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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News pinball industry news recap August 2020

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 5m·analyzed·Sep 4, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Avengers Infinity Quest announced; Stern releases code updates; JJP hints at major upcoming release.

Summary

August 2020 pinball industry recap featuring Stern's announcement of Avengers Infinity Quest designed by Keith Elwin, Jersey Jack's factory relocation and Factory Finds program, multiple Stern code updates including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1.2 with DJ Mixer and licensed music replacement features, and a surprise call-in from Jack Danger of Jersey Jack Pinball teasing an upcoming game without revealing details.

Key Claims

  • Avengers Infinity Quest is designed by Keith Elwin and features an all-new art package from Zombie Yeti/Jeremy Packer

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin discuss the official announcement and marketing materials with 60+ photos available

  • The Avengers Tower ramp uses a speed-sensing mechanism similar to Burbank targets, where ball speed determines awarded points

    medium confidence · Martin describes the mechanism based on available photos but notes 'we haven't actually seen it in use yet'

  • Avengers Infinity Quest features a ramp that can be shot from all three flippers, which Stern claims is a first in pinball

    high confidence · Direct quote: 'Stern claim it's a first in pinball that can be shot from all three flippers' with ramp widened to accommodate this

  • Full gameplay of AIQ Limited Edition scheduled for September 9th with Jack Danger having exclusive, followed by Pro version two days later

    high confidence · Jonathan states: 'full gameplay is scheduled for September 9th for the limited edition. Jack Danger will have the exclusive'

  • Chaz Siddiqui, Stern technical support engineer, passed away in August 2020 and a GoFundMe campaign exceeded $5,500

    high confidence · Martin provides details: 'Chaz is obviously a well-known personality...voice of the 1-800-KICKERS phone number support line' and mentions GoFundMe details

  • Jersey Jack found surplus Hobbit and Willy Wonka playfields as 'Factory Finds' which sold out quickly

    high confidence · Martin discusses JJP's Factory Finds program: 'they found a bunch of Hobbit playfields...they almost sold out instantly'

  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1.2 introduces licensed music replacement with instrumental covers for streaming compatibility

    high confidence · Jonathan explains: 'they've added an adjustment for licensed tune replacement, which allows the licensed music in the game to be replaced by an instrumental cover'

  • Jack Danger suggests Jersey Jack's next game will be significant enough to influence purchase decisions in the coming months

Notable Quotes

  • “if I were anybody that was going to buy a pinball machine in the next couple of months I would not spend a dime until you see our next game”

    Jack Danger (Jersey Jack Pinball) @ call-in segment — Major market signal suggesting significant upcoming JJP release; creates FOMO and market anticipation

  • “it's just going to knock, it's just going to blow the windows off a lot of things”

    Jack Danger @ call-in segment — Competitive positioning statement indicating JJP believes upcoming title will outperform competitors including Avengers Infinity Quest

  • “You never get a second opportunity to make a first impression. So let them see it and love it and be surprised”

    Jack Danger @ call-in segment — Marketing philosophy explaining reluctance to pre-announce game details or themes

  • “Stern has a very good relationship with Marvel, I suppose”

    Martin Ayer @ AIQ discussion — Notes Stern's licensing strength with multiple Marvel titles (Avengers, Iron Man, Spider-Man)

  • “He was pretty much the voice of the 1-800-KICKERS phone number support line. So if you had called, then you'd very often speak to Chas”

    Jonathan Euston @ Chaz Siddiqui tribute — Establishes Chaz's prominent role in customer-facing support; explains why his death generated significant community response

  • “this is his third title but Iron Maiden and Jurassic Park can definitely be considered hit games”

    Jonathan Euston @ AIQ designer discussion — Establishes Keith Elwin's track record as justification for high expectations on AIQ

  • “I never had to use that service, I have to admit. I don't have many support call issues with Stern”

    Jonathan Euston @ Chaz Siddiqui tribute — Implies Stern has good manufacturing quality/reliability if support calls are infrequent

  • “you really need to build people for our industry. It's hard to just hire somebody off an ad or out of school and throw them into pinball manufacturing”

Entities

Avengers Infinity QuestgameKeith ElwinpersonStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyJack DangerpersonZombie Yeti / Jeremy PackerpersonChaz Siddiquiperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball hired Jim Petla as COO with specific intention to bring pinball manufacturing industry expertise to leadership

    high · Jack states: 'Jim's got a lot of great pinball experience' and 'you really need to build people for our industry'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern senior leadership (Gary Stern) personally announced death of technical support engineer Chaz Siddiqui via Facebook/press release

    high · Martin notes 'Gary Stern announced his parting on Stern's Facebook' and 'sent out an email...That's the first time something like this happened'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Jack Danger's unsolicited call-in strongly signals Jersey Jack has upcoming title positioned to compete directly with Avengers Infinity Quest

    high · Jack states 'I would not spend a dime until you see our next game' and claims it will 'blow the windows off a lot of things'

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo converting to virtual format for 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic

    high · Podcast title mentions 'Pinball Expo goes virtual'; Jack Danger confirms 'there won't be shows for a little while' and industry must adapt launch strategies

  • $

    market_signal: Jersey Jack Factory Finds program (surplus playfield inventory) sold out rapidly, indicating strong community demand for playfield materials

    high · Martin: 'they almost sold out instantly' for both Hobbit and Willy Wonka playfields

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.375

0:00
Avengers Infinity Quest announced! Pinball Expo goes virtual! Multimorphic adds Twitch Connect support!
0:18
Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine, and welcome to the Pinball Magazine and Pinball News free monthly Pinball Industry News Podcast. And I'm today here joined by... I am Martin Ayer and I'm the editor of Pinball News. And we're here to look back at all the events that took place in August and a little bit of the month of September. And it's a good reason why we're a couple of days later than normal. And Jonathan will tell you exactly why that is. Well, of course, as good journalists, we knew there was a new game going to be announced, and Pinball Echo was coming up with some news about their upcoming October event. So we basically waited a couple of days so we can include that news and bring it to you straight off the press.
1:16
Yep, so rather than delay these fairly major stories until next month, We wanted to bring them to you as soon as we possibly could. So let's start off then, shall we? Yes. Dive straight in. Right. Not beat around the bush anymore. No. And, well, usually we start with Stern Pinball, unless there is another manufacturer with big news. But in this case, I guess it's more than fair that Stern Pinball will be the first company where we discuss the news as they just announced Avengers Infinity Quest. It's a new game designed by Keith Elwin and his design team.
2:05
It's the second Avengers title that Stern is doing because they already did an Avengers game in 2012 designed by George Gomez.
2:16

medium confidence · Jack's call-in statement: 'if I were anybody that was going to buy a pinball machine in the next couple of months I would not spend a dime until you see our next game'

  • Jim Petla was hired as new COO of Jersey Jack Pinball with Jack Danger's approval

    high confidence · Jack confirms during call: 'Of course I was involved, and I feel great. Jim's a great guy. He's got a lot of great pinball experience'

    • Jack Danger @ Jim Petla hiring discussion — Commentary on specialized industry expertise requirements for pinball manufacturing

    Jonathan Euston
    person
    Martin Ayerperson
    Jim Petlaperson
    George Gomezperson
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
    Stranger Thingsgame
    Elvira House of Horrorsgame
    Pinball Expoevent
    Willy Wonkagame
    Multimorphiccompany
    Pinball Magazineorganization
    Pinball Newsorganization

    personnel_signal: Stern released four code updates in single month (TMNT x2, Stranger Things, Elvira) suggesting strong development velocity and post-release support commitment

    high · Jonathan methodically catalogs: 'we had four different updates. Two for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stranger Things update, and Elvira, House of Horrors'

  • ?

    announcement: Stern officially announced Avengers Infinity Quest designed by Keith Elwin with comprehensive marketing campaign (60+ photos, videos)

    high · Jonathan and Martin discuss official announcement with extensive photo documentation and scheduled gameplay reveals on September 9th and 11th

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern implementing licensed music replacement feature in TMNT 1.2 to protect streamers from copyright strikes on Twitch/YouTube

    high · Jonathan: 'instrumental covered simply means that it won't be picked up by the algorithms in the streaming or recording services and automatically blocked'

  • ?

    product_concern: Jonathan notes smallest spinning disc on AIQ may have limited target accessibility due to post blocking, similar to Safecracker issue

    medium · Jonathan: 'the target will be blocked by the stand-up post on the spinning disc so that's going to make it a little bit harder to actually hit the target'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern releasing DJ Mixer feature in TMNT 1.2 with plans to implement across all future games and potentially retrofit older titles

    high · Jonathan: 'this is going to be introduced on all future games as well and probably going back and doing it on some of the older...more recent games'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Unconfirmed rumor circulating that Jersey Jack's next designer will be Pat Lawlor instead of expected Eric Marnier

    low · Jonathan mentions 'there was a sort of a rumor that...the rumor was that it's actually going to be a Pat Lawler design' but Jack only confirms 'I heard that same rumor' without clarification

    • And they also did, well, Iron Man is part of the Avengers, Spider-Man is part of the Avengers. So, Sterling has a very good relationship with Marvel, I suppose. And, well, with Avengers Endgame being one of the most successful movies ever, I guess they figured they... The most successful so far, I think. Right.
    2:40
    I guess they figured, like, let's do another Avengers movie. and Keith Elwin was the lucky designer to put his ideas on this game into a pinball machine.
    2:57
    Yeah, so obviously it's a new Avengers, a second Avengers game, but it doesn't carry over anything from the George Gomez design. No, it's a completely new design. Yeah. It's got an all-new art package from Zombie Yeti, Jeremy Packer.
    3:15
    And from what we've seen so far, and we've seen a certain amount of gameplay, it looks like it's a very packed play field with some very striking artwork. What's your take on what you've seen so far, Jonathan? Well, you've got to give credit to, first of all, Keith Owen for the play field design, but also to Stern Pinball for marketing this game, as they had several videos available,
    3:45
    over 60 pictures of the various models of the game available as well, many close-ups and so on. So that's all very well organized, I would say. we haven't seen any real gameplay that can tell you anything whether the game is any fun but the layout sure does look fun it's several elements that are I'd say a fresh take on some things that we may have seen in the past in pinball but developed into a 2020 type of thing. I mean, the Limited Edition does have a spinning disc with a post on it, similar to what we've seen on Safecracker. But on the Limited Edition, it actually races like the Ringmaster in Circus Voltaire, revealing a subway below the playfield, where you can actually see the ball travel below the playthrough because they put inserts above the subway. Yeah, clear one. Which is something I think we've seen on Cyclone, if I'm not mistaken.
    5:10
    Well, we've certainly seen it on Metallica, on the Premium and Limited Edition there for the coffin lock. But yes, this is actually, that subway uses a three-ball lock. So you can see the ball stacking up as they're locked. And it's got some decent lighting in there as well by the looks of it. Yes.
    5:30
    And there are a couple of other elements that are... I find it a very fresh symbol design, and I can't wait to play it.
    5:41
    Yeah, I think probably the other key toy would be the Avengers Tower, which is kind of like a very steep ramp with a magnet at the end which has some octos on the way up to it and I think we haven't actually seen it in use yet but from the description it sounds like it's used like a Burk-Chalbury target whereby the speed of the ball is measured as it goes up the tower and the water points or features according to how fast you hit it but the ball goes up to the top, gets grabbed by a magnet there's a little lock animation or other animation takes place and then the ball is released back down onto the playfield. Right. So, and it has locked lights on the side. So, it's a nice, it's a fairly simple mechanism. The only moving part really is the ball in it. The rest of it is electrical with the magnet at the top. But it looks like a nice feature. Right. And the other, elsewhere it's kind of existing mechanisms, things like spinners and captive ball and up-kicker on the right-hand side for the L.E. and Premium, which kicks it onto ramps. Also, there are quite a lot of ramps on this game, particularly on the higher versions. Yes. So there's wire forms all over the place, and I think two of them lead to the in-lane on the right-hand side. so there are multiple ways of getting the ball back and yes it's a three flipper game so the upper left flipper has quite a few shots for it the key one I guess is probably the side ramp which interestingly appears to be able to be shot through is that the one that can be shot from all three flippers or is it a different ramp I can't remember now? No that's a right ramp and Stern claim it's a first in pinball that can be shot from all three flippers indeed. They actually made the ramp a little bit wider so that it can be shot from all three flippers. So you can also backhand it with the right flipper.
    7:54
    Not a very spectacular first, I would say, but I suppose the game makes up for that in other features, I suppose.
    8:06
    it has a very, very colorful art package, very busy as well, but not as busy as I've seen on some other games. So I'd say there's a good balance. Since it's The Avengers, it's also worth noting that this is based on the comic book version of Avengers and not on the movie.
    8:31
    Yes, good point. which I suppose gave Zombie Yeti, the artist a little bit of more how do you say creative freeway but it looks like a very interesting layout and we have seen some videos or clips but basically those are almost like music video clips with very short shots where you see a ball traveling or a flipper flipping but you don't get any idea of what gameplay is actually like so yes of course the game is it's a pinball machine we see a ball traveling we see multi-balls going
    9:20
    um well really the videos were put out there to show you the features that are in the game so they'll show you the spinning disc and the disc rising up several times normally you'll get several shots of that happening so very clear what what the extra features or what the features in this game are compared to other games yeah the marketing the marketing videos so yeah you're not going to see full gameplay that is Sean's so and full gameplay is scheduled for September 9th for the limited edition. Jack Danger will have the exclusive and two days later the pro version will be on his show as well. Right and the the pro model doesn't have the rising disc that's a premium limited edition feature it does have a spinning disc. Yes. And it has a ramp viewer and a couple of other things that are on the right-hand side. The up-kicker there is now a stand-up target on that, so that doesn't do the same kind of things. And it also doesn't have the under-playfield look that the premium and elite will have. But even so, it still looks an interesting game. Yeah, absolutely. The only thing that I'm a little bit... Well, worried isn't the word because I really don't worry about it, but it appears to me the spinning disc with the standard post on it, that's a rather small disc, which means that the range of the post moving around is, I'd say probably three ball sizes, so to speak. there's a target behind that disc that you have to hit but chances are most of the time the target will be blocked by the stand-up post on the spinning disc so that's going to make it a little bit harder to actually hit the target I suppose yes it's a very kind of thing you get if you're playing as you mentioned safecracker you're trying to shoot the ball across the playfield so you can get it into the kicker on the left hand side quite often that post is in the way and it ends up spinning the disc and blocking the ball instead yeah but yeah that's part of the uh part of the fun of pinball yeah with something in the way the ball is wild and so are the toys on the playfield yeah all right um i was a little disappointed with the look of that post i thought it could have been a bit more interesting especially considering that the first iteration the The more recent iteration of that would be the Tesseract from the earlier Avengers game, I can say the original one, but it is also the original, which had two posts and a model on top as well, a spinning model, which made it more of a feature of the game. But this doesn't have that, it's a single post and no toy. But, you know, it can make a good feature out of the fact that they sense the direction and the speed of the spin in order to give you the appropriate awards. So it's not just a switch, but they do a bit more with it than just that by the looks of it. But we'll wait to see on the gameplay exactly how that works. Right. So I'm also curious, and we still don't know that. Obviously the Avengers is a group of superheroes. Personally, I have no clue who they are. I know of Hulk, and I recognize Captain America, and I think Iron Man, and that's about it. There's a couple of others, I have no idea who they are, let alone the villains in the game. yeah obviously there are plenty of uh marvel universe fans out there who know all about the avengers and the characters in it i'm unlike you i i mean i've seen i think i've seen all the movies so uh reasonably familiar with the with the storyline but i don't know quite where this one is coming from or indeed who who some of the characters are like you but i do know that um on the playfield there are a lot more characters depicted than there appear to be, sort of have modes or features for them in the wall set. But we're yet to see. And of course this comes out at a time when we just had the death of Chadwick Boseman, the star of Black Panther. And that I think led to a slight delay in the announcement of this game. in respect for that. And there are references to Black Panther and that movie and that part of the storyline in the artwork on the play field as well. I don't know what else there is in there beyond that, whether the Black Panther is one of the key characters in the game or not. Right. So, well, so far we've only seen photos, but we haven't even seen a rule set card with game rules, so we still don't know. No, we haven't seen any display animations or anything like that either. Yeah, so far it's still a guessing game of what the object of the game will be and how it will play. Obviously, that's also a fun part. the risk could be that people come up with rules that are far more interesting than what the game eventually turns out to be although with Keith Elwin on design he's got a very good track record for producing hit games at Stern Pinball, this is his third title but Iron Maiden and Jurassic Park can definitely be considered hit games I suppose so So, obviously, the expectations are high.
    15:38
    Yeah, and this one's just come out fairly soon after Jurassic Park. It hasn't been a sort of 18-month, I don't think, period between that game and the announcement of this one, which is the sort of normal development time for a new Cornerstone game, which is what this is for Stern. Right. I have to admit I wasn't expecting this one to come out until fairly recently because we're still expecting well we haven't had a Steve Ritchie game for a while have we so we're the last one was Black Knight yes quite a while but then usually there's like two years between a Steve Ritchie game which means that all the designers at some point get to go again so to speak Yeah, exactly, yeah. It's like Keith is being rather prolific with his productions at the moment, so that's good for Stern, because they want to keep producing three cornerstone titles a year. And obviously they introduced Stranger Things as well into the mix at the beginning of the year, so that's coming from Brian Eddy, so that was a new designer on the team. right and then we had Turtles which is a John Board game so prior to that we had Jurassic Park so Steve Ritchie expected to be next in line instead we get Keith Elwin again yeah that's right yeah and not sure whether it could very well be that Steve Ritchie's next game is ready to go but that's when management decided no we're going with the Elwin game first because for whatever reason and possibly COVID-related.
    17:28
    So, or it could be that Steve is not done with his design. That's all speculation at this point, which we're not going to do, so we'd rather stick to the facts. That's all that will come out when Stern are ready to bring it out.
    17:46
    Right, so, sticking to the facts, and well, there's a bit of sad news, also related to Stern Pinball, as Chaz Siddiqui, a technical support engineer at Stern Pinball, passed away.
    18:07
    Do you have more details on that? Well, I don't have the details about the cause of death, but Chaz is obviously a well-known personality for anybody who's had any reason to ring up Stern to get technical support. He was pretty much the voice of the 1-800-KICKERS phone number support line. So if you had called, then you'd very often speak to Chas, and he was a real font of knowledge, and I never had to use that service, I have to admit.
    18:41
    I don't have many support call issues with Stern. But from those who have, they've all been unanimous in their praise for his helpfulness and knowledge and the ability to resolve issues very, very quickly. And his death is going to leave a big hole in the support side at Stern Pimple and he will be greatly missed. There is a GoFundMe campaign being run, this is still running, in order to help his widow and children with their college fees. they were looking for $3,000 for that campaign and at the moment I just had a look before we started this recording and it was just standing at a little over $5,500 so plenty of love and support there for Chaz and he will be very sorely missed I'm sure by many others in the pinball community. Yeah, personally I never dealt with Chaz but I found it very interesting, so to speak, that Gary Stern announced his parting on Stern's Facebook. I think he even sent out an email. It's called a press release. Yeah.
    20:03
    As far as I know, that's the first time something like this happened. I'm not sure how many Stern employees have passed away in previous, the existing of the company, but never seen something like this. So Chess must have been a really public figure and appreciated by many for his work for the company. Absolutely. Including Jerry Stern and the other ones. Yeah. Okay. It was sad news.
    20:40
    But on to slightly more pleasant matters with Stern having, although they're bringing out a new game, they haven't abandoned the previous ones and they've brought out quite a lot of code updates in the month of August. In fact, we had four different updates. Two for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
    21:01
    Stranger Things update, and Elvira, House of Horrors. That's also got a new version. If you don't mind, I'll just rattle through some brief summaries of what those are. I'll keep it brief because I have none of those games and I couldn't care less. Yeah, well, okay, fair enough. But if you're a player of these games or looking to play them, then... Oh, I'm definitely looking to play them, don't get me wrong, but it's very hard to find an Elvira on location here in Europe, in Europe or even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, but okay, let's hear what are the upgrades.
    21:41
    Okay, well, let's start with Stranger Things. That's now version 0.98, so almost at version one. Yeah, it was a fairly minor update, it just brought some new display effects and some videos, so more assets in there. Some adjustments for jackpot values for send it back multiball, like the fire multiball, total isolation 2 multiball. I can hear Jonathan's really drawn in by all these details and is keeping himself busy. And has some new sound effects, S&M priorities and level balancing and things like that. Yeah, if you hear something in the background, that's me.
    22:21
    If you hear it in the foreground, then you have to be worried because that's me. version 1.1.1 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out at the beginning of August and version 1.2 came out on the 20th of August now those have got all the usual things various messages and lighting effects and bug fixes some new rules for Final Battle Challenge which is the kind of wizard mode allowing you to select a turtle and change its power up well not with that attitude you some minor rule changes amongst the rest of the game for the hellbird bonuses if that's something you rely on in getting your huge bonus scores previously they were held over in an unmultiplied method and now they're multiplied exciting eh and virtual 1.2 though which came out add some bonus calculation fixes and frenzy carryover bonus fixes, change some timers so they stop during some video display effects, which is helpful, so you don't run out of time before you even start playing one of the episodes. And I think probably the two really interesting things, and that's something which is, I think, going to be carried over into future games, is they introduced this thing called the DJ Mixer. Yeah, that's actually very interesting. Well, as a DJ mixer yourself, Jonathan, I'm sure you'd appreciate the fact that you can now access all the music in the game outside of the actual playing it. You can hold in the flipper buttons, press the start button, and in the menu where you can select the various different play modes, which is another recent introduction, where you can do team playing or one player against two others or three others. in there you can select this DJ mixer which gives you either all the songs or various playlists which can be played in order or randomized so basically you can play the music of the modes that you never got to yeah, that's right the ones where the music ends halfway through because it's a timed mode and there's a lot more to the music that you never get to hear so now you can have that playing in the background as ambient music which is a nice feature and this is going to be introduced on all future games as well and probably going back and doing it on some of the older or more recent games anyway where they've got the current operating system the other final thing that they added in that which is a bugbear that we've actually raised on this podcast before where streamers have had problems with their streams being taken down from Twitch or YouTube because they contain licensed music, which the record company who owns the rights has blocked. And they ended up having a strike against them. Well, in this version 1.2 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they've added an adjustment for licensed tune replacement, which allows the licensed music in the game to be replaced by an instrumental cover. That still raises some questions with me though, because it's not like an instrumental cover. If you would be streaming instrumental cover music, there's still composers that need to be paid for that music. It's not the master anymore of EMI or Warner or whoever owns the master recording of the song by a particular artist. But you still have to deal with composers and composer associations, publishers and all that kind of stuff. Yes, that's true. But that original music is licensed for use in the game. so that should all have been covered by the license to use the original music the fact that they've now got an instrumental covered simply means that it won't be picked up by the algorithms in the streaming or recording services and automatically blocked, at least that's the idea it will remain to be seen whether it's 100% foolproof but you'd think they would have tested it before they added that but it's a good nod towards streamers and help them get around it's a problem. Smart moves, because it makes sure, Stern making sure that their games are going to be streamed. Yeah, and the recordings will stay there and not be taken down. Yeah, which might be a problem for other manufacturers. So we'll see whether that becomes something which they also do something similar in their software. Finally, Alvaro's House of Horrors code up to version 0.99. so they're all getting up to version 1 now and some fairly minor things some tests in there for the topper for the lamps and all a new haunt mode according to the release notes it says they came from space which if it's based on a Corny or Bee movie then it would probably be they came from outer space but maybe they changed it, I don't know and some further away yeah that's right just anywhere in space well it could have come from in the space as well and some more speech for the phone the fiend feature and those are the four software updates that come from Stern in the month of August ok I guess that rounds it up for Stern Pinball I think so let's move next door let's cross the street to Dirty Jack Pinball.
    28:31
    Yes, obviously moved their factory from Lakewood up to Elk Grove Village. I've seen photos from the factory with an impressive lineup of Willy Wonka games on the line.
    28:49
    So they're in full production, I'd say. which is good for them and rather quick I'd say especially considering the COVID circumstances that are still causing lots of headaches and pain and what have you no pun intended yes and what's interesting is that Jersey Jack introduced something called Factory Finds, where apparently they found a bunch of Hobbit playfields, which were so-called seconds, which means that they have a minor scratch or something that makes the playfield not suitable to use in a game. but it could still be a great wall decoration piece or something like that. And so these factory finds were announced on Jersey Jack's social media and they almost sold out instantly. And after the Hobbit, they came with some Willy Wonka playfields and also a partial Willy Wonka plastic set. Yeah, that's meant to be the sort of high-wear area. I'm not sure exactly where the factory finds any more, sort of describes what it is. It's not like they moved the factory from Lakewood up to Elk Grove Village and, oh, look, we didn't know we had this big box of Hobbit playfields or Willy Wonka playfields. Well, we'd better sell them off. So, anyway, so that's because Willy Wonka is on the line at the moment, as you said. then the fact that they're selling off sets of other plastics I guess means that these are just sort of bonus items that are available in limited numbers and as you also said, they do tend to sell out very quickly. So probably worth keeping an eye on JJP's social media streams to see what the next items that come up are because you never know, there might be some really hard to find or unique parts that have been made available to buy Right okay so hold on You should probably hear in the back My phone is ringing Oh it not ringing Do you know what time it is? Oh, he picks his moments, doesn't he? Yeah. Okay, for those not familiar with this podcast,
    31:31
    our good friend, Gary Flower, has a tendency to call this show, usually when we're recording, although he's not that... he hasn't managed to come on the show that often. Yeah, not that successful.
    31:45
    Yeah. Well, let's pick up before he rings us. Yeah, okay, so... Hello, Gary. How are you? Hi, Gary. Hold on. I got another call coming in. It's Jack from Jersey Jack Pinball. We were just talking about him. Sorry, Gary. I've got to take this call. Oh, Jack. Thanks for calling. Hey, what do you think of the new Avengers Infinity Quest game? so listen let me just tell you this let me tell you something that you can use right if I were anybody that was going to buy a pinball machine if I was anybody who was going to buy a pinball machine in the next couple of months I would not spend a dime until you see our next game I wouldn't spend any money at all until you see our next game I just wouldn't do it I wouldn't do it because I just, it's just going to knock, it's just going to blow the windows off a lot of things. And a lot of people are just going to be, you know, really happy that we took our time making what we're making. Okay, but are you assuming here that people can only buy one people machine because there's plenty of people who can buy a pinball machine today and another one next week. Yeah, well, most people, that doesn't apply to those people. Those people can go buy everything they want to buy, you know, but if I only had room for one pinball machine to buy, you know, and there are a lot of those people too, you know, they have to sell something to buy something. I have a customer who's a dentist, and every time he buys a new game, he puts it in the game room and he takes the glass off the back box. And his wife says to him, you bought a new game. Now, this whole thing, come on, I'm working on it. It's opened up. You know, what are you talking about? It's not a new game. I have this game. Come on. so he thinks she's stupid and he thinks that he got over on her in the meantime he got his game right so I'm sure she notices the side art is different I said to him I said look she married you how smart could she be well of course you're always a salesman Jack but can you not give us something that a little tease or something that would encourage people to wait that extra month or two in order to buy a Jersey Jack pinball game, or the next Jersey Jack pinball game, rather than anything else that might be out there?
    34:39
    Well, I would say, you know, our best games are ahead of us. That's what I would say. But you always say that.
    34:49
    You know, I mean, I want people to be surprised. You know, you can't get, you can never get a second opportunity to make a first impression. So let them see it and love it and be surprised and go crazy and all that kind of stuff. I don't want to get in the middle of that. Right. So I know you're probably not going to comment on themes that are supposedly in development, but there was a sort of a rumor that there's two titles sort of floating around for Jersey Jack and the rumor was that although we were expecting the next game to be an Eric Marnier design the rumor is that it's actually going to be a Pat Lawler design which would be the game that was supposed to come after the Eric Marnier design I heard that same rumor okay can you comment on it what I just did comment on it I heard that same rumor okay well given the fact that you will be launching a new game fairly soon is there anything to say about what might have changed in the way you're going to launch it given the fact that you now can't go to any of the major shows, do a big presentation there, and whatever you're going to do is going to, I imagine, going to have to be an online event. So what are the plans? What's the strategy now that you're doing things differently?
    36:51
    You guys are too much I'm not too much Well you know I guess there won't be shows For a little while So You know We'll launch it in a different way We'll just launch it in a different way No nothing we should put in our diaries there's nothing you want to tease us with about what you're going to do when the time comes no you know interviewing me you're better off interviewing the ghost of Gary Flowers you know I hate to say it I don't want to give you guys a hard time but you know I've gone this long without saying much of anything I'm almost at the finish line so let's go to the finish line and let's just launch the game and let's see what it is and let everybody be happy and buy them and then I can come back and tell you everything I didn't tell you sure I'm just trying to give you the opportunity to build some more hype about the launch not about the actual game about what you're going to do to present it I know that. Well, you know, look, it's going to be a challenge, obviously, because there were other companies recently.
    38:29
    I was saying last year there were other companies recently that didn't use the show to launch a game.
    38:36
    You know, the games were in a controlled environment and only one person was playing it on a video screen, so nobody really got a chance to know what it was for a long time. and, you know, that's an advantage and a disadvantage. I love the whole people aspect, and I wish we had that, but we have to go to plan B. Right. So that's how we'll launch it. We'll do it in a different way, but it'll be, the way we do it, it'll be fun and it'll be cool. Okay. On a completely different note, Jim Petla was recently hired as the new COO of the company. Were you involved in that, and how do you feel about it?
    39:26
    Yeah, of course I was involved, and I feel great. Jim's a great guy. He's got a lot of great pinball experience, and we need people that have a lot of pinball experience, you know, guiding and, you know, suggesting and doing different things. So it's real good. You know, it's hard to build people for our industry. I was just talking to somebody today.
    39:54
    You know, what I should say is you really need to build people for our industry. It's hard to just hire somebody off an ad or out of school or something like that and throw them into the world of manufacturing and making pinball machines. And so if you have somebody that has that experience, you want to get that person on your team, and that's what we did.
    40:17
    Okay. Well, congrats. You're very correct. Jim brings in a ton of expertise, and he actually likes working in the industry.
    40:28
    Yeah. Well, that's a nice bonus, right? You want people that love what they do, people that have a passion for it, people that jump out of bed in the morning and they spring into action and they create things and they make things happen. So, you know, you dream about those kind of people coming to a company and working with other people because it inspires and motivates other people to be their best. And that's what you want. You want A players playing with A players. and just a little word about now the factory and the manufacturing is up in Elk Grove Village how's that impacted on your schedule? are you still are you commuting backwards and forwards between your home and there or are you able to spend more time at home and do what you need to do from there? well good thing for Zoom and good thing for Facebook Yeah. Thanks for all the technology we have today. You know, I haven't been out there yet. I'll be out there shortly.
    41:37
    But, you know, I'm connected to what's happening pretty much every day. I don't feel anything but good things about how everything is working. So, you know, we still have so much to do. And even, you know, it's going to be, the company's going to be 10 years old soon, unbelievably, to think of that. And, you know, you look at where you go, where you started, what you're doing, and all the different people that are working very hard to make games. So, you know, it's all good. I feel good about it. And I think for future, just a general statement of, I don't know that business people will get on a plane. You know, I used to fly 150,000, 160,000 miles a year the last few years. I don't know that business people would get on a plane and fly six hours to meet face-to-face with somebody for an hour or two needed. I think trade shows will come back and face-to-face, we hope, you know, comes back soon. But I think the pandemic, unfortunately, has forced technology ahead by maybe 10 years in just a few months, maybe more than 10 years, because even right now, you know, I'm not with you guys in the back room of a, you know, a beer hall, you know, drinking champagne and eating chocolate and having a conversation, unfortunately. Those were good times. I'd rather that we were doing that than this, but this is better than nothing. So, you know, sometimes you get used to what you can accept.
    43:40
    Like the Rolling Stones say, you know, you can't always get what you want, but you get what you can. You know, it's kind of like the situation right now with some of the communications and travel and things like that. So it's temporary. It's a temporary thing. It's not forever. Hopefully not.
    44:02
    It's not going to be forever. It'll be temporary. We'll laugh about it, hopefully. You know, we'll laugh about it.
    44:10
    I'm an eternal optimist, So I have to feel that way. Good. I think that's all to everything I had a question about. Turn it back to Allison. Yeah. Sums it up for me as well. Thank you. Good. I'm sorry in a way. I can't give you more information right now. I know you understand that. But I respect you. You guys do your job and you have to ask those questions. And I'm sorry. But everything will be revealed very shortly. Okay, we look forward to that and we look forward to meeting you up in person again. Okay, so that was an edited version of our interview with Jack Buonieri. Thanks for calling in, Jack. A little bit of information got lost in between all the off-the-record parts that we obviously had to edit out. The first being that Jersey Jack Pinball basically will not be announcing any new games until they are boxed up and ready to ship. That might take a while, so Jack's hoping that people will have a little patience. Yeah, well that's where they've always wanted to be, so if this is the game where they get to that point, then fair enough. Yeah, thanks Jack. Jack Warnieri of Jersey Jack Pinball.
    45:36
    Unfortunately, not revealing very much about upcoming games as we... But we tried, and you get it from the horse's mouth. Yeah. Not revealing a whole lot about his opinions of Avengers either. Yeah, he was very political in that regard, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, interesting nonetheless. I find it particularly interesting that Jack hasn't been up to the new factory yet but plans to go there very soon Probably due to the Corona situation Oh yeah, almost certainly He's not flying anywhere near as much as he used to He was doing 150,000 miles a year in the air previously and that's basically all come to a halt Right But anyway, he's safe, his family's safe and everyone in the factory and the company seems to be safe. So good news there. And we look forward to seeing the next new game from Jersey Jack Pinball when the time is right. Right. Okay. So, well, since we briefly talked about Jim Petlar working at Jersey Jack Pinball, Jim obviously came from American Pinball, so here's that bridge. so what news do we have regarding American Pinball?
    47:01
    Well, not a huge amount Hot Wheels Games is obviously their big title and that's what they're pushing and they are promoting it in association with the IFPA in what they call the Hot Wheels Livestream Challenge now basically there are like 15 challenge events each of which has a specific goal that people are trying to reach on the Hot Wheels game. They could be the fastest person to complete something, the highest score in a mode, or the most cars collected, or something like that. And all these 15 challenges are being run between now and the end of the year, and they're being done via streaming. So to do these, you need to have, A, a Hot Wheels machine, and B, be able to stream what you're doing. So that's rather limited. it but um not like you can go and play on location and and enter uh one of these challenges if you would be interested well you might be able to um no i'm not sure how difficult it would be just to get you know if there's two of you and you can socially distance if you need to if somebody can just hold a phone you know and and record and live stream onto facebook or something like that then maybe that will qualify but obviously you need to register in advance for doing that so So to do that, go to the IFPA website and you can register your interest and intention to take part in any of these challenges. And there are all kinds of Hot Wheels and American Pinball branded prizes for the most successful. You get points for where you finish in each of the 15 challenges. So at the end of the challenge season, the prizes will be awarded. So that's something for those people who are able to take part. and I guess other people can watch them attempt to beat the existing high scores for these things as well if you go and watch the regular streams. Right. One other detail about Hot Wheels that I read a couple of days ago, And obviously these challenges that we just discussed are organized in collaboration with the IFPA,
    49:20
    which is run by Josh and Zach Sharp, sons of Roger Sharp. And interestingly, I already knew that Roger Sharp was involved with American Pinball in getting the Hot Wheels license, But what's also interesting, at least I found it interesting, is that Josh Sharp has been involved in consulting the design team for Hot Wheels, basically making sure that the gameplay is accessible to people of various skill levels and so on. And apparently, as Hot Wheels is getting a lot of positive feedback, I guess we have to thank George Sharp for his input on that.
    50:14
    Yeah, the more input and more knowledge that the design team can get, and I wouldn't say more opinions, because opinions are a mixed bag. Sometimes they're useful and sometimes they're not. but informed opinion that you're certainly going to get from Josh, the better the game's going to end up. So, yeah, it seems like a win-win.
    50:39
    Yeah, definitely. And so I'm still, well, hoping, obviously, that Hot Wheels will be a very good game for American Pinball. So far, like I've already said, the feedback to the game is very very positive especially since it's a game that's appealing to well it's not one of those games that's very complex where a notice player is immediately lost in like what's going on, what do I have to do here so in that sense it's appealing to people that are not that familiar with pinball.
    51:26
    Yeah, I think people will get the basic idea of a racing game fairly simply, and it seems to be well implemented. While we're on the subject of Hot Wheels, there have been, now we're in September when we're recording this, there are actually two code updates to report on. One, they seem to bring them out every month on the first of the month, so there's one on the first of August, which well, Well, it added various feature adjustments, but also did an interesting thing, which I would have thought was already in the game, which is it allows the splitting of the levels for insert lighting and general illumination.
    52:05
    I would have thought they'd have been separate anyway, but apparently they were tied together before, and now they're not, so those two can be adjusted separately. There's lots of new display effects and lighting effects, and some new music tracks as well, for legend multiple and for the high score entry and some little tweaks for some of the battles the t-rex battle, the gorilla battle and jackpot value changes for multiballs along with the usual tweaks and bug fixes and yeah also there's a thing in there that displays your total race time so far which is a new feature they've added And, oh, there's even more new sounds and music for Redline mode as well. So, yeah, it's coming on leaps and bounds. So every month, look out for, on the first of the month, look out for a new update for Hot Wheels if you have one of those. Right. Okay.
    53:04
    I suggest to move on to another code update, but then from a different company, because I think that's about all the news there is to report from Spooky Pinball. a code update for Rick and Morty yeah American aren't the only ones who have been doing two software updates spooky as you say I've also got two code updates for Rick and Morty version well they're really only two days apart so the second one was just fixed a few minor bugs that got introduced in the first one I think but they so 2020 dot 08 dot 10, so the 10th of August version, that added more speech for Bird Person and the Roy and Roy mode narration, added new high scores for each adventure and for each multiboard as well, changed some of the insert lighting, some new rules for Morty's Choice, some bug fixes, which were then fixed again, and also some changes of how a few of the things in the gameplay work, but there's too many of those going to detail them all, but anyway, that game should be on version 2020.08.12 now, that's the current version as of the date of this recording right, ok well, I'm still waiting to play Rick and Morty, and the problem is Covid, crisis, you know travelling, and I don't think we have any Rick and Morty games in Europe yet and well hopefully soon there will be some Rick and Morty games in Europe and prefer a really close buy so I can give the game a go the good news is as I keep developing the game the more they develop it the more I can enjoy it I suppose yeah the complete of the game the more fun it should be especially in case of Rick and Morty your first impression should be an even better one yeah Yeah, that's good. Okay, well, I haven't got any other news from Spooky at the moment, so let's head on down to the south of the US and to Texas and to Multimorphic, where Jerry and the team have introduced a new feature to at least one of their games at the moment and coming to others later. Right. And surprisingly, not to heist, but to cosmic card racing. That's right, yeah, the Cosmic Cart Racing has just had added to it support for Twitch Connect, which will allow people who are watching live streams of P3 games being played to act with that game and control the game in various ways. So Cosmic Cart Racing would seem like a really good one for that, because it allows the people who are watching the stream to fire some of the power-ups or the blockers for other players or the player they're watching,
    56:21
    which could be interesting, could be annoying, could be collaborative in a really interesting way, but it opens up a whole range of possibilities for other features that could be started during a game just by people who are watching the stream, and I guess it has to be controlled in some kind of way. But, no, it's early days yet, and it's an interesting, interactive addition to the P3, and, of course, it's a first for any pinball game, as the P3 often is used to introduce whole new features, which other manufacturers gradually add to theirs to some degree or other. And so apart from the internet gaming and the USB and Bluetooth headphones that we reported on in previous podcasts, they now, yeah, Twitch Connect support.
    57:17
    So let's see what happens. It sounds quite complicated. Maybe I have to see in person or on a stream how it actually is working. Is there any way that we can find out more about that?
    57:31
    Yeah. Yeah, there's a stream coming up, I think, on the 7th of September, I think. Ah. Monday, 7th of September, where Multimorphic, Buffalo, Pinball and Gamma Goat will all be streaming on Twitch, streaming live on Twitch, and showing how the Twitch Connect feature can be used in Cosmic Kart Racing. So this is something which is out there now, and you'll be able to tune in to any of those streams, I guess, either Multimorphic themselves, Bluffer, Lippinburg or GammaGo, all on Twitch, and see what the possibilities are and maybe make some suggestions to the teams as to how it could be improved or added to. Right, okay. So that's Monday, September 7th. Okay, I'll have to keep that in mind.
    58:21
    Yeah, it's 8 p.m. Eastern time, I should say. Okay. Well, since we're in Texas, let's head a little more south to San Antonio, where Deep Root Pinball is located. Now there's some interesting news regarding DeepRoot in the sense that last month they had a rather odd way of announcing that there would be a sort of launch in September. And what I mean by that is there is this website called This Week in Pinball where they are recapping basically the pinball industry news as we are, but then on a weekly basis. And This Week in Pinball started a trial, I suppose it is, or maybe it's not, but of doing a video summary of each month, and so far they did two, one for June and one for July, and the video for July became available mid-August, which is already rather late, because obviously we have covered that news by then a long time, but the interesting thing is that video was sponsored by Deep Root Pinball, and they basically used this video as a sponsored message to announce that they would be revealing the production model of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland in September.
    60:14
    But obviously that wasn't news in July. So that's what I found rather odd, because basically they're using the summary of July to make an announcement for September, which wasn't news in July. that's the only beef I have with it. But, okay, that being said, since then, Deep Root have started a sort of teaser campaign on their Deep Root Spinball website, where an image is shown, and it's an image of, a black image with a sort of grey wall that's breaking, or something like that, with cryptic blue numbers and letters on it.
    61:06
    The first image showed a nine dot and a D dot, if I'm not mistaking, and a couple of days later, which is where we are now, the number 20 was added to it. So now we have nine dot, 20 dot, D.
    61:28
    Sorry about that. Yeah. It's exciting. Yeah. Extremely, because obviously, well, it could be anything. You might expect that there will be a date revealed for, say, September something 2020. Although we still don't know what the D stands for, but oh well.
    61:56
    Yeah, we're recording this on September 3rd, and September is still a long month, so... We'll have to wait and see when exactly this production model of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland will be revealed, and then we'll have to see what the changes are that they made compared to the prototype that was shown at the Houston Arcade Expo, I think that was November of last year.
    62:27
    So basically we 10 months later As I say when they get into these sort of tease scenarios they kind of turn me off rather than get me interested and I refuse to be drawn into it. And it's like, if you've got something to show, just show us. Don't try and build up some fake interest. No, there's plenty of things, plenty of better ways to tease it than to try and sort of create puzzles. and that to me is annoying. But I'm sure when they do actually reveal something, it's going to be very, very interesting and I will definitely want to, well, we will cover it, of course, here and in our respective publications. Right.
    63:12
    But, you know, come on, just tell us when you're going to do it and do it. Yeah, exactly. And, oh, well, for now, we'll just wait and see. and well hopefully they used those 10 months to really improve the game as it apparently needed some adjustment to the ramps if I recall because people were complaining that they couldn't the ramp was too long or too steep and they couldn't finish it so Well, it seemed to be something that they put their built into the software because there was some kind of a wall or whatever, or certainly some effect for not making the ramp if you tried to make it and failed. Yeah. That was also recorded. Right, and apparently the flipper power was on purpose turned down so that people would not be able to make the ramp. Hmm, well, we've heard that a few times. if I recall correctly, and if not, then that's basically my memory failing on me. So, anyway, we'll see what they will show, and hopefully it will knock our socks off.
    64:37
    Yeah, I'm sure next month's podcast will be one of our headlines. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, moving back to Chicago, gaming that is, the new Medieval Madness remake RGBGI lighting kits and extra large display upgrades are now available for those who bought a Medieval Madness remake when those updates were not available yet. obviously yeah when they brought the Royal Edition out that had all the RGB GI lighting which was something which made a huge improvement I think to the way the game looked to be able to wash the whole playfield in a particular colour you know when you were shooting the castle the dragon shot and you could get the dragon flames and that kind of stuff going right across the playfield not being washed out by having by general illumination. So that's very nice. Interestingly, it seems it doesn't include the pop bumpers, which is a little odd, but I guess they're quite difficult to put RTV LEDs in if they didn't originally have them. It might involve significant dismantling of those mechanisms in order to get new lighting in there. Especially on medieval mansions, it's very difficult to get to the pop bumpers in the first place.
    66:07
    Yeah, that's true. Because they're hidden under the damsel ramp. Hmm. Yeah, so maybe they decided it would be too much of an effort. And, of course, it means that the Royal Edition of that game has that extra bonus which can't be upgraded from the original, from the first version. So that will always be an extra setting point for that game. Right. And also interesting to notice that apparently Chicago Gaming started production again of Attack on Mars. As I've seen several disc computers basically announcing that they have Attack on Mars games in stock again.
    66:57
    Yeah, I think they said it was a shorter run, or a short run of those games. Right. So if you're looking for an Attack From Mars remake, that is, then, well, you're in luck. You might be able to get one.
    67:15
    Yeah, but don't hang about because, as I said, I don't think they made too many of them. So if you want one, snap it up while it's available. Yeah, okay, but then still, I figure, if they need more, they're probably going to run more at some point. Yeah, well, I was going to say it's not a licensed title, because it is licensed. It's licensed from Planetary Bimble. But I suspect that there isn't a three-year license on that, or three-year time limit on that license, so it probably runs for some time yet. Yeah, so. Oh, well.
    67:52
    So then there's a couple of companies, and here's a big spoiler, where there's no news. So basically I'm just going to name them and that's about it. So there's no news from Homepin in Taiwan. There's no news from Hacker Spinball in Australia.
    68:15
    And that's, well, hopefully everything's fine over there. We're still waiting for updates, of course. But they have been announced and then didn't show anything. So, okay, well, we're just wondering if everything is okay, and hopefully it is. Well, from being such prolific streamers or video producers on YouTube, on their channel,
    68:44
    doing it on a daily basis and cutting it down a bit, it's actually been five months now since the last video update from Haggispingel. But that last video update was the, if I'm not mistaken, the Slashhammer one. so yeah I think it's playfield and playfield options yeah the different yeah anyway sorry anyway no news from Dutch Pinball although it might be noteworthy to mention that Christopher Frenchy who is doing an awesome job as a host and producer of the super awesome Pinball Show podcast.
    69:32
    On his last episode, he mentioned to keep an eye on the Dutch, something like that. And some people seem to interpret that as that Christopher Frenchy might be involved with Dutch pinball, maybe doing some artwork for them in the future.
    69:53
    But then again, Dutch pinball is still busy building the Big Lebowski for at least, I'd say, another year before they might even get slowly starting to think about a second game. So nothing to get excited about for now, I suppose.
    70:12
    No, well, there's no news, but the news is that they are continuing to build games, both the new sales and also fulfilling the early achiever models as well. and there's somebody in this country who's getting ready to get their early achiever game. Good. Which they've been waiting a long time for, so looking forward to that. Right. So, and, well, Dutch Pinball is still looking, as far as I know, to move to a larger facility. If there's any news on that, then obviously we'll let you know as well. And then the other company where we have no news to report on is Circus Maximus, who are working on a remake of Capcom's Kingpin.
    71:01
    And have been for a while. Yeah. And the funniest thing is, or it's hardly funny anymore, but so supposedly they are doing Kingpin in order to create funds to do the production of Python's Final Circus. Yes, which is a rather unique game. The funny thing in this is that I'm actually currently working on the editing of my interview with Python Angelo, which is going to be in Pinball Magazine number 6.
    71:43
    And obviously when I was talking to Python, which is over five years ago, Now I'm coming across comments like, well, I got the team ready and everybody's ready and you got people from Microsoft and where have you ready to fork in money and everything will happen.
    72:05
    And basically, it should happen quickly because he strongly believes that if the development of a game takes more than six or seven months, then it's going to be a disaster game.
    72:20
    Now, obviously, these two games have already been designed, but if you look at how long it's taking the current team, which are only a handful of people, literally, I think it's less than five, to get this thing going,
    72:38
    I suppose that would not be approved by Python, the way things are, the pace things are going. but then again Python could dream of stuff and expected it to be done the next day so nothing new under the sun I suppose presumably his six month timeline was for a dedicated pinball manufacturer to bring it to a prototype or a sample game state rather than being done by a very small group of people who are doing this in their spare time and not as their main business yeah that's definitely true but oh well we still hope for the best and we're still looking for Kingpin to be taken into production at some day I mean apart from those translights, those signed translights that they sold of the game I don't think anybody's put any money down towards these games so no one's missing out but I think those who bought the translights were our first in line to be able to buy the game if I remember correctly, I think that was the deal. But beyond that, there's no commitment to anybody else to actually get this game finished, across the finishing line and out there for sale. So it takes as long as it takes, I guess. Yeah. So, oh well. Moving on to other news.
    74:11
    Yeah. Okay. Well, our main, well, our third headline, I think it was our second headline actually as it was, was about Pinball Expo and of course as we said before it was one of the reasons why this month's podcast is a couple of days late or later than usual because we wanted to be able to bring you that news and it is now official that Pinball Expo 2020 will not take place as a physical show in Wheeling as it has done for the last few years but it will be an online event instead. And I think it's easy to say that, as other shows have done, you know, we're going to do this as a virtual show, and that's kind of like a fairly small-scale operation. Well, I get the feeling that this is going to be quite an impressive online show.
    75:09
    There's going to be a lot of things for you to watch and participate in. Right. Which will actually allow them to do things which they wouldn't be able to do as an in-person.
    75:24
    Right, okay. So why not let's ask, why not ask Mr. Pinball Expo himself, Rob Berg, what's been going on lately. What a good idea. Yeah. Well, we're joined now in the, all the way from, well, I guess actually you're at your home, are you Rob, or are you in the office? Rob Burke. Rob Burke, I'm at work. Rob Burke, Pinball Expo founder, organiser, chief, the big guy who today put out the announcement that Pinball Expo as a physical show will not be going ahead, but instead there's going to be a big program of virtual events which people can watch online for free. But Rob, tell us about the process that went into deciding that Pinball Expo couldn't happen at the West End this year and you had to do something different. Yeah, the West End really made it difficult for me to make a decision and that's why I waited this late. But even in March, April, May, June, all these months went by, and we kept calling the hotel and said, hey, there's just no way this show's going to go on. But they held me ransom, so to speak. And it says, no, we can't do a thing until the governor decides we're in phase five. So, which basically means you can have an event for any side of the party. Any side of the event. and I said, but there's no way it's going to hit that at this pace. They said, we don't know that, so we're forcing you to just hold on to the contract and if you leave early, you're going to pay a real hefty penalty.
    77:11
    So I finally got to the point where I told my director of sales that I need a drop-dead date because I just can't be notified a week before the expo. So we're going to have it. It's just not fair. It's impossible to put it together. So he said, all right, September 1st. He said, if it doesn't hit phase five by September 5th, there's no vaccine, then we'll get you out of the contract.
    77:42
    So, frankly, I'm elated of that because I felt that even if we tried to do the show, there would be so many people that would be so concerned and so cautious that they'd be walking on eggshells. Plus, the way it is right now, a lot of Europe is closed down as far as coming to America.
    78:05
    So it's like, who's going to show up? So it was a concern. And finally, when September 1st came to the left, I felt much better that now I can focus my energies into a virtual show.
    78:20
    It's going to be a virtual show like you guys have never seen before. We have so much stuff planned, your head's going to spin. Is there anything you can reveal about that? Anything you can tease us with that you've got lined up? Yeah, I'll give you a couple of teasers, Martin. And that is that we're going to have our seminars like we always do. But what's interesting is a lot of people that I've never asked to give seminars in the past because their subject matter made it that it could be done live in our show.
    78:56
    Because they're going to be home, and because a lot of these people are collectors or enthusiasts operating out of their home,
    79:04
    all their equipment, all their machines, all their supplies are there at the house, so it's very easy to do a virtual event. So people that have never even thought about speaking are going to be speaking. and it's going to be the gamut of the people we have speaking as well as people from all over the world that are going to be speaking.
    79:25
    And most likely those people will have a video presentation. It's hard to say what time we're going to show that seminar. Plus it would be much easier for them rather than staying up until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning just to make it easy to show here in America that they tape it. But the one thing I will say is this. We're going to have several factory tours,
    79:52
    and that includes the American manufacturers, but it also includes Dutch Pinball. It also includes Home Pin.
    80:06
    Really? And most people have never seen it inside of these places. No. Great. and there will be a lot other, and I'm going to keep some surprises in there, but just knowing that the tours from these foreign manufacturers will be quite interesting, even to me, I mean, I went to Hongpin one time, and I saw it when he first started when he was still in China. He's in Taiwan now. He's moving to Taiwan.
    80:34
    But it would be interesting to see the actual operation of these guys right from their factory. Excellent, and will there be any sort of possibility for interaction from viewers going through the pinballexpo.com website? Will they be able to ask questions at all, or do you think everything will be in a pre-recorded format? Yeah, it's a great question because some people feel that it would be a lot of fun, and we're working on it right now, where they could type their questions in. Yeah, sort of chat window type thing. Yes, so there'll be a track window there, so even during their talk or when the talk is over, there'll be a questionnaire. The one might say, Martin, when are you going to start taping whatever? Or, Jonathan, when are you going to lower your rates on your magazine? And then you can answer that. So, yeah, we're going to be doing that. It'll be interactive in a unique kind of way. And, listen, we're doing the best of what we've got. Absolutely. Really? We're trying to throw the kitchen sink at you. And what we're also going to do, Martin, is the expo is moving to a new venue next year. So we will announce that. Plus give people an idea. We're going to do a video, a preview video of the hotel and the vendor space and the hotel rooms. Probably the last day of this year's virtual expo. Wow. So we won't be going back to the West End again, at least not in the near future. We will not be going back to the West End, that's correct. Well, I do feel some sadness about that in a way, but I'm sure given the fact that we're holding your feet to the fire for the contract, you're not that unhappy about it. I'd be glad to keep you a hotel room for one night so you can take a bite of everybody.
    82:22
    Sounds like a deal. Yeah. So it's going to be interesting, guys. And, you know, the manufacturers have been very supportive of this, so that always makes it really interesting. And they've reached out to me. For a lot of people in the pinball world, the Dutch Pinball Museum, and you guys probably know about this stuff more than I do. So, you know, they've reached out. So they're going to be giving us a presentation.
    82:50
    It's just going to be pretty wild because a lot of us here in America and all over the world have never had a chance to travel to these other locations, it's other factories, it's other museums. So to be able to do it virtually is the next best thing. Right. Okay.
    83:08
    In another subject matter, your daughters have been making sure that your basement is going viral on TikTok. I can't believe it, Jonathan. You know, she did it. She says, oh, yeah, by the way, I did this. And I said, oh, okay. You know, I had no idea it would get this. many hits. I mean, I think she had over 500,000. I can't comprehend it, to be honest with you. But, yes, that's the case, and it's hit a lot of the internet. And, you know, what's interesting is as many people have seen it, no one has really reached out to me or her as far as like, hey, that was cool, or hey, I want to learn more about pinball or whatever.
    83:53
    For those people who haven't seen it, can you describe or tell us what it was that she actually recorded and put online? Basically, we're just walking down the basement of our house and just seeing all the games. Right. What I'll probably do, you know, for the virtual expo is do a walkthrough of my collection right there, because we're going to... Yeah, that would be great. We're going to broadcast from the basement of my house.
    84:16
    So, all the machines will be there. Worst comes to worst, if there's a break in time or something, we'll put the camera on one of the machines, play one of the games, or something to do with pinball. There'll be a lot of interaction going on. And I will say this. If anyone there in the pinball world would like to participate, either as a speaker or if you're selling a service or parts, you're welcome to send us your commercial of your products. And we'll use that in between the seminars. Just to keep it going and keep it interesting. Yeah. Sounds like you're coming up with almost like a broadcast channel. Exactly right. While we're running throughout the day. Is it two days you're doing this, or is it longer? Right now, I envision the show starting Thursday at 5 p.m. Ohio time. Right, okay. And then on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Okay, so a three-day event, okay.
    85:19
    Three-day extravaganza. it's the kind of thing that I don't think has ever been attempted before are you feeling confident that you'll have the speakers and the factory tours and everything that you're hoping for? you know Martin the one thing for people that know me is if I do something I go all out so the seminars have always been my love and I've always had I don't know three full days of seminars you can imagine 400 hours if not more just crazy so it's just my nature just to fill up every minute with something going on and what we'll probably do also is you know possibly put on YouTube as well so these will be available to people to watch at a later time because I don't think people want to stay up 10 and 12 14 hours a day yeah that's what I was going to ask you because obviously last year We did that through Pinball News, and it got a huge number of hits for all the seminars. And even from the people who were there at the time, they wanted to watch them back in case they missed various parts of it. So, yeah, being able to do it after the event, you know, recap or watch what people might have missed is a very great idea. And, yeah, and obviously we're there if you need any help with that. Well, it certainly couldn't hurt, my friend. and you reach a wide audience, so that would be great if we could partner on that. Because I'm hoping the Zoom goes without any hitches. I need to have a strong Internet connection coming out of my home and make sure there's no hang-ups. Sure. We're working on getting that all prepared.
    87:07
    But it should be very interesting for everyone here involved because we all miss pinball so much. We miss the live shows. and I believe some of the other shows have done a couple of virtual attempts. I haven't seen any of them.
    87:23
    But we're going to take it to the extreme. Yeah, sounds like it. Sounds very exciting. And the best visitors are going to do it for free, no charge.
    87:35
    Yeah. So we've come up with a really creative design for this year's event. so we'll probably sell shirts this year as well and it'll say something like you know I tuned in to the virtual pinball expo but this is a big part of Americana that it'll be fun to look at years to come assuming this world is still around and people are healthy assuming that we finally find a vaccine and we can get back to the old normal you know it yeah so So we're doing everything we can to make this thing really fun and interesting and just with the seminars. And probably, you know, I'll announce the seminars perhaps a week before the event because there's just so much involved in putting this together and the timing and everything. But we'll have a scheduled event just like we do normally. Right. Okay. So if people want more information, where should they go?
    88:32
    Well, they can go to Pimbalas.com. You know, we'll try to update that as much as we can. and if not, I just have them reach out to my email via brkpinball at gmail.com and they can certainly reach out to me for any questions they may have or if they want to get involved in any way.
    88:53
    Great. Well, I think you've answered all our questions to be honest and Mr. Olson has any more? No, I think, well, the only thing I was wondering about, obviously, you were sort of held hostage by the Westin but were you in the meantime already planning this virtual event, or do you basically have to start now? Yeah, to be honest with you, we have been planning it for the past, I'd say, month, month and a half. Because in our hearts, we felt there's just no way they're going to open up the Western. So it was planning it, but not planning it with an exclamation mark. So once we got the word September 1st, it was like, you know, green light go. really put the effort and push in to make that happen.
    89:39
    Would you miss all the razzmatazz and the stress and the excitement of actually having everybody come to one place and seeing everyone and shaking their hands and thanking them and then thanking you for holding the show? You know, the only thing I want to say, Jonathan and Martin, is you guys send me emails or call me up. Hey, I love you, man. Keep it up, baby. Keep it up. It's great. But, you know, like I tell my son, deal with what's dealt to you. You know, sometimes there's stuff out of our control, and we've got to make the best out of it. So that's what this event's going to be like. I feel quite confident that when this was done, people are going to say, man, you pulled it off, and man, it was great. So, you know, that's the energy we're hoping to do, and the response that we want for everybody to have when this is over. We're like, this was really well done. And I don't expect any less than that. It's going to be a special event for anyone who watches it. Okay. Well, we look forward to it. We're missing you in person, and Bridget, of course, and everyone else behind the scenes, the Pinball Express staff. But thanks for putting this on, and thanks for talking to us today about the plans. I thank you guys so much, and thanks for keeping the hobby going, man. It all starts with you guys. You're the connection to the world.
    91:07
    Thank you. So, best of luck with your preparations and obviously there's going to be full support from both Pinball Magazine and Pinball News, I suppose.
    91:19
    So, we look forward to Pinball Expo, the virtual 2020 edition. Right. Like I said, at the end of that show, We'll announce what's going on the following year, and that will also be really interesting for those people to tune in.
    91:36
    Okay, so I won't ask any questions about that now. You got it. Thank you guys for reaching out to me, and I wish you all in your parts of the world stay healthy, stay asleep, and have a good night's sleep. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to update us. All right. Okay. Bye-bye. There you have it. Rob Berg of Pinball Expo and the current development. So, actually, I think there's two bits of news over here. The first one being that Rob is working on putting on a really big virtual Pinball Expo. But the other news also that we're not going back to the Westin. He's been relieved of his contract. and at the last day of the upcoming virtual Pinball Expo, Rob will make announcements on what he's planning to do with Pinball Expo in the upcoming years.
    92:39
    Yeah, I mean, my understanding of it was that this was going to be the last year at Westin anyway, so the fact that it's not taking place doesn't affect plans for the future. it was always going to move and I don't know if we're allowed to say where we believe the show might be moving to I don't think we're allowed to say it but let's say it anyway okay well we think it's going to go to Schomburg to the city of Schomburg which is also in the Chicago suburbs or the greater Chicago land yeah close to the airport I mean if you cast your mind back to the time when Pinball Expo was basically it was Rob and Mike together were running the show and Mike Pesack insisted he had the contract with the Westin and was hold his show there and Rob was then looking around for somewhere else to hold his show and I think at that point he'd actually started negotiations with Schomburg city and the conference or convention center there about holding a pinball expo there and that as it happened never came to part because he was able to go back to the west end but i think he was sufficiently impressed with the facilities that they had and the hotels that were linked and in the neighborhood and the facilities all around you know bars and the restaurants and the arcades in the barcade, all in Schaumburg, that he saw that as the future place for Pinball Expo to be hosted. And so we think, as it's been confirmed, you have to wait until the last day of the virtual expo to find out for sure. And if that is it, when it will be held exactly. So hold on. Are you telling me that basically we're not going by facts but by what we think? yep that's yeah I think we are yeah as I say no lots of caveats no anybody's going to go ahead and book any hotels based on this I don't think so it's just our understanding if it's Schaumburg there's plenty of hotels there so yeah that shouldn't be a problem so oh well I look forward to Pinball Expo on a slightly related note I think the well I talked to Gerard van der Zanden from the Dutch Pinball Museum and I think several Dutch pinball industry people including myself as I'm apparently a pinball industry person now are looking to do something like a seminar or something like that from the new Dutch Pinball Museum. So I'm looking forward to that.
    95:43
    Yeah, sounds great fun. I also reached out to Barry at Dutch Pinball and asked if he'd be willing to take part in the Pinball Expo virtual presentation, and he said he was. So we can look forward to seeing a factory tour and a view of the games being made from the Dutch Pinball Factory as well as part of the virtual event. Right. And what I understood is that Gerard is probably recording a virtual tour of the Dutch Pinball Museum, the new one, because they recently moved to a new and much larger location. I haven't been there yet, so I'm really looking forward to going there. And, yeah, if it's up to the Dutch, we're going to be helping Rob to make sure that his virtual expo is becoming quite a success.
    96:43
    Well, that's great. And because, I don't know, did we cover this in the last podcast? My memory is a little fading on me. It's whether we covered the Dutch Pinball Open Expo. Well, we cancelled that. Well, at that time, we didn't know yet whether the event was taking place or not.
    97:08
    And actually, mid-last month, so mid-August, as part of the organizing team that I am, basically I can say we decided that there's no way that we could organize the event without social distancing and basically earlier on we said if we have to do social distancing we won't be able to do it. So that was the main reason to cancel the Dutch Pinball Open Expo for this year. we keep the option open to do maybe something like a virtual event but obviously Rob Berg is going to be apparently being the event to copy or follow or whatever I reached out to a couple of designers asking them whether they would be interested in recording a video seminar and so far everybody was negative about that.
    98:16
    Right. So we still have to see whether such a virtual event will be taking place or not. Oh, well. So no people will open expo this year. No, no big surprise. Although I have to admit, if it had gone ahead, I'd feel particularly aggrieved because I always go there. And unfortunately, the Netherlands is on a UK list of countries that people have to self-quarantine for 14 days if they visit at the moment.
    98:48
    And I don't know if the UK is on the Dutch list, but either way, it wouldn't be practical for me to come over to any event if it was held, at least not under the current rules. Although these things change, you know. Yeah. Rulings change. It would have been in November. who knows what the situation will be in November, but at some point as an organizing team, we had to basically decide, are we going ahead, yes or no? And obviously you can't do that two weeks ahead, because chances are there might be a green light in November, but obviously organizing such an event takes months and months. So at some point you have to say, are we going ahead or not? and we decided to pull the plug.
    99:39
    Well, we heard from Rob what the difficulties are. You have to work with the venue that you have booked as to whether you can cancel that without any penalties or not.
    99:50
    And he was held to that until the start of September, which is fairly close to the event. It was about six, seven weeks before it was due to take place. but you were at least able to make that decision earlier than he was. Right.
    100:10
    Okay, so moving on to other news. Yeah, August has been a month of news from Las Vegas, actually, and the site of the new Pimple Hall of Fame, because we've been seeing pictures from that and even a walkthrough video of how progress has gone on the construction of the new building, which they're putting up on the south side or south end of the strip. And, yeah, it's looking good. And the walls are up. They actually have a box building now. They're starting to fit it out. And according to Tim Arnold, they actually have plans to open the new place in January of next year. Yeah, I'm always surprised to see how fast things can go in Las Vegas, where normal construction sites over here can take months and months and months. Well, it's still taking months over there as well, but it looks to be as if it's going really quick or fast, whatever you want to call it.
    101:19
    Yeah, I was doing some research on that for the Pinball News article about it and was looking back at some of the meetings that they'd had, that Tim and the architects had had, with the local zoning committee and planning board about how they were going to build this place, the things they had to change. Tim actually covered quite a lot of that in the early days of the planning in his Pinball Expo seminar from not last year, the year before, when they just bought the plot. but yeah he reckons it's about about 10 million dollar total budget for the whole thing about 4.7 we'll say 4.567 million for to buy the plot and then the rest of the building and fitting it out and all the uh well the the parking lot and everything that goes goes along with building a new building you know the fire um systems and air conditioning and all that kind of stuff takes up to about 10 million dollars and um in that was uh as part of that presentation that he and the architect did to the the planning committee and the zoning committee uh there was a picture of what the final uh museum or the hall of fame is intended to look like which is i hadn't seen before but it actually looks uh looks pretty awesome and they've got a really big sign at the front which obviously says pinball hall of fame on it and it also looked like they covered the entire front of the building but she's great lettering saying the same thing yeah uh yeah well it looks like a sort of a new logo for the pinball hall of fame i don't think they had one yet so um that's very welcome and what i understood is that that um uh that new sign is going to be right across the Hollywood, no, sorry, the Las Vegas sign.
    103:21
    Right, yes, almost on the other side. Yes. So... Yeah, the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, the iconic sign for Las Vegas, is in the middle, in the central divide between the two lanes. Yeah. So this may well appear in the background of a lot of pictures from tourists. Right.
    103:45
    Yeah, so very good and amazing. They get all that done by January. But let's hope if they do, then there's a big opening party and people are able to travel there and attend. Yeah. So I have to say what's interesting, what I read also in your Pinball News article, so go look that up on pinballnews.com.
    104:10
    First of all, I was amazed with the size of this new facility, and supposedly it can host 700 pinball machines or something like that, and a bunch of arcade games.
    104:26
    And it also probably will indicate that Pimble actually has to hire technicians in order to make sure that all these 700 games continue running, because already with volunteers keeping the Pimble Hall of Fame currently running with the 200-plus games that they have over there, that was quite a challenge. So imagine keeping 700 games running.
    104:54
    Yeah, it's amazing that they've been running on a purely volunteer effort all this time, ever since they first opened up. But, yeah, Tim was saying he thinks he will have to start paying people to work at the Hall of Fame in order to maintain the place and also do the customer service side of it as well. Right. But, you know, his number one aim is to pay down the remaining debt on the new building. He still, you know, he, the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club, still owns the current premises, so they'll be able to rent that or sell it, maybe eventually, and repay some of the loan that they've taken out in order to build the new place. But even so, he says that he reckoned they were only about 20% loaded up on debt, so I guess that's about $2 million on a $10 million build. So he reckons he can pay that off fairly rapidly and get back to making charitable donations to the Salvation Army,
    106:01
    which is where all the profits from the Hall of Fame have been going in previous years. And it was paused while they embarked on this project. So, yeah, I'm sure it will be a very, very well-received donation in these difficult times where a lot of people, particularly in Las Vegas, have been out of work or been furloughed or laid off or otherwise found themselves in hardship.
    106:31
    Right. Yeah. Oh, well, best of luck to Tim Arnold. And obviously, once we're able to travel back to the United States, which currently is not possible due to the coronavirus situation, I look forward to going back to Las Vegas and seeing a new facility opened up, and I'd love to take a tour and play some games there.
    107:01
    Yeah, absolutely. We will be there as soon as we can be. So that's Hall of Fame news. So we mentioned earlier about Chris Franchi, about his pinball podcast and the work he might be doing, potentially, for Dutch Pinball. But he's also been busy doing other work, hasn't he, Colin? Yes, it's rather interesting. Actually, I had a brief text conversation with Chris Frenchy about this.
    107:30
    He designed a new creature from the Black Goon, Translight, which is not going to be printed as a Translight. and the reason the artwork was shown on a page called Metaluna5 Media on Facebook and it showed the well in typical Chris Frenchy artwork style I would say which is more like based on photo-ish material or well he's probably repainted, but it has that sort of photo look to it that we've seen on... Yeah, very highly detailed. Yes, exactly.
    108:25
    And the first thing that I noticed is that on the new Translight, which looks very interesting, I have to say, but the logo of Creature from the Black Lagoon has been moved. But in order for it to be a translight, if you're familiar with the game, on that game, the logo on the back glass is actually, each letter is lit up separately.
    108:52
    And so there's separations made on the back panel of the game. so where the logo goes is sort of the only thing on that trans light that has to stay in the same place in order for that effect to continue but the logo moved so that's well I wasn't the first to point it out to Christopher but he at the time when he made the trans light this new trans light he was not aware that this logo illumination was actually on that game.
    109:33
    Well, I suppose one solution would be to have a new light board behind it, which could be done with LEDs these days, of course, reduce the heat and power use. So that might give an option there. You buy the Trans-I and you also buy the replacement light board because there have been new light boards for quite a few different games over the past few years, which were built on sort of foam board type material, which are just plug-in replacements for the existing one and allow better lighting effects and also allow you to tune the brightness of the back box as well. So it would be a good pairing if they did that. Right. So, yeah. Yeah, but so I mentioned that to Chris in a messenger chat, and he responded to me that he was not aware of, when he did the artwork, he wasn't aware of that individual lighting. But he also said in that same response that this artwork isn't going to be printed as a translight. so I suppose it's going to be a poster to put up next to your game if you want to assuming that you can actually order it at some point but then again maybe you can't because obviously this is licensed material and I'm not sure whether this art will be permitted to be sold well I think the picture I saw had the Universal Monsters hologram on it, which suggested it was actually a licensed product, or if not, it probably should be, because it was certainly very faithful to the original drawing and design of the characters in it. Yeah, exactly. So I couldn't imagine that to be a problem, but it would seem a real shame if it wasn't turned into a translight, because it's a good replacement for the existing one, I would have thought. Right.
    111:48
    Anyway, you can look at that for yourself and ask Chris on the MetaLuna, M-E-T-A-L-U-N-A, 5 Media page on Facebook. Right.
    112:03
    Then, well, ColorDMD had a bit of news. They are currently up to their 102nd game, if I'm not mistaken. and they added support for the smaller dot matrix display games, I should say, that Data East came out with when the dot matrix display was introduced in the industry in the first place. So that's 1991.
    112:36
    So we're talking about games like... Checkpoint. Yeah, Checkpoint, Batman, Hook, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I'm trying to think if I'm missing... I think those four are probably the only games that have the smaller display. Star Trek? Not sure. Yeah, Star Trek. Yeah, Star Trek had that. So, okay, so it's five games. But, well, there's support for those games now. and the first two games that have already been colorized are Data East Batman and Hook,
    113:18
    which is, well, interesting, especially, personally, I'd be interested in the Hook one. Not that I have the game, but I always find,
    113:30
    despite the game being a clunker of a play field, I still like playing it, so. I could play it with the display in color.
    113:39
    Yeah, what's interesting is that actually these are using the existing 128x32 displays from ColorDMD, the LED version, not the LCD ones. And they're basically only using half of the display,
    113:57
    which seems like a reasonable... If it doesn't take up any extra space or doesn't impinge on anything else on the backboard, then no problem with that at all, I'm sure it doesn't. But it allows an existing 128x32 board, or at least panel, to be repurposed for this range of games, which is nice because it would be a lot easier to do that than to have to design a dedicated unit just for those few games that use the small display. and it's a nice way of extending the reach of colour DMD, now after they've done all the games that they wanted to do in the first tranche they're now moving on to some of the more I would say esoteric, the lesser supported games like those Day 3's Batman was everywhere when it came out and Hook was a very popular game as well and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too but they don't command the same kind of prices that some of the games with the larger displays do. So it's understandable that they were further down the line. But we have to wonder where ColorDMD is going to go after this. Are they going to go into, you know, do the Gottlieb Premiere games?
    115:17
    Possibly. Yeah, it would be nice. It would be nice, although they aren't that popular, I'd say. No, I was never a great fan of the red displays that they used in some of those games, or the red filters they put over the games. So if they can colorize those, I think that will really bring them to life in a way that didn't happen the first time around. Yeah, and maybe they can also do some new colorization for Star Wars Batman.
    115:50
    That's a good thought, yeah. So, and I suppose Aerosmith could also use some colorization. Yes, that's right, yeah. It's a very monochromatic game.
    116:06
    I'm only kidding, I'm only kidding. Okay. So what else do we have? Well, the next thing I suppose is something which has affected or has been an issue with quite a few locations.
    116:23
    Those have been closed down. Some pinball locations have been closed due to coronavirus. many of them have struggled to keep going or keep the funding going while they've been closed. No income and still lots of outgoings. So one of the ways of doing that is to start a GoFundMe campaign. We mentioned one earlier for Chas Adiki's family. Well, arcades have been doing this as well and barcades.
    116:51
    And one of the ones which is particularly, in my opinion, very worthy and I can give a shout-out to Jim Shelberg of the Pingo Journal for pointing this one out to me, is one being run by Marvin's Marvellous Mechanical Museum, the 4Ms, Marvin's Marvellous Mechanical Museum in... Lyon.
    117:16
    Lyon. Well, yeah, I was going to say in Michigan. I couldn't remember the exact name of the place, even though I have been there. And it's because I've been there that it particularly resonates with me because it's an absolutely amazing place. Have you been there, Jonathan?
    117:31
    No. No, I've been to the other mechanical museum, the one in San Francisco, which also has a GoFundMe campaign going. I mentioned that in our previous podcast.
    117:46
    Yeah. Well, it's very important that these kind of places do continue to exist because they may not be financially viable if they don't get the support. So Marlins in particular is just packed and packed and packed full of little curios. It's got all the latest pinball games in there, of course, but all kinds of interesting devices and machines and even just curious objects that just appear out of nowhere that you weren't expecting at all. But because it's so packed, it's a very difficult place to socially distance in. so you can see the problem they would have in reopening and they're not open at the moment and I don't know how they would reopen so they have $10,000 of monthly outgoings and zero income at the moment so anyway put that out there for your consideration there are plenty of other GoFundMe campaigns and worthy causes but Marvin's is a particular one after my heart and plenty of other people who live in the area they all love going there So go and have a look at the GoFundMe campaign and have a look at their website as well, so you can see what it is that they've been doing all these years.
    119:02
    And let's keep our barcades, arcades and pinball locations going as much as we possibly can. Yeah. So, okay. And then last but not least, a sort of a, how do you call it? I don't know, an advisory, I suppose, or a public service announcement type thing, or a plug for us. Yes, we're moving, or actually we've already moved. In fact, we've moved, yeah. Yeah, we've moved.
    119:38
    Sorry, we're ready to repeat that. yeah we've done a jersey jack we've um we've moved location and we're already operating from the new place right yes this podcast uh is is the pinball industry news is now on anchor.fm that's our new podcast we were on podcast garden and i don't know if you remember last month we had issues because Podcast Garden was down for quite a long time. And that wasn't the first time either. It wasn't the first time and we weren't the only ones affected by that. Quite a few other podcasts, including some pinball podcasts, were unavailable due to that. Jonathan very kindly stepped in and hosted the July update. But we decided enough's enough. We need to do this properly. So we're now on Anchor FM, which also links to Spotify and Apple so if you get your podcast from any of those places we we're on there we are pinball industry news so if you want to go to our website where you can download this and listen to this and any of the previous 36 podcasts that we've done interviews monthly updates bonus podcasts then we're on anchor.fm slash pinball dash industry dash news. That's our new home and hopefully you can sign up to that, subscribe to our updates and you will get notified every time we do a new monthly bonus or interview podcast. So that's the public service announcement and we hope that you find it useful and that Anchor FM is a bit more reliable than Podcast Garden was. Right. Hopefully there will be case. The good news is they're free, so we don't have to no longer pay for hosting.
    121:36
    Yes, that's absolutely right. I'll be honest, I didn't even know we were paying, Jonathan. I was paying.
    121:43
    Yeah, yeah, sure. So, oh well, it was only like 30 bucks a year, so that's a saving. Yeah, it's a saving. And I suppose I'll be knocking on a podcast of uh garden's door seeing if i can get a refund because i think we just uh extended for another year and um now we're leaving so i suppose maybe i can get 20 bucks back or something like that i don't know i'll have to well it didn't seem to be very responsive when we had problems with them i missed them several times and got no response yeah whereas you probably weren't you once emailing them. No, but you think there'd be some kind of update.
    122:28
    Yeah, when I was setting up the Anchor FM one, they were immediately responsive, you know, send an email or message to them and within a couple of hours you get a response. So, sorting out the problems that we had initially, which are basically around Podcast Garden not responding to moving and redirecting our subscriptions. But, anyway.
    122:51
    There. So, we hope it all works So let us know if we have any problems or any questions, and we'll see what we can do.
    122:57
    Right, okay. So I guess that rounds it up for August 2020 up to September 3rd, I suppose, including the latest news. We'll be back, as far as I can see, we'll be back at the end of September with the Bimble Industry News recap of September. unless there is really big news and we get a big interview then we might do a bonus episode but if not then I suppose it's just the regular monthly Pimble Industry News Recap Yeah and it looks like September 2020 is going to be an interesting month so we already mentioned some of the things we think are going to be happening but there are always other things which pop up which we weren't expecting So, yeah, let's look forward to all that. And we might not have pinball shows or tournaments to go to, but there's still a lot going on in the pinball world, and we'll bring you up to date with it in a little under a month's time. Right. So, and, oh, one last public service announcement. If you were following this podcast by use of RSS, you might have to register a new RSS feed or save, I don't know how that works. But basically subscribe to the new RSS feed on Anchor FM and then you should be automatically notified when a new episode is up.
    124:41
    That's right. Okay. So, well, basically, that's it. So I say bye-bye and until next month. Yeah, take care, everyone, and we'll see you at the start of October. Okay, thanks. Bye-bye. Bye.