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Chris Turner of Turner Pinball - Episode 24

JBS Show·podcast_episode·53m 54s·analyzed·Apr 19, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Turner Pinball founder details Ninja Eclipse development and innovative glass design after Deep Root acquisition.

Summary

Chris Turner of Turner Pinball discusses the company's journey from acquiring Deep Root assets through bankruptcy to releasing Ninja Eclipse, a 100-unit game featuring innovative design including an integrated LED glass frame and a challenging middle flipper loopable ramp. Turner explains the iterative design process after feedback at TPF 2023 and Expo 2023, the team assembly, and efforts to balance competitive depth with accessibility for casual players.

Key Claims

  • Turner Pinball acquired Deep Root's physical and intellectual property assets through a bankruptcy auction with no other bidders

    high confidence · Chris Turner directly states: 'There were no other bidders in the process. And I ended up winning it, which kind of surprised me.'

  • Ninja Eclipse features an integrated LED glass frame system with contact board that is easy to remove, addressing the pain point of traditional glass removal

    high confidence · Turner demonstrates the glass frame mechanism and explains the design: 'we just open the coin door and then there's like a little latch in here... we can pivot the glass like this. Or we can just take it off completely and you can see all the lights are integrated into the glass.'

  • The middle flipper loopable ramp can be hit 20-22 times by pro player Collier at best, but typically less, balancing challenge with achievability

    high confidence · Turner states: 'Collier... what's the most times he's ever hit that game is like 20, 20 to 22... He won't do that every time'

  • Turner Pinball originally designed a slimmer cabinet model with removable backbox, but customer feedback revealed perception issues and preference for standard-size cabinets with coin doors

    high confidence · Turner explains: 'people would just walk up to that and they're like what what is this thing... the perception was without even going up to the game this thing is cheap... people perceive that size of the cabinet and also the presence of the coin door was a big thing.'

  • Ninja Eclipse includes an unlicensed ninja theme with a 36-page illustrated comic book story provided with each machine

    high confidence · Turner states: 'he put together this comic book it's 36 pages fully illustrated everybody that buys the game will get this'

  • The team includes approximately 14 people with roles in software (Matthew), mechanical engineering (Gabe), electrical engineering (Brian, David), story writing (Quinn), and art (Brad Duke)

    high confidence · Turner lists: 'there's like about 14 people on our team, a few full time and a lot part time... Matthew... Gabe... Brian... David... Quinn... Brad Duke'

Notable Quotes

  • “I love it from an engineering standpoint because it's so multidisciplinary. I mean you've got electrical engineering software engineering computer engineering and you've got all the art and the animation it's just everything coming together in one and it makes it so interesting.”

    Chris Turner @ early in conversation — Explains Turner's core motivation and passion for pinball as an engineering discipline

  • “The perception of the customer is so important and there were people that would just walk up to that and they're like what what is this thing... the perception was without even going up to the game this thing is cheap.”

    Chris Turner @ middle section discussing Expo 2023 feedback — Key insight about market perception that drove design pivot back to standard cabinet

  • “We want it to be challenging for the advanced and tournament players, but approachable for the novice.”

    Chris Turner @ end section discussing game balance — Core design philosophy for Ninja Eclipse targeting multiple player skill levels

  • “I really thought there would be other people out there that were interested in the stuff. But I knew that I wanted to try to do the pinball thing.”

    Chris Turner @ discussing bankruptcy acquisition — Demonstrates Turner's commitment to pinball despite being surprised to win the auction uncontested

  • “We went back to the drawing board on a lot of those things. The biggest thing we were trying to keep was that glass frame. I don't think there was anyone that said that they didn't like that.”

    Chris Turner @ discussing post-Expo 2023 iteration — Shows how Turner prioritized features that had universal positive feedback

Entities

Turner PinballcompanyChris TurnerpersonNinja EclipsegameDeep Root PinballcompanyBrad DukepersonGabepersonCollierperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Turner Pinball successfully acquired Deep Root's assets through bankruptcy auction with no competing bidders, indicating either lack of industry interest in assets or Turner's unique positioning to utilize them

    high · Turner states: 'There were no other bidders in the process. And I ended up winning it, which kind of surprised me. I really thought there would be other people out there that were interested.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Turner Pinball actively solicited and incorporated detailed feedback from multiple major shows (TPF 2023, Expo 2023, MGC), demonstrating commitment to community-driven design refinement

    high · Turner states: 'I've been trying to be as kind of open with this process as possible because we want to learn and we want to get feedback' and describes implementing feedback on boss difficulty ordering and wizard mode accessibility

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Initial slim cabinet design was perceived by customers as 'cheap' despite premium components, revealing disconnect between engineering innovation and market positioning/perception

    high · Turner reflects: 'people would just walk up to that and they're like what what is this thing... the perception was without even going up to the game this thing is cheap and because it's light because it's slimmer'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Turner Pinball intentionally designed middle flipper loopable ramp to balance accessibility with skill depth—achievable for novices (3-5 loops) but challengeable for pros (20+ loops), with difficulty-selectable boss modes

    high · Turner states: 'We want it to be challenging for the advanced and tournament players, but approachable for the novice' and describes ramp mechanics allowing progression from 3-5 loops for casual players to 20-22 for Collier

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.162

0:00
All right. Hello, you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents. And today I'm very excited to be joined by Chris Turner of Turner Pinball. Welcome to the Wormhole virtually. Chris Turner, how are you? I'm great, Jamie. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Oh, of course. So when I was researching your background and I'm a recruiter, That's what I do for a living professionally. I do not do podcasts and warm-up streams. That's not what I do for a living.
0:33
We are both golfers. Nice. And we both went to college in Central Florida. Oh, wow. Really cool. So you graduated from UCF? I did. Are you from Florida originally? I grew up in Florida, yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about it because I moved to Central Florida when I was 17 years old in Orlando. I moved to Orlando. Very cool. What year was that? Well, you don't have to reveal it if you don't want. I graduated from Bishop Moore High School in Orlando, Florida, in 1991. OK, very cool. So I graduated from high school in southwest Florida, a town called Port Charlotte in 98. OK, I moved to Orlando that same year for college. And so I started at UCF in 1998. So my wife went to UCF in 19, well, my wife went to UCF for one year and she couldn't get classes. Oh, yeah. There were just that many people going to UCF and there still are that many people going to UCF. If you're not familiar with UCF, University of Central Florida, Orlando, one of the biggest schools. I think A&M just beat them.
1:45
Wow. Yeah, it's a big school. And, you know, they always make up different things for the name, right? it was a lot of people would say you can't finish that was ucf because like you could never get the classes you needed to like close it out so yeah a lot of my friends went to ucf my wife went there for one semester and then she transferred to florida southern which is where we went in lakeland florida right uh our famous thing was frank lloyd right yep and we had a hell of a golf team i actually went to florida southern to go try to play golf wow that's really cool not good enough.

Turner Pinball presented a whiteboard prototype at TPF 2023 and later showed an updated version at Expo 2023 and MGC

high confidence · Turner states: 'we kind of set off on that path and assembled a team slowly. This started about a year and a half ago... that led us up to tpf uh a year ago'

  • The wizard mode features eight selectable bosses with difficulty levels, and only Collier has reached the wizard mode among all players tested

    high confidence · Turner explains: 'there's eight bosses... Collier has made it through to the wizard mode of the game... no one else has come close'

    • Jamie
    person
    Texas Pinball Festival (TPF)event
    Pinball Expoevent
    Matthewperson
    Brianperson
    Davidperson
    Quinnperson
    Highway Pinballcompany
    Lockheedcompany
    Wormhole Pinballorganization
    $

    market_signal: Customer perception of cabinet size/coin door strongly influences purchase decisions; home users prefer standard-size cabinets with coin doors for easier secondary sale to operators, contradicting original slim cabinet innovation

    high · Turner explains: 'they wanted a machine that would be easy to sell to an operator... a large standard cabinet with the coin door is going to be easier to sell to an operator. So even the home user would say, well, I still want the normal cabinet.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Multiple Deep Root employees including Brad Duke (artist), Gabe (mechanical engineer), and others self-assembled into Turner Pinball team after company bankruptcy, demonstrating talent retention/migration within pinball ecosystem

    high · Turner states: 'a majority of my team were employees there at one point and have wanted to continue pinball' and describes team self-assembly: 'people just started contacting me like Gabe reached out on LinkedIn'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ninja Eclipse differentiates through unlicensed ninja theme with embedded storytelling (36-page illustrated comic included with each machine), targeting collectors seeking narrative depth beyond gameplay

    high · Turner explains: 'we wanted to go above and beyond and really tell the story of the game because there really is a story to it' and describes comic inclusion for collectors

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ninja Eclipse underwent significant design iteration post-TPF 2023 based on playfield shot geometry feedback, then additional refinement post-Expo 2023 regarding cabinet size perception and glass material selection

    high · Turner explains multiple rounds of feedback incorporation: from TPF geometry changes to Expo cabinet/glass changes, demonstrating responsive iterative design process

  • ?

    technology_signal: Turner Pinball developed integrated LED glass frame system using standard tempered pinball glass and HDPE diffusing slides, reducing custom parts and costs while improving ease of maintenance versus competitors like Highway Pinball

    high · Turner demonstrates glass mechanism and explains: 'it saves us money too because there are people making a bunch of pinball glass and if we're buying stuff they're already making it's not a custom part'

    • 2:20
    I hardly play anymore. I really enjoyed it back then. Now I just don't have time to do it. I was rocking a one to two handicap as an 18-year-old. Way better than I ever was.
    2:32
    I went to Florida Southern to go play. The story is I played a practice round. I was just going to walk on. I had no scouts. I had no one looking at me in Florida. I was a two handicap.
    2:46
    You're not good enough if you're too handicapped to play collegiate golf in Florida. Yeah. You're just not. And so I tried to walk on. Shot 75. It was a nice little day, but I played golf with the guy who finished third, the U.S. amateur that year.
    3:00
    And he was just practicing, and I was kind of trying out. He shot a smooth 68, and that was it for me. And I had fun in my fraternity, though. That was good. I met Janine.
    3:13
    So when did you move to Texas? It was 2012. Yeah. So a different world, right? In Orlando for about 15 years. So a different world from Florida to Texas.
    3:27
    I don't know. Not completely different. I mean, my wife kind of imported me out here. She grew up in Texas. And I was like, as long as it doesn't snow, I think I'll be okay. So it's plenty hot out here, too. So I'm good with it. I got transferred in 97. here. And it was a little bit of a shock, but not so much because we had done the Florida thing, my wife's from Chicago, so we had done at least some bit of the South. Right. You know, but... Yeah, the main difference here is like the summers, they get so hot and it doesn't rain. Like in Florida, the summers are hot, but then like every afternoon at like four o'clock, it'll rain for like half an hour and it cools it off. The grass is all green in the summer. here it's like everything is brown and dead and it's like 100 degrees it's seven people at night and it's 100 degrees so it's a little different yeah it's suffocating it's suffocating so you transferred to texas with the aerosmith company right yes i i worked for lockheed and then uh did straight out of college in orlando worked there uh and then transferred with lockheed out to san antonio so they don't have like a corporate office here but they have like some commercial spaces that they rent and they have employees that work there. So how did you get into into pinball? How did you how did that start for you? So I I transferred with Lockheed out to San Antonio. And the the experience that I had out here was different than what it was like in Orlando is a big corporate facility there. A couple thousand people, a lot of different projects. It was a smaller group out here. and there wasn't as much appetite for new technology. And so it kind of spurred me to want to do something on my own, which I had wanted to do for a while. And so I started my own software company around 2013 and started doing that. And I worked with a lot of startups and companies here in the San Antonio area and ended up working for a company called Deep Root, which a lot of people have heard of. And we did some software for them. And they started working on pinball stuff and asked us if we want to do pinball software. And I was like, yes, of course. That sounds great. And so I kind of learned what we needed to do to get into that and started working on pinball software with Deep Root.
    5:58
    And I think when I was approached about that, I didn't know pinball was still a big thing. I'd played some when I was a kid in arcades. My dad had picked up a pinball machine at a yard sale and we kind of fixed it up. It was like a really old machine that had the dials in the back.
    6:15
    Do you remember which EM it was? No? It was some circus game. I don't remember which one it was, though. Someone listening is going to know. Yeah, I'm sure they will. A circus game. Did it have a scoop? And then they'll find out. No worries. I mean, it was single level and it had the physical bells in it. And I wish that I could figure out which one it is. And my dad may know enough to remember, but I was pretty young. And so it's a little hard for me to put it together. Nah, just for reminiscing, maybe go pick one up at a yard sale again. You never know. Yeah, that'd be cool. So I didn't know pinball was still a big thing and then started to get back into it and realized it's really thriving and growing. And I love it from an engineering standpoint because it's so multidisciplinary. and I talked to this about a lot of people that asked me like oh like you know what do you like about pinball and what I love about it is there's just so many different fat different facets to it I mean you've got electrical engineering software engineering computer engineering and you've got all the art and the animation it's just everything coming together in one and it makes it so interesting I don't want to spend a lot of time on deep root but were you a full-time employee there? Were you just contracting? I wasn't an employee, no. So my team was subcontracted, essentially, to do the software part of things.
    7:38
    Did you ever, you know, I don't want to spend any time on DeepRoot, really, but did you ever get a sniff of something? I just ask one question on DeepRoot, we'll move on, because if not, they'll kill me. But did you ever get a sniff of, wow, something's not right here?
    7:55
    Because it's hard being an outside vendor, right? It is. The decision making processes there made things challenging. And I oftentimes looked at it and wondered, like with the decisions that are being made, how can we make this work? And ultimately, obviously, it didn't work.
    8:15
    I tried to give feedback and suggestions the best I could to help it. And, you know, just it didn't go the right way. So the way that I look at it is I'm really thankful for the opportunity that I had to work there. I think it was a unique opportunity and I wouldn't have the opportunity that I have now if I wasn't there. And so I know that it wasn't a good thing for a lot of people. But the my personal experience there was good. I enjoyed the work and the challenge and obviously enjoyed pinball enough to want to continue it on my own. and a lot of the folks that work for me actually a majority of my team were employees there at one point and have wanted to continue pinball so our artist brad duke worked out in the utah office and he really wasn't into pinball before deep root and he found this love for pinball through working on it there i think he even said like when he first started it was like oh they're going to work on pinball, but there's some other stuff that they're going to work on too. And I'm probably more interested in that, but you know, he just came into pinball and loved it. And he's the one that designed our game and did all the art for it and everything. And so it, it was a bad situation in a lot of ways, but a lot of good, I think has come out of it, at least for my team. And so I'm thankful for that. Well, you know, that's awesome. I'm a recruiter. I lived in Houston for a long time and I've seen major company downfall. Most of the failures agreed, you know, from Enron to Stanford Financial. And I worked with both of those firms. And as an outsider, we didn't know what the hell was going on, you know. But so how was pinball, you know, Turner Pinball born then? I mean, did you like just make a conscious effort to say, I I'm hooked now. I want to keep going. Yeah. So after all of the stuff with Deep Root. Obviously, they closed and went into bankruptcy. And I enjoyed the work there and wanted to continue it somehow. And I started to look into like, what's going to happen to all of the stuff that Deep Root produced? Because there are tons of people that work there. They work very hard and they produced a bunch of really great things that no one was ever going to get to see. And so I investigated that through the bankruptcy process and ended up bidding on some of the assets that they have, the physical assets at their auctions, and then also the intellectual property assets. And it went through kind of like a court bidding process. And there were no other bidders in the process. And I ended up winning it, which kind of surprised me. I really thought there would be other people out there that were interested in the stuff. But I knew that I wanted to try to do the pinball thing. I didn't know at the very beginning kind of what it was going to become, but I hoped that we would be able to become a manufacturer. And we kind of set off on that path and assembled a team slowly. This started about a year and a half ago. Wow. And kind of, it was very small at the beginning. And then some of my team is just sitting on the other side of the camera here, but like Gabe, our mechanical engineer is a great example. I kind of had announced on social media that like I'm going to try to do this pinball thing and then people just started contacting me like Gabe reached out on LinkedIn and he's like hey like you know I heard you're doing something with pinball like I really loved working on it like I'd love to work on it with you and so the team kind of self-assembled around the people that worked at Deep Root and with my team already that loved pinball and so it was kind of neat how it all came together it wasn't a a like like we're doing this and it all just happened instantly it kind of happened over about four to six months and then that led us up to tpf uh a year ago right that's when we put together when i first met you prototype yeah so when you brought the whiteboard prototype yeah it's actually sitting right back here it's the one the furthest by the wall there cool and uh yeah that thing it was literally just a piece of plywood like a week before that show it was crazy i think i have some posts out somewhere on social media and you can see it's it's literally just just the play field nothing on it just crazy tpf2 by the way because it was 2023 yeah and there were just a few companies that launched uh at that time right let's see i think there was a foo pulp scooby dtf godfather and final resistance all crazy so much was at that show it was incredible and uh yeah we really enjoyed that show we got a lot of good feedback i was so glad that we were able to get to the point that we had a flippable prototype so we could get feedback that was really the goal and i think people may have been surprised when i was like you know we're going to show up and we're just we're bringing whatever we have you know whatever state that it in we going to be at the show and we want you to see it and we want you to give feedback And really I been trying to be as kind of open with this process as possible because we want to we want to learn and we want to get feedback and we want to do the things that people really want. And so that show was the beginning of that. And then obviously, you know, it went on to Expo and then again to TPF this year. And there's been a lot of changes and iterations. smokes. Totally different machine, right? I mean, it's evolved significantly. Yeah. Let's talk about that journey. Like how does that journey look? I mean, so many man hours, so many things go into making Ninja Eclipse, right? Yeah. I'll walk you through. And if you have questions about specific things, please kind of direct me. No, I do. I've got them all written down here oh okay perfect i'll interrupt no worries okay yeah awesome so after tpf uh we kind of had an idea of what's tpf 23 right tpf 23 correct yeah we had an idea of what we needed to change about the play field just some of the shot geometry uh the the ramp on the right was a little bit hard to get to um there were just the shot alignment and geometry all needed to be tweak slightly and that game it didn't have any wire form ramps in the back it was all plastic and that was just to get it together in time for the show i mean i was literally spot welding like a spool of wire to make ramps and stuff days before the show but it came together um so we learned a lot from the show we figured out what we needed to do to modify the play field to get it where it needed to be and started on that path. And we also started on some other things that as a team we had talked about and we had talked with some mentors about that we thought were going to be neat and unique directions that people would really like. And obviously, that culminated in the machine that we brought to Expo in October of 23. And we had made some missteps based on what people really wanted. And we did that privately because we were working on some unique things. And I didn't want to just tell everybody like, oh, hey, we're doing this because there's some proprietary technology that we're trying to work on patents for and things. And so we kept that all kind of under wraps until the show and then revealed it. And I wish that we had wider feedback earlier because it would have saved us some time. so essentially what we did was we thought the things i was hearing were like you know pinball is uh it's like this big item that's hard to move hard to get around and people that don't have a lot of space they're trying to get it upstairs or something like it's just it's a bulky item to move so i thought we can we can make something that's better we can make something that's like a slimmer cabinet that's going to take out some of the weight. It's hard to take out weight. It's always easy to add weight. You know, you want the cabinet to be heavy. You just put a 45 pound weight in the bottom of the cabinet and you've got a heavy cabinet, but you can just take that out and you can move the machine. We had a removable head, so the whole back box could just come off. We also went with a removable glass frame design. And that was one of the things that people ended up liking out of that show. But I think what I didn't realize was that there had been a lot of other attempts at kind of smaller form factor cabinets that were like the lowest of low end. They were like the cheap model. They had the cheap parts made out of particle board or something. And so we came with this premium model that was made of premium components in a small cabinet. but I think what I learned was that the perception of the customer is so important and there were people that would just walk up to that and they're like what what is this thing like what is this like two thousand dollars and I was like oh man like I wait way more than that for the parts in this thing you know um but the perception was without even going up to the game this thing is cheap and because it's light because it's slimmer and i don't know if you can see it in the back i'll just roll this out but that's the slim model right it's it's a much shorter cabinet now the the dimensions of the play field and everything it's all the same it's a standard play field it's a standard width it's We took out the depth because the cabinet is really a big empty box.
    18:08
    But at that show, we learned that people perceive that size of the cabinet and also the presence of the coin door was a big thing.
    18:17
    That is part of the value of the machine. And beyond that, this is something I hadn't thought of, but learned at the show and really appreciated the feedback, is that a lot of times home users will buy these machines and then they'll use them for a while. And when they sell them, they sell them to operators. And so they wanted a machine that would be easy to sell to an operator. And a large standard cabinet with the coin door is going to be easier to sell to an operator. So even the home user would say, well, I still want the normal cabinet. And then other folks yet said, I just want it to look good in my lineup. You know, I put that next to my other machines and it just doesn't look right. Right. And so those are all the things we learned in October. And really, we took those to heart and we're like, OK, we we need to fix this. And how are we going to do it? How can we keep the innovation that people wanted and then roll back on some of the things that they said, hey, you know, this you missed the mark on these things. And that's not to say that there weren't people that wanted it, but it wasn't enough demand to make it worth building a bunch of those. OK. And so we we went back to the drawing board on a lot of those things. The biggest thing we were trying to keep was that glass frame. I don't think there was anyone that said that they didn't like that. And the removing a glass from a pinball machine is really a pain, in my opinion. It's like one of the worst parts of maintaining a pinball machine. You've got to, you know, reach in and depending on the latch system, you know, maybe two latches in there, maybe the bar and you pull that uh the lockdown bar off and then slide the glass out carefully and it's like as you're sliding out it's like you know just the fulcrum right on the edge of the cabinet you're like don't break oh i know find a place to set it without touching the edge and i i've heard i have never had it happen to me i've never broken glass but i've heard a lot of people that have and i know we've broken glass here many times but i haven't done it Yeah, that's good. Hopefully you keep it that way. That wasn't my fault. Yeah. So that was one of the things I really wanted to improve. And Deep Root had some innovations in that area. They had the glass that kind of pivoted with the shocks and everything. And there were some good things about that, but also some things that I thought needed to be improved on that. And another thing is like a lot of people are installing the light systems that kind of shine down on the play field, like pin stadium lights and things like that. And I think it's a pretty popular add-on i think it adds to the game we wanted to do that with the lights in the glass which i thought was kind of a unique thing and so we essentially have our our glass in a a metal frame we made it as light as possible because there have been some others that have been very heavy and bulky and hard to use highway pinball this is one that comes exactly that's Exactly it. Yep. And then we've got lights integrated into the frame. I can see it. Yeah, I can totally see it. I'm watching it right now. Yeah. And it's it's just a unique system that works really well. It's super easy to come off. I can actually just try it right here if you want me to show you the audio podcast. They won't get to see all this great stuff. So I'm going to have to switch over to YouTube. Don't even worry about it. OK, OK. We're going to force some Chris. All right. I'll be quick and I'll try to talk loud because I'm a little away from the mic. But we just open the coin door and then there's like a little latch in here. You won't be able to see it from your angle. But if we just push it to the side, there's a little click and then we can pivot the glass like this. Or we can just take it off completely and you can see all the lights are integrated into the glass. And then we've got a contact board here. Yeah. It's contact to the cabinet and then it connects all the lights and everything. And the the apron is integrated into the glass frame. and then our trough and everything, you can see it above the play field. It's a unique system, and it works really well.
    22:22
    You know, because you always worry. I'll tell a quick story. I drove from here to West Palm Beach to Port St. Lucie in a truck with Tim Hood to go by an alien highway. Yeah. Right? And seven other machines. It was during COVID. We had not much to do. The wormhole was just starting and we wanted to get seven machines. So we drove.
    22:48
    It took longer to box up the alien highway than it did the other eight, the other seven machines, other six machines. Yeah. Because the head didn't come down. It was heavy. It was, they were just like trying to reinvent the wheel too much. Right. And that's not what they did there, what you just showed me. That is brilliant. Well, I certainly appreciate it. We worked hard to get to this point, and really it was listening to feedback from customers that got us to this point. We went to Expo with that glass frame, but the lights were just a little bit different. They kind of obscured the play field a little bit more. Also, we used polycarbonate at the Expo, and people didn't like that. They really just wanted the tempered glass. so we we incorporated all that now we've got the lights like really slim right under what's kind of resting the glass on the cabinet we use the the slide it's a hdpe material that's helping it slide smoothly on the cabinet and that's actually diffusing the light and working as a slide which is really nice and then it just takes standard size tempered pinball glass which is really awesome and so i think those are all the things people were looking for yeah because you don't want you know something if it breaks if something goes wrong you don't want all of a sudden it's this rare rare rare part yep you know that's really smart the other thing is it saves us money too because there are people making a bunch of pinball glass and if we're buying stuff they're already making it's not a custom part and so it's good for everybody it's good for the customer because they can get it, and it's good for us because when we buy it, we get a better price.
    24:40
    Got to flip it a bunch of times at TPF. Yeah, thank you for that. It's hard for me because I'm up in the tournament room, you know, but I know a bunch of the wormholers came and got to flip. They had a couple of questions. Do you mind if I ask a wormhole question? Sure. Yeah, what's up? Middle flipper to the left of the middle ramp was a lot of love. got a lot of love because that is a repeatable shot using how how when you put that design together how did you make that work is that has i don't know if that's been done before has it i don't so i i think it is fairly unique i have seen a couple designs and i don't know them off the top of my head i may know tell us later but there have been some games that have had a flipper that's not all the way to the side of the play field that's out a little bit.
    25:32
    The loopable ramp, we had to put a lot of work into that to get the geometry right. And also the model we went to Expo with, when you would hit that ramp, it didn't stop the ball. It just let the ball fly around and you could get it like two, maybe three times. And by the third time, the ball was going so fast. It was just humming. There was no hope to hit it again. Right. And so we we kind of designed the end of that ramp more like the in lane returns. And so it stops the ball and drops it and then you get another chance at it. And we went as a team, we kind of went back and forth on that. We wanted something that was challenging enough, but not impossible. and so finding that balance i i feel like this has really hit that mark because for me i'm not a great player i can probably hit it three to maybe five times in a row if i'm really on but you get a great player like collier the the pro that's on our team i was just going to ask you about collier oh yeah i mean he what's the most times he's ever hit that game is like 20 to 22 Yeah so like He can hit it At his best 20, 22 times But He won't do that Every time There'll be times Where he gets it 7 And it pinball Right You know You don want it To be like Doctor Who sometimes where a certain Doctor Who you can hit a hundred times You won't do that on this ramp. And so to see Collier be able to achieve that and then to see someone at my level be able to kind of do it, but realize it's a challenge that I need to work up to, I feel like it's kind of the right balance. And I did not see many people at the show stepping up and just hitting that thing nonstop. I didn't. it takes a really good player which is great because the game challenges you to improve it's not impossible to start and you can be engaged and have a good game but there's something to grow on there so i think you know there were a few people that came and i said hey how was ninja clips well what'd you think um and they said i think it would be too easy for us the wormhole and i laughed i said i don't think it's going to be too easy for us at the wow it just our Our issue is that, well, one is space, right? Because we just don't, you know, they have 200 games between John and Tim. And so there's only 23 here until we build the museum, which we'll talk about later. But we got a lot of great players that come through, like Collier. He's been here a bunch of times. Yeah. But, you know, I'll tell them, listen, listen to this podcast, because Collier can only hit that ramp 20 times tops was the most that he got. And so I think that was a perception, but that's not reality. And I'm glad you're here to clean that up because I can only hit it a couple of times. Yeah, we were actually talking amongst the team after TPF and then MGC, the machine was just up there as well, about how to make things a little more balanced for the novice players. Because we think that there are a lot of elements of the game that are too hard. So I don't think anyone has really complained about it being too easy. Collier has made it through to the wizard mode of the game uh no one else has come close um even at the shows there's there's eight bosses and then the the wizard modes good I want to talk about it yeah yeah so the the first boss that is on the display because you can cycle through and pick your boss it's like almost everyone just picks the first boss and like so few people were able to ever complete that boss it's just the first boss on there is kind of one of the harder ones and so we're going to reorder those and put like an easier boss first so that the people that step up to the machine and just pick the first one can like actually complete a mode oh like you could put what if you put like easy under it that's exactly what we're doing we talked about there's been games that have done that difficulty on the bosses so that you know people they they know what they're getting into right so if they want an easy boss they can pick an easy one And there's even a few other little things we can do to make maybe like the first boss that you do, like you won't have to do both phases or something like that. There's so many things we can do in the code. But we're working with Collier and trying to figure the things out that are just going to make the game balanced for all the players. We want it to be challenging for the advanced and tournament players, but approachable for the novice.
    30:07
    Nice artwork. Thank you. Who did the artwork? Brad Duke. All credit goes to Brad. I mean, he is an incredible artist and he designed the playfield layout. He has been an incredible member of our team and we're grateful to have him. Talk about the remaining team that you have to put this together. I don't want you to forget anyone, but. Yeah, I mean, we've got there's like about 14 people on our team, a few full time and a lot part time. So Matthew is on our software team. He is doing basically all the software. Gabe's doing all the mechanical engineering. We've got Brian, one of our electrical engineers, and David, also an electrical engineer who works with him on stuff. Those guys are part time. They've helped us design a really incredible electrical system for the game. We've got Quinn, who is a story writer, has done a great job. We've got this comic book that he put together and obviously unlicensed theme. we wanted to go above and beyond and really tell the story of the game because there really is a story to it and so he put together this comic book it's 36 pages fully illustrated everybody that buys the game will get this you know there there are a lot of people that will just see a ninja game and they'll step up and they'll play and they'll go oh that was cool but for the people that are collectors or more into these deep stories and things like i think those those will be the folks that really appreciate that um there's uh bradley who is uh kind of our ui designer and helps us with like web stuff and and marketing and things like that um and i'm gonna forget a bunch of people don't worry i'll put it in a post there we go so i should create a team page that has like everybody on it you do on on the website there's i don't I think I have everybody, but not everybody. So, um, so a run of a hundred ninja clips, that's the goal. That's right. Yeah. So, uh, we wanted to start with something achievable. And so I, one, I didn't know how many we're going to sell. And also I didn't want to say, Oh, we're going to try to sell 500 of these. And I, in the space that we have, that's not a reasonable expectation that we would be able to build those in any reasonable amount of time. So we set a hundred. I think that as we go through the process of building those hundred, there's going to be things we learn through the manufacturing process, just like we've been learning all along to get to this point. And so I want to do that in a controlled fashion with a number that makes sense. And I think we picked a hundred as the number that's going to work for us here. So they're selling at $69.94 with a thousand dollar deposit. I like your deposit structure. okay yeah let's go about it and i got this from the website so i'm going to read this to you any deposits made directly with turnip pinball are fully refundable only if we have not notified you that your machine is built and ready to ship within 12 months of your deposit date yeah i think it should be right i think so i think it's i haven't seen anyone else doing it that way and i'm very much a do unto others as you want them to do unto you person uh i wouldn't want to put down a deposit on a game and expect to get it in some unknown time and then have them hold it two years and eventually get the game like there's going to be a lot of other things that come out between the time you put down the deposit and when you actually get that machine and it's like there needs to be some reasonable expectation set between the manufacturer and the customer to say look like we're going to try to deliver in this time frame but the upper limit is if you don't get it by 12 months you have every right to request your money back and i think the the things that i know it sounds so logical right it does but no i don't see anybody doing no one's doing it yeah and i hear complaints about people buying machines from other manufacturers and they're just like hey i don't know when i'm gonna get my game they've had my deposit for 14 months and like i don't even have an estimate of when i'm gonna get it i'm just like i wouldn't want to be in that boat, you know? So I think if manufacturers adopted the same policy, it would do two things. One, it would make the customer feel more comfortable because they say, okay, you know, at least I've got an option. If they don't deliver it in 12 months, I can get my money back and then do something else with it if I so choose. But it also would make the manufacturers more transparent in their process because if the manufacturer is on the hook to deliver within 12 months and let's say let's say they're going to miss the mark by two months and they say like hey you know we we're going to try to get you your game but it's going to be it's going to be 14 months or whatever then the customer has the choice but it actually makes the manufacturer have that conversation with the customer to say like here here's our estimates on when you're actually going to get your game so i think it's good from both both standpoints customer feels more comfortable manufacturers held accountable and so for us i set it up that way because i think it's the right thing to do and we fully expect to begin delivering in six months so i'm telling people fall but if something happens and they're not getting their machine by a year mark they can request a refund and get it that was my next question if i ordered one today what's my time frame and delivery so we're looking at fall 2024 yep that's when the first deliveries are you Are you selling direct to customer or do you consider distributor model? Well, so I think the distributor model is way easier, right? Right. Because they're doing the work, but there is they have to be able to make money. I mean, they're doing that work and they need to be compensated for that. And so in talking to folks at Expo and then getting mentorship from operators and from other industry experts, price was something that just kept coming up.
    36:11
    A lot of people are just saying that the pinball machines are so expensive. It's a huge purchase. And operators especially, I think, are reluctant to go out and spend much above what a Stern Pro can offer in price. and so a lot of operators are running stern because they know what they're getting and they're getting it at a price that they can justify with their roi and so i wanted to i wanted to come in at a price that i could attract both home collectors and home users and operators and so i knew that i needed to be around a stern pro price and that's super hard to do i mean there's really not much out there that you can get at a $7,000 price point in pinball. And so especially as a new company, it's extra hard to do, right? The economies of scale just aren't there yet. And so I talked to several distributors and tried to get their advice. I explained the situation. I explained what I'm trying to do with price. And the advice that I got from them was, you're trying to sell 100 units. For your first one, go direct to customer. and that's going to let you offer the best value to your customer for your first hundred and then kind of see where that goes from there like does it make sense to continue the direct to customer or does it make sense to come and use the distributor route and account for the distributor's margin in our pricing structure and so that's kind of the way we're doing it right now um i I it's harder this way, for sure. Sure. I know that we're bringing better value to our customers because of that. And so I I think it was the right choice, but it's still a hard choice. Last thing I want to talk about switch subjects real quick. But you posted recently posted on Naps Arcade. You have a quote that Melvin and you came to an agreement in which he acquired the rights of Braza, Magic Girl and Alice in Wonderland. Can you expand a little bit on that post? Because if I don't ask that question, I'm going to get hammered. Right. So I will expand on it in what I can. Obviously, there are contracts that have NDAs and things like that. And I'm well aware I don't want to do anything with that. The the quote that I have there is what I was authorized to disclose. I can tell you a little bit about kind of my thoughts on why I might want to sell that. yeah why why that and maybe why those over those titles over you know choosing ninja eclipse over those titles yeah that that's great so um one thing uh we'll start with the ninja eclipse part of that okay so ninja eclipse it had nothing to do with anything that was deep root this is completely a creation of my team after deep root had closed for a while and so nothing from ninja Eclipse came from Deep Root. And that was really important to me because I thought that if we just started with something that was complete or partially complete from Deep Root, that one, people might look at it negatively because of how the company was perceived, obviously, because of the way it ended up. And also that people might look at it as like, oh, well, you know, there was a lot of negativity at the beginning just because of that association. And I think people were like, oh, like they're never going to make it. They're not going to be able to build anything. And then let's say that we brought one of those machines to market. People would be like, oh, well, it was already done. They didn't really do anything. And so I didn't want, I didn't want to try to go down that path. I really wanted to go our own way, have complete freedom to build something new and then bring that to the market and let that be our first offering. And so that's why we did Ninja Eclipse. And then the work that was done on Raza in particular out of that batch. There was work done on Magic Girl and not really much on Alice in Wonderland but it was mentioned there Those games had a history to them obviously a very complicated history And because of our association in contracting with Deep Root I thought that we wouldn be the right people to bring those to market should they come. And so essentially, when I was approached by Melvin, we talked about it, And I I knew that we weren't the right people to do that. And you'll actually see videos like right when I announced about that, I was going to do Turner Pinball. People asked, are you going to build Raza? And I told them, no, I'm not going to build it. And so I wanted to stay true to that as well. But there's also this aspect of all of this stuff that was built that so many people spent time on. And I didn't want that to be lost. And so really, I felt that working with someone like Melvin to be able to offer that to them for whatever they want to do with it in the future. I don't know. And I can't even I don't want to speculate or try.
    41:23
    I think it was the right thing to let that go to someone who now has control and can make the decision on whether they want to do something with it. And and yeah, I don't have to I don't have to worry about people asking me, like, are you going to make that? I have no control over it now. Yeah. Property.
    41:43
    And I think that that is a good thing for us because. It just separates us more from the deep root stuff and what went on there, but let someone else have the opportunity to not let it be lost. And so it was a complicated thing. A lot of thought and team discussions went into what we should do with all that. And I think that's what we felt was the best thing. And I hope that it turns out to be the best thing for us and for Melvin and for the pinball community at a whole. Yeah, I hope so, too, for you. That's great. And thank you for answering that. I really appreciate it.
    42:19
    Can we talk about Pin Access? Absolutely. Yeah. What is it? So Pin Access is a mobile app and a website that essentially will let you maintain your machine. It will let you do high scores, have interaction with other players and community features. And it's meant to make the pinball experience better.
    42:44
    And one of the biggest things that I think people will like is the, at least initially, is that all of the settings on your machine can be controlled through the phone. So you've got the coin door. You can open it up, and you've got the same buttons that every other machine has on there, and you can go through your menu system using the buttons. But I'm going to open this real quick. Cool.
    43:08
    So you press Menu, and you're presented with the menu, but there's a QR code on there. And if you open the app and you scan the QR code, you'll go into the app, And you can access all the menus through the touchscreen interface on your phone. So we've all gone through the pinball menus and like scrolling a hundred times to get to the thing we wanted. It's kind of the four button. Our interface is a bit archaic.
    43:36
    It's totally functional and it works, but it's not the best user experience. And so we're trying to design and build something that's going to be a better experience. we presented this at Expo and there were concerns people were like they we didn't have the coin door at that time and so they didn't realize that you could access with the buttons in the machine the menus and so they're like well I don't want to have to download an app to maintain my machine and the answer is you absolutely don't you've got all the functionality in your machine this is a bonus but I think once people try it they're going to be like this is the way it should be because it's so much easier. It's just user-friendly and the touch interface and being able to scroll quickly and find what you want. And so that's a core feature of Pin Access. There are other features. Essentially, all the high score stuff that you see that's available out there, like Pin Access will do all those same things with the high scores. You're able to log in, play, store your scores in your profile. There'll be achievements and things. and then there's also a payment system built into that and so if you're at an arcade that wants to adopt our system you can scan to log in and if that machine is coin op you can pay through the app through your profile and the operator will get those funds and so you could still use the coin door and drop coins but you can also pay through the app electronically and so that's something we're going to work with our caves to to kind of investigate and roll out and see how that works out so we've got the maintenance aspect we've got the high scores aspect and then we've got the payment aspect and then one other thing a big piece of the technology from deep root was the pin bar and so you can see our machine doesn't have a pin bar but the the patents for the pin bar were essentially touchscreen control of a pinball machine. And so that technology we are using through our mobile app because the customer already has a touchscreen device in their pocket. We don't need to charge you more for that device and complicate the pinball mechanical and electrical system to integrate that screen. All you have to do is take out your phone, log into the machine and then set your phone down on the apron and you've got the pin bar you have an additional view that can show you shoot this next or your scores and you can also touch and interact with the machine through your phone and so essentially we've taken what was the pin bar and rolled that all into our app pin access that's awesome is there an opportunity for the operator switch 523 is down. Is that something you can envision in the future where we have a ninja eclipse on location, operator comes, he goes into the app, sees that there's a switch problem there? Absolutely, yeah.
    46:38
    Error checking based on this switch hasn't been hit and how many play, all those kinds of things. It's great because it's connected, we've got the capability to do all those features and we'll start with the ones that we think are going to be valuable to the operators. We'll field it with the operators and get their feedback and then improve it until it's exactly what it needs to be. Will you ever envision a day where you have to pay for that service as you grow?
    47:06
    You're talking about the pin access system? Yes. So the core parts of it. Yeah, I mean, if I were to pay, if I were to take my phone, play Ninja Eclipse on location, I'm sure you're going to get a little bit of that money as it goes to the operator, right? Correct. That's the plan. So we're going to, we have not, we don't have a planned payment structure yet. But the only portion that we're considering charging for is the payment portion of that. OK. And it's obviously there are credit card fees involved in that which have to be charged. And then, you know, if we mark it up a couple of cents, it should be a convenience or something. Yeah. It's going to be something that is small enough relative to the value that it's producing to make it make sense. Otherwise, it's not going to be successful. I just you know, insider connected. It's going to cost money one day. Right. Especially for the operator. I mean, that's just happening. And so they're getting you hooked on it. I happened to you ever heard of Indeed.com for resumes? Yes. Because I'm a recruiter. They hooked us on that. They gave that crap away for free for a long time. And now we're all. yeah i mean i i don't like business models like that i i've signed up for a lot of services i just got an email from uh kind of like a project management tool that i used for years and like you know you're on the free tier and they offer you so much and then eventually they're just like they cut it out and then they start charging you and like i don't get you whatever we do i want to be up front and i'll have a plan for what we're going to do and when i present that plan that's what we're going to go with i don't want to be like trying to reel people in and then you know now i can tell just by interviewing you for 30 minutes that that's not something that you're interested in so that's that is awesome i don't want anyone to do it to me so i don't want to do it to people either is turner coming to turn a pinball coming to the houston arcade expo in october uh so we plan to be at expo in chicago okay those shows are generally so close i i don't know yet um we didn't go last year and i i don't have it on the calendar this year i i'm not sure yet okay my reasoning is you'll be in houston yeah there's no need you know i was just going to invite you to the wormhole and i appreciate that i want to come visit you guys have an awesome place uh well i'll talk to collier too he's been here a half a dozen times at least and i know he's coming in June for the Pintastic tournament. Okay, nice. That we have. So if you're ever in Houston, you have an open invite to come and see us. I hope I can get you at the Houston Arcade Expo because I love Keith Christensen. I love what they're doing there. Yeah.
    49:54
    And your Wormhole East Pinball Museum is probably going to open in 2026. Wow, that's exciting. So pretty exciting stuff. Be over 120 machines, very rare, beautiful machines. and the machines will be amazing, obviously. Any machines that we have here at the Worm Ball, you know, Brian Foytick, we got one of the best techs in the business, and you can ask Collier how our games play.
    50:19
    We're still trying to figure out how to get a Ninja Eclipse in here. Space is our issue, but I do think it would be awesome. I think it would be really cool to showcase another techs manufacturer here in Houston and here in Houston at the Worm Ball. I really do. We would certainly appreciate it. And we love selling to the home collectors, but getting them out at locations is going to be so key to us. Because with just 100 units, we want a lot of people to get to play them. So really, the more of these units that can go to locations, it's going to be better for us because more people will get to play. They'll get to play it. They'll get to flip it. They'll get to see that the strides you've made and it's really been incredible.
    51:07
    And I'm really happy for you. And I wish you all luck in the world, guys, because I think you're doing it the right way. And there's they're trying. It's a challenging project. It is a challenge. Yeah. But, you know, if you do things the right way, it'll work out. It'll work out. So, Chris, thanks again for coming on the podcast. Please visit Turner Pinball at www.turnerpinball.com. The website is super easy to navigate. You must be a developer or something. Oh, man. Crazy. Ordering info is readily available. Chris, good luck. Thanks for taking the time. It's fun. Thank you, Jay. I really, really appreciate it. I look forward to talking again soon. Take care. Thanks, guys, so much.
    51:51
    Well, that was fun. It's only taken me 24 podcasts. to figure out I should be recording an outro for each podcast. So here's my attempt at an outro. Next week, I'm really excited to interview Cale and Rachel of Electric Backcast Podcast.
    52:09
    Not only will they be on the podcast, but my co-host, Donovan Wade, and social media expert will also be on the podcast. There will be four of us next week, so look at that about next Friday. We're also opening up our Discord channel To our listeners and viewers And patrons I suppose Sorry the mattress was just on So simply email us at warmupinball at gmail.com If you want the invite to our Discord channel Just change your name So it's not offensive One because I don't want to see that And two so that I know who you are please visit space city pinball.com for all events at the wormhole we are open the first and third monday of each month we open up at five o'clock tournament starts at 6 30 usually lasts about 10 if you're good and the first saturday of every month is a 4x and doors open at noon for those saturdays we are also available for rent please email us for the rental information What else can I throw in here? Oh, check us out on the socials. Let's get 1,000 follows on Facebook. We're there on Instagram. We're rocking on Instagram, but we're just a little behind on the Facebook. So get your grandma to like us on Facebook. And lastly, you can buy our merch at wormholepinball.com. This was fun. Thank you so much for your continued support. It really means a lot to all of us. Thanks. Have a great day. Thank you.