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Episode 21: "Dungeons & Dragons Pinball Debuts! Live Reaction + TWIPYs Voting Opens & Pinball Cup is Heating up!"

The Flipside Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·37m 32s·analyzed·Jan 4, 2025
c3a9f6ca-9f2a-4d7a-a09c-9c7c97e5f7a5
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

D&D pinball debut review: dragon mechanics impressive, gameplay looks fun, Pro tier well-equipped despite feature restrictions.

Summary

Retro Ralph reviews the newly announced Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine from Stern, discussing its mechanics (animatronic dragon, character selection, shield feature), art design, voice acting featuring talents like Luke Gygax and Kevin Smith, and the distinction between Pro/Premium/LE versions. He also covers Twippy Awards voting eligibility and briefly mentions the Pinball Cup tournament series.

Key Claims

  • The dragon mechanism in D&D pinball detects bidirectional hits from multiple angles (right, left, front)

    high confidence · Retro Ralph describing trailer footage: 'This is one of the first mechanisms that I think Stern has put in a game where it detects bidirectional hits'

  • The Pro version has a sculpted (non-animatronic) dragon that cannot shoot pinballs from its mouth, unlike Premium/LE

    high confidence · Retro Ralph reading feature matrix: 'custom sculpted red dragon features vertical movement detects hits and illuminated eyes' for Pro vs 'custom animatronic red dragon' with 'omnidirectional impact sensing' and 'can shoot pinballs from its mouth' for Premium

  • Stern is producing 750 LE units of D&D pinball

    medium confidence · Retro Ralph: 'they're only making 750, I think it is, on this run of them'

  • D&D was delayed in development to make room for X-Men pinball

    medium confidence · Retro Ralph: 'this game was in development, and then it was bumped for X-Men, so they've had some extra time to work on this game'

  • Voice talent includes Luke Gygax, Kevin Smith, Brendon Small, Michael Dorn, and Matthew Mercer

    high confidence · Retro Ralph quoting trailer: 'Luke Gygax: Nothing is impossible. Kevin Smith: Enough talk, let's finish this. Brendon Small: We meet again. Matthew Mercer: You are being attacked by a gelatinous cube'

  • The D&D playfield features overlapping and cascading ramps with more shot variety than recent Brian Eddy designs like Venom

    medium confidence · Retro Ralph comparing: 'there's a lot more going on here on this play field than, let's say, Venom...There's a lot of stuff going on here that looks fun'

  • Unique maps refresh every Sunday for at-home players

    medium confidence · Retro Ralph: 'There's also going to be unique maps that come out every Sunday. So I guess Sundays they're going to refresh the maps'

  • Retro Ralph will play D&D at Stern on the same day it's revealed at CES

Notable Quotes

  • “The dragon is amazing. It looks like it shoots the balls back at you. This is one of the first mechanisms that I think Stern has put in a game where it detects bidirectional hits”

    Retro Ralph @ ~10:30 — Core mechanical innovation observation about D&D's signature feature

  • “I like that the pro is as equipped, really, as the premium in LE...unless they're really impactful and super differentiators, they don't become as valuable to you as long as the game is still fun”

    Retro Ralph @ ~42:00 — Pro-tier value assessment and philosophy shift toward gameplay over mechanics

  • “If you can give me everything, if you can give me music that's good, if you can give me call-outs that are good, if the gameplay is good, the LCD video is good, then to me you've got a complete package”

    Retro Ralph @ ~14:00 — Host's quality standards for complete game experience

  • “There's been a lot of chatter lately around, oh my gosh, Brian Eddy needs a hit and all this stuff. And I don't know, I was a fan of prior Brian Eddy games”

    Retro Ralph @ ~15:30 — References community speculation about designer Brian Eddy's recent track record

  • “I like Nudge Magazine not just because Ian's my friend, but then Knapp Arcade...him and I had a little bit of prior work history that's similar”

    Retro Ralph @ ~52:00 — Disclosure of personal connections to community publications and creators

Entities

Retro RalphpersonBrian EddypersonDwight SullivanpersonGeorge GomezpersonLuke GygaxpersonKevin SmithpersonBrendon Smallperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern released official D&D pinball announcement trailer featuring lead designer Brian Eddy and programmer Dwight Sullivan; trailer showcases animatronic dragon, character selection mechanics, voice talent, and Pro/Premium/LE tier features

    high · Host watched and analyzed official trailer; cited specific footage and feature demonstrations

  • ?

    design_innovation: D&D pinball features custom animatronic dragon with omnidirectional impact sensing that detects bidirectional ball hits from multiple angles (described as potentially first Stern mechanism of this type)

    high · Retro Ralph: 'This is one of the first mechanisms that I think Stern has put in a game where it detects bidirectional hits, so it can detect hits from the right and left side, the front'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern differentiates D&D Pro from Premium/LE via dragon animation (sculpted vs animatronic) and ball-shooting capability; Pro playfield shots remain largely equivalent, positioning Pro as value-focused variant

    high · Feature matrix comparison: Pro has 'sculpted red dragon features vertical movement' vs Premium 'custom animatronic red dragon...can shoot pinballs from its mouth'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Brian Eddy's D&D design emphasizes interconnected ramps, cascading shot sequences, and spatial complexity compared to recent Eddy games like Venom; features overlapping ramps and S-curve paths feeding upper flippers

    medium · Retro Ralph: 'there's a lot more going on here on this play field than, let's say, Venom...There's a lot of stuff going on here that looks fun'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.113

0:00
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the flip side podcast. I'm your host retro Ralph. This is episode number 21 and man, I saw D and D just like you saw D and D and Hey, it looks pretty good. And we're going to talk about that in this episode. But before we get started, as always, this podcast is sponsored by Flippin' Out Pinball. So I'm going to run a quick ad for Flippin' Out Pinball, and I'll be right back.
0:48
Are you looking for a new pinball machine, a used pinball machine, or to trade in your old pinball machine for something new? Look no further than Flippin' Out Pinball. they can handle all your pinball needs they ship anywhere in the united states and they will give you the best experience in the business check out the link to flipping out pinball in the video description for more information now back to the video okay we're back and we got so much to talk about so i'm very very excited because we're going to talk about dnd we're going to talk about the Twippies. We're going to talk about Stern's Pinball Cup. So we got a bunch of things to talk about. And I'm going to Stern next week. So there's a lot, lot to talk about. So we're going to, I'm going to kill the music and we're just going to jump right into it. Now I will put this disclaimer on this episode. I really haven't consumed a ton of Dungeons and Dragons. I really just watched it once. So you and I are kind of, if you haven't seen content on it, although it seems like a lot of people, I'm not one, look, I have a day job, I got stuff to do, so I can't just rush and drop everything and go do it and be first, but there's some value to being first, whatever, you know what I mean? If this was something I got paid to do, well, I guess I somewhat get paid to do it, like, you know, I have a sponsorship, but it's not paying the bills, and it's not, you know, feeding my family or putting my daughter through college, or my son, for that matter, so you get it when you can get it, and I've got some time right now, so that's why what we're going to do. I want to talk about it right now. So what we're going to do is I'm going to go over to this view and we're not talking about Twippies right now, actually. That's not what we're doing. We're not doing that at all. We're going over here. All right. What we are going to do together is we're going to watch the trailer together. I'm not going to watch the whole trailer in its entirety, but we'll just kind of stop it along the way and talk about things that I think that are interesting about this game, because I will give you the full disclaimer that I am not a D&D fan. I never played D&D. I have some friends that play table games like that. My friend Chris, he's really into it. As a matter of fact, he designed or helped design the updated Shadowgate game. So yeah, I have friends that do this, but I'm not necessarily into it. I don't have a ton of friends that do D&D though, or table games in general. But anyways, that being said, we're going to jump right into it. I'm going to bring up the trailer and we're going to see. So I have it playing in the background. So I'm going to lower the volume just slightly. And he got George Gomez. First of all, George is there looking handsome as always. George is such a handsome guy. So anyways, George, if you don't know, he's the chief creative officer over at Stern. And right now he's giving us a look at, I'm going to mute his volume for a second. So we're getting an actual look at the LE cabinet. Of course, they're going with, we're going to do aesthetics first. They're going with this idea of that foiled artwork, which seems to be their go-to for any of that. And you'll notice, because this is the LE, you're getting every single feature in the game. We will do a little bit of a breakdown of the features, but the thing that stands out the most to me is this dragon. The dragon is amazing. It looks like it shoots the balls back at you. This is one of the first mechanisms that I think Stern has put in a game where it detects bidirectional hits, so it can detect hits from the right and left side, the front. I don't know to the extent, but they are advertising that as something of interest. It also has, as George is kind of going through it, it shows us there's this cube. I think this is something that's popular in the D&D world. I'm not really sure, but the cube locks your ball, which I think is a pretty cool feature. There's even a dungeon feature, which pops up from the play field. So there's a lot of really cool... is definitely like upping the ante on this game when it comes to that so i'm going to cut back to george again real quick cast including michael dorn come here tasty traveler so the voices right now he's talking about the voices so aesthetics wise we'll go back to it in a minute but holy crap the voice acting in this game is really good and i find that really helps with the immersion of a game so let's continue and just listen to a little bit of this luke gygax nothing is impossible Kevin Smith Enough talk, let's finish this Brendan Small We meet again Matthew Mercer You are being attacked by a gelatinous cube And many more Okay, so when we talk about games like this, obviously when you think about, you know, being immersed in a game, voice acting has a lot to do with it, right? Like, are the voices good? Are the callouts good? So we're going to jump back to the trailer here in a second, but I have no doubt that the call-outs are going to be really good just based on the small sample and the talent level they got to deliver the voices, which actually excites me. I'm more of a complete... I like things complete. And if you can give me everything, if you can give me music that's good, if you can give me call-outs that are good, if the gameplay is good, the LCD video is good, then to me you've got a complete package, and that's sort of what I'm finding through this trailer that we're getting. It looks like, and keep in mind, this game was in development, and then it was bumped for X-Men, so they've had some extra time to work on this game, if you want to call it that. The art on the game was created by prolific Dungeons & Dragons illustrator Vince. So we're going to talk about the art for a second. Now, if you're not visually seeing it, you know, on the audio version of the podcast, you're not going to see the artwork itself, but he's going to go over the premium first. My only beef on this right now, the premium, the side artwork looks really cool. The back box sides look good. I'm not really a fan of almost any of the back glass trans lights, but that's okay. Maybe if you're a big D&D fan, these are cool.

high confidence · Retro Ralph: 'I'm going to get a chance to see it at Stern so I'm going to be able to go play it on the same day it's revealed at CES'

Matthew Mercer
person
Michael Dornperson
Vinceperson
Ianperson
Knapp Arcadeperson
Chrisperson
Stern Pinballcompany
Wizards of the Coastcompany
Dungeons & Dragonsgame
Uncanny X-Mengame
The Flipside Arcade Pinball Podcastorganization
The Flip N Out Pinballcompany
Twippy Awardsevent
Nudge Magazineorganization
Pinball Cupevent
Jawsgame
John Wickgame

licensing_signal: Stern secured high-profile voice talent including Luke Gygax (D&D creator's son), Kevin Smith, Brendon Small, Matthew Mercer, and Michael Dorn for D&D pinball callouts; talent depth suggests premium production investment

high · Trailer quotes: 'Luke Gygax: Nothing is impossible. Kevin Smith: Enough talk, let's finish this. Brendon Small: We meet again. Matthew Mercer: You are being attacked by a gelatinous cube'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern planning 750 LE units for D&D (described as 'this run'); Retro Ralph predicts LE will not sell out quickly unlike prior years, indicating potential supply abundance or demand softening

    medium · Retro Ralph: 'they're only making 750, I think it is, on this run of them...I don't think this is going to sell out on an LE'

  • ?

    content_signal: D&D pinball officially revealed at CES 2025; Retro Ralph given advance opportunity to play same day as public reveal through Stern facility visit

    high · Retro Ralph: 'I'm going to get a chance to see it at Stern so I'm going to be able to go play it on the same day it's revealed at CES'

  • ?

    community_signal: Twippy Awards voting opened; Retro Ralph eligible for Content Creator of the Year and Best Video Content Streamer; host emphasizes no conflict-of-interest participation in selection despite being Twippy Awards host

    high · Retro Ralph: 'I happen to be eligible for two categories...I am part of the Twippies. I'm a host but I did not participate in any of this. Like I wasn't asked. I think maybe it's a conflict of interest'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: D&D includes character selection with RPG-style progression, shield mechanic (blocks drains between flippers), cube lock mechanism, dungeon crawl feature with pop-up playfield, and weekly refreshed maps (Sundays)

    medium · Retro Ralph describing trailer: 'you can pick your character...some of them have the ability to put up the shield for longer...the cube locks your ball...dungeon feature, which pops up from the play field...unique maps that come out every Sunday'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community has elevated scrutiny of Brian Eddy design quality; Retro Ralph notes chatter about 'Brian Eddy needs a hit' but defends designer's prior work, positioning D&D as potential reputation recovery

    medium · Retro Ralph: 'There's been a lot of chatter lately around, oh my gosh, Brian Eddy needs a hit and all this stuff. And I don't know, I was a fan of prior Brian Eddy games'

  • $

    market_signal: Retro Ralph reports personal strategy shift toward Pro tiers based on Uncanny X-Men experience; suggests collector mindset changing from LE-centric purchasing to evaluating actual feature impact on gameplay

    medium · Retro Ralph: 'if I knew what I knew right now and I could buy Uncanny X-Men again, I probably would buy the pro because it's as feature-rich...I probably would have got the pro and saved a bunch of money'

    • 6:52
    I'm trying to think of which one I like the most. So let's look at this really quick. I'm gonna I'm gonna mute the audio so you can't see it but I don't know man the um the premium looks okay on the back on the translate I don't know it's hard to tell I don't even know if I have a favorite they all look okay like the thing is the cabinet artwork on all of these to me looks really cool but the translates the only thing that I'm kind of like hung up on whether I I'd like it or not I mean those can be solved there are companies that make different translates the art is artwork is subjective but i'm not a big fan right now of the translates i don't think they're amazing maybe my favorite one is the pro looks pretty cool maybe i favor the pro and the limited the limited is obviously going to be that mirrored uh looks it looks like that mirrored art artwork or the mirrored back glass so it's not actually a paper or not a paper but it's not a translate material it's actually um a mirrored glass, right? So there's definitely more, you know, there's a premium nature to that. Now they're going to talk a little bit about musical soundtracks. So let's kind of hone in on that for a second. Most impressive. And now lead game designer, Brian Eddy and software dungeon master, Dwight Sullivan will take you through the pinball adventure of a lifetime. Ah, it begins. So here's the thing. There's been a lot of chatter lately around, oh my gosh, Brian Eddy needs a hit and all this stuff. And I don't know, I was a fan of prior Brian Eddy games. So I'm not like in this camp of Brian Eddy makes bad games. I think there are people that maybe were not as excited about Stranger Things or Venom for that matter. I liked Venom. I will say the Venom Pro was not my favorite. I had the Premium and I also had the Limited Edition at some point. I think those were great games. So if I'm rating Venom on Premium and Limited, I really liked them. The other thing, too, they keep showing, sorry, I'm going to bounce back and forth a little bit. There's sort of this shield. As you play the game, you can pick your character, and just like any kind of role-playing game, you have different powers that each individual possesses. So they talk about a shield and how, you know, as you learn the characters, you'll notice that some of them have the ability to put up the shield for longer. So you can see there's a shield that comes up between the two balls that I guess if you want to block a shot or something or if you feel like you going to drain you could hit that shield and it will you know keep the ball in play That a pretty cool feature kind of like the overdrive feature on Foo Fighters although with the overdrive feature, it's not, you don't press a button to enable it. It's just you light the light and then at that point it'll be lit and you'll know if you left drain or if you left out lane drain, you can hold up a flipper and kind of, I think it's you hold up the left flipper and it bounces the post to the right and it bounces the ball over to the right. So this is a similar concept to that, except it's right in the middle of the playfield. You know, Galactic Tank Force had a shield, although I don't think that shield ever really worked that well. So I like that idea and concept of the shield. I also like a lot of what I'm seeing on the artwork is really cool on the playfield. So we'll go back and the artwork is very RPG-esque. I'm not familiar with this artist. It's someone that, I don't know if they've done other art for Stern, but it's not like your normal, you know, it's not your normal cast of characters when it comes to artwork, I don't believe. I'm not familiar with this artist, at least the name. We'll go and look at it again on the spec sheet when we get to that. But, yeah, I mean, it looks really cool. And I'm not, I just want to let you know, like, I don't really, I'm not interested in D&D typically, but, you know, I do like this sort of fantasy world that they've put together here on their glass with a lot of these cool features. Like that ice thing on the right that locks the ball, that seems pretty cool. It like traps your ball and then you have to get it out of there. The dungeon crawl thing is really cool. I think that pops up. I'm not sure when in the game that happens. But what I'm seeing is some cool shots and some cool mechanisms. And I'm not one that's like heavy on mechs where, oh my gosh, the mechs make the game. I think the gameplay makes the game in my opinion. But I know that there are different camps of people that like different things, right? There's different people that are all about the shots. There's tournament players, which care about completely different things. There's at-home buyers, where some of them actually really care about how many mechs, and that's how they perceive value in a game. There's two flippers on the bottom. There's a right flipper that has this really cool ramp shot over on the left that I think looks like that's going to be really fun. Other than that, I'm trying to grasp some of the shots, but this trailer moves pretty quickly. So it is showing you there's this concept of RPGs where you can use money to buy certain items to up-level your character, which I think is really cool. There's also going to be unique maps that come out every Sunday. So I guess Sundays they're going to refresh the maps. At least that's what they're saying right now. I think that's really cool. If you're an at-home buyer, it gives you more value out of your game, knowing that every Sunday you're going to have something new to explore. They're focusing a bit for a moment back on the Dragon. The one thing it sounds like, the Dragon will be fully featured in the Premium and the LE, but it won't be on the pro. I guess the pro will move from right to left, I think, but it won't, I don't think it will spit out the ball and some of those other things. Now, keep in mind for me, this is interesting because I bought uncanny X-Men LE. I will say if I were to able to do that, if I knew what I knew right now and I could buy uncanny X-Men again, I probably would buy the pro because it's as feature-rich. I'm not the wire form breaking on the right. I don't really care that much about that. And then the finger thing that shoots the ball back up, I don't really care about that. So I've noticed that those features aren't that impactful to me personally. So, and the sentinel head going up and down, that doesn't do that on the Pro, but the game shoots almost identical. So to me, if I were to do it again, I would probably get the Pro version of Uncanny X-Men and then maybe upgrade some of the things like as as the artwork and art blades and stuff come out so that might be something you take into consideration if the even though this dragon head is cool is that enough for you to to drive you in that direction that's up to you but but i think with uncanny x-men i made the mistake of getting the le when really had i let that soak in a little bit longer i probably wouldn't have i probably would have got the pro and saved a bunch of money so this is gonna be one of those things like are you okay with the dragon being maybe a little less featured on the Pro. I don't know all the other comparisons. We'll bring up the spec sheet so we can actually go over that. But I want to make sure that we at least talk about it and show you the features of it in its fully featured version first before we go into the other things. All right, so it's showing a bunch of the shots on the head of the dragon, which look really cool. And like I said before, they have some system in there of sensors so that it knows at what direction and where it's getting hit. I don't know how granular that gets, but I think there are also multiple overlapping and cascading ramps. So he's talking about these like overlapping and cascading ramps. This is probably considered more of a fan layout, but I think a more interesting fan layout than than we've seen before from Brian Eddy in recent times. Right. I think to me, there's a lot more going on here on this play field than than, let's say, Venom. Venom can feel Venom. They're all right in front of you. Right. Like you know exactly what you're shooting at. There's a right orbit that looks, you know, it's tucked in on the right-hand side. There's that right flipper that you see right now that shoots up that ramp that's on the left-hand side of this tavern sign that's in the middle. And there's that spinner. So there's a lot of stuff going on here that looks fun. Like so far, if I was just judging it on the gameplay video, it looks really fun. ramp to travel or take so that right ramp that he just showed kind of goes down this like sort of s curve ramp on the left and feeds the left flipper like all of this looks like they'd be fun shots there's that shortcut quick loop which there's a shot that loops back around and feeds your upper left flipper like there's a lot of neat things here and then imagine how satisfying this shot would be if you put it together so i know i know for those of you listening to the audio only the road to town loops around to travel goes down this s curve then there's a quick loop on the sort of if you were to go up the play field on the left of or sorry the right of the spinner that loops around it looks like it locks it for a second and then it releases it to that upper left flipper that then you shoot over to this ramp on the left it's cool like it that looks like a really satisfying series of shots.
    15:48
    And then there's also, like, another orbit that has a... I don't even know how to explain this for those of you that are listening only.
    15:58
    Yeah, it's an up-down ramp, which leads to that cube that locks the ball. Like, that looks fun, too. So if I was judging it just based on the fact that it looks fun to play, then it does look fun to play. Sorry, I said that really weird, but it looks like a fun game to play. The spinner shot looks fun. This dungeon cavern thing, whatever the heck it is, dungeon crawl. I think that's actually a term in Dungeons and Dragons. I'll probably sound really stupid to those of you that are very well versed in Dungeons and Dragons. But yeah, I mean, I don't want to just be full on only hype train here, but this just does look like it's going to be a lot of fun for those of you even that are not big fans of role-playing games. You know, so I don't know. That's my initial thoughts. The pro version, I'm going to show you right now. So for those of you that are listening audio only, I'll try to describe what I'm seeing. It looks like the play field is pretty well packed for the pro. I almost see, unless there's something I'm missing, it looks like almost all the shots are there. But the dragon looks like it just goes up and down. I can't see a right to left movement. So the dragon doesn't have all the features that it has in the premium and LE version of the game, at least from what I can tell. I don't see if there's anything else, at least in my initial look at this, because I'm doing this right now. I'm in the middle of my workday. I'm literally stopping to check it out. It looks like it's very... Oh, no, I'm sorry. The dragon does move up and down and right to left. I just think it doesn't necessarily spit the balls out. But that looks pretty cool. Oh, no, wait, it does. So what the hell does the dragon not do on the pro? does the dragon literally do all the same stuff that would shock me there's no way all right we're gonna have to look at the we're gonna look at the spec sheet really quick because then now i'm now i'm wondering all right i want to jump over here we'll look at twippies in a second so if i look at the pro let's look at the pro flyer so pro flyer all right main attractions i don't see you know what maybe we need to look at the um not that we need to look at the comparison sheet where is that of course i can't oh feature matrix there we go all right let's look at the feature matrix because i'm i'm really confused about this about this uh dragon head all right the dragon's lair custom cave blah blah blah so wow the the feature the main features there's a lot so it says custom sculpted red dragon features vertical movement detects hits and illuminated eyes so that says pro okay so so the the the red dragon on the pro is is this is a sculpted dragon and it says features vertical movement detects hits and illuminated eyes then then there the premium and this is how they describe the premium in the Pro Dragon It says custom animatronic red dragon because that interesting because in the video they might have messed up, because I swear that showed the Pro being an animatronic. It says features multi-axis motion, omnidirectional impact sensing, that's that idea that it can sense where the ball is hitting it, and then illuminated eyes, and can shoot pinballs from its mouth. Okay, so you lose the pinball from its mouth. You lose the sort of, it's not a fully animatronic thing on the Pro. But if you look at this Pro Premium list, there's a lot of stuff on here. The dragon seems to be the thing that is the most, you know, that's going to be the thing you're going to miss out on. So if you're okay with it not being a fully animatronic dragon, it doesn't look like there's a lot of stuff you're missing out on. There's a couple of other things down here, like on back glass and art, but that's too expected on a Pro. It's going to be different, right? You're not going to have that. mirrored back glass that you'd have yeah the fully mirrored is going to be in the le and then you're going to have um you know different art on the on the premium and the hardware and trim is pretty close to the only thing the pro does not have it's not powder coated and you're not going to have oh it looks like they powder coat the premium it says powder coated black wrinkle finish hand guard side armor oh that's not that that's like this stuff that they put on default now uh yeah so i mean really the pro is pretty i feel like stern lately is doing like pretty well equipped equipped pros so that's kind of cool so you know if if you can get by with the dragon looking the way it does i think the pro might be kind of cool obviously you're going to want to go and play it speaking of playing it i'm going to be able to play it next week at stern so i know they're going to reveal it at ces but we're also i'm going to get a chance to see it at stern so i'm going to be able to go play it on the same day it's revealed that CES. So I will let you guys know what I think about it. But this is the pro. Let's compare the pro and the premium visually just really quick, just to see if there's something I'm missing. Let's see. No, so I'm flashing back and forth between the pro and the premium, and it looks like all the same shots are there. So very similar to how they did X-Men. That's cool, man, because I think one of the things that we kind of demand is give me more value. So maybe this is Stern's way of saying, look, I'm not going to lower prices, but, and maybe I can't lower prices, but I'll give you more in the pro than you've expected in the past. So therefore there's more value there. So the pro might be a more viable option if you can get away from like the, you know, it's kind of like with, it's kind of like with Jurassic Park. Like I think Jurassic Park pro is great. I never really, I'm not hung up on things eating balls. Like I'm just, I don't know, but I think my journey has been different, right? I feel like I've become a pinball player. I really enjoy playing pinball and the features. I think when you really enjoy playing, then some of these features, unless they're really impactful and, and super differentiators, they don't become as valuable to you as long as the game is still fun. So I like that the pro is as equipped, really, as the premium in LE. I mean, LE is obviously going to be your most beautiful one, but it's also going to be your most expensive. So, all right, that's my quick assessment of it. I'm very excited to play it. As always, what I would say to you is if you're unsure, you know, the LE is the LE. For those that are going to buy LEs, I don't know, they're only making $750, I think it is, on this run of them. So, you know, LEs are one of those things where I would like to say in prior years you had to jump on if that's what you wanted. I don't think this is going to sell out on an LE, so if you really end up liking it, you probably could still pick up an LE or you could pick up one later on. But yeah, go play it at your local distributor if it's something that you're unsure of or wait until it goes out on location. And if you're just a hardcore Dungeons & Dragons fan, you could maybe just go out and buy it. I don't know. But I am probably going to pick this up, and I don't know that I'm going to keep it in the collection, but I'm definitely going to get it to make some content on it. And I hope that I end up falling in love with it. I'll know. I'll know on Tuesday when I go and play it. We'll know for sure. All right, we're going to pivot real quick. We're going to go to the Twippies real quick, and then I'm going to round things out with the pinball cup. So the Twippies are back, for those of you that don't know, and the voting is now open. I happen to be eligible for two categories. I am going to put a link in the description if you're watching the video version. I would love it if you would vote for me. I am eligible in a couple of categories. If indeed I am your content creator of the year that you just really enjoy watching, you can vote for me there. So if you look up Retro, you can see Retro Ralph shows up. So you can vote for me for content creator of the year. There's obviously a lot of other great creators. So if I'm not your choice, then vote for one of those other great creators there. I am not eligible for breakout content creator, but here are your breakout content creator selections. I've been listening a lot to the Bash's Pinball Podcast. I really think those guys are great. In Before the Lock, there's a lot of great people there. So just kind of consider that topic. And then the other area where you can vote for me is best video content streamer. Now, this is tough because there's a lot of great people on this list, and I view myself more as a video content creator than a streamer. I do stream from time to time, but I don't have like a regular streaming schedule when it comes to pinball. but I'd love to do that. I just think I haven't really had the time to do that. So anyways, I'd love to get your vote there too. So those are the two categories that you can vote for me on. There's other categories, best publication. I know I'm a little bit probably biased here because I'm friends with Ian at Nudge Magazine, but I love Nudge Magazine. It's a very cool, it is probably the cool most hip, I don't know, it's a very good picture of what pinball is all about i think it's like it's just cool right pinball is cool it's hip i think nudge magazine does a good job it's it's like you know ian would describe it as a skateboard magazine for the skateboard magazine of pinball and that's exactly the vibe he puts out very cool um nap arcade is great there's a lot of great ones in here you know kineticist colin there's so many good ones this is going to be a tough category i think for people but i mean i love nudge magazine not just because Ian's my friend, but then Nap Arcade. If you're looking for like late breaking news, I think these are a little different publications though. Like Nap is going to be your news breaking publication. Like, hey, I'm going to cover rumors and speculation and that kind of thing. And he does a really good job because come to find out, him and I had a little bit of prior work history that's similar. I used to do competitive intelligence and competitive intelligence is all about understanding your competition. You look at websites, you compare websites, You have all these searches that are going out to see if anything has changed about a company.
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    I never really like – I've never been a report the news content creator. That's just not been my space. I don't really have a lot of fun doing that content because that content is all about who's first, and it's just not my thing. I'd rather just report it when I have the time the way I want to versus feeling rushed to do it, and that's what that world is. It's all about like give me the latest. Give me the greatest. Just it's content I enjoy consuming, but I don't enjoy making. But Nap Arcade does an exceptional job with that. So anyways, after that, I'll just put my email in here really quick just so I can show you a couple more of the categories. And then we'll move on to the last topic, which is the Pinball Cup. So if we move on to the next – it's going to make me choose. Oh, no, it's not. All right, so Game of the Year. You're going to have a bunch of selections for Game of the Year. I mean, this is going to be all subjective based on what you like. these are all the games that came out this year so you know what one was best to you there's innovation of the year so there's a lot of cool stuff here i don't know innovation of the year is kind of interesting so the jaw revenge challenge mode that's cool on jaws see i think it's interesting that they put i by the way i am part of the twippies i'm a host but i did not participate in any of this like i wasn't asked i think maybe it's a conflict of interest i have not been asked what categories I would like to see or any of that. So I had no say in who's zero. There is a committee that has done all this. The John Wick Dynamic AI, I am not convinced that there is even anything there to call that Dynamic AI, but whatever. So I don't know if that to me would unqualify that one or disqualify it for me personally. Uncanny X-Men, the Danger Room is very cool. You know, is that something that someone views as ultra innovative? I don't know. um the ninja eclipse grappling hook kickback sequence is pretty cool if you've never seen that the scoops shoot the ball between two scoops i think that is pretty neat and uh you know turner being a newer company i think that's pretty cool that they're pushing some innovation i don't know yeah barrios i don't know okay i don't i can't imagine that's going to get any votes for i i played it a couple times i didn't think there was really anything innovative about it but there's something says bash locks i don't know maybe i didn't play it long enough but um Yeah there some cool stuff here So anyways you got innovation of the year best theme integration Now to me this is going to be an interesting category because is no it not on here okay okay good i didn think it would be on here um theme integration is gonna be tough i really liked pulp fiction but was pulp fiction really last year but that was the year before but maybe i guess didn't get delivered till last year so theme integration is going to be an interesting topic i'll give you my two cents on this i think jaws to me jaws was the number one of last year i think it was awesome they did a great job with jaws i'm a big fan of john wick and if you're a big fan of the movies i think it could be it could have been best theme integration they have some work to do still metallica remastered is freaking awesome i own that it's great ninja eclipse is a unique ip so i don't know like how do you say whether it's i almost feel like theme integration is an easier category to rate when it's an IP that you know about that's being integrated, but that's a unique IP that they created. So an Uncanny X-Men, I could definitely could not vote Uncanny X-Men right now in its current form for best theme integration. That has a lot of work to be done when it comes to code. And then Texas Chainsaw is just not a game I'm interested in. But if you are, then that's a great one. Best game launch and reveal. I mean, man, if you looked at, talk about a game, talk about a trailer that made me want a game until I played it really was Avatar I mean holy crap Avatar was the trailer they put so much money into it they made me feel like I was going to step into the world of Avatar like I was I was literally going to be in that world so I think they did a great job with that by far to me that was the one that would have won probably there although Pulp Fiction Pulp Fiction was pretty good too that launch was pretty good as well so yeah some good choices there I mean all of these have good choices most improved game I think that's going to be kind of interesting because, you know, a lot of these games come out and then code revisions happen. And sometimes the initial, depending on, you know, Stern likes to lean on this idea that they, you know, it's not really fully baked. It's a game and it works and the code is there, but it tends to get better over time. Like I'll use 007 as an example. Bond, when I bought it, was already baked. so but i had heard with bond and i never played the early versions of the code that it was actually kind of iffy like people weren't enjoying it i think bond's one of my favorite games now so it's interesting to see what's on there some of these i'm not as familiar with like i've rarely played scooby-doo so i can't really comment on that um galactic tank force has that been improved i don't i don't know whenever i see that on site there's always issues with the lock in the back so i don't know but there's a great there's a great selection of game labyrinth i really enjoy when I see it, Labyrinth on Location. I always play it, but that's only because that movie was really meaningful to me as a kid. I watched it a lot, so I have some nostalgia for it.
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    Yeah, so anyways, great titles there. So we're going to jump away from this. There's a bunch of other things. Obviously, it goes into art packages and rules and code. So there's lots of great categories, so the committee did a great job putting that together. So before we round out the end of the podcast, I wanted you guys to see the Pinball Cup. if you're not participating in the pinball cup you log into insider connected and you go as soon they actually change this thankfully it used to be on the fourth tab here which is weird because it was really hard to find and my buddy jason was like dude i had to ask him i was like where did it go it used to be easy to find now it's hard to find so now when you log right in you're going to see it uh go to quest page you're going to go there and you can see you can see where you stand in your tier. So if you're brand new to playing, you basically play one of these. If you didn't do the qualifier, I'm pretty sure you can still participate, I think. So if anybody knows if that's wrong, definitely let me know in the comments below. But I've been playing through the qualifier. I'm in tier one. You can select your position. So if people are coming to your house and playing, you can go to your game room and it will show you how you compare in your game room. There's been no one through this current race, my buddy Rudy or anybody really for that matter has not been over to play. So before it was showing my buddy Rudy in here. Now it doesn't. But if you look at all tiers or your race tier, this will show you where you place in your race tier. So right now I'm 587 and it shows you everyone. I mean, you've got people on here with, you know, when you start looking in here, there's players that obviously are playing quite a bit of pinball. I do play every day, but I don't play to the point where I'm going to get 16,000 points. You can also compare yourself to the connection. So connections are people you follow. So I've been having fun with, I don't know this guy personally, but this midlife arcade guy that I, midlife arcade, I think is what it's called. Him and I have been bouncing back and forth, so it's been fun. This is my buddy Jason. He's been sort of bouncing back and forth. Don, I don't know. Don's in like Australia messing around. I don't know what he's doing. He's not playing a lot of pinball. It doesn't look like. And then Rudy has given up. He just gave up. If he listens to this, Rudy, don't give up, man. You were on it the first time. You and I were going neck and neck. He was pissing me off, actually. I was like, damn it, Rudy, get back to work. So anyway, so there's that. Pinball Cup is super fun. If you have some connections that you've made with friends, it's actually really fun to do it. The other thing, too, that's kind of cool, and I want to celebrate this really quick. It's a little accomplishment of my own that I'm very happy about. So if you scroll down to, if you go to the, I think this is where you go. Nope, that's not where you go. You go to the little two guys icon. No, that's not it. Sorry. You go to the home icon.
    33:37
    And if you scroll down, it'll show you how many days you've played. I have played 100. I'm on 129-day streak. The thing that bums me out about this is I am not going to be able to sustain this because I'm going on a work trip next week. So unless I can find a pinball, well, Stern, I will be at Stern. But if I can play Monday, I got the Stern thing on Tuesday. If I can squeeze in a game of pinball on Wednesday, then I'll be okay because I'll be home on Thursday. But I don't want to break this streak. It's so awesome. I would love to see this continue to go up. But yeah, 129 days. I'm pretty excited and happy about that. But if you're not following me, please do. My name is just Retro Ralph, and I've got the little Space Invaders little icon. I would love to...
    34:15
    And if you do follow me, let me know what your name is below in the comments if you're watching on YouTube. I'd love to follow you as well. I want to build my network of people up. It's more fun when you compete against more people. So yeah, that's it. I'm having fun with it. I think if you're looking to have some fun with competitive pinball, it's a fun way to do it at home. And I think Stern does a good job with this kind of Stern pinball cup stuff. There are some things I'm frustrated about. I think there was some cheating going on, just kind of annoying. But for the most part, if you do it and follow it with your friends, I think it's more fun. And hopefully your friends aren't big cheating, big cheaters, because if they are, then you're just going to get pissed. But I'm hoping that's not the case. Anyways, that's the end of the show. So I'm going to be at Stern next week. I'm planning on doing a podcast of my reaction, so I'll know a lot more about Dungeons & Dragons when I actually play it. I can analyze pictures and the video all day long, and so can you, but I think it's a matter of how does it play. But I will say this. Based on the assessment, the music, the people that they hired to do the call-outs, I can confidently say that looks very solid and sounds solid. The artwork on the cabinet looks great. That's not affecting how it plays, but everyone likes their machines to look pretty. I don't like the back box art. It's up for debate. I'm not sure which one I really like. And it looks like there's a lot of fun shots, and they've integrated the RPG elements into it. Now, people can sometimes be critical of Dwight and say that Dwight gets a little too crazy with the code.
    35:47
    Hopefully, it's a good balance between easy and fun to have fun with, but more difficult to master. I'm cool with that. I feel like a game that does a really good job of that, being very fun but maybe difficult to long-term master is is godzilla so hopefully they've you know but but but but i will say i think this is gonna be a game people are gonna really enjoy just based on what i know so far so anyways i love you guys as as i've told you on multiple episodes you've turned this podcast into something that's very successful and i love that and hit him with the hind hit him with the hind i just it's just awesome i love you guys it's very very much been a fun experience i'm excited to be in in chicago and see some of my other fellow content creators and my plan is to report back to you as quickly as i possibly can hopefully the day we experience it so it's all fresh ian doesn't know this yet but i am going to corner in and be like Ian, we're doing a podcast, baby. And can we do the podcast from that awesome room at Stern? I got to ask Zach about that. Zach, I know you listen to the podcast. Come on, man. Let me in there. I'll bring all the podcast gear. You just give me the green light and we will do a podcast. Can I do it live? I don't know. But we'll at least do it from that room. So that'd be cool. Zach, come on, man. Zach, over the weekend, I better get a text from you being like, all systems go. I'll be super disappointed if not I thought we were boys man I thought we were boys don't disappoint me Zach alright guys that's it for now we will see you on the flip side see you guys