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We Are Pinball #12 "Hangin' with Cale!"

We Are Pinball (WAP)·podcast_episode·1h 24m·analyzed·Sep 28, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Kale Hernandez shares operator insights on machine economics, manufacturer strategy, and gameplay philosophy across Stern vs JJP.

Summary

Kale Hernandez from Electric Bat Arcade discusses operating two successful pinball locations in Arizona (Tempe with ~62 machines, Flagstaff with ~12) alongside his wife Rachel. The conversation covers operator economics, comparing Pro/Premium/LE pricing across manufacturers, Jersey Jack Pinball's market positioning, and playability differences between Stern and JJP games. Key themes include why JJP doesn't make operator-friendly standard editions, earnings per tier, rule complexity issues affecting casual players, and the distinct gameplay feel between manufacturers.

Key Claims

  • Pro, Premium, and LE versions of the same game earn essentially identical revenue on location

    high confidence · Kale stated 'you do not you don't you don't make any more money whether it's a pro a premium or an le' based on testing both versions simultaneously at Electric Bat locations

  • Jersey Jack only sold 140-150 Standard Edition Guns N' Roses machines, which doesn't move the needle for their business

    high confidence · Kale cited direct conversation with Jersey Jack: 'they brought up that standard edition Guns N' Roses and said they only sold around 140 or 150 of them'

  • Stern sells approximately 30% of inventory to operators vs JJP at roughly 5%

    medium confidence · Kale's estimation: 'if Stern sells, what, like 30% of their inventory to operators, Jersey Jack probably only sells like 5%'

  • Jersey Jack contacted Electric Bat about increasing their street presence and considered a 'Stern Army' equivalent strategy

    high confidence · Kale stated: 'Jersey contacted us and asked, what can we do for you to put more of our games out on your locations... almost they wanted to do something like the Stern Army thing' approximately 1.5 years prior to the episode

  • Electric Bat can pay off a Pro machine in 3 months, Premium in 5-7 months, but has not paid off any Jersey Jack machines

    high confidence · Kale stated earning timelines: 'we can pay off a pro in three months we can pay off a premium in like 5 to 7 months we still haven't paid off a Jersey Jack machine just the initial investment is too high'

  • Avatar's code has excessive light indication making it confusing for casual players - all lights lit before ball launch

    high confidence · Jengiz described streaming observations: '30 of the lit up lights are blinking and the remaining 17 of the blinking lights are blinking in different colors they haven't launched the ball yet'

  • Stern has superior flipper feel compared to all other manufacturers due to lower latency

    high confidence · Kale stated: 'no company has the flipper feel that Stern has. Nobody's even close... It's the latency. It's the lag... Your brain, even though it's like milliseconds, your brain can tell'

Notable Quotes

  • “you do not you don't you don't make any more money whether it's a pro a premium or an le”

    Kale Hernandez @ ~12:00 — Directly contradicts premium tier pricing logic for operators; fundamental challenge to three-tier manufacturing model profitability

  • “they only sold around 140 or 150 of them, which I don't think moves the needle for them”

    Kale Hernandez @ ~18:30 — Explains Jersey Jack's business model focus on high-margin home sales over operator market penetration

  • “This is going to be a bit harsh, but I'm going to say it anyway... the guy or the team that codes these games, they need a new team. I mean, they destroy everything by this.”

    Jengiz (Don) @ ~42:00 — Harsh criticism of Avatar's code/UI design despite acknowledging mechanical beauty; signals community concern about JJP's design philosophy

  • “When people place them on location, we have our numbers... when they hear the price, $15,000 for Elton John's CEO, people are like, are you kidding?”

    Danish operator (Jengiz's colleague) @ ~25:00 — International pricing perspective showing operator resistance to JJP price points even in different markets

  • “if a Jersey Jack is in your house and you have time and it's on free play, you can learn these games. But... you should be able to walk up to a game, hit start, and just get it”

    Kale Hernandez @ ~30:00 — Core design philosophy criticism: JJP games require spreadsheet/flowchart to understand, contradicting casual accessibility principle

  • “What really sells these things is people getting their hands on them.”

    Kale Hernandez @ ~35:00 — Operator perspective on street presence importance vs marketing; implicit argument for operator-friendly pricing

  • “I think this is the best machine Jersey Jack has ever made... I think this thing is going to make more money than any other Jersey Jack”

    Kale Hernandez @ ~50:00 — Qualified praise for Avatar aesthetics and earning potential despite rule complexity concerns

Entities

Kale HernandezpersonRachel BesspersonElectric Bat ArcadeorganizationJersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyGame Room Goodiescompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Standard Edition historical failure (140-150 units sold) cited as rationale for abandoning operator-friendly pricing; business model dependency on high-margin home sales limits operator-friendly product strategy viability

    high · Kale: 'they brought up that standard edition Guns N' Roses and said they only sold around 140 or 150 of them, which I don't think moves the needle for them... doesn't make sense for their business model'

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball contacted operators (Electric Bat ~1.5 years prior) to discuss increased street presence and considered 'Stern Army'-style operator engagement program, but has not implemented changes, signaling operator market remains non-strategic

    high · Kale: 'Jersey contacted us and asked, what can we do for you to put more of our games out on your locations? So they are interested... And they haven't done anything about it. And that's why I think that that's not really their business model'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Qualified approval of Avatar as 'best machine Jersey Jack has ever made' aesthetically with earning potential, but tempered by serious accessibility and code complexity criticism affecting practical operator deployment

    medium · Kale: 'this may be the most beautiful pinball machine I've ever seen... I think this thing is going to make more money than any other Jersey Jack' but simultaneously expressing rule complexity concerns

  • ?

    community_signal: Electric Bat Arcade positioned as successful operator model with strong visibility in pinball community through Pin Pals podcast discussing earnings, locations, and operator best practices

    high · We Are Pinball hosts credit Kale/Rachel's podcast as influential for operator insights: 'every time I listen to these guys' show... I have so many questions'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.253

0:00
Oh, we can see that Tupac is in the house, as well as Jengiz and Don, and a very special guest on this forthcoming episode of We Are Pinball. Wop! We're ready to go. So Jengiz is in the studio. I'm here ready. Tupac is watching down among us. And who else do we have but Mr. Señor.
0:24
Kale Hernandez. Kale, how you doing? Hey, what's up? Good to see you guys. Direct from the Electric Bat Arcade at the Yucca Taproom. Currently in two locations in Arizona. A beloved haven of pinball mavens, I guess.
0:40
What's going on? Oh, yeah. I mean, that name, that name, Cale Hernandez, it sounds like a name from Street Fighter II games. Cale Hernandez wins. Sonic Boom. Cale, is it a made-up name or is it your real name? I love this name, Cale Hernandez. No, it's totally real. I have the documents to prove it.
1:04
I believe you, man. I believe you. It's so cool. So, first of all, thank you for joining. We are Pinball Episode 12. It's so cool. So, our listeners, the way I found out about this cool guy called Kale, so I made a show with Jason from Pinball Party. Yay! Jason, such a nice guy. And I subscribe to his shows. And his next show was with Cale Hernandez. And I listened to Cale and I was like, this dude, he has got everything together in his head. He's such a cool guy. He's such a sweetheart. And this guy runs one of the biggest, most successful pinball arcades with his, is it your wife, your partner in crime, your wife? Okay. Both. Partner in crime and wife, it's Rachel Bess. Yeah, man. Whoa, it's so good. So you have two arcades now, right? Yeah, two arcades, one in Flagstaff, Arizona, and then one in the valley in Tempe, Arizona. Okay. So in total, how many pinball machines do you have, both places, in total? So there's about 62 in Tempe, I think 12 in Flagstaff, And then we have three other ones at another bar that's across the street from the electric bat. Wow. So how is it with maintenance?

  • Avatar has fewer multiball sequences than previous Jersey Jack games

    medium confidence · Kale confirmed: 'Absolutely. Yeah.' when asked if Avatar has reduced multiball levels, noting he only experienced extreme multiball once around 3.7 billion points

  • “It's like an action movie that's just all action all the time, and it doesn't give you a break... that creates fatigue.”

    Kale Hernandez @ ~65:00 — Key design philosophy distinction: JJP constant intensity vs Stern pacing strategy in game design

  • “I could sit there on Iron Maiden and... play five games in a row, rapid fire... Whereas with Avatar, it's like, let's settle in. Let's start making these shots.”

    Kale Hernandez @ ~70:00 — Direct gameplay experience comparison illuminating Stern vs JJP design intent and operator value perception

    • Avatar
    game
    X-Mengame
    Iron Maidengame
    Godzillagame
    Guns N' Roses Standard Editiongame
    Donperson
    Jengizperson
    Marco Specialtiescompany
    Yucca Taproomorganization
    Willy Wonkagame
    Pirates of the Caribbeangame
    ZapConevent
    John Schappelperson
    Markperson
  • ?

    competitive_signal: Flipper latency/responsiveness identified as primary mechanical differentiator between manufacturers; Stern consistently rated superior across all competitors; affects tournament and casual player preference

    high · Kale: 'no company has the flipper feel that Stern has. Nobody's even close... It's the latency. It's the lag... Your brain, even though it's like milliseconds, your brain can tell'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Avatar code/UI criticized as overly complex with excessive light indication (all lights lit before ball launch) causing confusion for casual players, despite praised physical aesthetics

    high · Jengiz: '30 of the lit up lights are blinking and the remaining 17 of the blinking lights are blinking in different colors they haven't launched the ball yet... what do you shoot for i don't know what's going on'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jersey Jack game design strategy contrasted as 'all action all the time' causing gameplay fatigue vs Stern's paced, accessible gaming theory approach; JJP optimized for home experience, Stern for repeated casual play

    high · Kale: 'It's like an action movie that's just all action all the time... versus Iron Maiden... play five games in a row, rapid fire... Whereas with Avatar, it's like, let's settle in'

  • $

    market_signal: International operator perspective (Denmark) shows same Pro vs Premium/LE pricing resistance as US operators; Jersey Jack machines take 3+ years to earn out vs Stern 3-7 months; JJP expansion abroad appears constrained

    medium · Danish operator: 'if you buy a brand new... Stern Pro, it has to earn itself the first year... If you have a game that earns itself in three years, that's a bad investment' vs Electric Bat's actual payoff rates

  • $

    market_signal: Operator data demonstrates Pro/Premium/LE pricing tiers produce identical location earnings, challenging three-tier economic model sustainability across industry

    high · Kale: 'we do not you don't make any more money whether it's a pro a premium or an le so... just get the pro' based on simultaneous floor testing

  • ?

    product_concern: Avatar confirmed to have reduced multiball sequences compared to earlier JJP titles (Pirates, Wonka), representing potential gameplay simplification or design direction shift

    medium · Kale confirmed multiball reduction when asked, noting only extreme instance at 3.7B points scored; acknowledges fewer sequences than previous JJP pattern

    • 2:37
    How much time do you use every week? Oh, many hours. So me and Rachel are taking care of the games. Plus we have John Schappel, who comes in on Wednesdays and takes care of games. And then we have our friend Mark who helps out with his games that are in – he operates a few games in the electric back. And he also helps us out with our other machines. Yeah, so it's a full-time job, but we love it. So it's almost like not even working. We just really enjoy – I mean, who doesn't want to hang out in an arcade and play with pinball machines all day? Yeah, we're talking about – Don has been in Vegas. I've been to both locations. I didn't know you were operating games across the street from the other location. Is that the one at the Yuggatap Room North in Flagstaff?
    3:25
    No, this is in Tempe. So across the parking lot, our business partners purchased a bar that is just, I mean, we could throw a rock and hit it. And so it's perfect. So it kind of works out of storage for us because we're running out of room. We have so many machines. And so we threw three machines over there. Okay, perfect, yeah. So I made the pilgrimage out there, right? and I'm following the GPS. I don't know if there's a front entrance at all, but I came in behind, and I was like, oh, man, am I in the right place? Did Google Maps take me to some sketchy parking lot? And then I walk into this nondescript door, and I didn't realize at the time that it was in the Yucca Tap Room. So I'm like, well, let me try this place. And I walk in, and it's like instantly I'm transported through the portal into a wonderland of the best dingy kind of punk hangout place I could imagine. And then it just kept getting better from there as you wander from one room to the next and then to the next, and they keep getting bigger. My God, it's like through the looking glass there.
    4:22
    Yeah, yeah, and we love that because, you know, when you – it's a rough place, man. It's a – Yucca Taproom is a dive bar that's been around for over 50 years. And, yeah, it's old school Arizona cowboy slash biker bar. And, yeah, so many people say that, and we kind of like that. You know, you don't – there's no sign that says Electric Bat Arcade. You know, you just come into the Yucca Tap Room, and you cut around, and you pass all the regulars that are sitting there drinking. They've been there all since 6 a.m. And, yeah, then you cut the corner, and it's just like pinball machines as far as you can see. It's authentic. I mean, yeah, just the place, the smell, the vibe that's in there, you can tell it's real. Like this isn't something you can manufacture, you know. and I think a lot of normies might even be turned off a little bit at the door you know but I I pressed on through that and I'm like let me just wander and pretend I know what I'm doing and then boom was I not rewarded coming around the corner it's like here's a bunch of Japanese rhythm games here's the tales from the crypt uh one of the finest whirlwinds I've ever played oh look a bond 60th all right let's do this let's do this yeah so cool so when did you start this How did you get the idea? How long have you been running this? So Rachel actually started it before we were married, about a few months before we were married.
    5:49
    The guys from – so this was six years ago. We just had our six-year anniversary last week. Congrats. Thank you.
    5:59
    The guys that own Yucca Taproom, they could – they saw the writing on the wall. They were like, arcades are going to be big again. It would be a great way to attract people.
    6:13
    And so they reached out to Rachel. In this area in Arizona, Rachel's been well-known for a while in the arcade industry because she was one of the founders of ZapCon, which is Arizona's biggest arcade and pinball convention. and so they went out there to meet her told her uh told her their idea they wanted to create an arcade next to yucca tap room or as part of yucca tap room and she was like you know what i don't know if i have enough time to do this you know at the time she was a full-time oil painter and uh and if you want to check out her work check out rachelbess.com rachel b-e-s-s.com anyhow she was like but i will consult you guys so she she showed up at yucca tap room in the office to have a meeting with them and she is hyper organized she was ready to go she had all the data and she was like this is what you need to do then all the bullet points what you need to do to run a successful arcade and she went over with them and they were like yeah that's a little more than we thought what can we do to get you to do it and so yeah so she like thought about it for a little bit and she was like okay if you want me to do this you know this is what i need and they gave her everything she needed they they gave her the space the power everything they she needed to create the the first electric bat which was just a little tiny hallway where the the office to yucca tap room was so she started having tournaments there she outgrew that so she had to bust down a wall and go into the next unit so they can have a little so we had and by this time i was there also living in arizona um you know helping her and and doing this we we got married and all that good stuff but kale two seconds were you into pinball before that or was it because of Rachel and her or Kate that you jumped into this hobby? Well, I was into pinball because I was working at Marco's Specialties. Oh. Yeah, I was living in South Carolina. Yeah, so, yeah, I was already into pinball and more like selling parts and helping people fix their machines and what have you. I wasn't as much of a tournament player as I am now.
    8:46
    But, yeah, so, and that's how Rachel and I met. We both worked for Marco. She worked remotely from Arizona, and I was in the office in South Carolina.
    8:56
    And, yeah, so we met on the road, like promoting Stern machines and, you know, going around and showing off the Stern machines at conventions and selling parts and accessories with Marco. Wow. What a nice story, man. Meeting your wife through pinball, that's so cool. Yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah. Guys, you need to listen to Kale and Rachel's Electric Podcast show because in there, they are talking about their locations, their earnings. Each show, they're talking about their earnings, top five, top ten earners. and here in Denmark, my brother and I, we run seven locations. So every time I listen to these guys' show, I'm like, this is so cool. I have so many questions. My brother, I think his favorite podcast is Kayla and Rachel's podcast also, talking about earnings. So we have some questions. I want to see do we have some similarities here in Europe versus in U.S. One of them is we just got a new game. X-Men, so cool, from Jack Danger. So, I want to ask, if you buy the pro version for just under $7,000, or the premium version just under $10,000, and put it at the same place, three months from now, will it be worth to pay $3,000 more? Will the premium or even the limited edition for $13,000, will it give you the double amount of the pro earnings in the U.S.?
    10:44
    No. And we've had pros and premiums on the floor at the same time. We did that with, you know, so we've done the tests. you you you do not you don't you don't make any more money whether it's a pro a premium or an le so i'm not saying so just get the pro because we we operate premiums also and the premiums have some cool features uh you know just it depends on the game you know for example with godzilla we wanted the premium because we want people to experience that building falling and uh you know the mecha the Godzilla, that little turntable turning and all that stuff. But, I mean, we ended up with both of them. We still have a pro. We operate a pro in Flagstaff, and we operate a premium in Tempe. Okay, okay. I can say here in Europe, it makes no sense. I mean, pro is the way to go. For sure. Yeah. On top of that, years back, we actually ordered Jersey Jacks Guns N' Roses Standard Edition. I don't even remember what they cost back then. I can't recall. $6,000 or $7,000 or something like that, the standard version. It's actually a good game. It doesn't have the upper play field, but if you have played the standard version, the only thing I'm missing on that game is the rail light on the sides. They're just white instead of RGB. Yeah. And that's about it. And it's half the price. And when I see that game, I always think about Jersey Jack. They make so beautiful games. I mean, but they cost $12,000 to $15,000. We are also distros here in Denmark. These games are so expensive, you know. And when people place them on location, we have our numbers. You can always call us up and, you know, we can sell you a game. And when they hear the price, $15,000 for Elton John's CEO, people are like, are you kidding? And we can buy a car for that money. Also, people that bought, you know, they bought, we have some collectors that bought, you know,
    12:58
    what was that, Black Arrow Edition? Hobbit? Yeah, yeah, Black Arrow. Yeah, yeah. Bought those games, you know, and they come back now. They want to buy an avatar and hit us up and, I want to buy this one. And it's like the price has doubled up since then. And they're like, what? Why? What's in these games? So my question goes to you and Rachel also. It could be cool if she was here also. But don't you think that Jersey Jacks – I know what Donnie thinks, but don't you think Jersey Jacks should make a standard version of their games for us location owners? What do you think about that?
    13:40
    From actually talking to them, I don't think it makes sense for their business model. You know, I think they are concentrating on the home sales. You know, when we had a discussion about operators and if they're thinking about the operators,
    14:00
    they brought up that standard edition Guns N' Roses and said they only sold around 140 or 150 of them, which I don't think moves the needle for them. So if it doesn't fit into their game plan, I mean, it just doesn't. I mean, you have to think, if Stern sells, what, like 30% of their inventory to operators, Jersey Jack probably only sells like 5%. I mean, yeah, so, I mean, you can check out pinball maps. I mean, the Jersey Jack machines are hard to find, at least in the States, they're hard to find on the streets. You know, I just, you know, it doesn't make sense for that. You know, we don't have access to their books, but they do. And if it made sense for them, they would release a cheaper model. But, you know, it's not going to keep their lights on. I was thinking of this after the Avatar launch. Like, what would a standard edition version of Avatar look like? I mean, it would have to remove the lower play fields, have, you know, just decals on the side. But how much really could you carve off but still keep the concept of that machine and the cost of the license? It's almost as if if they wanted to get into that market more, they'd have to just start from the ground up with a machine that's built with that end goal budget target in mind. I don't know how you would strip down Avatar and still have a lot of the concepts that are still in there and still run that license but have a $6,000 version. Right. And the most important thing they would need to do, which I don't think they would do, they need a game with simpler rules. You know, I see it because, you know, if a Jersey Jack is in your house and you have time and it's on free play, you can learn these games. I mean, you know, here's a company that has to give you a spreadsheet to even figure out or a flow chart to even figure out how to play this game. That's a marketing disaster. You should be able to walk up to a game, hit start, and just get it and figure it out. You know, with a Jersey Jack, everything is lit up. Everything is in your face. These are beautiful games, but, man, they're hard to learn on your own. And, you know, we see it on the street. A Jersey Jack will earn some good money for two to three months and just do a nosedive. Once people are like, man, I can't figure this out. I don't know what's going on. I'm going to go play a Stern, you know, because the guys at Stern know game theory. They know how to develop a game that anybody can enjoy. And so, you know, it's more than just the price with Jersey Jack. If they want to hit the streets and get people just like normal people that want to put money into, put quarters into a machine, they have to go back from the ground up and think about just the game theory and how to get people to enjoy their game and to keep playing it and keep wanting to play it. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't know if George Jack will be angry, but I understand what you're saying. but Jersey contacted us and asked, what can we do for you to put more of our games out on your locations? So they are interested in having their games out there. They do ask. I mean, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this. I hope it's okay. I mean, I'm not under an NDA. They asked us too. Yeah.
    17:36
    Probably like a year. So it's probably like a year and a half ago. They got in touch with us and wanted to know how to have more of a presence on the street. And almost they wanted to do something like the Stern Army thing. Like, what can we do to have more of a presence on the street to get people excited?
    18:01
    And they haven't done anything about it. And that's why I think that that's not really their business model. That's not what they're concerned about. They have a Rolodex of people that they know are going to pay top dollar to put these machines in their home arcades, and that's what they're living off of.
    18:22
    I mean, I still think they should have a cheaper model because the thing now, Gary Stern, And he said that 70% of the sales went to private owners. Look at the background at Donnie's Place over there, you know, 18 stirring games. Yeah. But 30% out on locations. The thing is, when these beautiful games go to collectors' homes in their collection, we don't spread the pinball love out to the mainstream. The only way we can expand everything, have more pinball machines, more companies, more people love is by having more games out at Bad Arcade and, you know, all the different locations. If Stern or JJP is listening, why isn't there an operator-friendly program where we can buy Stern Pros for $4,500?
    19:23
    You know, for operators only. Well, yeah, and I think that's up to, you know, it comes from the top down and it would be a great message to come from Stern. But I think at this point it comes from the distributor where they can, I mean, our distributor, you know, when we first started, they gave us, you know, a great deal. Like, you know, we wouldn't have to pay for the machine for like three months so we could earn some money to actually like hook them up, you know, and, and now years later, we've gotten to the point where we just, you know, we have the cash to pay for it just right off the rip. Shout out. Who is your distro? Game Room Goodies. GameRoomGoodies.com in Arizona. Great team. It's like three generations of operators are running that thing, and this is their life. They love it. I mean, if there was something like that, so we could have more locations, because one of our games, Jurassic games, is Toy Story. Toy Story is a great earner. People don't care it's number four. People don't know. You're on Main Street, they just walk by. And our location is actually at big malls where women want to shop clothes and men are bored. They go into these old arcades and they want to relive the 80s, 90s, whatever. So games like that, popular. And in these malls we get invited because they want to entertain kids and men because women are shopping out there So it a great way to do this but games are just so expensive I don know how long time it takes for you to you know earn a game but when I talked to my brother, he says, if you buy a brand new, whatever, Stern Pro, it has to earn itself the first year. and then sell it beginning of the second year and sell it for 30% under what we paid and get the next game. That's how it should be. So if you have a game that earns itself in three years, that's a bad, bad investment. I don't know how it is in the U.S. We can pay off a pro in three months. we can pay off a premium in like 5 to 7 months we still haven't paid off a Jersey Jack machine just the initial investment is too high and there's just not the same kind of replay that you get on a Stern you're 100% right I remember when we bought Godfather I thought it was such a cool game And we threw it in the lineup. Man, we sold at least three machines in the area that we know of just from people coming and playing them. But, you know, the optics are a little weird, you know, because, like, people look around and, like, why do you have all these Stearns and not many Jersey Jacks, you know? It just gives people the idea, like, Stearns obviously better, right? Which is not necessarily the case. It depends what flavor you like. But, yeah, I just – I mean, you're 100% right. They should do more to help out the operators and get their games on the streets. You know, this is – you know, forget about social media or print marketing or what have you. What really sells these things is people getting their hands on them. Yeah. So I think that there could be some room for, like, a $6,000 game that, you know, if most people only – most casual players are only going to get to about the first 10% of code, probably on any game they play. So why not make that? Instead of the convoluted, very diverse world of the Avatar rule set, maybe just take the best fast 10% of that, put it in a game without the lower play fields, maybe keep the locking subway or something, and just put that out so people can just walk up and casually play the Avatar game. And then if they are interested, that's when they can dive a little deeper and say, well, there's this even better version if you really want it for your house. And I think that would help even just from a marketing aspect because I think operators could afford to put that out for four to six months at least. Sure. You're talking about the deep code. Kale, you're talking about the code of the J.J.P. You're talking about the light show. Let me tell you what's going on right now. This is going to be a bit harsh, but I'm going to say it anyway because I'm called J.J.P. Shield because we sell these games. But let me tell you what people are seeing, feeling with this new Avatar release. Okay, so my dear friend Joel Ingerberth, he streams this game and nothing. Joel is so good at that. Okay, perfect audio, perfect levels, everything. He plays well. Everything is good. Thank you, Joel. A couple of days later, Tom Graff streams Avatar also. Everything is set up perfect. Everything is so cool. You can see Tom and his friends, they're like, what am I doing? what do I shoot for, I don't know what's going on, they say this on the video, Joel and his brother, they play, I can see his brother, his name is Jared, Jared is like, yeah, I'm getting there, I'm learning, the thing is, they start this game, I mean, I'm not over, just watch the video, they start this game, okay, they didn't launch the ball yet, every light is lit up, everything is lit up 30 of the lit up lights are blinking and the remaining 17 of the blinking lights are blinking in different colors they haven't launched the ball yet i'm like we're watching this and we're like what do you shoot for i mean you two you played the game yeah why i mean mark siden he makes a great layout i love jersey jack games look at that light effect look at everything The only issue is the guy or the team that codes these games, they need a new team. I mean, they destroy everything by this.
    25:51
    For us viewers, we get so confused. How was it when you guys played this game because you were invited to JJP?
    26:01
    You want to go, Don? Sure, yeah. So now for me, I usually don't know the rules of the game I'm playing anyway, unless I've had it for a real long time. So I'm just shooting things, trying to keep the ball alive.
    26:12
    So for me, once I started to play and I figured out, okay, I can skill shot here. That will give me a ball lock. I figured out where that lock system is there, how to get down to the crab and play down there. And then I kind of focused just on that. Now, I'm kind of, you know, my eyes are wide open as far as, like, what's in this game. I saw the underneath of the play field. I saw them being put together. I was walking through the whole factory. So, like, I get it. I talked to the people that designed it, so I get the scope of what they were going for. So I'm coming at it from that perspective now. So I can appreciate what the game has. But just, you know, casually on the street, you hear about this game, you see the price, you're not going to be able to make that connection because you weren't personally walking through the factory, you know. But as far as, you know, learning what to play for, I think that will come from more time that I have on it. But, yeah, from the outset, I still can't tell you, you know, I know I get an extra ball at the World Tree. I know I got some miuwa, but I still don't know what I'm doing with that.
    27:07
    Okay. How did you feel about it, Cale? Well, first of all, when I looked at it, I was like, this may be the most beautiful pinball machine I've ever seen in my life.
    27:18
    That's the thing. I was just like, dang, this is the art. And I think it was Rachel. It starts with an F. I can't remember. But anyway, she knocked it out of the park with the art. And I hope I got that right because there's also a Rachel who did like the mechanical engineering. But anyway, you guys can Google that later.
    27:38
    But anyway, so the artist just knocked it out of the park. And, of course, the Jersey Jack light show. It's like being at a carnival. It's like being at a fair. It's an experience. And, you know, when I first started, I'm like I'm just shooting shots. I'm not even shooting lit shots. I just want to see how shots feel. Trying to hit everything I can, trying to see how the scram works.
    28:04
    It has some tight shots. It has some nice open shots. So I wasn't paying attention to the rules or anything. I'm just hitting shots and wanting to feel how good these shots feel because that's what the person on the street, when they put a buck in this machine, that's what they're doing. You know, most of them, they don't know the rules. You know, the serious players are going to read some stuff and watch some streams. But most people walking into the arcade are just going to drop money in and just try to hit shots and try to keep their ball alive. And how those shots feel is what keeps people putting money in. It creates a connection to this thing. And I will say, you know, I think from me playing it and looking at this machine, I think this is the best machine Jersey Jack has ever made. I don't know about gameplay. I don't know about rule-wise. I don't know about shot-wise, but just the look and feel of it. When I say it's the best game they've made, I think this thing is going to make more money than any other Jersey Jack, and that's what I'm concerned about. Oh, that's nice to hear. But again, I am hearing people are so confused about the code and everything is lit. But it is a Jersey thing. We know it. How about the multiball levels? Are they reduced now? Could you feel lesser multiball in Avatar? Absolutely.
    29:30
    Okay. Yeah. You mean like under the playfield stuff? No, you know, they're all over the internet. Like the crazy multiballs. Yeah, the only time I got like absolutely insane amount of multiballs and sort of had that like godfather feel where like, oh, here comes another multiball and another one was when I scored that 3.7 billion. And Keith Johnson was even he was even like, how did you do that?
    30:02
    He thinks I may have found some kind of exploit on accident. But, yeah, because I hit one shot that was one billion points. And then, man, I was playing with I don't know how many balls I was playing with. It was absolutely insane. But I think it doesn't feel like there are as many multi-balls as like some of the other games. I know people complain about that. But also, I mean, we only played it for a few hours. Okay. So, this is a feeling question. My brother is a huge JJP fan. When we play competition, him and I, he's like, let's play Jersey Tech games. He wants to play Chocolate Factory. What's it called? Wonka. Willy Wonka. Yeah, he wants us to play Willy Wonka and, you know, those games. And, okay, we play two-player. But when it's my turn to choose, I go and turn on, you know, Iron Maiden. Yeah. As soon as I change from Pirates to Iron Maiden, I feel this uplifting, lighter gameplay effect. I don't know. I can't explain it because my English is really bad. But how do you guys feel when you jump from a Jersey to a Stern? Can you? If you played, you know, Avatar and visited Stern after and played X-Men, did you feel this lighter effect? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
    31:34
    Did you get that feeling? Yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing you feel, I mean, the only thing you interact with on a pinball machine is the flippers. Yeah. You know, and like, you know, I said it in our last podcast, no company has the flipper feel that Stern has. Nobody's even close, you know, and it's every other every other manufacturer has a slight lag in, you know, It's not the power of the flippers. You can make the shots just fine. You can make the ramps just fine. It's the latency. It's the lag. And you feel that. Your brain, even though it's like milliseconds, your brain can tell. You know, you can feel that. So that's the initial thing. You're feeling when you move to a stern machine. And secondly, it's just gaming. Like those guys know how to make a game. And I'm not talking about just a pinball machine. They understand gaming. They play board games with each other. They play video games. They understand gaming and how to make people feel good and excited. Where I think Jersey Jack is just like, let's throw the whole kitchen sink at everybody, and they try to get a feel like that. It's like an action movie that's just all action all the time, and it doesn't give you a break for an hour and a half, and that creates fatigue. Yeah, exactly. That's the word. When you start multi-ball in Pirates and while you're in multi-ball, you get the second, third, fourth multi-ball, and you just start double-flipping and everything is lit, fatigue, as you're saying. I think I could put that in terms of pizza, okay, if we're going like Stern versus JJP. So let's say you're at the boardwalk and you walk by a New York pizza slice place and you grab a slice, and it's amazing, it's familiar, you know what it is, you know how it works, you eat that, and then go on with your day. It was a great time. I can't wait. I'd probably stop by here every afternoon, right? Versus going out to a Chicago pizza place where it's like an event. We're going to sit down. This meal is going to be heavy, but it's going to be amazing. It's going to have everything that we want. I was just at Pequod's in Chicago, and it's like the cheese was caramelized. The crust was two inches thick. The toppings were where they needed to be. It was a great atmosphere. But I can't stop there after work every day. There's just no way I could do that over and over again. But the experience, if I was to weigh one versus the other, you know, there was a lot more packed into that experience I had in Chicago versus the boardwalk. But, like, the boardwalk is something I could do more often. I kind of see these Stern games as like that, you know. I could sit there on Iron Maiden and, you know, play five games in a row, rapid fire, like, let's go and try to get better each time. Whereas, like, you know, with Avatar, it's like, let's start. All right, let's settle in. Let's start making these shots. We'll build towards them jackpots. Here comes the eclipse. It's like this whole thing that's going on. It's like, you know, go into like your favorite, you know, kind of quicker service family restaurant versus I'm going to the Rainforest Cafe. It's going to cost more, but a thunderstorm is going to come every 20 minutes and there's an animatronic gorilla right next to me, you know.
    34:32
    Not saying that one is better necessarily than the other, although there is more experience packed into one versus another. But they both have their place, you know, and I'm glad they're both there. Yeah, well said. Yeah, absolutely. So we know that Donnie, he ordered the collector's edition. We are getting the collector's edition And I can't wait Unboxing that avatar collector's edition I Yeah I can feel it So how about you Cale Are you getting avatar Yes We are getting an LE but we're not Paying for it That's the best of both worlds What Our distributor game room goodies is going to operate it in the arcade. Okay. Yeah. Wow. So after I played it, you know, Rachel said, I'm not buying another Jersey Jack. All we do is lose money. And when I went back home, Rachel was not able to come on the trip. She was drawing. She was at a body farm in Texas drawing dead people. And so, yeah, that's another story. If you want to hear about that, check out the latest episode of the Electric Batcast. That's episode 20. But so, yeah, so I was like, Rachel, I think this machine will make some good money. But I don't, you know, but I'm not saying that we should, you know, buy it. And she talked to our distributor and they said, yeah, we'll operate it in your arcade. And this is great for them because this could increase sales. You know, they could have their little card in there. If you want to buy this machine, get in touch with Game Room Goodies. we're going to have a hell of a lot more traffic than they will in their showroom so it's a win-win for both of us. But I know you're getting some percentages right off of me. Oh yeah if you're operating the JJP in town I mean that's all the more reason for casuals to go frequent there especially in the first few months so it's going to drive foot traffic for you the operator is paying not consumer MSRP but lower and then if he can then pass that game off later and got some exposure in it as well. Like, that's a great angle, man.
    36:48
    Yeah. But the thing JJP is missing on location is that Insider Connected. What's your experience with it, Kale? Don't you have people that come to get those badges and, you know? Oh, Insider Connected is huge, huge for us. People love to see it. We have two monitors on the wall that have Insider Connected leaderboards, and people love seeing their names up there. People love collecting badges. When a new John Wick badge comes out, those limited ones, you can see people starting to pull into the parking lot. You know, we have a couple of players that are Uber drivers, and they'll take a break and pull up within minutes of getting that notification. They flood in. People are trying to collect. I mean, it's like Pokemon. They just want to collect all these badges, and they love pulling up the app and showing their long string of badges like there's some Girl Scouts with merit badges. It's great. It's so cool. Can you imagine if Stern, once you get these badges and achievements, they would send you a metal pin of that achievement, and then you could wear your vest with all of your merit badges on there like you're a little Girl Scout and walk into the arcade like, look at me, dude. I'm just fully dressed. This was limited to only 50 WIC contracts, and I went and I got it.
    38:12
    Guys, you guys, you visited JJP. Did you ask them, hey, what's your status on this insider connecting? Do we have something here in 2024? Did someone ask that?
    38:25
    Somebody did ask, but they were kind of vague about it. But, I mean, I know they are working on something. Okay. No, we don't have a timeline or anything like that. But I don't really think that's going to move the needle because there are not enough Jersey Jacks on the street for it to really make a difference. That's why they should take the price a bit down or make a standard version, one of those two, or make operator-friendly prices. We need something because I want J.J.P. to succeed. I want more companies, more competition, more games every year. but they're just too expensive. It is what it is. Just a side note, I'm totally in Data East mode. I just want to ask, do you have any Data East games in your location? The only one we have is Tales from the Crypt. Oh! And we love it. It's an awesome game. Does it hold up? Because my brother does not want to put old games on locations. Does the Data East hold up? Absolutely, yeah. But we have games older than that at the arcade. We have a wide variety of games. We have super old stuff from like right on the cusp of when, you know, they started making solid state games, getting away from EM. So we're very used to keeping all of these machines running no matter how old they are. Oh, great, man. I love those old classics also. Donnie doesn't. He doesn't want to talk about them. I just don't know how to fix those things. So, yeah, I do love them. Yeah, those things are easy.
    40:07
    I'm not talking about EMs, but I mean like classic Bally's, classic Gottliebs. Yeah. I'm learning. I've got a Gottlieb now. I've got to wipe out.
    40:16
    Oh, nice. I'm going to rebuild a pop bumper. So that was my first foray into there. It's just weird opening this cabinet. Like I'm used to the sterns, man. I'm not used to looking at these things. Yeah. But, man, yeah, there's a charm there. One little board there. That's it on stern right. I got the craziest question today. So we are all content creators, right? So I got this question a couple of hours ago. I didn't answer, but I wrote it down, and I want to ask you two, how would you want me to answer, okay? So I got this one. He writes on one of my videos on YouTube. So he writes, RetroDango, what makes you an expert? talking about pinball as you do do you have at least three to five pinball machines at home in your collection because if not you should shut the f up is the question do we think you should shut up because yeah so what guys what do you think because we have we have so many content creators, should a content creator have minimum three to five pinball machines in his or her home collection before talking about pinball?
    41:34
    Does that make you an expert? No, 100% no. And I wouldn't even worry about responding to a troll like that. You can have zero pinball machines and be an expert. You can just like going to arcades and playing machines and talk about your experience with that. You do not have to – this guy is just trying to be some kind of gatekeeper. You do not have to own pinball machines to talk about them. Yeah, I spent – I was about to write have you watched my videos I unbox everything We have hundreds and hundreds of pinball machines What are you doing But I mean this was nothing to do with if we have some guys in the community that doesn't have no pinball machines. But I was like, do you need to have five games or just shut the F up? I mean, it was just such a, yeah, what makes you an expert? I never said I was an expert. This is just my opinion. I mean, as Cale is saying, some people go. I mean, we have one guy, he comes and plays a lot, and we have asked him, do you want to buy a game? No. He says he's very unlucky. If he buys anything, it will break down. Sometimes, for a six-month period, he has rented some games, but after six months, he delivers them back. He doesn't want to own them, but he comes and plays all the time, you know? Some people are like that. as Donnie said I don't know how to repair these I don't know how to fix these we have a lot of help today online right but some people they just enjoy it at Kale's Arcade why not I spent most of my time in this hobby as a pinball non-owner you know and I was having a ton of fun I mean my home location was the Scandia Family Fun Center in Runner Park California you know and that's where I would go and they had those wall of bally machines and fishtails are right next to Adam's family, right next to Indiana Jones and Terminator, and it was like, let's go down the line. And that doesn't make, in my opinion, any less valid than anybody else's. Big content, you just need a microphone, which that's probably the lowest buried entry there is.
    43:47
    That's it. I mean, also, I used to have top 20 Bella Williams games and all the new games, but right now, I don't know what happened. I'm in Data East mode. It's just such a dumb thing because I've been in this for 20 years. Data East was like, nobody wants to buy them. Nobody wants to have them on location or have them in their home. So I never looked at those games. But now I'm just, these games are so awesome. I mean, John Bork designs, Lyman Sheet codes. It's craziness. When Don was at JJP, he contacted me and he's like, the backside of Avatar is like Tales from the Crypt filled with rams and shots. I was like, wow, man. So cool. So we're all different. Yeah. Like different games. Cale, what are your – do you have some era of – I mean something like System 11. Do you have some era or STEM Pro something? What do you prefer right now? What are you into right now?
    44:56
    Man, of course, just Stern Machines. Either that or I've been playing Joker poker a lot, old Gottlieb game. Yeah. Yeah, it's such a cool game with a really easy to understand rule set. You know, on your first ball, you knock down the 10, then you move to the jacks, and then to the queens, the kings, the aces. And it's just so much fun. People love pumping quarters into that. thing uh so you know i love that i love classic got leaves um so oh and classic bally's of course i have a nitro ground shaker that that was me and rachel's uh covid project you know we did a play field swap brand new back glass brand new plastics you know you really shopped it out and this thing is beautiful and um i just love this especially for tournament play those games are amazing yeah when i mean when my brother and i when we we unbox a new game what did we get what was the newest unbox that was looney tunes we played a bit of looney tunes and then after a couple of games we just jumped over to other games and we always end up at those belly games from 1980 to 1982 i mean they are so cool so much fun yeah so simple and so approachable yeah yeah and Fast ball times. So you don't sit there and wait, right? I mean, if you turn on Godzilla, we're like, oh, my God, 45 minutes, you know? Yeah. But also Paragon. That's a fast playing game. Oh, I love that. What about Hot Doggin'? That's one of my favorites. It's also a wide body, super wide body. Yes, super wide. Last time I played that was at the bat. How about Skateball with all them drop-down targets? I love that game. Oh, absolutely. I wish we had one. We don't have one, but I love that game. I love it, man. Viking, have you played that? Oh, I wanted Viking so bad. Oh, come on. Rachel's been wanting one. It's a great game. If you visit Denmark, hit us up, man. We have all of them. But the greatest one, this is not a popular one, but the greatest of that era is Embryon. Oh, yeah.
    47:10
    That's a nice game. I love Embryon. It's such a cool game. And I have got one of the coolest Stern Electronics free fall like new. if you have that gaming location. We do have a free fall. We found a funny story about that. A lady called Rachel, and she said she had some machines. Her husband passed away, and she's moving, so she had to sell us pinball machines. So we go out into the middle of the desert, a middle of nowhere, and we're surrounded by javelina. That's these little desert pigs.
    47:46
    And so we're trying to get them away from us, And we get into this lady's house, and holy crap, she has the most beautiful Andromeda and Freefall. And we move those things out of there. That Freefall, man, that is a rare game, especially to see it on location. We have one at the Electric Bat. That is a cool game, a great Harry Williams-designed game. Yes, yes. Yeah. Well, you know your stuff, man. I'm loving this. I mean, I was like, kill Hernandez, great name from Street Fighter. He's a sweet guy. But now he has got everything. I mean, you know the story. Yeah, yeah. I'm something else. Yeah, yeah. I got to get you to be an unlockable character. Surprise.
    48:29
    I actually, I didn't know this game. I didn't know anything about Free Fall. And I fell in love in a game called Quicksilver, if you know what I mean. Yeah. So I find this Quicksilver in Germany. And he says, yeah, you can buy it. but for the same price you need to buy my free fall also and i was like what's that and he's like it's a good game also and i was like okay ship them both to me and i had and i had my quicksilver for about six to eight months yeah played it almost every day both games and i ended up selling quicksilver i put it up on pinside and i got contacted by a u.s guy and he was like do want to ship this game to America? I've been looking for it for six years. And I said, sure, buddy. Packed it in a JJP box on the pallet, and they know how to pack their games. Shipped it to the U.S. by plane, and he got the game, and he hit me up, and he's like, Genghis, if you ever come to the United States, welcome, buddy. You can sleep at my house. You're welcome. Come and check out my collection. And Don has said that. And people from the U.S., I don't know why you guys are like that. You're like, when you come to England, you can stay at my place. We're going to eat. Eat some football. Stay here for a week. And you guys are so open, warm-hearted people. And I love that about the U.S. So, yeah. Thank you. When I'm over there, I'm going to visit 2,000 people. It's going to be great. For sure. Yeah. But you ended up keeping the free fall. Yes. I still have the free fall. That's a great game. I mean, think of it. The sounds on that game. the multi-ball the wire like back then you have a really cool mechanism that locks the balls I mean that is a winner wire form kale from 1981 or something yeah and the speech is awesome so good I love it so I go in a bit deeper and I found out Quicksilver is so popular because it's a rare game they're made 1200 and I'm like okay it's very rare very popular very expensive 1200 made Do you know how many free-fall is made? I have no idea, and I can't wait for you to tell me. 1,300. Wow. 100 more only.
    50:48
    I mean, it's a rare game also, man. Oh, my God. It's amazing. I have played this. Okay, I know what you're talking about now. Sorry, I had to look it up real quick.
    51:01
    Don has to try so many great games. I know. I mean, usually when people get this pinball bug, I don't know what I should call it, but, you know, get that pinball happy feeling, they tend to go into Stern Games. New, fast, fun, they're awesome. And then all of a sudden they go into Billy Williams' DMD era. And a few years later they found out about System 11 games. It's like, you know, Whirlwind and Earthshaker.
    51:37
    Just fell in love with them. And then go eat Longerback, Quicksilver, and, you know, Fathom. They're awesome games. I love them both. Every time I find a Frontier on location, I got to play it. Just like the cricket chirps. There's something about that game. I have no idea what it is. One of the greatest two-player games in the world, Frontier. I mean, I love that game. It's amazing, man. I just played a brand new game last night that I've never played before, and that's Capcom's Flipper Football. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this thing. Yeah, yeah. It's a rare one also. Yeah, so I was at a four-player death match with the Spooky Pinball guys last night, and holy crap, man, it was getting intense.
    52:17
    Kale, do you know what this guy did last night? He was at Spooky. He opened the door to the next game. You were like, what's going on in there, Donnie? I know you can't talk about it, but come on, man. So did you see it? No, no. I was like, guys, throw me under NDA. Let's go. And they're like, we're not ready. We're not ready. But no, their brand new factory building just opened. So they took me on a tour through there. I got to film it. And their manufacturing process seems so much better now. So they don't go up and down from stairs? No, the guys were getting their steps in before. because they would take the play field from downstairs, take it upstairs to get populated, take it over to get wired, take it back downstairs, throw it in a cabinet in the next room, and it was like every step, they've carved like 15 minutes off of every single step of production now because it's all on one line all around the factory. Good deal. Good for them. Oh, man. Yeah. It looks so much better. How many people is working at their factory now, the bigger place? There were about 20. George Gomez said like 500 at Stern, but how about at Spooky? because Spooky, they're pumping up games. Yeah, I mean, it looks like they're getting, you know, four to five games each day at the end of the line there, and I saw about 20 people working. But, I mean, their new layout and system saves so much efficiency. It's almost probably like they're operating with twice the staff they had before. But, yeah, they were cranking through games, multi-levels of quality checks. Tori is just, like, looking over that whole department and, like, touches every game. Bug touches every game. They've got one other guy that touches everyone, too, just as a couple of final checks. Because what they don't want is somebody to open a game and have a screw loose or a connection that's not working. But they also refined their process on QC, too. It used to be that the game went into a cabinet, and then if a switch was having a problem, was it a problem on the play field with the wiring, with the back box, with the power supply? So now they're QCing every play field on its own rig, QCing the cabinet on its own rig, QCing the back box on its own rig. And so they're catching these things before they get to final assembly. And doing that, they're not trying to fix something in a cabinet on an assembly line. It's on a rig. It's on a rotisserie, so they can flip it over, fix it, make sure it's working before it goes in. If a game's got an upper play field, they've got a separate rig just to check all that to make sure before it goes in, it's already passed that check. And they said that that's been saving them so much time. I'm so happy to hear that because we sell for all the companies out there. and I don't want to name names, but some of the products from some of the companies, they have given us a lot of headache. I'm not going to say no names, and my bro here, he does not want to have a headache. So we just became distros for Spooky also, and we ordered the first Spooky game here in Denmark, and we are playtesting it before we want to release and sell it to the people. But, Cale, you must have more experience with Spooky games. Have you had any spooky games on your location?
    55:23
    Yeah, we get every spooky machine. Okay. Yeah, and they... So you had Halloween and all that? Oh, man, that was a disaster. I heard about that. Yeah, that thing. And I've said it on our podcast, they have grown so much from that time.
    55:43
    Yeah, I mean, Halloween was riddled with problems. I think Luke even talks about it. He acknowledged that. And they've learned so much. Their games are way more reliable now. And we love having spooky machines because that's another machine that consistently earns money, and it earns money for a while. And I think it's just like the way they're doing things, the little difference, kind of quirky. And most importantly, the titles they get. That's what attracts people. People love Scooby-Doo. The song starts playing, and people just, the casuals love flipping that game. Yeah. So how is Scooby-Doo holding up? Scooby-Doo's good. It's holding up all the time.
    56:31
    We've been operating Spookies for so long, we're kind of used to it. We know there's things that we're going to have to do, and maybe certain parts that we're going to have to get our friends to 3D print or fix to make these things work. But we've had good luck with keeping these things operating. Nice. How about the newest? I mean, we have been lucky with Looney Tunes.
    56:55
    How about you guys? Looney Tunes is okay. And we're working with a team at Spooky right now to kind of work out some of the bugs. There's some kind of bug where just a random flipper will stop working. and I know it's not just our machine I've talked to other people who have had it like at conventions and stuff and that'll just happen like the left flipper will stop working the right flipper will stop working and so there is some things code wise I think they need to work out we're helping them with that how about have you encountered where the game just loses track of balls we did on before we updated it uh we were noticing that so i i think the most recent update will fix that so just make sure you have the most recent update i unboxed it about two months ago or something i don't know if there's a newer code now there's gonna be there's gonna be new code like this month they're doing a whole run where each week there's gonna be a major new code update um and that's part of what they'll be streaming and you know i also say like like people like stern pinball right they existed at of time when you could take these new games, these new prototypes, and you could stick it at a corner bar and let people hammer on it, get it back and kind of work out bugs and then put it back out there again. And you can't do that now. You know, you put a game out, it's going to be around the internet in an hour, right? You know, so a company like Stern is building on all that past experience that they've been able to do, you know, in antiquity, you know, so Spooky's kind of learning in the modern age now. But for the most part, it seems to be whenever I do run into an error, it seems to be caught in code, which is a lot easier to fix than something fundamentally flawed in the layout. Yeah.
    58:42
    Something just happened with Spooky. I am so happy with this company. I'm so happy with the people in there. I want them to succeed also, like really from the heart, absolutely. So yeah, some people call me too positive, but the thing I love, I just share it, man. I love to share happiness. When I'm together with my friends, I'm a smiley, happy guy, and they start smiling. I push negativity. I don't want stuff like that in my life. I'm too old for that. So I'm just – I love pinball. Some people cannot take it. Some trolls, they're like, do you have Stern stocks? Does Gary Stern give you money for this? I'm like, no. I just love this. Did you get that check? I made videos about X-Men. I'm loving this game I love the design I love the shots, I actually like the music I'm the only guy in the world that defends the music, I don't know with you guys because I'm into old computers and the music is really 16 bit and I have Amiga games if you remember on the podcast I still enjoy stuff like that and when I listened to the music of X-Men I was like, woo, this is so good after Don and I played X-Men we were walking around going it was great we had a good time people just need to wait and I know it's not going to happen they just need to wait to play the game instead of watching a video and then going oh this thing sucks you know but I mean I don't think they have anything better to do that was the craziest thing Because I got to play X-Men before that whole stream came out and everything. And so I missed all the people bad-mouthing. I'm like, what are they talking about? I'm like, I played the thing.
    60:40
    And then I watch the stream. I'm like, okay, I get, you know, if that's your only point of reference, you know, how they can lead you down there. But, yeah, man, we both played it. Game's awesome. I want to tear that box open today. Are you getting an X-Men on your location? As soon as they tell us. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. We're getting a pro, so it's probably going to be about three weeks because they're doing the LEs first this time. So it's going to be a little time. It's probably going to be about three weeks. We'll have Avatar on the floor before that. I think we'll have Avatar next week.
    61:12
    It's so cool that some of the companies that has their IS together, they release a game, and a week later they ship the games. That's how it should be. I mean, I'm so done with giving a deposit and wait for a year. What's going on, man? I mean, that's just – The only game we have ever given a deposit on is Pulp Fiction because, I mean, we knew that team would make that game. But I will never give anybody money for a game that is not ready to ship. No, no. We're done with it. We have learned so much. we have burned so many times lost so much money we're done with that if people from now on gives hey new company i'm making night rider give me 10 000 i will make a game in 18 months no we're done we're done so did you play the pro version also of x-men yeah we played the pro and the le wasn't that le don yeah it's le and a pro and they both slapped don don is saying the pro is amazing bang for your buck how did you feel kale oh one one hundred percent you know that this this pro is packed and i believe i mean it has like almost all the same shots as the premium just you know adds a little little extra something you know the the the finger that stops the ball and then launches it the other direction that's super cool yeah um yeah so i I mean, you can't go wrong with either one, but we're going to operate the Pro. Nice. So a personal question.
    62:57
    Would you buy X-Men Ellie or, for the same money, X-Men Pro and Godzilla Pro? What would you choose?
    63:06
    You mean like if I didn't have any of them? Yeah, if this is for you. Oh 100 the two games Godzilla and X Yeah I mean that a no I would never buy an LE just because you know I can get the same experience with the premium
    63:26
    But it's not a no-brainer. I have friends that answer, uh, LE all the way. LE, LE, LE. No, and I'm happy there are those people that do that. I think the LEs are absolutely beautiful. You know, you get a real back glass, you know. And most of the time, it's a mirrored back glass. You know, that one on John Wick. Man, that thing is so, so cool.
    63:49
    And I have friends that have to have the LE. That's great. But just for me, and I'm making money with these, it makes more sense just to get the premium.
    64:01
    About, yeah, five, six years ago, when an LE did cost, you know, $7,500, we would never buy the premiums never buy the pros sometimes the pros but never the premium we bought the LEs for 7500 they held the value because they were only limited to 500 you could put it out in a location and two years later sell it for 8500 it was such a great period it was amazing those times But right now, if you buy a John Wick for, what, $13,000, what's the price in U.S. now, used price for a John Wick LE after we got the X-Men? Have you guys checked? $10,500. I don't keep up with it. You don't sell, replace games every year? We don't sell any games. The only game we've sold is Galactic Tank Force. Oh, why did you sell that? uh just because it it wasn't earning money anymore it's just so frustrating that you want to talk about a game losing track of balls i mean their their programming uh department just doesn't have their shit together so um yeah so uh we we decided to get rid of it it's fine so it's a really pretty looking game and and it earned some money for a couple of months but you know they just they just don't have the support needed to you know keep something like that running. But didn't you get in contact with David Fix and say, hey, huge location here? Oh, yeah. No, he got in touch with us.
    65:43
    When we originally, the first galactic tank force we had was just a major lemon. It had huge problems, even more problems than, you know, other people are having with theirs. And you can read the message boards about them. But when we got in touch with American about it, they were like, well, there's nothing we can do for you. And so that's when we went, okay, well, we'll just talk about it on the podcast. And as soon as we got, you know, as soon as we started talking about it on the podcast, immediately Dave Fix gets in touch with us. Oh, let me fix your problem. You know, so, yeah, so if you're going to be operating, I guess it just tells you to go ahead and start a podcast so you have a big enough megaphone to get these problems fixed.
    66:27
    All right. And he did something. I don't think any other manufacturer would do this. You know, other manufacturers will send you a populated play field or something, a CPU. He sent us a whole other game. Wow. Respect. That's nice. Yeah. So they opened up a game, and they made Steve Bowden play it all day long to make sure there was no issues, and then they shipped it to us. Well done. And it was a much better game. And then we shipped their game back. It was a painless process, and kudos to them for fixing the problem.
    67:04
    Yeah, so here we are. But we ended up selling it just because we needed some room, and if one game was going to get chopped, that was the game.
    67:14
    Fair enough. So my last question. I listened to your awesome show. Shout out again. And so you guys got invited to JJP, and our listeners know now this guy, Kale. He knows what he's talking about. He operates one of the greatest, you know, arcades in the world today. So I heard about you asking the man at Jersey Jack, the owner, Jack Conari.
    67:45
    No, I want you to tell the story. What did you ask him in that room? What happened? Well, so during the tour, a couple of, I think it was Eric and Tom, did mention how much they thought about operators. I went into this thinking they didn't think about operators at all. I was almost like, why am I even here? But I do promote their products. Whenever we have something in the arcade, I pump it up, and I think they make a good product. And, you know, I want people to get into it and play it. And so when we went back into the conference room, it was toward the tail end of their talk. And I mentioned you guys say you think about operators as far as when you're doing manufacturing,
    68:34
    leaving operators enough room to work on these mechs and having stuff spaced out properly so you can work on them in a dark bar. and so I just said it sounds like you guys are thinking about operators at some level but I can tell you I operate, my wife and I operate one of the most popular arcades in the nation we house the largest single location pinball league in the entire world and I lose money on Jersey Jacks I lose money if I purchase one of your machines and try to operate them and they went into well, you know, but we offer a topper. We offer side, you know, it's thrown in. We offer the, which that doesn't make me any more money. That's fine that they do that. That's cool. A topper doesn't, you know, and the side art and, you know, the art blazes, that doesn't push the needle.
    69:29
    And they did mention that they kind of tried this with Guns and Roses with the standard edition but didn't.
    69:38
    They only sold around like 140 to 150 of those. So that didn't work for them. But then Jack, the face of the company, right, he chimes in remotely and says, you know, if you need some help operating the machines, here's my personal number, 1-800-JERSEY-JACK, and I will help you out. and the way he worded it, it was kind of, it was somewhat rude and it wasn't just me that thought there were many people in the room and on the media side that were like, that was kind of weird, that was a strange flex, you know I'll tell you an interesting thing, since then a distributor who knows Jack he listened to our podcast and he got in touch with him and he was like, why would you say that to Cale? You know, he didn't say, hey, Kale, but I was the only operator in the room, right? Everybody knew who he was talking to.
    70:41
    So anyhow, he told the distributor that he was genuine, he really meant it, and he wanted to teach me how to make my games easier to play so they would make more money. This is even more mind-blowing. So now he thinks he knows my audience better than I do. I mean, it just shows he's so incredibly out of touch that, you know, I hope he's not making a whole lot of decisions for this company because, I mean, that was just mine, the whole comment and him thinking that he knows my audience, he knows my players and knows what they want. And nobody's going to know my customers better than me. Of course. So I wrote to you. I'm really happy. I'm really sorry about this happened to you, if you remember. I'm sorry for that.
    71:41
    I was like, does Jack know who you are and what you do, about your location, about how many games? Does he know you? I mean, because this is inappropriate to invite a guest over and in front of so many people talking like this. Does he have any idea who you are? Do you know that? I've never met him before, but, man, if you are flying people out to have a meeting with them, it is your job to do a little research or have your assistant do some research, however they do it over there. He should know who he's speaking to. I mean, that's another huge misstep. Yeah. Wow. I'm sorry to hear that, man. I don't know, Don, how you feel about it. You was there too, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't tell, you know, if he was speaking kind of just like in the abstract, put it out there, or if it was direct.
    72:39
    But, yeah, it's definitely kind of a strange situation. I'll just see how it all shakes out, really. I don't know that I really have a way to weigh in one way or another. but you know I know Kale I've met Jack I've been to the bat the bat's awesome so yeah I don't have much comment I mean the thing that makes sense he could have just said look we've tried to sell a cheaper model it just doesn't fit into our business model and you know but like but open the dialogue don't come at me with oh I know how to run your business let me show you how you know just like let's open the dialogue if we can't drop the price of these machines what else can we do to help you I do agree with that I mean you just asked what can we do to elevate your products it's a genuine question right right sure alright alright I can tell at least they're looking at that issue now for sure. They've got to have to be taking another look at it. It's out now. Yeah. I don't know if something was lost because he was viewing remote there or not, but we'll see. I'll hope to run into him at IAP and we'll see if we have more progress on that.
    74:05
    And Cale, when you say you have the biggest location with most games in the world, I get a bit offended. That means you haven't watched my videos. I've never said that. I said we have one of the most popular arcades in the nation, but we have the largest single-location pinball league. Oh, league. Oh, I listened to it as a collection. No, no, no. No, we know we don't have the biggest collection. We've seen the biggest collections around, and we don't have near that.
    74:43
    But it's very popular. When we hear it all the way here in Denmark, then you're doing a great job. I don't think you need no one to tell you how to make your games easier. And I don't think if your games are easy that you will automatically make more money.
    75:00
    Games should just be fun and have great themes and have Insider Connected. For sure. Aren't you excited for version 2.0, Insider Connected? Oh, absolutely. I'm excited about everything Stern's doing. And they're making the right moves. Everything. We are extremely happy with their products. I'm excited to see what Spike 3 brings. If that's coming. That's a rumor. I don't know. I think George may have said it is coming. But we're excited to see because that's going to bring more computing power to this platform so they can do so much more. So, you know, this company is here to stay, besides what some other podcasters might want you to think. But this is, they are growing by leaps and bounds, and we're going to see some absolutely amazing stuff in the next few years. So excited. I talked to Odestro, and he told me that the next game will not be Spike 3 either. That's sad to hear, man. Come on. Come with this system. So he said, next game is not Spike 3. Yeah, we're probably going to see Spike 3 next year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't wait. So next year is going to be awesome. We're going to get Spike 3. We're going to get Back to the Future next year. It's going to be awesome, man. Last question, how about the game from, is it called DPX or isn't it? Dutch Pinball. Dutch Pinball exclusive. Yeah, the Alice in Wonderland that's been having teasers and things. How do you feel about that? Are you going to get it?
    76:40
    No, we're not. I don't know anything about it, and we're not going to get it. Why? Why do you say that? Why do you just cut it off? Because it's probably going to be pretty expensive. Have they released a price? I don't know. But I think it's going to be. Under $15. Yeah, it's probably going to be expensive. and we don't we have to think about you know it's just me, Rachel and one other tech taking care of all of these machines and we want to just stay with certain systems you know we don't want to add another one into the mix that we have to learn and learn about every manufacturer has certain quirks and things you we want to stay comfortable and fun and consistent and I don't know enough about the machine to say whether I would get it. I don't think we know anything about it. We still don't know a price, a date, or what's in it. And if you order, when you're going to get it. It's one thing that if this game was sitting on the floor at ZapCon, you could take it home with you at the end of the show and just put it right in your arcade and you get to play it. Let's talk about it then. Right now, I think we still don't know enough information to really say one way or another.
    77:52
    Okay. How about the Ninja game? Is that out yet? It's being built. Are they still in games? They're building them. Ninja Eclipse? they're building them yeah that game's actually cool but i i'm not gonna purchase it but i've shot it it's fun i like the company that makes it those are some some solid people um the game looks cool the artists they got to you know develop all that um but you know same kind of thing well you know when i played it rachel and i played it when it was like the shallow cabinet It was kind of weird. You had the lift. I think they went to a more traditional cabinet now, which was much better for an operator. But, you know, it's just the same thing as a DPX game. I don't want to add another system into the mix. But that game looks cool. Yeah. And Don, he's thinking of the same system and so on.
    78:45
    Years back, if we had a Fathom and it had some board issues, it was such a headache. But now we can just buy these all-tech boards. You have them also, I think. So you can just go in and say, put it to Embryon, put it to Fathom, and put it in.
    79:02
    Us operators, we love stuff like that. I asked my bro, should we have a Sega game? And he's like, I like Sega games, but we don't have no spare board, something we can change between to repair. And he's like, no. We bought Haunted House, Gottlieb. Is it System 80, Haunted House? I think so. Yeah. We bought that and Black Hole, I think, the one with the curtain on the back. Man, that's a heavy machine. Yeah. They had so many issues, so we ended up replacing all the boards in the back box, and they still had issues, and he just said, no, we don't want no God Leap. Got rid of them. So I know exactly what Kale means with system where you can interchange between boards and all that stuff. It's so important. Yeah, you can't have a game down for three weeks waiting for a board, you know. Oh, right. That's the worst. Do we have issues with note boards from Stern?
    80:00
    I have not. We have not with any of our machines. Wow, that's not true. Yeah, I mean, we had some kind of like one time on Guardians, we had some kind of note board weird issue, but all I did was like swap one note board with another one, you know, set the pins properly and everything worked fine. Yeah, we haven't had any issues.
    80:25
    That's great to hear. Do we have that P3 or what's it called? No, the multi-morphic. Yeah, you don't have that. Man, I heard those are really rough to operate because one of the main issues is, and I just learned this on the trip when I was talking to somebody who owns one of these things, There were like maybe 20, 30, 40 balls in that thing. That's a lot. Yeah. What? Yeah, and so sometimes like the trough doesn't register them because they'll clump up and not line up properly, so the game just won't start. And if you don't know to shake it, you'll never get the thing started. So on location that can kind of cause a little issue. But they're very cool. I love Jerry. I used to hang out with him on the circuit, on the convention circuit, and those games were fun to play. I just wouldn't operate one. Okay, fair enough. Oh, man, I am so happy I asked all the questions I had in me. Kale, so cool to have you here. What a nice guy you are, man. Donnie, do you have any questions to Kale? I just want to do a plug for ZapCon. What time of the year is that? Because it's one show that I haven't been to yet. Well, you know, we kind of pumped the brakes on that thing, and I don't know if it's ever going to happen again. The last one that we did may be the last one. Because all the founders have moved on to do all kinds of other projects, and they just don't really have the time to do this convention anymore. Well, if you want to move it to central Wisconsin, I think I have enough room here on the property. We could have some tents. We could camp out in the woods and play some of these games behind me. We'll call it ZapCon by Don or something. Yeah, it's the DonCon. Do DonCon.
    82:20
    Kale, thanks so much for coming on, man, buddy. I appreciate it. So where can people listen to your awesome show, Kale? Just go to YouTube, search Electric Batcast, or just search Electric Bat Arcade. It will probably come up on YouTube and on Spotify and all your favorite podcast apps. Just search for Electric Batcast. Also, follow us on Instagram. We do most of our stuff on Instagram, promotions and fun videos and all that stuff. So it's ElectricBatArcade, at ElectricBatArcade on Instagram. We're also on Facebook if you want to follow us there. Yeah, I follow you there. And I saw a picture with you getting another belt. You do something, Kung Fu, Karate. What do you do? No, I do competition jiu-jitsu. oh man yeah I tried this just keeps on getting better yeah I spar with MMA fighters just to get them ready for you know for matches will we see you in the octagon soon or what I'm too old for that I'm 49 years old all I do is I train and I do some Jiu Jitsu competitions oh it's so cool man Next Saturday, I have a 13-year-old son. We're going to travel, and he's going to enter Kumite. He trains karate. Wow. I cannot wait. So proud of him. I hope he wins. Yeah, good luck with that. Okay, USA. That's awesome. Thank you, guys. Can we get a blood spurt machine? All right, Tony. Let's get the awesome outro music and say thank you for joining us. Kale Hernandez, what a great guy, man. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute slice. Oh, yeah.