All get around, he's on the rebound Hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby Pinball now to rejoice He's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee Myth to syrup and honey Homestead life with his family And a random tangent Stories of his boys He's on the poor man's pod network We're gonna get more listeners Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 646 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Albert, and on today's show, we're going to be doing top five rad and one very, very bad. unfortunately for the winchester mystery house but instead of keeping it a bit a mystery to you or as we'd say here in canada like sarah mclaughlin building a mystery house uh basically to break it down for you what we're going to do is i'm gonna do something different i have done dozens of these top five rads in one bad but today i'm going to keep it clean i'm going to keep it simple and i'm not going to keep it a mystery i'm going to tell you the one bad right now. You could hear it in my voice in yesterday's episode. Make sure you go listen to that if you haven't, number 645. I actually brought you some news after reaching out to Ryan McQuaid, the creator of Cuphead Pinball by American Pinball, formerly and now Orbit Pinball, even though their new machine has no orbits. Anyways, let's not go on too much of a tangent today, okay? In yesterday's episode, I thought it would be really cheeky and funny and cool to check the Barrels of Fun announcement halfway through my podcast to see if they did, in fact, hire Ryan McQuaid, as I thought they might have, because he's a known, very good pinball designer. At least he's done at least one good homebrew before, and now seemingly from what everyone who's ever played Cuphead I've heard is it's the best American pinball machine hands down, and unfortunately it might be the one that doesn't see the light of day. So I thought, what a cool twist. and I saw that the timer had finally happened. So I went over there to hear from David David Van Es himself. And what I found out was more shocking maybe than even him being hired as their new designer. It was that Carl D'Python Anghelo of IE Pinball fame and InDisc. It never drains in Southern California as well as the never drains tournament software that I've been playing with for almost 10 years now as a tournament player. So not only is he well, well, well known as a live streamer, whether that be for tournaments or whether that be for just Carl going up and blowing up a machine. Carl is usually the very first person that I see get to wizard mode on almost any machine, whether it gets to Ace Go-Go. Is that how you say it? I think so. Korean barbecue place up there that I chef's kiss can't wait to try. It sounds incredible. You put craft beer, Korean barbecue, and pinball machines in the same spot, and you somehow allowed my wife to come with me. I could probably stay there forever and ever and ever. I don't know if she could, but I could, okay? You added like a cupcake emporium or something like that, and we might have a deal with her. But I'm very, very, very excited for the Winchester Mystery House review. The only thing is that I'm not excited for is the bad part. So I don't want to be a negative answer to your Debbie Downer or hold you hostage to the end of the show. I'm going to tell you right here. It is that, and as you heard in yesterday's show, I was stoked for Carl D'Python Anghelo being involved, but I didn't know what a Winchester mystery house was. It was a mystery even to Orby. And I like to joke that I have my finger on the pulse of society, what's happening in culture at any given time. I make sure I stay in the forefront of music, having two teenage sons in my house for the last, well, I guess now a decade. That probably doesn't hurt. Now, the 20-year-old has flown the coop and will soon be moving out, in fact, to Grand Prairie, Alberta. Alberta, that's right. His dad's name is going to be on his driver's license, on all of his, like, where he lives. So that's kind of funny. Alberta. Not quite Alberto. Sorry, Jenga, only you and my sisters can call me that. And maybe Donnie, I guess. But, yeah, so stoked for him. But let's get back into this. I just, the one bad thing is, no matter what, no matter how good the game is, and I do think it's pretty good, we're going to get to that in a second, but I wanted to get this out of the way. I could give a shat less about that, a shats, a shats, this is a pinball show, I could give a shats less about that theme, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I mean, a random haunted house theme, like, you know, the pinball machine called Haunted House, that got me into pinball. Actually, I'm going to save that story for the very end. Just not to upset Franchi. I know he likes me only to talk about pinball on here, okay? So just not to upset Franchi any more than we already have. Let's save that for the end because I do have a cool haunted house story from when I was a kid and how it helped get me back into pinball at Paul Bunyan Trailer Park in Bayfield, Ontario. But we will talk about that at the end because it's too important to just say that this theme is the worst theme. Hands down, the worst theme. It's worse than GTF. Okay, it's not worse than barbecue. It's probably not worse than the Pinball Adventures one. It is probably worse than Thunderbirds, though. I'm sorry. It is. To me, it's worse than ABBA. Now, ABBA was a turd, a turdlet of a machine, okay? But anyways, the theme does absolutely nothing for me, and that's all I'm going to say about it because I heard David David Van Es' excuse that they like to have A themes, B themes, and C themes to screw around with. And it's like, yeah, take all those C themes and just don't make them. Because imagine right now, just if you had to close your eyes, I'm trying to think of like a creepy theme that would be way, way, way better for this. Okay? So like, remember, was it Luigi's Haunted House or Wario's Haunted House? It was one of the, on the Nintendo Switch, I believe, one of the newer Mario games that was like a haunted house. And that way you could have Peach in it, the princess. You could have Mario. You could have Luigi. You could have Yoshi. You could have Joshi. You could have all of them. You know what I mean? Like I just – I personally think just the theme, from a thematic standpoint, it's just never going to be a winner. It's – no matter how good this shoots, it's just never going to be a top performer at a random arcade unless pinball players know who Carl D'Python Anghelo is because then you lose the Carl factor. But let's get into the number one rad. We're not going to concentrate on the bad today. No, no, no. Because new pinball day is a good day. And I have to start by thanking, that's right, Scott. Now, I don't think it's Larson. Patreon does not show me the last name. Thankfully, I don't always need to know. Sometimes it does, but quite often it will just show me the email. And so it didn't come from Loser Kid, so it may or may not be Scott Larson. But if it is Scott Larson, and Scott whomever you are. I doubt it's Scott Larson, but it could be. Who knows? If it is Scott Larson, thank you. And if it's not, thank you, thank you, thank you. no matter who it is thank you so much so i did promise yesterday uh you know if i did get a patreon in the next 24 hours i would be back with another show doing the top five rad and one bad for the winchester mystery house and i have gone ahead and and and done that thank you to scott and i was going to take the day or two off for a couple days and come back with the five rad but because of scott every one of you right now is getting a show into your ears and the good news is I hate being two or three days late on one of these. I've been late a couple days before for various reasons, and I didn't want to be late on this one. I already knew what I wanted to say. I was just waiting for that. I checked last night four or five times, even when I was going to bed, yawning at 11 o'clock at night. I would have 1030. Okay, I'm getting a little older nowadays. I would have gone ahead and recorded, but nobody paid until today at noon. So thank you, Scott, for that and shout out to you. And that's right. I'm going to try to remember to put Scott in the episode title. So if you are kind enough to donate to my Patreon and join my Patreon, you're not only going to get, of course, the epic Stern rant. You're not going to get the epic floor washing of said negative Nancy and Debbie Downer who decided to call me pathetic for unbeknownst reasons. Completely unspurt on by anybody and still owes me a massive, massive apology. and that would just be the start but a massive massive apology still owed he knows that i know that whether or not he's gonna uh i i don't like the term man up he would probably use it but i don't like that term whether or not he's going to do the right thing and actually apologize to me times you know who knows who knows maybe that little tiny 15 to 20 chance of me going to expo gets a little bigger if i know that i can confront the person that owes me the largest apology in all pinball and I wouldn't do it in a mean and rude way I wouldn't be unkind like him and I certainly don't want to have any type of physical altercation but what I would like to do is be in a live stream and just really call that person out Kaneda call him out just for all the mean rude and horrible stuff he said about all my friends in the industry for absolutely no reason I've gone off after him lots I would I'm owed at least a little okay maybe not three shows of him calling me pathetic and financially shaming me but he's gone after people like colin of the kinetesis and my boy don for years who seemingly have never ever said or did a single solitary thing wrong to him in any way shape or form and rad ralph come on you want to go after donnie whatever you can take down him and jenga's i know you've gone after jenga's like 10 times in the last seven years since i've even been the hobby sure fine you want to go after donnie boy fine he works over there it spooky okay whatever you want to go after colin who had the most successful toy launch we've ever seen with those incredible roger sharp action figures okay and is reporting all the time colin of the kineticist thank you thank you thank you so much for all of your coverage i went over there and looked at the high resolution pictures and read everything uh that you had to say about the winchester mystery house so thank you for that but why on earth are you going after glenn one of the most positive people in pinball. And then why on earth are you going after me when I haven't said anything to you forever? Who knows? So Retro Ralph, don't bug him about his gloves, okay? Those gloves, if he wasn't wearing this, if everyone wore gloves, we'd have less sweat on all these machines. And that'd be a good thing because it's absolutely gross and disgusting. I don't know who these people are who sweat from their palms. If you sweat from your palms, take a cue from Retro Ralph and put on gloves because it's like the nastiest thing ever when you walk up to play. And your hands like and slide right off the machine and they're all ooey gooey. It's like, yo, it's pinball. Save that for Ron later on. All right. So the number one thing, the number one thing. I'm not going to go in any specific order, but this is just how they jumped out to me is the mechs. OK, this machine is more packed than the tournament room will be at Expo in just a few days. It is. It is. Is that this week? Wow. That is this week. That's so cool. tribe members Rachel Risto no not Rachel Risto Rachel Lazar and Dan Dan the man Lazar I just saw they were already at Stern so shout out to them and all the other tribe members that are going to be going this weekend and just everybody going have a great time make sure you sleep well I'll give you my tip this has been the tip so that I don't get fall down dirty gross disgusting drunk by like 4 20 p.m in the afternoon okay what i do is beer non-alcoholic drink doesn't have to be a water but it could be beer coffee beer water beer coffee go back and forth rotate and then past your second or third drink it's important to add in a snack it doesn't matter if it's a small package of peanuts or i mean probably don't want necessarily a chocolate bar every time but like a bag of chips it doesn't matter if it's just a small snack you want a slice of pizza that you steal, you renegade from someone there, you know, something. But try to go that this way you can party all day. You don't want to be that dude that's partied out at nine before like the big party start, right? And you also don't want to be that guy that's like getting kicked out at like 2 p.m. like, you know what I mean? Save that for me. That's who I'm going to be at Expo. No, I'm just kidding. I still would love to go to Expo. I don't know if it's going to happen. I suspect it won't. But I like to keep people guessing so that in case they owed me an apology, they might actually consider doing it because boy, wouldn't it be nice if we could all just be friends at expo instead of me have to do a live stream where I interview them. Do you know what I'm saying? All right. So going back to the mechs. So this is number one on my list for top five rad, the spinning table. Okay. The spinning table mech is really cool. We saw that in the ramps, uh, trash Panda game. Um, wasn't implemented very well. Didn't look like it worked very well. This one looked like smooth as butter. And what are the chances that Ramps came out that has a spinning thing, then Harry Potter, and then this one? So they would have all three of these pins would have been in development with a sterning table. Ooh, a little Freudian slip there. No, a spinning table, not a stern table. We haven't seen any sterns with a spinning table, ironically, because then it could be a stern spinning table. But that really looks cool. It looks like it gives you two more extra ball paths. It looks neat. obviously in a haunted house you'd have like a spinning you know fake entrance way or something like that so uh what else is there here i also had that there was uh like as far as just the mechs go there was the inline drops and i know what you some people are going to say targets aren max well first of all a stand target which does not move or interact with the ball yeah a stand target not a mech because it's not mechanical it just stands there it's just a dorky like dung dung dung go ahead and hit me it might turn on a light attached to it but i would argue that a drop target and george gomez has been on the record saying this multiple times that drop targets are far, far more expensive. And I'm 100% sure because of how rare these mechs are that an inline drop target system would be even more expensive. Now, are these inline drops implemented as cool as Scott Danesi's inline drops on TNA? Of course not. Do they look as cool as maybe Flash Gordon or Future Spa, two games that I've owned with inline drops that I absolutely love? Not really. But the fact that they're even there on a modern game, like I think we said this a while ago, when was the last modern game that had inline drops besides TNA? Probably Metallica. And then I guess Metallica Remastered, if you'd include a Remastered as a new pin, right? So, so cool. I love that. I also love that both of those, originally I thought it was like a silo or a barn in the back left, but it's not. It's like this part of this really weird mansion, of course. And it's got this, I think you'd call it a tower. I think there's actually a name for it, but it looks like there's a tower on the back left and the back right. And the implement, the implementation of said towers, considering the one tower is a ball lock, the other one, the entire tower tips over and falls over interacting with the ball. And then in between that, you've got that really cool sculpted roof. And then to blend it all together, you've got that screen, which is built in as part of the mansion. And that screen is, I think the best implementation of a screen I've ever seen. Now, is a screen a mech that's hard to say i would say the lcd screen is not a mech in this particular case when it's part of the wug if you will the world under glass when it's down there and it looks to me like it interacts with the ball and part there must be some type of ball tracker thing because it looks like when the ghost is moving around you know what i mean like you're actually able to make stuff happen on that screen more than a video mode just by how the ball moves then I would argue it kind of is a ball interactive mech. Now, certainly the ball's not like smashing into the screen and cracking it every single time. But I've just never seen a screen that so far, I think, you know, probably coming very, very close would be the screen from Dune. But this implementation is definitely better. So there you go, the mechs. And oh, and then on the left, they have that, I call it an opposite spinner. So it kind of looks like a spinner, but it's a little bit taller and a little bit longer. But instead of you hitting the ball up through the spinner, it's a ball lock on the far left, just kind of above the ball guide for returning the balls from the ramps to your left flipper. So the ball comes forward out of there as a multiball start. And then there's another one that takes the ball down around. I've lost track of how many mechs interact with the ball. I think there's five, but it could be six. and again it depends on if you include you know uh just you know the whole tower going down after the ball goes into it and that sort of thing but wow mechanically it looks great it looks packed it's got a really good vibe to it i'm vibing out on it i can't wait to play it i can't wait to play it and i didn't even know what a winchester mystery house was yesterday i'd never heard of it maybe it's big in america maybe like going through american history x like they tell you okay well you know uh there was this crazy lady who built store stairways to nowhere and doors where if you walk out of them you just go off a cliff into the air maybe in canada though it's just not something we've ever heard about was not something we've ever learned about i mean i even know about the twilight zone tower of terror ride you know like i know about lots of other i know about the anna time whatever that is the the horville thing you know i had heard of texas Chainsaw Massacre before, but I just, is there any movies or TV shows about this? Not that I know of, and that's why maybe I don't know anything about it, but later on today, my wife and I are going to sit back and go watch a tour and learn a little bit about it, and I'm excited for that. So there you go. You learn something new each day, and I do like the idea of a haunted house pin. I just don't, I can't even give it a one out of ten for a theme if I've just never heard about it, right? So like if Stern came out with – if Stern – and I'm kind of half being facetious here. But if Stern came out with Orbital Albert's Haunted Maison – oh, wait. That's French. They wouldn't like it. Okay. Orbital Albert's Haunted House in River Hibbert's beautifulest Nova Scotia. A bit of a mouthful, but they just got – Orbital Albert's – oh, Jesus. Now I'm saying Orbiter. Orbital Albert's Haunted House. literally more people in pinball would have most likely heard of me than especially in Canada, the UK, I could guarantee you, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland, France, Germany, Belgium, Scotland, Ireland, Robert Englunds, Wales, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, and all of Asia, and definitely Egypt. There's people there who have heard of me and have listened to me i have proof i can see the receipts right whereas i guarantee you those same that percentage of people have no clue what a winchester house is so if orbital albert would have more name recognition than the pinball machine you're about to do probably not a strong theme do you know what i mean and i even think of the non-themed themes like of a galactic tank force i still think that's a stronger theme and sounds cooler and more fun than just a winchester house right a mystery house because we don't know what we don't know what a mystery house is we know what who houdini is that was unlicensed we know who and what houdini is right even the viking game you know about the legends of alhalla everyone's heard about that in history growing up there's people who are huge massive fans of the vikings and the viking television shows and watching the discovery channel show there's i don't know if there's one person who collects winchester house stuff right i don't even know if one person does i'm sure zero people collect orbiter albert stuff But still, you get my point. If you could ask a thousand pinball nerds and more of them would have heard of me than the Winchester Mystery House, you've probably picked a bad – I get in the general public more people have heard of that than me. But anyways, let's move on here. We can't get stuck on this for too long. We've got places to go, things to see, and gummies to enjoy. so let's keep moving forward here uh number two is the launch flawless victory i'm gonna give a flawless freaking victory to this launch okay nobody knew what it was and it's a darn tootin good thing nobody knew what it was because if you had said for six months nine months eight months people would have been ready to laugh winchester house like that's a joke you've got to be kidding like please go make uh what was that what was the pinball adventures one where they stole barney fife's voice uh go make that one again punny factory like punny factory okay i'm lying punny factory is not a better theme than this mystery house it's just not but i if you can only think of two themes worse than this on planet earth which would be probably well that's that's the thing is it's just not a great thing but let's think about the launch the launch was nearly flawless nobody knew about it ahead of time and all the the right content creators who did know about it no one spoiled it we didn't have to look at like horrible potato screen freaking videos of it uh and i think some people were just so so shocked that the pinball machine came out with us seeing all of the video at the same time with having carrie hardy and carrie hardy uh slow clap for him with that wasn't slow there we go slow clap for carrie hardy he did his first ever featurette i don't love that i don't love that name but we all know what it is in pinball so i guess it works so congratulations on your first featurette i think you did a great job something he did a little bit different um retro ralph did the one for harry potter incredible job flipping out has done lots of them in the past they you know him and zach and greg greg bone they do a great job but i thought with carrie hardy's for this particular one he did a really good job explaining and putting up the pictures in the video of who this sarah winchester was and like all that kind of stuff right so um i will say i was watching i believe it was the flipping out one with ken and greg thank you guys for that I'm about halfway through that right now, but I will say it was either that one or it was another video with David David Van Es, and I looked at it. It was seven minutes in, and he had only let Carl D'Python Anghelo say one word once. There's no shot Gary Stern would be on a podcast with Keith Elwin for Keith Elwin's new game, and in seven minutes, he wouldn't let Keith Elwin say more than one word about the game. So David David Van Es, I don't think you listen to this. I don't think I've ever talked to you before. But if you do happen to listen to this or someone sends you a sound bite because we know how much people love doing that to my show, I'll let you know this in the nicest, kindest, most respectful way, David David Van Es. S-T-F-U. When you have a designer on talking about their game, you need to do that. You need to be a little bit more quiet. You need to be a little bit more humble and you need to realize your place. Sure, you're El Presidente. You're going on all the podcasts. Sure. but don't fall into the David Fix trap of, and I love David Fix, but he would do this as well. He would go on a show with one of the designers and he would just yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, and we didn't want to hear a gosh darn toot thing he had to say. We wanted to hear from the designers. We wanted to hear from the coders. We wanted to hear from every single other person who wasn't David Fix, right? And maybe that was part of the issue. And I did say on yesterday's show, It is very important. I do hope people go back there. Ryan McQuaid, not that I did an interview with him per se, but I did send him some questions originally, and then I did do a follow-up, and then he got back to me, and he really did want to set the record straight. And I think something that I missed the entire time, go and listen to Ryan's words yesterday. I don't have them in front of me, and I don't want to misquote him. but something I think I missed over all the years was I thought a lot of the issues with what David Fix was saying was that David Fix didn't know what the heck was going on and that he was just sort of putting spin on nothing and he was just full of hot air. And the real truth of it is it appears as if David might be full of a little bit of hot air, but also most of that hot air was blown in there from the management. And it appears as if management didn't have their head on straight and David Fix, like the rest of the team that was trying to produce Cuphead and all the other pinball machines, were kind of, you know, put in a sink or swim category. And as good as David Fix was in trying to correct the ship and make it go down the correct way, it sounds like management there was working against David Fix, making it nearly impossible for him to do his job. Now, do I think if a George Gomez type stepped into David Fix's spot three or four years ago when David Fix got it. Do I think he could have steered the ship of AP, right? Yes, I do. But I think that David Fix tried his best and maybe, maybe, maybe I was wrong about him. So I did, I ate some crow yesterday and I apologized. And the best pinball podcasters out there, or at least the ones that are the most authentic, are the ones that will apologize to you when they've messed up, especially if they made a major mess up. All right, let's move on. So that was a flawless launch i absolutely loved everything we saw uh out there uh dirty pool jeff from dirty pool pinball uh he did a very like off the cuff interview with him and carl that was probably my favorite one that was like a 20 minute talking heads that was so neat to hear um i i also wanted to say too this didn't quite make my top five but i love that what is he the the Casey Butler the Casey Butler jeff is that your voice it sounds like it might be yours but twisted no i don't know whoever's that voice was that's really cool i like how that Casey Butler is kind of guiding you through the haunted house and kind of cheering you on but also kind of taunting you and once a while a little bit evil a little bit scary and that voice oh my god that voice is creepy the sound is creepy the whole game is creepy david kept saying oh it's not that bad okay wait wait i'm not gonna try to do australian because i ended up just doing a dirty london accent there but he kept saying like oh it's not that scary and it's not dude you want it to be scary people want to be scared it's a haunted house game stop bragging it's not scary okay and also the only other minor flaw that i might have heard them say from the launch if i had to be super critical is that the code was only at 25 if the code's at 25 that's like if your wife asks you does my butt look fat in these pants you never say damn baby got back you're bringing all the boys to the yard like no you gotta you know you don't say no honey you look really really fat in that no you don't even if maybe it's not the perfect fitting dress or uh you know for her or for him because i know lots of guys they like to make sure their jeans look good okay um but if they come to you and maybe it doesn't look that great, you just say, you know what, I don't know if that's like the best fit for you, or you can say it in a nicer way. So the same thing is if someone asks you how far the code is done, and the code's only 25%, here's just an example of something you could say. Look, the code isn't as far along as we'd like it to be, but the code that is there has set the really good base for what's coming in the future. And without directly lying and saying, oh yeah, the code's at 0.99. No, don't directly lie. Never do that to customers but say you know what The code not quite as far along as we thought it would be but we are working on it faster than ever And now that this is our third game we figuring out how to do code even quicker even better with less bugs And with Carl D being the brains behind the coding and helping with the rules, oh my God, you better believe this is going to be our best coded machine to date. So that would have been the type of spin that as a college-trained marketer, advertising, social media, I've written professional press releases that have got a lot of views in several different publications. And when you're doing something like that, you just don't – people are not going to – there's people who were probably on the edge of their seat about to go on there and put the deposit down to get a Winchester, and they heard the codes at .25, and they remembered how Dune was launched with like i don't even think dune was as far back as 0.25 i thought i remember them saying it was at like 0.45 or at 0.5 or something or maybe it was at 0.67 who knows but the code itself was definitely the code itself it definitely seemed to be a lot further along than this and that code was really far back now the callouts seem like they're further but we haven't seen a live stream to prove that yet we've only heard like six or seven callouts from the thing the music sounds really good and integrated well but we don't know much about it and far as the rules perspective go we have absolutely no clue how many bugs there are or not until we see a live stream just watching recorded play i want to remind you guys okay i'm very excited for barrels of fun i think by far this is their best pin i think everyone would agree with that even though it's their worth worst license to date um this is by far their best shooter it looks like it definitely is their best woogie as i call it okay and no i'm not talking about the guy from something about mary woogie no i'm not talking about what my grandparents used to call my little sister back in the day woogie i'm talking about woog and then you gotta add it with a little bit of swag okay and what is woog woog is world under glass and this has lots of that but maybe we're gonna come back to talking about that later because i gotta dig in even a bit further for number three here after the perfect launch for number two number three and yes i'm bringing this in twice because i didn't know what category to put it in sorry i had to plug in the old lapper topper there uh but is that screen and i think that the screen screen is a game changer because on all of the other screens like when you look at there is a cool screen like that on circus voltaire but it doesn't make sense that the screen's there the screen isn't implemented to be part of it whereas this is perfectly implemented it is part of the house they've got the roof going along the one side of the screen it's perfectly framed and in like a haunted house type game the fact that you can see a moving ghost that's tracking with the ball or running away from the ball or vice versa that is just so interesting so neat if you are in a this i call this a like dark room game if you are at home in a dark room and this not only has uh like we heard from surge and kale over there on pin pals through the Electric Bat Pincast, I think, is the YouTube channel that Pinballs is through, but I'm sure it's on all your other pin catchers. Hey, if you're listening to me, you've definitely already heard of them, right? Come on. This is the nerdiest of the nerd shows. You only listen to this podcast when all the other ones are done. I get it. That's fine. It's just a personal blog, just me shooting the shots about pinball. But I'm telling you right now, this implementation of the screen, I really think it's going to be a matter of time until we start seeing screens now along the sides, like where you put the Radcals or the Mirror Blades, right? I really, really think we're going to see when it's due and when it's possible. Not the whole, and I don't mean the whole length of the pinball machine, but I mean about the same length or even smaller as that screen. I think we're going to see, like, pinball companies start to implement more and better uses of the screen. Now, of course, the best use of a screen ever, ever, ever. Again, I will eat crow and apologize again. Yet twice in one show, holy cow, is obviously multimorphic. and a little bit of news on the multimorphic front i just saw this morning Ian Harrower the gamma goadiest himself uh did share that portal is being shipped out so congratulations maybe i can finally see one and play one now that would be so rad i know ian mentioned when i'm back there next month that i would get to possibly perhaps try to play the prototype pin but now that they're being shipped out maybe they'll just be one in toronto or who knows maybe we'll even get lucky enough and Ian will, you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, talk to someone and maybe get his buddy Jeff Teolis to have Portal at the Maple Tournament. So you could have like 100 of the top pinball players across Canada and even the northern states come and play it. Check it out. That would be awesome. Wouldn't that be great? So anyway, super stoked for that. The screen. And again, the screen, if the screen is not in place, like it didn't make sense really in so many other machines I've had screens. Like there was, what was that other race car game that had the screen in the middle of it? Didn't really make sense. Didn't really, you know, didn't have perfect implementation, I would say. When we're going on to number four, number four is very similar to when I bragged about how good the launch is. It's not something inherent to the machine. Guys, I'm starting to get like my third cold. This is no good. You guys better be double, triple, quadruple thankful to Scott for joining my Patreon to get the show today because I suspect by tomorrow or the next day, my voice might be so scratchy that I either wouldn't record it or if I did, you'd all be like just turning it off in the first five minutes instead of the first six minutes. So, all right. So number four on the list is the Carl factor. Now, Carl much like, and I do talk about the good karma factor. This does happen with – it used to originally until a few years ago happen with American pinball. So they burned all their good karma kind of. And then a lot of people had this, of course, for Damien over there at Haggis Pinball until really he started to burn through all that good karma. And we in the pinball industry, we tend to really, really, really cheer on the little guy. And I love this. I mean it's not just in pinball. It happens in everything. We are always cheering on the little guy. Okay, if Stern put out the Winchester Mystery Machine, people – I don't think people would knock the shots because the shots are incredible. I don't think they'd knock the mechs. They'd go, wow, you added more to this than like 10 avatars. Like this is about one scram shorter being the most magnificent mech pinball machine on planet Earth, right? But now, does it have more mechs that interact with ball than Harry Potter? I don't know. Would I say it's a better world under glass than Harry Potter? Harry Potter is probably the best world under glass we've seen for a long time so I'm not going to go so far as to say that but I do think it's getting pretty close for a haunted house it's getting right up there the Carl factor so Carl gets a lot of good he gets a pass from a lot of people as far as us assuming he knows how to implement code because he understands code so well I even think he might have been part of the crew of like, I know Escher Lefkoff back in the day helped with this a little bit. I don't know if Carl did as well. I thought maybe he did, but I don't want to say for sure. But like Stern would send out pinball machines to people and be like, hey, let me know if you have any or go play this on location. Let us know if you find any bugs. Now, most of that's probably being done in-house nowadays, I would assume. But, geez, if you think that Carl's doing his first live stream on any Stern pin and people aren't going to be watching that from Stern to see what Carl's doing to get points and, like, what exploits are in the game, what scoring exploits, what exploits to get to the wizard mode even quicker, you know, and Carl can do that. Carl can play the game two different ways. He can play it as a score chaser and as a moment maker. He can do both. And that's, I mean, those are sometimes some of the best designers. Like imagine if you took everything that we love about a Steve Ritchie machine and him being like really, really good at being able to set up, say, like flow and help make a really good story for the pinball machine. And at the same time, you were able to have the amount of rules implementation and tournament strategy and also getting to the wizard mode that you would actually have in something by Keith Elwin. And I don't want to say this seems like half Steve Ritchie. It doesn't seem like Steve Ritchie at all. If anything, I'm getting like, okay, if I had to guess, I would give this like 33% Pat Lawler vibes actually. A lot of this stop and go stuff is a lot more Pat Lawler-esque. And then I would – and Carl, I'm sorry. I'm just going off the cuff here. I'm sorry if – it is 100% Carl. I'll say that. But then I think it's all honestly like a third maybe Keith Elwin-esque. and then just with a couple of the habit trails and the swirly swoopy shots, I see a little bit of Jack Danger in there too. I could be wrong. I could be 100% wrong. Maybe it's just 100% Carl. I mean the stand-up targets, you could say that's Scott Danesi. So maybe it's 25% of each of those four rad dudes. Who knows? But what I do know is that Carl has been long, long overdue for getting a pinball machine. He also – he's beloved in the tournament world, not just for live streaming tons of tournaments. not just for running, it never drains in Southern California, which for years and years and years has been one of the top tournaments ever ran. And if it wasn't so darn tootin' expensive and so far away to get to California, I would have already been to it, Carl. And he does that with lots of help. It's not just him. But then he's beloved because not just during COVID, but before COVID, after COVID, he does some of the most entertaining streams. Almost any time a new pinball machine comes out, you'll see a live stream. Now, I've seen less of this in the last year from Carl, but maybe that's because he's been working on the Winchester, Stop. Wait, I seem to remember Winchester. Wasn't that the place that they go hot fuzz? Isn't that the place they go in hot fuzz maybe? The Winchester Bar? I forget. I think it was though, maybe. All right, so the Carl Factor. And I did put in brackets 520. Do I think the Carl Factor is going to sell all 520 of these? Of course not. Do I think the Carl Factor is going to sell like maybe 100 of them? Yeah. and i guess no one's gonna buy it just because carl did it but when everyone's looking at this and they're going but wait how will the rules be implemented but wait how will the code be implemented but wait will this have nice flow and then they go wait carl is one of the top tournament players of all time carl is one of the top players at getting to the end of a wizard mode so not only can he do score but he can he's also a moment maker and on top of that he's probably pretty much been involved in pinball for like decades now i think like a decade and a half two decades i don't even know so long before me that when i was even starting to listen to pinball podcasts carl d'Python Anghelo was thought of as like the god of like i he basically him and jack danger are the ones that are him and jack danger are the the two people that kind of revolutionized live streaming i think i didn't carl make the the rig the original rig that everybody has oh sean of the dead thanks honey so drop target danielle if you're gonna want to actually hear her voice you're gonna have to listen to go go listen to absolutely free episode number 644 uh that already had over 80 impressions i don't i don't think that means necessarily listens but thank you to everyone who went there yesterday and if you're somebody who one of the 200 and some odd people who listened to my show from yesterday about the redemption of david fix and you didn't go listen to that free episode on Patreon with Drop Target Danielle, she's probably mildly disappointed. I'll be honest. If I'm just talking about David Fix and I get 200 listens in the first 24 hours and in five days since I recorded with my wife, we only got 80 impressions. Come on. And like five of those are just retro Ralph having to go back and re-listen because he was so busy himself. And Jeremy Burchell of the JBS show, wow, I might be influencing him just a little because apparently according to Cale on the Pimp Al show, he said, I got to play the new Barrels of Fun machine and it is, and I will quote, freaking rad. So there you go. And then I wrote that to Jamie this morning, and he just wrote back, well, you are an influencer, Albert, or something like that. I don't know. He said something about that. Anyway, so I thought that was so funny. I love being part of this industry. Even Lawrence Adams recently did a really cool meme showing, like, you know, Silver Ball Chronicles only talks about the past. Electric Bat, Retro Ralph, JBS show only talk about the present. and then they put eclectic gamers in the pinball universe and then they put uh well they put the sign for poor mans which is my fault because i should be updating it each and every time but i don't have the time or energy or strength and i don't want to use up too much of our bandwidth that we get in our local one month supply by uploading a new picture every time and also feels a little bit vain but uh he used the poor men's pinball network um logo but put beside it and in albert's universe and that's kind of what it is that's what a blog style pinball podcast is supposed to be it's supposed to be my view of the pinball world through my road rose colored glasses here in beautiful river hibbert's nova scotia so let's go into number five the carl factor is real is it going to sell all 520 no but if if this was just a random designer we had never heard of and we didn't know if they were a good tournament player and we didn't know if they were really good at getting to wizard modes and if we didn't know they had revolutionized pinball in the past and we didn't trust that they knew what good shots and good flow and all that kind of stuff was no in Carl we trust like if Elwin went over to a brand new pinball company people would believe that Elwin would like make sure he still made a good pinball machine And that the same way that by Carl D going over two barrels of fun you now it the Carl factor guys That's what it is. It's the Carl factor. I think that it really – if you were teetering on the edge like, yeah, it looks kind of cool, and then you're like, wait, Carl D'Python Anghelo designed this? This man is going to not – this man will probably work night and day. I know it's not his full-time job, but he's going to work as much as he can to get the code there. because he's probably more annoyed by bugs than any of us are. And then he's going to work his butt off to make sure that's a good tournament game because he's such a big tournament player. And then he's going to work his butt off to make sure that just, you know, we're going to see a cool live stream. I don't know if it's going to be Jeff first. Oh, I did reach out to Jeff from Dirty Pool Pinball to ask him when the live stream would be. I did congratulate him on the game and the sound and all that kind of stuff and let him know how cool I thought it was. But I also wanted to know, like, when's the live stream? Because the live stream will tell us so much more than these edited clips. the live stream will tell us is the code just too early to decide or not whether you want to buy this you know let's hear some of the other callouts let's hear some of the other music let's see let's see some of these modes being played let's see let's see what's happening on the lcd screen we have no clue we've only seen like two or three effects on the lcd screen so we don't know there's just too many question marks for me to give like a full stamp of approval now you know me anyways As I've been saying since Mandalorian, play before you pay. This is the way. And this is 100% the way. Will this machine possibly perhaps sell out by Christmas? Yeah, probably. But I can tell you this. You're going to be waiting unless you got in already because according to David David Van Es, over half of them have already sold. So unless you've already bought one right now, you're part of the 270 to 200, probably like 10 to 15 people will back out. I'll say 279 or, in Owen's words, 206, 7 machines probably are already gone but are still to be spoken for. I'm telling you right now that you will have time to go play this at Expo or various other locations long before you ever have to decide whether you're going to buy it or not and whether it's going to sell out. I would say maybe, maybe, maybe possibly best case scenario, best case scenario, and I don't even think it will be this, maybe it sells out two or three weeks after Expo by like December 1st or something okay maybe maybe mid-November I doubt that I think it's going to be a push right till Christmas Day I really do even if people play it and even if people love it I will say this I do like the back glass art I do enjoy most of the play field art I do like the stained glass over the not the pops but there's I do like all the stained glass pieces. I do love the lighting. The lighting looks fire. I mean, the lighting in Dune was also incredible. I do love that apron. I mean, this is the nicest apron I think I've ever seen. And that being said, the nicest apron I'd ever seen until now was Dune's. I'd have to see them side by side. But either this Ouija board, sorry, spirit board, either the Ouija board down there or the spirit board, whatever you want to call it, I think that is the coolest, most sleekest, awesome-looking apron I've ever seen. And really, it adds extra space that you can do cool stuff to make it really stand out and pop. What I will say is I don't think Winchester will ever, ever, ever do well on location. Maybe on location inside the Winchester Manor, or maybe in the exact town that that place is in. I don't know where that is. I think Don said he used to live near it or something, but either way, this particular pinball machine is going to be for the hardcore pinball nerds or the odd person that loves the Winchester Mystery House. This pinball machine is going to be for the hardcore collector that likes to have super rare. I would say only 520 machines. That's pretty freaking super rare. I mean, the last like five or six LEs from Stern have even been more than that. And that's just their least common one, right? like never mind how many premiums or pros are out there uh price wise just from looking at this would i rather have this than most stern premiums i would need to play it i really really would need to play it i don't love the cab i'm sorry brian i think it's uh who did uh oh brad Brad Albright brad Brad Albright i don't love the cabinet art the one side is okay i think on the left the right hand I don't know. I don't love the cabinet art. I wish there was kind of a little more going on there. There's like a whole huge big area with just like a lightning strike and it takes up like most of the area that you'd actually see if you were walking by it as opposed to – but you know what? Is this Brad Brad Albright's first like him doing the whole artwork? No, Brad Brad Albright did Portal. I thought Portal was very well done as well. I do think it's very, very, very good. It's not like my favorite artwork. It didn't make the top five rad, but I do like it, and I do think it's very well done. I do think he worked his butt off on it. I don't want to sound like straight down the middle, but I'm probably going to give it a B-plus for the artwork. Is that okay? Is that fair? I'm trying to be fair here. I don't love it as much as a franchise artwork job. I just don't. I'm sorry. I thought Evil Dead was done even better, but Evil Dead is one of the best artwork we've ever seen, especially coming from American Pinball, who's known to have not great artwork up until then, right? So anyways. number five on the list you already heard me talk about it earlier it is the woogie factor okay also known as the world under glass and i think just i've may already made this point but when you look down on it it's packed there's what six and what do i mean by packed it's not just flat and all one level there's like six or seven different times when the ball gets raised up to different heights and different levels and many of those buildings and those different things that you're seeing in those ball paths and even just look at the number of habit trails that the metal habit trails spinning around and whimsical going everywhere if you had a good multiball going you could see three different balls going around those different tracks coming from different heights at all different times and you would forget which ball was which unless you put like five different colored balls in there but why would you do that um that would be yeah nah we We had it in Twilight Zone. That was good enough. But to me, looking at this, in comparison to, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and I don't want to be a mega moron, even though I am quite a bit, but I will say this. In comparison to me looking at, say, Star Wars, it doesn't feel as well thought out as this. just from a look like if you were to if you were to uh get the the gun okay from don't worry it's not it's not a winchester gun it's just it's just a regular gun a regular gun that everybody has at least their neighbor does in honey i shrunk the kids and you shrunk yourself down and you put yourself inside that star wars that most recently came out from stern and john borg shout out and ray day of course doing awesome stuff with the code if you put yourself in there you would see the job of the hut which most people don't really love and i don't know why his belly is lighting up did he just eat a glow bug or something i don't know what's going on i just uh daily dose of uh internet i just saw a video of like a frog that ate a glow bug and like every 10 seconds it would go glow glow and glow in his belly and that's all i can think of now when i see that job of the hut uh when you see the death star and it's barely opening and it's rejecting all the different balls and it's so tiny that even as a little micro person it doesn't look very you know it's I just don't feel like there's a lot of world under glass happening there. Whereas if you were to put yourself in the Winchester and look around, you'd feel like you were in that crazy lady's actual mansion. Do you know what I mean? Like the ball is disappearing and coming back so often. And maybe it's just me, but from a world under glass standpoint, they win. They win from a theme standpoint, big L, but big W from the woogie from the woogie. Do it to the woogie. All right, everybody oh yeah oh yeah and the other part of that was too that that that mixes into the world under glass is how well so far it sounds like they have implemented the code as well as the sound as well as the even the speaker lighting going with the different and the their their version of their expression lights that go along the sides and how the lights move around under the play field maybe barrels of fun is doing that better than anybody and all of that mixed together i i'm more excited to play this than probably stern's last three or four games i'm more excited to play this than even kong knowing knowing it was elwynn's baby like it's like so it's really really really hard it's it's tricky because i don't know will this be barrels of fun's best pin probably will it sell the best? I don't know. But I will tell you this. If Carl D'Python Anghelo does a fantastic job, as I believe he will, finishing implementing the code, finishing making sure there's no bugs, finishing making sure there's lots of call-out, lots of good animations on the LCD screen, lots of great implementation with that screen that's all along the side of the mansion, I really truly believe that not only could this pinball machine sell out, but I think past maybe the first six months to a year where you're going to see a couple pins sell for less than value. I think that, especially if this is Carl's, like kind of his rookie card, like if this is, you know, Keith Elwin's Iron Maiden, that I do think that this could be one of the rare pins that does hold its value fairly well and maybe even possibly slowly go up five to 10 years from now. Again, if you hold it in your collection for that long. I don't think it's going to skyrocket or anything like we saw during the COVID times, but I do think that it is a very good effort. I do think for how crappy of a theme, it was implemented as well as it can be. And I'm sorry if I'm being too upfront. Are you listening, Stern? Are you listening, Barrels of Fun? I'm sorry if I'm being too upfront. That's the nicest way I can say it. It is a Shatz theme that is implemented near perfectly. I'll tell you what this machine does for me, though. It makes me more stoked to see what Barrels is doing next. It makes me even more pumped up to think that maybe we could get another pinball machine from Carl D'Python Anghelo. It gets me even more fired up knowing that Jeff of Dirty Pool Pinball is going to be working his butt off to implement all of the sound effects, all of the callouts, and all of the music far better than they had implemented before. You can even hear it in the work he's already done on Dune. So now does this mean that Dune sales are probably shot in the foot for a bit? Probably. But let's be honest. If they're releasing this pin at .25 code, it means that Dune sales were already more empty than a desert. Okay? So, will this sell better than Dune? Probably. Why? The Carl factor. It's not the theme. It's the Carl factor and the Woogie. Okay? The Woogie, just remember it stands for the world under glass because this pin got Woogie, this pin got Carl. It doesn't have theme, but maybe it doesn't need to when you got the Woogie and you got the Carl. Am I right? Or am I right? All right, pinball nerds, I probably went on way too long. Sorry for that. I'm going to be gone for a while, but if somehow, someway over the next three to five days, before there's any more information or before I get a live stream or before I start hearing stuff about Expo, during that time, if you ever get bored and you want to go listen to a little bit more Orby with swearing, with beers in his system, talking a little bit more off the cuff, get over there and listen to Drop Target. Danielle and I do the WTF has happened in pinball in the last month. We had a great time doing that. That's episode 643. You know me. You can get over there and you can listen to it for free. I was shocked. I thought today when I woke up, I didn't necessarily think I would get one more paid Patreon, but I thought I would get like five to ten more people that joined my Patreon even though they weren't paying for it just so they could, you know, just to thank me for putting that episode up free. And it is an important episode, and I do want everyone to go listen to it. But at the same time, while you're listening to it, could you at least follow me if you're not going to be a paid member? But you know what? Just like yesterday, it worked yesterday. Let's see if it could work today. My next, and I've been working on this for quite some time. This is maybe my most researched episode ever. I happen to suspect that I know exactly whom owns the most number of new inbox pinball machines. And no, it's not Jersey Jack. I don't care how many warehouses they have. No, it's not Stern. No, it's definitely not American Pinball, even if they got 500 freaking Legends of All Hallows left to sell. This one single dude who is not a distro and who none of you have ever heard of in pinball other than probably me owns, I believe, the single largest collection of new in-box pinball machines. And if I – I've got a sneaking suspicion they're all LEs as well. So now he only collects from what I understand Stern and Jersey Jack, but I think for the last 15 years he has bought not even 10 or 15, but believe it or not, I think he's buying 25 new in box LEs at every release, five from five different distros and keeping them in a location. Now, I even have receipts and I have proof and I'm going to show that as well. But whether or not you guys want that show to be behind the paywall in the next two to three days or whether you want it to be there for everybody, get your name in the logo just like Scott did today. I don't know if any other pinball podcasts are actually going to put you in the name of the episode, but there you go, Scott. You got that. If I get within the next three days, today is the 14th of October. If I get a new Patreon in the next 72 hours, that will not go behind the paywall. It will be given to everybody thanks to you. And don't worry, I'm not going to give away your last name. I'll just, first names only. That's all we need here on the Poor Men's Pinball Podcast Network. Until next time, pinball nerds, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe. Winchester, of course, from the shot of the dead.