Oh, welcome everybody, Friday, Canada's Pinball Podcast, I always have the most energy on a Friday. There's a lot to talk about in the pinball world. Kiss Pinball, Jason Knapp is saying it is going to be Kiss Pinball and not ACDC Remastered. I hit him up. I'm like, Jason, how confident are you? And he said, very. Now, it makes a lot more sense for Stern to remaster Kiss and not another run of ACDC. But still, all of this comes with complications we're going to talk about. And now if you're one of those Kiss lovers out there who's been holding on to your Ellie and you love the band, what do you do now? Once again, Stern is going to screw over everybody who supported this company years ago. It's a failing strategy. These remasters, we're going to talk about it. There are only a handful of games that really should be remastered. And I think they go earlier than even Kiss. Because remember, it was never hard to get a kiss. The games that are really hard to get, you know what they are. All right, what else is going on? American Pinball. We can't kiss them goodbye. They're looking to hire people to get the company up and running again. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about whether or not we think Pokemon is coming out this month or next. I'm now hearing it might be a little bit longer than we think. We all know the Pokemon 30th anniversary is in February. They are going to hit that date. So whether it's the next week or two or three weeks, it is happening very soon. We're going to talk about Dutch Pinball and these Alice Toppers that people just can't seem to get and what this means for Dutch moving forward. I think there is growing anxiety around this company that they need to fix now. They need to do something now to reestablish some goodwill. And we're going to talk about that. And then what else? We're going to talk about Winchester, baby. They popped the hood on Winchester game number seven. and it looks like a spaghetti incident happening underneath that playfield. Wires everywhere, not very clean looking. You should see the underside of Beetlejuice. It's like you could eat off of it. And then I'm looking at this game. It feels very homebrew sort of prototype. It doesn't feel like this is how the production games should look. And this is production game number seven. So let's talk about that. Let's start first and foremost with the return of American pinball or the desire to return. So this company now with logo number four or five is hiring and looking to hire pinball professionals, which is probably the hardest job to hire. How many people out there in 2025 are actually hyper-qualified to pinball game design? Now look, let's go down the list of all the jobs they're looking to fulfill. They've got general assembly, decal department, sub-assembly. So those assembly jobs are really the low-paying, sort of temp worker, on-the-line jobs that nobody wants. You can make more money probably flipping burgers at McDonald's than doing that kind of job. Then they need someone for the parts department, final testing, and QA, game design. Okay, this is a lot. The only thing they're not looking for here is like software and coding. And I don't know, game design, the job description says mechanical engineering and stuff like that. So American Pinball ostensibly is looking to turn back on. it's pinball operations. Why did they fire all of their pinball operations? The people that were there back in the David Fix period don't like this company at all. I love when Josh Kugler chimes in about this company. It's like an utter joke how they operate it, how they ran things. And my question is this, what will really change over at American Pinball? What I think is going to happen is this. I think they're going to end up hiring somebody from the homebrew category. These homebrew guys, this is their maybe only opportunity now to sort of break in to commercial pinball manufacturing and actually bringing a legitimate product to the market. Now that being said, How is this company now going to jump in, go get a theme that is going to break through in the current pinball landscape when Jersey Jack has got juggernaut themes coming left and right over the next three to five years? We know that spooky pinball has got a ton of great themes coming out. Barrels of Fun has reached a new level of excitement and momentum with Winchester. What's next from them? We're going to talk about whether or not it's going to be the last dragon. And Bruce Leroy, baby, is one of the rumored themes I've been hearing. But we know they're learning a lesson that nostalgia plays way better than modern themes. So they are also in this horse race. And so American Pinball is really a company that never ever ever made a great game And they been in it for a really long time And they are now coming back I think what's going to happen is this. I think this thing is going to never really get off the ground. I do think they will be successful in bringing another game to market. And I think it's going to flop. And I think it's going to flop because a few reasons. I think karma is going to kill this company. I have a lot of personal animosities towards this company because they employed people who came after me and my family personally and tried to destroy my whole livelihood. So yeah, I hold a little bit of like an annoyance towards them as an organization. They never apologized for any of that behavior towards me. So I think that karma is going to bite them. I also just think this company just is not going to be able to assemble a team, a brand new team that's going to ever gel or have the chemistry that's going on at some of the other pinball companies. And I also think we now live in a world in which getting a pinball machine to market isn't cheap. And so you're going to have to come out with a game that's somewhere around $10,000 if you want to load it up and if you want a great theme. And I just don't see American Pinball as a brand being able to create a product that's going to be competitive next to Stern and Jersey Jack and Spooky and Dutch and Pinball Brothers and Padre. The list goes on and on and on. And I think for those reasons, I'm curious to see who takes these jobs. I'm curious to see what happens. But I don't think we're going to see the fruits of any of this labor anytime soon. I know there were like rumors there was going to be a new American pinball game at Pinball Expo. And again, think about it. If they need to hire all of these people and a normal pinball development cycle that leads to a great game is around 18 months, there's no way. There's no way unless they quickly design something and rush a game into the marketplace. And we know what happens when you rush pinball development. You get a barren game, you get uninspired games, and it's not gonna work. All right, so American pinball coming back sometime in the future. I could care less. Kiss pinball coming back. Jason Knapp blows up all the rumors that it's gonna be ACDC. This is what Jason Knapp does best. Jason, thank you. Let's talk about it. So KISS obviously makes a lot more sense than ACDC. There were not as many KISS machines made. The KISS machine, when it came out, I remember when it came out, it was an interesting game. The art package was a throwback to the old game. The game itself wasn't the greatest. The code wasn't the greatest. They never really implemented all the different cities in the game in the right way. But if you're a KISS fan, you love this game. And this game really did have a nice art package. It was really visually stunning. And then the topper became something nuts. Like people were spending like $5,000 on the topper because they didn't make many of them. and so if you're sitting at home right now and you're one of those guys who has a kiss le you've got the topper and your machine you love it you love looking at it you love playing it it's been worth a lot of money you're never gonna let it go and all of a sudden stern pinball if it's true that the next remastered is kiss your game has now lost 50 of its value instantly because the Kiss LEs with the topper, baby, they were going for like $16,000, $17,000, $18,000. Now it's over. And this is the issue with all of these remastered. It's not whether or not they can find new consumers. I just worry that for every new consumer you do find, you are still going to piss off the old buyer of the game. It doesn't matter how long ago it was. If these people own the original and you make a newer, nicer version of something you said you were never going to make again. Remember, for the last 10 years, gang, Stern was not in the business of remastering anything. The only reason they have to start remastering games is their present day games are not great. Most of their present day games over the last four years have not been commercially so successful. You know, I know this because back like six, seven years ago was Stern Pinball remastering Simpsons Pinball Party or CSI or Lord of the Rings. they didn't go back to the well ever. And nowadays, they've been going back to the well twice with remasters and with anniversary editions. Again, I think this is a strategy that's ultimately gonna really piss people off. And one thing I'm surprised about is they haven't really implemented any sort of thing where if you are the original owner of a Kiss LE, we're gonna do the following. You know what I think they should do? For anyone that's the original owner that's still held on to the game, I think they should make like an SLE version of the remastered and offer it only to those people. Because a lot of these games changed hands You have to be the original owner from back in the day your name on the receipt and proof that you still own it And we're going to make a special SLE version of the game for you. But they're not doing anything like that. They are simply going to bring it back out. They are going to do what they always do. It'll be a premium and an LE. And it'll be $10,000 and $13,000. dollars. The topper will most likely come back. So if you have one of these toppers and you paid a lot of money for it, you got burned. But man, no one ever feels bad for someone who spends a lot of money on a topper that you never should have had to spend a lot of money on. Again, this is on Stern. The only reason these toppers went through the roof is they were too lazy to make more of them. They could have made more Ghostbusters toppers. They could have made more kiss toppers why didn't they why did they see people having to spend four or five times over msrp on a topper when they could have just said we'll make more and they never did all of these decisions over the years i think have made a lot of people not enthusiastic about buying new inbox stern anything i mean this it doesn't mean we're not excited for stern's new games it doesn't mean we don't want to play them, it doesn't mean we won't eventually buy one. But buying one new really feels like a silly endeavor nowadays. And I'm only going off of all of the games that have come out over the last four years. Not a single game has held any value. And for you newbies who are like, well, it's just like a car. It's just like depreciation. That was not the case from years like 2011 to 2021, every single Stern held value or went up, especially when it was an LE and you did not lose thousands of dollars on pros or premiums. So yeah, it wasn't like a car. And yeah, that's the reason why this hobby flourished for so many years. And yeah, it was easy to sell one of your games to get one of the new games because you got a good return. And yeah, nowadays you're getting destroyed if you go in early on these games. And yeah, if you add up the total losses, if you bought every Stern LE over the last four years, it is somewhere around the vicinity of $40,000 in losses, people. All right. Crazy. absolutely crazy so if Kiss is the remastered game of 2026 when are we going to see it I think it's going to be at the end of the year kind of like we're walking dead is I think Stern's going to start to use this spot like right after the summer release they do the remastered it's sort of like their strategy now and so here's what I think the order is going to be Pokemon and then in four months we're going to get Transformers and then we're going to get Fallout and then we're going to get Kiss remastered. It's another John Borg game. Why are they remaking everything John Borg has made? There's a little bit of like a rumor that they don't want to remake games that are made by people that are not at Stern anymore. So no more John Trudeau for obvious reasons. No more Steve Ritchie remakes because he's over at Jersey Jack Pinball. And so maybe they're just remaking John Borg games because he's the only guy along with George Gomez that was designing games all those years ago. But everybody just wants Gomez's Lord of the Rings and John Borg's Tron. Those are the two games everybody wants remastered and the two games that they just continue to not remaster. All right, what else is going on in the world of pinball? Let's talk about Dutch real quick. These guys need to call a meeting. Holiday's over, Barry. You got to call a meeting. I'm in the Dutch pinball thread and there are people that are trying to figure out where their toppers are for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the new games have the toppers on them. But there's like a handful of people that didn't get a topper and they still don't have toppers and new games are going out to consumers with toppers. So these individuals are looking at this commonsensically like, wait a minute, you've got toppers in the studio. You're putting them on new games. I don't have a topper. Why aren't the new toppers you're getting in going first and foremost to the customers that don't have toppers? We should be in front of the line to get those toppers. So what's the issue? What is the issue? They got to figure this out and they got to make these people whole immediately because they're playing with a loaded gun right now. They are really playing Russian roulette with their own customer base. And let me explain what I mean by that. The only people that are going to buy Raza are the diehard pinheads that have been following this whole debacle all these years. These are the only customers you got. And you've got to really maintain their goodwill. And you didn't win them over. Like you made promises about how many Alice games you could put together in a year, Barry. And I'm putting it on Barry because Melvin designed the game. But Barry and his crew are the ones who are supposed to be able to accurately predict how many games they can make a year and communicate that. And they said they can make 500. And they came up almost like 30% short of that target. That's not good. And so now they've got to figure out how to make the remaining Alice's also reveal Raza and get Raza orders. The problem is is this when people ordered Alice they sort of still had faith because because the big Lebowski were going out the door and everyone just felt good All right They going to figure this out They really didn figure it out And it been a little bit of a headache for all these people And so now the issue becomes is this With that being a headache and Raza needing to get 333 people to order it, it's not going to be a cheap game. They've got to do something now. They've got to do something now to get people excited again with Dutch. They've got to communicate to the community. They've got to get back in it. They just can't wait. And I think this is like Barry's strategy is like, let's just wait it out. Everyone's going to want to order my back to the future. So it doesn't matter what happens before then. But he's 100% wrong. The next six months at Dutch Pinball are so crucial for this company to get to back to the future. And I don't feel like they're taking it seriously. I don't think they're understanding what a bad look it was to come up so short on those 500 Alice's because if you can't make 500 Alice's, there's like zero confidence anyone's ever going to get their back to the future anytime soon. And the only way out for this guy is to find a manufacturing partner. It doesn't make any sense. Why do we have so many manufacturers in America who don't have a theme as good as Back to the Future? You've got it over in the Netherlands. Why didn't you ink a deal? And the deals he was going to ink were with Stern and JJP, the two companies that could actually realize and manufacture the extraordinary demand this game is going to bring. And you said no. I don't want to do it with you. We're going to do it over here. Well, fine. If you're going to do it over there, then you got to figure out what's happening over there. And you haven't. Because if you can't make 400 games in a year, this is not good. This is really, really bad. And again, I just think they need to figure stuff out. And it's not looking good. Like, this is not the way you want to go into Raza reveal, Raza pre-orders. And if they don't make Raza, there won't be a back to the future. There just won't. So I think this is wake up time for everybody over there. And they need to get their ducks in a row and figure it out. Let's end on this Winchester spaghetti incident, man. I don't know, man. I'm just looking at the photos and I'm in the thread and people are like, oh, man, what's happening underneath this game? You look at like Chris Turner's game and it's as smooth as glass under there. there's like no wires and it's so beautiful and then you pop open winchester and boy it looks like old spooky pinball like glue gun days with wires going everywhere there's not even like wiring harnesses keeping this stuff together and this is on a game that went out to uh i believe a customer game number seven they just need to figure that out i saw that they had the whole like pre-order FOMO on the Dune topper, you have to order it by January 9th or you can't order one again. I just want to say once again, that is the lamest marketing move I've ever seen. It makes no sense, David. Why would you do that? If you've got a whole bunch of Dune machines to make over the next few months, why would you penalize one of your customers who might even get your game secondhand? Let's imagine this. Let's say I buy a Dune four months from now and, you know, the original owner had a great time and now I buy the game. He didn't want a topper, but I would like a topper because I love this game. You're going to tell me I can't have one. You won't make more and just put them in inventory. Why not? Why won't you just hold them in inventory? Why don't you just have a few lying around? Why do you need to do this? It just feels like a cash flow issue and they need the pre-order dollars and the number to actually start development of the topper. Again, I've been covering this hobby for almost 15 years. I've never seen a company ever require a pre-order deposit on a topper that hasn't even been made yet. It reeks of cash flow problems. And I think it's a bad look. And I would love for them to explain to me why they need to do this, especially after they just sold 525 Winchesters instantly, basically. Why do they need this? Didn't they get enough money from the Dune sales and the Labyrinth sales to pay for the development of this topper? Why the FOMO? It is a terrible move. It is a black stain on the marketing of this company that up until this point has prided itself on making marketing moves that were in favor of the consumer and the community. This is not that. This feels like something Damien would do over at Haggis. This feels like a move that Andrew Highway would do. All right. I'm not going to preorder an ice explosion machine and I'm not going to preorder a topper eight months before it's even made. Wake up, everybody. It's time to put on the big boy pants and treat your customers like the smart, successful adults that they are. Happy Friday, Canada out. Searching our hearts for some heaven Both of us knowing Love is a battle field