Hey, welcome everyone to Today in the Scene by Indie Arcade Wave. I'm Joe, your host. And here on In the Scene, we dive into what's happening in the arcade space from arcade developers, arcade owners and operators, pinball, and just news in the space in general. Now, we're going to jump back into some guests that we've had on previously. The first interview was four years ago. The second one was two years ago. And now we're going to update and see how far they've come in the last two years. That's going to be the team at Astrocro Games, the couple behind Highlight Heroes, Throwback Highlight Heroes, the beautiful Miami Vice looking cabinet that's been circulating all over South Florida and now expanding into the rest of the country. So, let's bring in Caris and Brian. How you guys doing?
Good. How are you?
Hey,
I'm I'm good. I'm good. I'm glad to glad to have you back on. Um I know we've been talking for it's been like at least six months we've been talking about doing another episode. Um, and now that I'm down here in Florida, I've got to hang out with you guys a couple times and and see the cabinet and go to free play with you guys.
Uh, so we've kind of moved into this whole new era for you guys. The last time we spoke, you were just building the first cabinet with Neil. It was going into Glitch Bar. It was going to be your first convention you took it to. At this point, I think you guys may have gone to more conventions than I have. Um, I mean, seems like you're going to one every other week. I mean, it's pretty crazy. So, let's just have you guys reintroduce yourselves and we'll kind of dive back into like how High started and then move forward with kind of where you guys have progressed to in the last couple years.
Sure. Uh Brian Stil. I'm the uh co-owner of Astro Crow. I'm also I do all the game design and all the coding and then sometimes I'll do sound effects and music.
I'm Caris Baker. I'm the art director and artist for Throwback Highlight Heroes. I've been working on this for a very long time. It's a pretty cool project that's um that's a lot of fun to play. Still fun to play after all these years. And um yeah, I have been up to all the sales and marketing and working on all the uh growing my skill sets in the directions I need to to get the uh product out in the world.
Basically learning how to fill all the other hats that come along with this, right? You guys are both kind of like wearing a dozen hats and that's that's what happens when you're in this space. you know, you got to figure everything out. Um, the budget's pretty tight, so you just you make the game, all of a sudden, you got to learn marketing, you got to learn sales, and you got to learn promotion, then you got to go to events, and you got to figure out how to set up a, you know, a nice looking booth, and it
it snowballs and it never ends, and you're always learning something new. Um, let's talk about how it all started, right? Like, how did how did the game start? There's obviously two other interviews. I'm going to link to those in the description, but let's talk about how you guys first came together as Astrocrow and started making the game. and then we'll talk about kind of what's changed over the last couple years.
Sure. Um I know it's a very long story. I probably talked about it on the previous episodes. So just to like sum it up, um started off my studio making mobile games. Um came up with the idea for HighI as a mobile uh app because I wanted to make a sport, but I wanted to do something different. Highlight was something that I grew up around in South Florida. Um my grandfather worked there. My dad's best friend was a manager at one of them. And I figured that would make me, you know, do something unique. That was around like 2009. Didn't like how it felt on mobile. Set it aside. Years later, I tried to rein restart it as a uh console game with Xbox controllers or just, you know, some sort of controller. Uh got permission from Nintendo to get a Switch dev kit. And then uh we we moved it from there to a PC game and we're going to do a Steam Greenlight. And then we found out about the indie arcade scene. And then I'll kind of back up as a how I met Caris. So I had the little prototype with the Xbox controllers and it was just, you know, capsule colliders. Really ugly, but it was very fun already just with the the small game move. People could dash, people could grab the ball and throw it. So I I was a really big fan of handdrawn animation, also a big fan of pixel art. And I was like, I need someone who can do both of those things. And where I was working, every single person was saying, "Oh, you got to meet this girl Cares." I'd never met her. She worked on the same floor as me. But um they kind of just like said, "Oh, here's Caris." You know, and we started talking and I think Caris can tell the rest of how she she came aboard.
Yeah. I was in a period of my life where I was trying to uh get as many titles under my belt as I could. Um so I had I was working on a lot of game projects at at this time. And so when Brian showed me the prototype of Throwback, which was called Highlight Heroes at the time, um I said, "I'll give you three weeks." And uh you know that three weeks has turned into this this project uh that has expanded beyond my dreams because um you know that three weeks we made the art direction what it is now. We solidified the color palette, the the theme, um like the the style and the the meat and potatoes behind the the style and um we just moved forward from there and I think we were showing a Free Play Florida the fourth week in development since I joined the team. Um and then after that we went to Orlando and it really started to pick up momentum and uh we showed at Indie Nomicon here in Florida and some other places. Um, and this project has been um kind of a hobby project that has pushed my career forward over the last number of years. Um, it allows me to, you know, go into indie game spaces, game development spaces, and bring something um, and it's been something we've maintained momentum on all this period of time. and like now it's what we're going to talk about today, which is a nationally released product and a full-on business. Um, so it's been a an amazing journey. Hey guys, quick break. If you want to support the channel, one of the best ways to do that is purchasing your next pinball through Compulsive Pinball. They're helping bring some amazing Stern pinballs to players everywhere. And the next game that they're releasing, you're not going to want to miss. Whether you're looking to add a machine to your home collection or you're an arcade owner or operator, Compulsive Pinball has you covered. They offer special pricing for operators and can handle routing operations for businesses all over the East Coast as well as down in Orlando, Florida. Check out compulsiveball.com for your next Stern and let them know that you heard about them from Indie Arcade Wave. Yeah, I mean, you guys have clearly been working on it for quite some time. You put a lot into this and the game really has changed quite a bit in the couple of years that you've been working on it. I mean, I feel like every time I go to a convention, it was I was even just at free play the other day uh with you guys like playing on the uh oh, what was it? The the little cab. I just looked over at Brian. He's like, "Yeah, you can tell, can't you?" I was like, "Yeah, it's old code." Like,
he's like, "I don't know if I want to update it." I mean, I don't think you need to update it. I think it's cool to like leave that one as like showing how far you guys have come and you really can see it in the gameplay. So, let's talk a little bit about like the cabinet building, right? Like that's usually the part that holds people up. A lot of people can can make a game and whether it's fun or not, they can make a game, right? But the hardest part is building it for the cabinet, bringing the cabinet together, having one that's solid that, you know, an arcade would actually want to buy and put on their location. So talk about how that whole project evolved starting with, you know, the first one that that Neil and Joey built all the way to working with Fun Company now, which is where a large quantity of us indie developers work. I mean, they they make they make the cabinets for Stern Pinball. They work with Bandai Namco. I mean, these guys are these guys are professionals. They know what they're doing.
So, we had our game as an Xbox game. Like I said, we used to bring around a TV and a bunch of Xbox controllers. And once I found out about this whole space, you know, you guys and Killer Queen, Killer Queen were like the first guys who kind of caught our attention. And um I realized it makes sense for our game because the highle concept was, you know, NBA Jam but highlight classic arcade game. Okay, why not just make ours an arcade game as well and we needed somebody to build them and we had a publisher, some guy who's going to uh manufacture them. Then COVID hit, right? And obviously all the arcades are closed down. There's nothing we can really do about that. So, we kind of let the game sit for about a year and a half, we were focusing on our careers. Uh, outside of that, I actually had two full-time jobs. So, I just kind of uh buried my head into those for a while. And then as uh civilization started to get back to normal and people were going to be social again, we decided, okay, it's time to make these machines, that's when our buddy Neil Hernandez was like, you guys have anyone making a machine? We're like, no. He's like, I'll make it. So, he built them by hand. This is one of them John Youssi right here. These are our mark ones, what we call them. And now we had this tangible thing, right? Caris spent probably a year on alone on the artwork and the design. And um we started off with a Frogger cabinet. You can clearly see the influence in its uh silhouette. And then we made a couple of uh changes to it. And with that first one, now that we had a tangible machine, we would put it out in a bunch of locations every time we'd go to these conventions, bring it around, and we'd really sit there and watch and just see how people interacted with it. And we take a bunch of notes. And finally, when we wanted to massproduce them, uh we went to Fun Company, right? Because everyone who's doing indie is going to fun company for the most part, almost everyone, right? And um we told them we showed them our our our machine and you know we needed some files and um Caris can tell you the story about that. But uh one thing we did was all the the design flaws that we noticed or things that were kind of a problem. Not problem but just could be better with the Mark1. We told them about that and we even went all the way up to Wisconsin to check it out and actually, you know, give our seal of approval. and we had to give a couple little more um tweaks to it while we were there.
Yeah. Uh so one of my favorite things about Neil is that he does everything by hand. And by that I mean his original design, he laid a waterlogged frogger on a piece of wood and traced it with a pencil. Um so when we went to Fun Company and we were talking with them about manufacturing this design, um they said, "All right, now just send us your files." And we're like, "Files? So uh we uh we I went through the process of um uh translating the physical machine that we had in front of us to uh to CAD. And um I learned CAD in about a month and I you know I'm a 3D modeler. I I study it um studied it in school and um I do it for a living and I thought I would be okay with just picking up CAD really quickly. like what can be so hard about it? Um it was really hard. Uh it was like uh yeah I know Spanish of course I can speak Latin and yeah it wasn't the same at all but I got it done and so translated the entire thing to uh the CAD drawing and got it all done. redid the entire exterior of the machine and kind of was able to take all of my whatifs and what a what a could a shouldas and put them into this M2 version of the machine. And I just think it's so beautiful. Um it is exactly what I wanted it to be. And um yeah, it's it speaks volumes even with the volume off, you know, the loudest arcade uh in in the place with the volume off. and it looks so beautiful in a dark arcade. It just lights up the whole place. Um the hot pink that we use is the T- molding from Miss Pac-Man that is still in production because people repair the Miss Pac-Man machines. Um and this like baby blue or light blue that we have on the uh the um the vinyl, it just glows under black light or just in a dark arcade with lights around it. It it really makes a statement and it looks great next to all your other retro machines. Lines up perfectly with them.
Yeah, I mean it definitely has heavy retro inspiration, especially the color palette being very Miami Vice. Um let's let's talk a little bit about what adaptation or what changes you made right with this with this Mark 2 versus the Mark 1. What was like what are some of the major features that you guys changed up going between the old model and this new model with Funco? Sure. Um, it was actually interesting because almost every single thing we touched on, we made an improvement. And what was really cool is because we're working with a larger manufacturer and getting them mass-produced like more at more at once, uh, they were actually able to keep it the keep the price exactly the same. So, that's crazy because everything has been an upgrade, right? So, um, for starters, the artwork is different on the sides. This one right here is the Mark 1, but um, we'll send you some video that'll be playing right now showing the Mark 2. uh brand new artwork to show more of the characters uh personalities and identities because they used to be the same characters just with different shirts and different numbers. Now they have their own uh you know back lore and and personalities and stuff. Um the uh bezel is uh glass instead of plexiglass. We upgraded our monitors because before we were having some issues with viewing angle and now we have these better monitors. Um we upgraded the control panel. control panel has plexiglass on top and we got rid of the carriage bolts which while it looked cool to have a matte surface. Um it's cleaner without the the carriage bolts. Also, um someone brought up a good point. Now that there's plexi on top of it, it won't wear away if people play it for a long time. Um there the control panel itself, this one, it slides out and you have to kind of hold the uh bezel in place. They put a piano hinge on it so it just hinges up, which is great. Um, we added art up here. You'll notice there's no art on this one. We we noticed that after the fact like, "Oh, we should probably design art for the the new version." Uh, the marquee, even the marquee, it was positioned in a way, it was kind of set back where if you were under six foot, you couldn't really see the word that said Highlight Hero. So, we brought that forward. Um, no screws on the back there. You actually use a key, which makes it way easier for you to open it up. Um, my favorite thing is that the uh the power cord is now at the bottom instead of inside the machine, so I don't have to open it up every single time I want to plug it in and unplug it. Um, we added a subwoofer. We added um a EQ uh volume with a bass and treble. We we actually put the the computer onto Linux now. And inside of Linux, um, we allow for we have a a thing that we made called Astro Chrome Manager with the help of my friend Greg. And, um, it monitors the game. It does a lot of things like it it allows us to download updates, allows, um, the the operator to find figure out a specific version if they want it or they can just have it set to auto update. They can set uh images for the background of the Tampa level. So, if they want to put their company's logo or their business's logo, they can uh you can even do full screen um image for the operator panel or not operator panel via track mode. So, if you'd like to uh advertise, you know, events going on at your business or welcome to our business. Um we also have this is something really cool. Um I don't know of any other game that has this, but I kind of thought about it for a while because I noticed sometimes, you know, games can get buggy if they've been running for a long time. um something could just happen and the game freezes for some reason. We have in the Astro Chrome manager, there's actually a service that's monitoring the health of the Unity game. And if it detects that the Unity game has has frozen, what I mean by that is it hasn't moved to where it should be in a while, it assumes that the game is uh locked up and it'll automatically restart the game. So that pre prevents operators from having to go to the machine, you know, turn the power switch back on and off. It gets kind of a hassle, but that's that's something that happens in arcades, right? We're trying to kind of ease that painoint and make it so it kind of does it on its own. Um, one of the the the things we're about to launch right now uh with the next update probably tomorrow, we actually now have support for uh seven different languages and they were all languages. You know, when we were deciding which ones to do, we're like, well, they should be the ones where highlight is still relevant, still popular. So, we actually have um Basque, which is the the uh kind of an obscure language, right? But it's obscure region in general. between France and Spain, but that's where Highlight is actually from. Uh, which is really awesome because um, the Bass community can kind of embrace it and, you know, play their national sport in in video game form. We've included French, European, uh, Spanish, Europe or Latin American Spanish, European Portuguese, and Brazilian Portuguese. Is there anything I'm missing?
And more and so many more. In fact, there's probably the feature that you would like. Um, so yeah, just just give us a call or a message and we can talk about what your particular needs are. Ultimately, we're just very very uh interested in making sure that the operator gets taken care of. You can hear in a lot of those features that Brian listed off that the intent is to provide a quality of life improvement for the operator in particular. And that's not even getting into the gameplay features, right? The amount of fun that we've added in for the last two years. uh just by watching people play, like we were saying, location testing and uh talking to tournament players and and patching up things that, you know, they think would be cool or they thought was interesting or um and sometimes just thinking like what's the most fun we can inject in this game right now and re completely redesigning systems that we've had in there for several years because, you know, why not? This is going to be fun, more fun. It's got to be funner. We might as well do it. Um, so yeah, I mean I would love to talk to anybody who is interested in this game so they can discover everything there is about it.
We even have some uh, you know, just the little touches are what matter, especially when someone's buying, you know, an indie thing, it's kind of boutique. Uh, we want it to be special. We want the the not just the player to feel like they're getting a good experience, but also the operator. So I was, you know, overanalyzing it like I do with everything because I'm a programmer. And, you know, a lot of the games in arcades, they have a serial number, right? Right? And it's typically just a sticker, some generic printing thing, but I was like, I can't do that. I'm making something special. I want it to feel special. So, we even went all out. I just went and grabbed one of these. Um, even our uh serial number plates, right? They're this special like full color aluminum. We we made like 10 different designs. It kind of looks cool with the symmetry behind the cab, right? But, uh, even these, you know, we went all out and made sure that you're getting a quality product that you feel like it was worth it. You know, you're like, "This is great. you guys stepped up and we're always looking for other ways that we can improve that experience.
Yeah, I I think that's really cool. I mean, what I'm hearing from you guys is you took the player into mind, right? You got feedback from all the conventions and stuff that you went to, but you're also thinking about the operator on the other end, too, because, you know, a lot of these games are pricey. They're, you know, they're they're up there with a pinball machine, right? So, why wouldn't someone want like a lot of details and a lot of personal touches to it to make the game function? And I I love that idea with like the that program checking Unity and seeing if it's moving forward and if it's not like let's just reset it because I've seen a lot of indie games, you know, there there's a few that I'm thinking of particularly like in an arcade where it freezes up and all you can do is start it over. You know, it's it's really obnoxious when like you have to do that over and over and over. So, if you have software that's scanning for that, that's great. Um, so we covered a lot of like how you got the cabinet, how you got into this position. Let's talk about taking it to trade shows. Like what is that like? Right. Obviously the game is nobody knows about the game yet, but you need to get it out there. You need to get as many people to play it. Show it off as many places as possible so arcade owners can see it. What was that tour like? Because you guys I mean you've been to probably at least 30 shows. I've been to like six shows with you guys minimum. Right. So tell me about that process.
Yeah, we um tried to go at least one a month and then I think November we wind up going to like three. But uh started la started last year we were going to trade shows a lot and we realized we had to keep renting a van and you know all the gas and everything it was getting so expensive we were like you know what we should just buy a company van so we actually went ahead and did that. Um it's pretty cool. We call it the high roller which if you guys if there's any other indie arcade guys out there you want the um the Chrysler Pacifica. It's awesome because it'll fit your machine but then the seats also go into the floor. So, we've done things and I think you were with us when we went to MGC, right? We we drove all the way up to Milwaukee uh with the cabs and then once the cabs are unloaded, put the seats up and now we can move everyone around and we can kind of go around town with every, you know, play taxi. Um and uh yeah, we just bring bring all of our our merch, all of our our booth dressing, and just try as much as we can to impress people, get them onto our socials, join our Discord so they can follow it. Um because you know a lot of people that go to these conventions, they're they're not there to buy the cabinets, but we hope that there's a place that they hang out or um their friend maybe runs a business and they think it would be a good fit. And we love throwing tournaments because our game is meant to be played competitively. So every time at a convention, we'll we'll have at the beginning of the day, we'll we'll kind of onboard people, let them learn how to play the game, try and throw a tournament, give out some prizes. People love that. I think at MacFest was our most successful one. How many people did we have there, Caris?
Uh, over 80.
Over 80 people. Great.
Actually, playing the game, it was uh I think it was the most we'd ever had. It was like 18. It was a lot of people.
Yeah. And um so we've been to MGC. We went to uh Southern Fried Gaming. We went to Magfest finally, which was great because we always we always wanted to go there. Um, we went to
we got best in show at play through GC.
What was that, Chris?
We got best in show at play through GC.
Oh, yep. So, at Play through GC, we won best in show last year. And so, we made sure when we came back this year, we had it like on the attract mode and on the background. Um, because it was that was really nice to to notice have people notice that our game is fun. you know that that's all I care about when people say um it's the same like when when I make a musician as well and the best compliment people go oh it's actually good instead of thinking like they have to uh compliment me because they're my friend and they're required to but when they go oh you know what I don't have to pretend to like this your game is actually fun um but yeah we just bring it all around u we do a lot of local events so if there's anything in Orlando and there's a chance to have uh an arcade machine we'll typically go out because uh you We're local and we have that van now.
Yeah, I've been learning a lot about marketing and um the uh the trade show. If we're going to be meeting somebody who really wants an arcade machine, um the trade show is where it's going to happen. And ultimately, it's worth it to get our name out there and do that kind of bottom of the funnel marketing to have that opportunity to have a face-to-face moment with somebody. And we have had a lot of those uh those appearances turn into sales. Um and it that just makes everything worth it. And plus, you know, there's always the opportunity that someone meets us and they, you know, often need to see something seven times before they make a decision on a large purchase like that or a pre of a premium product. Um so I'd love to just, you know, see someone one more time, you know, if they keep seeing us right in front of their faces. Oh, these people are serious. This is still an option. I can definitely bring this into my arcade. Or they could be quietly saving up money for it and then finally, you know, decide to to uh to uh let us know that they're ready for their purchase. That's always very exciting. But a lot of this work that we've been doing has been grassroots gorilla marketing. You know, every time we go to one of these trade shows, we scope out all the arcades in the local area, whatever state we're in, and we'll pop in at those local arcades, and kind of do a circuit um to introduce ourselves to get the the um amusements manager uh business card or the general manager's business card, maybe make an appointment. Um, and uh, ultimately, you know, doing a lot of phone calls and seeing if we can just drop in or not. And um, it's uh, it's a lot of work and it's been a lot of fun.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's a blast. I love doing it, honestly. I love going to all these different shows and showing off games. And I mean, recently I haven't really been taking games to shows. I've just been going to check them out. Um, and I've been going to a lot of shows with with my partner Chris from Compulsive Pinball. So, it's been really cool to to just, you know, be be a guest at these shows and and be there seeing stuff as opposed to being at the booth all the time and really a lot of the stuff that I've missed in the past. Um,
yeah.
So, we figured out, you know, you guys are going to shows, you guys are building the cabinets and everything. You guys are starting to sell cabinets. You've sold nine of them now, so they're going all over the place. Um, let's talk about kind of what advice you would give someone that is in the position of I want to make a game. like what are some expectations that they could have and how would you um advise them going forward with like trying to get these sold, maybe even like just finding a location to put their first prototype.
Sure. Um with the arcade space, it's very different than the home market, right? A lot of different expectations, a lot of different um use cases, right? You want you want a game that has some depth, but you don't want to give it too much depth unless there's some way to keep paying money for it. Uh because unfortunately that's how the operator is making a living, right? So there are some places we've been to where they they don't even care about the game. Like I'll be sitting there pitching and they just go, "How much will I make an hour?" You know? Um so you have to cater to that while also catering to the the player because you want the player to have fun, but you want the operator to feel like they made a good decision. And it's weird because, you know, the market has changed. I feel a lot of the classic arcade games wouldn't be accepted into a modern-day coin drop arcade because someone's good. They can stay at that machine like on Miss Pac-Man for like hours, right, on one quarter. That that's not going to really move them. Um, so you have to allow options and we do that in our operator panel. They can change the difficulty of the AI. They can change how many points until victory because you want them to be able to dictate how long it takes uh per match, right? And we we give them metrics too so they can see how much money they're making. We have a coin audit um that shows them how long the match took, what the score was, what the difficulty the AI was, so they can tweak that. Um you also want the the biggest gameplay problem in arcade is onboarding. So you have to teach this user player uh how to play at least not everything in your game. You can leave some stuff that's still hidden like we do in our game, but they have to know the basic controls and the basic goals of the game in like 10 seconds. And good luck using words because nowadays people do not read. Um, and it's it's it's sad. It's just a weird like trend of like social media or whatever, but people see words on the screen, they go, "That's boring. That's homework." They block it out and they're like, "I'm just looking at the pictures." Um, so you have to find ways to to teach them in other ways. And it's it's it's weird because you can't study the old games of the past. Like I tried looking at uh NBA Jam for inspiration on how to onboard people and NBA Jam as soon as it does the tip off the game freezes and there's eight pages of text you have to go through before the game resumes. And I'm thinking like if I ever did that in our game people would just walk away after like the second page of text. So we keep reiterating upon our tutorial um doing making more PFI it's called player uh playerf facing information. How do we make it so it's airtight and anybody even if they've they're good at video games, they've never played a video game before, they can still just have fun and kind of understand what to do by just slamming on buttons. But then we still want to make it rewarding enough that someone who wants to keep coming back to the machine. uh we want to give them some some depth and make it uh worth it for them to come back which is different than some other arcades that uh arcade designs that I've uh I've talked to some people who work on other machines or not even worked on other machines but they they own arcades and stuff like that and they were saying how they don't even care if people replay the game because the the location they're in has such high foot traffic all they want is someone to have a really good experience once and for me like I can't really do that as a designer because I feel like I'm just making a carnival ride, right? Or like a a museum curation thing. I want it to have more depth than just the the first time through. And so, you know, you want to come back, you want to bring your friends, you want to get them involved, you want to learn more and talk strategy with your friends. Um, that's what kind of makes the arcade rewarding. Um, if you because you want to do something that you can't do at home, right? So, I'm trying to make like a social experience and by playing next to someone that you don't know, uh, that that makes it more rewarding. I I may have mentioned this before on a previous show, but like I'm a kid of the 90s arcades. Really big into fighting games back in the day. You know, all the kids, the newest game was dropped in the arcade and everyone's crowding around it and you got to wait your turn to even see what's going on on the screen. I really like that that energy and I'm trying to to recreate that. But we kind of put ourselves in a into a corner by make by choosing the game of highlight. While it is unique, it's a game that no one knows, no one can spell, no one can pronounce it, right? So, how do we onboard people to a sport they've never heard of, but at the same time make them have fun the very first time? And um that's really what we're we're pushing right now. And Caris and I are doing like a deep dive into like every little nuance of the menu select and the rules and the serve and things like that.
Yeah. All those things and more. Um, and more specifically, if you're trying to get your arcade game in an arcade, um, I would recommend, um, having a conversation with your favorite local hangout, um, wherever you are in the world, uh, you know, have that conversation with the person who owns it and maybe you can do some location testing there of your machine, um, without having to go through the whole process of selling it to them. And you know, maybe you can get some uh very good information just watching it happen. Uh observing how people interact with your machine and then maybe it's not there permanently. You take it home, you keep working, you bring it back, maybe there's something that can be done there. I would highly recommend that relationship um first as a first step. Um we've met a lot of arcade indie arcade hopefuls over the last couple years and I would encourage them to do the same. I believe in the indie ar believe in the indie arcade wave and the indie arcade renaissance. Um, so I think that everyone should make something for the arcade. It is something that is unique. It's interesting. There's a a huge market for it. There's over 6,000 arcades in the United States right now. Um, and I think it's just another great way to get your product, your content out in front of your intended audience. Um, and overall I think that we should be developing for the arcade because we need more good games in the arcade. Um, we love our classic favorites. But ultimately, are you going to play the same 30 video games you've been playing for the last 30 years every time you go to an arcade? I don't know. Um, we need to, you know, provide valuable experiences with depth and challenge and competition to these spaces because they're not going anywhere. They're they've got to evolve with us. So,
I think we also we made the decision to go arcade exclusive, too, to even make it more of a premium experience, right? And we get kids all the time like, "You need to put this on Steam. I'll buy it instantly." But it's like, but then that's that that whole magic is you got to go there. you can only experience it there because if you got a home version too, the operator also goes, "Well, why would I buy your cabinet when I can just get a TV and spend 15 bucks, right?"
So, we're trying to respect the operator's uh money or his setup, you know, and like have something that he can brag and say, "I'm the only person in a 50 mile radius that has this machine, so you want to experience it, come on down."
Yeah, I think the arcade exclusive side of it is is really important and it it being it becoming like a destination thing, right? Like you can play virtual pinball. You can play games on Steam that that have this indie vibe, but there's nothing like being at a physical cabinet and and hitting the buttons and talking trash to your friend who's standing right next to you or like meeting someone random in the arcade that you never would have met otherwise unless you were playing this game and and building that community of somewhere to to hang out in the physical as opposed to everything being online. And I think I just I want to shout out one group down in Argentina, the the Video Gamo crew and NAV, who's been around, they're at like 12 or 13 years since they made their game. There's one in the world. Like you have to go to Buenos Cyrus to play this game and they have national tournaments every year and they people show up in the hundreds to play this game. I just I love that that dedicated hardcore like arcade vibe that like you can't play this at home. I I think that's that's such a good avenue to take to make it arcade exclusive. And I know I mean we've been we've been talking about it for eight years. I know Tony at Death Ball gets it all the time like put it on Steam, put it on something else. And everybody's like I built it for the arcade. I want it to stay in the arcade. Like this is where it's meant to be played. This is how it's meant to be played. And you guys brought up a lot of good points there like the the arcade avenue that you were talking Caris like become friends with that local guy. Like and and even like if you want to take it to a trade show, like a lot of these smaller trade shows, like I know MGC and Southern Pride Gaming and Free Play Florida, like if you have a show that's local to you, just send them an email. Just be like, "Hey, I have a game. Can I bring it?" They usually are just like, "Yeah, just bring it. It's free. We just want you here. We want something cool, something local. We want to support local." Like, it's not that hard to get into a lot of these trade shows. Some of the farther ones, like farther away ones, they might make you pay a little bit for a booth, but at the same time, it's like it's never, it never hurts to ask. Sometimes you can get a free booth and then all you got to do is cover your hotel and your travel and and you get to go to a really cool show. Sometimes they even give you free passes. I mean, you never know. Like just to be something cool and unique at their show is is what they want. Um,
I'm not going to uh I'm not going to directly call anybody out, but it seems like the more we pay for booths, the less it actually the less it provides us. Like I've had the most expensive one I paid for. It did nothing for us and no one had a good time. I like going to the free ones because it's just a better vibe overall. Right.
We've been going to Free Play Florida for the last nine years and they've been incredibly good to us every single year. So, um, mega shout out to Free Play Florida. Big big fan of those guys.
Yeah, I've gone the last two years. It's been a lot of fun. Um, but yeah, I mean I think it's like, you know, John Youssi it the the ones that that let you come for free. They always seem to be the player base, right? It's it's not like a B2B situation where it's like everybody's talking business all the time. It's just people that love games, that just want to play games. So, you get to see the authentic people that would be in an arcade playing your game in the first place. Um, that's pretty much all I had for you guys. So, uh, go ahead, shout out social medias, shout out to anybody that you want to just, you know, thank on the journey and and tell us a little bit about, you know, how everything's going for you.
Sure. Um, I think we can shout out to all the people who have supported us, anyone who tells their friends, anyone who comes out to our tournaments and plays it and tells their friends, um, all of our operators who have purchased one and are enjoying it. And, you know, they're on our in our Discord. we have a special channel for them where they kind of tell us um what they want to see like features, things that they're having, you know, pain points with and we try and fix that stuff immediately for them. Um, one cool thing, uh, we didn't mention, um, we're actually the focus or the small focus of a documentary about HighI now because we've been going to these conventions. These guys found out about us and they decided to bring a camera crew and kind of their whole documentary is about um, where Hilaii is now because the director, his father used to be the guy who actually stitched up the balls by hand and those guys have been great to us and they gave us a lot of cool opportunities. We actually got to go to Dana Highline, which is now the casino at Dana Beach in South Florida, and we got to bring the mini into the locker room and we got proi players to play our game. It's like, how awesome is that? You know, that's like exactly what we wanted. So, anybody who's helping us get to where we want to be because um I think I can speak for Caris and say that we want to stay in this space, but we'd love to just dedicate all of our time and our energy to making fun, creative arcade games. and everyone who's helping to push us that that's someone who's helping us to live that dream, right? And so you can follow us on Astrocrows on most of social media. Um just if you astroc.com, you can get more info about the game itself. And we've got uh merchandise and everything like we we made all that ourselves. Like everything is just Caris and I and we kind of just dictate who's doing what. Caris right now has the uh privilege or or misfortune, whatever you want to say, of doing this full-time. So, she's doing everything during the day while I'm kind of, you know, hobbling over at my my day jobs. And then at night, I jump in. I'm like, "All right, what are we doing?"
So, Carish, go ahead. Anything else I'm missing?
You mentioned the website. Um, definitely take a look at astroc.com/throwback. There you'll find everything you need to know about our arcade machine. Uh as well as a really cool Google map that'll show you the current locations of all our publicly playable games. So we are national now, which is insane. Um so you can play it all over the United States. And uh maybe there's one near you. If there's not, feel free to join the Discord server and we'll keep you up to date as soon as there's someone that has uh added one to their collection near you. um our uh Instagram at Astrocroame. And of course, you can always email Brian or I uh cariscro and brianastro.com.
Thank you for having us, Joe.
Thanks again.
Yeah, of course. Yeah, thanks for coming on, guys. I'm I'm always happy to talk and I'm excited to see what happens. I'm I'm glad to be down here in Orlando with you guys so I can kind of like see how everything moves forward and I'm sure we're going to be running into each other at more conventions. I have a bunch on my schedule coming up here, but we'll see where they overcross. Hopefully, Magfest is is an option. We'll see if that happens.
Or we can go to Arcade Monsters, right? Because we didn't mention that we have our machines over at the iDrive location. So,
yep. We've already been over there twice since you guys got it. Two or three times now, something like that.
Um, it's been a bunch of times now. But yeah, I mean, I just want to say again, thanks guys for coming on. I appreciate your time. For anyone that's still watching, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. It helps us a ton the way we'll continue to grow and we can all ride it together. If you're looking to add a new game to your collection, it could be a Highlight Heroes, could be a throwback, could be a pinball, could be a whole bunch of different things. Um, those are all available on the Indie Arcade Wave website if you want to check there. As well as if you're looking to add a new stern to your collection or your arcade, your home basement, any of the above. I partnered up with Compulsive Pinball and those are for sale. The next game that's coming out, you're not going to want to miss it. This is going to be a crazy one. And until next time, peace.