Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 158 - Rush Those Stats

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·analyzed·Jan 9, 2022
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

EGP 2021 stats analysis: 37k plays, 39% growth; Balarama startup criticized for vague plans.

Summary

Tony and Guinness review Eclectic Gamers Podcast 2021 statistics, revealing 37,000+ plays (39% increase from 2020), with top cities being Boardman OR, Columbus OH, and Melbourne AU. They discuss their most/least popular episodes and cover industry topics including Balarama, an Australian startup attempting Kickstarter-funded pinball manufacturing, which they criticize for lacking concrete plans and relying on buzzwords rather than actual design or manufacturing strategy.

Key Claims

  • Eclectic Gamers Podcast achieved 37,000+ plays in 2021, a 39% increase from 2020

    high confidence · Tony cites official analytics from their pro plan subscription showing year-over-year growth metrics

  • Boardman, Oregon is the #1 city by listens due to Amazon AWS S3 server infrastructure located there

    high confidence · Guinness researches Boardman's largest employers and identifies Amazon Simple Storage Service as likely source of 'Unknown' traffic referrer masking actual location data

  • Balarama is an Australian startup planning to fund pinball manufacturing via Kickstarter with minimal concrete plans

    medium confidence · Guinness describes Pinside forum thread criticizing Balarama for using stock images, buzzwords, and failing to explain manufacturing process or present a game design

  • John Norris from Premiere (formerly Deep Root working on Merlin's Arcade) offered design services to Balarama

    medium confidence · Guinness states 'I believe' he volunteered services but acknowledges he may be incorrect and didn't verify in the thread

  • Pinball community is becoming more cautious about funding startup games via Kickstarter after learning lessons from past failures

    medium confidence · Guinness observes 'Pinballers are sometimes a little slow on the uptake and don't learn a lesson very well until you teach them two or three times. But they're very leery about funding startups.'

Notable Quotes

  • “We're in the pro plan, so we can do that. [about accessing city-level analytics]”

    Tony @ ~00:11:30 — Explains how the podcast upgraded analytics capabilities enabling granular audience geographic tracking

  • “I don't believe doing a pinball bounty segment will let you sell more games. Most sane people wouldn't equate those two.”

    Guinness @ ~00:58:15 — Critique of influencer culture in pinball/watches where people believe flexing/content creation directly drives sales

  • “Pinballers are sometimes a little slow on the uptake and don't learn a lesson very well until you teach them two or three times. But they're very leery about funding startups.”

    Guinness @ ~01:01:30 — Assessment of pinball community's caution toward crowdfunded game startups following repeated funding failures

  • “It's basically low skill stuff. And it's just, and I don't care. I get it. Yes, if you work hard and you hustle, you can make more money than if you don't work hard and don't hustle. What a shock.”

    Guinness @ ~00:55:45 — Criticism of 'hustle culture' rhetoric used by startup entrepreneurs and influencers

  • “Episode 149... was really meaty. So I guess I probably shouldn't be surprised that it was the top episode.”

    Tony @ ~00:28:45 — Reflection on what drove engagement: coverage of multiple major announcements (Spinal Tap, Insider Connected, TWIP hiatus, gaming news) in single episode

Entities

Eclectic Gamers PodcastorganizationTonypersonGuinnesspersonBalaramacompanyPinsideorganizationJohn NorrispersonPremierecompanyDeep RootcompanySorcerer's ApprenticegameSpinal Tapgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern Pinball experienced significant production constraints in 2022, leading to dealer throttling strategy

    high · Episode 154 covered 'Stern's 2022 production issues and how they were going to stagger the or I should say throttle the amount of games going to the dealers'

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo was major event driving Episode 153 popularity despite hosts' moderate assessment of episode quality

    high · Episode 153 (Pinball Expo recap) was 2nd most popular despite being 'an okay episode.' Guinness notes 'people were just desperate to hear something.'

  • $

    market_signal: Critique of 'hustle culture' and empty motivational rhetoric in startup/influencer spaces affecting both pinball and watch communities

    medium · Guinness criticizes Balarama and unnamed YouTube watch dealer for relying on buzzwords ('grit,' 'determination,' '110%') without demonstrating actual product/plans

  • ?

    leak_detection: Multiple pinball manufacturers/games missing from year-in-review requiring post-hoc additions

    medium · Guinness admits: 'I had to go back when I was making the show notes, I think twice, and add in companies I forgot. And then when we were recording it, you actually caught me where I skipped a section'

  • ?

    community_signal: John Norris from Premiere offering design services to Balarama despite startup's vague plans

    low · Guinness states 'I believe' Norris offered services but acknowledges uncertainty: 'I may be incorrect' and didn't verify in thread

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.267

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 9th. This is episode 158. I am Tony. I'm Guinness. We've got a lot to talk about Because there's been some stuff going on In the video game side And we have a new pinball release So there's actually some Substantive news, but before all of that What's been going on, Tony? I know you've been busy Yeah, work's been real insane the last couple weeks Because between COVID, the weather And vacations and everything My staff's been well under 50% In the last two weeks So it's been pretty busy and saying I actually had to work all last weekend, which, you know, as a salaried employee. No fun. Coming into work weekends is not nearly as enjoyable of a task as it was back when I was an hourly employee. When you were not an exempt employee. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, it used to be I'd come into work weekends. It's like, yeah, here's somewhere between 8 and 12 hours of overtime. And now it's just like, this is your job. Do it. Yeah, it's nowhere near as enjoyable. Yeah, I had an interest as an aside. Actually, this last week, I had one of the health department administrators contacted me. Her county, actually, the other department heads were so upset because she was hourly and had earned a tremendous amount of overtime working COVID clinics. And so now she said, what do I do now? The commission is insisting you will be moved to salary or we will find someone else. and I said well try and negotiate it as best you can because our big concern wasn't being put on salary but rather being put on salary and then having to constantly work overtime and I'm like yeah they can do that to you yeah there's usually an expect there's normally an expectation that you don't have a lot of overtime as a salary or your salary you know attorneys are notorious for this they have a tremendous salary and they know that they might be pulling 60 to 80 hour weeks as a starter. If I have to work a little bit of overtime here and there, I have to work a lot of overtime. When I start pulling multiple days worth of overtime, my company likes to have us take an extra day off, take a personal day when things get calmer to try and balance out the issues. I don't get anything. So anyway But it's not been as bad for me as it was in 2020 Well that's good So in terms of I don't have a whole lot in terms of my Updates before we go into the show Other than I did finish Resident Evil Village Which I started when we Last done the game and so now I'm playing That furry game Biomutant Where you're a furry running around in a post-apocalyptic world of furries Do you Which do you prefer being stepped on by Amazon vampire goddess or your furry interactions? Which one is opening something you never found within yourself?
Insider Connected
product
Cactus Canyon Remakegame
Godzillagame
Home Pincompany
Jeffperson
This Week in Pinballorganization
Pinball Networkorganization
Zachperson
Steve Ritchieperson
Lyman Sheetsperson
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Stern Pinballcompany
  • ?

    personnel_signal: Key designer departures from Stern: Steve Ritchie to Jersey Jack, Lyman Sheets left months prior

    high · Episode 147 'New Pastures and Deep Roots' covered Ritchie joining JJP and Sheets leaving Stern, described as 'Deep Roots Implosion starting to show'

  • ?

    announcement: Stern released Cactus Canyon Remake with new 'Standard Edition Plus' tier at Limited Edition pricing

    high · Episode 154 covered announcement of Standard Edition Plus model with topper at LE price; hosts called it 'one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball community becoming more cautious about crowdfunded startup games; learning from repeated Kickstarter failures

    medium · Guinness: 'Pinballers are sometimes a little slow on the uptake and don't learn a lesson very well until you teach them two or three times. But they're very leery about funding startups.'

    • 3:28
    I'm not far enough along in Biomutant to say for sure. So far, though, I'm preferring giant vampires. Yeah.
    3:36
    Resident Evil Village, really fun. If you like survival horror, really fun. I thought about playing through it again, but I've got so many other things to do that I might as well do those first. Actually, while I have been busy with work-related stuff, I have been filling the time that's not been family-related by playing SnowRunner, which is just like off-road trucker kind of hauling cargo thing through like swamps and mud bogs and deep snow fields. And then you flip your truck over and get it stuck. So you go to another truck to come out and rescue the first truck. It's a ton of fun. One of the streamers I watched played it the other day just before Christmas. And when it hit the Steam sale, I bought it because it looked like so fun. And it's one of those interesting games that it's a, it is multiplayer with full cross play between everything. So anybody can, so, so that when they were playing it, They were playing it cross-played between PC and Xbox. And, yeah. So it's pretty cool. Don't people with steering wheel rigs have an unfair advantage? I would say probably not, actually. Because this is not like the trucker, like the Euro trucker or an American trucker, which are real tight simulation. This isn't the Microsoft Flight Simulator level of simulation of trucking. This is much more like Ace Combat level of arcade-y simulation. it's like in between. It's not nearly as yeah. I do it all third person and it's a lot of fun. So I've been enjoying the crud out of it. Okay. Before we actually jump into our regular segments, we always at the start of the new year go ahead and do a little glimpse behind the curtain for people of what our annual stats were for the podcast because some people are curious. It's not so much the sausage making as the numbers behind the sausage making. So I guess if you don't like this part, usually five minutes is probably as long as it takes for us to get through it. But because we do it every year. But anyway, so there we go. Annual stats looking at 2021. Go ahead and note. So for the calendar year, we had just over 37,000 plays. And that's actually over a 39 percent increase since our from what our 2020 numbers were, which as far back as I can remember, I did not go back and look at our last percentages if I even had them all on the notes, but I believe that easily is the largest percentile increase we've ever seen. I don't know quite to say why it got so much higher. I mean, we've always had higher numbers every year, right? So I wasn't surprised to see that they were better now, but I just was shocked at just how much they went up. So maybe we've just gotten that much better. And, you know, we talked about that it could be more exposure. It also could be that, uh, like we see every year, a number of podcasts went away. And so if you've got your, you know, if your favorites, like if you were into the pinball players podcast or all the, every other week of the super awesome pinball show, and they've gone away, maybe you had no choice, but to turn to, no, you had to come to us, but it's okay. We welcome you anyway. Whatever reason brought you to us. We're very welcome. We still welcome you. Uh, In terms of the countries that play us, there are a lot, but the top five are USA, and it falls way off after USA. Just to make that clear. So USA, followed by Australia, followed by Canada, followed by the United Kingdom, and then our top five finalist is Sweden. Oh, didn't Germany used to be up there? What happened to Germany? Germany, I think, and Sweden were within ten plays of each other. It was real close. I remember Germany was always in our top five. Well, this is how we say goodbye in Germany. Sweden, Sweden. That's how we say it. Now, I also pulled the numbers for what are our top five cities that play the show. I didn't even know you could do that. Well, we can now. We're in the pro plan, so we can do that. So our top city is Boardman, Oregon, followed by Columbus, Ohio, followed by Melbourne, Australia, followed by Portland, Oregon, and the final of our top five is Chicago. okay i'll be 100 honest i've not even heard of one of those towns is it boardman it's board it's gotta be because i know all the other ones are famous i've never heard of chicago what's this chicago place maybe boardman's like a suburb of portland that's what i'm looking for it is we know oregon is a huge mecca for pinball so i'm not surprised that oregon no where is boardman is like right on the Columbia River, right on the Oregon-Washington border. You know, I was a little surprised that Washington, another big pinball state, wasn't in the top five cities, but maybe a lot of Washingtonians have come in on our Boardman stat. I don't know. I don't know either. It's weird. But welcome to Boardman. Yes. Peoples. Yes. I wonder if one of the big online listening companies is based out there. Could be. could be, given that it was number one. I didn't write down the differentials on these in terms of how many plays came out of them.
    9:04
    Now, in terms of our website references, so these are external sources that are pointing that people clicked on to play us. Now, I almost dropped it, but I thought it wouldn't be fair. So the number one option in our listing was just called Unknown. And it was huge. Huge. I mean, thousands of plays, whereas nothing else is that high. Okay. I figured it out. What is it?
    9:32
    Boardman, Oregon's one of their six largest employees is the Amazon Simple Storage Service. It's where Amazon Web Services is based out of. Oh. So by Boardman, Oregon, it's not – as I was looking, their population is 3,000 people. Aw. We have them all. So Okay so people are playing through Probably the Amazon They're getting us through the Because I think we're available through Amazon Yes we're available through the Amazon That could have gone to a real city That is I was happy on not knowing Actually Yeah and S3 also does Website hosting so it could be through Also online websites That are hosted at that S3 site I bet I don't think our show, I mean, we host our show through our WordPress site, but I don't know of anyone else who hosts us.
    10:28
    I mean, some of that might be masked in this unknown category for external sources then. Could be part of it. Yeah, probably. Because I think most RSS grabs wouldn't show that way.
    10:39
    Now, aside from the unknown website references, the rest of the five are in order. Google, then our website, then Pinside, and I was actually surprised. I think it's the first time Tilt Forums made the top five list. I actually thought about stopping maintaining our thread on Tilt because I feel like it's not getting us anything, but apparently I was wrong. I don't really pay attention to how many people play it through there.
    11:07
    Now, just for those stat nerds who are curious, according to our SoundCloud account, here are the five most popular RSS applications that have been used to play the podcast. So the number one, which isn't a surprise, is the iPhone's Apple Core Media, whatever. I think it's actually branded. It's something different when people go in. I always call it Apple Core Media and people are like, what are you talking about? I go, your default iPhone player. And they go, oh, okay. Because sometimes I get asked, how do I load something? And I don't know anything about iPhones, but I try and pretend. Followed by Podcast Addict. That's actually really grown over the years. Probably because it's one of the full-featured free ones. Probably. I actually have the paid version of podcast addict, just to take away the ads. That's the only thing is it has a little banner ad. Otherwise, that used to be how it was. Right. Followed by Podbean Podcast Player, followed by Overcast, which is a pretty famous program, and followed by Pocketcast, which is also really famous. Yeah, that's my, I use Pocketcast. So those are our top five. Pocketcast is my podcast player. Yeah, I'm aware of all these. Podbean one kind of, I don't think that used to be the case, but. No, Podbean's come up in the last couple of years. It has. For example, I co-host on the Pinball Show over with the Pinball Network. We use Podbean to host all the shows over there. So I think some people may just have Podbean because they're familiar with Podbean Pocket. Not necessarily ours, but you can add other shows in that aren't on Podbean. So it's pretty flexible. In fact, I think the number six, I didn't write it down, but I believe it was Stitcher.
    12:35
    Stitcher used to be huge. It still is pretty. I mean, it wasn't too, too far away from Pocket Cast. But now to wrap these things up, we always have done our most and least popular episodes of the year. And I try and keep this confined to – it's usually pretty easy with the analytics – to keep it confined to the episodes that came out during the year. So here are the top five shows that we had. Our most popular show was episode 149. That was the one that was titled Sorcerer's Hiatus Connected. You can tell I'm just really working the creativity on these titles. So just be forewarned on that. But that was the show where we talked about the Sorcerer's Apprentice game that was new on the P3. That was also the episode where Home Pin announcing Spinal Tap was covered. That was the episode where this week in Pinball, we talked about them announcing that Jeff was going on hiatus. That was also the episode where we talked about the launch of Insider Connected, the online connectivity tool of Stern. And then on the video game side, that was the episode where you covered Blizzard shredding all their documents. The new Saints Row trailer had come out, and you covered the day-off Twitch protest that was organized.
    13:46
    So that was a really meaty episode. So I guess I probably shouldn't be surprised that it was the top episode, but I am kind of, because it wasn't like a big Stern. I mean, Stern Insider Connected's a big deal, but it's not like a game. It's not like a cornerstone. Our second most popular episode was episode 153, which was just our recap of Pinball Expo that we recorded on the 4D recorder. At Pinball Expo, yeah. I'm actually really surprised. I guess people were just desperate to hear something. Because I'm like, it's an okay episode. I was a little surprised. Our third most popular was the next episode, actually. Episode 154, which I titled EGP Plus. Because that was when we talked about the Cactus Canyon remake, which we covered in our Expo episode. This was when we found out that they had since announced the Standard Edition Plus model. Which was just the Standard Edition with a topper at the price of the Limited Edition. still one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard we also covered what was coming out about Stern's 2022 production issues and how they were going to stagger the or I should say throttle the amount of games going to the dealers you covered the announcement about Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 being delayed on the video game side also the removal of the XP boosts that they put into Marvel's Avengers and that was also where you gave the big Star Citizen update. Yeah, I give it a few episodes early. Again, another fairly meaty episode, especially on the video game side. Our fourth most popular episode of the year was episode 150, Their Ghost Tokyo. That's the Godzilla episode. So that one was fitting to be in the list. That was really about the only major thing on pinball we talked about. On video games, you covered the Jaguar Alliance 3 announcement. That was where it was announced that Battlefield 2042 was delayed by like a month and a half. and Knights of the Old Republic getting a remake. Well, that's why everybody listens. A ground-up remake. Yep. And then our fifth of the top five episodes for 2021 was episode 147, New Pastures and Deep Roots.
    15:48
    And that was the one where we talked about the recently revealed news that Steve Ritchie had just left Stern and joined Jersey Jack Pinball. That was also where we discussed the information coming out that Lime and Sheets had also, apparently months before that, left Stern.
    16:06
    Deep Roots Implosion starting to show. This was before all the SEC stuff. This was just when, or at the start of it. This was when the websites went away. And then that was also the episode on the video game side where you covered how Blizzard was in the process of full spin cycle mode about trying to downplay all the problems they were having on the harassment front with their employees. Pretty much every one of those episodes had a big Blizzard update in it. Yeah. And, you know, I remember someone on our – you may not have known this. Someone on our Pinsight account had posted and complained about – it was just one specific episode. But they complained about the Blizzard coverage on that one. I can understand that. Yeah, yeah. There's been a lot of it. But I don't remember – I'd have to go back and read it. I don't remember the complaint being about why are you talking about this all the time. It was really much more of a why are you talking about this in this one episode, which I know I replied to it because it's like, well, like it or hate it. hate it it's huge news on the video game side it would almost be irresponsible in my view for us not to talk about it because it's actually impacting games it's not you know you could i could see saying a sign going i don't care what like i don't care what they do or what's going on with their employees doesn't affect me and i get that it's not well that that part is interesting to me and i think it's worth talking about but setting that aside it's actually like we had in one of these top episodes games are being delayed top level creative talent is leaving that knows how those games are, and they're just gone. Yeah. Like, Overwatch's brains are all gone now. Yeah. And so it's really having an impact, not just in the short term, but possibly in the mid term, and maybe even the long term, depending how long it takes them to sort this out. Anyway, so yeah, you're right. Blizzard did come up a lot with this.
    17:48
    Outside of that, there's not a lot of, I mean, of rhyme or reason necessarily to this. Obviously, our top episode and I'd say our top three episodes. Well, I guess you could say four. All right. All but that last episode covered some sort of pinball release. Because our Expo one did talk about CCR. I mean, we mentioned it being announced before that. That's why I'm having trouble saying it. That's where the core of our audience is. It's about our pinball stuff. Sure. But, I mean, I don't know. How many times do you want to hear the same, or maybe not the same people, but different people talking about the same game? Well, we'll find out when we cover Rush. I was going to. Because we ain't above it. We got to do what we got. The show's got a format. It's part of the show. We still got to talk about it. But before we do that, we got to do my favorite thing, which is what five episodes sucked the most? I always like to end with this one. I'd like to end on a downer. So here are our five least popular shows from 2021. And I'm going to go ahead and note so that we don't feel too bad about ourselves, Tony. even the worst one like if we were to compare to our 29 stats 2019 stats was a great number so they were still pretty high compared to just not as high i still you know i still remember when we started the first like half year and we'd have 50 some listens i still remember the old day when we were hosting on google right yeah instead before we had good analytics and had to try and read off a feed burner and did everything for free except buy our fancy microphones which weren't as fancy back then. Yes. So, yes.
    19:22
    And, oh, I should point that out. Let me know how I sound. I'm now on a Yeti X. Tony got me a Christmas present. His family and he purchased me a Yeti X. That's the Yeti's cry. So now we're both on Yeti X's. He's Yeti X and I'm Yeti X 2 in the virtual mixer because mine came in second.
    19:42
    That's very cool. It's so neat. I'm doing good not staring at my meter here, but that's only because I'm staring at the meter in the control room. So I've really not solved anything, but it's just because it's entirely digital. It's just weird for me because I'm used to using the traditional Yeti, which was all great, but it was all analog. Right. And I had a Snowball before, which had like nothing on it. You'd have to control it on the computer. Yeah. Which was difficult because we're routing it all through my computer, not yours. Right. So, anyway, let's discuss the mistakes that were made so okay here is our this is and it'll actually uh go down to uh best from best to worst worst so our fifth least popular episode was 157 that was our 2021 year in review not a surprise this happens every year it's because we dropped that the last week of december and my analytics are not to date it cuts off december 31st that's why so we don't have the full download. So that one gets it's unfairly in there, but you're in review always. So just all right. So no biggie there. All right. Number four. Fourth worst was John Hughes pinball. I thought it was such a great idea. So for those that did not hear it, and apparently none of you did, that was the episode where we went through what John Hughes movie we thought would be the best pinball machine. And apparently the rest of you did not care. We did also cover Lucasfilms Games. You had an update on what Lucasfilms Games coverage was going on. And also the retracted price increase. Microsoft had decided they were going to raise the price of their gold subscription service for live access. And they had just backpedaled on that super hard. So you threw that in there. Yeah. So our third least popular episode of 2021 was 136. I titled that one Diablo Interviews. That was the one where on the pinball side, we covered that the Pinball Hall of Fame met its fundraising goal. We read then the other thing on pinball was we had a we had a listener write in and ask us if we would go and revisit the Robert Mueller interview that we did three years ago. And that was all that we did. So most of pinball was actually just regurgitating the episode we had done three years prior. So there was that And then on the video game side that you did the talking about the XP revamps that the Avengers video game was having And then also the announcement from two separate companies but both Artifact and Anthem had just been announced as being abandoned Right. Or in the process of abandonment. Our second worst episode of 2021 was episode 139, which I don't even remember why I named it Waffles with an exclamation point, but I did. On the pinball side, we just covered some spooky news It was a really light pinball episode We talked about their new building Them finally adopting Molex connectors And the Pinotar new board set Rather than using P3 Rock And then on the video game side That was the one where you covered More than just this But the highlights that I remember were Twitch cracking down on ViewBots And CD Projekt Red had come out With their best financials the company ever had despite all of the trouble that they had with the cyberpunk launch. So I think this might have been one of our shortest episodes, if I'm remembering right. It was, looking at the show notes on it, it was really light. We really did not have enough content. Well, these were both, I just went back and checked the dates. These were both from early April last year. And April for everything. Video games and pinball and everything. Oh, yeah, because pinball, you know, Led Zeppelin was announced in December. And when we had nothing until Mando, and it was a long stretch, I think back over on the Pinball Show, on the Pinball Network, I think I told Zach off the air a couple of times that I thought we should move the show to Fortnite-ly. Because there just clearly wasn't enough news to warrant a weekly. Yeah. He disagreed. But I don't think he's putting out a show this week either. So in the end, who really wins? I do. Because I always win. You do. Except when I don't. and speaking of not winning our worst episode of 2021 was episode 138 so which came first question mark was the title uh i did cover a raza update from deep root this is back when deeper it was still putting out updates on raza and people thought the game might actually get built just a few you never thought that but a few people did i know some people all right and then that was the one i really enjoyed this but apparently no one liked to listen to it and And that was, this was the one where we had someone write in that really, to me, it was a really cool game. So, which came first, where they listed, like, a, they listed us a video game and a pinball machine of the same theme. And we had to pick which one. Yeah, I remember that. Because they sent the questions and they put the, they, like, did it really clean. So, I was able to send, like, a separate email or whatever. Or they did in some way that I was unable to cheat. And so, we had, yeah, and we'd have to go, oh, did the Terminator 3 game come out first? sort of the pinball come out first. Right. Well, no one wanted to listen to it, but it was fun for us. And then on the video game side... And that's what's important. That's what's important. As long as we enjoy it, that's all that matters. Yeah. This ain't no Patreon thing. You guys just got to put up with what we do.
    25:08
    And then on the video game side, you had some info on, I believe, an indefinite delay on the Lego Star Wars Skywalker saga. You had some information on Outriders, and then there was also an update about No Man's Sky. So, again, nothing huge, nothing special. You noted that time frame. Those were some really light weeks. Yeah, it was definitely not the kind of week that most people would really enjoy stuff to listen to. And I think I said people should skip ahead five minutes, and what I think I should have said is 15. So, we're done with it now. So, we're done with the stats. so let's go into the pinball segment and while Rush will be covered that's going to be the last thing we talk about and the first thing I think we need to cover is boo-boos I made some boo-boos I know you know in our year in review our 2021 year in review I always try and include every manufacturer and you know what yet again I failed to do so but did you no well alright one of these I deliberately didn't. I knew about and I thought, no, they haven't made anything. But then two of these technically haven't made anything. And then three of them didn't make anything in 2021. But there was only one I explicitly thought about.
    26:29
    And it's just sort of funny to me because when we were doing the episode, I had to go back when I was making the show notes, I think twice, and add in companies I forgot. And then when we were recording it, you actually caught me where I skipped a section of my notes and left off a company and we had to drop it in in a different point, which the listeners couldn't tell because of the magic of editing. But so the one that I deliberately did not include and someone wrote into me and asked me about one of these, but I realized which ones I'd left off. I don't remember. I think it was this one they asked me about. And this one, yes, I deliberately did not include. And it's named Balarama. You probably haven't heard of Balarama, Tony, because I don't think I've ever even mentioned it to you. Yeah. And it's got next to no news. Here's Ballarama. Ballarama is some Australian-based startup that I believe has indicated they're planning to fund their pinball company with Kickstarter.
    27:28
    Okay. All right. There's a thread about them on Pinside, and there has been a tremendous amount of blowback on that site about them not really having any plans. And I've been following the thread. I probably should have gone back and reread it, but I can only do so much work for this episode. So and I did not do that other than there had been like three or four new posts since I last looked. They don't have a lot of information. It seems like stock images, a bunch of buzzwords. And when people ask him, like, well, what are you like? They're not explaining how they plan to do the manufacturing. They're not even presenting a game at this time. There's a lot of talk about grit and determination.
    28:04
    You know, I classified as the guy give 110 percent sort of. You gave 110%. You got to give 110%. And I don't mean to be mean about this. This is really sticking on my mind lately. I've seen it in pinball before, not just with Balarama, but obviously with following watches as a hobby. There's a YouTuber slash dealer that we've discussed off air quite a bit that falls into the same thing. There are some people out there that they talk this game about believing in themselves and the grind, doing the grind, respecting the grind and the hustle and doing the hustle. And I just, it really nauseates me because it's basically low skill stuff. And it's just, and I don't care. I get it. Yes, if you work hard and you hustle, you can make more money than if you don't work hard and don't hustle. What a shock. Buy a Lambo, get a Rolex, buy your personal jet. And I'm even separating it from the flex. and some people thinking that the Flex somehow helps them make more sales. You know, I don't believe that. I don't believe doing a pinball bounty segment will let you sell more games, for example. And most sane people wouldn't equate those two. Those are two separate things.
    29:19
    The watch person we're vaguely referencing would. Thinks that wearing an Audemars Piguet means he will sell more watches. And so he wears a customer's and scratches it up at the gym. Because he wears... But anyway. So my point is, that's what Ballarama reminded me of. And they're not flexing. They're just saying a bunch of gobbledygook. It's Indiegogo for give me more money. Yeah, yeah. Well, they're trying to do... Pinballers are sometimes a little slow on the uptake and don't learn a lesson very well until you teach them two or three times. But they're very leery about funding startups. Like, very leery. Especially when you're doing it like a video game or stickers or a new vacuum with Kickstarter. Yeah, they're finally learning their lessons. Now, the important thing is if you bring in a known name, they'll just hand money over left and right. And that's one of the weird things. So, I mean, if they could, I don't know, like hire J-Pop. Right, right, right. Well, here's the thing. And I should have gone back and checked the thread, but if I, so warnings that I may be incorrect. I believe on one of these things, John Norris from Premiere, who had been at Deep Root working on the Merlin's arcade game. I believe he volunteered his, not to be a volunteer, but offered his services to them saying, hey, you need a designer. I, you know, I could, I could be involved. And they are so savvy about pinball. I think they said something about, oh, well, if you want to send us your thoughts or concepts or something on what you know about pinball, we could look at that. But we already have our design team together. And the way they phrased it, it was really clear. They had no idea who he was.
    31:15
    Like, are you asking for the portfolio? He's one of the most famous designers. I get it. He wasn't ever with Bally Williams. He's still one of the most famous pinball designers to ever live. And you're there, like, asking for his bona fides. Are you kidding me? Have you not played Bad Girls? What is wrong with you? That's right up there for when you, like, see the post online where some author hears two people talking about the book and tries to get into the conversation. And they're like, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what – and they're like, no, we have – and they didn't name who they're, like, designing. I'm sure it's the couple doing it or whatever, but it's just like, here's the guy who said, hey, you want to, you know, I'm willing to have a conversation with you to help come up with a game design. They've not shown any game design. Then they're just kind of like, eh, we'll call you. Like, okay. Okay. You had a chance. You had so many of them. I mean, don't forget, like, Dennis Nordman helped with the Lexi design. And, you know, there's been a lot of engagement on getting people that know something to help with startups to give some credence and, you know, have a design that doesn't suck. Anyway, so that's Balarama. Don't know what's going on with them other than they're – I don't even know if the kids started talking. We didn't need to talk about it. That's what it amounts to. No, we didn't need to. But someone asked. They were asking tongue-in-cheek, I think. Because there was no need for them to be in. But I'm more than – here you go, guys. You wanted the topic. Here it is. Judge it as you see fit. So there you go. You got Ballarama. Congratulations. That's right. We all got Ballarama. And I don't know if their Kickstarter is live or not. And as you know, I'll go ahead and note, I don't actually fault them for wanting to use Kickstarter. I don't fault entities for using Kickstarter. I'll fault people for funding them. But I don't fault, like, if you're a business or a person that wants to do something. No, no. It totally makes sense. I have never funded Kickstarter myself. I've funded multiple Kickstarters. We had an excellent, actually very well statistically speaking episode from way back in the day where you talked about the big burn. My big burn. I've had some small burns too, but I've also had a lot. The big burn got an hour on this show. It did.
    33:23
    And you were still very angry at that time. Yeah. You actually hit it really well though during the episode. I was very angry at how that whole thing ended up being. So I don't remember which episode it was, but it was the episode about my Robotech Kickstarter burn. Yeah.
    33:41
    Search for it. Go back and listen. It's a fun one. It's fun to just, because Tony don't get mad on the show much.
    33:48
    I am a calm, controlled person. And even that episode, I was calm and controlled. Barely. I should have pushed the buttons. I should have pushed the buttons a little bit. I should have been like, but Tony, why did you trust this startup Kickstarter? Do you loves him? Is that what it is? That was the problem. It wasn't a startup company. I know. That is a company that has been around since the 80s. They are a well-balanced, well-versed company. We're going down the rabbit hole. You're right. They were well-established. That's why I couldn't do it. That's why I couldn't do them. But I love him. It wouldn't make any sense.
    34:27
    There's no reason on the startup. There's no reason on the surface you wouldn't have trusted them. Right. Because they had done it before. But, all right, second of the three I didn't mention, Home Pit. This is the one I should have included. Why? Because they did put out the announcement that they had the license for this as Spinal Tap. I've got the license for Knife Fight City. So there you go. Okay, but Knife Fight City is an occult classic. Knife Fight City is a cult classic. Knife Fight City is the absolute best action movie of its generation. Okay, will people write in if you agree with that? Because I don't think you do.
    35:03
    No, I think it would have just been a throwaway thing to say that Home Pin announced they have Spinal Tap, and then since then I've basically heard nothing. I think there was a minor update that I heard on last week, actually, on Pinball News, Pinball Magazine. It was so brief that I don't even remember it. I think it was just that Jonathan Houston, one of the co-hosts of that show, mentioned that he spoke with Mike from Home Pin about it and that they're working on it. Okay. Now, more relevant, though, of course, was the rumor we reported about that HomePen actually has secured Harry Potter.
    35:36
    There's that. I still don't buy it. I just don't think it's true. But that's probably worth mentioning because people really care about that. You know what? I forgot to put Rumor Corner in these notes. Don't worry, people. I'll stick in Rumor Corner. I just forgot to write it in our internal notes. And then the last one. This one I should have mentioned, too, though I don't think this is important. But I think I should have just because of how important it was to us. pinball adventures they're the company that's been working on it they're the company that's been working on punny factory but that's not and that's not out yet so you can understand why i didn't bring them up but why i should have and you see it now why i should have is we had a whole segment of an episode dedicated to when they dropped a trailer for a future game they're doing where they had this wizard and he was talking with a really and it was a terrible lip sync and then you went through and you were like all of these cool art images are straight out of magic the gallery they stole the magic of gathering they did and i believe that video was deleted since then and i'm like no they don't that was one of the best that was a comedy goal that was comedy gold i thought it had to be deliberate with as bad as lip sync was but apparently the blowback was bad i got a little suspicious when you confirmed that like this was actual after we were off the air tony loaded up the magic the gathering art and found the exact prints they were taking yeah cards they were taking art from but um oh my gosh there was that so don't forget about the crazy wizard lip sync wizard with magic the gathering art which of course was great art i mean can you imagine any some of those magic the gathering artists actually do pinball holy cow you guys fawning over what we currently have would lose your minds lose your mind because it'd be really difficult when you take what is this one little image like that and try and do a whole play field of that style of art but whatever all right so those are the three things I left out of the year in review. Apologies for leaving them out of the year in review.
    37:26
    Next topic. Hall of Fame voting. We had an email from John Morrell. He wrote in and he asked us how we voted in the Pinball Industry Awards Hall of Fame inductees.
    37:38
    And you know what? I don't even know if you knew that was going on or not. I didn't know. I voted for nothing. It's still going on. So I have a link in the actual show notes for people to go and vote. Okay. Well, let's do it live. Just give me a second. You can do it live. Let me follow the link. I'll do it live. All right. I'll try and remember what I voted for because I did it already, and I've written down what I think. I know what I voted for, I believe, except I wasn't completely positive on the 2000s. So I'll mention that when we get to it. So the EM is, for those that don't know, the Hall of Fame voting is by decade except electromechanical. So this was done last year. It's done the same way. But, for example, if you go under 90s, you won't see Medieval Madness because Medieval Madness got inducted last year. So it's not an option anymore. So let me know when you're there, Tony. Okay. I am there. Do we want to start with just how it goes down the list? Yeah. I don't remember the orders. Okay. 1970, solid state era, 1970 through 1979. Okay. I believe my vote for this one was Joker Poker, the System 1 game from Gottlieb. Okay. I see a Joker Poker from Gottlieb. I see that. Yep. There's a lot of good choices in here. There's a lot of good choices.
    38:51
    There's no way I'm reading them all. Nobody would care. We'd be here forever while I read them all. Here is where I'm torn.
    39:00
    Interesting. So many good choices. Knight Rider. I really enjoy Knight Rider. Knight Rider is a fun semi-truck game.
    39:11
    There's also Gorgar, which has the best soundtrack of the 70s. That's right. I forgot it was a 79 game.
    39:19
    Ballet Star Trek. We've played a lot of Ballet Star Trek. We have. It's a lot of fun. I'm debating the... Oh, Countdown. Countdown's a fun game. This is actually legitimately kind of tough.
    39:34
    Disco Fever, which has, I believe, one of the best backglasses. Yeah, but didn't that game come with banana flippers? I think it did. Do you like banana flippers? I actually don't hate them. Oh, you're the first person I have ever heard say that. I didn't say they're good. I know you didn't, but you didn't say you hate them. It's pretty extreme from a banana flipper perspective. Let me look, let me look, let me look. No, I'm thinking the wrong game.
    40:04
    Yeah, no, that is not the game I was thinking of. But yes, it is full-on banana flippered. Yep. You were thinking of Roller Disco. I was thinking of Roller Disco. The Gottlieb. Yeah. I like Roller Disco. Roller Disco's a good thing. I don't remember if that was 70s or 80s, though. Probably 70s, because they moved away from the System 1, I believe, in the end of 1980. So, like, 1980 would be Buck Rogers, so it wouldn't be in the list. Right. But most of those System 1s were 70s. All right. Well, I'm going to narrow this down. And so I'm going to go with either Freedoms in this list, too. My problem is it's the regular Freedom, not the CinePod Freedom. Now, that would be the solid state one. So you can always write in Freedom for the EM. You can write in Freedom Prototype even, I suppose. But it was a prototype. It didn't go into production. So that's where you're at. Yeah, well, and most of these, like anything that had under a certain number of production isn't in the list either, because I think some people probably dislike that. But there have to be rules, folks. Oh, Strikes and Spares is in here. Now, Strikes and Spares has a good backlash. A very naughty backlash. All right. I'm going to choose between Countdown and Knight Rider, I think. I think I'm going to go with Countdown. No, I'm going to go with Knight Rider.
    41:27
    So this is taking you longer than your judge's PIA ballot did, is my suspicion. Maybe not. How did you know? Because of, I don't know. Actually, the judge's ballots on the PIAs, incidentally, those are now closed. I actually already know all the winners. I can't say them here yet. Because they had to be – actually, only the Excellence ones had to be compiled. All the other ones were automatically compiled by SurveyMonkey. Right, right. So I don't know how individuals voted because I didn't even get a look at that. Because we already know best podcaster is Godzilla. Best Twitch streamer is Godzilla. I will confirm for the Excellence Awards because those were all write-ins. You have to match them up. People don't always spell everything right or they might name the name of a channel instead of the name of a person. Right. There were some that wrote in things that I'm like, I'm not sure they were in the right category in their headspace at this time. I don't know. If it's there, it's there. You've got to just go with what they say. So actually, at least two of us have gone through and did our own counts to make sure, figure out where we weren't in alignment and stuff. But anyway, people don't really care how the sausage is made there. All right. So what did you end up going with? I went with Knight Rider. It was between that and Countdown, both a lot of fun. But I went with Knight Rider. As a reminder, because it's been like 20 hours since I said, I went with Joker Poker. All right, what's next, 80s? 1980s era. All right, 80 to 89. I did Pinbot. You did Pinbot. Of course you did Pinbot. What else would you have done other than Pinbot? Pinbot, Pinbot, Pinbot. I mean, nothing else makes sense for you. Pinbot. Let's see. Oh, Mr. and Ms. Pac-Man Pinball. You could do Mr. and Ms. Pac-Man. I mean, I could. High speed is probably still available. I know you're a big high speed fan.
    43:05
    System 11 game. Oh, Torpedo Alley, that's a good call. Yeah, you do like the torpedoes. Buck Rogers.
    43:14
    Buck Rogers. Maybe not Buck Rogers. Maybe not. I did have one, but maybe not. Volcano. Volcano actually is one of the few wide bodies I actually like. It's got a really interesting gimmick mix. You have fire powers from 80. Oh, here's a game that shouldn't be in here, that shouldn't be in a top anything list that will bring the hate. Let's bring the hate mousing around. You know, I'm not a fan of it either But I know some people think it's one of the better System 11s I've been told that on pretty much every On every occasion Orbiter 1 Probably the only vote for Orbiter 1 That it would get I don't know, maybe, you have played it a number of times I have played it a number of times A huge thing, oh look, furry cats is in here Furry cops Yeah, furry cops But Bad Cats is probably in there also. Bad Cats is also in there. Bonsai Run. You know what? You're a big Bonsai Run fan. Big Guns, that's also a lot of fun. Grand Lizard. Greatest soundtrack in the 80s. No. Greatest soundtrack in the 80s man Xenon the greatest in the 80s Oh you right Try Tube Shot Don you ever forget to try Tube Shot Try Tube Shot The original Black Knight
    44:33
    Tough, tough choice. I think I will go with the high speed. I don't remember what won last year. Or what got inducted, I should say. I'm going to go with high speed. Honestly, I'm torn between high speed and F-14 Tomcat. Really? Because I thought you just flat out prefer high speed. But that's why I'm taking high speed. Okay. But I can understand if 14 Tomcat was considered. F14 is too hard to win. It's just too hard of a game to win. Okay. There we go. High speed. 90s. This one should take you no time because Medieval Madness won last year. Oh, okay. So where is.
    45:08
    Oh, Star Trek Next Generation. Yeah, I don't think so. Never works. Let's see. Where is it?
    45:17
    Oh, Godzilla by Sega Pinball. There we go. Actually a fun game. not as fun as New Godzilla but fun I've only played it a couple times I think Punchy the Clown terrible game didn't we play that at Expo we did play that at Expo oh my gosh the soundtrack alone wanted me to leave the facility I'm being very G-rated I don't want to set something up yeah it was very oh Lethal Weapon 3 that's a lot of fun everybody dance now it is a fun game We can go with Maverick I mean come on What's wrong with Maverick The ball lock You take a nap You take a sip of coffee I just re-watched Maverick The other day About three weeks ago Two or three weeks ago There's always Popeye saves the earth That's great Alright 2000s era So here we go So The audience They're brand new listeners They don't know what you picked Oh I took Attack from Mars Yeah Because Attack from Mars Is my favorite Pinball machine of all time That's what I put down as well So 2000s This one, I think I picked Terminator 3 But I might have picked World Poker Tour I can't remember I know I was torn between the two But I think I didn't want to pick World Poker Tour And I went with Terminator 3 Oh, man So, last year, of course, Lord of the Rings was the one that got inducted Right, which was the best game And I'll tell you, everyone's assuming Simpsons Pinball Party will be inducted this year I don't like Simpsons Pinball Party I don't either, so I won't pick it I don't I There is no good choices in here Maybe Spider-Man. Spider-Man's turn's not bad. You know what? I thought about Spider-Man as well. Because it's a lot of fun.
    46:58
    I think, though, gosh, like every decade has a Playboy. How does that work out? I don't know. I'm going to go with World Poker Tour. Okay. World Poker Tour. That's a really enjoyable game. So then the 2010s. The 2010s. So many choices. Yep. I went ahead and I voted Walking Dead for this one. That's a solid choice.
    47:25
    Heck a doodle. I might have to go Walking Dead myself because of the games that are from there. It is probably my favorite. It might be. I don't know. You like ACDC? I do. I do, but TNA is in there. I like TNA. Yeah, you like TNA a lot. So, but no, I think I am going to go ahead and hit, just like you said, Walking Dead.
    47:57
    Yay. And then the electromechanical right here. Yeah, because there are two, I mean, these lists had to be compiled. So there were just too many. No one wanted to type all that or try and paste it and clean it up. That's what, that's the sausage making on that. I believe last year the EM that was inducted was, oh gosh, I just blanked on the name. It's the one everyone always picks. It's the one with the two spinners. Grand Prix. So I wrote in Sing-A-Long.
    48:27
    Sing-A-Long is good. The Krinsky one where the ball gets kicked over in the middle of the play over and over and over. Yeah. No, that's a good game. I don't mind Sing-A-Long. I put in Campus Queen. Ah, yes. The campus.
    48:39
    Ted Zale design. All right. So there you go, John. There are our votes. And I did it live. Did it live. Screw it. I'll do it live. I'm not sure why we ran with a different date on this versus the PIA judges. Because that one, well, I mean, there are a lot more voters on that. And I do know Dave over with Silverball Chronicles has been, he takes the lead on that ballot. And there are way, way, way more votes this year already than there were days ago than there were last year for Hall of Fame. Wow. There'll be a lot of people participating. Good. Awesome. Good to hear. Thank you for letting me know because Dennis didn't tell me. I didn't know it existed. Well, it wasn't open when the PIA votes went out. So I couldn't tell you the same time. That's true. Otherwise, I'd probably just thrown it into the email I sent everyone. But I didn't. All right. So now Rush.
    49:34
    All right. That wasn't a real Rush sound. So the new Cornerstone was announced in December, as we discussed.
    49:43
    And I think it – well, we knew that there was going to be an announcement that Tuesday, I believe is what happened. Yeah. Now, since then, they've just did a teaser for Rush, didn't show anything about the game. And then this last week, they did the trailers that showed stuff about the game. And then Jack Danger with Deadflip hosted a reveal stream on, I believe, a premium on Friday. So now you probably weren't able to catch the stream. No. Okay. I caught about the first 25 minutes or so because then I had to do a watch stream because I had to. I know. I was required by law. You were required by law to do your streaming for your watch channel. That's right. Because when I don't generate other content, I have to do live stream to generate content. Yeah. I watched it. Yeah. I know you came in and you threw in crazy scenarios that never come up in real life. Except for when they did to me earlier this week. What sort of people wear watches where they just fall off their hands? Yeah, I don't know. It bothered the crowd out of me. Yeah, it happens.
    50:42
    So Rush, polarizing theme choice, it has seemed online. Designer was John Borg. Lead software on this is Tim Sexton, who I believe was lead on the Black Knight sort of rage. It was confirmed that Raymond Davidson has actually done a lot of the details of the rules on this, though. So there's at least two people that were coming up with rules on it. The artist is someone I'm not familiar with, Michael Bernard.
    51:10
    Lead sound engineer was Bob Baffey. I'm not familiar with him. And then computer graphics art director was Chuck Ernst, who's been responsible lately for a lot of the Stern LCD stuff.
    51:21
    Prices, I believe, are the same as the Godzilla pricing. So pros are $6,899. These are all MSRP. I don't know if you're going to get it for under MSRP at this point, though. Premium is $8,999, and the LEs, of which I believe they did $1,000, and yes, they were already sold out, was $11,099.
    51:39
    Call-outs in this game, they got two. The drummer, he passed away a couple of years ago, but they did get Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee to do call-outs, and they also, for whatever reason, have Ed Robertson of Bare Naked Ladies doing call-outs as well. from near as I could tell from the write up on this week in pinball's deep dive which I do have a link in the show notes too so people can go in and read this to their hearts content is the main differences between the premium le model and pro model is there's an electromagnetic time machine ball lock think lord of the rings ring from that game it has a motorized ramp entrance on the premium the pro model has a fixed ramp kind of reminds that part kind of reminds me of Iron Maiden and the lift. I believe they had a lift on the... I don't think I've ever played the pro Iron Maiden, actually. But anyway, so the ramp lifts on the premium.
    52:32
    Then another thing is there is a... And in our internal notes, Tony, I put in two play field shots. The bottom one is the premium, top one is the pro, just so you have something easy to look at without having to click on the links. There's a Clockwork sculpt away. It's called the Clockwork Angels Clock. And it's got a motorized minute hand and illuminated on all 12 time positions, basically, on the Premium LE. There is no such toy at all on the Pro.
    53:00
    There is a ball lock post system that's capable of staging two balls that exists on the Premium and LE model. There is a side scoop subway with two kick-out options on the Premium LE model. The Pro model only kicks out the front.
    53:15
    There is a vertical up kicker at the end of what they call the dead-end shot, which is kind of, if you're looking at either of the play fields, that's the shot just to the left of the ring, or time machine, I guess I should call it. So it kicks up to a wire form on the Premium LE. On the Pro model, there's a stand-up target at the end of that dead end. And then there is a double-up post ball lock that's hidden behind the three drop targets, the instrument drop targets over on the left-hand side of the game on the Premium. On the Pro, there's a stand-up target behind those three drop targets. So those were the main differences that I identified between the two models.
    53:56
    So I guess let's go over our thoughts. Now, when I sent you just the clips of the game first being played before the dead flip stream. Right. You replied to me. Yes, I did. What was it that you said? I said it looks like X-Men. And it seems that after a lot of debate, people agree with you. That's because it's X-Men. Otherwise, I've heard some people have been claiming that this looks like Iron Maiden to them. I don't see it at all. Some of it, I think, is like the ring and the ramp thing. Some of the features, I guess, are Iron Maiden-esque. I don't think that, and there's a shot through the pops, which reminds them of Iron Maiden. Yeah, there's a shot there on the left. But, no, I don't get it. I don't really get it. Iron Maiden is a four-flipper layout game. This is not. This has got three flippers. So, to me, there's already a lot of distinction on it. But the other thing that other people had, which I agree with, is someone took a side-by-side image, but they mirrored Tron. They flipped it. Right. And yes, Tron, when you flip it, looks a lot like Rush. But X-Men looks a lot like Rush without flipping it. Right. So why don't you just say it's X-Men, like you did? So ultimately, a lot of people have been like, yes, this looks like X-Men. I thought when I read about the features and looked at it, I agreed with you, because how could you not? Yes, it looks a lot like X-Men, but I thought, this looks like it might play better than X-Men. Watching the stream that Deadflip did, it's like, it's X-Men with way more flow. Like, that ring shot. I'm going to keep calling it the ring shot. I can't help it. The time machine shot. It allows for a lot. Like, Magneto's a clunker. Yes. He's a clunk guy. The ball lock over by Magneto. And then when it's not ready, of course, it's just sort of like, you're just bricking if you shoot into him. Whereas this is, it's another shot that the ball might get captured by the magnet. But if that's not going, it just goes through and then we get another loop around.
    55:52
    I don't know because we're watching some of the top, I mean, the people on the stream when I watched were Raymond Davidson, number one player in the world. Jack Danger, who, he's not, I mean, he's way better player than I am. Yeah. Tim Sexton, top player. And I don't remember who the fourth person was. Maybe that was their normie, but probably was, probably was a top player too. So it's just like, Raymond blew this game up on game one, and it was just like, you've got to remember that you are not him. We are mortals, and we can only do mortal things.
    56:22
    I think it actually kind of hurts the game when somebody blows the game up in these reveal streams. I think it kind of actually hurts more than anything else. Interesting. Why? because it gives an artificial thought to uh ball time length or ball time because it makes you feel weird especially but at the same time they're showing like these huge scores that most you know real people aren't actually going to get when they sit down and touch a machine i see i do i see your argument um the i think my my counter response would be but let's say you do like and i think this happened with uh when buffalo pinball did the reveal of wonka for jjp and it was at a show and then they just live streamed as people at the show came up and played it oh well no and then make the game look really hard because they all suck right right i'm not saying you need normal people okay okay i'm just saying you might be better instead of picking players out of the top 20 to show your game off. Maybe pick players out of the top 500 to show your game off. Well, and maybe that's where... I actually thought the stream Jack did was really good. And I thought with the mix-up, because I don't know if Jack's in the top 500 or not. I have no idea. But with Jack and then whoever the guy is, I apologize, can't remember the name of, plus Tim, plus, okay, Raymond, we did have a blend of players that may have all been better than me but like right so like at the end of game one raymond blew it up two of them jack and the other guy i can't remember the name of they had pretty short ball times and and i don't think tim's was like it didn't make me think oh this is a long player when i saw him play it either plus the nice thing was of course because three of the actually all four of them work at stern but tim and raymond working on the game they were able to talk about like what they were doing and why like raymond was really going into the rules and explaining like he was doing a countdown thing and all of this with how he's got the scoring going on with it to explain why he was doing the shots he was doing. There was a lot of numbers. I kind of felt like the count from Sesame Street was playing. No one used that voice, but they should have.
    58:33
    So, yeah, back to the layout, though. It's like X-Men, it's got flow to it. I don't think of it as a very flowy game, but I also don't think of it really as necessarily a stop-and-go game. This definitely leans even more into the flow side of it. And I should go ahead and acknowledge, in terms of bias, I like X-Men as a player. I've thought about, back when games were affordable, I thought about trying to get X-Men because I thought it was underappreciated. Yeah, I enjoy X-Men. And so this looks like a lot of fun to play.
    59:04
    The way, again, without playing it, I always struggle with understanding the rules without playing it. But the way it was being explained, and we've got the inserts with these numbers, keeping track of these counts of what you're doing, it seems well thought out. Like, and I, you know, that's something where I don't know if Tim worked on Led Zeppelin or not. I know Raymond did, but you're, you know, one of the things I've heard from a lot of, especially from tournament players that have had perhaps had to play Led Zeppelin more than the average person has been that the rule design on Led Zeppelin is very, very good. It's just unfortunate that if, you know, if you're on a pro, it's barren as well. Get out. And you just are, it's just like, I mean, that's what we know because we've had to play it a number of times and it makes me not want to play it. this I want to play. I'm not in the market to buy A-Rush. No. But I do look forward to this one going on location because I think this will do very well. I actually think this game will probably play pretty hard. But not like Walking Dead hard, for example. But Borg seems to lean harder than some people. He leans harder than Richie does, which wasn't always the case. Hello, F-14.
    60:10
    So there's that. So overall, I thought this was really neat. Also, here's something I didn't think I would say for quite a while. I started to think Stern had, I don't want to say learned their lesson, but I started to fear that they had kind of figured out by listening to all of us and watching the forums, the secret sauce too, here's the things we need to do Godzilla style that make people be like, oh, darn it, I have to get the premium.
    60:33
    And here I look at this and I'm like, I think this is a good pro game. I think so. I see the differences, and I understand a Rush fan would obviously want a premium rally. And it got some really cool add-ons to it, like, oh, here's a thing that can divert with the subway either way on the premium, and it only comes out the front on the pro, and things like that, and the extra ball locks, physical ball locks, kind of stuff we historically associate. but it's not like a collapsing building and a breaking bridge and a Godzilla mech with a magnet you know it's sort of like no no no here's all this stuff like if I were more into Rush and you know my mind obviously if the game plays well the game plays well and that would be a different story but based off of if I really liked this theme I would be like oh thank goodness I feel like I would be really happy with a pro to buy, but I'm just not that big into Rush. So, I mean, those are my initial thoughts. I don't know if you've looked at the cabinet and back glass. I did. I actually liked the pro.
    61:47
    The premium LE seemed to go on the cabinet side's more logo design, and you got some of the band members on the side. I'm not usually big into the sides of the cab anyway, because, you know, unless I put it on the way my room is lined up there's only one game you get to see one side of so uh but otherwise i i kind of like all the translates about the same but the pro one it had the harry potter owl we'll embrace the harry potter yeah it it's fine watch out for home pin here's here's going after you for using the harry potter yeah it'll be i think that owl has a name but i don't know it that's why i call it harry potter yeah it i'm sure it does here's the thing this year's Music Pen is done. We don't have to worry about a Music Pen for another year. With Rush done, and Queen announced by somebody else that might possibly be coming out someday, sometime, somewhere.
    62:44
    We're getting to the point where Dead Rock's pretty much mined out. I would hope. I could be wrong. Maybe we will start seeing some different... I guess that's more of a spoof movie. I was going to say. But from a dad rock era. Right. But maybe we'll start getting some differences. I mean, I personally would have zero problems if music pins vanished for a couple of years.
    63:12
    But I think we're getting mined out. Hopefully. Okay. I could be wrong. There's probably somebody I'm missing out there. Let me ask you before we leave this To The art We don't know this artist We talked about the cabinet and Translight But the playfield art I've seen a mixed thing about the Three faces of the band members in the center Mostly has been where there's been criticism It's like cartoony caricature Kind of But you know that's what Zombie Yeti did with Ghostbusters Yeah Not the style I think it's fine I think he followed all the rules He oversaturated the crap out of the colors, which people will eat up because that means the colors pop. Right. Yeah, it might be. I mean, I can see where some people, especially huge mega fans, might have wanted something more akin to the hyper photorealistic type stuff. Like a Franchi style? Like a Franchi style. But I think it's fine.
    64:15
    Okay. Well, I didn't have anything else to say about Rush. It looks like fun. I look forward to us getting one on location to play it. I enjoyed playing it. Yeah. But I mean, I like trying to do pinball, so that's cool. I think it will do better for them than Led Zeppelin. I think so. Which is interesting because Led Zeppelin is a more popular band. Unfortunately, the game sucked.
    64:35
    Now, before we go to video games, rumor corner. The rumors are coming. They are. And you're going to love this one. So you were speculating. You were postulating. You were perhaps even hoping that we've seen the end of Dad Rock. The rumor mill is Next winter I almost said December Probably December Next winter is released by Stern Journey God damn it Dennis Don't stop believing Hold on to that feeling Has there already been a Journey machine? No Crap And you like Journey I don't hate Journey I mean Can we get something Can we get a Toto machine? You know, I thought when I thought about this, I thought I should maybe I could just change it to Toto. Tony would be happier. I would be. Let me give you a scenario. I'm going to Led Zeppelin it for you. Toto, Toto, but they can't have Africa.
    65:32
    Ooh. Interesting. I mean, Led Zeppelin didn't get Stairway. That's true. And it's like the most popular song. So there you go. I mean, I mean. Oh, and that was a plus for Rush. They got all this band footage and stuff. And that's fine. That's cool. But they got all the major songs. But it's Rush, so how could you not? But anyway. Oh, man. Matoda's not the rumor. Journey is the rumor. Oh, there we go. There we go. Dead Rock had perfect idea.
    66:00
    They need to get John Mellencamp. And then each level can be labeled from a different part of his thing. So it could be Johnny Cougar. And then the middle level would be John Cougar Mellencamp. And then the LE will just be John Mellencamp. That's their version I've heard no rumors on John Mellencamp My rumor for you is Journey So there you go That's the end of Rumor Corner Are you not rumor changed? I am You know what? I don't Why can't we I mean I want to see them Just lean away from Dad Rock And throw out like a I don know Like a Dr Dre machine Or an M machine The Dr Dre fans are not wealthy enough yet to buy That the argument Loser Kid on our latest episode that I just heard Actually, I'm not even all the way through the episode yet. I've only heard part of it so far. They were talking about that and the speculation about how some people might. I mean, Journey's kind of crossing into the 80s.
    66:59
    Granted, that's just a rumor. We don't know if that's true. But that's the thought is that, well, yeah. I mean, I kind of thought that with Iron Maiden, for that matter. But, yeah, it's just the thought that, like, the people that, like, grew up on Green Day and stuff just are not yet in a place in their careers to be buying these for the home. Man, everybody forgets about Dre. Yeah, well.
    67:20
    It's a hard life. Next game from JJP, Alabama. It'll be out in 30 years. So video games Tony Video games Small Not a whole lot of stuff that I put in here There's a few things There's some big things I have to drop Full disclosure What's the disclosure There is so much stuff Going on in video games right now About NFTs The non-fungible tokens and this and that. That's all my Reddit is. Half of it on the video game site is NFT talk. NFTs are everywhere. I haven't brought it. I didn't bring it in last episode when I really should have. I didn't bring it in this episode when I really should have because I think they're stupid.
    68:16
    I do as well, but I have to be... I don't want to be a whiner. Whatever. It's our show. We can do it. We can whine. It's your show and you can whine if you want to. This is like the natural disgusting evolution from crypto it is the natural disgusting when crypto all right y'all are too young to remember when crypto came out the whole argument was here is a non-fiat currency that like it's not going to be government controlled that was the whole point not this speculation i got watch dealers now talking about taking it's like half of it's just gambling people are just guessing and hoping that everything's going up and their crypto will go up and then when their Dogecoin doesn't go up enough and then it goes back down because they did diamond hands on it. They lost thousands of dollars. I mean, it's just weird. Like they don't know what they're doing. People do not know what they're doing. And it's like they're thinking they're playing a market. But with crypto, it's just like straight up guessing. Let me really scare you. I'm already scared. I had a conversation with some people talking about retirement funding and they have 30% in crypto. I would be absolutely terrified. because only because it's so new we have no like if you're going in the market i don't care if you go conservative to highly aggressive because we do know that over time over decades of experience markets go up markets go up ideally you're diversified so that when so that but you know when things when we have the inevitable recession and things shrink you just keep the money in those funds, not all those companies go away. And then when they recover, you're back. I went through it in 2008. I'll have to go through it again. My funds recovered within three years, and I actually invest pretty aggressively. I'm in a lot of international funds, and I'm in a lot of aggressive large cap stocks. But I just do indexes at this point. I'm entirely 100%, other than a few penny stocks I picked, which are all down, by the way, because I picked them. my indexes are great they did well in the trump administration and they've done great under biden too it's just been it's just been everything's but the market's hot right now but now everyone's like thinking they know stuff about crypto and they're just buying all of it and if it's money you can afford to lose more power for you i sure wouldn't put my retirement in it yeah it's oh man so anyway but that's crypto so there's but there's at least a concept a structure behind it then there's this nft stuff which is all like i have a digital fingerprint on this stupid painting and i own it now and then i right clicked and saved it and used it somewhere and what are you going to do about it like i don't i really don't nfts there's a structure behind crypto i don't like like i don't agree conceptually with throwing money into crypto but there's a structure to it nfts i just don't understand where there's value at all i don't know it's meant to be a currency at least nfts are they're nothing it's just actual nothingness yeah and video games there's a bunch of video games have dived hard into nfts i guess because custom gun skins and custom i don't i don't get it and images and it's i mean more power to the artists and stuff that i found the use are exploiting this to make money because otherwise they were starving before this so hey you can take advantage of people and get that more power to you right but from a buyer perspective i'm just looking at this and I'm like,
    71:48
    what? I know Capcom's putting out a Castlevania thing that's just tons of NFTs that people, the Castlevania, like an anniversary box that people can buy. I don't get it. I don't understand it.
    72:03
    Well, let me rephrase. I understand it. I don't understand the appeal to it. Well, again, because, talking about that same watch person we discussed, who is the Flexer, and They've dumped money in crypto, which rumor mill is that because they named which cryptos they put the money in, some of those cryptos went down. And they're stuck diamond-handing crypto that's not worth it. Because, yeah, no, crypto is like almost all the big cryptos. Well, I don't know enough about cryptos. Some of the big ones I know of, like they're way up from where they were two years ago. But if you bought it in October, it might not be up now versus October. But NFTs also. Yeah. They went and bought their releases of NFTs and they spent $10,000. And then you see them trying to sell the NFT for $150,000. And someone else went on one of the Reddit threads and posted and said, oh, yeah, here's the comparable one out of that same set. It just sold for two.
    72:58
    That was launched at 10. Sold for two. This guy wants 150. But you also get to know that you have the one that came from him. And he touched it and that makes it gold. I don't know why you would want it. I see where people are like speculating. We're speculating on everything. We're speculating. We see it on pinball.
    73:18
    I saw someone online. I won't say who because I'm so nice. List. You remember that stupid R2-D2 Star Wars topper? The $750 topper that took purpose to sell out? I remember the really dumb topper. $2,999 I saw it listed for. That hunk of plastic. That is so dumb.
    73:37
    That's just, I don't understand it. Now, here's the thing where I'm tying it in. is someone going to buy that in the hopes that it becomes $5,000?
    73:46
    It seems like people are even speculating on the stupid stuff now. What happens if Penn Stadium quits making lights? Are those going to be speculated on? Probably. It's sad. It's weird. We are in a weird time. Things are real weird. And again, I mean, we've seen this with like toppers and things that have gotten discontinued. It used to be that was the flex, I think, in pinball was. We're a brief period here. Maybe it still is, where it's like, okay, well, everyone's getting an LE now. The only way to flex is with the topper. But I think as manufacturers figure out that they just haven't been building enough, that ultimately will get resolved. I mean, granted, the Star Wars one was at least announced as being limited. But what was the point of that other than to try and make it collectible?
    74:27
    Forced LE is always kind of annoying me. But it's a way of thing. At least that's not new. It's a way of things. We see it in pinball. We see it in watches. We see it in everything. In limited editions. So anyway, but you weren't going to focus on that. No, but I felt like it needed to be mentioned. Okay. We're aware. It's one of those things. Slaying the world. We do know about NFTs. And a lot of companies have launched NFT things and due to negative feedbacks have already started withdrawing and canceling their NFT plans. Yeah. I've seen others hedging it saying we'll cancel it if the gamers ultimately say they don't like it when the game is out. Yeah. Okay. Which, I mean, we've seen similar with, I'm thinking like Battlefront 2 and all the backpedaling EA had to do when they launched that. And then it was like 40,000 tokens to unlock Vader or something. Stupid. Yeah, it's just so silly. And I mean, there's even a game out there that is just all about, it's purely NFT based. It's just everything on it is NFT. I don't know. Okay. Some people. All right. So back to video games. There was a thing. Yeah, we had another email. Matthew V wrote in and he asked if either of us have played a game called Yoku's Island Express and wanted our thoughts on it. He described it as a chill platformer and that it has some pinball mechanics. I have not played this. I've seen the trailer for it. I hadn't even heard of it until the email came in.
    75:56
    It actually looks kind of cool. Yeah, it looks all right. I have not been in a mode where I want to play platformers. I am definitely not a platformer player. I used to be. It's always been a hot, cold thing for me. And to be fair, I usually played some pretty hardcore platformers. So I have played a few chill platformers before, but I'm not really inclined to get it. I would just say, if you're curious, take a look at the trailer. I think you'll get a good feel for the game because you're kind of controlling a ball and doing a lot of stuff. And it did not look overly difficult, but the trailer is only about 90 seconds. So I don't know if it ramps way up or not. Well, see, what I thought about and what I think I'm actually going to do is my oldest daughter loves platformers. So I'm going to show it to her and see if she's interested in it. And if she's interested in it, I might pick it up for her and she can play it and she can let us know. Okay. Because like I said, I just... The art style looked really nice. Yes. I will say it's got an interesting aesthetic. No, it looks cool. The aesthetic looks cool. Everything about it looks cool. I'm just so terrible at platformers that I've gotten to the point where I cannot handle the... Like, I remember the incredible amount of time we put in doing co-op, Meat Boy, and stuff. And I just, I cannot play those type of games anymore. I just do not have the timing, the patience, or the patience to handle that kind of stuff. Yeah, I did get stuck playing Ori and the Blind Forest in a platforming part, and I didn't get through it, and I moved on to other games. Yeah, I'll show this to my oldest. There's a whole idea. My oldest has a couple games that are very popular nowadays that she loves that are games I would never touch. Maybe I should have her review a game. I'll just record her talking about a couple of her favorite games. We can pop them in here and there. See how it goes. Give the segment a name.
    78:00
    We'll think about it. Yeah. All right. I know someone who did that on the pinball side. He would interview his daughter about every new release. Yeah.
    78:08
    That's not a terrible idea. And it was funny. It was actually pretty funny. Yeah. All right. So into the video games. This one is the video game version of Rumor Corner. And that is simply that there is a new Armored Core game being worked on. Oh, wow.
    78:27
    Apparently, some surveys were sent out to certain people in the, call it video game media, with screenshots, a couple short videos, and some questions about an Armored Core game, which had a good use, I would say, of the NFTs, because apparently every single thing was watermarked digitally and in the shots with individualized information in such a way that if any pictures leaked or any clip of video leaked, they would know exactly which person did the leak. Oh, yeah. NFTs for tagging things is brilliant. That's great. That's come up in wristwatches as well as finally a way to know that something's not counterfeit easily. Yeah. Just use an NFT style. Yeah. No, that's great. So that's cool. For those who don't know Armored Core, Armored Core is a third-person mecha action game that was one of the... You played them. I played a lot of them on the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2. The latest, I didn't play a lot of the newer ones, but I think the newest one came out in 13. So it's been almost a decade since there was a new Armored Core game. But one of the primary designers behind some of the later edition Armored Core games was Hideki, the designer of the Souls games. Ah!
    79:58
    He worked on... Oh, yeah. Armored Core was... Was it from software? Yeah, it's from software. It's some of their... They used to do a lot of non-Dark Souls stuff. It feels like that's all they do now is Dark Souls. That's what they've become. They've become Dark Souls Studio. They've become nothing to us. But now there's an Armored Core coming out. That's cool because I used to play a lot of Armored Core.
    80:23
    BioAir, there's a name we've not heard in a while. No. Their general manager, Gary McKay, put out a blog post on the website talking about last year and about being focused on regaining the trust of their fans and their community. and taking the lessons that they've learned and returning to their roots, which basically is all stuff pointing out the fact that they poured everything for years into Anthem, and it crashed so far. As we touched on in our stats summary, one of our episodes was one about them pulling the plug on supporting Anthem. Yeah, yeah. Anthem, they poured everything into Anthem, and it was crashed, and it was terrible. Mass Effect, Andromeda was bad.
    81:11
    At least for a Mass Effect game. I never played it. For a Mass Effect game. Yeah, I was just going to say, there are two things they should be doing. They should be focusing on finally getting out another Dragon Age, because people have been waiting a long time. They are. And the other piece would be go back into the Mass Effect universe and bring back the writing quality of the first three. They are targets. They are working on two games currently. A new Dragon Age game that is single-player experience focused on choices that matter. I really like the Dragon Age games. I've played all the recent ones. Yeah. So they're working on that, and they're working on a new Mass Effect. So that's where their concentration is. I still haven't even played Mass Effect 3. They're stuffed back together after Anthem tore them up.
    81:55
    Continuing, it's sounding bad for E3. Wah, wah. Once again, no physical E3 this year. There hasn't been one since 2019.
    82:07
    But from the way their release was put out, it's not guaranteed that there will even be a digital E3 this year. They're still looking at the possibility of a digital E3 event. And here's the thing.
    82:23
    All the big stuff that brought E3 is gone. They don't have the big tent poles anymore. all those developers have pulled out and they do their own events and they've not even uh the big event anymore because between summer game fest and games con they've lost big numbers of the kind of announcements and reveals they would have had from even the smaller groups now well sure and and look how big the video game awards in december and that was i mean that's really what's i mean you've you've mentioned for years that you felt that e3 doesn't really serve its purpose anymore. Yeah. And how much of that is just the changing landscape with how companies like to put information out and how much of it is E3 mismanaging how it treated its own attendees. And I think it's a mix of both. I think so. But, you know, I mean, from a media hobbyist perspective that we come at it from, as fun as it kind of was to do the E3 thing, you know, it was also like a bunch of work. Oh, it was so much work. And I so much prefer just sitting there for three hours during the Game Awards and just absorbing all the trailers without it not being, oh, well, here's the Microsoft set, and here's the Sony set, and here's the Nintendo set, and here's the Ubisoft set. And it's just like, just, my body is ready. Yeah. I flow into me. I get tired of sitting down and watching all of these releases at two times speed because I ain't got enough time to watch every single thing at normal speed. and then just backing up and watching the important bits at normal speed. So after the last few years, I'm with you where I think you've been for a while in that. I'm going to say I want E3 gone. Yeah, I think there is no loss. I didn't originally, but at this point I'm like, no, you know what? I think I want it to go away. I mean, I'll miss the kind of big E3 episodes we had in our early years. Those were the days. Those were fun where we'd have, you know, three or four or five of us sitting around the table talking about stuff. But it was already getting weird because two months out, you're seeing leaks. I'm doing air quotes. Leaks of things. Some deliberate, some not. And it was just like, there just wasn't a lot there. It was like a week's worth of stuff that could have been condensed into a couple hours. Yep. So I see there's no big loss. All right. We'll see if they formally die or not. And in the interesting category, I'm going to go with Microsoft made an announcement that the nail polish brand OPI is putting out 12 colors based upon Xbox stuff. Okay, interesting. And they've got gaming-related names. And if you buy them in certain shops, you will unlock Hume-hatched game content. To match your nails? Yes, for Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5. So you can get your shiny, purple, sparkly halo armor, and you can get the nice pearl essence on your car in Forza. Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Master Chief.
    85:36
    They should put that off the box. They should. But I think Maybelline would probably not allow it. Come on, Maybelline. Get with it. Do it.
    85:49
    So, just a reminder out there for our friends who do listen to us this week, shortly after the release, Awesome Games Done Quick is active as of, like, an hour ago? Yep. So. Charity event. It's the Awesome Games Done Quick is the winter one. They do a summer Games Done Quick. They do different charities. I believe the winter one is for the Prevent Cancer Society. Right. And the summer one is normally Doctors Without Borders or something like that? Yeah. So, I mean, it's just a fun thing to watch people speed running games. I know it's all distanced again this year. They don't have the giant physical location, I don't think. I'm not positive. I don't know. So, I mean, they've been doing them virtually and got it pretty smooth out. Yeah. I mean, it's digital stuff, though, in a way. Right, right. But at the same time, it's always been kind of fun when you see the shot of everybody on the couch and then the crowds. Yeah. Over the summer, they kind of split the difference. I think they brought some of the hosts together, but the gamers were still separate. We'll see how they do it. Yeah, no, it's not as fun without the live audience. That is part of it. It is kind of hilarious over the course of a week when you see the live audience and you notice the same three people, and you realize that some of those people are in the same chairs that they've been in for 19 or 20 hours. It's like, do they just get that chair back, or do they have the bladders of a god? I don't know. Or bottles. They're popping bottles, yeah.
    87:30
    So that's where we're sitting on video games today. I just wanted fun and easy. I know we had a lot of other stuff going on. So if you have any questions or any thoughts, let us know. Yeah, they can do that by emailing us, which is at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. Or you can go to the facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast and send a messenger message from there. Or at Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. I actually have posted on the Instagrams like when we started recording. Yeah, the grams. On the Grams. We should be back in a couple weeks. Don't expect to be a new pinball announcement yet. Who else is going to make a pinball announcement? Rumor mill is maybe by March, JJP and Toy Story.
    88:17
    I thought JJP and Toy Story was supposed to be out two years ago. Supposed to and reality don't always align. Maybe they'll have an NFT of it. Knowing their normal release schedule, they'll release pictures and start rolling demo units in March. and physical units will start coming out in, say, June of 24 or 25, and then, like, in 27 or 28, they'll start talking about the next game. I'm hoping they'll be a little more speedy than that. Hopefully. Until then, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. Bye-bye. Bye.