No sleep till... Brooklyn! Ah, who would like a 90-minute pinball podcast about Harry Potter rumor? I can't believe, like, shows can stretch out a single post by Joe Kamikow into 90 minutes of discussion about Harry Potter. So look, we saw Joe Kamikow pop into the Naps Arcade thread. This rumor is obviously true, I feel like. It's going to happen at some point. Jersey Jack Pinball has the license to Harry Potter. When this game will come out, nobody knows. Will they do it justice? Nobody knows. Is this good for Jersey Jack? Well, it is when Harry Potter comes out, but is it good for Jersey Jack right now? A company that needs to move Godfather Elyse, it's not good news, right? You're going to wait. Because I also think the Matrix is going to be next from Steve Ritchie. And then we're going to see something after that. Will it be Harry Potter? Will it be Avatar? Who knows? All I know is this. At these prices, Jersey Jack Pinball needs a hit. And we've been waiting for a hit for a long time. And if there's one company that can take an amazing theme and absolutely whiff on it, it's Jersey Jack Pinball. Now, I want to see Jersey Jack Pinball get back to a place where they crush it, where they put everything we want into a game. And here's why I'm worried about Jersey Jack Pinball. They've only really done that once. And the one time they did it is when they had Slash working with the company. And he gave them everything they wanted to make Guns N' Roses the right way. They kind of did that with Wizard of Oz. And they were very creative with The Hobbit. But since then, none of these themes at Jersey Jack Pinball have really been integrated properly and really deliver. if you're a fan of that franchise or that movie, they haven't really crushed it. It hasn't really been the case. So I hope they do Harry Potter justice. I think we have years to go. And I think this rumor is going to get pretty stale pretty fast because of the amount of time that's going to pass between now and the game coming out. So let's go around the horn and talk about what's going on in pinball these days, because Kaneda, yours truly, has been sniffing around Pinside. I've been popping in the threads. I've been reading what's happening at all these companies. And I love just going around the horn like this and talking about what's happening in the pinball scene this week. So let's start out with this rumor of a new pinball company coming out. We've seen the teasers like, shh, an amazing new pinball machine is coming. They've got these buttons and signs they're putting around at different shows. And I can tell you right now that I can confirm for you that this is going to be a brand new pinball company bringing out a game that I hear is going to be a licensed game. It's not a remake of an old game, but it's a new pinball manufacturing company. And I think when you hear that, I think most of us, when we hear that someone is going to throw their hat into the ring as a new pinball company, we roll our eyes. Think about it like this. When was the last time a new pinball manufacturing company announced themselves and actually delivered an amazing product? Think about that. It's been over a decade. And then think about which one of these boutique companies is actually making games that can even compete with Stern Pinball. And then the list gets almost to zero. The last amazing boutique game that got revealed to the world was probably The Big Lebowski, which was 10 years ago and a manufacturing disaster. Haggis Pinball didn't really figure it out. I mean, they're just treading water. Who else out there? Pinball Adventures? Come on. Who's actually buying the Puny Factory? Now that Andrew McBain has left this podcast and he doesn't subscribe anymore to Kaneda, I can be honest about the Puny Factory, all right, because I was trying to be a little bit nice. We all know nobody's buying those games. He's not going to sell 120 of those games. Sorry, Dave Sanders. It's just the bitter reality. And who else out there? Turner, Logic, Pinball. Come on. That Sushi Eclipse game is total garbage. I'm just going to be honest. Total garbage. You cannot enter into the pinball space and expect people to pay a price that's a Stern Pro or above and buy your product if your games are not great. I mean, look at American Pinball. They're still struggling just to sell a thousand of any title, let alone make the titles that people order. So if a new company is coming into pinball, when they reveal themselves to the pinball world, they better have games already built, already in a box, and ready to go. And I think they need to be transparent. And I think they need to show us they can figure it out. Because I don't think anyone's going to trust any of these companies anymore. And no one is going to back these companies anymore financially. We always see these new boutique companies come out and then they want us to kickstart their dream. Nobody's going to go in anymore and give deposits on a company that has not proven they can make games. And why do we need these companies? I keep feeling this way. We have like 8 or 9, 10 or 12 pinball companies right now in 2023. And only like a handful, only like four of these companies are actually executing and manufacturing efficiently. It's only Stern. It's only Jersey Jack. It's only Spooky Pinball. And maybe the Pinball Brothers are trickling games out and Dutch Pinball is trickling games out. But who else is really crushing it on a manufacturing level? Chicago Gaming Company takes forever. All right, I'm about to give you a scoop, ladies and gentlemen. Are you sitting down? So look, Canada always gives you news and then it ends up on Naps Arcade and I never get any credit for this stuff. I'm just here to tell you right now, a lot of new remakes are coming into the pinball space. We all knew this. We see the signs. The writing is on the wall. Planetary Pinball is working with Pendretti to make like kits for games like Whirlwind, games like Funhouse. So they're going to start upgrading the classic Bally Williams games. But the next move that's going to happen, and we all knew this was coming, is we're going to see more remakes of all the classic Bally Williams games that you love. And so that begs the question, what are you going to do if you own one? Do you want to buy a kit and put the new version of the game into your old game? Because people always complain that the Bally Williams games are too shallow. I would argue that that's not the case. They're not all too shallow. But now we're going to see remakes coming not only from Chicago Gaming Company, but from other manufacturers as well. And I think you're going to see remakes of all the classic games you wanted. You want Theater of Magic. You want Tales of the Arabian Nights. You want Addams Family, Twilight Zone. I think you're going to see these games come back again. And I think you're going to see them in the next couple of years. And I think it's going to create an interesting thing for the marketplace of all of these used games. The market is already saturated with so many titles, but I think for a lot of us, we're not looking back. Will they sell these old games? Absolutely. Like, if you make a modern version of an old classic, you're going to find people to buy it. People are in love with those old games. And there's no denying the fact, like, if you put a Tales of the Arabian Nights next to a Foo Fighters, people, and look at what's mechanically in these games. And look Toten shoots very well Toten got a lot of flow Toten got a lot of toys Toten has more mechanical magic than almost any modern Stern And so if you offer it up in modern times and you do it right and you make a special limited edition version or a remake of Toten I think you going to have a sales juggernaut on your hands. And then the question becomes, what can you charge for these games that have so much mechanically in them? These modern pinball companies are loving the new direction of pinball. It's all about theme, artwork, and software. The mechanical magic is not in most of these new games. It's just not. If you make a game shoot well, and it has good flow, and it has great code, and it has beautiful artwork, that is good enough for many of you out there. You don't want to see a disappearing magnet. You don't want to see a shooting star out lane save. You don't want to see a genie magnetically grab the ball and fire it back at you. Personally, I would like to see more of that stuff in modern pinball, but these companies do not want to do the effort to put that into these games because it's more expensive, it's more problematic, and that's where we're at. But at these prices, and I mean this because I've been talking to my friend Derek who's enjoying his Godfather, I still can't help but look down at Godfather and see a game that looks pretty damn empty for $12,000 to $15,000. And I get it shoots well, and I get the code is deep, and I get you're getting some satisfaction as you try to reach to a hundred times multiplier. Did you see this in Godfather? There is an ability to get a hundred times multiplier in the game. Carl over at IE Pinball has been exploiting this and putting up scores. Wait for it. In the trillions, you can score in the Godfather pinball machine. The score is so long, it goes over the box where the score is showed on the screen. Absolutely ridiculous. They're going to have to change this because if people play this game in competitions, that's all people will do is get to the 100 times multiplier. Really weird that Jersey Jack would even have that in a game because I actually like Jersey Jack scoring where you know this does this. When you play a Stern game and you're just getting hundreds of millions, if not billions of points, I always find it somewhat confusing on what led to what score. When you can actually sort of do the math in your head, I think it's more enjoyable. All right, so get ready for those remakes, people. All right, let's talk about what's going on at these pinball companies. So Spooky Pinball. I've been in and out of the Scooby-Doo thread, and I keep seeing the same thing over and over in this thread. The quality control issues over at Spooky Pinball. There is no longer an excuse for this anymore. You see some of these photos of people that are just getting their games, and the soldering in these games looks horrendous on some of them. And they really need to slow down and train people better on how to put these games together. There's no excuse anymore. The company's been around for a decade. They're now making like four or five hundred Scooby-Doos. And so whoever is in charge of doing the soldering on the coin doors, what's happening that day? Is he drinking before you hand him the soldering iron? I saw this other game where one of the boards apparently wasn't good. So they put another board in and they just left the old board right on top of it. Just sitting there like they didn't even remove it from the cabinet. They just attached a new board below it. And it's like spooky. Come on now. Like at some point, you've got to make it where these games are being better inspected, it where everyone who's got a slot on the manufacturing line needs to realize that this game and the quality of this company is only as good as the weakest person on the line. One person having a lazy day during manufacturing is going to put a black stain on your company. And I just hate seeing stuff like this this late into production because we really want to just start talking about gameplay and code and how beautiful the game is. And I think because there are so many people concerned about quality, it's got all of the people waiting for their games really nervous that the game I get is not going to be great quality. And if the quality isn't there, the other problem is this. You're going to start to see the price of the game go down and down and down as people bail on their slots. So come on, spooky. Call timeout, have another pizza party, and make sure you catch these issues before these games go to customers. So the other thing with Scooby-Doo that I saw in the thread is a really cool mod by Back Alley Creations, which is an apron mod that brings like that stonework to life on the apron that you see in the back of the game. So it sort of ties the whole game together. Really neat mod for the game. Almost looks like it was supposed to be part of the game and they removed it and decided to sell it as an additional accessory. There's only one problem with this mod. It's $500, people. You got to be kidding me. $500 for just a piece of plastic that goes over the apron of the game that says Scooby-Doo on it. This is ridiculous. You can get an Xbox for $500. I think at some point with all of these mods, we really do have to start looking at, well, is the effort there? Are the materials there? Was it this hard to make this mod? I mean, they're probably making these aprons for $100 at most. And they should be around $250, not $500. But that's pinball now. They know if you're going to spend $10,000 on a game and you want to make it a little bit nicer, what's $500 when you're spending $13,000 on a Foley? loaded Scooby-Doo pinball machine. All right, let's go on to Stern Pinball. What's going on over at Stern? So we did hear about the Joe Kamikow rumor a little bit more by Naps Arcade because Christian Line went on the Loser Kid Pinball podcast and he talked about how that cabinet we saw in the rumor was made by Christopher Franchi. And we've seen this before, right? Franchi's made cabinets for Wonder Woman, for Superman 78. And when he does this, he says he's used these mock-ups to pitch the license holder to try to secure the license to make a pinball machine. Now look, I think it's kind of strange, right? Are you telling me that a license holder can't imagine what their license would look like on a pinball machine? They actually need to see it mocked up and then they're going to say, okay, cool. I see my license on a cabinet. Go ahead and make a pinball machine. I don't really get it. How would that win somebody over? You're not really showing them the play field, the design, everything else. You're not even showing them a pinball machine. You're just showing them a cabinet with their license slapped on it. I don't think that would be enough to convince someone that they should go ahead and give you the license. I also think Franchi's sharing all of this with everybody because he has. He's released this stuff. I don't know. How's that going to win over a license holder if they see you sharing this stuff on social media before they have approved the pinball project. And let's face it, I don't think any of these Franchi comped cabinets have been successful in convincing any license holder to make the game. So why do they keep doing it? And this is the image that Joe Kamikow grabbed. It's an image that Christopher Franchi made. So it is what it is. I don't even care about Harry Potter. Good, we're going to see it in 2024, 2025, if it ever comes out. All right, let's talk about James Bond's 60th Talk about market trends This game is plummeting in value Everybody remember that Stern priced this game at Flippin Out Pinball will sell you one for I mean, think about that for a minute. If you bought this game directly from Stern, you paid them $22,000 with taxes because they charge tax when you buy direct from Stern, $22,000. And just a few months later, you can get one from one of the most reputable distributors for $15,799. You almost lost $7,000 on the game. People, wait and see. Kanae is giving you the best advice ever. Just simply wait and see, and you will save a fortune on these games. And it's funny watching people try to mod their James Bond 60th to make it complete. Like you paid 20 grand, 17 grand, and you got to pay extra for inner art blades, for mirror blades to go in the game. I think the best thing to do to this game and the best versions I've seen of it are just put black mirror blades inside the cabinet and change the T molding to gray or that steel color. And that's it. Don't touch anything else on the game. If you want to keep this rare 500 made Keith Elwin classic the way it should be made, just do those two things. Enjoy your game. And I'll enjoy watching this game go to $12,000 by the end of the year. Trust me, this game is going to keep sinking in value because it's the biggest ripoff in the history of pinball. It really is. This is a $5,000 to $6,000 pin at most. And everyone who bought it for more than that, I'm telling you, I don't care how fun it is to shoot. You gotta remember how much money it cost Stern to make this game, and it's not a lot. Alright, speaking of James Bond, there is a really cool mod coming for James Bond. It is a shooter rod mod that looks like the Aston Martin gear shift. And you can pull out the shift knob and pop open the top, and it's got the red button from the ejector seat from the Aston Martin. Super cool mod being made for the game. I'm not sure how that's gonna work. Are you going to pull it off when you're playing the game? Or is there some way to do it during a mode? But really neat idea. I just wish I saw a lot of these neat ideas coming from the companies themselves, everybody. We're spending a lot of money on these games. And think about it. It's almost like these companies are not even trying to be ultra creative anymore. They're not even trying to change the plastics into becoming more molds and things that are interactive because they're just saying to themselves, the mod community will do it. And of course, they're not even going to go after the mod community now because now they want to sell you $10,000 premiums and $13,000 LEs and leave a lot of the real estate in the game pretty empty and pretty plastic because they want to make it as cheap as possible for them to make the game. So they don't care if you want to stick a bunch of expensive mods all over Godzilla or James Bond. They don't care if those mod makers are making a lot of money because Stern Pinball is making a fortune by not going the extra mile with these games. You know, so in a lot of ways, it's a win-win for Stern and the mod community. And it's a lose for us, the consumers. These companies should be putting more in these games for this much money. Everybody knows it. I know I'm a broken record on this, but you know this too. All right. So closing out what's going on with Stern. the Rush toppers are finally shipping to people. So if you have a Rush and you ordered a topper, it should be arriving soon. Which begs the question, where's the Godzilla topper? I still can't believe it takes Stern over a year delay to get people their toppers once the game is out. I know everyone's been waiting for the Godzilla topper and now everybody's waiting for the Foo Fighter topper, which is going to have interactive toys on top that interact with the game. So when is that going to come out? I mean, Stern is just sitting on a gold mine when it comes to accessories for each of its games. And when they finally drop these accessories, they sell like hotcakes and they really do make the games pop. But you know what's nuts about it is this. This is why Stern is so smart. Stern will sell you a $13,000 limited edition game that comes with no topper. Then they will sell you a $2,000 topper. So now to have your Stern LE with everything it should come with for $13,000, it is a $15,000 game. And all of a sudden that's the same exact price as a Jersey Jack collector's edition that comes with a topper that has different artwork than the normal LE of the game that has rad cows and has a lot of other stuff. Stern Pinball is basically selling you the most expensive pinball machine on the market alongside Jersey Jack CEs. And ladies and gentlemen, if you put both of those games next to each other, Jersey Jack pinball's bomb and their build of materials and the stuff they put into their game is of higher quality than Stern pinball. They don't have the flipper feel where it needs to be, but they give you a bigger screen. There's just a lot higher grades of detail in their games. And again, just stand over each one. Look at each one side by side. And this is why Stern Pinball is Jersey Jack Pinball's greatest fan. Because Jersey Jack Pinball showed Stern Pinball how much money people will spend. And instead of putting a lot more money into the games, Stern Pinball just charged more. And they did it subtly. And then they accelerated the price increases. And now we are spending almost twice as much as a Stern LE used to cost. We don't get a topper. You can almost price these Stern games with all of its accessories to be $16,000 and nobody wants to pause and say, wait a minute, what happened here? What has happened to pinball? Wizard of Oz was $6,500 and now you can accessorize a Foo Fighters LE when the topper comes out to be probably $15,000 to $16,000. You're almost spending $10,000 more than the Wizard of Oz was originally. And nobody wants to say, what the heck has happened to pinball pricing? It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. All right, let's go over to Jersey Jack Pinball. So I got my replacement playfields for Guns and Roses. I gave Jersey Jack Pinball $656. I'm sure that money went right to Mirko. That's Mirko's cost for the playfields. It's absolutely disgusting that this slimeball Mirko is making millions of making crappy product. And then when he makes crappy product, we have to spend more money to get more of his crappy product. Unbelievable. I'm not happy about it, but I made my order. The playfields are on their way to Cointaker and it is what it is. And that's that. So if you have a Guns N' Roses and you want your replacement playfield, they are available and you can buy them and it won't make you feel good. And yes, 99% of us will never do a playfield swap. All right, are you sitting down? You want to hear about a cheap pinball machine? My friends over at Cointaker, Chris and Melissa, the folks from the Netherlands who came up with the Magic Girl kit, right? The kit that starts to make these mechs work in Magic Girl. They spent years fixing John Papadiuk's disaster. They flew over to Cointaker and they retrofitted their new kit onto the existing prototype games or the games that Cointaker had sitting in its inventory It cool I was watching the video of them putting the kit into the games And I would like to tell each and every one of you now, if you would like to buy a Magic Girl where the mechanisms now work, there's not much of a game there. You kind of hit the switches and that activates the mechanism. But there's no game, right? You're not progressing through a storyline. None of it's really connected in a way. But this stuff works. The magna flipping works. The levitation chamber works. The magnetic ball save works. All of it works. The hands come down and lock the balls. All of it now works. So here's how much money they are if you want to buy one. They have the one with the lion's saw cabinet, which they made, I think, 22 of. And then there's the prototype cabinet that has different artwork and different plastics in the game. And that one, I think there was four prototype games made. Are you sitting down? If you want the Lion's Saw version of the Magic Girl, it's $45,000. If you want the prototype version, it's $65,000 for this game. And I was talking to Chris about this and I'm like, come on, man. Just come on. Like really, really $65,000. And look, you know me, I have a soft spot for this game. I love how beautiful Magic Girl looks. And I was even trying to say, hey man, what about 40? And maybe I'll sell my Batman SLE and have this rare Magic Girl. But here's what I did. I went and watched the video of them showcasing all the changes they made to the game. It was like a 25 minute video. and I saw the gameplay stream of the game and I immediately said, no way. This is not worth it. It's just glorified artwork. I get that the stuff works, but it's nowhere near worth this money. And if you buy it, good on you. It means you have so much money. But the problem with owning these Magic Girls for me personally is everyone just looks at you like you're a fool. Like you're just a fool with a ton of money. I don't think it's a great story. I don't think it's a great game. I think this entire game is Zombie Yeti's bright, colorful artwork. And while it looks magical, it is anything but magical. And that's how I feel about the game. Like, I would think about buying it if the price was right, but $45,000 and $65,000? Come on. I mean, that's just crazy to me. All right, what else is going on in pinball? So I heard that American Pinball is sending out Galactic Tank Force games. I reached out to one of its big distributors and they said they are sending out three deluxe editions and three L.E.'s next week. So that's six games going out. That doesn't seem like a lot. I then asked the distributor how many games a week is American Pinball making and they would not tell me. It is still a secret. American Pinball won't take the Canada Boutique Challenge. I would love for them to open up the door and show us what's going on every day at American Pinball. I would love to see that from Haggis. We saw some behind the scenes at Home Pin. They put up some photos of manufacturing. And when I see Home Pin manufacturing, I'm just like, who's buying this game? Every time I see Spinal Tap, I'm like, man, you couldn't even pay me to take that game. It just looks so damn pedestrian and weak considering what's available in pinball these days. Look, ladies and gentlemen, there's a lot happening in pinball, but there's also not a lot happening. I think the main thing happening right now is prices are starting to come down again. There's a Ghostbuster LE for $15,009. That's prices coming down. Like during COVID, Ghostbusters were like $18,000, $19,000. thousand. There's a guy that wants to sell you Ghostbusters with the topper for $24,000. It's stupid. These are not $24,000 experiences. And I know you're going to say, Kaneda, you bought a Batman SLE for $25,000. And I'm going to tell you right now, I've already been offered $30,000 for the game. And I know that Batman SLE will hold value nicely. There are only 80. And Stern is the number one company people collect. And there's no going back. Pinball is a collector's thing right now. And if you're a pinball collector and you want one of the nicest games Stern has ever released, Batman 66 SLE is still probably the most valuable Stern machine ever. Think about it. What Stern machine is worth more than Batman SLE? Even though it's not a better game gameplay wise than Elvira, it's a better theme than Elvira. So Batman attracts more people than Elvira. Elvira's got 199 of the 40th anniversary editions. So that's almost three times as many as Batman SLE. And that's what sucks about the Elvira signature edition, which there were 50 of. The nicer version is the purple version, which they made four times as many. They really screwed over the Elvira collector because now there's like two versions. But I don't even care, right? I think ultimately my advice for each and every one of you is buy a game because you love it. Buy a game because you want to keep it. The days of going in on games just to dabble at the gameplay, that's an expensive venture right now. Like my friend Derek bought Godfather for $12,000. He's enjoying it, but he could have bought it for $10,200. Like he could have saved himself almost $2,000 and had the same exact experience. so it's really hard to justify going in early on a lot of these games and i think if you just wait you're going to be able to buy whatever you want and if you want one of these rare games you'll be able to get one trust me money will always open the door to a game no matter what anybody says and hey if you have 65 000 burning a hole in your pocket and you want to see John Papadiuk's magnetic hair magnet hit up coin taker because they got one they'll sell you have a great day everybody. Talk to you soon. No! No! Sleep! Please don't prohibit Auschwitz No, no, sleep Please don't prohibit Auschwitz No, no, sleep Please don't prohibit Auschwitz No, no, sleep Please don't prohibit Auschwitz No, no, sleep Please don't prohibit Auschwitz No, no, sleep Please don't prohibit Auschwitz We'll see you next time.