8 days away from Sonic the Hedgehog! We are finally going to get to see this Jersey Jack and Steve Ritchie game. Is it the most anticipated game of the year? I don't know. Maybe, right? What do you think is the most anticipated game in 2026? It wasn't Pokemon. It's not going to be Fallout. So is it Sonic the Hedgehog, Steve Ritchie over at Jersey Jack? We're going to talk about the features that we are hearing are in this game. Maybe it's Back to the Future from Dutch Pinball. I don't know if that's the most anticipated game of the year because most of you won't be able to get one for years. And the nice thing about Jersey Jack is they're going to make as many collector's editions as people want. The FOMO and the shenanigans and the scalping doesn't happen at all. They figured out how to get rid of it. The way you get rid of scalping and flipping and all the urgency is you just make a really amazing game that people don't want to sell because it's so good. I think that's what Harry Potter's been to a lot of people out there. That's why you're not seeing a lot of Harry Potter CEs pop up for sale. And I think Sonic CE is going to have a similar sort of bolted to the floor in your game room kind of vibe going on around this game. We're also going to get Tales of the Arabian Nights from Pedretti Gaming. They're going to reveal it to the world today with the Brian Allen art package on the more premium edition and then the standard version of the game, which we've seen for like 35 years. And look, here's the thing. Is now the right time to release this game? And I don't think it is. That's why we were seeing this weird like $500 discount and this and that. And apparently like, I don't know if Pedretti was trying to do that to sort of drum up sales and excitement, but it's a bad look already. If the game is on sale right away, that's immediately a bad look. And we know that these guys are going to be panicking a little bit because they've tried this before. They remade Funhouse. They had Brian Allen on artwork and they had a 2.0 kit and they could barely sell any of them. And a lot of these dealers that bought those Funhouses, they were left holding the bag. And that's why I think they're trying to move these games right away. The problem is this. Who in the pinball world is so ignorant that they don't know that Sonic the Hedgehog is coming out next Tuesday? Like this is the thing that makes no sense to me. Why would anybody buy anything until you see Sonic? Why would you buy Transformers? Makes no sense. I think I'm hearing more and more people wake up to this reality that buying Stern new in box right away really is not the smartest move, especially when you know that we're literally a week away from freaking Sonic the Hedgehog. And so I'm excited. I can't wait to see it. We're going to talk about some of these features right now. But Toten releasing itself to the world eight days before Sonic, I don't know who you are. I don't even know who the target audience is for this game. Toten, and I owned a Toten, so I think you could blame Kaneda for not playing every game intimately, but if there was one game I played a lot of, it is Tales of the Arabian Nights. And it is a stunner. It has amazing mechs. And the game is as easy as it gets. Like you could beat the game in like 15 minutes at most if you're a good player. And I'm not so sure they're going to be able to add more to the game that's going to make it much better. And the other thing is this. This is the big issue. The quality, man. The quality of Pedretti Games is not up there with the other manufacturers. And I think a lot of people lifted the hood on those fun houses and it was like, man, I don't know, this looks pretty cheap. And so Bally Williams was like bulletproof. And so you're going to go from Bally Williams quality to this. And is it going to work? Is it going to like, I don't know, function as it's intended? Is it going to have issues? And I think a lot of people are just like you know what between what happening at Stern with like the endless wait for Pokemon code and Optimus not transforming I feel like a lot of people are like you know what I just gonna sit on the sidelines with those guys Jersi Jack, if you love Sonic, you'll be able to get one this year and you'll be able to get any trim you want. That's good news. We're also gonna get another Jersi Jack game this year. I think Van Halen will be on the line at the end of the year. They're going to have two lines going. I think Potter Fulfillment is going to start to wind down. And then we've got Spooky Pinball with Goonies and we've got Dutch with Back to the Future. It's starting to feel like, you know, it's really more fun to wait and see and see how this stuff shakes out. OK, so, you know, to put a pin in it, I don't think there's even a good time anymore to release a Toad-In remake. I don't. I don't think any of us that really, really loves pinball is pining away for these 35-year-old games that had their moment. They had their time, and they succeeded in doing what they needed to do back in like 1993 or whatever it was. You put those things in the arcade, you had a little short ball time fun, and you went home. And it was probably like 25 cents to 50 cents to play the game. It's not the kind of thing you want to spend 12,000 plus on, putting in a home environment, which these games were not designed for because of how shallow the code is. And then you're bored in like an hour. And I don't know how they're going to fix that problem. And when I got rid of my totem, I couldn't wait to get rid of it. It was just like one of those games where like, yeah, it's fun. Yeah, the fun stuff like the shooting stars and the disappearing magnet. And the Genie, all that's fun, but it's not fun after like an hour or two when you hop on a modern game and have real depth and real replay value. So, you know, let's see how it does. My hunch is it's going to be a little bit of a sales disaster, and I think that's why they're already offering $500 off. I'm not giving you any discount on Canadian Spinball Podcast. Okay, let's talk about Sonic. We've got some of these details that are out there now. I'm hearing that it is Steve Ritchie. Yes, we know that. Four flipper game are the two other flippers on the upper playfield, which is supposed to be this very big, clear, like Lexan upper playfield that you can see through. So does that mean there's going to be flippers up there or not? I'm not sure on that. There's also this middle arena that looks like you're going to battle Dr. Robotnik there. It's also going to have these tiny little LCD screens. I think there's four of them around the play field that can simulate or generate 16-bit graphics. Really cool. When you play Sonic, it's got those 16-bit icons, whether they're rings or the different faces. And I think that's going to be really neat. It's also going to have three inline drop targets. That's going to be fun. It's going to have a magnetic accelerator like No Fear, like the hyperdrive that sort of charges up the ball and then shoots it into the loop-de-loop. Hello? If we just get that, I mean think about it, if we just get one of Ritchie's like magnetic accelerators where the ball is going into a loop-de-loop and it's like, yeah, that's exactly what Sonic the Hedgehog needs. So I think this game, man, I'm getting more and more excited the more I think about it because it's like speed, flow, colorful world of Sonic, you know, fun mechs, fun things happening in a game. And I'm like, yeah, we're even like forgetting the 27-inch screen. Jean-Paul DeWin, I believe, worked on this game. I'm also hearing that Joe Katz is on code. I don't know if that one is true or not, but I'd rather Joe Katz be on this code than Keith Johnson. who makes everything way too complex. If there ever was a theme that should be a lot simpler in execution, it is Sonic the Hedgehog. So eight days from now, I can't wait to have a watch party with each and every one of you. I want to see this game for the first time when you see this game for the first time. I hope they give us the exact time that is going to happen. We're going to get a featurette video. I think Ralph shopped the video for this game. That's going to drop also on day one. And so I think we're going to get hit in the right way with a plethora of great Sonic content. Content creators went over there, captured content. And this game I think is on the line. I think it's been on the line for a few weeks. I think we're going to see this game at dealers next week, on location next week. And Jersey Jack I think is going to drop I think to I just mean this when I say this I think this is going to be their most successful game in terms of love I think the pinball loving community the enthusiasts the people that love both theme and gameplay are finally going to get the greatest thing in this game because it has the nostalgia It's the perfect theme for pinball. I know there's some of you older curmudgeon guys out there that are like, what's with all these kiddie themes like Sonic and Transformers and Pokemon? And yeah, to those curmudgeons out there, it's like we know you're a little bit dead inside. And the whole point of pinball, it's a toy to make the little kid in you wake up and say, yeah, that looks like a lot of fun. And I don't know how you can love pinball. How can you love the toy that is in front of you and not appreciate and understand how Sonic is the perfect theme for pinball? The one question I have is what are going to be the call outs? How is this game going to speak to us? Because Sonic doesn't speak really. He doesn't speak in the video games, you know, not like Mario and Luigi. So how will they sort of inject all of that personality into this game? We also know that Slash, man, he's still involved, baby. Slash is making some music for a wizard mode in this game. That is super cool. That's going to get even more attention for this game. Slash and Sonic, baby. I love the old school Sega font. They're going to have that in all of their marketing materials, the t-shirts. They're going to have that boot up screen. And once we see that Sega really big on the 27-inch screen, OMG, yes, it is going to create a lot of nostalgia and a lot of smiles. And that's the point of this hobby. If you reach a point in this hobby where you can't get excited about this, then I don't know, man, maybe it's time for a different hobby. And the other thing that's going to be very exciting about Sonic, unlike Pokemon, unlike Transformers, unlike John Wick taking two years for the code to get good, on day one, this game is going to be pretty much code complete. There will be a full baked game here. There might not be the final, final wizard mode that nobody ever sees, but for the most part, you are not going to unbox something that is incomplete. And I say this as like someone who's struggling right now because Killian loves Sonic the Hedgehog now and he loves Pokemon. And I'm so I feel like a bad dad. Like I got you something, son. And not even your dad is into it. And I can't even find new ways to enjoy Pokemon. There's nothing in the game. And yeah, I was wrong. I was given a little hint that last week we were going to see new code update. And again, it's the same thing. It's being held up by the license holder. Working with them is impossible. Well, if working with them is impossible or takes this much time, why didn't you just wait? Why did you release this game when you did? When you think about it, Transformers released like three months after Pokemon and has way more in it on day one. Why didn't they just like delay Pokemon and bring out Transformers first? It makes no sense. And yeah, I mean, if you're just not going to have Optimus transform, you could have done it. You absolutely could have done it. But I'm really looking forward to the next eight days knowing that we are on the eve of a game that I think is going to be Steve Ritchie's like statement game. I think Elton John was his first effort. It was not a bad one. Elton John is a phenomenal game. I don't care how many pictures Bond puts up where he removes or shows us how blank the playfield is. Bond, that blank space is what makes it fun. And what's that like feng shui, like the Japanese, like, yeah, sometimes the negative spaces in life are what make things positive. If you have too much going on and, you know, I look, this is not me making excuses for barren games that are twice as much money, which a lot of modern pinball is. And you know how I feel. I feel like we've all been gaslit. But what am I supposed to do? I've got all I got is a pinball podcast. How can I talk about this hobby? And I can't change the past. I can't change what's in these games, but from what I'm hearing and the sense I'm getting, there is going to be a lot of really fun stuff in Sonic. And I think it going to send a message to everybody else out there to Spooky to Stern to you know who else Barrels of Fun American Pinball I think this game is going to be the new bar And I think it good because I think everything about it I think what on the topper how the cabinet looks like when you see the Sonic CE cabinet and then you go look over at what Stern sells you for you going to be embarrassed for Stern needs to wake up and there's no greater wake up call than what the company down the block is doing. Jersey Jack is about to raise the bar with this game and I think unlike Elton, I think even unlike Harry Potter, I mean this when I say this, I think the one ding on Potter is the code is still a little way too complex. That is the one Achilles heel in my mind of Potter because it's like it's still you start a game and they're just everything's happening at once. I don't think we're going to see that. I think this is going to be the game that is Jersey Jack's Godzilla. I think this game is going to be so universally loved by the pinball community and without any shenanigans about getting one, without any chipped play fields, without any broken things. I think this game is going to fire on all cylinders. I think everybody's going to be very happy for Steve Ritchie. And I mean this when I say this, when I visit Jersey Jack, you get a sense of the culture there is just different. It is different. There's a reason why people have migrated from Stern Pinball to Jersey Jack. They wanted a new home base. They wanted to build a game without compromises. If you were to look at what's happening at Stern, every decision being made driven by the private equity investors, that entire company is basically all about what they're compromising with each game, what they're taking out of each game, what they're not giving you new in box when you buy a new Stern machine. That's what the conversation is all about. You go down the street to Jersey Jack, it's the opposite. What they're putting into this game, what they went and got, what's going to be on top of your game day one. It comes with a topper. It comes with code complete. This is why there's going to be such enthusiasm because when you execute like this, and Spooky is executing like this as well, the games need to come out with all the accessories. They need to look spectacular on day one and nothing should feel like you're cutting a corner. And that is why eight days from now, I think we're all going to be turning blue and wanting to do loop-de-loops in what I think is going to be Steve Ritchie's masterpiece in pinball. And you can't indict me for like hyping this game or pumping and dumping it. No, because there is no scalping. There is none. Like nothing I say about this game is going to make it go up in value. There is no up in value. I think what they're just doing is upping the fun, upping the quality, upping our enjoyment. That's what pinball should be. It shouldn't be about this arbitrary FOMO scarcity. You run at this stuff and then you lose your shirt six months later. Stupid. Stupid. I think this game is going to be all about fun, fun, fun, but with stuff in it, no compromises, and in the most beautiful pinball platform of all time. You cannot and you will never find a more beautiful pinball platform than a Jersey Jack game. The problem is for the last decade they didn't shoot well and now this game is going to shoot amazingly well because of who is making it. Who do you think helped Harry Potter shoot so damn good, man? It's not like Eric woke up one day and all of a sudden, no man, he's helping. This is why Steve's great. This is why Jersey Jack and the way they collaborate and the way they bake now with Tom Capara, Eric Menear, Steve Ritchie, Jack, the Abbas family. You feel it, man. They're like a family over there. I think the only thing they need to do more is like, Keeith, just stop. No, no, Keeith, not so much code. And then they're just going to have banger after banger. I am so excited, everybody. Happy Monday. Thank you so much for the support and it's going to be an insane week in pinball. I can't wait. I hope it doesn't leak. I hope we get to watch Sonic all together at the same time when it has its global reveal to the world. Peace out.