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Ep 147: Hands On Uncanny Xmen

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·59m 7s·analyzed·Sep 24, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Hands-on X-Men gameplay analysis: top-third Stern title with innovative offset flipper design but early code and voice acting concerns.

Summary

Josh and Scott from Loser Kid Pinball Podcast discuss hands-on gameplay experience with Stern's newly released Uncanny X-Men pinball machine. Scott played the LE version and provides detailed mechanical and design observations, while Josh analyzes the playfield layout against historical context. The conversation covers theme implementation, code maturity (early state with 4 modes), voice acting quality concerns, and gameplay accessibility, positioning X-Men in the top third of modern Stern Spike 2 games.

Key Claims

  • X-Men was moved up in production schedule, resulting in early-stage code with only 4 modes currently implemented

    high confidence · Josh states 'we know that this game was moved up a little bit' and confirms 'the code is therefore earlier code' with 'four modes coded into it. Two were in the future, two were in the past.'

  • X-Men ranks in the top third of modern Stern Spike 2 games (from Batman 66/Munsters onward)

    high confidence · Scott directly states when asked where X-Men ranks: 'I'll say top third, actually' among Stern Spike 2 titles

  • The offset flipper design doesn't significantly impact playfield functionality—it simply utilizes previously unused area

    high confidence · Josh explains: 'most games—that area of the playfield is rarely used anyway' and 'he basically just utilized some area that typically wasn't used'

  • Sentinel head raising/lowering is primarily cosmetic with minimal gameplay impact

    high confidence · Josh questions whether the head animation 'add[s] enough because it's really cosmetic, right?' with only mouth-open kickback on Premium/LE adding scoring variation

  • Voice acting quality issues: Gambit accent and Storm characterization were poorly executed despite Marvel approval

    medium confidence · Josh criticizes: 'whoever they picked for Gambit...they were trying too hard' and 'Storm was a mad Karen...like she wanted me to—like, if Storm was going to kick your butt, she's going to get hold of the manager first'

  • Danger Room mini-flipper is tilted upward by design to make the area feel safer than the playfield geometry suggests

    high confidence · Scott: 'I guarantee that was by design. If the flipper were tilted down, it would be a much more dangerous Danger Room.'

  • Venom and John Wick LE editions did not sell as well as Stern expected, prompting strategic production contraction

    medium confidence · Josh: 'I also think it was a strategic contraction of the games because we know that Venom didn't sell as well as they wanted. Wick didn't sell as well as they wanted'

Notable Quotes

  • “You could see a lot of Keith Elwin's influence in there. You could see a lot of George Gomez's influence in there. You could see a little bit of Borg with the Sentinel head bash toy...it really felt like a friendly, accessible game that you could make easier or hard depending on your audience.”

    Scott @ early-mid — Establishes design lineage and accessibility philosophy of X-Men

  • “I'll say top end. Top end? I'll say top third, actually...up there with Jurassic Park, with Stranger Things, with um, Godzilla?”

    Scott @ mid — Direct ranking claim placing X-Men among elite modern Stern titles

  • “I guarantee that was by design. If the flipper were tilted down, it would be a much more dangerous Danger Room.”

    Scott @ late — Reveals intentional design decision to reduce drain risk in mini-playfield

  • “It felt like a natural progression of the games Stern has been putting out.”

    Scott @ early — Contextualizes X-Men within Stern's recent design trajectory

  • “I felt like the music didn't match the mood in some areas...I felt like the voice actors they got on some of the characters were terrible.”

    Josh @ late — Primary production quality concerns despite gameplay praise

  • “The guy who did—who did all of the stuff for Iron Maiden and Godzilla, he is a very good—I would say he is top-tier talent.”

    Josh @ late — Establishes voice acting quality baseline for comparison

  • “They stated that we know how releases go. They have multiple simultaneous games in development, and depending on certain situations they'll actually move a game up or back.”

    Josh @ mid — Contextualizes X-Men's early code state within Stern's production pipeline

  • “It felt like, you know, those carnival games where you go and you get that giant hammer and you try to slam it down and hit the center of the dot and it goes up to ring the bell?”

Entities

Uncanny X-MengameJack DangerpersonGeorge GomezpersonZach SharppersonScott (Loser Kid co-host)personJosh (Loser Kid co-host)personWasenpersonFlippin' Out Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern design team actively engaged in playtest feedback sessions with designers (Jack Danger, George Gomez), coders (Wasen), and executives (Gary Stern) present

    high · Scott reports: 'George came down too. George Gomez was there, and Gary Stern came in and we talked for a bit' and 'I had Wasen in there...talking to him about code'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: X-Men positioned as accessible to multiple skill tiers through playfield design flexibility: long ball paths and multiple shot options accommodate both casual and competitive players

    high · Scott: 'it really felt like a friendly, accessible game that you could make easier or hard depending on your audience' and Josh notes long ball paths serve to 'slow the ball down, give it an interesting path'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Voice acting implementation criticized as mismatched to character expectations: Gambit accent overplayed and inaccurate to actual Cajun representation; Storm characterized ineffectively

    high · Josh: 'whoever they picked for Gambit...Sounds like the hillbillies you find in the swamp...they were trying too hard' and 'I didn't like Storm at all. I felt like Storm was a mad Karen'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: X-Men demonstrates deliberate playfield geometry optimization: offset flipper placement utilizes previously underutilized space to enable longer ball paths and expanded shot variety without creating ergonomic dysfunction

    high · Josh explains: 'most games—that area of the playfield is rarely used anyway...he basically just utilized some area that typically wasn't used. And by moving the playfield or the flippers over to the right, he just expanded the top of the playfield'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.177

0:00
thanks for tuning in to loser kid pinball podcast we are on episode 147 we're doing something a little different today we're actually recording a couple days early and then we're going to release so if anything happens i guess we're we're behind the time on the news huh scott we could be forecasting we could be uh as uh as don on the pinball podcast used to say we try to wake the news exactly exactly new machines out x-men uncanny x-men we've got all the information you want to know about we're talking about today but if you want to buy that game scott where are you buying it from uh zach and nicole mini at flipping out pinball and actually i did place an order i placed you did premium yeah i did nice you yeah well i guess let's not let's not break the news just yet but okay um all right so i did i did place an order um so i'll get it uh the nice thing is i i always want zach to take care of his his customers that go you know that we refer them to first so we actually go to the end of the line so if you want it you could actually jump up and get it uh this is interesting because they're doing the le's first and so that's that's going to be a little different than what they've done in the past i really think it's a great game And my friend, I have two friends that ordered Avatar Collector's Editions through Zack and Nicole Mini. So these are things that are great because they can take care of you. Exactly. And their customer service is just above and beyond. They're great. Yeah. They're great. So let's – you know what? We're kind of talking about this. Scott, you got hands-on. You got to be one of the first people ever to play X-Men. Yep. Tell me about this. because it okay let's let's do some uh let's let's bring it up to par okay so it released like a week and a half ago yep they showed some video of it uh everyone was hyped don had bought four and ellie and like three premiums yeah crazy uh people are saying you know ellen better look out because jack danger's the next goat which i i don't know how to slow the roll slow the roll slow the roll now and then it was i'm not saying it's not gonna happen i'm I will say Ellen has six games under his belt and Jack has two and a half. Yes. So it's fine. But the good news is not a competition, not a competition. Exactly. Well, and what was funny to me is like, well, I posted that meme, right? Wolverine sitting there stroking the picture of Uncanny X-Men. I had relayed that to the pinball community with X-Men. And a week later, they did a surprise stream. Well, it wasn't a surprise. They gave like a 24-hour notice. We're doing a stream. uh and it they did the stream and i don't know what happened i don't know if it's because they were wearing outfits or jack it was distracting i i guess yes it ended up uh people didn't get the best vibe of the game um yeah and like the ball times were like 30 seconds long and this is like zach sharp granted he had a wolverine mask on so it's probably hard to see but he's like a top 100 player right he's a great player jack's great player uh in so okay i'll tell you my experience though okay my experience is and i am a professionally average player okay i i i am not a i'm not a papa level player yeah but my job is to hey is this going to be good for my situation i'm you know i i have a home arcade play most of my games in the home arcade i i do try to understand the rules and get into that but is is that great for my situation now the good news is we also have friends who are really involved in like scoring and score balancing and making sure that you're not just locked into one path that was always the criticism of some of the old games is that there's you know okay this is josh sharp we had him on and he he's like which game do you love which game do you hate remember when we did that both of them were twilight zone yep because he said i love it that it's a complete game however i hate that in tournament settings you just do the same thing yeah ramp ramp start a mode right and so so that's the one that's the that's the magic that stern has been able to inject into games is that the high level competitive players they have are really influencing what they're doing and how they're balancing the code to make sure that you can be competitive regardless of which path you're going to take yeah and it keeps games fresh it keeps keeps games interesting and that you can try something else um so that being said i played it in my ball time i'm sure i was playing on exactly the same game they were playing on yeah and it's an le um it has all the le features and really we had some pretty good ball times really if anything i was wondering they may have to mean it up a little bit for these high level players so when you have like a pop level tournament they don't have the ball times aren't too too hard which is funny because you watch the stream and it's like finally like jack zach and a waste and i'll step away and it was just like nick i think his name was yeah he was doing so good on it they were just like you just play it and so it was like right what one person ball times just and so that's why i was like when you told me this when you text me okay this is he's like man uh you and was it don and who else was there yeah don was there you guys were just you're like okay trailers and this was going so it was going great you know it was me and i was playing with don wasen was there wasen came down so we were able to talk to him and it was great to get the coder's perspective yeah and also you know zach was there so zach got in on a few games too we were able to do things on the game and it felt very very fun if it as i as i explained before this feels like a natural progression as to game stern has been putting out yeah and uh i can't remember exactly how i described it but if i can remember um i i said it's almost like there is a uh there's a an upgraded katana shot where you take it and you shoot it and you shoot the from the right flipper you shoot it to the left and it flips all the way around and then goes to the lower play field yeah so it is a katana type shot may not be as hard as the katana shot but it's still very very reminiscent of that yes you have long ball paths and so it just felt a lot you know you could see a lot of keith elwin's influence in there you could see a lot of george gomez influence in there you could see a little bit of borg with the sentinel head bash toy yeah but it really felt like a friendly accessible game that you could make it easier or hard depending on your audience gotcha so okay so let's get into it how it looks.

  • George Gomez indicated that if he'd known the full scope of Jack Danger's design, some elements might have been dialed back

    medium confidence · Josh reports: 'I think even Gomez said on one of the interviews, If he would have known how much Jack had put in this, they might have actually dialed some of it back'

    • Scott @ mid — Vivid gameplay mechanic description of elevated VUK design

    Zombie Yeti
    person
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Gary Sternperson
    Nolan Northperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    John Borgperson
    Marvel (corporate)company

    licensing_signal: Marvel approval process for voice actors established but quality outcomes inconsistent; Marvel-approved talent did not necessarily meet community expectations for character representation

    high · Scott: 'I did ask specifically about who voiced him, and he said they were all Marvel-approved voice actors for the characters.' Josh responds: 'I don't know who at Marvel is like, Yeah, that sounds good enough, because it doesn't in some of these cases.'

  • $

    market_signal: Venom and John Wick Limited Edition versions underperformed sales expectations, prompting Stern to reduce X-Men LE production volume as strategic contraction

    medium · Josh: 'I also think it was a strategic contraction of the games because we know that Venom didn't sell as well as they wanted. Wick didn't sell as well as they wanted. And so it made sense for them to shrink down the LEs.'

  • ?

    community_signal: George Gomez commented that scope of Jack Danger's design may have exceeded optimal parameters, suggesting potential design authority or communication gaps in production planning

    medium · Josh: 'I think even Gomez said on one of the interviews, If he would have known how much Jack had put in this, they might have actually dialed some of it back.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Men was moved up in Stern's production timeline, resulting in early-stage code with only 4 modes implemented at launch

    high · Josh states: 'we know that this game was moved up a little bit...So the code is therefore earlier code. Right now there were four modes coded into it. Two were in the future, two were in the past.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: LE tier features foil wrap on cabinet exterior with 'battle-damaged' future timeline side art; Premium/LE feature animated Sentinel head with mouth-open kickback; Pro lacks these cosmetic/mechanical variations

    high · Scott: 'On the LE, they did a really cool touch though. They used the foil wrap again...the side art...has like some damage, some cuts, some laser cuts into the art' and 'The one effect that can—on the Premium, you hit the mouth and it opens up'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Danger Room mini-flipper deliberately tilted upward from standard angles to reduce drain risk and improve accessibility despite complex geometry

    high · Scott: 'the mini flipper...it's almost—I don't want to say flat, but it's compared to the other two flippers. It's tilted up...I guarantee that was by design. If the flipper were tilted down, it would be a much more dangerous Danger Room.'

    • 7:11
    So the one thing, the reason I asked George, oh, George came down too. George Gomas was there and Gary Stern came in and we talked for a bit. Nice.
    7:22
    So 8-11, these are things that I found out about the Marvel timeline. So apparently there's two different timelines. There's the 8-11 timeline and there's another one it's 600 something 616 i think okay and so that's the reason why they actually have like 811 and it was okay i also think it was a strategic contraction of the games because we know that venom didn't sell as well as they wanted wick didn't sell as well as they wanted and so it made sense for them to shrink down the le's yeah one thing that uh the game theme is centered around it's the the days of future past so i ordered this on amazon and they actually had some new comic books that were printed of of this specific one which was kind of fun so so we got those new printing um this one actually has it's in the 90s they would do all these crossovers basically to sell more you know if you were that in person or a fantastic four you're like oh well now i have to buy a few issues of other ones so it made sense um secret wars was the same way civil war was big on this it was i mean spider-man had a whole new line that ran off of it yeah yeah so things like that now this one that i bought on amazon for like 16 bucks this has all of them together well and if i remember correctly the original storyline only lasts like two issues so is there in x-men but if you look at this um i'm just casually looking one two three four five six seven eight so at least at least eight okay cool so and it's a it's a thick book it's not It's not a standard comic book. So the gist of it is you start in the story anyway. You're in the future, and then you realize that it's dystopian.
    9:33
    The Sentinels have taken over. They've tiered the people into like normals or just normal people. And then there's those that have the mutant gene, and they are not allowed to reproduce. and then you have mutants and basically that's the three tiers of people and mutants are they have these suppressors on and they can't use their mutant powers and so you know this is a really dystopian future especially for you know for mutants that hey just because you exist you're actually outlawed yeah so they're trying to balance these two you know these two timelines and you're going back and forth between the future and the past. It was really cool in that they, on the LE anyway, and I'm just trying to look at pictures of how they did it for the Pro and the Premium. It's a little hard because they don't have exactly the same setup. up it looks okay so it looks like on the pro and premium i can't see exactly how they themed the side art it looks well one okay it looks like it's ripped right off the yeah it's yeah yeah one of them's mirrored the the pro i just looked it's mirrored uh the premium so the premium is also mirrored it's one on one side which i think people overstate a little bit the importance of side art because as you see behind me, all the side arts are abutted against the other machines. Yeah. On the LE, they did a really cool touch though. They used the foil wrap again. And on the right side is the future. Yep. And it looks dark. And even the art is battle – sorry, the side armor, it's battle damaged. Oh, really? So it has like some damage, some cuts, some laser cuts into the art, which I thought was a really cool touch. The other side was going back to like the 1980s.
    11:46
    Okay. And so it was clean. It was crisp. I do find it interesting that the storyline, the future, the dystopian future was 2013. That is funny. Yeah. it's kind of like back to the future when you know i we are well past the the time date they set for flying cars yep um so so you're going back and forth now the the code is pretty early now they have they have stated so this is not like a rumor thing they stated that the we we know how releases go is that they have multiple simultaneous games in development and depending on certain situations they'll actually move a game up or back okay so we know that this game was moved up a little bit yep so the code is therefore earlier code yes so right now there were four four modes coded into it two were in the future two were in the past and the mood which was really cool because when you did the when you went to the past it it has this kind of upbeat music it's it's this uh the music that you would i would say it's era appropriate okay um you know kind of poppy just just think of a little bit of synth electronic type stuff you go to the future and it's a little darker but it's similar it's not super jarring but you are noticing that hey um this is a different style of music yeah so they did a really good job and and also the illumination dims down on the play field okay so that's cool so you know whether or not you're in the past you're in the future uh the game play so i don't know how the pro plays uh the pro looks quite similar i guess so there's a wire form ramp on the right side that has a sentinel hand now that does not break so think of godzilla that does not break down on the right side okay um there's also a sentinel head that on the premium and le it raises from the playfield um it you can't really go over it and so it's still there anyway but in the in the premium uh in the pro it's just up there all the time so i guess my question to you is because if if it goes up and goes down do you feel like i mean this game looks pretty packed and i think even gomez said on one of the interviews if he would have known how much jack had put in this and they might have actually dialed some of it back but the question is does the head going up and down add enough because it's really cosmetic right it's not yeah It totally visual The one effect that can on the prone premium you hit the mouth and it opens up and from what i understand there kind of like a little bit of a kickback if you hit right into the open mouth okay so you're defeating the sentinel and if you hit it in the mouth area the scoring is you actually get a better score than a glancing shot yeah so you're battling the sentinel right yeah so that that is something that is on the on the premium le the pro i i don't think it has the mouth part that goes down nope nope it does open up okay okay it at least on the pro pictures that they have it does open up so you at least have that similar thing yeah um the the hands are a little different so it is a cool effect when he's breaking the wire form because it does feel like it's like oh that's really cool he breaks it down it's a little bit more of a uh a danger move than godzilla when when the bridge breaks in godzilla it's like oh that's kind of cool but the ball's pretty high up there in the in the left upper play field so it doesn't really like come shooting down to your uh to your flipper yeah this one comes down and it does feel a little dangerous but it doesn't necessarily feel like a cheap drain which is funny because like on the stream can't remember who was playing and the the wire form broke and the ball went straight down the middle right i was like well that's not great i'm gonna respond well to that right yeah so uh that's it and also um so in keeping i know i'm jumping around a little bit but in keeping with the foil on the outside there is foil on the inside too oh okay and uh on the le the premium le uh the one thing we didn't talk much about and we can more talk about this now just because i'm looking at the the pictures on stern's website is and i realized that when we talked about this before we focused almost exclusively on the theme and the play field right we barely touched on zombie yeti's art and it it is interesting to see that this art package is it is consistent with a 90s era comic book and it it does look really cool he's he's done a great job have you taken a look at the art package josh i have i i have and we kind of talked about this not the last episode but the episode before and i do feel like it's like they kind of just dropped comic books over the play field and like i felt like it's really good but it's it's probably the busiest art package it is it is done but did you look at the back glasses at all or the trans lights yes um i can pull those right up again now that you were putting me on the spot i'm like sorry i know i've seen them i i happen to have them up because i was looking at it so yeah so i've got them here yeah they're and these are they're just as busy they are they failed yeah there does seem to be a focus um interesting i'm just curious because we haven't talked about this before which one do you like the best uh out of the three probably the pro with wolverine kind of yeah me too being predominant and uh right yeah and okay the the good news is i don't think there's a wrong answer no there's this is 100 preference because each package is really good yeah i think i think they're all really good and it's zombie you know what you're getting with zombie it's all good so right and so so that's awesome okay i'm rambling a little bit josh what uh what are some things that you are wondering since you have not played the game so i'm wondering about um well i asked about the gameplay like here's the thing okay so when you when you're drawing inspiration it looks like gold wings and looks like spy hunter with offset flipper these games respectively are ranked so gold wing doesn't have enough ranking but based off of the average it has right now it would rank around 290 and spy hunters at 297 so So when you take that and then, you know, they haven't done this in 40 years. And granted, modes and software and all that stuff has definitely caught up. And it can make it. We've said this multiple times. Like, good code can make up for, like, a bad layout.
    19:20
    Not, like, 100%, but it can definitely put a big Band-Aid on it, right? And so my biggest concern was, you're doing this old play field in a new style, and I felt like people were jumping too quickly that this is an amazing game. So I guess my question is, I felt like after the stream, a lot of people have been turned off because of the gameplay that they saw. Where would you rank this on a modern stern? Is it in the higher end out of the sterns? Is it the lower end? And we're starting – let's start at – Munsters was the first Spike 2. Okay. Batman 66 was the first. Okay, that's the one I keep forgetting because it was a – Batman 66. Yeah. So from Batman 66 at 2016 to now, where would you place it in the collection of Spike 2s? Okay. I will – I'll say top end. Top end? I'll say top third, actually. so up there with uh jurassic park with uh stranger things with um godzilla i think there there's a lot of deadpool vibe to this okay there really is um okay if you look at this so one i do have a question and i want to double check so there are three flippers okay yes but one of them is a mini flipper down there right yes yep okay so let's let's dumb this down and say it's a two flipper game with a play with a a play field that's separated maybe an upper play field okay so how many shots do you get out of a two flipper game i don't like seven or eight i guess probably more yeah probably about that you're between seven and nine depending on how tight you want the the shots to do yeah and so if you look at this it's exactly the same vibe as a lot of two flipper games on the right side okay it's it still has about the seven to nine shot paths and if you look at the lower like the little danger room area it feels kind of like an upper playfield there's a pop-upper down there there's a mini flipper and there are a few paths that you can take with that so therefore it actually feels very similar to any other game it's just it's just you move even though the flippers are a little offset on the right don't even think about that because if you look at most games most games that area of the playfield is rarely used anyway yeah unless it's like some weird slingshot or some stand-up target or something that you don't want to hit anyway because it just sends the ball ricocheting back and forth yeah right and it's it's a wedge when you're looking straight up straight up and so he basically just utilized some area that typically wasn't used and by moving the play field or the flippers over to the right he just expanded the top of the play field a little bit on the left side and so he had longer ball paths okay um so my other question too looking at this play field on the left side where there there's usually two slings right like that's just yep there's no sling on the it technically be the middle of the play field but it's the left flipper that isn't in the danger room it does that feel weird does it feel weird that like you don't really technically have because that's the thing As you get into the slings, they bounce back and forth. You're in trouble. This one looks like it kind of hits the right sling, and there's no way for it to – it might hit the pop and send it back. Okay, but look over the pop. There's a little hole to the danger room. Yeah. Okay. So you can actually go over that. It didn't feel bad because if you look at it, you can pop over that and get into the danger room, and on that mini flipper, you can flip it up, and it has a wire form that returns right to the left flipper. Okay. And then, so with like a lot of play fields, I'm thinking like Jaws upper play field, you're only up there for a couple of seconds. And if you don't do it right, you're dead. My question is, when you get into this danger room, is there enough time to react? Or is it one of those learning curves where you're getting in there once or twice and you're going to drain regardless until you get it down? No, it actually, it's a long playing lower play field. That did surprise me. Okay. you can spend a lot of time there. What you don't see is that mini flipper. So look at the angle of the mini flipper. Yeah, it's almost, I don't want to say flat, but it's compared to the other two flippers. It's tilted up. Yeah, it's tilted up. Yeah. And so when you look at that, that's actually a much smaller area than you think it is. Okay. And so it does feel a lot safer than you would anticipate it to be. and i i i would guarantee and i'm looking into jack's mind right here i guarantee that was by design if the flipper were tilted down it would be a much more dangerous danger room yeah can you adjust is there it looks like there might be a wire behind it you didn't ask if you could address that down at all did you i did not i didn't even think about it just because i was looking right at it and and when we were playing i had waste in there so i was talking to him about code with how busy the artwork is is it hard to keep an eye on the ball or is it one of those things it's like you're you don't really pay attention to art really when you're playing a game you you focus on the ball okay the other question i have too is because there's this there's this uh oh it's not a vertical up kicker i'm sorry it's a very target okay the weird part is is the very targets actually elevated above the play field so you're not actually so in a lot of very targets year they're pushing a target back yeah or you're hitting a you're hitting another ball that goes back so far but this one you're hitting a target and then like a ball hits another ball above the play field did it feel weird was it weird because you're not like you're kind of hitting a very target or did it feel like yeah i'm hitting a very target and whatnot you know what it felt like you know those that carnival game where you go and you get that giant hammer and you try to slam it down and hit the center of the the dot and it goes up to ring the bell yeah that's kind of how it felt okay yeah that makes sense all right so it didn't it it didn't feel it didn't feel like a very target but it felt like a variation of a very target yeah um i'm just looking over this so the ball paths are pretty interesting uh i'm assuming that they're the way the reason they are is because this game's already can be kind of brutal and so the ball paths are there to kind of slow the ball down it gives it like an interesting path but it also slow it down long ball paths yeah so did it feel because like in godzilla you know when you hit that right ramp it just it takes its sweet time to get back to you is that how it felt on x-men it it felt a little faster but if you shot from the right flipper up to the left side yes you're gonna have longer ball paths which you can see with that semi pretzel shot up there yep you know you can see that and there are a few diverters that help change the paths so it didn't feel like you were losing the ball much but it did feel like there was a lot of ball movement okay cool well i think we've covered the gameplay on this pretty good the one thing i want to bring up that i noticed from the stream but since you were there in person could you hear the game really well i could hear it fine but i was also playing alone in a room with and so it it didn't i i didn't feel it was different than any other game what were you concerned about what were you wondering so a couple concerns i felt like the music didn't match the mood in some areas okay uh my other concern was um i felt like the voice actors they got on some of the characters were terrible um i was not a fan of whoever they picked for gambit sounds like the hillbillies you find in the swamp out in in louisiana which i know he's a louisiana accent and i know that he's trying to do that that cajun and whatnot like we got a really good representation of that from um from chatting tatum in the new wolverine x-men movie and i felt like this was kind of almost opposite of that like they were trying too hard and they picked the wrong place to pick a dialect from from louisiana and then i didn't like storm at all i felt like storm was a mad karen i don't know how else to put it but it just sounded like she wanted me like if if storm was going to kick your butt she's going to get hold of the manager first kind of thing it just okay neither one of them felt good to me how were they when you were there um that's a good question i i don't think that i was focused too much on hearing which um voice actor they were using yeah i will point out though that the previous x-men i you know the the john borg version right yeah the the voice actors on that were terrible oh yeah it was it was to the point where there were some people who sold the game because it was that bad okay yeah this didn't feel that level this and i did ask specifically about who voiced him and he said they were all marvel approved voice actors for the characters see that's what's been in the past though but i don't know who's picked i don't know marvel at marvel who's like yeah that sounds good enough because it doesn't in some of these cases like it let's talk about owens avengers like i know like ryan c from the head to head you know he's like i'm playing this and i hear i am at iron man you're like no you no you're not yeah I just – and that's the problem too. I think you've got multiple properties, and I get that Ryan Reynolds is iconically Deadpool. Yeah But the guy that they got for Deadpool is For Deadpool is really good Yeah he was really good Well he the voice of Deadpool in all the animated stuff So it like they got the guy but people complained it didn because it wasn Ryan Reynolds And I get there's just going to be some ways or sometimes you're not. Nolan North, that's who did the voice of Deadpool on the game. And he's done the voice of a ton of – he's like the prime cut out of all the – If you want the best, he is it for Deadpool. He is Deadpool. But people will complain it doesn't sound like Ryan Reynolds. So it's not Deadpool. It's hard in some of these situations. And I get Gambit's had multiple iterations over decades. Right. And same with Storm. But I just – it didn't feel close to me. Yeah.
    30:18
    Okay. So I will put it this way. When you have voice actors, people don't realize there are tiers of voice actors. Okay. And I'll put it this way because my kids watch the Big Hero 6 animated series on Disney+, right? Okay. So you watch Big Hero 6, the movie, and there is a high level that is achieved by all those voice actors yes like they are top tier talent okay and i would say it is is noticeably different when you get to a cartoon an animated series versus a motion picture so when you have these uh these voice actors that are doing it i would say they're probably on par with an animated series which means they're good for what they are that they are slated to do um i would argue also some are much better at doing call outs than others yeah um the guy who does uh who did all of the the stuff for iron maiden and Godzilla. He is a very good... I would say he is top-tier talent. Well, and it's hard. Like I said, it's hard when you have iconic voices that do these characters and then you're...
    31:55
    I don't want to call it the Teemu version because it's obviously done by Marvel, but it's... It feels like you lose some of the magic because you already have a voice in your mind that it should be and it's not that one. Here's a question for you, though. Do you think that it would be better if you chose one voice actor, like a top-tier voice actor as all the call-outs, or do you like that they attempted to go with an ensemble cast? So I think – Do you see what I'm getting at? Yeah. So like you only have so much money to pay for these voice actors. Each voice actor is going to command a certain level. And this is me that I am a fan who's only looking at how would you possibly do this? I would argue you can probably get higher quality talent. Yeah. If you have one person doing the main call-outs and you use your budget on that person, then you chop up the budget into five different people and have five people doing voice call-outs. I'll give you this. Here's the thing. I think it depends on the situation. I think in this case where it's Days of Futures Past, the original one was done in the 70s, and the main character was Kitty Pryde. But when they made a movie adaptation of it, it wasn't Kitty that went back in time. It was actually Wolverine. Right. So I think – let's say if it were me, I think I would have done it from the perspective of Wolverine even though it's not like comic book accurate. Okay. So I went with Wolverine and went with a top tier either whoever did the animated voice for the X-Men animated series or Hugh Jackman. And Hugh Jackman probably is like way too out of cost. Yeah. Yeah, a Hugh Jackman would be cost prohibitive. But I think if you do it that way, because that's like Deadpool, right? Like Deadpool, you're playing as Deadpool, or you're playing, like you and Deadpool are interacting. I get this is all the X-Men. Right. But I think if you had one sole character like Wolverine, and then you had an ensemble behind him that wasn't as, like, you know, the Sentinels don't need to sound perfect, you know, if you're beating the crap out of them. I just, I feel like, and even like with Deadpool, like I'm thinking of Wolverine and Colossus and, and Stargazer. I can't, I mean, it's not Stargazer. Disco Queen. I can't remember. Oh, Dazzler. I think you don't notice them as much because they're not as in your face as everything else. Sure. But the problem is when you're doing a song cast like this, you're trying to give even time to everyone. Yeah. And so when one sounds, so if Wolverine sounds really close to Wolverine, but Storm doesn't, you're just like, it's like. you're like yes that sounds great and then you kind of like no well crap now i have to hear storm and she's not as close as what i think she should be i don't know it's a cash 22 but here's the weird part though like we're doing a comic book version i feel like maybe there should be more freedom and this is something jack danger could attest to i know that and we can we yeah if we have wasting on if we have jack on then we can talk more about the the you know what what constraints they had to work with yeah and that's the thing is like i feel like if you're doing the comic book theme there should be a lot of freedom there like yeah you got to stick to the storyline but to a point because even into this point there you're only doing two two comic books right and one the first one's pretty much in the future and the last one's pretty much in the past right and so it's just it's just weird and that's the thing i think people passed off of fanny gauntlet because there was just a movie made you know endgame and right uh and so people had adam warlock wasn't even in the the movies yeah yeah and so i feel like people kind of gave it a pass because like yeah it's a comic book but it's still it feels kind of movie-ish because we just saw that and you're fighting thanos and yada yada it this it's uncanny x-men it just it feels kind of out of left field because x-men hasn't really been relevant for a minute and because fox has done kind of a poor job with the like with with the movies within the last decade and and deadpool and wolverine was more of a deadpool movie like a buddy comedy right right and so i just i feel like i don't know if x-men was a theme people are asking for and especially like this um i don't know here's the thing though i think people i think this is the reason we're going comic book we're starting to see this more and more and i people seem to respond better to this then i'm this is where i'm going to make the comparison to steve ritchie star trek okay every mode was based off of a scene in the star trek movies the first two trek movies the lines were from the star trek movies the dmd was a recreation of those scenes you're literally playing the movies right problem is is you got a lot of assets that way you've got a lot you you're kind of constrained to what you can do and it's all like kind of narrowed and this is dmd so there's a little bit of leeway because you're recreating those scenes take it with if they did an x-men we did on kenny x-men we did days of futures past let's say we did the movie instead with the comic book you get more freedom on the storytelling right like it's not set in stone you can kind of take that world and mold it to what you need if they did days of futures past the x-men movie there's a lot of constraints because you got like hugh jackman you've got um uh jennifer lawrence you've got patrick stewart wasn't in it but the younger guy you've got a lot of you've got a lot of actors there's now we're using movie clips that could cost extra so it just i guess my question to you is do you like the direction because pinball is going this direction right if you look at godzilla if you look at mk x-men if you look at i mean wick wasn't wick was more of a i guess that was kind of a storytelling mixed with the movies yeah but still like we're kind of creating these worlds where we're creating our own story with pinball do you like that more or do you like more of the star trek approach where you're literally playing the movie inside of a game depends on the movie uh i would say some movies it's more of a that's the the thing you can't do and we'll talk about this in the future you can't do princess bride and just be in the princess bride world yeah you have to tell the story of the princess bride because that's what they want um with jurassic park it's reasonable to say hey you're in the world there are dinosaurs coming and you can there are other people other than the five people that were featured in this situation and so therefore it still feels you know it still feels consistent with the X-Men and you bring up some good points I think the movies the problem is would you rather do the movies and have more licensing constraints or would you rather have the freedom to do like an animated version and be able to do to play more with the storyline I think they would sell more Do you think they would sell more X-Men If they did the movie version of Days of Future Past It's a catch-22 And I'll give you my reason why I think the problem is People just want the best game that they can get For what's put out I think the best comparison to this Is Gomez's Avengers Versus Elwin's Avengers Gomez's Avengers were based off the Avengers movie.
    39:48
    It's not a good game, by the way. It's not fantastic. It's not terrible, but it's not the best I felt like they could have done with what they had. Right.
    39:57
    But with Elwynn's Avengers, there were constraints there. He talked about this when we did the interview. You only had the eye on Hulk? It was weird. But I felt like he was able to make the best game with the assets and the constraints that he had. So I really think it comes down to people will forgive if it's not the movies or the best iteration of that franchise. As long as you take that franchise and you make the best product out of it.
    40:32
    Now that we've made this big loop, bringing that back to Uncanny X-Men, do you feel like Jack made the best product out of the license he had? Yes.
    40:44
    Easy enough, right? Yeah. It would have been harder to do a movie version. And I will also say with the voice and the music and maybe that feeling like it's not as immersive, that's going to evolve with the code. Yeah. So I guarantee this is very early code. We are going to see a better version of it in the future. there there are people who are already stating this is still very similar to the animations that they used with uh with infinity quest yeah where you're still getting that static comic book figurine with a moving background yeah i did notice that i was not a fan and it's it's rougher than it was in avengers it's and like you said it's early code it is i guess it is what it is If you rank all the things – and by the way, I'm sorry I'm sniffling. I really am finding it cold and I'm trying to mute as much as I can.
    41:47
    It's one of those things where I'm like the things that I care about in a gameplay. LCD is important obviously because we have talked about that with JJP Games. That's one of the things that they do great is the LCD and theme immersion. yeah but aside from layout theme art that you see in front of you lights and music then it actually comes to lcd so does it really matter that much that the lcd is more basic than what you see with competitors games at first yes but honestly once you start getting used to the game and everything now you don't really you don't really pay much attention to it the only time the only time i watch animations or watch the screen and and granted i see the exact same scene like 30 different times like jaws this is a wonderful example you're going to it pauses because it wants you to focus on the screen to let you know the barrels you got to shoot the shark with a barrel and you've got to shoot the fin quick just like in jurassic park it stops the ball to let you know that the the missile you've got 30 seconds or three seconds to make the shot or whatever it is so i think that's honestly the only time i really noticed the back the animations or anything i mean your quick glance and i see your score what sort of stuff is overall i don't i don't but that's the problem though like uh i don't know yeah honestly on the bottom of my list is animations yeah anything to do with that lcd really is kind of on the bottom of my list and we've talked about this before honestly i wouldn't mind them going back to dmd no actually you you would you would trust me dmd games look immediately dated they really get that but but i think but look at pulp fiction i felt like pulp fiction i didn't even notice different it's like it's this weird um dmds will be cool in 20 years yeah true like it's not retro enough right now like cassettes cool now cds still getting there but not quite as cool as a cassette or vinyl.
    44:00
    I think we've covered this as much as... So overall, you're getting a premium. Yeah. Is this a game... Do you think as the code expands, do you feel like it can only make it better? Or do you feel like... Is there any way it can make it worse Okay the code is always a moving target yeah the it still very fun to shoot okay and and that's that's the biggest thing um really the walking dead this is an unintentional pun but the code resurrected the walking dead it's true because when it first came out and i had the hillbilly like calling out things it didn't it didn't sell very well yeah this it is a solid shooter the layout's great the storyline will come along right now there there are four modes and i'm sure that they will move move that but imagine if you had another three months in development and getting more into it yeah and that's the hard part too like gomez has said multiple times they're usually on a 15 to 18 month timeline and this was shortened to 12 and it was shortened a little while back because yeah gomez had said on our podcast that danger was in the next in the pipeline yep and that was in may and so you know may june july august september yeah five months they already moved them up yeah yeah they'd moved them up six months ago so you feel the crunch a little bit and really we were talking about this earlier like pinball is starting to decline a little bit and I don't think it has anything to do with pinball itself. I just think people are having a hard time. I would say it's plateauing a little bit. Plateauing, yes. It's plateauing in that I have games. I have no space. So if I'm buying something, I have to say, what am I going to replace it with? Well, I think economically, pinball has went up in price from COVID. It has. And the main demographic is feeling like they're getting priced out of the hobby. And so they're really holding on to their dollar unless if they feel like it's worth their buck, right? Yeah. And so you're going to have to start making new, unique machines. And – sorry, I'm going back to why I was saying this is if we get to a point where there's more decline and they start having to let people go, my concern is like you've already built a product in a way that you need these coders. You're already having a hard time keeping up with the product that you have. if you start firing people there's no way you can get rid of the coders because you need these people to finish the code you know i'm saying or make less games a year i don't know that's just my thought process as we were going into all this but awesome sounds like so i think we're actually fine i think we're on a a steady pattern we may not be selling the gangbusters that covid did but that was really an anomaly if you think about it that was a a snapshot of two years where people weren't traveling so they had extra money um to spend on entertainment that they needed in their house this is probably consistent with what a growth pattern would be in 2019 if you if you shaved off uh if you shaved off the covet years and just looked at the linear progression you probably would still be about here yeah okay okay my final question to you on this and that i want to move on to another subject really quick okay um my final question is you've had hands on both avatar and x-men yes uh if money was an object and space wasn't a problem but you can only buy one are you going x-men or you going avatar that's actually a tough one because when you talk about it we get back to the question who is this game for right and so if I'm buying for me, I could have fun with both games. I actually had fun with avatar. I thought if avatar was a fantastic game, I could have fun with X-Men. X-Men is on the path of being more of a competition, um, like well-rounded scoring based thing, something like a Deadpool. And we all know Deadpool is a, an unqualified success.
    48:24
    Yeah. It had a rough start, but it really took off. Okay. Avatar. I don't see my kids coming down and playing Deadpool, but I do see my kids coming down and playing Avatar. Okay. So if I were looking for a reason to draw my family into pinball, Avatar actually would probably be a better game for a... I'm looking to create a family environment game. Yeah, something that entices them to want to turn on a machine. We all know that JJPs tend not to be the best tournament player games. They tend to be heavy on theme integration and theme… Multi-balls. …emersions and multi-balls.
    49:13
    So it really depends on what you're looking for in a game. If it's mainly, hey, I just want competitive balance and I want to be able to level up, then probably X-Men is your game. If you're looking for a way to bring people into your home environment that really just want an experience, then you may want to lean toward Avatar. But you'll actually like both of the games. Okay, cool.
    49:41
    Okay, so my next thing I want to talk about really quick, Papa 21 happened. Yep. the last time a Papa Championship had happened was April of 2017. So it's been seven years. It's been a little bit.
    49:56
    We want to give a congrats. If you haven't heard who won, you better skip right now or may, you know. But we want to give our congrats to Raymond Davidson for becoming the world pinball champion. And that was a tough, tough competition too.
    50:14
    Awesome. Amazing that they did this in memory of Lyman Sheets and doing it in raising money for suicide awareness.
    50:26
    It's hard. Lyman was one of the greats, and I appreciate those that put this together in memory of him. Penny Epstein and the Sharp family. Roger has said Lyman was like a son to him. and it's it's hard when you lose someone that close to you uh it just i i i still feel like kind of shocked by it i know it's been three years but it's just it's hard it's hard to imagine a world without lyman but we've had to live it um this is all done in interium in chicago it was amazing shout out to tom freaking graph i mean fox city's pinball did the streaming of this event went off without a hitch. The numbers, have you seen these numbers, Scott? They're insane.
    51:17
    He streamed for 12 and a half hours, is what the stream was in that 12 and a half hours. The average amount of viewers watching, this is the average, 2,200 people watching at one time. The max amount of viewers was almost 3,600. Unique viewers, this one's going to floor you. Are you ready for this? 341,972. So almost 342,000 people.
    51:47
    That's fresh eyes. That is people that have never watched Fox Cities Pinball before. Holy crap. They were able to get this on the front page of Twitch and it's just insane, right? And the money that was all raised went to suicide awareness. Like awesome all around. Like you couldn't have hoped for, especially bringing something back, right? Like you're bringing back a Papa that hasn't been around for seven years. Like, how's it going to be received? It was received very well. And a shout out to all these, all the people that made it happen. Cause holy crap. If you haven't checked out some of these, you can go to Fox city pinballs, a Facebook page or to their Twitch even better. They have clips, they have all the goods. Go check it out. Cause it was just absolutely amazing. And also the other thing too is like District 82 is no longer using Fox 8 days because they added more pinball machines, which is kind of weird because I'm like – It's okay. It's a choice. It is a choice. I'm not going to second guess them for their choice. I will just say that Tom and his ability to capture pinball and be able to let you see it and see what high-level players are doing, it's exceptional. So the good news is it's not like Tom is going anywhere. so tom's still around tom still knows how to capture things oh yeah and that's good and tom has his own home arcade well and he's like he said he said like he's not gonna be spending every weekend at 82 now but he's going to be more focused on these bigger tournaments right awesome congrats to him like seriously he just he is definitely like perfected some streaming there yep um yeah dude's amazing so anything else you want to cover before we turn this off scott talk about our guitars oh yeah let's let's do that really quick uh not this guitar sitting behind me no i don't know if it'll end up on stream but not i got a tom de log starcaster behind me uh all all decked out in the so he he stickers his guitars and i did a replica of how he stickers his guitar on stage uh love it it plays smooth it's nice but speaking of guitars sithargic guitars if you've not checked this guitar company out uh just sithargic guitars.com they take old play fields pinball play fields and they turn them into guitars even putting leds in the uh the inserts and programming them so they randomly flash like a play field does and they do it in the body styles of like a less paul so when you when you hear less paul think of slash from guns and roses that that iconic guitar he plays right um and telecasters because these are so it's a les paul jr so it's a little smaller uh and it's a flat top so with a regular les paul they've kind of got a curve to the it's kind of domed on top or less paul jr is just flat and it makes it easy to put a pinball filled on there right and then telecasters so if you're in a huge in the country um a lot of country artists use a Telecaster. It's just a flat. I don't know how to describe it besides just type in Fender's Telecaster. There's other designs too. Fantastic guitars. I'm excited for this because we're partnering with them. I'm getting a guitar. I've picked out Earthshaker as my play field. What have you picked on yours, Scott? I picked Silverball Mania because it is supremely 70s. And it's really great. It has a silver ball and it has like a silver man coming out one side and a silver woman coming out the other side. It looks great. Yes. And I've been into electric guitars for a little bit. This is your first one, right, Scott? This is my first one. My kids all play guitar, and I played a little bit in college. I took a few classes, but I haven't kept up. So this will be fun to get back into it. Definitely. And you've kind of been asking my opinion on some of this stuff, because I'm like, here's the thing. From a guitar player's point of view, if you are a guitar player and you like specific stuff, I like to play punk rock. I like to play metal. I like to play rock. i like that sound uh so i'm going with the les paul jr because it has what's called a humbucker uh it's two coils put together and the with reverse polarities it gives you a cleaner sound it gives you a it gives you that that good grunge sound if you go through a distortion pedal so like a telecaster has what's called a single coil and you get more of that country twang out of them and stuff like that so i'm excited because daniel says you can customize this any way you want and so i'm like all right i'm putting you to the test so everything i've already thrown at him he's like yeah i can do that no big deal are you sure yeah no big deal let's do it and i'm going with more of a simplistic design just because why not you know i'm probably gonna do one tone knob one volume knob a single humbucker right at the bridge because i like that bright bright sound but and you've been asking me yeah and i'll get whatever you're getting take one of his in this for ball mania yeah pretty much so i'm excited uh yeah it looks beautiful i'm really excited about the uh the example cut out that he sent me it looks really cool if you haven't checked these out go check out his instagram if you want to see his latest designs he just showed off a jjp guns and roses oh and that's cool it's really oh my goodness it is insanely cool so there's a bunch of them he He has like a Dolly Parton on there. He has Ed Robertson, a Barenaked Lady. He's got one. He's got a Quicksilver one. It's just cool to see these guitars. And John Borg's been showing off Ed Robertson's on his profile a couple of times. But yeah, I'm excited for that. Yeah, it'll be really awesome. So if you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, X, Twitch, YouTube. If you're not following us on there, go ahead and hit subscribe. Expo is so close. Holy crap. Like we're, we're weeks away, less than a month right now. If you haven't checked it out yet, the media mixer, Kineticis is putting on a media mixer. It's not open just to the media this year. It's also open to the community. There's only a few tickets left. There's not many left. It's going to be at Interium. We're going to have a blast. Other than that, Scott, you got anything else for us? You know what? Just look, hopefully I'm still waiting for that last day for Expo. Looking forward to it. and check out get your tickets um and uh yeah no go ahead and you know order one of the guitars because they are awesome oh yeah oh oh one thing about ordering the guitars don't be afraid of the pricing they're all canadian i didn't realize that i'm like dude like well how much are these don't worry it's all canadian i'm like oh oh so he prices in canadian like free money yeah like i just saved fifteen hundred dollars because canadian canadian doesn't even use real money so don't worry about it exactly just send them a beaver pelts and maple syrup and you'll be fine that's what they pay with yeah all right what's our last word scott uh multi-ball mania
    59:06
    Thank you.