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The Super Awesome Pinball Show - Ep. 40 Gomez Pt. 2

The Super Awesome Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 39m·analyzed·Dec 2, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

George Gomez interview part 2 + host updates + Stern facility news.

Summary

The Super Awesome Pinball Show episode 40 continues an interview with George Gomez, discussing his artistic process, current game projects, and philosophy on design freedom. The hosts also share personal updates including tournament play, vacation stories, and a backstage experience at a Better Than Ezra concert, plus brief pinball industry news including Stern's facility expansion and Twippy Award hosting announcements.

Key Claims

  • George Gomez has signed on to do artwork for a game coming out in 2025

    high confidence · Gomez explicitly states he has 'everything done except the play field already' and has 'only had the job for, I think, less than a month' as of the interview date (late 2022)

  • Gomez has completed back glass and back box artwork for this 2025 game with only minor revisions requested

    high confidence · Gomez describes sending files that were printed and reprinted multiple times over a weekend due to final back box changes, and confirms 'they're extremely joyous' with the result

  • Gomez is currently working on five games simultaneously

    high confidence · Direct statement: 'I'm working on five games right now'

  • Gomez has never had a manufacturer make major changes to his initial artistic submissions

    high confidence · Gomez states: 'Never had anybody make any major changes' and 'I've not had anybody take a look at that first thing and go, no, no, no, no, no. You got it all wrong.'

  • Stern is moving to a new facility that is 163,000 square feet compared to their current 110,000 square feet

    high confidence · Christian reports reading this on NAP Arcade: 'the current facility that they're in now is 110,000 square feet, and the next one is like 163,000'

  • The Twippies will be live-streamed this year after initial uncertainty

    medium confidence · Christian notes: 'Todd just mentioned the other day that they actually are planning on doing that' live streams, though 'not everything is necessarily completely set in stone yet'

Notable Quotes

  • “This is the one. This is the one I'll be remembered for.”

    Christopher Franchi @ opening — Self-aware meta-commentary on the podcast's ambitions and tone

  • “This second half is gold. There's some awesome shit in here that people are going to be amazed that he was so candid with us and talked about and so honest.”

    Christopher Franchi (about George Gomez interview) @ mid-episode — Sets expectations for George Gomez part 2 content; indicates he will discuss sensitive topics

  • “I don't want to see that. Like that's my job. You know, if I'm sitting in the living room watching TV and I see a big poster of my art, I'll be thinking about work. I'm like, I can't relax.”

    George Gomez @ interview section — Reveals personal preference for separating work and home life despite being prolific pinball artist

  • “Every job that I've been given, there's been a small conversation up front, and then I'll turn something in... If they buy into that, then I'll go through everything.”

    George Gomez @ interview section — Describes his iterative working process with manufacturers

  • “And honestly, you would think there's no way you're going to eat all that stuff in one bite. It is amazing.”

    Jeff Parsons (about tournament sandwich) @ mid-episode — Humorous commentary on the oversized Thanksgiving leftover sandwich prize

  • “We checked in on the tour bus. We had backstage passes. We were the only ones there for their soundcheck... GNR is, like, the best game, hands down.”

    Christian Lyne @ personal updates section — Describes VIP access to Better Than Ezra concert and playing Guns N' Roses pinball backstage with the band

  • “It weighs 5.2 pounds. Oh, my God. It's huge. That's a horrible baby.”

    Jeff Parsons (about sandwich weight) @ tournament discussion — Comic reaction to the massive prize sandwich size

  • “They moved on a Friday, and they had games on the line on a Monday. Holy crap.”

Entities

George GomezpersonChristopher FranchipersonChristian LynepersonJeff ParsonspersonTom DrummondpersonStern PinballcompanyChris MarquettepersonBetter Than EzraorganizationArcadia National Bar

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Pinball expanding manufacturing capacity with 48% facility size increase (110k to 163k sq ft)

    high · Christian reports from NAP Arcade: 'the current facility that they're in now is 110,000 square feet, and the next one is like 163,000'

  • ?

    community_signal: Better Than Ezra band members participated in backstage pinball gameplay experience, indicating growing mainstream awareness/interest in modern pinball

    medium · Christian describes backstage pass experience: 'Chris Marquette brought a Guns N' Roses LE backstage... we played that with the band... They were loving it'

  • ?

    event_signal: Twippy Awards ceremony will be live-streamed in 2022, reversing earlier uncertainty about live vs delayed broadcast

    medium · Christian states: 'Todd just mentioned the other day that they actually are planning on doing that' live streams, though 'not everything is necessarily completely set in stone yet'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: George Gomez demonstrates consistent artistic autonomy across multiple manufacturers with minimal revision requests; suggests earned trust based on track record

    high · Gomez: 'Never had anybody make any major changes' and 'I've not had anybody take a look at that first thing and go, no, no, no, no, no'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Christopher Franchi continues as Stern Pinball artist while co-hosting The Super Awesome Pinball Show and producing pinball podcast content

    high · Franchi is identified as host and podcast editor; George Gomez interview discusses artistic process with manufacturers typically understood to be Stern

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.299

0:00
This is the one. This is the one I'll be remembered for. This podcast features three men who like to act like children and swear a lot. So get your kids out of here or I'll fart on their heads.
0:14
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Please take your seats. This evening's performance is about to begin. Thank you.
0:30
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Christopher Frenchy, Christian Lyne, and Chair Parsons of the greatest pinball podcast in the entire world, The Super Awesome Pinball Show.
1:00
Hello, pinball people, and welcome to the fashionable choice for the Twippy Award for Best Pinball Podcast for 2022, the Super Awesome Pinball Show, and we got a doozy for you this week again. The exciting conclusion to our exclusive interview with Mr. George Gomez, plus some pinball news and some other pinball shit, so stick around, or I'll take your last can of hoo-hash. The boys are back in town, the boys are back in town Hello everybody, happy holiday season and welcome to episode number 40 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. My name is Christopher Franchi and with me, as always, my more handsome than me host. You're not talking about me. Oh, don't be so modest, Parsons. That would be Mr. Jeff Parsons and Christian Lyon. How you doing, boys? Hey, fantastic. How are you? Happy post-Thanksgiving, boys. Yeah, all Thanksgiving. I started a diet. You saw your diet. I was going to talk about that. We'll save that. My week in pinball was not very pinball-y, so we can talk about that. But Thanksgiving was awesome, and it could have been worse. I left a few dessert items that I bought at home, so that would have been piled in. But, boy, it's the one day a year when I unbuckle my pants at my mom's house. You fat fuck! All right, man. Hey, listen, it's the one holiday where that's completely okay, and you should do that. You've got to go in. You've got to go all in on Thanksgiving. I'm not sure it's been completely okay. Well, all depends on who's buckling and why they're doing it. It's kind of a figure of speech. I didn't actually undo it. I know. I got you. I did do the Al Bundy hand in the pants. I figured out what that's for. That's to pull the pants away from the gut so they don't press, and you're just like, oh. You really are a fat bastard. It's a little bit of a relief thing. I think it's just the ultimate relaxation, man. Just put the hand in the pants and lay back on the couch and watch some football. Can't believe this is happening. I'm going to high school with that. You're thinking the wrong way, Carson. I'm sorry. Put your hand in your pants. If you take all that out of context, then this is a completely different podcast.

Christian Lyne (about previous Stern factory move) @ news section — Demonstrates Stern's efficient previous relocation capabilities despite larger scale of upcoming move

company
Joey Harwoodperson
Zach Minneyperson
Marty Robbinsperson
Todd Tuckeyperson
Will Aldingperson
The Super Awesome Pinball Showorganization
NAP Arcadeorganization
Ron Hallettperson
Guns N' Roses pinballproduct
Eric Menierperson
  • ?

    rumor_hype: Unconfirmed 2025 pinball game in advanced artwork stage with completion expected 3 years from interview date (late 2022), suggesting release target 2024-2025 window

    medium · George Gomez mentions 2025 release but notes 'the three years might be a stretch, might be sooner' based on game whitewood proximity

    • 3:18
    Just put the hand in the pants and lay back on the couch and watch some. so listen it was great uh to hear the first half of the gomans interview francie did an amazing job editing that again thank you i love me some george and he is as you have said before our favorite guest to have on george you are an editing nightmare we've had much worse though we've had much worse and i will say that he is gracious enough to spend like three to four hours with every time we do it. So being on and crystal clear the entire time would be really hard. Do you remember he had a bad week? He was pretty tired. He pulled his arm out. Yeah, he was pretty tired too. Oh, we edited all that out. Yeah, we had a long discussion about how George fucked up his shoulder really bad, but that was not part of the episode. Action-packed story though. I mean, he truly did a doozy. But, you know, I thought the interview was good. I can't wait to hear the second half. I don't know if it's the whiskey or that he just said something too quickly, but I always find new things that I don't remember every time I re-listen to these things. So I'm excited to hear the second half. Because we're busy trying to construct a good interview. So a lot of times we don't, I know a lot of times I don't actually hear the answer or the full answer. Because I'm thinking, like, where do I have to go next? I'm looking at my notes, you know, and I'm thinking about things. Or like, ooh, I got a follow-up question. You know, so you're taking notes all the time. So like when I'm editing, I can pay full attention and I'm hearing all kinds of crap. And I'm like, I didn't realize you said that. This second half is gold. There's some awesome shit in here that people are going to be amazed that he was so candid with us and talked about and so honest. Usually people say that, you know, when people like George come on, they candy coat everything. They don't admit to any problems or any faults and all that. And he does to his credit. And he will answer any questions you throw at him. I mean, there's nothing off limits, which I love. And obviously we're respectful. We don't try to attack the guy, but he will throw uncomfortable stuff his way, and he always is very honest and open about it. Yeah, the only question we had to edit out was when I asked him if he had enjoyed wearing unusual European mesh underwear.
    5:27
    You're making that up. He's making that up. You are making that up. Maybe I am. All right, so let's go into our last few weeks in pinball, boys. What have you been up to? I have this new pinball thing where it's like when my dog goes outside because it's cold out now, so I can't just let him out and then go back in and do my thing. I stay back in the game room. The door to go outside is through the game room. So I'm sitting in the arcade and I'll fire up the Beatles because the Beatles kicks my ass. It's a drain monster. So it's like I've never gotten through all of the things. Okay, one day I'm going to focus on spinners. I turn the game on. I pick the song where you have to do the spinner so many times, level one, level two, level three, level four. You finish, yay, and can never do it because they want an unreasonable amount of spinners. But the thing is, what I'll do is I'll play the first ball, I'll set it on spinners, I'll go, and if I don't get it all the way to level four and complete that, I just go, fuck, and I shut the game off. Wow, fuck this game. So that's been my past couple of weeks in pinball. There's one ball, a big loud fuck, and then shut the game off. That's what they say you have to do to get better, though, right? You have to just try to focus in on one thing every time you play the game, like draw catches or hitting the spinners. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. And then the other thing, work-related, as far as much as I can say, I'll just say this. I won't get in trouble. I got signed on to do a game that is coming out in 2025. That's a long way off. So do the math. It's three years away, right? The original Brainiac, I presume. I have everything done except the play field already. I have only had the job for, I think, less than a month. Wait, wait, wait. So let me get this straight. They've asked you to do it, right? But they clearly haven't sat down with you. If it's that many years away, they don't even know necessarily all the stuff that's going to go into it. I mean, obviously, you're just going off of what would make you the most excited about an art package, right? You're going off of all the things that are cool to you, but they haven't given you any guidance. The art on the cabinet and the back house has nothing to do with the game other than the license, you know? I mean, if there's a special feature on the game, that doesn't matter. with the, you know, I don't put on the side of the cabinet, shoot the ramp when lit. No, I know that. But wouldn't the company itself have some guidance for you? Like, hey, we really want to see, let's say it's Batman, for instance. They say, hey, we really want one side of the cabinet to have the villains. We had that discussion. So you've already gone through what your vision was and they were totally on board. Well, I didn't have a vision at first. We talked about it. We talked about what it was. They discussed their expectations, what they were looking for from me. Okay. And then it was kind of like, well, you know, let's sit back. We got a lot of time here. There's no rush, but it's something that I'm very passionate about and was hoping one day would get made. No, not Beavis and Butthead. That sucks more than anything that I've ever sucked before. And so I just started going. And there's another job that I had to get done that I put on the back burner. And once I started, I couldn't finish. And I just kept cranking and cranking and cranking. And then I was finally done. I sent them all the files because they wanted to print them out and stick them on the cabinet. And then I said, no, wait, I made a change in the back box. And then an hour later, no, wait, I made another change on the back box. Two hours later, no, wait, I made a final change. This is the last change on the back box, I promise. Meanwhile, they've printed out it six times now. No, this was over the weekend. I mean, this is three years away. So they have taken these images and they said, yes, we're done. They made a couple of changes and I made the changes. And so they're happy with it, like it's officially done. Yes. Damn, that's amazing. So three years away. And yeah, the three years might be a stretch, might be sooner, because I believe the game itself is, if it's not done, it's very close to done, as far as like a whitewood goes. So just going back to that for a second, do most companies give you that amount of artistic license just to let you pretty much go with it and do your thing and end up being very happy with it? Or are there some companies that come back and say, hey, man, you totally missed the mark, and we've got to move this around? Never had anybody make any major changes. That's amazing. I don't know if my former work has anything to do with that, and somehow I've earned that right. I don't know. I just know that every job that I've been given, I'm working on five games right now, and every job I've been given, there's been a small conversation up front, and then I'll turn something in. Usually what I do is I'll just do something like a back glass or side of a cabinet, and just to execute my feel, what I want to do, to look at the design. And if they buy into that, then I'll go through everything. But I've not had anybody take a look at that first thing and go, no, no, no, no, no. You got it all wrong. That's incredibly liberating, man. I'm sure as an artist that you have that degree of freedom in your job. Yeah, definitely. It's great because I was able to sit here over the holidays and work on that one project, knowing that when I turned it in, they were going to be like, no, you know, they're loving it. They're extremely joyous, to use a term of the holiday season. They're very joy-ucks.
    10:31
    They're very JX Noel. I can't wait to see what it is. Considering that you're passionate about it, it's going to be great, I'm sure. Yeah, damn. You know, I said I've got to quit buying these games because I'm running out of room, and I don't need to have one game of everything that I've done, but I've got two games that are coming up real quick, and I want both of them. I'm at the point now where I'm getting rid of all my video games. Like I need more pinball here. I'm just, these got to go. Sorry. I want them, but they got to go. I get it, man. I get it. I mean, that's a huge part of your life. You've put a ton of hours into those jobs and it's pinball, right? So you get an amazing toy as well. So yeah, that's the only thing like people always come over my house and they're like, I'm surprised. Like I expected to see all your artwork hanging everywhere. I'm like, I don't want to see that. Like that's my job. You know, if I'm sitting in the living room watching TV and I see a big poster of my art, I'll be thinking about work. I'm like, I can't relax. You know, I'm just like, oh, shit, I got to do that thing. And like, so there is none of my artwork hanging in my house except the game room. But I welcome that, you know, maybe because it's attached to a pinball machine. That is a big plus. Do you ever get bummed out that you have your machines together so you can't really see the sides of the games? Yeah, they're all kind of crammed together. And even so, it's like wall to wall. So it's not like you can come in and at least see one from the side. You're seeing none from the side. All you see is the coin door and the back box and the play field. That's pretty normal. If you go into an arcade or any place that's got machines on location, they're all just crammed right in there. You never really see the side out for most of them. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so I guess I've been looking through Amazon for some. I want to hang patio lights in my arcade room. Hell yeah, man. Along the top of the ceiling or around the outside just for some fun ambiance. But hey, enough about me. What have you guys been up to? Arsene, tell us about your last two weeks. My last two weeks, I played in a...
    12:21
    Now it's time for some tournament talk. We'll go with tournament talk, but there's more to it than just the tournament, okay? Because what I was playing for... Well, I want to make a turkey sandwich. No!
    12:37
    Glad you mentioned turkey sandwich. So, I played a knockout tournament at Arcadia National Bar. And it's not national anymore, just Arcadia here in Portland. And this was their fourth year of doing this. They have a Thanksgiving leftover tournament. It's a knockout tournament. You get ten strikes and you're out. So if you lose to somebody, whether you're in a group, you know, if you lose to the all, you come in last, you get three strikes. You come in first, no strikes, right? Had 25 players and went through this whole thing. And it came down to just me and one other person. And that guy had one strike at the time that I gave him earlier. And I had nine. So in order to win this, I would have to beat him nine times in a row. You can do it. That was not happening. He's going to lose everything. I started off great. The first time I got two on him, and then it went away after that. But the grand prize was cash involved, but the grand prize was a giant leftover Thanksgiving sandwich.
    13:33
    And it went to the first place player, and the second place player got a smaller sandwich. Okay. Dude, you sent us a picture of these. Oh, yeah. They looked amazing. Best part of it, turns out, Joey Harwood is his name. He was the winner. He's gluten-free. So I got the sandwich. You win.
    13:56
    That's a kitchen they made. They whipped up real quick a gluten-free version of the form. So we both got giant sandwiches. Let me tell you everything that's in this because it is insane. First of all, the bread is two pizza shells. Yes. Because they make pizza there at Arcadia. It's delicious. So they took two pizza shells, one of them had like maybe a garlic thing. I'm not even sure because there's so many flavors in this thing. On top of that, they put leftover turkey. Yes. Brussels sprouts and bacon. Yes. Mashed potato. Yes. Gravy. Yes. Crispy fried red onions. Yes. Cranberry sauce from the can. The best kind. Yes. Stuffing. Yes. More turkey. Yes. More gravy. Yes. And then the tops on it. Yes.
    14:33
    I think Francie just passed out. And honestly, you would think there's no way you're going to eat all that stuff in one bite. It is amazing. I was surprised how good it is. It's one of those tournaments where you got $100, but you know what? The sandwich was even better than the $100. It was just so fantastic. As you were going through those ingredients, my jaw was opening a little bit more. A lot of the mashed potatoes. I'll probably share a picture of this at some point on the Facebook page. Yeah, we can do that. The question is, Jim, did you eat the entire sandwich? There's about half of it left. I took it into work, and we talked about it on the radio, and my co-host tried it, and we just loved it. It was the first time I had tried it there. I held it the whole night. And then every day when I'd come home for the past two days, you can cut it like a pie, basically.
    15:19
    I'm about halfway through now. Michelle won't touch it. It's all mine at this point. You're not tired of it yet? No, I'm not tired of it. But at this point, I've got to hurry this thing up. As the days go on, it's going to kind of lose it. so food only has like there's a certain amount of vitamins and nutrients right in food and over time they fade so i had a buddy in med school who used to make this giant pot of chili right and he would eat it for an entire like week or two and that was like his main his main source of of nutrition and we learned that it doesn't actually retain its nutrients because the dude got scurvy he didn't have it like over time the amount of vitamin c and stuff in the sauce just faded away and that was really all he ate and so he got scurvy he eventually he's like he had a loose tooth they didn't know what was going on and he had scurvy like i'm not eating the rest of this thing man No, just eat other stuff with it or take a multivitamin. You can't eat other stuff with that thing.
    16:29
    It is other stuff. That's right. By the way, it weighs 5.2 pounds. Oh, my God. It's huge. That's a horrible baby. Not anymore, but that's how big it started out. Oh, man.
    16:45
    Oh, jeez. The chili guy, by the way, his poor toilet. Your toilet. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's not one thing that you want to eat like day after day after day. That's like on a Taco Bell every day. I don't understand why I'm either eating or shitting.
    17:05
    What else, Jeff? You got anything else? That's really all I've done since the last time we've chatted. That's all you need to do is play pinball and eat a big sandwich. Two great things going great together.
    17:16
    Fantastic. Well, my last week was spent in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic, for Thanksgiving. We decided that this year we wanted to just completely do away with all of the responsibilities and the cooking and the drama, which is usually not a lot, but Sarah doesn't like all of the to-do with Thanksgiving. And so we decided to go out there, and it was amazing. We had lots of relaxation pool time, and there was like 15 pools, and my kids were in heaven. So no pinball really out there, but a little bit indirectly because Zach Many and his family were literally one resort over from mine. Dominican Republic Resort Market Trends. Trending up, Zach Many's Resort. Trending down, Christian's. So I was shooting him texts during the week to say, you know, check in, wish him a happy Thanksgiving. And while I was on the beach, I mean, you guys know that like daily when I go out all year, I'm pretty much wearing SPF 90 because I'm so pale. I'm the widest boy who ever lived. But I did, you know, make some sandcastles and I played on the beach with my kids. But for the majority of the beach time, I was on the chair in the shade and I was rocking out to a playlist that Marty Robbins from Final Round and Haggis had made, which is amazing. So, you know, pinball was there with me kind of indirectly. I'm kind of seeing you on the beach like the boy in the plastic bubble, like with a tinted bubble. It's a tinted, yes. That's me.
    18:45
    You all look like you might have gotten a little bit of color. I did, Varsons. We didn't check any bags, so we had to bring these tiny little sunscreens. And we burned through them on, like, the first day because I could use a can of that myself just going out. So we bought this crappy little Punta Cana Dominican Republic sunscreen that I had never seen before. And it was SPF 90. So I trusted this thing, and it was a bad move because I went out and I reapplied like three times during the day, and I still freaking burned. We all actually burned when we wore that stuff. So, yeah, my forehead's red. You should see my freckles. My farmer's tan is insane right now. The only way I noticed it on the webcam that I'm seeing you on is because your eyelids are a different color than the rest of your face.
    19:30
    That's right. That's where my sunglasses were, Jeff. Those are white eyelids. call me powder but uh but in addition to that i did do something really really cool that i haven't talked about on the show so i wanted to go into it a little bit but uh we've done a ton of really cool stuff in pinball in general but i think this had to be one of the highlights of my pinball life uh i went out to delaware with chris and melissa marquette to the better than ezra concert in uh late october and oh my god man it was uh it was surreal my personal life of loving this band And then my pinball life just kind of, you know, was a perfect mesh. And we met up with Tom Drummond, who is just even cooler than I expected. He's super down to earth. He is a rock star, but you wouldn't necessarily know that. He's just like really humble. And the coolest thing about him is that he has a genuine love for pinball. He was geeking out about pinball just as much as we were the whole day. But we got the VIP treatment, man. We checked in on the tour bus. We had backstage passes. We were the only ones there for their soundcheck, which was like basically a mini concert. Brent, I'm just flipping you off right now. I know. He hates me. But, dude, you had a chance to do this, too. You failed. Come on. I had to drag everyone down with my fucked-up knee. Well, Chris Marquette brought a Guns N' Roses LE backstage, and so we played that with the band, and I was taking pictures for Eric Menier and sending it to him. We were both getting out. And I put in the super awesome pinball show, Flipper Code, showed the guys that.
    20:59
    And, you know, GNR is, like, the best game, hands down. You know, the rest of the band isn't really super into pinball, So it was the best game to have there to kind of blow their minds about where pinball has gone since, you know, I'm sure they remember pinball with, you know, the light shows and all of the cool video effects. And so they were loving it. We had we had them backstage playing for a couple of hours. But it was great. Just as good as I remember from back in my college days. And, you know, they still have the same energy and the vocals that they had back in the day. So kick some serious ass. So I really encourage anyone to go see them live if you can. And a huge thanks to Tom Drummond and the Marquettes for being amazing people and showing us such a good time. And I left with a signed poster and a set list that I literally, like within an hour of getting home, was framed on my wall. So I'm still a super fan. Went through the drive-thru at Frames R Us. That's right. No, actually, I have a few extra frames in my closet just because Franchi sends us posters. Whenever I have his stuff, I want to have it behind glass instantly because I don't want it to get messed up. So I use a couple of those. Good times. Cool. Now I don't have to send you any posters. Yay. That was my two weeks. So that's it. That's pretty epic. Yeah, pretty epic time. I guess then we're going to scoot over to Pinball News.
    22:17
    And this just in, more crazy pinball bullshit with the WPIN Action Pinball News Group. This week in Pinball News, I don't know, but I'm going to rely on Christian who took some notes. So what the hell's going on in Paulding's head? I got my head so far up Amazon's ass doing Christmas shopping. I have no idea what's going on. Well, it's kind of a slow news week, guys. But there are a few things. So Stern has a new factory that they are going to eventually move their stuff to. It is very close to their old factory, and it is huge. Apparently, the current facility that they're in now is 110,000 square feet, and the next one is like 163,000. So quite a bit more space. And I was thinking when I read this article on NAP Arcade that moving all of that shit from their existing factory to their new one, like I hated moving when I was in med school to, you know, residency. That was brutal. And I can't imagine how much more this would suck. I don't even like trying to fish Barlow's tennis ball out from underneath the couch. I can't imagine. I've been in that place several times. and to think that everything inside that building has to go to another place. I hope they got a lot of U-Haul trucks. Yeah, man. Call the J.J.P. and the A.P. boys and have them come over for some beer and pizza and help them out, you think? No. This year they rocked what? Two games this year, right? How many games do you think they're going to put out next year with all that hanky-panky going on? I think they're going to stick to the two. I think they're going to get one. I don't know. Good luck. They're going to move that whole place. I mean, because you've got to think about it. Shit's got to get packed up. If it's packed up, you can't use it. Right. When they moved from their last, I was listening to Slam Tilt, and they said that the last time they moved, it was a pretty smooth move. Like, they moved on a Friday, and they had games on the line on a Monday. Holy crap. Yeah. If you want your pinball news in a more timely fashion, just tune into Slam Tilt, because that's where Christian gets all of our news. Actually, I get it mostly from Nap Arcade. So thank you, Jason, for being so on top of things, because we certainly are not. And Slam Tilt. And thank you, Ron Hallett, for the USB drive full of Beavis and Butthead shit. Everything from episodes that were before it aired up until the latest movie and the latest series on Paramount. It has everything on there. Damn. I've just been in my glory. So if we can do you and Ron together in a room to talk Beavis, you should be doing your own podcast with that. I should talk to Ron about doing a Beavis and Butthead podcast. Welcome to Beaver and Butthole Beavis and Bughead Podcast You be all over that You be fantastic We could do like always Sonny does and do a podcast based on one episode at a time We'll just discuss that episode and that's the podcast. Just make Ron edit. Yeah, Ron's got to edit. Sorry, Ron.
    25:11
    I've got enough fucking editing in my... The Twippy hosts have been revealed for this year. we've got Todd Tucky stepping in with a moto to tag team co-hosting duties. Hurry, please. Oh, no one wants to buy my crap.
    25:29
    That's pretty damn good, Franchi. It is good. I have to thank Todd for letting us use his, we have a drop that pretty much makes it into every episode, which is the wow. Oh.
    25:44
    Oh. I think it's going to be good, guys. They both have a ton of video editing experience. They're both good on camera. I feel like there's going to be about 200% more slapstick humor in this now that Todd is involved, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I think the question is, is he going to be Facebooking live while he's hosting at the same time? I would think yes. I would say yes. When Will Alding was on the Loser Kids Pinball Podcast, which was a great interview, he kind of talked about what his goals were for the Twippies this year. He mentioned that he didn't know if the show would be live streamed. And Todd just mentioned the other day that they actually are planning on doing that. So I don't think everything is necessarily completely set in stone yet in terms of how the show is going to go. But people want to watch it live. I mean, I think a lot of people have said that since Will had mentioned it may not be and would come out at a later date because you want to see the action as it happens. Well, it sucks waiting three, four months or whatever as it is just to find out who wins. But, you know, then, you know, to have the show and go, well, you know, if you know someone who's there, they can tell you who won. Otherwise, you're going to have to wait. That sucks.
    26:53
    What do you think Parsons? Leave me hanging. Long pause. It says nothing about what I say. I think it was great to chat. The Twippies are the Twippies. It's, you know, it's a popularity contest. Well, if that's the case, then I'd win everything.
    27:09
    Yeah, it'll be fun. I will be there. I will have my traditional front row seat because I figured out how to get in the front row. And that is to walk in there and talk to Will. Previously, it was Jeff. While they're setting up. And then you just kind of sit down when the show starts. Love it. Yeah. When people start coming in, you just plop your seat down or put your jacket on the chair, you know, whatever. So you're already in there. You just claim a good seat. So there's a little tip from Franchi to you. Just go in the room when you're not supposed to. he's gonna have like 80 people in there like standing around while he's still trying to set up what the hell are you doing in here well frenchy said we get good season you're not going right christian no unfortunately i can't make it how about you jeff no i'd like to but i and it's just it's not gonna fit the schedule i'm starting to see a pattern here with christian's like he can't go to expo because his kid's birthday he can't go to tpf because his wife's anniversary all he's doing is he's planning his life he's like well we can't get married until this day because now I have an excuse to not go to Texas Pinball Fest. That would be his wife's anniversary. He's in that too, you know. Yeah, let's have sex in February so we can have kids in October and then I won't have to go to Expo. You totally fell through my master plan, Chris. Which is to avoid all of the shows with all of this awesome shit that I would love to be at. It makes total sense.
    28:30
    How'd you figure that out? What are you going to do to get out of the super awesome tailgate party You know what? That is wide open. And not only did I specifically take that week off, but the weekend following that is a special concert out in Nashville, Tennessee with Better Than Ezra that I think I'm going to go to with the Marquettes. So I have that whole week blocked off. How come nobody calls me? You're invited, buddy. Thanks, thanks. I thought you discussed that with the Marquettes. Like, should we invite Fred? Well, yes. Let's have our conversation, and then we'll bring him in later. God damn you guys. It's just in. Coin Taker fired as official sponsors of the super awesome pinball show. You guys can all fuck off at 11. Come on, man. You're going to be there. You got to come. No, now I don't want to go. No, I'm out. And you know what? I'm going to have COVID next September. I'm not going to no goddamn tailgate party. You guys can have your own grand fun with your secret plans. Parsons, you know he'll be there. Of course he's going to be there. Fucker! Of course he's going to be there. Of course he'll be there. There's free food. So we'll rapid fire through a few more news things. Chicago Gaming, their limited edition Cactus Canyon remakes are on the way out the door. It's about time. I have been told, though, that it is mostly Planetary Pinball Supply customers that are getting these in some locations, but the big shipments aren't going to go out until probably 2023. So that's the... Is it toppers that they have a short supply of? Is that why this technology... I don't know. No, apparently that issue's been solved. So I'm not 100% sure what's slowing things down now, but at least some of them are going out. And so that's a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. And then you guys saw the image on Facebook of a kind of a mold of some saloon doors that people are now thinking that they're going to put that out with the new code that Josh Sharp and Lyman Sheets code may come with a mod that you can add to your game to incorporate those doors that were supposed to be on the initial rollout of Cactus Canyon, but never really supposed to be. I think they were supposed to go in front of Bart. So it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, so it kind of was to stop you from hitting him, and then you'd have to somehow, whether it was a bash toy, I'm not sure how they're used. Okay, I like the sound of that. Yeah, man, it could be fun. Yeah, I'm sure those saloon doors will be out in 2026.
    30:42
    My mom always said, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, so I'm not talking about this news article. Well, what do you think about Multimorphic's new drained game? My mom always said, if you can't... Just kidding, just kidding. I can't talk about it. Actually, I can't talk about this. I've only seen the logo. I don't know anything about it. But I'm willing to learn. So I'm going to sit back and I'm going to listen to you tell me what I need to know about this fantastic offering from Multimorphic. And to be honest, I've never even played a Multimorphic game except for like the test one they did the very first year they were working on doing this. There was one at Cointaker. You didn't play it? No, I didn't. I never even saw it. Wow. Well, it was tucked into the corner in that main arcade area. Yeah, you had to turn around from the bar to speed. Okay, well, that might have had something to do with it. Apple pie moonshine, I couldn't get enough. That stuff is gold. All right, really quickly, because I know people have probably already heard about this, but it's a new game that came out for the Multimorphic P3. It's been made by Nicholas Baldridge, and he's part of the 4 Amusement Games podcast. And he also, I think he has a company now that may be involved with making games in the future. but he's put together a pretty interesting game. It's all about vampires. It's an add-on that not only has the digital component of software, but it also has a hardware unit that you plug in, and it makes it an entirely new game with cabinet side arts and a back glass and everything. So it's a full new game. It costs about $3,500, but it's got 15 vampires that you battle. I guess they are all voiced, 50 songs. It's got a bunch of drop targets that are mirrored that I've never seen before. Have you ever seen a drop target with a mirror on it so it reflects everything on the play field? Keep your eyes out for that. It's the cheapest new in box probably that you'll buy this year if you pick that up. I believe the reason why they went with the mirrored drop targets was because as long as you see a reflection in the drop targets, you know you're not a vampire. Makes sense, right? It totally makes sense, man.
    32:46
    Now that there, someone was thinking. so really outside of that there isn't a ton more news there are some rumors out there and i know chris you can't really speak to the stuff you know about but there are some potential upcoming games we don't have any inside track about scooby-doo is rumored to be coming from spooky rather soon there's another stern game obviously coming in the next few months it's rumored to be venom other titles are getting thrown out there like foo fighters and there's a new rumor by my drinking buddy, Glorious, that there may be a new version of Metallica on the way. Yeah! Either a remake of the existing game with video assets, or a completely new version of Metallica. According to him, the band went through the CERN factory and met with them and asked them to make another game. So, should be interesting to see if that actually comes to fruition, because Metallica's a pretty awesome game. I don't know if it necessarily needs a remake, but it would be cool to see what they could do with some of the new features that we have, like there was just a it was a dominatrix display for that for the last game right yep they could throw all the assets I'm sorry guns and roses that thing I had to think I heard you say dominatrix display I'm like what I didn't know about Carson's your mind in the gutter today no I thought yours was that's literally what my brain said and I heard him say drinking buddy Kaneda he starts off his episode with saying that we said something about him and then he says you must be doing something right because you're doing something right if people talk about you and then he proceeded to talk about us for the next 45 minutes that's exactly right apparently we're doing something right yeah and that is it for my news for the week hey news is news you gotta step it up man that's all i got because it's all off all the shit off your site all right well that's going to take us into our commercial break and coming up after that we will conclude our interview with mr george gomez and we'll give you the answer to the cliffhanger. What is George Gomez's desert island choice for a pinball machine? Stick around for the commercial break to find out. The Super Awesome Pinball Show.
    34:57
    It's kind of like Canada without all the bitching. Okay, well, it's nothing like Canada. Brought to you by Cointaker in lovely Sunbury, Pennsylvania.
    35:08
    This show is sponsored by Cointaker, distributor of brand new, full-size authentic Stern pinball, Chicago game, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Valley Williams parts, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on. And now, American Pinball and Jersey Jack Pinball, also available.
    35:38
    Hello, everybody. This is George Gomez, and you're listening to the super awesome Pinball Show, the only pinball podcast as cool as my signature. And let's be honest, my signature is badass.
    35:51
    Now, back to our program. And now, the answer to the cliffhanger, what is his Desert Island pick pinball machine? Plus tons of other juicy tidbits from behind the scenes at Stern Pinball with the exciting conclusion to our interview with Mr. George Gilman.
    36:10
    You know, the old question that I think you guys or somebody asked me, right, Desert Island, what game are you taking? Taking a Deadpool, dude. Cool. Yeah.
    36:22
    No, but I think, and, you know, hopefully, you know, maybe in two months it'll be taking a Bond. You know, I was just trying to figure out how do I own one of each of the Bonds, right?
    36:36
    So you still were Captain Fantastic on fire and make space for it. Yeah, I had some reservations about the Dr. No package. I won't cut corners with you. But I had some reservations about that package. But when I step back and I see it, now all of a sudden it all hangs together for me. And a lot of my, you know, do I wish the backlash was crisper? And I don't like the fact that, you know, Bond looks like he just woke up.
    37:04
    But other than that, I think when I step back, I was like, wow, that really came together. And the art on the side of the yellow cabinet is really, and, you know, when I saw those, and like a lot of people were taking sort of a 90-degree shot that has the premium and the yellow cabinet, so you see both of them, I thought that was awesome. And I put some of that on my social media. I'm very proud of the way that the whole thing is coming out. And, yeah, it's been a fight, but, you know, I think they all are. And eventually you get them, you get to a place. And the path is never easy, and much is that. The Aston Martin DB5 with your ejector seat, something came up on Facebook, and it was something that we'd never asked you that might explain why Stern's machines tend to be so extremely reliable. And that you mentioned that you had tested the ejector mechanism over 500,000 actuations, and that it's still running 24-7. Do all mechs receive this kind of testing prior to game release? They do. The problem is, certain pinball machines are reliable, but they're not perfect. And so we can specify that it'd be built a certain way, et cetera. And just like we make mistakes, right? Like on Rush, we made a mistake. You know, that board's done 100 of those eject holes, right? And this particular one, you know, the front edge of the hole is a little closer to the back, and he's got a pretty unyielding piece of steel behind it, and that thing was getting beat up pretty bad, right? So I don't, for a second, intend to tell you that product development is perfect. Manufacturing department is not perfect. Quality assurance is not perfect. We do try. I look at the stats. More often than not, we do get it right. Every once in a while, we screw something up. We do test the crap out of things. The difference is, the magic is that sometimes you don't test something that it's like, okay, it's like obvious. We've done this a million times. Like we didn't test that scoop, right, you know, on Rush. And honestly, until some guy on the Internet said, oh, you guys aren't putting a protector on that, the majority of the game was developed without a protector there. So what's the issue? The issue is the protector didn't hold up. It was an 11th hour addition to the thing. So I think that that's the stuff you don't hear about, right? You don't hear about that. It's also possible to design a test that doesn't reflect the real world. So it's not unheard of that, you know, you've got a bunch of guys standing around scratching their heads going, that thing wouldn't have a million cycles. I know, but that's not how it's used in the game.
    39:33
    So it appears people are doing something different with it. But we try. I mean, we have a room. If you ever come on a tour of the factory, it's called a click and bang room. And we typically don't let people get back there. But like a lot of the VIPs and sometimes we show fixtures and stuff. Those things run 24-7. It's a loud room. And we're testing everything. We're testing new hard codes. We're testing new, you know, just new, you name it, we're testing it back there. It's just kind of like running and running. We test the failure, which is interesting from the standpoint that we calculate the life of a particular device based on what we think it gets used in a game. It's kind of like when a car manufacturer calculates when your brakes are going to wear out, right? He says, okay, if they get this many miles out of the brakes in normal use, then it's okay to service the brakes. And so we do the same thing, right? We say, okay, the DD5 VWK is used X number of times in a game, and let's figure out a life for that based on when it would be okay to service it. So we design the test around that. But then to really understand what's going on, we let it go until it fails. And sometimes it takes years to make something fail. So I did the wing mechanism for the dragon on the top of the Game of Thrones, right, on the topper. And that dragon was flapping his wings 24-7 for years.
    41:06
    When do you just stop and say, okay, it's good? Do you let it just go? I was like, okay, that thing's been going for like years. but you learn so much about how they begin to wear right like it's got these little gear segments that pivot and you know if you if you go up to the test for sure there's like powdered plastic from literally the gear segments wearing you know there's a pile of powdered plastic on there but it's still working it's awesome yeah i mean it's so yeah we test things we're not perfect and And sometimes it's not uncommon. We had a problem with, I think it's Ghostbusters, where the Slimer mech was failing. You know, the cord on Slimer mech was wearing out. And I went to see the engineer, and he said to me, that thing's got like a bazillion cycles. I said, really? I said, show me the test fixture. So we go back to the test fixture. The thing he was testing was not the thing that we shipped. So I'm like, dude, come on. Yeah, all the individual parts kind of work. You know, I don't know. What if this test fixture tests?
    42:15
    You know, the one thing that should have been tested, my favorite stern boo-boo of all time is the Batmobile on the turntable. When, you know, after a certain amount of time, the Batmobile just goes flying off of that turntable. So I'll tell you what that's about, though. In that particular case, it's basically I don't have the money to do a die-cast, highly detailed Batmobile, so I buy a Hot Wheels Batmobile. A Hot Wheels Batmobile is not designed to be stuck on a turntable and hit by a pinball, right? A Hot Wheels Batmobile is designed to go down a molded orange track, and, you know, Dad gets to step on it in the middle of the night. Yeah.
    42:56
    Better than Legos. Yeah. And little Johnny doesn't care that, you know, it's got one wonky wheel and, you know. But we've run into this problem a lot. We'd run into it less now because we do so many custom toys. But when we used to buy off-the-shelf toys, off-the-shelf toys is, it's false happiness. And I'll tell you why it's false happiness. It's false happiness because you say, oh, look at this thing. It's beautiful. It's done. I can just grab it and use it. The reality is that you're always modifying it in some way. And it's not designed to do the thing you're doing. And on top of that, there's also availability issues, which have become more and more of an issue, right? So it's kind of like the last Batmans, we were buying those things on the Internet. I mean, we just, you know, they were like, they weren't in the toy stores anymore. We're doing what we can to build the games. I'll tell you another secret. There's probably, I think if I recall, five different versions of the Hot Wheels Batmobile on Batman. Six, because I put my own different version on it that cost $50.
    44:00
    It's super mega detailed, but it's sharp. Those were off-the-shelf parts. So when you ran out of one, availability of one, you would just move on to the next? Interesting. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Hot Wheels, like, they sort of excused making another Batmobile model by just doing, like, some gray pinstriping in the back or some flames. Yeah. They changed the wheels or they, you know, they mold the canopy in a different transparent color, you know, stuff like that. You know, the one that used to just explode was when I did Transformers, I had the Camaro, the yellow bumblebee Camaro. The Camaro would actually, there was a Newton ball, and you'd hit the Newton ball, it would transfer the energy to the Camaro, and the Camaro would run up a track and hit a stand-up target, and then roll back, right? And it was an awesome-looking toy, but I started getting calls from tech service that the backs of the Camaros were only lasting, so they were like, the thing would lose its trunk, you know, like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we were buying, that was a Hot Wheels. It was either Johnny Lightning or how I can remember. But, yeah. Let's talk about Insider Connected because we know that's your baby as well. And I've got an interesting story about Insider Connected. I had a guy post on our New England Pinball League page saying, hey, I downloaded the Godzilla Premium 1.1 upgrade onto a flash drive, but before I could install it, the game uploaded on its own. What kind of sorcery is this? And I said, you connected to Sir Insider Connected? And he's like, yeah, that is so cool. He had no idea that it did that. Auto update. He was just blown away by that. I'm a big fan of auto update. Yeah, totally. So Insider Connected is blowing up in a good way. I mean, we have a large amount of adoption. Every single day, more than 200 people sign up. Wow. Numbers are growing fast. We have more and more stuff coming. We have the universe of Spike 2 games is all connected, so people can do that. Everything that's shipping from the factory is connected or is Connect enabled. And I think that the world we live in, when you buy a new Samsung TV, you don't think twice about it. It's part of your setup. You connect the TV. It's a smart TV. Why wouldn't I connect it? And so everything we buy has an element of connectivity, whether it's a service, feature extensions, whatever it is, right? So Insider is the same way. Insider addresses not only the audience of enthusiasts, but it also addresses professional operators. It's going to begin generating a lot of data that we can use and operators can use to understand their business and understand how the games are being played. And, of course, all the privacy controls are there. It's all anonymized. We don't know who you are. We just know how you're playing the game, et cetera. But, I mean, look, I just talked about this in the IC presentation at Expo. The day that I had the kind of like anyone standing in front of a connected the Stern Primal Machine anywhere in the world. The machine can know who you are. That was like, you know, my mind, you know, I was like, that was so seductive to me because I thought, now I can reward you, now I can track your scores, I can do all that stuff. And I wanted it to be a really seamless thing. Like, I didn't want it to be wonky. I just, you know, like, go up, you know, scan your card. There's a great video that somebody showed me this weekend, this little girl, she must have been seven or eight. she's walking around with a stool to play the games at the show her dad had put her QR code on a laminated card on a lanyard around her neck they were all enthused to see her get up on the stool they didn't know she was going to scan our cameras were on that little girl she walked up put the stool down stuff reached over scanned her card pointed at the screen it was like I couldn't have scripted this as a commercial. I mean, it was the coolest thing I saw all weekend, right? She saw her name on the screen, pointed at the screen, turned around and smiled at her dad. I was like, whoa! George was like the Indian in the littering commercial, like his little tear starts rolling down his cheek.
    48:05
    Unbelievable. So, yeah, you know, it's taking hold. I think there's so much cool stuff coming. There's a batch of features that are very player-focused that are going to feel really new, and they're about extending play. They're about, you know, extending your interaction with the games. And so, yeah, it's a very, very cool thing. It's doing great, and people are loving it. And so we're going to do more. I mean, leaderboards, you know, the story of leaderboards, when we launched this thing, I told the exec team, I said, look, I don't know what's going to resonate. I don't know what people are going to like. I don't know what people are going to hate. We just have to be nimble enough to chase the things they're going to love. And that was the story of leaderboards. The internal tournament guys told me they weren't valuable because they said, you know, people are going to game them. It doesn't mean anything. People are going to game them. And it turns out they've been very self-policed by the community. And it happened. We put them up on a show a year ago at Expo when we launched Insider. We put them up just as gingerbread for the booth because we thought they were cool. And, you know, it was cool to see everybody's name with the avatar and all that stuff. And everybody started talking about them. And so that was a perfect example of, I guess we better put this other stuff down and give people leaderboards. The next question that I'm sure you guys are going to ask me, everybody's asked me, is when are they coming for the home? It's not that we don't have the tech to give them to you in the home. We do. It's no big deal. But the operator community is pretty much in love with them, and they've been saying, you know, hey, hold something up for us. So it's a different conversation, right? It's a business decision about, you know, how do we want to do this. Okay. That's a tough question, though, because I can imagine that there are a lot of people at home who have families that they want to compete with. And of course there already a leaderboard on the game itself right So you know who the GC is But for every game that you play it would be cool to see like a running total or a running tally of your scores and an average And that the stuff that coming to leaderboards by the way So a lot of these kinds of filters about what the leaderboard is tracking and all that kind of stuff is only going to get deeper. We were excited about Home Team. Yeah, Home Team, you know, it just makes the convenience of using the system so much listener, you know, hopefully in January you'll see the dedicated app and that'll take the whole signup thing to another level because right now it's clunky and we know this, but when you have dedicated app and you're downloading, you know, whatever the Android version or the Apple version, whatever, it's just so much easier. There's been mention of some special assignments in Bond unique to Insider Connected. What can you tell us about that? Yeah. So I think what I want to do is I want to tell you that they're there, but I don't want to tell you how or when. And I want you to discover them. And then I think that I want you to discover them. And then at that point, you'll be prompted maybe to the next level of your mission or whatever. And maybe your mission, we're trying hard to figure out a way to involve other people in the community in your mission. So there's some cool stuff. We're still working on that. And you probably won't see that until after we're code complete. or, you know, you may see, like, some crossover stuff between Keith's game and mine. You may see that sooner. But the secret assignments is a thing that, you know, we're still working on. Is this the first time you've done this in the game, or have you done it with a game previously? No, it's the first time. It's not the first time in terms of, I mean, it's a very common thing in video games, right? And I'm a big fan of Discovery, right? Look, I'm the guy that, so when I was a little kid, I had this castle. This castle that had knights. And I had played with this castle for, God, I mean, for a long time. and I had never found, this castle had a trap door. I'll never forget the Eureka the day I discovered the trap door in the castle. Right? It was kind of like, oh my God, this is cool, right? Unfortunately, that was the only trap door in the castle and it was the only thing I hadn't found because then I started ripping the castle apart trying to, it must be more. That was the other cool stuff. I played with this castle for two years. I've never seen this. Yeah.
    52:05
    That is cool. So this will be something that you might not publicize fully. It might be something that you're going to just leave open to exploration. That's right. I'm going to leave it open to exploration. I want people to play stuff, discover it. Now, when you do discover it, you know, I'll help you along. And honestly, at that point, it'll spread. You know, people will say, how'd you do it? And people will reverse engineer it, and they'll be going for it and getting it and all that. But, you know, it's just a fun thing, right? And it lends itself to 007, right? just like decoding things and secrets and all that kind of spy stuff. Listen, when I was playing Godzilla and we saw the newspaper flash in with a picture of Keith Elwin's size, that was unbelievable. I never knew that that was in the game until just recently. So, yeah, there are some cool things about finding new stuff you haven't played in a game you own. Absolutely. Speaking of finding new stuff, with what versions of the game Are we going to be finding some exciting toppers and multiple versions of toppers and some accessories coming with this game? Yeah, you get accessories. The toppers is a challenge. The topper is cooler than it appears in the images because it has a crap load of multicolor LEDs in it. I have gotten a lot of requests to do something with the Thunderball dudes and the topper. I may explore that. The art blades on this game are Ken Adam sketches. Ken Adam was the designer of the films. Ken Adams designed the gadgets on the DB5. Those are his sketches. He designed a lot of the environments. So I thought the sketches were really cool. And so as a designer, they were kind of geeky to me, and everybody told me that, but I don't care.
    53:47
    So the Art Blades are Ken Adams' sketches, and the accessory Art Blades are a different set of Ken Adams' sketches. So they have a similar look, but they are a different set of sketches. And then, you know, the shooter knob's not terribly exciting, but I'm going to have to have one on my game just because it adds more color and coolness to it. It's got the Union Jack and a 60th logo. Nothing too fancy. The armor is a 007 logo, laser cut on one side, and a Spectre logo on the other side. and the only thing that I couldn't pull off, that I wanted to pull off, is I wanted the LE armor to have that in it, and I couldn't do it because of some of the art stuff. But other than that, those are the accessories. And a lot of people want me to do DD5 topper things, and I'll tell you that it's not the Mando topper.
    54:46
    We've sort of set a new bar there. Yes. But it's also not, you know, it's also probably not going to cost like the Mando topper. So, and I think that part of this is, you know, the game is everywhere you look, it's a bit of sensory overload, you know, in terms of, you know, there's art everywhere and lots of color, lots of different things going on. And the licensure had asked me to, you know, you know, maybe some quieter things. So that's what the topper and the armor are about, you know. Cool. Do you have any idea when the topper will be available or the other accessories for the game? The accessories should be available right away because there's nothing that exotic about them. The topper also, I think, it's got a lot of LEDs. You know that, I don't know if you've seen images, but that rim glows different colors, and we're working on a missions rule relative to the color because we color-themed the missions, right? So if you look at the play field, all of the assignments are color-coded, and the color coding extends into the designation of the villains, the henchmen, the bondwomen. So if you look at the game, the borders of the icons are all color coded. Cool. So the accessories for both models are going to be the same, the Elwynn and the Gomez. Okay. I don't think you'll have to buy anything for your Elwynn. I think your Elwynn ships with everything. Okay. I think your Elwynn ships with a tapper. It ships with the armor. The only thing your Elwynn doesn't ship with is arc blades. And the reason is that the sketches really didn't fit. And when we were looking at just that play field, a lot of the, like when you see that play field, you'll notice that it has sort of an old school feel because it is. And so it was a very, it was a fine line to kind of walk. You know, it's got to look like a modern pinball machine, but it's got to respect where it came from or what it's alluding to. So, like, the plastics are quieter. They're beautiful, but they're not as over the top as what we normally do. And so that game doesn't have our blades. You know, it does come with the armor. It comes with the shooter knob. It comes with the topper, I think. And so, you know, you're getting the whole thing. Cool. I'm getting to work on my martini glass shooter rod right now. I want to make some cash off your back, George. It's better.
    57:05
    So let's be honest. The rollout of this game was a complete disaster. Which is very unlike Stern. Yeah. You know, I mean, it came out, it didn't come out. You know, okay, we'll come out this date. We don't come out now. The queen died, and then it comes out. So we're prefacing it with that. And again, like I said, you know, we usually, I don't say we expect more from Stern. We get more from Stern. Your launches, your rollouts are always, you know. So what's interesting is I watched you play some of the keys to what's in the game right now. Those targets around the rocket spell specter, That's a bonus multiplier on your jackpots when you start the multiball. But Stalling Spectre also lights the Goldfinger target, which then opens up all the Spectre weapons. So four of the six Spectre weapons modes were in the game this weekend, and they were in the stream. And I saw very few people getting them, or no one got them on the stream. And then I saw people getting on the floor. Finally, on Saturday, I saw people getting them. So it's kind of interesting. There's a crap load of code, finished code in there that no one was accessing because it's hard to shoot the Spectre targets. And that's by, I mean, to some extent by design, we're going to do a couple of things that we watch people play, and we're going to do a couple of things to help it. Like we're going to keep the drop targets down after you take them down, which will give you more access to those targets behind. But getting back to the layout, there's one target that's facing away from you, and there's two targets that are behind the rocket. and the only way you're going to shoot this is to rattle around in there, right? And I found it fun, and so I thought, this will be cool. You just have to kind of fight this and rattle around in there. And so, yeah, it's not to say that if it really becomes very hard for people, and by the way, I don't think it is. I just think it's challenging enough. But if it becomes really hard for people, we can spot some targets, you know, neighbor, spot the neighbor kind of thing. Lyman would be talking about that the other day because that was a thing that Lyman used to do all the time, which, you know, spot the neighbor target. And so we may do that, but let's go back. So, okay, so that's intended to address the it's not complete thing. On the launch, we had zero control of the Queen dying. So you're talking about a brand that is located in London. So they had a lot to say about what you can and can't do relative to the Queen dying. So it's kind of like we had those early photos that snuck out. You saw games on the floor of the show, right? And so clearly we intended to show them or we wouldn't have shipped them to London. Right. But when the licensor calls at the 11th hour and says, out of respect for the Queen, we believe the launch of the game should be delayed, you know, we don't have a lot of choice. And we understand. We want to be respectful. Right. That explains the discrepancy, honestly, because people were saying, why would Stern ship the game there after the Queen had already died? Right. But it sounds like the licensor was the one who pulled the rug. Absolutely. Hey, we want to be respectful. And this is, did you see, I mean, everyone here doesn't, you know, on this side of the world, people don't understand what the monarchy means to the United Kingdom. And all you had to do was tune into the TV and understand the impact of this. So it's kind of like, yeah, your little James Bond game is just cop and wait. Yeah.
    60:20
    If I remember correctly, I think what people were saying was that there was a slight delay. Like, she had passed away, and it didn't come down right away that the rollout was going to be delayed. So people were saying that Stern used it as an excuse because they weren't ready with the game yet. That's nonsense. Why would we—that's complete nonsense. We eat the games to the show floor with every intent to show them, and we essentially were told, no, you know, we want to delay it. And we don't want it to be, like, the day after the funeral. So they basically gave us the date, and we go, okay, we will comply. I saw some of that stuff. I just thought, oh, this is usual. You know, this is usual. Hear that, all you negative Nancys out there? Yeah.
    61:05
    You've done this for so many years now. I mean, I've seen you respond on the Stern Pinball Enthusiast page, and I'm always impressed every time you do it because I have to imagine that all of the misnomers and all the things that are out there that are false have got to get to you and wear away because you know what's really going on. Yeah. How have you not been beaten down by that? You know, look, we live in a world where anyone can say anything at any time. And that's unique to our time. It didn't used to be this way, right? Companies had way more control of the media related to their events and their products. I'll tell you this. I've said it before with you guys. We are all about taking the high road. I'm not going to go down in the slime and fight with you about it. If you want to be crazy, have a good time. I'm not getting down there with you. I know what's true. I know what's up. And I'm going to do that because, you know what, if I didn't, I'd challenge my own integrity. So I won't do it. So it's kind of like, now I said the stream is a perfect example. People ask me, you know, you're so incomplete, what are you going to do? And I said, I'm going to be honest. I'm going to say this is what's in. Now, the story I just told you about the weapons modes, I was like, oh, my God. We fought to get these weapons modes in. Nobody's playing with them because nobody's getting to them. And how frustrating. We should have focused on something else that they were going to get to, like villains or hedgemen or whatever. But I think that I try to be as honest and forthcoming with the stuff I tell you. Am I going to disclose company strategy to you? Probably not. And only if it doesn't hurt us in some way. I have permission to do so. I told people every time I'm on a panel, I tell them, just leave all the hard questions to me. Don't worry. Because, you know, the guys that work for me, they're like, what if they ask us about the Rush scoop? I got this. Yeah. Don't worry about it. And they're like, I'm going to be honest about it. I'm like, you know, you want to invent some, you know, he's lying. Okay.
    63:08
    I don't care. You know, I'm not going there with you. But they've been saying that for, they say weird, crazy shit all the time. They say, you know, I hear like, yeah. I mean, I hear, yeah, it sounds typical corporate speak. Okay. I mean, it's like, yeah.
    63:25
    You're an extremely rare executive in that not only are you well spoken about it and you can put a company like a front on things, but you also are honest about stuff. You don't try to hide it. And it's very obvious, which is why everyone loves when you're on our show, because we can ask you things. And because you're so high up in the company, you can answer them with impunity, really. but you don't hide anything and that goes a long way. I mean, people really respect that and respond to it. Yeah, I mean, I think that I do it the way I know how to do it. I don't know how to do it a different way, so I don't do it a different way. I'll tell you that I'm often the voice saying, you know, let's not cloak this. Look, I've been in some tough scrapes, right? I mean, the thing that blew up the original Deadpool design, that's some ugly shit, right? And I faced it. I just, I came right out and said, we had this problem. I'm not a fan of scooping it under the rug. Shit happens in business and life. You deal with it. Man, I really miss the days when the pinball reveal was you walked into a bowling alley and there's a new game.
    64:27
    Sure, Jordan. So we haven't street tested in a long time because it's so hard to keep things secret, right, because everybody's got a camera in their pocket. We haven't street tested. We've been doing internal testing. and we were just talking about this the other day.
    64:46
    How do we go back to the days when... Back in those days, sometimes the games got discovered, right? No matter what. It would happen, inevitably. We'd bury them in some bowling alley somewhere and the design team was there at launch night and we'd watch people play the games and we'd collect earnings every week and we updated code every week and we watched how the code would affect earnings and all that stuff. We did that. And ever since in the modern era, it's close to impossible to do this unless you've already launched the title. Now, once you've launched the title, now, you know, you'll see we clearly, you know, we'll put games at Logan, we'll put games at Interium, we'll put games wherever, and we'll do this.
    65:34
    But it's a different scene. It's like you're not getting any secret testing anywhere. That's impossible. Yeah. The best analogy is that Kiss couldn't get away with wearing makeup and not being known for 10 years these days.
    65:52
    Yeah, that's true. Exactly right. We only have a few more questions. You've been a trooper. Thank you for staying with us. Gary had said that we will start to see games available in November with the 60th looking like it will start production in December. So how is Stern doing with their backlog and your production schedule? So I know that pros are on the line in November, early November. I actually think the first pro is going to ship the first week in November. And then our typical cadence is pros, LEs, premiums. The factory is pushing out more games than they ever have a day. So Kevin and his people have done a remarkable, remarkable job considering the challenges in procurement in terms of getting parts and electronics and this, that, and the other thing. And so those guys are like, man, they are jamming. They are just, that factory is humming. The reason we didn't have the expo tour this year is because when we do the expo tour, it kills the day of his production. And he said, you guys are crazy. There are only so many manufacturing days left in the year. We've got a number, a target, a goal. and we got to hit that and you guys are going to like screw me up for a tour. And he's right. And so we didn't do the escort tour. We were like, hey, we'd love to, but, you know, no thanks. You know, that day, as many times as we've done it, you know, we only try to disrupt a part of his day. The problem is that it is a disruption in his day. We take over that cafeteria area and now these people are eating at funny times and their schedules are all off and, you know, they start at 630 in the morning and now you got these people coming in at whatever it is, 9, 30, 10 o'clock, and then we tie up the place for two and a half, three hours, and you got tours running through the factory. I mean, it's crazy. It's like how does anybody stay focused in those work styles and do the work they have to do with, you know, it feels like being animals in the zoo, right, with all these people looking at you. And so it was like, you know, Kevin said, come on, guys. And we were like, I was 100% with him. I was like, yeah, dude, no. I want the production day.
    68:01
    And you know what? Jack Danger does such a great job in showing people around. I didn't see the stream this year at Expo, but I imagine you could have hosted it and walked around. I heard it wasn't as seamless as it normally is, and I don't know. I didn't watch it, so I'm not sure. I was deep in my own stuff at the time, so I didn't really see it. But I heard it wasn't as, I don't know, as detailed or something. I don't remember what I heard, but whatever. I'm like, it's really more important that they push out a lot of great pinball machines every day. That's more important than disrupting them. Do you have any definitive plans for your release schedule in 2023? Are you planning on sticking just to two cornerstones, or do you think you might have three back on the table? That's still being talked about, again, because it's sort of a good problem to have that every time we do a new game, you didn't help the back order. You didn't help the backlog of orders, right? Because you just added a bunch of orders to it. So that's still being discussed. We're not sure what that schedule looks like right now. We are talking about it a lot and trying to figure out, you know, are we back on the three cadence? Are we keeping the two cadence in order to keep up with the backlog? And, yeah, so that's the conversation. You had mentioned on the reveal stream that, of course, everyone knows 007, the number 007, game. Yeah. That would be actually, you know, obviously highly sought after. And then you mentioned that you were going to auction it off with charity or some type of auction. Has there been any progress in what you guys have decided to do with that? No. I mean, so the conversation is, so what he's talking about is both the 007 limited edition uses the 007 logo on the ID plate. So it says 007 logo of 1000, right, for the LE. And in Owen's game, it says 007 of 500. So those two gains, because they are 007, the conversation has been that we should auction them off to benefit a charity. You know, I think the conversation has been that it would be two separate lots, but the hope would be that someone would have to own both. And so, yeah, that's what it is. And then I think that the 001 through 009 are also handled in a special way. I think that, you know, people, historically people have been able to, I don't know what it costs. It costs something to call your number. And I think the call amounts on 001 through 009 are going to be higher than they normally are. I thought some interesting things, you know, 003 is a woman. And so I thought it would be cool if, you know, a female collector ended up with 003. When we see the 00 numbers, right, and this shows up in Thunderball, right, in the briefing, in the Thunderball briefing, there's a shot in which you see the 00s from seven back. And there's a woman in the 003 seat. I thought that was kind of fun, sort of a fun thing to kind of play off on. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I wanted to call them the License to Kill Editions.
    70:57
    I'm not sure licensing is going to allow me to do that. They might be the License to Thrill Editions. So you're still deciding on what charity gets the benefit of this? Yeah, I have the logistics of it. I'll tell you this, I have both plates on my desk. Oh, very nice. If I was at work, I'd hold them up for you to see. I don't think I'm in my present. But if we were doing this and I was at work, I would hold them up for you to see. I may post an image of them. I've been reluctant to pull the protective plastic off of them. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the pricing for the game. So there's been a sizable jump in cost. And we know that inflation, we know scarcity of parts play a huge role in that. But demand has also gone sky high, right, over the last few years. So do you have a feel for which of those factors is the biggest driving force when it comes to raising the cost of these games? The single biggest driving force is what we're paying for material. I'm sensitive to the price of games. I'm the voice in the room saying, you're not really going to charge for that, are you? So we live in a capitalist structure, and we operate with the notion of supply and demand. But I think that the single biggest impact on the price of games in our company. I can't speak for the other guys. I don't know how pricing decisions are made elsewhere. But in our company, it's the price and cost of services, goods, and materials. And so if you look at it, let's say an LCD screen, let's say whatever it costs, that the price of that has gone up. But you know what else has gone up? The fact that you can't discount that I had to pony up that million bucks to get those screens in the house so that I could guarantee that I could make games six months from now. It's first come, first serve. And in the electronics business, since the pandemic, that's become the way of life. There is no more the distributor or the vendor that you buy from is going to hold them until you need them. That's gone. What has to happen is if you want these parts, you need to take these parts today, and you need to pay me today because I'm not holding them for you because another guy is going to come in, and I'm going to sell them to whoever's got them. Do they also ask you to buy more of them? Yeah, sometimes we do because I can guarantee that we're going to have those parts if those parts are scarce. If you're competing with a big guy, I'll tell you, here's something you guys don't know. There's a ton of parts in Spike 2 that are also in Ford cars. Who'd have thunk it? Not me. That's wild. Who do you think is getting first dib on those electronics? I'm guessing Ford. Is there a pinball?
    73:35
    It's the biggest big dog in the pinball world, but not in the world market, I would say. I'm just excited to know I've got pinball parts in my car. You do have pinball parts in your car. You absolutely do. If you have a Ford F-150, you have pinball parts in your car. Oh.
    73:50
    So, yeah, so I think that the parts purchasing is really crazy, right? You know, a transistor is, like, typically considered a nothing part. and, you know, I don't know, three weeks ago, there was a bunch of procurement and planning guys running around the building trying to figure out how to get, you know, some transistors, you know, for the games. And this is like a part that you never worry about. So, yeah, for us, you know, I know the Internet's going to say whatever they say. And, you know, like we talked about earlier, I'll tell you the truth, you can believe whatever you want to believe. Right, exactly. George, another pricing question in regards to Elwynn's 60th anniversary game. there isn't a known price, and the rumor is that the price will be determined by the distributors. This is the second time this term has done this before with the Beatles Diamond Edition. What are the benefits and the downsides of that model? Well I think the benefits are for the dealers you know to essentially kind of create a market I don think our pricing is affected by what they determine they going to sell it for So I think it about trying to give those guys some margin on things that they I mean they can look those guys they work hard They've got businesses too. They've got families too. And sometimes when you have a product that price expectations are such, they can only stay within the realm of that. So that means that the money they're going to make is somewhat fixed because we have to make a certain amount of money. they mark it up a certain amount and then the amount they mark it up if my cost is strom pinball's profit and strom pinball's cost and they have to mark that up and then they have to sell it you know within a window because there's a there's a limitation they're doing that for 99 of the products they're selling right there's the elasticity of demand if you will right nice like that i like that so i think that when you have something special it allows them a little running room to do something. And you're hearing my perspective on this. I'm not. I'm hardly a sales and marketing guy, and I don't know how they arrive at those kinds of decisions. I remember some of those guys getting in trouble with the Beatles one because they were like, you know, $75,000, and everybody was really pissed off. Yeah, I don't know. You're talking about 500 items that are going to be in high demand. Yeah, the Beatles was a lot less. I don't remember. What was the diamond edition? I don't recall. Very limited, though. It's very limited. The issue with the Beatles was that there were a lot of people that were not pinball people in the community trying to buy the game and being interested in it just because it's a Beatles collectible, not because it's necessarily a cool pinball machine. And in this particular case, you may have some of this. I mean, James Bond is, as you mentioned, an incredible brand. I don't know if that's going to play a role in those games. Lots of collectors out there. James Bond collectors, that is. There is so much to pull from with Bond. Being a diehard fan, can you narrow down your favorite actor, movie, and villain? My favorite actor, for sure, is Sean Connery amongst the Bond films. Especially, like, my least favorite Bond film is Diamonds, because I think it was clear he was getting tired of it. And, you know, so I love, you know, the first four or five movies. As I said earlier, my favorites are Thunderball and Goldfinger, Goldfinger and Thunderball. My favorite villain has to be our goldfinger. Yeah. Although, you know, I love, there's a great, so we do this, we do, there are two Dr. No scenes, obvious scenes that everyone will see. There's a couple other ones, but there are two in the game that are significant. There's a really cool scene where Professor Dent goes to visit Dr. No and to tell him that Bond is figuring things out, and Dr. No sends Dent away with the tarantula. And I got to tell you that the voice of Dr. No in that scene, you don't see Dr. No. At that point in the film, we don't know who he is. We just, it's the first time we've heard anything. And Dr. No in this really ominous sort of loudspeaker voice says, sit down.
    77:56
    Why have you disobeyed my strictest orders? You know, it's like, it's awesome. So we have that scene, and then one of the funniest things in the game is this scene once the spider is on Bond, right, he's sleeping and the spider's crawling up him. I think I know where you're going with this one.
    78:15
    It's awesome. You know, we do this thing where you make the shot and he, like, throws the spider off and smashes the spider. The video's awesome, you know, because the sound effects, you know, of him smashing the spider. I mean, those are two. That villain was cool also, but Orick Goldfinger I think is my favorite. That whole movie I think is probably my favorite. Although, you know, Emilia Largo is equally sinister.
    78:43
    You know, I love that Thunderball scene where they electrocute the guy, the Spectre guy in the Spectre boardroom.
    78:51
    Right. So Chuck Skye's model, the Spectre boardroom, and so the Ball State animation. Yes. The ball lands in number one's chair. You know, at that point, we've never met number one. We don't know who number one is. We know Largo is number two. And there's a guy that's been embezzling from Spectre. Let me say that that's a bad idea. Yeah. Exactly.
    79:14
    Right. As Dr. No tells us, the special executive for counterterrorism, extortion, revenge. And Bond quips, oh, I'd like to be in the revenge department.
    79:37
    Going back to the spider scene, did you ever notice that the spider is actually sitting on a piece of glass and they're moving the glass around so that as the spider walks across James Bond, it looks like he's walking on him? You can see this big, flat circle where the glass is pressing against his skin. Don't ruin things. Don't ruin the magic for me. Did you notice that those spiders were right on Sean Connery? Thank you. He got bit several times, but he sucked it up. He's freaked out. I mean, come on, that's a freak-out scene. The spider, originally, it's beneath the sheet. It's like crawling out of him. It was like, Francie, when's the last time you woke up with a tarantula? Oh, I woke up with one of those weird little centipede, water centipede things on my arm. the other night and I almost shit my pants because I have arachnophobia.
    80:31
    Oh, the guy with arachnophobia doesn't think the tarantula scene is that... Oh no, I wouldn't do it. I would not let... I wouldn't let a spider the size of a dime crawl on me. I'm sending you a spider. You're like Professor Dent walking around the room picking up the spider in a cage walking with it at arm's length. I'm the guy that like rolls up paper towel and then smashes it against the wall, then let's go with a paper towel because if it's going to be crawling out from underneath it, I don't want it on me.
    81:05
    I'm a big wuss. Here's one that might be harder. The 26th official James Bond film is rumored to hit theaters in 2025. There's a new actor. It's a complete reinvention of the franchise. You're involved with the casting of this movie. Who do you pick as the next James Bond? there are a couple of people in contention so I'll give you the people who they're deciding on to kind of make it a little easier there's a guy from Outlander named Sam Heughan I don't know if you know him Idris Elba I know Idris Lashana Lynch was 007 in the last Bond film and she was very good Tom Hiddleston who was Loki Superman Henry Cavill I think is how you say it And then a guy from Bridgerton, Regé-Jean Page, are kind of rumored to be in the running. I'll tell you what I would do. I would reach for a character actor or someone that we don't know. Okay. I would not go in the direction of a big star. You know, I think that if you're going to reinvent the franchise, reinvent the franchise. And I think that, I'll say my personal opinion on Bond villains and, you know, what I consider the downfall of many of the films. The downfall of many of the films is I don't give a damn about the villain, meaning that they haven't created a compelling enough, distinct enough character to make me care. So the problem is that for some amount of time, it becomes an explosion fest. You know, how many guys do you have to kill in the stairway? I don't, you know, honestly, it's like, it was cool the first three times you showed it to me. When you started showing me the camera from different angles on the same kill, I'm like, yeah, I don't know. So it's like I've said this for a long time about action films, my kingdom for a writer. Honestly, my kingdom for a writer. Pick a character actor, get a decent writer, and truly extend the franchise. I'm not telling you to get rid of action scenes, anything like that. Just watch something the other day. It's like a nothing Netflix action movie, but I thought to myself, the stunts and the action felt fresh. for a change. And I can't say that for, you know, I mean, it's like, I liked it when they went in the direction of Daniel Craig for a little while because I thought this was the fresh take on it. He's a harder edge Bond. You guys are really kind of painting it in a different light. You know, we're seeing a little bit of backstory, how he earns his license to kill, all that stuff. That's great. But I think they lost, they lost their way at some point, you know, and begin by making the villain someone I care about. Those early villains, they had a little bit of Marvel in them in that they like, you what they were going to do.
    83:51
    Right? Yes. There was the dissertation on how he was going to rule the world, right? And all of that stuff. And so I think I'd start with a character actor. I'm not impressed by any of those names you said in terms of I don't envision them as Bond. I'm afraid that it's just going to become like another, I don't know, just another action film. And go easy with you. I mean, it's like, get a writer. You know, a writer is not going to let you do 15 camera takes of the same kill and show it, you know, like that scene in the last film when he's in that Spectre facility or whatever it is. And, you know, he's like, got to shoot all those guys up. I'm just like, come on. I mean, I don't know. Do you think maybe like with the popularity of stuff like John Wick that, you know, 007 guys might think, you know, oh, ours is kind of a dinosaur and they want to sort of borrow from some of that stuff? Let's put this on context, right? I'm not sure I'm the audience, right? So I'm telling you what I would do. I don't know that I'm the audience. And by the way, I love the John Wood films. I think that those are what they are. But there's plenty to do in 007. There's plenty of lore and plenty of stuff that they could do. If you've ever read the Ian Fleming stuff, the magic of the Dan Jack film franchise, what they did, Ian Dan Jack, what they did was that they took the Ian Fleming stuff and brought it into present-day early 60s. When you read the books, the Ian Fleming books, like, everything's kind of there, but stuff is different. They were written in a different time, and the gadgets are different. The villains present differently. The femme fatales present differently. The Bond women present differently. Even Bond. Bond is a hard-edged, he's very much a loner, a man of action. He's not a guy that has had a particularly easy life. And so it's a different thing. Again, I'm not the audience, maybe. I'm not sure. I would love to sit back and love it. I would. I would like it to refresh the franchise for me. But I don't know. I just, I think it starts with get a character actor, get a good writer, and make villains and henchmen that I care about. Because I can't even tell you who the last henchman was. There's no Jaws. Yeah, and honestly, for me, the plot of the last one was so convoluted that I couldn't understand, like, what, wait, what?
    86:09
    I've had a hard time following a lot of the Bond movies, at least, you know, what the arc is for the villain and what they're trying to achieve, more than just like a very cursory thing. Right, let's think about this. You just touched on something really interesting. Dr. No steals $10 million, which doesn't sound like a lot, from a Chinese gang, loses his hands to, you know, an experiment with regular activity, probably becomes mad in the process. He's trying to hold the world ransom by essentially, you know, starting a war, right? Similarly, a theme that comes up again, right, It comes up in Yolanda twice, you know, tippy Americans against the Russians. Spectre ends up the winner. Thunderball, hold the world ransom with two nuclear bombs, right? Like the world's worst nightmare, the notion of a terrorist organization getting a hold of weapons of mass destruction, right? So, for Merchant with Love, get a hold of the Russian encoding machine, the Lector, right? So, our goldfinger wants to essentially have the only gold in the world that's valuable by irradiating the American supply of gold, right? So you have themes that, in a sentence, I can tell you what the movie's about. In a sentence, I can't tell you what half of these other ones are about. Yeah, right. When I made Xbox and PlayStation stuff, Electronic Arts used to call it the X statement, and the X statement was a couple of sentences, tell me what your game's about. And so it's kind of like if you can't do that and you're going on and on and on and on, you've failed. because that's also going to play a role in how you communicate the theme to the world, right? So we talk about pinball back glasses. Pinball back glasses are essentially movie posters, and in my case they are literally movie posters.
    87:51
    But I have to, from across the room, I have to convey something that's compelling to you that's going to tell you something about the story. And so one of the hardest things, by the way, you want to talk about inside stories, One of the hardest things for me to get across was the premium backlash. It took a year to get permission to use the premium backlash because it was difficult for people to wrap their heads around, bond upside down. You have to take it into, you know, walking on the rim of the crater wearing ninja booties, right? You can't look at this stuff in the context of our time. You have to sort of say, this is what it was, and let's represent it as such. Let's celebrate what it was. We're celebrating what it was in 2022. And the people who are a fan of the franchise will get it. Absolutely. And that was my point. My point is I grew up with this stuff. This is not strange to me. And I think that, and you know what? Curious thing. Nobody has said anything to me about it except it's awesome. I'm sure that somebody doesn't like it, but that's the case with everything. Right. George, you've told us before that you try to align properties with designers who are passionate about a license. and this time you were clearly the perfect choice. You know, it's obvious that you put everything into this game. Fans of the Bond franchise are incredibly lucky that you were willing to take over and save the day once again. And I think that your aunt will be proud of what you've done and that you played a part in sparking your love for property. I definitely want to dedicate the game to her. You know, she was a pretty amazing woman in that she had a lot of, just a lot of spirit and did what she wanted, lived her life exactly how she wanted, didn't really care too much about what anybody thought. And some of the things that she instilled in me is she's one of these people that never, ever doubted that I was going to succeed. When I doubted I was going to succeed, she somehow imagined that I would. And that came across whenever she talked to me about just anything. And so I think people need, when you're young, you need people like that in your life that are going to tell you that, you know, hey, you can do this. You just have to try to do it. You can do it. And, you know, when you fall down, you try again and you'll eventually get it. If you really want it, you'll get it. So, you know, she was like, like I said, she was a cool, hip aunt. You know, she worked for a law firm in downtown Chicago and she had bought this brand new 67 Camaro SS, you know, with a Muncie four speed. And she would take me in summers. I was like a gopher at the law firm when I was like 11, you know, 12 years old, whatever. And she would pick me up at my house and she would fly that thing down Lakeshore Drive. I mean, like she was in a race, power shifting this car, you know, business suit and heels, right, all the way downtown. And then I'll tell you a funny story. So I would just run errands and do things. And so one time she said to me, go to this courtroom, and when you walk in, you'll see a line of lawyers waiting to talk to the clerk. Take this folder and stand in that line of lawyers, and then when you get up to the clerk, you say, we would like to file for a continuance.
    91:00
    A lot of responsibility on you. So, you know, I'm 12 years old. I'm standing in line with all these guys in suits, right? And I get up to the front, and the judge, who's just coming into the courtroom sort of, you know, like to start his thing, he looks at me and he says, what can we do for you today, counselor?
    91:26
    Did you nail your line? He'd like to go for a continuum. Sir, we would like a continuance. That's awesome. Yeah. It's a lot of responsibility. It's more than just like, go get me a gallon of milk at the 7-Eleven. That's file a continuance. Yeah, it was funny. But yeah, no, she was amazing, and she helped me a lot. She helped the family a lot, and she didn't have children. You know, she never married, didn't have children, so she had more disposable income, and, you know, I'm the oldest of seven. And she came over about a year before we did, and so she was instrumental in helping the family settle, and she helped us a lot because she had more disposable income than my father and mother raising seven kids. So she was great. And she had a huge confidence in me that whatever I was going to do, I was going to be good at it. And she would speak about it sort of like, there's no question. And I was like, as all of us, right? You're growing up and you don't know that you're going to be able to do what you want to do, right? That's awesome. I'm still knowing. yeah no i i try i try to do that for my kids and so it's cool that to hear from someone who that i mean my dad says that stuff to me and it yeah it is i think it's really really important you talk about the notion of mentors and role models and stuff i mean she wasn't like officially in that role but the but the fact is that she was right yeah she would do cool things like i don't yeah my mother would never you know i don't think taking me to go see goldfinger you know would have been too racy or too whatever but you know the cool aunt gets to say yeah i'm taking him and a to the movies and I saw this movie you're going to love it. I was like, whoa!
    93:07
    You know, we called her after the first showing from a pay phone. Remember those? Yes. Oh yeah. Can we stay and see it again?
    93:18
    Sure, I'll pick you up a spot. Okay. Every pinhead who is out there owes her a debt. You know, for encouraging you to do what you did and what you're still doing. Yeah, definitely. yeah, you never know, right? Life is crazy. I thought I got out of school I was going to design games for a couple years and then go make serious products.
    93:39
    We're glad you didn't go that route. Oh my god, who knew? What are you talking about? Pinball is a serious project. Yes. Take it very seriously. I graduated from design school in May of 78 and started at Midway Games in October of 78. Actually, October 14th, so So, you know, sort of my anniversary of starting this crazy business, the arc of my work sort of just passed. And so, yeah, who knew? That's a long time ago. But look at everything you've contributed over those years. I mean, I saw a game. There was a pool game that I saw at an arcade. There was a video game with an actual pool ball, and I saw your name in the credits. Slick shot. I've done a lot of stuff, that's for sure. I had, for a long time, I got very lucky that I went into, you know, a manufacturing company as a designer, so to speak, because my stuff actually got produced. So for a long time, I had buddies that went into consulting firms, and, man, they would never, none of their stuff would ever get made. And so, like, after seven years at Midway Games, I had my portfolio was full of stuff that I had actually designed and was in the world. And those guys were just like, they had, like, one little stupid thing, you know? Like, you made an igloo cooler?
    94:52
    Did that take you an afternoon? Like, what? Like, seriously. You know, like, stuff like that, right? So he's just like, you know, I love igloo coolers, but, you know, I just can't, like. There's no stern Bond 007, that's for sure. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, George. We've eaten up your entire evening, and as always, you've been gracious about it. So thank you again for coming on the show. I think this is the fourth or fifth time, and it's great every single time. You know, I love you guys. I think you guys ask thoughtful questions. You ask hard questions. And I think you get it from the questions you ask me. I think you think into the work a little bit. And that's always important to me because I get a lot of not particularly thoughtful questions, you know, like questions that are kind of like obvious questions, if you will. And, you know, it's okay. Everybody's got to ask some obvious questions. But I appreciate the homework you guys do because clearly it shows through. And I think the reason that your stuff is so popular is because you think into the interviews that you do. And, I mean, it shows. Thanks, George. That means a lot, honestly. It really does. But we have to end this interview on an exciting note. Before we spoke to you, I spoke to Gary this afternoon. Oh. And Gary told me to tell you. Yes. And I'm not paraphrasing here. I'm reading it right off of what he said verbatim. It says, George, please enjoy your time with the boys from Super Awesome, and feel free to share our next title with them.
    96:18
    That sounds very nice. You know, Chris, like the human phishing email. Chris Franchi. We're really, we're Bank of America. We've lost your social security number.
    96:36
    We're going to close all your accounts. Our king has been overthrown and the princess needs money bad. That's right. That's the prince. Franchi, the human phishing email. Oh, man. we love you George thank you George thank you obviously for all you do for Pinball Man thanks for having me on adios Mr. Franchetti good as always see you guys love you big thanks to George Gomez from Stern for taking time to talk to us again he's always so generous with his time with us and he always is there to answer every question we throw at him and it's amazing how he's given us so much information always love having him on the show that was awesome man It's never a dull interview, you know, when George comes on. I could have asked him so much more about the game and gameplay features. So, you know, I apologize to everyone that we couldn't get everything. Even when I'm writing 25 to 30 questions for each guest we have on, it's impossible to touch on all the good stuff. So, you know, maybe we can get him on in a couple of months as we normally do and hit him up with some more information. So if you ever have a question for George, send it our way. We'll get that shit taken care of. Yes, we will. Yes, thank you, George, for coming on. You are my favorite guest by far. We definitely appreciate the time, and I hope everybody enjoyed that. He was very candid, and I'm glad we took this approach for this interview because we've heard the George Gomez interview a million times, including our own show. I think it was a good approach to talk about how he tackles design from ground up, and then we just threw in some bonus questions from there, but that was fantastic. So if there's another show in the can, I don't know who we're going to interview next, but I do know that our next episode is the rerun everyone looks forward to. Who has rerun podcasts? when it's as epic as our Christmas episode you can do it and we're going to add a little bit more to it this year so it won't just be the same show as last year yeah just a little bit more and plus we took out the news and stuff riddles here and there it was all old I took all that out I just got it down to the basic fundamentals but look for that in the next week or two to come and then we're going to be off until the new year so that's going to be it but I will save my mushy holiday shit for the next episode right so look forward to that It was good talking to you guys, and I will see you on the next show. Right on. All right, take care, everybody. See you. Bye-bye. See you.
    98:54
    Thanks for tuning in to episode number 39 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show, sponsored by the fine folks at Cointaker Amusements, who now carry Jersey Jack and American Pinball, as well as many other fine pinball products. If you want to write us, we can be reached at superawesomepinball at gmail.com, and if you care to wear some sweet, super awesome swag, You can find our junk at silverballswag.com. Everything in our super awesome pinball section is at cost. We make no profit off you because all we want is your Twivy boat. And as always, the original content of this show is copyright 2022 S-Hat Radio Productions. Good night, everybody.