Hello everybody and welcome to the first third of the 14 days of dawn. Somehow it's all falling apart, but we're not going to let that stop us. We're going to continue to have fun in the world of pinball and let's get caught up on the latest news and views. You can't afford to lose. you will never defeat me boom do we have do we have a sound drop oh that's definitely not one all right what's everybody's done hey i had a great idea uh at the beginning about five days ago i'm into a 14 day stretch voluntarily inflicted um at this new job of mine which now you know four months ago when I agreed to do it, it seemed like a great idea. It's kind of one of those let's let future me worry about that. I'm just looking at extra cash that I'm sure I will need. Came at the worst time. I mean, I'm just about, I'm making some headway, getting out of my homes, getting ready to get them listed for sale, and then I have to stop everything, run out here, and it's like I'm trying to set up, you know, front door contractors from across the country to come out. They're taking measurements, upgrading things. I just wish I was on site, man. Can I get can a boy get a sabbatical? Can I get a sabbatical? Not until the freaking beach, man. Thankfully, it's coming up. Now, I had this great idea. You know, why don't I while I'm out here? I'm in purgatory for 14 days. Let's generate a new piece of content every day. A live stream, a Dawn of the Magic podcast, a Patreon crap, you know, maybe live with Dawn. Let's go shopping. And I had like this whole head of energy going into it and work quickly slap that out of the picture. man i made it into a couple of days and then it just got away from me and it's hard to be creative and generate stuff that's interesting and fun when your just mind is preoccupied with like other stuff that's going a lot of problems here i'm trying to get them sorted we're making some headway i'm doing some good work it's just it does not conducive to me sitting down to be entertaining talking about pinball you know if you're familiar with maslow's hierarchy of needs there's something similar and to be at that self-actualization peak it gotta have the bases where they need to be when they're not it just if you force it it wouldn't be any good so i'm doing my best man uh when i do get out i popped on facebook i did a couple live streams um i want to pop on and do one on youtube but the timing has to work out man you can't force this thing like a burritos barbecue challenge down the throat of America. All right. So anyway, I was thinking I had some time to drive around. And when I drive, I get into my thoughts and my thoughts turn to Raza and then turn to tariffs, then it turned to European pinball in general. And what all's going on? This is a narrative floating out there that Dutch is in trouble. I don't know that Dutch pinball, the house that Barry built, solid guy, love the dude. um i love the dude the game as well for that matter they took the big lebowski rug and included it with the game the cabinet build is fantastic you can play bowling in that game all we've wanted is just more from dutch pinball we don't want to have to wait years and years to get the games out and then when you know we're waiting a decade for their follow-up game supposed to be back to the future like can you imagine back to the future built like the big lebowski with uh you know even even more modern technology that we have now a decade later. I mean, come on, especially when the rumor is that they got all the assets. That's all we want to see. And then what do we hear? We hear Dutch pinball exclusive. We see Dutch folks mucking around with Magic Girl for some reason, a game that is completely beautiful to look at, completely mediocre to play. And the best part about that game, the artwork would not even be in it. If they do redo it, why go down these quests of failed products? I don't know. We got Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Okay, as a proof of concept that you could take a foam core from John Papadiuk and put it together and get a game out, okay. You made it into a functioning game. Still not a great game in terms of gameplay and stuff, but it does look great. It does look great. You went with Slutty Alice on the side. Okay, I'm here for it, but where's Slutty Alice in the game? I'm not seeing it. I'm getting the weirdest take on one of the weirdest characters to ever exist in the world of fiction, the Mad Hatter with his little weird giggle and jackpot carry crap. Besides all that, besides all that, game came out a little expensive, 500. OK, fine. You know, limited game does have some appeal. You know, it's not going to be made ever again, sold out immediately. And then where are we at here over a year later? We've got 300 games delivered, 300-something. Thirty-five people or so have asked for their money back on it. And the couple of big issues that have come out of it are the fact that, of course, they lost their licensing contractor or builder for the toppers. And so they had to kind of restructure and do that. That's fine. They're back into production now. They're shipping on the new games, which is great. But people have already gotten their games, and their toppers are nowhere in sight. And it's like you've got to catch these people up. I get that there's an extra expense incurred, especially with tariff pricing as well for the customer, to ship these things to somebody that's already got their game. Whereas if you throw it in the same box with the game going out, you avoid all that. So I get why they're doing that. But you really got to make these guys whole, man. You only had 500 games to build. 330 were made. Get the toppers where they need to be. And then communicate, which is what is missing. I want to see these guys like if they owe me money, I want to have my phone blowing up constantly with updates. Right. If I had purchased one of these games and got it and then didn't even get the topper that I wanted. And I'm sitting there with my electric playground topper parts upgrade to upgrade my topper. But it's still not even there yet. And it seems weird to dwell on something silly like a plastic accessory for your game. But really, it was the whole package is what you were purchasing. If you purchased this thing, it's because you liked how it looked top to bottom, up under the skirt, all of it. You wanted all of it. You don't want it to ship without legs. You don't want it to ship without a plunger rod. Well, as long as the plunger rod doesn't, you know, come busting your hand and fall apart. We've seen that. Jeez. You know, I make shooter rods. I get an idea in my head. I buy some blanks from Pinball Life. I put it together. I make some magic. And I like a rod that feels good in my hand. I don't know come at me Add in what you want for that But I like that When I have a sentinel head I want it to fit in my hand Looking straight up it works Because my hand fits around its roundness And I can shoot Some people are like I want the face facing me It just feels weird in the hand I created this Death Star shooter rod For Star Wars games And it feels great in the palm It's the same size as the D20 From the Stranger Things pinball machine that Stern had built, the first party one. It just feels good, that size. It's easy to grab. You don't have to look down. Just tactile feel. You know where that thing is. And when you're going to do a sword handle, it's going to be long. It's going to feel awkward in the hand. It's kind of skinny. And you're going to hit it with your hip. And unless you've got a full tang on that baby, which it turns out is not the case with the what have yous here, the Alice Shooter ride, you're going to hit it with your hip or your kid's going to swing off it, the thing's going to snap, and then what are you going to do? You can't crazy glue this thing back together. It'll fall right back apart again. You need to have, if you're going to do a sword, then you've got to get an altered rod. That rod has to extend the entire length of it for reinforcement purposes, and I don't think that's cost prohibitive. I think you could do it. It would just cost a little bit more to engineer that. You can't go with an off-the-shelf little stubby, rubby knob rod to go ahead and put on that. Looks like that's what they did. I didn't like it on Elvira either, man. That thing was plastic junk. It was like pot metal, the one that came with the 40th anniversary and then again on the Blood Red Kiss. I love what they were doing with it. I love the idea, but that thing should have been metal and not just of the pot metal variety. The plastic gems were falling off. What's going on, man? You've got to have something robust. It should be generally round, all right? And I'll even take the dune shooter rod. That's a task for being really long and awkward for a handle. At least I haven't seen any of those break off. You know, in the spooky pinball, when it comes to their shooter rod upgrade for Evil Dead, that thing bolts freaking on. The whole thing is, like, cut steel with, like, walnut actual pistol grips put on the side of it. Like, that thing, your hip will break before that will break. You can put that on the game. And I've seen Luke grab the gun, lift it off the ground, lift the whole game with it. Like, it's not moving. It's a unit, man, an absolute unit. I love it. so uh my point let's get a circle back around to it is that uh dpx had a job and a promise and a contract with customers for 500 games didn't deliver the ones that they did some of them got toppers some of them didn't some people are waiting other people's that are getting the game ship later are coming with it it just sucks the whole thing kind of sucks and just the sour taste is in the back of my mouth like a like i'm living with severe gird or something right give me an acid somehow so what are they talking about they're talking about doing Raza next now again no reason to make this game I saw the videos from deep root you know I saw the people when they were there at the factory I talked to people that have played it This game just does not look all that interesting Maybe for the time and everything was like brand new and it was like the surge of COVID buy everything Even if it wasn't a scam, you know, I think that's the only realm it could have possibly existed in. So now you're going to take Raza, finish it into an actual game, and then deliver it. And you're only making 300 of them. And who knows what the tariffs are going to be. You know, nobody wants nobody wants a Raza now. Nobody definitely wants a sixteen thousand dollar Raza that may or may not come with the topper. They may or may not communicate with you. You may or may not be able to pull your deposit back and you may or may not get it back to the future spot if you do. So this is a problem. This is a problem. Now, I'm not the only one to have said, hey, guys, Dutch pinball, you design OK games. You know, we've seen Big Lebowski and we've seen which was great. And then we've seen Alice, which I think is kind of mid, you know, but nobody wants to pay the prices for these games. Let's look at another set of 300 games from Europe, Predator. OK, now compare Raza with Predator. Predator has an interesting layout, a lot of cool mechanisms, wire forms going everywhere, wide body game built. Well, art looks great in person, a little bit iffy on some of the between the flipper art stuff looks a little Photoshoppy. You know, it doesn't have Arnold. It kind of does, but it doesn't. But like, you know, he's there. But I played the game a couple of times. I talked to the pinball brother representatives that were there. I played their trophy edition and their other one. I liked the game. I thought the game was fun. You know, not every game has to be like a pinnacle top five pin side 100 forever. You know, you can have just really good games that are in, you know, the pin top pin side top 75 or above. that can be great i would have one of these games here absolutely if it was 99.99 right if it was like spooky price game or even maybe a barrels game i would have bought predator i liked it better than alien like that a hell of a lot better than queen ab is in a category all on its own man um i do appreciate abba but you know for being serious like not even in an ironic way predator was a fun game i would own a predator i would like to have one retro ralph got himself one he's digging it and this is a game that they also made 300 of and it didn't sell out okay so what i'm what i'm trying to draw is a parallel here between dutch pinball experiences exclusives raza of 300 and predator of 300 i think predator is a hell of a lot more of an interesting game they're being made they're getting delivered and they still didn't even sell out with a great theme an interesting build some fun mechanisms just some stupid pinball fun it still didn't sell out It's probably the price that's doing it. If it was $99.99, I'm sure they'd be gone. But like what, $12,000, $14,000, $16,000 with shipping and tariffs, who knows what they're going to be by the time you get it. If Roz is in that same situation, I see them struggling to build 300 of these things. So people have been saying, Dutch, find a partner in the United States. Just find a build factory to contract build these things to your specifications, but do them in the U.S. So the largest market for pinball in the world, which is in the U.S., can purchase these things, and we just don't have to worry about the tariffs. The tariffs are not a price that's paid to the Netherlands. It's not a price that's paid to the people making the game. It's a price that we have to pay to our own federal government just to get the game imported. And look, look, United States pinball production and manufacturing is not under attack or threat by the games that are made by the Euro Pinball Corps or Pedretti or Hexa or Dutch. I mean, come on. There's such a small fraction of the market. It's not like if we have parity, trade parity with pinball, all of a sudden the United States market is at risk of total collapse. The United States market is at risk of total collapse for putting two ramps and a bash toy in a machine instead of some great pinball mechanistic fun. Hello. So I don't see the whole point. So, you know, what do you do? You come out to American pinball and ask them to make it. I'm sure that conversation has happened. It's probably happened with Stern and everybody else. But I can't think of anyone that realistically has capacity for this. Except for Turner pinball. except for that young upstart down in san antonio who's got his own captive pinball uh manufacturing complex on his own compound right so he's got the benefit of a company like spooky pinball where like they own the land own the building don't have a landlord you know aren't splitting it with fedex or something in the heart of chicago you know where maybe this guy could edit he's got can build this guy can iterate this guy could crank games out i'll tell you this if uh if 300 predators had come out from Turner pinball, they would have immediately sold out and would have been gone and probably would even be built already by now. I think anybody's got a chance of selling 333 Raza's. It would probably be Turner pinball. I think there's much better ideas to go for, and I'm glad he sold it and took that money and is paying it forward. I can't wait to see what his next game is. I hope it's a licensed awesome game and we'll sell out immediately and we could all cheer on Turner. but i i think if they were just built in the u.s i think it would have a chance but right now i think predator is showing you that even 300 games with a killer license an excellent layout two things which raza does not have and that is having trouble i think you gotta beware a bit man i think you gotta beware stumbler can make that game somber leor can make raza look completely amazing but I still don't know if that's successful. And if what I'm hearing is true, that back to the future is still like arts, not even done on it. Whitewood's still not even totally complete. Engineering still needs to happen. You know, we're still like a year or a year and a half away from seeing that game. I'm worried, man. I'm worried. And it's all because Lebowski was so much fun, was built so well, like the cabinetry. Oh, I love it. The bowling alley, like they, like they did so much in that game. um yeah i'm glad they saw it through to the end uh i don't think they should have been in that situation to begin with but going forward i man if back to the future could hit like a more modern lebowski i think that's all we really want but is raza the way to go about it i just think i think dutch pinball is better than raza i think they're better than alice and alice's adventures in wonderland and i i i have i want to see that spark and that fun again man i can't wait to go back to the netherlands i'm gonna swing by even if i'm just hanging out up front doing a live stream um i'm gonna hit this place up i'm gonna go to dutch pinball museum i'll see if we could swing the dutch pinball open next year but it kind of happens the same time as iapa it's a little bit tricky um but we'll get back to the netherlands well you know it's a time in and political tensions permitting all right so american pinball got a new guy making the rounds uh was on the flipping out podcast uh i think there's an interview with nap i think he talked to kineticist um i you know i've i've got texted hey come on the show uh i've got to wait till it's not the 14 days of dawn man because i gotta have my mind where it needs to be but i've picked up on some of the things they've been talking about and the gist of what i'm hearing now is that uh you know they've moved into the factory they're hiring some staff they've got i've been in the factory multiple times i know they've got tons of back stock i know they have i know where they keep the playfields for off gassing i was shown that every single time i went by there um i know where some of their other failed pitch and putt arcade machines are sitting back there that that pirate blasty one that they made um i hell of a lot would have played that rather than the world of all game but they got all these parts left over for games and it seems like like every time i they come up it's like we're making more legends of ahala who is out there buying these legends of ahala i'm wondering so i'm sure they've got a lot of inventory already that's already been purchased It's already an asset. This guy bought the company and these assets sitting around, you know, these vertical up kickers, these crappy shooter rods from GTF, you know, all of that playfields and whatever. So why not go ahead and just build with what you got? Maybe you can make some money on it because it's not making any money sitting on the shelf. You know, if they only made 70 burritos barbecue challenges, like how many, you know, Vuck assemblies are you going to be able to send out or pop up or caps with hot dogs on them? you know so go ahead and make them fine go ahead and make them you know fire sale them get whatever you can get for them i think that's fine and then get on to your new game and my god man i think everybody's saying the same thing american pinball you need to make masters of the universe i want a he-man game i want skeletor on my cabinet i don't want to watch cartoons on the lcd screen i want to bash castle grayskull and snake mountain like that's what i want i want to beat beast man he can have a mode evil lynn can have a mode uh man at arms can have a like a multiball it's just the thing writes itself this is a license that should happen so this rumor's been running around pinball as long as i have it seems uh multiple companies have had or have had access to this license um the the two things i know fairly for certain is that american pinball had or has this license and seem to be the strongest contender to make this game um and also other companies have been offered it or had secured it but then passed or had the opportunity on it or were able to option it but just didn't think it'd be a big enough seller for them now listen if barrio's barbecue challenge sold 75 games then i think you definitely have room for 150 or 250 masters of the universe games i think those would sell ahead a lot better than i can't even hazard to guess how many full price signature edition galactic tank forces actually went out there i used to go to the factor in c60 of them stacked there um just in boxes uh i don know whose idea was it to charge sixteen thousand dollars plus for that game and then they wrote all over the apron and then they used fluorescent poster paint from the craft store to paint the sculpts, and then they put Titan bands on everything and thought that was worth $6,000 more than the base version. And the kicker, God, this saga will not die. This was like the most famous thing of my entire pinball career. uh you or you got you got a banner you got a t-shirt you got a coffee mug you got the lunch box but if you paid the extra six thousand dollars not only did you get the lunch box but then you got the thermos for the lunch box so like putting a thermos behind a six thousand dollar paywall was just such a choice to be made right you know because if you got the limited version or the deluxe version or whatever was below that you got the lunch box but like no thermos that was gate kept behind a six thousand dollar paywall and then when the lunch boxes started going out they all came with thermoses because that's how a lunchbox company sells products if they make a thermos it comes with it oh what a debacle what a complete debacle that was oh my god where the heck was i at so all right make masters of the universe somebody's got to do it american i would love this uh put me down for one if you make one i want a he-man game and i'm just about at the point that I don't care who makes it. Turner, please make it. But, you know, if you're not going to do it, AP, take the license and run with it. You know, but don't do it if it's just a re-name of Cuphead. Oh, man, there's just so many, like, unfortunate decisions that were made. And I wish I could have been in the room as, like, a voice of reason to just – because it seems like two or three decisions, if they were made kind of slightly differently, I think we'd be in a different place here with the whole thing. But I don't know. I'm a casual backseat observer to this. Let's see what happens. But if I'm going to consider parting with some money for anything that American Pinball makes, it better have the freaking Sword of Omens in it. That's Thundercats. Wait, what was the name of Skeletor's staff? It had a goat head on it. It was purple. Man, Skeletor was freaking ripped, and he wore skin-tight lycra and a loincloth. What was this cartoon? God, what was going on in the 80s besides, like, all the cocaine in the world? God, he, man, was just amazing. I want it to work, man. I really want it to work. What else are we talking about? Speaking of work, I've got 10 days left, nine maybe, and then it's time to go home and pack my shorts and get my butt down to the beach. Pinball at the Beach is coming up. I went for the inaugural event on a whim last year. You know, people were talking it up. Kerry Hardy was pitching it strongly. I heard that there was going to be pinball celebrities there, so I'd love to go meet and hang out with those people. And it was at the beach, and my friends from Spooky were going, and I was like, you know what? Let's just go. Fine. Let's go. Let's go. So I went. I went. I believe I brought Monica, too. We got to have a little bit of a beach vacay, and it was super fun. We hit up Busch Gardens. We went to some of the other Florida parks. We got to hang out and play in the sand. It was a good time. It was a good time. It was fun. It was fun being in a tent with like every brand new game out and not hours long lines, not the whole cacophony of noise that you get at Pinball Expo or TPF. It was just cool to just kickback and have real pinball celebrities just hanging out with us normal folks. Plus, it was banana daiquiris. So, I mean, come on. The water was a little bit cold, but there was warmth within our spirits. It was fun. It was fun. So I've been looking forward to this since basically last year. and then I was reminded that Stern has a game that comes out in January. Last year it was Dungeons & Dragons, and that was a game that was all over the place at Pinball at the Beach. Got to play tons of them. Brian Eddy was there to talk to and play the game with. And, hey, there's George Gomez. He's playing the game too. Look at him go. It was fun. It was just a fun time. I'm losing more and more hope that we're going to see the new Stern pinball machine, strongly rumored to be the house of Pokemon, the house that Pikachu built. Team Rocket hopefully makes an appearance. I was waiting to be able to go there because I know there's going to be 10 Beetlejuices there. I know Harry Potter will be there. We'll have a Winchester, maybe a Dune, finally play that finished code on the game. And then I was expecting the whole front hall to have like 10 or 12 Pokemons in it. So I could just really get some time on the game. We could all have fun, play with it, laugh at the lack of mechanisms or marvel at the cool stuff that's in it. That's what I wanted to happen. But here we are. It's the 21st of January, and I'm just not seeing anything. pokemon anywhere it's not it's not rumored nobody's like you know thursday's tomorrow and then we're gonna get into friday and i'm not hearing like guys teasers definitely for sure coming like usually you always hear that so for this to happen i mean as long as the game is unveiled by the time the event happens then they can still have some games in route to be down there at this point they got to be getting them you know built right now and ready to be going down if they're going to have like 10 or 12 otherwise maybe they drag one of the le prototypes so we can at least oogle it but that's not as fun man i really wanted to see 10 or 12 of these things i think there's still time if we get a teaser on friday and a reveal the next week i mean we've been saying that the last four weeks um but if we do get that then i think that's still in the running pinball at the beach can be saved and we'll have something new there because if it just fall the empire there's nobody's gonna be playing that game man come on we're all kind of over that game by now uh um unless you're out in you know on locations or something almost like had like halfway between a cough and a hiccup that was strange um you know if it's fall of the empire when you walk into that tent i'm gonna be walking right by it to go play any one of the other stern hits from the last three years that are gonna be there oh my goodness so i think there's still hope i think some of us hope it's actually transformers it's just weird we've been waiting for pokemon for so long it was gonna be like you know yeah the jjp's doing harry potter but stern says hold my beer they got pokemon like the even biggerest license um but at this point i don't know man i don't know i'm just not hearing anything i really want it to come out but like enthusiasm is really fading as we're waiting to get some other games and stuff um speaking of other games uh let me take you on a road trip to ramps how's that for a segue remember this company uh this is uh this is tilt bob's outfit i met tilt bob a couple of times i played his elf homebrew game I thought it was fantastic. He seemed like a charming enough fellow. I met one of the other guys in the crew while I was down there at Pinball at the Beach last year playing Ramps Road Trip, who was very much open to constructive criticism. And I was trying to give him the best I could. They did give me a Ramps Road Trip Translight, which I got kicking around somewhere. I need to give that thing away. You know, the game was fun. Isn't it weird that it had a rotisserie as, like, its main thing? Now, it had some issues where, like, the flipper power wasn't quite there to always make it up that center ramp, and that was part of the feedback it gave them. But isn't it funny that, like, within that same year, we got Winchester Mystery House also featuring rotisserie. We got Harry Potter with its staircase diverter, which is essentially another rotisserie. Like, all these rotating mechs all of a sudden, everything from ramps to JJP is using them. It's just weird how stuff happens because I know they weren't all, you know, in cojoles with each other to make all that come out. Well, I heard that Ramps is getting a little bit busy on another build, to be determined. Just a little bit of rumor I had. Shout out to Patreon members. You already saw that. But where's Ramps Road Trip? Like, when I talked to the guys, you know, of course, they had their game out way early. They weren't asking for deposits. They weren't asking for money. They were asking for feedback, which I think is fine. You're a brand-new company. You're first design. It's something a little bit untraditional. There's a plastic cow drop target that worked pretty good. I thought that was cool. you know you created this cool character with the raccoon i like that there's a mascot it's a road trip perfect and then they were starting to release things like you can put whatever songs you want in it and it's like whoa whoa whoa downplay that man you don't need as cap coming after you you know so uh their idea was to get this game out let people play it get some feedback take it back to the lab work on it bring it to the next show with you know some of those upgrades and things implemented into it and show it off again. Then we kind of follow the creation and iteration of this game and then eventually get to the point that we all want to put deposits on it and have it and launch another company out of a garage in Florida, which hasn't been done yet, down in Florida at least. So, yeah. But we haven't heard or seen anything. Like I didn't see these guys at Expo. They didn't have a panel talking about, you know, here's our PowerPoint presentation on everything that we've done so far. You know, nothing, nothing. And I haven't heard anything from Ramps Pinball Development Company. I don't know what their official name or title is. But, okay, we're going to be back at pinball at the beach. If this game is actually going to be a viable product, it's got to be there. Got to be there. And I can't wait to see, hopefully, what a year of development has brought to this, a year of feedback, a year of pinball devotees flipping this game and telling you what they think of it and what they would like to see in it and, like, what its next iteration is. but I've seen nary an app arcade update all year on this. No chatter online, nothing in the discord, nothing behind someone's Patreon, like nothing. And I'm a little bit worried. I'm a little bit worried about ramps, man. Where are you guys at? Where are you guys at? It was an interesting concept. The game was kind of fun. You know, they use those proximity switches instead of the little rollover micro switches. Interesting. Like, let's see what you can do with it. Now they had a great powder coat on the game, but I mean, I can do that. Show me a cool game. Show me a cool game guys. so here we are in january anxiously awaiting games to come out um i've ordered my winchester i'm in a spot that i hate being in which is where you've put down money on a game and then you don't have your game i will say this you know if you order from stern pinball when their games are released you're gonna have it if you order from jersey jack you're gonna have it too eventually if you order early you'll probably get an early build i've always been able to do that uh if you buy a game for spooky pinball you know it be made this year you know what your number is going to be and you going to have a rough estimate of where it going to come in at my winchester though i not sure what my number is i know what my number in line with my distributor is um but i don know when my game going to be made i don know if it's going to be a february game probably not i don't know if it's going to be a november game hopefully not maybe i'll get it by summertime um but you know it's bought paid for i'm ready to go get it if i have to drive to houston myself and pick it up that's something that i would do um You know, I hate being in this position where I've got money in on a game. At least it's a company that I've got some faith in, and I don't think it's going to turn into vaporware. I don't think they're going to steal my money and run with it. And the game is actually pretty freaking cool, and it is trickling out. I think they're in the really early form of this. I don't know if they've really truly started cranking these out in earnest. You know, they went from, like, hand-built prototype one-of-one games and, like, got those out to the Ace Gogees of the world. which is fine. There's one sitting up at Appleton somewhere, maybe Lumberjack Johnny's or somewhere similar to that. There's one floating out there. So there is one in Wisconsin, but I know IO Arcade hasn't got theirs. You know, I haven't gotten mine. I don't know that Kingpin's gotten any delivered to them. So still waiting on it. I hate being in this position, but if I was going to pick a game to be in this position for, I'm glad it's Winchester. That makes sense. That makes sense. At this point, when are we going to see the topper for Winchester? Man, they had to solicit money. For the Dune Topper now, I think they even cut sales off for that. And then it's going to be August before it gets delivered. There's not a working prototype. Oh, man, the growing pains of a pinball company. I'm sure they're going to land where they need to. Hopefully, you know, with the sales of Winchester that they had, the extra boosts that they got with Dune, they'll have enough capital to continue capitalizing into the company and rolling this thing down the street. I just want to play some more Winchester, man. I want to play some more. hopefully it's at the beach and there's a couple of them uh so we can get some more time on them i think that would be fun i think that would be fun so let's close out with spooky pinball what's going on this is great man these guys have like hit their stride on their games their qualities where it needs to be and like they're making they're making dreams come true over their dream factory you know you know rob durdek had the dream factory these guys are the dream factories does that make luke big black or am i big black we'll have to figure that out later i know i'm bringing the skate ramp at least uh so evil dead can you believe it evil dead the little game that could the little wide body that'll fit through your door um there's 20 left to build like like that's it like 20 you're going into boxes and then like the casket evil dead is closed i think there'll be a collective sigh of relief throughout the entire town of benton when that happens because this game was pretty brutal um as far as like building like when you look at this thing and everything you have to QC. These guys just said, heck everything and went for it. But there's room here for a mechanism. Heck it, put a mechanism in there, put one there too. You know what? Put two troll mechs right here. Let's get crazy. And so when you look at, I mean, I can appreciate it on a whole different level here. I spent hours and hours of my day wiring Beetlejuice where the team next to me was wiring an Evil Dead and the complexity of that thing. It's unreal. Every little solder point that's got to be made there's so many steps to making that game and plus you got the lower play field as well like it's nuts and so i think they've taken what they've learned there uh they made a great game with beetlejuice and it looks like it's going to be even more streamlined in production to the point that not only do they have 10 games uh looking ready to go for pinball at the beach i think they actually have 20 in cabinets right now which is nuts like they're getting their final testing done and so like they're well off to the races now normally it's kind of a slow trickle during the month of January to get the game started just because of QC training staff you know final fitment of the final pieces not the prototypes making sure they all fit together a little last minute problems will come up and then they kind of start in earnest and ramp up from there but man they're hitting the ground running here they're they're like uh they're like greased iodine gauze right here just sliding out of the factory um you know like like If you grab the ripcord and pulled it, man. So that is super cool. I'm excited. And I got to see part of that. And it's killing me right now that I got to be sitting here in the frozen northern reaches. And I can't be there with my friends like when their games go out the door like the first babies. I want to swat them on the butt, man. Come on, bug. Let me swat it. So 10 cabinets are going to pinball at the beach. I think that's super fun. Some non pinball news also dropped today. We got word. Finally, the long-rumored roller coaster coming to Universal Studios Florida as a replacement for Rip Ride Rocket. This is that coaster that's going to go right at the front of the park. The theme has been revealed, though the layout is still pending, and it's Fast and Furious. So let's freaking go with that. So there's a Fast and Furious coaster going in Hollywood right now. It's in final testing. It's going to open up this spring. It looks amazing. So there's like four cars on a train with like four to six spots each. and they'll drift right it's it's it's fast and furious hollywood drift they're calling it so as the coaster's going around turns uh the the cars can actually rotate and drift into them you know or spin 360 while you're inverted kind of like what we're seeing with like guardians of the galaxy and epcot the reason i'm dropping this roller coaster news into this podcast is because like i've said before what themes work for theme parks will also work for pinball absolutely guardians of the galaxy at epcot got a great game it's basically metallica reskinned but there it is um and so fast and furious i've pitched as a theme pitch to just the general room around me there was nobody actually here but i think this is a theme that i am completely shocked and surprised that we have not seen a pinball machine from fast and furious not because i love the franchise i don't it's kind of stupid i like stupid but not this kind of stupid you know what i mean um but still they made 13 of these movies or wherever they're at now for a reason like this thing's popular uh there's been fast and furious attractions at two universal parks that i know of for a decade or more so i think it's got legs i think you could make a fast and furious pinball machine drop it off at a laundromat and people would walk up and play it like this would be for the general public this would be for the locations hey here's a recognizable theme while i'm checking out at walmart here kid go play the claw machine i'm gonna go play this and join the family because it's about family so i could see this working so i don't know when the last fast and furious movie came out had to be multiple years from now but we're still seeing brand new multi-hundred million dollar theme park attractions being built on both coasts about this theme so like doesn't it have some legs there what do you think would this work for pinball now i don't know that this is something that spooky would do i definitely don't think it's something that barrels of fun would do i don't think we would see it coming from the european companies but this is the kind of thing i would expect stern pinball to turn around and say you know what we did john wick here's this we did james bond here's this it's cars like john wick could have been fast and furious i mean look at it look look at it look at it car slides out and does its drift it's a fast playing game um you're fighting enemies there's three ramps i placed a lot of balls in the back a little nightclub scene which could have been like the diesel shop and you go in there and bash things around or whatever like just reskin that that would have been fast and furious it's not a game or a theme that i'm completely passionate about but i could see that being made now if you want to know a theme that hasn't been done that i could be passionate about i shared a photo of it on the facebook page and that's planet of the apes new movies old movies i really don't care uh punk rock pinball uh group on Facebook I'm just becoming acquainted with or familiar with. They posted an AI image of a pinball machine of Planet of the Apes. And normally these are all crap. Like we've seen the AI-generated chat GPT images of arcades and pinball machines. It doesn't look anything like a playable machine, though it does have the same colors. And there's usually a pop bumper, but like the cabinet's misshapen or whatever. So this was an AI-generated image. And yeah, the cabinet was squatty. It was too wide. The form factor was definitely off. But the layout of the game, not that there was a lot of detail. It was kind of a three-quarter view of it, orthogonal as it were. But the layout of the game as far as mechanisms and upper play field stuff looked really sweet. There was all of these caged jail cells going off in a semicircle where there was an upper play field with the main one and then over some wire forms on the right. So some elevated areas on the left and right and then a main play field down below. this looks super fun like imagine if you're playing as the humans trying to escape from the apes or battle the apes and you know you've got friends that you know balls that are locked in cages and you have to like hit something to qualify it and then bust it open and then it's like a jailbreak multiball and you're gathering weapons and building up your numbers and gaining allies and taking out the the the monkey tanks or whatever that they had you know you have as long as there's an ape riding a horse with like a sword in his hand and like you could take him out like That's all I want. So if you ask me, Don, what's a theme that hasn't been done that you would love to see? Planet of the Apes. If there's a theme I haven't seen that I would expect to see, Fast and the Furious. Let me know your thoughts. Hit me up, donspinballpodcast at gmail.com. And let's watch me slowly lose my mind over the next week. Thanks for joining. Oh, some good thumping sounds. It's Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. That's how you get at me, Facebook page, Discord page. I'm all over the place. You know how to find me. Catch you on the flippity-flip.