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Pinball Roundtable - Is Stern Back on Top? Pokémon Pinball, Rumors & Why 2026 Might Be the Best Yeare

JBS Show·podcast_episode·1h 39m·held·Feb 17, 2026
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Pokémon Pinball media day shows strong enthusiasm; Stern poised for major sales success.

Summary

Pinball Roundtable discusses Pokémon Pinball's successful media day reveal, strong pre-launch reception despite early leaks, and growing crossover appeal beyond traditional pinball enthusiasts. The hosts debate Twippies Awards awards format changes and their impact on viewership, discuss Stern's renewed momentum, and explore the game's potential for commercial success through location play and home collectors. Ralph shares firsthand impressions from the media event where Stern and game designers displayed exceptional enthusiasm for the title.

Key Claims

  • Pokémon Pinball is generating substantially more pre-order interest and inquiries than recent Stern releases like Harry Potter

    high confidence · Cale Hernandez reports receiving continuous messages from both pinball and non-pinball audiences asking about purchase timing and variants; notes unprecedented Discord and Reddit discussion about entry into the hobby

  • The early leaks of Pokémon Pinball images were 'potato photos' but did not significantly harm pre-launch perception; instead may have energized the fanbase

    high confidence · Ralph and Jamie discuss that despite poor-quality leaked images, community reception remained intensely positive; Stern employees acknowledged the leak upset them but seemed relieved by positive external reception

  • Stern's recent game sales have been sliding and the company needs Pokémon Pinball to perform well commercially

    high confidence · Cale states 'their sales have kind of been sliding' and notes George Gomez has emphasized Stern's need for high sales volume to support their operational overhead; Jamie agrees these games weren't selling 'the way they need them to'

  • Twippies Awards 2026 award show on Valentine's Day had significantly lower viewership than previous years when held as live events

    medium confidence · Roundtable hosts note the viewership on the newly-formatted YouTube premiere was 'minuscule' compared to prior years; Ralph emphasizes the date choice was puzzling given the niche audience

  • Pokémon Pinball will support collecting mechanics through Stern Insider Connected with 182 Pokémon available at launch and more planned

    high confidence · Cale describes the feature as part of Stern's progression system; likens potential for queuing behavior to Dungeons & Dungeons & Dragons which generated sustained lines for 1-2 months

  • Stern factory tour during Pokémon media day revealed minimal production activity due to transition preparation

    high confidence · Ralph reports 'there were no line workers there' and 'there was nothing really to see' because staff were preparing for the Pokémon production shift

  • Erica Winnick (content creator) wearing a Pikachu costume at media day became a viral moment within the event, energizing attendees

Notable Quotes

  • “I think what we've got going on...has really been a lot. Maybe we just do them as specials. If there's something going on where we all talk and we're like, man, we've got to have this person on, then it's like a special episode or something.”

    Cale Hernandez @ ~3:00 — Proposes ending regular Roundtable guest interviews, preferring the three-host dynamic; positions Christopher Franchi interview as potential final guest slot

  • “If anything, it probably pissed them off because no one wants to have their unveiling be some crappy potato photo.”

    Jamie Burchell @ ~22:00 — Commentary on the leaked Pokémon Pinball images; acknowledges Stern's frustration while noting the leak didn't harm reception

  • “Seth seemed excited about it George seemed excited about it um Jack Danger seemed excited like they all had this different energy almost I don't know if it was nervous energy like oh my gosh I don't know how they're going to react to it”

    Ralph (Retro Ralph) @ ~15:00 — Observes distinct enthusiasm from Stern leadership (Seth, George Gomez, Jack Danger) at media day; suggests underlying relief or confidence about reception

  • “My phone is still blowing up about when is the game coming? Which version are you getting? And the great thing is it's mostly from people who are not pinball people.”

    Cale Hernandez @ ~38:00 — Indicates crossover appeal beyond traditional pinball enthusiasts; contrasts sharply with Harry Potter reception which generated minimal pre-order inquiries

  • “We haven't seen stuff like this in a while. This is really fun.”

    Flip N Out Pinball @ ~52:00 — Distributor assessment of Pokémon Pinball sales velocity; indicates exceptional market demand from retail perspective

  • “You have this, which is a hit. This is a game they're going to be selling for a long, long time.”

    Jamie Burchell @ ~43:00 — Positions Pokémon as a transformative release for Stern; implies sustained demand and longevity vs. recent titles

  • “We've still to this day we've never seen a line like that to play a pinball machine and we're like man we should get to because...people were playing it a lot and there was a there was a line for a long time like a month or two [with Dungeons & Dragons]”

Entities

Pokémon PinballgameStern PinballcompanyJamie BurchellpersonCale HernandezpersonRalph (Retro Ralph)personGeorge GomezpersonJack Dangerperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Pokémon Pinball generating exceptional pre-order inquiries and sales velocity from both traditional pinball operators and crossover audiences; distributor Flip N Out reports best sales activity in extended period

    high · Cale reports phone 'still blowing up' with purchase inquiries; notes crossover appeal from non-pinball audiences; Zach Sharpe states 'we haven't seen stuff like this in a while'; operators ordering both Pro and Premium variants

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Noticeable reversal in community sentiment toward Stern following Pokémon Pinball reveal; exceptional enthusiasm from internal team and media day attendees contrasts with lukewarm reception of recent releases

    high · Ralph observes different energy from Seth, George Gomez, and Jack Danger; Jamie notes 'they haven't released a bad game' but sales were sliding; unanimous positive reception at eight-hour media day event with zero negative commentary

  • ?

    leak_detection: Pokémon Pinball promotional materials (artwork slides) leaked before official reveal via low-quality images; created temporary controversy but did not suppress community enthusiasm or pre-orders

    high · Ralph confirms 'the bets and slides had already been leaked' before media day; Jamie characterizes as 'crappy potato photo'; Stern employees acknowledged leak 'pissed us off'; positive reception despite leak quality suggests strong underlying appeal

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's recent game sales have contracted; Pokémon Pinball positioned as critical revenue driver and long-term seller; company needs sustained sales volume to support operational overhead

    high · Jamie: 'their sales have kind of been sliding'; George Gomez emphasized company's sales requirements; Jamie predicts Pokémon will sell 'for a long, long time'; Cale forecasts substantial location revenue based on Dungeons & Dragons precedent

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.300

0:00
This week on the Roundtable, our intrepid hosts have returned. Retro Ralph, Jamie Burchill, and Cale Hernandez.
0:13
And with their powers combined, they bring you the latest edition of the JBS Roundtable. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Pinball Roundtable. Joining me as always, Jamie Burchill. I am, that's who I am, Kay Hernandez and Retro Ralph. Pinball Roundtable. We were supposed to interview Franchi, gentlemen. Yeah. But Ralph's still good, right? And we're still gonna. We're still gonna. but my question to the round table is this i wanted to do it live kale okay and not in our pre-game warm-up okay was this should be the last interview after franchi that the round table does tell me tell me why you're thinking that i think so because i think what here's why there's a ton of interview shows right i have one of them right on the jbs show also i like it when it's just the three of us being stupid that's what i love the most oh for sure and i just i don't know i i don't want to bring somebody else in and that threesome that we have it changes it's a little different and uh i like what what we've got going on yeah and you you have you have an interview show i do so like what why also have an interview show where it's you and other people interviewing people right i'm with ralph what do you think yeah i think it i will agree i think it loses a little bit of the it's hard for us to have our same dynamic and a fourth person i think it's just hard right um but no i like i feel like when i get compliment although we did get a lot of compliments on the gomez thing i feel like people are always saying like oh man i love that you get you three together just shooting the shit because it's like me and my buddies hanging out talking pinball. I think we might lose a little bit of that when we have a guest on. That's what I worry about. I don't want to lose what we've got going on, which has really been a lot. Maybe we just do them as specials. If there's something going on where we all talk and we're like, man, we've got to have this person on, then it's like a special episode or something. Yeah, remember like Family Ties used to have a very special episode once in a while. Two hours, right? Two hour long. two hour long. And the Franchi thing is special. It is. He's kind of got his hand in everything right now. He's been asking about coming on. We're friends and he's kind of part of the round table.

high confidence · Ralph describes the moment in detail, noting Stern employees filmed her and attendees 'lost their minds'; she had to enter the replay room sideways due to costume width

  • Pokémon Pinball is Stern's largest IP license ever in terms of scale and cultural reach

    high confidence · Ralph describes Stern's presentation emphasizing 'how big it is in comparison to some of the other licenses they've worked with because it's by far the largest one ever'

    • Cale Hernandez @ ~58:00 — Documents sustained queue behavior for progression-based games at location; forecasts similar or greater impact from Pokémon's collecting mechanic

  • “It was like a good vibe all around like everyone was having a blast with it no one was saying anything like you know you talk the whole time it was we were there for like eight hours and no one was like i don't like this or that they were just having fun with it”

    Ralph @ ~18:00 — Describes unanimous positive reception at media day; contrasts with prior reveals where some attendees expressed lukewarm reactions

  • “I don't want to say they were bad games. I don't think they were selling the way they need them to.”

    Jamie Burchell @ ~34:00 — Acknowledges recent Stern releases met quality standards but underperformed commercial expectations; frames Pokémon as corrective release

  • “If you're part of a super group i think they let you do that”

    Ralph @ ~50:00 — Discusses embargo protocols and content creator privileges; hints at ability to pre-release podcast content after media day attendance

    • Christopher Franchi
    person
    Erica Winnickperson
    Zach Sharpeperson
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Erica's Pinball Journeyperson
    Marc Silkperson
    Flip N Out Pinballcompany
    This Week in Pinballorganization
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Stern Insider Connectedproduct
    Houston Pinballcompany
    [name withheld pending review]game
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Barrels of Funcompany
    Sethperson
    Joe Marchfieldperson
  • ?

    design_innovation: Pokémon Pinball incorporates collecting system via Stern Insider Connected app with 182 Pokémon available at launch and more planned; mirrors successful progression system from Dungeons & Dragons that generated sustained location engagement

    high · Cale describes collecting grid/Pokédex feature; notes Stern Insider Connected enables progression tracking; references D&D Pinball queue lines lasting 'a month or two' due to progression mechanics; expects 'way more lines for this with pokemon'

  • $

    market_signal: Pokémon Pinball attracting substantial non-traditional pinball audience including casual players, Pokémon franchise fans, and social media crossover appeal; represents potential market expansion beyond traditional enthusiast base

    high · Ralph notes media day included 'Pokemon creators' not 'pinball people'; Cale reports 'mostly from people who are not pinball people' inquiring about purchases; unprecedented Discord and Reddit activity from prospective hobby entrants

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Pokémon represents Stern Pinball's largest IP license in company history by cultural reach and commercial scope; dwarfs prior licenses including John Wick, King Kong, and other recent acquisitions

    high · Ralph reports Stern presentation emphasized 'how big it is in comparison to some of the other licenses they've worked with because it's by far the largest one ever'; CEO discussion of license significance and process

  • ?

    event_signal: Pokémon Pinball media day at Stern HQ in Chicago generated exceptional enthusiasm from attendees, creators, and internal Stern team; unanimous positive feedback over eight-hour event; contrasts sharply with prior reveals

    high · Ralph: 'everyone was having a blast with it no one was saying anything...they were just having fun with it'; 'no one was like i don't like this or that'; observed relief/satisfaction from Stern staff upon learning external reception positive

  • ?

    content_signal: Roundtable hosts debating format changes including potential end to regular guest interviews; discusses embargo protocols and content release timing for media day attendees; positions Franchi interview as possibly final guest slot

    medium · Cale proposes 'last interview after franchi'; hosts prefer three-person dynamic; discussion of allowing pre-release podcast content after embargo expires; Ralph references 'Triple Drain did...podcast but then didn't release it until...embargo was over'

  • ?

    community_signal: Twippies 2026 awards show underwent major format retool including removal of content creator award categories, shift from live event to YouTube premiere, and Valentine's Day date selection; resulted in significantly reduced viewership and community backlash

    high · Hosts note 'viewership compared to other Twippy years was minuscule'; Valentine's Day date called 'weird choice'; Erica's Pinball Journey criticized leaks; omission of content creators removed voting constituency and discussion drivers for podcasters

  • ?

    venue_signal: Major arcade operators (Cale's venues, Houston Pinball) pre-ordering multiple Pokémon Pinball variants (Pro and Premium) in anticipation of exceptional location revenue; positioning machines next to ATMs suggests expected high volume play and spending

    high · Cale and partner ordered both Pro and Premium; Ralph recommended placement 'right next to the ATM machine'; comparison to Dungeons & Dragons which generated month-plus queue lines; Jamie notes 'it's going to print money for you guys'

    • 2:55
    You know, there's a small, it's a sliver, but it's you. He likes me. He's very nice to me. He's great. He gave you a T-shirt? No, I never got that. Oh, wait, that's right. He didn't get it. Oh.
    3:12
    I was kidding. Wait, wait, Jamie, did you really not get one? No, I never got it. Oh, man. I'm sorry, dude. I'm sorry. I went to the mailbox like every day looking for this shirt. Yeah. Right. So, you know, French is going to hear this, so he's going to be like, well, how is it? Why is there another episode? And I'm not on it. But we had to reschedule because of flight arrangements with Ralph coming back from Chicago. So we couldn't do it last week. We're going to reschedule for this week. So don't worry, Franchi. We're going to have you on. We're going to have a good time. We're going to have a good talk, just like four guys hanging out. Absolutely. Or girls. Four guys or girls hanging out. Doesn't matter. We're just going to hang out. So real quick, T-shirt, niche internet micro-celebrity, given to me by a gentleman that works at Barrels of Fun, Victor H. So, Vic, thank you so much for the shirt, Victor. I really appreciate it.
    4:06
    I don't know if I can wear it in public, but I'll wear it here. Was that the guy you commentate with sometimes? Yeah. He's cool. Yeah, he's cool, dude. He is cool. He works at Barrels. He's great. I love him. I don't know what he does there, but he does something. Okay. Something with the machines. You've never asked him what he does for Ferrell? No, he puts the machines together. He puts mechs together. Just two seconds ago, you said, I don't know what he does. Now you're like, I don't know. He does wire harnesses or something. You don't know what he does. He does wire harnesses. He just made it up. Dude, you totally just made that up. Yeah, I don't know, man. Every time I take the back door, he's in there. How about that? Okay. Do I know what the hell he does in that machine? Just say I have no idea what he does. I don't know, but he got me a hell of a t-shirt, and I want to thank you, Victor. Twippy's last weekend The past couple of days Boys, did anybody watch it?
    5:00
    Oh no What happened? He doesn't even say anything He's getting us in trouble Well, it was on I mean, it was on Valentine's Day You guys What's wrong? Nothing Well, it was on Valentine's So that probably not a good not a good premiere day. OK, so but, you know, there may be people listening that don't know what's going on. The Twippies kind of retooled themselves. And this year they decided not to do a live show. They decided to pick a YouTube channel with very few subscribers to premiere this. It's a new channel. It's a new group. It's a new channel. Very talented folks.
    5:59
    Super. And I didn't watch it, but it seems like it didn't go well because the viewership compared to other Twippy years was minuscule.
    6:14
    And Ralph brings up a good point. It was on Valentine's Day. So I don't know what you're saying about pinball fans when you decide to have it on Valentine's Day. But also, you're not renting a venue.
    6:32
    You're not organizing anything, a group of people to do production live. You have the whole Internet and any day of the week to do it. Why Valentine's Day? That was kind of weird. Yeah. Why not Friday the 13th? Yeah, the day was a weird choice. But then there is not. I love I listen to the bashes podcast. I've met both of them. They're really, really great. Good dudes. I think the thing is, like with something like this, if you're premiering any piece of content on YouTube, YouTube is brutal when it comes to the algorithm in general. So like sometimes if you even have a large channel, your notifications are not always all getting out. Like I get notifications sometimes on stuff on my like my phone that that happened two days ago. So sometimes they stagger the notifications.
    7:20
    Number one, I don't think they did a lot of promotion up until the point like, hey, just to remember it's going to be on this day. And then to launch it, like the Bash guys could have produced it and maybe they found a larger channel to premiere it. You know what I mean? Because that premiere came out as like it's almost like you're watching a prerecorded live stream. So you can all comment and everything. But, man, if you don't do it, if you don't have a lot of subscribers and you do it, it's just not going to go anywhere. You don't have to fight against pinball. You have to fight again. Pinball is such a small niche thing to begin with. But, no, I watched a little bit of it. They highly produced it. They got Mark Silk to do a lot of the voice stuff. It was cool. I just feel like probably the way they launched it was not really the right way. But yeah, so I think a lot of people are not going to end up seeing it probably.
    8:13
    Yeah, and there's also the aspect that they omitted content creators. They really – that was one of the major changes, and that's almost like if you had a format change like that. It's like if you had the Academy Awards and only gave awards to the film producers and you didn't bring attention to the stars. That's a good point. Yeah. You know, you're saying you lose a lot of those people that want to vote for like their favorite creator and stuff like that, which there's a lot of people. But what Kale's point is also you you you took all these podcasts that used to talk about you. Yeah, and didn't give them a reason to talk about it. Yeah, no, it's true.
    8:59
    What are we even doing here, Jay? What are we doing? So the change to not have the content created, and I'm not going to speak for Colin.
    9:11
    We did a Twippies last year, and I thought it was fucking great, okay? Yeah. But we had an internet outage, so what? Piss off. What am I going to do?
    9:22
    But other than that, I thought it was great. And with the wormhole closing, I think Colin got put in a tough situation. I probably would have tried to go back to TPF maybe, but, you know, it's Colin's choice. OK. And yeah. And, you know, he he did it this way. And now I don't know, you know, what he's what him and the group are thinking. Maybe they're like, man, maybe they liked it this way or maybe maybe they're like, hey, so we tried it this way. Maybe it's time to take another look at it for next year.
    10:00
    Yeah, I will say the period I did watch, I think I watched it for like 20 minutes, but the production was really good. Like the Bash guys did a great job. All the audio was tight, like even when they were interviewing people because I skipped through a little bit. So I don't know if they actually set them up because I noticed like Eric Minier won. I kind of skipped to the end to see who won best game. And Eric Minier, you know, Harry Potter won. And he sounded great. Like they all sounded good. And incorporating Mark Silk. So the production was great. But then you wonder, because I know he was trying to do it like a little bit of like a keep it simple. But maybe that isn't keeping it simple. I wonder if you went live and did it more raw, but it was just live. Like you had the envelopes and you're opening it. Like, would that actually do better? Because I know sometimes I'll go produce the most highly produced video and put it on YouTube and it gets 2000 views. And then I do some stupid thing about how the ball save works on Star Wars and it gets 22,000 views. So I think sometimes there's something to be said about simple, like just going straight. I feel a little bit bad because they produced the crap out of this thing, and it's not quite getting the views that you'd probably want for an award show. I hope they're happy with it. I was on for a while. I wanted to give them a view, but I'm not a chatter.
    11:17
    You know what I mean? I'll chat on streams like Electric Bats or Kaneda once in a while, but I'm not really a chatter. I'm more of a lurker. Yeah, I've noticed that. Yeah, lurk in the darkness. Yeah. I lurk, you know, it's not about me. It's your stream, dude. I don't want to be the dude who comes in and is like, hey, talk to me. Talk to me every fucking two minutes. Actually, when I was doing like arcade content, there was this guy I didn't like very much, and he would sometimes go into my live stream. He was like kind of a creator that had a similar audience, and then all of a sudden he'd start like talking to them. And it did bug me a little bit because it's like, I don't know, because you're going into a show as someone that's also very well recognized. And then all of a sudden, like it was drawing all the conversation over there. It can kind of be a little annoying. So if that's what you're trying to avoid, I guess I get that. I'm just trying to avoid, hey, Jamie. I mean, you are a micro celebrity. So you join that chat. Chat people like, oh, excuse me. Jamie's here. Let's put a bow on that. And, you know, good luck moving forward and whatever you want to do. If I were to do a show, I would say I would take 100 content creators, 100 of them, send them an email. This is the list of people to vote for. You are voting for the Pinball Roundtable Awards.
    12:41
    And then you do it live, me and you, three idiots, and we announce it. Because the public, you know, whatever. What are you saying right now? the public whatever whatever i mean they're not you it's very hard to get them to do the votes right it's that's brutal all right i don't want to go down that path i mean when you make the voting system complicated then yeah because people are like oh you know if you if you if you get them so tired by your voting process then by the end you don't even know what they're voting they're probably just like filling stuff in because they're done yeah you know what i mean those long i i that's how i feel if you make it too complicated they just put whatever they're done Yeah, I know. I had a lot of fraternity brothers call me last year and go, what the hell did you have me vote for? That took 20 minutes of my life. I was like, I know.
    13:32
    Sorry about that, buddy. All right, Ralph, let's talk about media day, dude. Yeah. This guy got to go. He scheduled a work trip around it. Kale and I said, one, it's too cold. Two, it's in the middle of the week. And three, it's too cold. yeah well we were i was bummed that you guys weren't there obviously but uh no it was cool man it was um it was different though because the the you know it's not there were a lot of people that normally go that couldn't go and then i think there was a lot of creators that were invited that were on that fringe of their kind of more pokemon creators it was at least two or three that i met there were really they were they made more pokemon content they weren't even like pinball people it was about three of those one of them was like hardcore pokemon i mean he was like asking me like he thought that because i was there i must be like wicked hardcore pokemon and he asked me like when i had my game boy as a kid like which pokemon games i played and i was like got nothing brother got nothing yeah i just know i had i know i have a gold i know like my buddy had like a gold game boy cart but i don't i did i i wasn't even going to say that because i was i would have been totally fake in the funk but i was anyways but so there was definitely like a cool crowd i like all the creators got got along really well there's a lot a lot of great people there but the thing that the thing that stands out out of all of it not even the game so we've been to a bunch of these now and you go into that room and seth gives the sort of the the dealer presentation to us which is like talking about the license talking about the process like all the stuff that's sort of the behind the scenes stuff he had different mojo at this in this yeah yeah he was like excited and i'm not saying he wasn't excited for prior ones but it just seemed like there was a different energy and I know that's hard to explain but Seth seemed excited about it George seemed excited about it um Jack Danger seemed excited like they all had this different energy almost I don't know if it was nervous energy like oh my gosh I don't know how they're going to react to it but once once that we got unleashed into the room and everyone was playing it like it was it was just like a good vibe all around like everyone was having a blast with it no one was saying anything like you know you talk the whole time it was we were there for like eight hours and no one was like i don't like this or that they were just having fun with it and i think that's cool right by the uh fill me in on the timeline here so by the time you guys all got together for the media day the the bets and slides had already been leaked correct the bets and slides were out and the dealer's call had happened so like okay they've all they had all seen it but yeah the slides were out and that makes a lot of sense why there were some seriously good vibes because from those leaks, even as shitty as those images were, the quality,
    16:22
    people were – I haven't seen this much excitement about a new release in a long, long time, especially Stern. I mean, they had a few stinkers, right? They had a few games people weren't excited about. It is very exciting. they were all very excited to hear so much positive stuff. I mean, I've heard directly from people at Stern. They were pumped. So I think that's what you were feeling. And so the leaks seemed to help them.
    16:58
    Yeah, I mean, and I definitely didn't. Like I said that in my – I think I talked about it in my podcast. I don't think it really affected them. If anything, it probably pissed them off because no one wants to have their unveiling be some crappy potato photo. Yeah, was there any chatter about that at the media day? Because I know Erica's pinball journey wrote like a novel on social media about how bad leaks are. You mentioned it. Was there an official talk about that, or where was all that coming from? There was some casual stuff, like the Stern employees will weave in and out of the – I call it the replay. I think it's called replay, the name of that room. The replay room. They'll weave in and out. And there was a conversation that I kind of caught some of, and I don't remember who was saying it. It's probably good that I don't remember. But they were just like, obviously this pissed us off. we don't we would never want any game launched for someone to see like something that they have to like pick apart and they really it's not a good representation of the game and all i heard was but the situation's been dealt with so i don't know what the situation's been dealt with means but um they were talking about bets and when they were when they were having that conversation so the thing is like you can't but how much can you really strong arm bets and they're the ones that sell to probably main event dave and busters like all the biggest venues so that are not going to carry a pokemon machine you know yeah so i don't know like i don't know how much betson is of their business because you know how many those i only in the chicagoland area the only dave and busters that has pinball machines there's one that they have on test in um it's like right around the schomburg area that i went to but i was asking one of the guys at stern there they're like it does okay but the thing is like people just don't go to that venue to go play pinball. And plus there's so many other great pinball locations in Chicago. It's like, why would you go to Dave and Buster's? Right. And if it's not spitting out tickets, I don't think the kids are going to be into it. Yeah. They have all the new games there. But anyway, what else do you want to know about the day as a whole? How hard was it to get Erica to dress up as Pokemon? How long did that take? Pikachu. It took two seconds to get her to dress as Pikachu, and it was awesome. She said yes immediately, right? so excited about it like because i told her i was like well you're gonna be in the intro of the video but the thing is like after we did that i don't know if erica's intent was to like take it off like take the pokemon or take pikachu off and just go back in but everyone's people from the so we're in the lobby area and people that are you know the you know the main area where they have all the games it's like it's like their lobby or whatever not the outside lobby but the inside lobby area you know i'm talking about right inside stern where they have a lot of games yeah So people in there are seeing her out there, and they're, like, getting excited. And then people from Stern have their phones out, and they're filming her in the thing. And so we were, like, amping her. You could tell she was getting, like, amped up. So she's like, screw it. I'm going to, like, go up to the door. And then someone opens the door for her. And then once she got in that room, like, it was maddening. Everyone was freaking out. That's so great. So Erica's like, I don't know how. She must obviously have worn this thing before. But she knows how to use her hands. So the Pikachu's hands stay out, right? Uh-huh. So you don't have to do anything with those. So she was taking her arms and putting them through the ears and making them do all this cute stuff with his ears. And people were losing their minds. People were literally losing their mind. George was like, oh, my gosh. It was just fun, dude. You have to remember Erica is a Hollywood behind-the-scenes professional. She knows how it works. Oh, she was working it, and everyone was loving it. And so she didn't even get into the replay room yet. When she went in there, everyone lost their mind. like lost their mind because she couldn't even fit this costume's big so to get through the door of the replay room she had to like walk sideways through it because like the ears are hitting stuff it was so funny man it was it was the best like we had i'm so bummed you guys weren't there because the vibes at this one were just fun like the whole time and yeah and i don't think you know maybe it's on unsaid sometimes but maybe when we go to some of these the reason why it doesn't have that same level is because there's a group of people there that aren't liking the game as much and i just think everyone enjoyed it like everyone was enjoying it so the whole vibe was like happy so it was pretty cool and it was cool to see like i don't know why sometimes you maybe read into stuff but it felt like there was this sigh of relief amongst the stern people because i think once they heard us kind of flipping out about it i think they were like shit the reception's been good from the outside even with the potato leak um you know what i mean and i think they realized It's like, hey, we might have created something that we're going to sell a lot of. And they need that, though, because I don't feel like these other games, to Cale's point earlier, I don't want to say they were bad games. I don't think they were selling the way they need them to. Oh, 100%. They haven't released a bad game. We have them all in the arcade, and they're all making money. You know, it's just the, you know, they have to, you know, George has said this, you know, to support a gigantic machine like they're running, they need sales. And their sales have kind of been sliding. This is great, and I've heard nothing but positive, wonderful things from the audience and the pinball fans and people at Stern. They really needed this, and they deserve this. Yeah, it's awesome, man. Good for Stern. Good for him. You know, I was going to ask you a question. Is Stern back or were they ever really gone? And I think you answered that perfectly, Cal. Well, I mean, business, it's waves, you know. It goes up. Even the titans of technology, Apple, they go up and down. Stock prices go up and down, you know.
    22:58
    Stern doesn't have stock prices, but it would be interesting if they did. but... It'd be trading pretty high right now. It'd be trading real high. I think it'd be trading. Because you have this, which is a hit. This is a game they're going to be selling for a long, long time. And what I am incredibly excited about,
    23:20
    I have, you know, anytime a new game is released, I get a lot of messages from people. Well, not every time. You know, sometimes... And I even said, like, with Harry Potter, I only got like a couple of messages like, are you going to get this at the arcade?
    23:37
    On Pokemon, my phone is still blowing up about when is the game coming? Which version are you getting? And the great thing is it's mostly from people who are not pinball people. That's cool. Yeah, that's a crossover, right? And we're seeing that in our Discord. There's a lot of chat about, you know, Pokemon fans. They're talking about this thing. and then you're seeing a lot more chat on i like to hang out on um our pinball on reddit there's so much more there's so much more chat you know i was there like years and years like 10 years ago when it was just like crickets now now every week there's people like hey i want to get into pinball what do i need to know i'm gonna buy a new inbox machine what tools do i need how What is maintenance like? What's to be expected of a new machine? There's more talk about this than there ever has been before. Great. I know. That's good. It's good for our podcast.
    24:42
    Yeah. We're going to be making money. Yeah, we're making cash. No, but it's good for our industry. That's in the notes, right? We're talking about that? Yeah, we're talking about that. I have a Remind me I got something when we get there later Okay good I remind you Anything else about the day or anything else you want to talk about Oh yeah Oh did you hang out with Erin Winnick I did. Yeah, and that was cool. So for those of you that don't know, she was with us as one of the hosts for the Twippies last year. Yeah. She's awesome. Yeah, we got a chance to talk for a while. She's been with a bat with her mom, and yeah, she's one of my faves. And Melissa Loomis, that's another one. You got to see Vic VP. I'm just naming some people that I love that I didn't get to. Pinball adjacent. Oh, yeah. Hey, Ralph, since we've been to other media days, besides the vibe, how did this differ? Did you guys still do the tour?
    25:38
    I noticed you had sushi. That's new. Yes. Well, they tried to do the Pokemon Japan tie-in thing, which I thought was kind of clever. You know what? I love sushi that sits out for a long time. No, no. They refreshed it. It wasn't like that. You know what I mean? You give us – like everyone was like scarfing it up, but they did order more. So it didn't sit for a long time, but yeah, I'm with you. I always think about that too. But no, it was kind of the same thing, but you could forego the factory tour. But honestly, the factory tour wasn't really interesting because there was nothing going on. There were no line workers there. So it wasn't – there was nothing really. They're all getting ready for the transition over to Pokemon, so there was really nothing to see. But yeah, same format. We got in the room. They did the thing kind of like they did at John Wick, kind of gave a deep dive on the property and the significance of it and just how big it is in comparison to some of the other licenses they've worked with because it's by far the largest one ever. And then they just brought us into the replay room. The one thing they did do, which I think when we went for King – no, not King Kong. What was it? Yeah, it was King Kong, right? When we all went together? The last one we all did, yeah. Yeah, so they still did that breakout room thing. So I don't know who did it at Stern, but they had to schedule all of the content creators. They had them on a schedule. Hey, you get your 30 minutes, your 45 minutes, whatever it was. They gave us like 40 minutes each, which was fine because honestly they had – this time around they had the pro premium and the limited in the replay room. How did Joe run that? Wasn't it Joe? Yeah, Joe Marchfield and Zach.
    27:11
    He kicked you right on out of there. They were running a tight ship on all that, but they had a light in there for us. So if you needed a light, there was a light in there. And then it was a premium copy of the game, so you could check that out. Oh, good. Yeah, no, it was good. So they ran it. I think they have a system now. This system seems to work. I'm glad they kept with this private room thing because, you know, you can't really hear it as good in the replay room. So this at least got you into feeling for the sound effects and the music and the call-outs and stuff like that. You know, ladies and gentlemen, though, I do have to take, you know, piss on you a little tiny bit, Raph, okay? Why me? Why? Because you gave us nothing, dude. You gave us literally nothing. Did I give you anything on Harry Potter? I didn't give you shit on Harry Potter. No, you gave us more on Harry Potter, which was very little, than you gave us on this. You gave us nothing, dude. Yeah. I'm not supposed to. That's the whole point. Come on. If you're part of a group, you can. That's what Triple Drain did. as soon as they came back they did a podcast but then didn't release it until they the embargo was over right well maybe we need to do that next time yeah next time you're part of a super group i think they let you do that all right okay yeah okay so i just got authorization all right zach sharp nothing thank you yeah good i want him to know would you get the Pro or premium? Because Houston Pinball, the guys at Eureka, were all over me, Cal. Hey, ask your boy Ralph. Pro or premium? What do we get? And radio silence. You know what I'm doing?
    28:49
    What? I'm getting both. This guy's getting both. One of my questions to you, are you going to really do it? Yeah. Yeah, we ordered both from Zach at Flippin' Out Pinball. That's awesome. So did Taylor and John. at Houston Pinball. They ordered a pro and a premium. I really got to ask him, but I did ask him the other day. I said, I know you're not going to give me sales particulars, but I was like, Zach, how good is this selling? He's like, dude, it's selling really well. He's like, we haven't seen stuff like this in a while. This is really fun. I mean, that's awesome, right? I mean, it's good for the hobby. It's great for the hobby. It's good for his wallet.
    29:29
    Mine too. Exactly right. So I called up Kale today. Jamie, I called up Kale today and I was like, hey, I want to propose something to you. And he's like, we're already getting two. Yeah, we're already getting two of them. Because I was thinking I could maybe get one and then put it on site. But I'm like, dude, the thing's going to print money for you guys. It's going to make so much money. I told him, put it right next to the ATM machine at the back.
    29:56
    And we've done that with a few other games, bought both versions. We did that with Godzilla. you know any popular dnd right dn we did with dnd yeah um but this thing so uh this is the reason we we purchased two of them with with dungeons and dragons we've still to this day we've never seen a line like that to play a pinball machine and we're like man we should get to because i i don't know if it's because of the progression you know you save progression on dnd people were playing it a lot and there was a there was a line for a long time like a month or two um you're gonna see way more of lines for this with pokemon um yeah i think so too for one thing you can with stern insider connected you can collect right now you can collect 182 pokemon to um with more to come many more to come what's that called a grid or what's it called is it pokedex pokedex pokedex yeah okay they go crazy for this pokedex guys yeah and and i'm even i was talking to some players last night at the arcade they were like you know what i haven't played pokemon since i was a kid but i'm kind of excited and all i really want to do is collect all 182 of these so that's going to make you play it that's gonna print you money yeah and so i mean if you have like killer players sitting there just collecting pokemon you know you're gonna have to have two machines man yeah what do you want is shitty players that get addicted to collecting you know what we love everybody we love it all the players they did show us a little bit of that they showed us like the app and they showed us like what because none of the games were insider connected like you couldn't actually scan so they did show us that they showed like here's what the pokemon here's what they look like in the app and stuff like that but uh they also you know what was interesting they didn't show us the topper they showed the dealers the topper and supposedly the topper is like blow your mind cool they were like this topper you don't understand like they kept saying it like this topper is gonna like blow your mind yeah i'm excited i don't know what they did i have no idea what they would have done but um they're saying that then they probably did something cool yeah That's a weird thing. I'm hearing the same thing.
    32:21
    Dealers are saying the top is super cool. Not only that, we should see it within like a month. Like the stuff is ready to roll, the accessory package. They did say that, thankfully. And honestly, why would you not with this? Like if you're going to have this many – think about all the people that are going to buy premiums. Like, oh, man, I wish I had expression lights. And they're going to sell a ton of those, both of the speakers and the cabinet. And then I'm sure they'll have another shooter rod for it, so there'll be that. And then, I don't know, I can see this being, I think this is going to be crazy. I think it's going to be something that we haven't seen in a really long time, as far as when they start rolling out and how many accessories they're going to sell for these things. Yeah, for sure. And now, think about it, right? How smart. Now with Spike 3, all the trim levels can add cabinet lighting and artwork and speaker lighting. They're going to sell all that stuff with this. Did anybody ask them to take the lock bar off to see if they finished that? Not one person. Nobody even mentioned it? By Woodgate? No one. Nobody.
    33:23
    No one. I would have been there, be like, I need somebody to take this lock bar off because I want to see what's going on here. Because you don't want to – it's interesting. Well, you know what? They haven't built him yet, so they still have time to do whatever.
    33:38
    But it's interesting after the whole edge gate if they've – because you remember Gomez said, you know what? I think I'm going to paint the edge now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because you don't want people, like, complaining about that, even though it's not an issue. Yeah. You know what else got a bum, though, that they didn't have? So, and they didn't really, this is the one thing they didn't do a good job telling us, so there's a little misinformation out there. I was bummed because I looked at the, the LE is beautiful of this Pokemon. Like, it's really pretty. But the Backglass, it was glass, but it wasn't mirrored. And I was like, oh, that's a bummer, man, because that's, like, something they always do with these LEs. And come to find out, they are doing it, and it's on the spec sheet. It's just that they didn't have it ready and made, but they didn't really make that clear there. So, like, there's a lot of videos of people that were there. They're like, oh, bummer that doesn't have the mirrored back glass, but it will. So I'm curious what it's going to look like because I think that I'll leave back glass. And that's kind of like a play with Pokemon, like the lore, because of the shiny type Pokemon. You know, you have your shiny back glass. I don't know that, but you said it with confidence, so I believe you.
    34:39
    So I believe you. Shiny Pokemon. Got it. Salamander. What is its name? I don't even know if that's the name. And we can't end this conversation without talking about the LE. They decided to roll it back, do $750 instead of like $1,000 or $900 and something. Man, these things, it seems like these sold out before the official announcement. I went on just for giggles. I wasn't going to buy it. I did the whole, you know, when you have all access, we all have it, I think. But when you have all access, it lets you log in and you can try to buy the LE, however many. They don't ever say how many they do through the website. Dude, I clicked one click, and it was sold out. I didn't even put it in my cart. It was just refreshing the screen. It said sold out. I was like, what the hell? I've done that for other releases, and I could at least get it into my cart. I couldn't even get it into my cart. So yeah, they're probably riding high. And they're selling for like $20,000 or $30,000 now? Is that correct? I heard 20, but Kaneda keeps thinking, you know, he's pumping it up that it's going to 30. So he can sell his allotment, right? So I did. I had someone literally message me before this show, and they said, do you think Kaneda really likes this, or is he just pumping it up so he can sell it for a lot of money? I was like, I don't know. He seems genuinely excited about Pokemon. Like, he actually does.
    36:03
    I'm sure he's pumped about both things. I'm sure he's pumped about the potential to make a lot of money, and I'm sure he does seem genuinely excited about it. Making money and pleasing his kids, he's going to be a happy camper over there in Bridgeport. But doesn't it fit his whole thing? Because isn't he really into Japanese culture in general? Yes. Oh, yeah. So it kind of fits his whole motif he's got going on, right? And his kid is all excited about it. Now, let's say you're Stern now, you guys. All right. It's all about IP.
    36:34
    Yeah. Clearly, that's what this says. I mean, clearly. And you look at Harry Potter too, right? Right. That's the statement here. So this is – man, this – it puts a lot of weight on Jodie's shoulders. It is, but it isn't. Like Star Wars is a hell of an IP, dude.
    36:53
    Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, what is it about IP? Or is it about the right IP? It's got to be an IP. But, Jamie, think about it this way. It's almost hard to compare those because there's been so many other Star Wars games, including theirs. So this is like giant IP. It's like perfect storm. Giant IP plus there's never been a pinball machine ever made for this. So it's like in a highly collectible – you know what I mean? So I do – I would normally agree with you. I would normally agree with you, but I think because they did Star Wars before and then there were so many Star Wars games before that, it's almost like how much more are you – and it's the same three movies. Like you know what I mean? So I think – I don't know. it's also a good machine pokemon i mean they put out everyone says it's a long player maybe but that they you know that's what you kind of want for this audience right you don't want them going up and having a brick fest yeah it's very easy to find the shots for sure yeah right so ralph you'll verify this is a this is a more more kind and gentler layout than something like star wars Yeah, and they definitely took – you could tell the ramps are wide, so you're not going to – you've got to have some shot accuracy. But if you're in the bozo zone, as George Gomez says, you can still be having fun. And then you have the whole bash toy thing in the middle, so it's like the people that just tend to flip and they don't really play pinball yet, they'll start hitting this thing. It's going to be like, oh, I want to hit that. And then all of a sudden, if they can hit it enough times and they hit all the stand-ups, they'll get a multi-ball. And so there's some of that. But I wouldn't say it's like – I asked one of the guys. I think I asked Kyle. I thought it was either Kyle or Derek there. I can't remember. But I asked what's the average scores from the Stern people that have been playing it because I wanted to gauge it to what we were getting because we were all getting like close to the 200 million mark. And he's like, actually, we find that this isn't a game where the people at Stern were getting like billion scores. It was kind of between that like two to three million. So I was like, okay. So we're kind of – everyone in the room was kind of in the ballpark until Tom Graff shows up. And he puts up – I know, but it's so awesome, dude. He puts up this – I have a video clip. I got to post it as a short.
    39:06
    Everyone's like, get the billion, get the billion. Then he did, and he drained, and he turned around, and this look – he gave just this look like that was fun. It was just this – I don't know. It's just this great look. He's like, yeah, I'm pretty good at pinball. But not in like a snarky way. Just like, yeah, I don't know. I put up a billion. Put a bow on IP. They've got some really good IPs coming up too, but they don't have – it's not like Pokemon, right? Pokemon is – there's nothing like it. There's another thing we haven't mentioned. So this is the animated series, right? So you have this nostalgia for people for the animated series. But if Transformers is G1, well, then you've got a good license, not nearly as big as Pokemon, but you're also going to pull on the nostalgia heartstrings with G1. Like the movie I don't think does that.
    39:57
    Transformers movies don't pull on nostalgia, but G1, all the old dudes are going to want to buy it. I put myself in that old dude category. Not only that, right now they have some serious momentum with Pokemon. and then now you have these people who, lots of people didn't even know pinball was a thing they've been introduced to stern pinball, so then when stern pinball releases the next thing, which is apparently Transformers people are going to be like, oh I want the LE because I missed out on the Pokemon LE once the ball starts rolling yeah yeah yeah hey i gotta tell you one story but i cannot say who said it but it's it's so so so someone that is in that the the arcade room so i you guys if you saw the video i i i walked up to the front door as as a transformer right yeah so i was showing someone at stern hey i i did this earlier but you didn't see it and they slipped and they said wrong costume and i'm like because I was wearing the modern Transformers costumes. I was like, bingo.
    41:13
    G1 confirmed. So you were like, gotcha. I did. I did say gotcha. But I won't say who said it. I said I wouldn't say anything, so that was kind of a lie. There you go.
    41:24
    You know what we blew, Cale? We just got to get him on a podcast. That's what we got to do. Hey, let's just record. And then he'll start spewing everything. I was dressed as the modern. It's going to be G1. You've got to get Optimus Prime's voice, though, right?
    41:42
    Yeah. That guy's alive still, right? I think so. Got to get his voice. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, for sure. They'll have him. Or sample it from – or get samples or whatever. It's going to be a banger. But the crazy thing is is the vibe – sometimes people at Stern say things, and there was definitely things said. Not what game it was, but this feeling of – this is why I think the feeling was different in the room. I think they know the next two games are really good because they were kind of hinting like, oh, you think this is cool? Do you like this? It's going to keep rolling. Almost like there's going to be another banger and another banger this year. So I don't know. They're feeling confident right now, but that's good. They need it. They need to be confident right now. Yeah, from what I've heard, it's like they're like Pokemon is awesome, but these next two games are for real pinball fans. Yeah, yeah. Good.
    42:41
    All right, how much do you think, guys, that Jack Danger was involved in the Pokemon? Give me a percentage.
    42:49
    No, I mean, nobody knows. Okay, so we've heard that there were like two Whitewoods before what we're looking at. Now, you know, we've heard. And I mean, that's that's not unheard of. There were three on John Wick, you know, that they had to scrap and restart.
    43:09
    What? What's so funny? I almost said something terrible. Because he hates John Wick. I hate John. You just got to play good. Yeah, I know. I said that this should have been. You got to play a good one, man. I played a good copy of it the other day. Oh, it's so funny. It's so funny. Whatever you hate. OK, go. So Star Wars you hate and John Wick you hate. Got it.
    43:31
    Okay. Sorry, Gail. Go ahead, Gail. I'm sorry. No, I don't. The percentage, I don't know. I don't think we'll ever know because there's so many vibes and stories and opinions and feelings involved in this that you're never going to get a real answer. It's just really who cares. But it's just, you know. Here's the whole thing, like leading up to it, you heard some people saying, oh, this game, this layout sucks. They took out all of Jack Danger's cool shit. Yeah, that was going around. But I kept telling people, bro, it started with Jack Danger and you had Gomez come in and do something. Like how could that be bad? There's two great designers with great ideas with the finishing touches by Gomez.
    44:24
    You knew it was going to be fun and a fine layout. Yeah. And plus, I mean, I've heard that they're never going to do anything like X-Men again because it's too hard to reproduce.
    44:38
    Yeah. That makes sense, though, if that's true. I've had it twice, and between playing it at the bat and the two copies I've owned, I feel like they all have variances. And, of course, games do. Like pinball machines have variances. The different copies play different. But I'm talking about like major differences. And then I have friends that owned it too. So, yeah, I think they had some struggles with that just because it's so wild, right? It's so different and a little slight variance in the build might actually make it shoot bad. Exactly. And plus these are all made by human beings. They're not robots. they screw up the drill holes. I don't know if you listen to the Electric Batcast, but Oh yeah, who was saying that?
    45:24
    Oh, it was your Star Wars, right? We got that Death Star fix, right? And so you have to take off a ton of stuff. Yeah, you have to take the damn back of the game off, basically. Dude, did you do it? I did it. And I was like – I think I was on the phone with you, Jamie, or someone. I can't remember. And I was like, holy shit, I have to take everything off, like all the plastics. It reminded me of a Steve Ritchie game where he just like stacks fucking shit on top of each other, plastics.
    45:55
    And it makes it hard to work on. So you can kind of tell that John was rushed in this because he was just like stacking shit on top of shit. So you have to take all that off to get to this part. Well, once I did that, I noticed once it was naked and it was just like the ramp and the Death Star, I was like, holy shit, this is way off. Your ramp was way off, right? Yeah, the ramp was way off. And, you know, I sent pictures to guys at Stern, and they were like, man, we knew this thing was off. We've never seen one that off. So we actually, like, filled in the holes, re-drilled new holes, and moved the ramp over. Yeah. So that just shows – and I asked – I was like, don't the line – the people on the line, don't they follow a template? And they're like, yes, they do. But once you get down to drilling the actual hole, there can be human error. And that error, it's a game of millimeters.
    46:55
    So you can imagine how difficult it is to reproduce something like X-Men with those faraway figure-eight shots and all that shit.
    47:06
    There you go. Well. And there you have it. There you have it. I forget what the original question was. What was the original question, Jamie? The original question was about. Oh, how much of a Jack Danger. Oh, yeah. It's a stupid question, so we'll move on. That's not a stupid question. All right. Thanks. Let's talk about American Pinball. Yeah. We kind of make American Pinball the news between roundtables, right? Well, actually, we were the ones to kind of break it, but we didn't release it. Oh, that's right. That's right. We did. Well, you did that. Yeah. He's like, yeah, I did. Damn it.
    47:45
    But should they rebrand themselves rather than buy a name like American Pinball? Should they have just rebranded and now called it New Venture Pinball or some shit? Who the hell knows? I mean, I'm okay with them calling it American Pinball. I just think they chose a really weird logo. like their logo it almost looks like everyone's logo looks kind of hip and cool like that has a cool vibe to it like it looks like very family and i'm not saying that's bad but it it doesn't it could have looked so much cooler like the old logo with like the pinball with the little tip on it or whatever like i actually thought that was kind of a cool logo so i don't know what then and this does look i i actually ran it through ai because i was like is this an ai generated logo and it was like it doesn't look like one and i was like well why does it look like this and it It didn't say it. It was kind of like it was trying to be nice. It was like, well, it's just a really bad logo. Like, I don't know, man. It's not AI, though. I was like, okay, cool.
    48:42
    AI dissed the logo. It was like, yeah, I don't know, man. It's not AI. It's just really bad. So I didn't have a chance to watch all the interviews that the new guy is on. What's his name? Does anybody know? I can't remember the new owner's name. I can't remember. Don't worry about it. Good for him. Congrats on buying him. And it says they're going to release some reimagined classics.
    49:07
    Yeah, what does that mean? What is that? I was hoping you would know. Well, they explained it on a podcast because he was trying to say, like, bringing – so it was weird because everyone was taking that as, well, reimagined. If you say you're going to reimagine something, then you're going to take the initial design and change it a lot. That's what I would say. Like, oh, what would it be like if I imagined it in a different way? Isn't it like what Pedretti did with Funhouse? Yeah, so he backpedaled on that because he wanted to be like, well, look, we're not like changing the whole game. We just might add some modern elements to it because initially I think people were running with that going, well, if you reimagine something, then you're technically like kind of taking it conceptually and changing it. He like well look we not planning on changing it dramatically Just if there some updates we can give to it kind of like what they did with the Lime and Sheets Cactus Canyon kit thing It doesn make it a different game It adds more to it. Or the Centaur. Yeah, exactly. Or something like that. So that was kind of what he was saying. But, I mean, it sounds like, how can they say they're going to make one of these this year, though? Wouldn't it already have to have been designed by now? You know what I mean? Do you think they're handing him the design and saying, you make this? or no, no, no. Rick's not part of the design process. I mean, he's just a license holder. He's just licensed. Yeah. Um, I'm not saying he doesn't approve stuff, but, um, but you think they can make it that fast if it, you nailed it at every podcast I listened to it. Do we know this guy's name yet? I'm sorry. I'm looking it up. I'm looking at it. I know it's bad that I don't know the guy's name. I listened, I listened to, I can't remember whose podcast it was oh it was um the the uh the flipping out guy uh greg is it brian vincent does that sound right brian can yeah brian vincent i think that's it i don't well i listened to brian and ken interview him and it was very good and this guy it sounds like i mean when you listen to it you're like okay cool i think this guy can actually pull it off you know um but one thing to ralph's point, he shouldn't be saying he's going to do all these things. Like this is his first venture into pinball, which we know is incredibly hard to do. Yeah.
    51:31
    Like just do it. Like I think it's a mistake to go, oh, we're going to do this. We're going to do two games this year. We're going to, you know, update these garbage games they made in the past. You know, it's like just do. What's wrong, guys? It's nothing. It's garbage. That's what's wrong. Just do it, you know, because you don't know what's going to happen. You know, I don't care how impressive your global LED company has been. This is pinball. This is different. The supply chains are different. He kept referring to this way of manufacturing, the something Ford. Do you guys know what that is? He kept mentioning it like a million times. He kept saying, oh, we use the blah, blah, blah way of manufacturing. I want to say it was called Pat Ford or something. He kept saying that over and over and over again, but he never explained what that was. I was like listening to it going, I wish he would tell me what this is because he's making it sound like, oh, well, I can get this going really fast because I know this method of manufacturing. But he kept using that as like a key piece of information of like why I'm equipped to do this, like why I'm going to get off. you know, get off the ground running with this. But the one thing I also thought was wild that he was saying, he's like, well, I'm going to have different packages. Like if Ralph buys his game and he wants power-coded armor, like he can have a different color than that guy. And I was thinking that sounds like a disaster. Like it sounds too hard to do. Like let people buy accessories, but I don't know about different color this and that and like different The manufacturing process he should be focusing on is K-I-S-S.
    53:17
    Exactly. And not adding all these features. This is your first foray into an industry that has bankrupted people, that has crushed people's souls. you come in swinging like this and I think this is the kind of industry where you just want to be meek and modest and say we're going to excite you in the future I don't think it's a good idea to lay down just throw a bunch of stay tuned he did say a lot of great stuff And so if you took it at face value, it feels like this guy could make this happen. But there was some stuff – I agree with you, though, Cale. He was getting a little crazy with some of the stuff he was saying. And that's why it's kind of bad for him maybe to do a show right now because he probably knows going on these shows that we want to hear something. And so there's that pressure of, well, I'll share about my idea about this custom this and custom that and all that stuff. So I don't know. We'll see what happens. but good luck. I don't know. I mean, no, I actually, I hope they make great games. It'd be cool. I just. Yeah, and I think they're going to do something because they've done something other manufacturers have killed themselves trying to do. You know, some have gone bankrupt. Some have, you know, screwed people over. Americans actually delivered.
    54:51
    Yeah. And so he's. Yeah, he's got that. Why are you going to bring up that game? You know, they had Hot Wheels, Houdini. and barbecue.
    55:00
    I don't know how that got through Q&A. I just don't know. I had never played, and I'm probably going to get beat up for this, but I had never played Legends of Valhalla, and they have one at this place kind of by my house. I thought it was actually a pretty fun game. I don't know. I mean, it doesn't have like super, super deep ruleset or anything. They didn't make that. No, I know that other company made it, but they manufactured it. From a quality standpoint, outside of Galactic Tank Force, I felt like their games were built pretty solid. They didn't have a lot of issues that way. I liked American Pinball games. I really did. I liked Oktoberfest. I didn't like Houdini when I first started playing because I was a new player when it first came out. But now I appreciate Houdini a lot. I wasn't a big Hot Wheels fan. I always thought it should have a loop-de-loop, but whatever. I'm over it. Do you guys think they should get rid of one thing I don't like about their games? I hate the way the back box looks. Do you think that'll change it? I think it's cool. Oh, you do? I don't like it for some reason. I don't know why I don't like it. You don't? No.
    56:05
    I've always thought it looked cool and kind of like, almost like steampunk-ish with its curves. Oh, I never thought of that. Actually, I can totally see a steampunk game in that cabinet type. Yeah. And it stands out in the lineup. I think they should keep it. All right. Well, I'm already here. We're split. Well, actually, no, it's you guys against me. So, yeah, you should do it. Keep it. And the Galactic Tank Force, I mean, it turns down. I don't think they should make games that look like tanks anymore. I don't think anybody cares about that. No, that's not. We don't need a transforming pinball machine. They went all in on a theme that just didn't work. Oops. You know, but they went all in again. Why not? Another one. God bless them. Who's the woman that's from Mortal Kombat? It's like the one that plays Sonya Blade. Do you know her actual name? I don't know her name. Hutchins? That sounds right. Let's go with it. Oh, because I have a video from – it would actually be awesome if I could find it for the Franchi interview. He's on the panel at the expo where they were signing autographs, and I just caught him kind of giving a what's up to her. It's just kind of funny. I'm Franchi. I'm like a famous artist. What's up?
    57:13
    It's funny. I've got to find it. I've got to find the clip. I have it somewhere. Please do. Please. He's like, what's up, baby? Franchi. To end our American Pinball conversation, it goes into another conversation.
    57:27
    First of all, with DPX closing, right, do they have any interest in some of the licenses that he owns?
    57:36
    Oh, Melvin? Would you partner with Melvin? Well, I thought he tried to, and he didn't want to – I thought he was the one that said he didn't want to do it or something. I have no idea. I don't know Melvin. I've only met him once. you know didn't he try wasn't there like an attempt but he's the one that didn't want to do it or something he met with Stern Melvin did I don't know that oh yeah so and he didn't like the arrangement so maybe he could get a better arrangement with American Pinball so it doesn't take 10 years and a time machine to play it what do you guys think I thought he left. Didn't he leave, Dutch? I thought he left, Dutch. He left DPX. The spin-off company. The spin-off.
    58:28
    And then Dutch is still owned by whoever the names are, right? Who's the guy that's buddies with Kaneda?
    58:36
    That's Melvin. He's DPX. He's gone. Melvin left DPX. It has his licenses, which supposedly has Raza. Which no one cares about. No, not really. Does anybody? I don't know. Dude, I played the original Raza. It never worked.
    58:56
    And then supposedly Dutch still has Back to the Future. Right. That's what I've heard, yeah. So why wouldn't Dutch call American Pinball and let's get some American manufacturing in a game that people actually want with a huge IP that somehow you have? I mean, they should because how are they going to produce? What's crazy to me? I didn't know the history of Dutch. I just knew that the carpet game took a long time to come out. Big Lebowski, right? Yeah. And the thing is, here's what's crazy. Like, they really only made one game. So, like, it's weird to me that they had a spinoff company if the company itself had only made one game that they actually brought to market. Isn't that kind of wild, though? Like, wouldn't you be have more success before you're like, oh, we're going to have this spinoff company that does these kind of one of these more collectible licenses? I don't I don't know. That company confuses me because I like what what why would I be confident at all in buying anything from them? Like to me, I'm like, no, that's why I would gravitate toward like someone I know consistently delivers. I can get parts like to me. They scare me like that company scares me. When you say it took 10 years to get a bigger Bowski. I could not recommend on this podcast anyone buy anything from that company. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, but if they did partner with American to do production in the U.S. and people saw, like, the games coming out in some consistent fashion, maybe you could gain some confidence back. But I don't know. I just – I mean, the Bowski came with a rug, which is pretty cool. That's cool, but imagine being the guy that you waited 10 years to get your freaking rug. I'd be like, holy shit, man. I would have lost so much interest in the 10 years. Could you imagine the videos that you would post waiting on your – You know what the YouTube thumbnail is? I waited 10 years, and all I got was a stupid rug. That would be my YouTube thumbnail for that video.
    60:50
    That's crazy. Well, what else? Does that even come out? Real quick, does anybody think that game is actually coming out this year?
    60:59
    Back to the future. Back to the future? I'm saying no. There's no way. I don't think so. No. And when we talk to Franchi, I want to ask him – I don't know how much he can tell us, but apparently he did the art. Is that correct? That's what I've heard. I have no idea. I don't know. Well, we'll find out. Hey, stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen. Later this week we're going to interview Christopher Franchi and find out, did he actually do the Back to the Future artwork?
    61:24
    We're going to ask that. Let's find out. He'll tell. He'll spill the beans, right? I mean, is there any reason why he couldn't? I guess I'd be confirming the game since they haven't actually ever confirmed that they have it officially. No, they haven't, have they? No. What if they don't? It's a big – Can I tell you like a wicked two-second story? It's really fast. Please. Have you ever met Matt Stringer, Cale? He's my crazy friend. He's crazy. You'd know if you met him. He's crazy. Yeah.
    61:54
    Give me some context. He's just nuts. That name sounds familiar. So he goes up to the owner of Dutch. His name is Barry, is it Dressen? I think that's the name that owns it, right? So I think it's him. It was either him or Melvin outside. And Stringer's weird. He catches people off guard with stuff, but then assumes that, and I love him, by the way, but he assumes that you know exactly what he's talking about at all times. So he'll bring up really obscure movie quotes and things like that, But he'll be like the only person that remembers it. So everyone else is like, I need you to explain your joke why it's funny. I get like 10% of them. But they're usually funny, but I usually just don't know. So anyway, so he's going out for a smoke break, and the Dutch people are outside. And he goes, hey, do you see? I think that guy stole his wallet. And you guys, do you have any idea what I'm talking about right now? No. I don't see the wallet. Well, there's a scene in Back to the Future 1 where, remember when Biff goes up to the car And then did you remember there's a scene where a wallet gets – I can't remember whose wallet gets stolen. It wasn't – I don't even remember now. But anyways, there's a scene where he goes, I think that guy took his wallet. So he keeps saying this to them, and they're like, what the hell is this guy talking about? He's trying to get them to confirm back to the future by using the most random obscure quote. I'm like, why would you say like when you get up to 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious shit or something like Great Scott, like one of the ones that everyone would know. And so they looked at him like, what the hell is this dude talking about? So finally he's like – finally they just laughed because they figured it out after some explaining. But they laughed and they kind of sort of maybe somewhat confirmed that it was Back to the Future. This was two years ago at Expo, maybe even three. I mean I know. I've talked to some of those guys. It definitely is Back to the Future. But they've never like officially said it. No, they've never. We all know that it is. Yeah. How did they get that? Overstern, Jersey Jack. I don't know how they secure their licenses. I mean, could it have been that because Big Lebowski is universal, they already had developed a relationship and they said, hey, we'd like to do other universal titles? I don't know. And then Back to the Future just happened to be one they asked about. Yeah. Right? I mean, they already did Big Lebowski. All it takes is money. I just need sales tips, you know. Speaking of landing licenses, I swear today I saw a, social media post from Nap. What was it on? I think there's a toy fair going on right now in New York.
    64:35
    And he said Roger Sharp was playing Pokemon. He took video of him. And in the description, I swear I read that Roger Sharp was there securing, trying to secure licenses for other manufacturers. Saying not Stern because that was kind of the focus of the video. That's very interesting because I think he works with Spooky. I thought he was CGC. Am I wrong? I don't know. Maybe both. I don't know. Are we starting rumors? That is interesting though. Well, I mean, there's no rumor because he's just at a toy fair. so they did talk about the toy fair a little bit because that was so when when we were doing that one thing in the room and and seth was talking about the licensing challenges and stuff he said you know pending license or approval we're supposed to be at toy fair so like they they really went down to the wire because they didn't have the final approval till the day i think after or approval to the day after media day so that's why it happened on a friday and not a thursday because they were thinking they were getting approval on the wednesday and launch it on the thursday we had to wait that additional day so before we get to our next topic can i ask a favor of stern sure just a little favor we know they listen so it gets a little favor can uh you do these on a friday maybe what is it released no they should do the media day on a friday it makes no sense and then release release it that afternoon well or or they just do it on the friday before all that other stuff and then that way because so we can you know dude everybody in that room has a day job there's no one there that does well except for Erica. Everyone else, I guess she's full-time pinball stuff, right? Yeah. So she's the only one. Everyone else has a day job that they need to be at. So to take two days off your day job, that's kind of tough for a lot of people. So it would be better on a Friday to me. I'm doing a lot of contract work. That's hourly, baby. I can't give up those hours to go see Pokemon. I want to go see them. Well, I can tell you what they're thinking right now.
    66:59
    Look how many people showed up. You got to toughen up, Jamie. Because you got to think about it. Right now, it's not a problem.
    67:11
    No, apparently it's not a problem. They can do something on a Wednesday and have a shit ton of people show up with their video cameras and iPhones. I don't think they're going to switch it to Friday.
    67:23
    Virtual, huh? People are going to show up. I hope I don't have to work during the next one because I really got it. I want to see Transformers so bad. Like, that's going to be what I'm really excited about. So I hope I don't have to work because I'm thinking that's probably going to be what? We're in what, February? So March, April, May. Would it be like May, late May or early June? Probably somewhere around that time, right?
    67:46
    No, I think. I mean, that's the regular cadence, right? If I was a three-month-old, I would go and look at their schedule of when they consistently. well this one was off a little bit because normally the game would have came out last month so they would have announced it in january so they're off okay so that makes me think like may late may or even early june maybe for transformers that's wild this this is going to be a great year for pinball i know it's even more crazy one what's even more crazy is if it happened in june that's the month they did harry potter so that would be sonic going up against Transformers. Cool. Talk about nostalgia property. This is a crazy cool year for pinball. And Goonies at the end of the year. It's pretty freaking cool. And then whatever Barrels is going to do, right? Maybe Neverending Story or whatever it is. The dog. What is that thing? The fucking dog. The dragon. Actually, he's a dragon, right? He's not the dog. He's a dragon. He kind of looks like a dog, though. His face looks like a Shih Tzu. Yeah, he looks like a Shih Tzu, kind of. I had a dog named Turtle that looked just like Falcor.
    68:59
    So Falcor's not a dog, right? It's a dragon? A luck dragon. With a dog face. Can y'all hear me? It's a luck dragon. A luck dragon? Is that what it actually is? Yeah. Oh, all right.
    69:10
    We keep saying that they have this title, and we have no confirmation. What, never-ending story? Yeah. They do have it. It makes sense, though. That is such a barrels license. It fits totally. They have it. No, they don't. After our last podcast, somebody from the company got in touch with me.
    69:30
    And he confirmed it? He didn't deny it. A non-denial denial. Non-denial denial. Right. Check this out. How insane would have this been? Imagine if the stars aligned like this, and this June was also Beryl's launch, and you had – just check this. Just hear me out for a second. And you had Stern doing Transformers, JJP doing Sonic, and what if Barrels was doing G.I. Joe? Imagine if in June you got all three of those. That would be like people would be so confused where to spend their money. Did you notice, Jack, in the Pokemon video, he was wearing a G.I. Joe shirt? he's like we got the gi joe license so in the um in the loser kid interview which is very good cool uh if you haven't go watch that if you love him at all because they had tonyo jack uh go like everybody involved with this game was in this interview and it was very informative very cool It really was. And Jack was wearing a fucking G.I. Joe shirt.
    70:44
    That's funny, though. He has no ties to Barrels of Fun. Why would he do that? How are you getting there?
    70:50
    Maybe. Oh, no, that's not. He's going to work for Barrels of Fun. I'm saying maybe Stern has it. Oh.
    71:00
    Well, I can tell you right now, I know for a fact, Barrels does not have G.I. Joe, if that's what you're alluding to. How do they not with that dude, Brian Savage? How do they not? They don't. Stern has a – they have a good relationship with Hasbro. Yeah.
    71:17
    Gosh, if they did – dude, if they did – dude, if they did freaking – why do I keep forgetting the game? If they did Transformers, then Fallout, then G.I. Joe, like, dude, they'd be riding high for a while, for a long while. Yeah.
    71:35
    You've got to think about what they're thinking. And after the hit of, you know, Pokemon and landing an IP like that, they're already trying to figure out how to do that again. Yeah. And, you know, and like you say all the time, it's about chasing nostalgia, Ralph. And yeah, Joe is full of nostalgia. Oh, my gosh, yes. I know Jamie's a huge fan. Huge. Oh, I thought you were saying you're not. You are, right? No, no, I'm a huge fan. Yeah. And it kind of fits with, I mean, they're doing Transformers now. Now, Transformers is a massive, massive franchise that Michael Bay did these flashy movies.
    72:15
    You have the same thing happen with G.I. Joe. G.I. Joe is a longstanding comic book series, awesome cartoon.
    72:22
    What's fascinating about G.I. Joe, I still read G.I. Joe. I started reading G.I. Joe as a kid. I still read it. It's in my pull list at the local comic book shop. the same writer larry hama is still writing the it's a continuous series that's been going on for what like 50 almost 50 years how's that show doing still kicking that was good he's he's he's a he's a likable bad guy that show is my guy dude him in the baronet come on dude it's our tan but but you this was just made this was made for pinball it follows the same trajectory as the transformers IP, you know?
    73:04
    We've talked about G.I. Joe before, but god damn would that be something. It would be awesome. It would. It would cost me a lot. The LE is the Cobra edition. Come on with the big one. Oh, dude.
    73:15
    Put it Cobra Commander. Which I had one, by the way. Oh, dude. That was a mail-in only. Yeah, I saved my points, dude. I had William Perry, the refrigerator. Yeah, you had to save You had to save your points for William and Barry. I saved them all for the hooded Cobra Commander. I had the aircraft carrier, boys. See, that's – Dude, that's crazy. I had one friend that had that. Yeah. Did you ever – so I had the boat with the depth chargers. I thought that was the coolest thing. You know what I'm talking about? What was that – that was like the Cobra hydrofoil.
    73:51
    I can't remember the name of it. It was like a hovercraft thing. Oh, the hovercraft. Yeah, with wild – Yes, yes, yes. And I remember like I would make – I would be like, Mom, I'm just going to fill up the bathtub. And she's like, for what? I'm like, to play G.I. Joe. She's like, what? And it's like I would fill the bathtub up. Did that thing float? Yeah. If it's the one that you're thinking of, it floated. And then you could press this little thing and the like depth chargers would go into the water. And then I'd sit in there and be like blowing up the water everywhere in the bathroom. It's awesome. It's the best shit ever.
    74:21
    It's got to happen. G.I. Joe, make it happen. It's got to happen. For sure. It's got to happen. All right. We're – what are we at? An hour and 13. Not bad today. Yeah. Yeah, we're moving quick. We're moving quick. We're moving on. Do you want to do the YouTube monetization? Yeah, because I need you guys to help me understand it. It's not you guys. It's this guy over there. He's the only one. Okay, this is the reason I brought it up. I make $12.50 a month. Right. This is the reason I brought it up. This is the reason I put it in the notes. you guys have talked about it before and it just like you make very little money off of it right I think most of the and we get into that Most of the money comes from like Super Chats and bits or I don know what they call it Yeah, Super Chats, yeah. Yeah.
    75:07
    But I was watching Don and Genghis. I was watching one of their – I hope I didn't mispronounce his name – one of their podcasts on YouTube, right? And I'm at work, doing work, listening, and it's like every 15 minutes I'm interrupted by a commercial.
    75:32
    And it just destroyed the content because the content was not – the commercials were not built into the content. So they would have – they're just talking, and then mid-making a point, it's just like all of a sudden, like, buy this thing to shave your balls. And it's just like why – like is it worth it to like destroy the enjoyment of your content to fill that in? So then I figured out – So they must have clicked on ad breaks, right, Ralph? So there's different ways you can do it. So you can turn monetization on and not do – you can manage sort of mid-roll ads. So like if you don't manage those, like YouTube is going to put natural breaks in. But the thing is, a lot of people have YouTube Premium. If you have YouTube Premium, you just watch YouTube with no commercial. So even if you have ad breaks in them, they won't see them. So if someone's paid for YouTube Premium, your video will run all the way through. But when you publish a larger video, it will automatically put – if you have mid-rolls turned on, it's automatically going to put them in. So you could have one minute, three minutes, six minutes, nine minutes, 12 minutes. Now, you'll make more money, but especially if it's a cohesive video that someone should listen to all the way through or watch, it's kind of jarring, right? Because you're going in and out. I'm watching for three minutes, and then you're forcing me to watch an ad to then go back into your video. Okay, so how much money – is it worth it? If you're a content creator, is it worth it to sprinkle these annoying ads? What are you making? So I just realized – it's good that you're asking this question because I just realized that I accidentally had mid-rolls turned on on that latest video I just published on Pokemon, right? That video has 8,813 views on it. Congratulations. Impressive. It's pretty good. It's actually making a lot more money than it normally would, and it makes sense because of mid-rolls. So it's made 55 – now, keep in mind, not a lot of money. It's made $55.88. I bet if I shut the mid-rolls off, it'd probably be more like $20.
    77:39
    Okay. So my question is – I didn't even know they were on. Is that $15, $20, $30 worth? No, I don't think so.
    77:54
    You're interrupting your message. Shouldn't that shine? I think you could probably put in like one. like if you have like a 10 minute video and you put one in at five minutes that's probably okay but but if you have them every if you have them the way they put them in it'll be like every three minutes you're going to be bugged by an ad yeah so you reminded me to make sure i don't have that on i don't think i have that on for us what mid-rolls yeah you haven't seen that i think i had accidentally had so so sometimes you can set that stuff for default so like you can set it say i always want mid-rolls or I never want them. In which case, it'll just be ad revenue. It'll just be the click stuff, which you don't make really anything on. I mean, it's very low. I mean, you're, especially if you paid any amount of money to make your video, you definitely aren't getting back out from monetization, that's for sure. But super chats are really where you make the money. Like, if you go live and you, I don't like doing this, but there are definitely creators I've seen that encourage people to super chat. Like, they'll say like, hey, I'll put your comment at the top if you super chat or if I get X amount of people to super chat, I'll do this or that. And the thing I do notice though, as soon as a super chat starts, more people want to super chat. So like all of a sudden more people will want to go, we'll want to do it cause they see others doing it. And it's customary to feature their message. If you, if they pay, you know, but you don't have to, but I think that you feel like if I'm going to pay you two bucks, you're going to read my message on, on the live you know interesting tie into this kale is that you were talking about youtube but you recently took the electric back cast and you were looking at just youtube for your streaming for chewies and for your wednesday and now you're back to twitch why'd you do that so we um and i'm not throwing surge under the bus this is this is a important aspect of it this was all surge's idea he wanted to start streaming on youtube and the really the main reason was uh because it's archived yeah you know with with twitch they they give you a you have a limit of how much storage you can have and then you have to make a decision well let's get rid of an old one archive a new one um let's see i don't see twitch i didn't know that so you only have so much storage so like you have to you can't archive your old 60 days something that kind of sucks can you pay for to do it though or you well you if you connect your prime account you get a little more but there's no unlimited option limited okay i'm aware of you also need to be a i think you get a little more if you're a partner, though. And I might be talking out of my ass, Cal, but if you're a Twitch partner, like Fox Cities or somebody. So that was the main reason Serge wanted to switch. Another reason is the quality.
    80:54
    YouTube doesn't even have, I mean, Twitch doesn't have an option past 1080p. That's right. Unless you're part of, there's like a pilot program that they're starting to let people do like 2.7 7K or something like that. But there's no 4K option if you want to do that.
    81:15
    So we tried it. And I think we only did like a couple, like two YouTube streams at the most. And it was cool. And we had like a lot of people participating.
    81:28
    But one thing we noticed was, you know, we weren't getting any subs or bits or anything like that. We don't make a lot of money on streaming, but I'll just say we usually get about like $50 a stream.
    81:45
    On Twitch. We got zero. Like you look back in the analytics, it's like zero. Now, that $50 doesn't make a huge bit of difference, but it's nice to make that because all this equipment is very expensive, And we roll everything back into, you know, the stream, making it better, like buying, you know, a Rodecaster Pro 2 and all microphones, all this stuff.
    82:09
    So it's nice. But also the main thing was the community. And I'm not trying to put up, like, say, like, oh, the Twitch community is much better than the YouTube community. But we had spent so many years building up our following on Twitch. The people were excited about it. one other thing we noticed that you don't have any like – you know, it's a niche, like pinball, but you don't have those kind of like asshole comments you get on YouTube. We don't get that on Twitch.
    82:45
    So that was another – so long story short, we went back to Twitch. Good. We enjoyed it. And then what we do is on OBS, I record locally. So as soon as we're done, I just upload that recording to YouTube. And I can tell you, I mean, you can just go back and look right now. Doing that, the YouTube for a VOD, it's much more enjoyable to watch the VOD on YouTube. It's crisper. Maybe the way they're doing compression or something, it looks way better. and we overlaid the chat so anybody watching it you can you can see what people yeah i feel like i have the same i'm i the reason why i don't do twitch is the same reason why you're not doing youtube is that i already built this big audience there and it's like do i really want to start from the ground up and and they've all found me there through the arcade stuff so it's it's like for me i i don't feel like i'm kind of with you you already have this established audience there if you're not seeing any benefit going this way and you can still just upload the VOD there, maybe that's good enough. You know what I mean? You'll still get people over there, and you might even get people coming over to Twitch. I'm glad you're keeping your Twitch community, though. Guys like Brooklyn Pan and these guys I miss because I used to be exclusive to Twitch. And then when I started over, I was like, well, I'm just going to start over on YouTube.
    84:14
    Cale, you're doing that every time, though, right? Like after the Twitch stream's over, you upload it to YouTube. So someone can watch it and replay there, and that's your archive. You can keep it there forever. Exactly. Yeah. And it seems to be working for us. Yeah. And another thing I noticed – well, I mean I knew this before, but like the biggest and best competitive pinball streamers are all still Twitch.
    84:39
    Yeah. I mean that's no knock on you, Jamie. No. I'm not taking this as my I was up there for a while You know Have you thought about coming back? So here's the rub, right? Like It's a pain in the ass Okay? The whole thing The pain in the ass, right? You gotta really love it, ladies and gentlemen And at the old joint, I really loved it But I had that joint wired for sound Okay? The reason why you had such a cool setup, Jamie, is because when you talk about it being difficult, if you have the convenience of you had your station there that's always set up, you did have it perfect. It was all ready to go, basically. Dude, it was dialed in, right? It was dialed in. And now with the mega rig that I built, because I said, all right, well, I'll just stream at Eureka Heights and I'll do this mega rig. and then no one helps me move the mega rig.
    85:43
    They just watch you. Everybody wants it, but they don't want to help, right? Fucking silence. I would be helping you, Jamie, if I was there. I'd help you. It's like I was asking for money or something. And so it's like I go and I try to put these things, oh, this giant thing over two machines. It's got six cameras and six axoons on it. Wow.
    86:08
    Right? They just watched Jamie move this thing. That looks like he's really struggling. Look at that. That thing's enormous, right? So I'm moving this thing in between rounds. And then I've got the YOLO box. It's in 4K. It's absolutely gorgeous. Everything's perfect. And it's like I had 25 people watching. And I'm like, what are we doing? What am I doing? I'm going to grow this. or I'd rather just do Ralph versus Jamie once a quarter, keep my stuff at Eureka Heights, and then just do Ralph at his arcade and Jamie here, and I think I'll get a hell of a lot more viewers, one, and I think people will really like it, and I can still showcase Eureka Heights, which is a great joint, right? And so I still can showcase the place, and I don't have to move. But you're married to YouTube. I'm married to YouTube right now. I'm doing my, uh, what is it called? The shorts are doing well. I do well. I mean, for me, whatever. Yeah. Um, the, the podcast as well. Uh, and especially the round table that we're getting such good views on YouTube. Then I'm going to stay, I'm going to stay on YouTube. And then, you know, Jamie versus Ralph is a, is a quarterly thing. I think we're going to get that going soon. So cool, which is really cool. and we were geeking about that earlier, but we've been talking a lot about the Rodecaster, ladies and gentlemen, which we really like even the new guys at American Pinball to invest if you're going to do podcasts. It's Rodecaster Duo 2 is one you should be buying. I don't understand anyone that goes on a podcast and doesn't have a good effing mic. It's totally embarrassing. You sound like shit, and you don't have to with the Rodecaster Pro 2. It's 2026, people. It is 2026. You've got to get a good mic. You've got to have a good mic. But the call function on this thing. By the way, I need to give credit to Sterling for this. He's the one that actually said it. This is all Sterling, by the way. This is all Sterling. Thank you. Sterling Martin from the Pinball Studio. I actually meant to bring him up. I'm going to talk about him after you guys are done. Go. Yeah. Well, he walked me through this. He literally – I was on roadcast for support because I was having some issues, and he was the one that got me through it yeah it sounds so good i can call you on my road caster let's say you're doing a stream like through wi-fi yeah but it's but it's like a direct it's almost like it's almost like if you were to take the the mixer board and extend it virtually because like it sounds just like i'm right next to you it's freaking amazing it's so good we sound so good right now it sounds even better and so so during one of my uh streams at the arcade the me and surge i could call you guys and you guys yeah yeah you guys could be on there i don't know if you can have more than one call going but you definitely can but you could have yeah you if jamie if i was at with jamie and we have both connected to the board we our board would be hooked up to your board it's it's cool wow so that's that's dope it's cool yeah man again We're only using, ladies and gentlemen, about 10% to 15% of what this board can do, and it's just incredible. Ralph's the expert at it. I'm not really. You know who probably does more on it is Don. Don's got like – Don, too, yeah. Well, I know Don has the old one. He's an OG. He is an OG. When he brought his to Expo for us to use, it was like the old model. yeah and that actually made me feel real good about the technology because i was like if this thing's thing's still kicking the the pro 2 is gonna it has a lot of legs yeah i literally when i bought this this never shuts off i've had this turned on for years it's just on wow i don't shut it off ever oh i turn it off and i put it in a box i've had it on for years now i'll tell you One thing I noticed, unless there's some way to turn this off, you have my laptop here and the USB-C connected to the Rodecaster 2.
    90:32
    If my laptop is not plugged in and that USB-C is plugged into the Rodecaster and I keep that on, it will drain the battery on my laptop. Yeah, that thing actually – it takes a lot of power, that thing. But it's power. That makes sense. That's the weird thing. No, it is weird. I'm not powered My laptop's not powered today And I'm already halfway through Because of the road catcher sucking it through It just doesn't So about Sterling Yeah I listened to The Retro Ralph interview That Sterling did What a great episode Oh thanks dude He did a great job I had a lot of fun with that It was all you I mean, he was like, he's barely talking, but he's leading you. But, like, you just went on, like, your origin story. It was nice. It was, like, if you want to know about Retro Ralph, go check that out, Pinball Studio. Oh, cool. Thanks, man. That was fun. I mean, I talked about my grandfather bringing me to the arcade. I talked about a lot of stuff. That was a really great story. Oh, cool. Thanks, man. Give Sterling some views. Yeah, he's a really good dude. He's doing a lot of good things. He has that little collective, right? He does pinball tournaments and stuff. Yeah.
    91:53
    All right. Well, that's all I got. We're at 90 minutes, boys. No more news. We've run out of things to talk about. We've run out.
    92:01
    There was one thing I wanted to bring up, but I didn't bring it up. You have to do it. Now you have to.
    92:09
    Me and Ralph did a podcast. I did Ralph's podcast. And he got in a little hot water over it, and I wanted to talk about it. Oh, come on.
    92:21
    All right, let's get into it. All right. Well, we were talking about Pinball Brothers. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, hold on. We were talking about Pinball Brothers. Ralph's like, why are you doing this to me? The question was, Ralph asked me, would you ever be interested in working for a pinball company? And I said, probably not, because the anxiety would just kill me because I suffer from this anxiety, and I just don't think I could handle it. And what if I was personally responsible for the Pinball Brothers Predator launch? How bad that went, I'd be in a corner naked shivering. So we did not mean to refer to Genghis as anything but that we love Genghis.
    93:12
    But what happened? How did it go? I don't even see. I don't even really. I didn't go back to listen to what I exactly said. But the thing that I think upset him, well, there was a couple things. First of all, it was a slip. I called him Jenga by accident instead of Jengis. I said Jenga. I said retro Jenga. But I know that's not correct. You said he's from the Netherlands. And then I corrected myself. And he's also not from the Netherlands. He's from Denmark. So he basically got upset because he's like, look, I'm your friend and your number one kid. don't know my name and you don't know where i'm from so that upset him um and i get that but like i'm also like a jokey guy and sometimes you know what i mean so i didn't think anything of it and then the only other comment that i made damn i hate you jamie the only other comment i made was i said look jengis isn't a marketing guy so like i was trying to say like it sucks that they put that like on his shoulders because i think maybe had it been done differently like the Predator launch would have been a little bit better. But I wasn't trying to say, like, it's your fault. You know what I mean? And he got really upset, like, as if that was the worst diss in the world, and so we have not spoken since. He won't talk to us. We don't have any more beefs with anyone anymore, right? Yeah. We never have. Yeah. So we're just trying to squash beefs. You know, we brought you and Punk Rock together, Pinball. We had so much fun. No, we had so much fun. I talked to Stephanie for a while. I talked to Mike. We brought all that together. We're always having to clean up any kind of mess Ralph makes. But people need to understand anybody. Like, Ralph, I listened to it. There was nothing nefarious there.
    94:53
    Maybe I just said it weird. I don't know. Cengiz, this is to you. Listen, Cengiz, I know you're listening. I love him. He's awesome. We love you. We do. You're great. Keep doing WAP. I just don't like the sound effects. Don makes, but he knows that. It's okay. And look, I don't like the commercials, but I'm still going to listen. We're still going to listen. We love you.
    95:17
    I love you, Jengis. I don't know what we're going to do to bridge this gap, but you blocked me, so I can't communicate with you, so be great if you can unblock me so we can talk. You know what? I think it's time for a Building Bridges tour.
    95:34
    Cue the music, Jamie. I don't have anything. I don't have anything queued up like Don would, but we're going to fix this, okay? All right. Okay. Yeah, we will. I'm glad I brought this up. We'll call him. If things aren't better by TPF, Jamie, we're out there. You and I are going to call him. We'll call him together. We're going to FaceTime him. Well, actually, because I can't call him, so you'll have to call him. Oh, yeah. I'll just be there. Hey. I'm here. Well, it is probably a seven-hour difference, so we'll call him in the morning. Yeah. We'll wake up, have some coffee. You drink coffee, right, Jamie? No, Diet Cokes. Wake up, we'll drink some Diet Cokes, and we'll call Genghis. Yeah, it's a perfect morning. All right, boys, thank you so much for a fun evening. We didn't get in too much trouble here. No, I don't think so. No, we never do. No, never do. No. I'm a little worried about our beginning conversation, but that's okay. We're having good times. I don't even remember what that was about. What did we talk about? I already forgot. I'm a little worried about what we said about the Twippies, but, you know. Oh, no, I thought it was great. What? What do you mean? you know people love this behind the scenes we're still on right this is the thing Jamie you gotta stop this man you're beating yourself up for no reason you're gonna make them think that we thought something that we were doing something bad when we really were just doing something do I have to reach out to Colin do we say anything we ain't saving bed okay we both said we love the Bash guys We both said that they did a good job production-wise. I watched enough of it to say that. And I think it's a shame that the way it got launched because they're not going to probably get the views they want. That's all I said. Right. And we said they can look at the analytics and pick up the pieces and do better next year. What's wrong with that? Nothing.
    97:24
    Sorry. Oh, my God. So wait, we just convinced you it's not bad. So now you're good? That was a therapy session. Are you good now? So we're good. You have no anxiety now. You're good. No, I don't think I have any anxiety. I think I'm going to be okay.
    97:42
    No. I'm not. I'll be all right, though. I'll get over it. We're going to get off this thing and you'll be like, Cale, I don't know, man. We're going to have to end out that last part. No, no, no, no, no. It was nothing bad.
    97:54
    Cale, I don't know. You can call me up when you get a chance. Let me edit this episode. No, no, no. I'm not editing. What time is it? 640. I'm going to go eat. Yeah, I'll put it up tonight. This is going up tonight? Should I? Yeah, yeah, do it. Yeah, don't eat. Just do it. Yeah, don't eat. Then do it. Then eat. Night time's a good time to release stuff. I've been releasing stuff at night, and it's doing shitty. Nobody likes my Can Jamie Play Pinball anymore because this one over here did with his own Can Ralph Play Pinball, and he gets so many more views than I get. I don't know. Shut up.
    98:32
    All right. That's it. That's all she wrote, boys. Thank you so much for another great roundtable. Next time, we will have Christopher Franchi, and that'll be our last interview. That'll be it. Not really an interview. Franchi's just going to sit in on the roundtable and bullshit with us. Thanks, everybody, for watching. Appreciate you. Yeah, we love all you guys. Thank you for playing pinball. No, what I love is, too, I told Ralph this today. We just ended the show, and you're like, we'll just go back in. What else? Let's go. Keep going. I said, these guys come up to me and they go, hey, JBS show, I love the roundtable. Love the roundtable. I'm like, oh, thanks. And then they walk away. I'm like, you don't like anything else I've ever done or anything? I have to be with Cale and Ralph. I have to be. Yeah. That might be your anxiety too, though, Jamie. Maybe they just, he's just saying he likes roundtable and he just, he likes you. So he likes everything you do. I'm just having a go. All right. Let's end it. Sorry. Okay. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks for joining