Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside Podcast. I'm your host Retro Ralph. This is episode 42 and I'm coming to you live from the Death Star. all right there we go in theory i thought that was gonna work but that was weird all right where the heck is my uh where's my hat i guess i could go crazy hair on this one but i'm not gonna go hat all right guys well thanks so much for joining okay today we're going to talk about my star wars experience at stern you know i didn't get to talk about all of it in my video because uh well i'm going to get to all that so thank you guys for joining me on a sunday morning that's what i'm recording this at least i'm trying to record it before football starts because guys in this house on sunday it's all about football so there's no there's no pinball playing although sometimes I play pinball in between halftime and things like that. But for the most part, it's all about football on Sunday morning. And I've been gone. I've been gone. I was in New York City. Actually, before I say all that, let's have a quick word from our sponsor flipping out. And then I'll tell you the whole story about how this Stern visit even came to be. 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 Flip N 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 Flip N Out Pinball in the video description for more information. Now, back to the video. All right, so as I was saying, so I was originally on a work trip, so I had to go to New York. And these kind of work trips for me, they're really, really fast. It's like we get on the trip. It's usually a bunch of meetings and then dinners at night. And then we're like back, right? So I basically asked Zach Sharp. I said, hey, do you think I can't make the media event on a Wednesday because I'm not flying home from New York City till Thursday? And I already had a really early morning flight booked, except my flight was direct from New York to Phoenix. So I asked him, I was like, look, if I can get through Chicago, if I can do a connection through Chicago, can I stop by and look at it? And I wasn't, you know, I was trying not to, you know, I have a pretty good relationship with Zach and I didn't want to ruin that. But I figured like, hey, why not ask? It's not going to ruin anything. He's just going to tell me no if he can't do it. And so he's like, yeah, we can make that happen. So I got really excited because I'm like, man, I didn't want to miss out. I like the media days for a lot of reasons. I like hanging out with the other creators because we don't get a chance to all be together like that. and you share information, you talk, and just kind of they become, a lot of them have become friends. So it's just fun to hang out with everybody and also get that whole experience of the new game. The only thing that I don't really love is that they always do the tour every time. And so I think once you've been on that tour once, it's very awesome. I'm not going to lie. If you're going to Expo, go do it. If you've never seen it, it's amazing the operation that Stern runs in there. and it just like goes to show you're like wow this is it's just it's just a well-oiled machine but I've already done that before so anyway so I figured if I go out for this thing too I'm probably not gonna have to do all that but anyway long story short Zach is like more than accommodating same with Joe Marchfield over there but here's where it got interesting so it's the night before and I'm like man if I have limited time there's no way I'm gonna be able to play the game and film the game and do any justice or any kind of video and I didn't want to make it a wasted trip so I like randomly texted Mason it was like the night before so less than 24 hours before we'd have to even be there I'm like hey would you meet me in Chicago and he's like yeah sure well actually I asked him would you hey I got some a crazy idea are you down he's young right so Mason's just like yeah I'm I'm good and so he met me there so it was awesome so but Mason and I usually have you know we're really we film so much together now that it's like we just we just know how to do it right and the great thing is is mason has a new camera now and a joke of ours is that he's always turning on the camera and i'm like are you ready are you ready because his camera didn't have a red indicator light so i never know when his camera is actually on versus not on so now now now i he i won't annoy him as much because i used to ask him are you ready like a million times but anyway so we fly out there and uh and like i didn't know what to expect right i asked Zach for a favor. So it's not like I'm expecting to have the whole day with the game or anything. But when we did get there, they were doing a dealer meeting at the same time. And he's like, he's like, Hey, well, why don't, why don't I pull you into this? So then you'll, you know, you'll see the whole, you'll get the whole experience that the media day people got. So I'm like, all right, cool. So I get into the room and Seth Davis is in there and, and, and Gary Stern is in there and all these dealers. So they're getting like the breakdown of spike three, And the thing is, like, I know I haven't seen the game yet. So I'm experiencing the same thing they are. And they were there for like some repair school stuff. So Kyle was with them in the room, too. And they were they were going over like the repair and maybe some of the new menu system stuff. But then we sat through this whole presentation and the presentation was pretty interesting because it went over like how big the Star Wars license is. And and they they filled us in on some things that were actually rumors in the community that that they wanted. They didn't really like tie them together, but they kind of did. They were like, look, you know, with the IP this big, I can't remember. They gave the financial number of how much money that Star Wars has made. It's like, you know, in the I would say it's in like the 60 billion or something crazy, right? Over its lifetime. And like we could have done an original story. But this was Seth saying this. He's like, look, with Star Wars, no one wants to see like people want to see the original movies, the original clips. And so even though they tossed that idea around, they squashed that idea really quick because they were like, we got to make this the original trilogy and stick to that. So they did. Now, one of the things that they also mentioned during that meeting is that you may notice when you're looking at this game that the video clips don't take up the whole 18.5-inch screen. That was not Stern's decision. Sometimes license holders don't want assets over like UI assets, so user interface stuff, like how far you're progressing in the game, game rules, all that stuff. They don't want that over the movie. So that's why you'll see the movie sort of in the middle and then the user interface on the sides. Now, the cool thing about that is that you still actually get about the same size screen as the old screen, but now you have the user interface assets out a little bit. So I think it works, but if you're wondering why that's that way, It's not like Stern said, hey, let's box the video in. They had to. So another good example of this is James Bond. So if you're playing James Bond, you probably see the movie assets or, yeah, movie assets are kind of shrunk in. Same thing there. The license holder doesn't want things over there, the video, the original video clips. Now, keep in mind, this is going to be license specific. So some licenses might not care if they do that, right? And some might. So I think you'll see different games. you know like John Wick they those video assets are full screen so I'm sure Lionsgate probably didn't care right so you're going to see that very it's just sort of depend on the license holder and what their requirements are but the screen's impressive it's nice but anyways so that so they're going through that the other thing that they mentioned about the game besides the video assets is just things about Spike 3 like there's now a power supply that can sort of go into a sleep mode. So for home users, you know, might mean less power consumption. If you want to keep your games up and you you're absent from them for a little while, they go into sort of this like sleep mode to utilize less power. Now, an operator probably will shut that function off. I don't know if that's on or off by default. They didn't say. But but it was nice to sit in that meeting because I got a little bit more of a glimpse as to like why certain decisions were made and things like that. Then now keep in mind, I still haven't seen the game. Then they were showing me like pictures of the pro premium and the limited edition then they showed the trailer and then after all that we got to go see the game and i was like all right this is just this is just me sharing my my thoughts we all went into the room their arcade room i always forget the name of that that they named that room but we all went in there and now i'm thinking to myself how am i going to be able to film they're all in here with us like it would have just not worked and you know they're dealers they don't want to have some dude around with cameras and microphones and all stuff so luckily that wasn't the plan so Zach's like no no you guys will we're gonna take them on the on the factory tour and then you guys have about an hour an hour and a half literally was more like an hour so now I'm like okay I'm super grateful again for this experience but I'm like I don't know how I'm gonna do this in an hour like how am I gonna get a good idea of the game and how it plays it usually it takes me a while like it being realistic you can't play a pinball machine for like a half an hour to an hour and really grasp everything about it. They're so deep these days, even with the, I think that I said in my video, the code was seven, eight, I think it's eight, seven or something like that. So the code is pretty well on its way. And so there is some depth to it. So how am I going to really evaluate that in that short period of time? So I knew that wasn't going to be possible. So what I figured I'd do, I was like, look, Mason, I'm going to play it for 30 minutes and then we're going to squeeze filming into 30 minutes. Now in the video, if you watch it if you haven't watched it go watch it it's it's not that long it's like less than 10 minutes i'll have a link in the description but in the video there's a scene in there where zach's like i was like zach you think i could play one more game and he's like yeah yeah i think you can and um and i had played i had a bad game and i played that game and he was like kind of going around the corner of that room you can see it in the video he's talking on his cell phone and i'm like mason is he there and i'm looking behind he's like all right i'm gonna play another game he won't even know so i press the game so uh i press the start button so later he comes over and he's like hey what ball are you on but like he wasn't he wasn't being a jerk he's like really he knew right he kind of could sense that i might have been playing i was playing terrible that day by the way i hadn't played pinball in about in new york i hadn't played any pinball so i was like four days without playing pinball maybe even five and i was rusty and also when you have a ray day and and um zach sharp who are both amazing players sitting over your shoulder there's i don't i don't do well with that pressure and and it's not like they're pressuring me it's just that's just me and I didn't play well at all like I was I was rusty I was making stupid mistakes I was fumble rooskiing things I was like fumble rooski fumble rooski all over the thing so whatever it was fine um I would have preferred if I played well but so anyways I guess why I'm mentioning that is you just kind of don't um you know you I tried to I tried to do what I could in the short period of time. Luckily, you know what? You guys are so nice in the comments. No one even mentioned, hey, this felt like a shorter video or anything like that. No one said that. They were all really complimentary, which I appreciate. But I realized I wasn't as happy with that video as I could have been. And that had nothing to do with anything other than we just didn't have a lot of time to film it. So anyway, so I would have liked to go a little bit deeper on it. But that's why I'm going to do this. So I want to tell you a couple of things that were talked about or discussed because I did have a conversation with George Gomez, too, who filled me in on some of the cool things about spike three so i'm gonna just i'm gonna kind of go with cabinet stuff first and then i'll go into the gameplay stuff because i wrote down on the plane ride back i wrote down a bunch of notes so that i was like look when i do a podcast on this i really want to have my notes in front of me because i i tried my best to you know like i said do that live but i don't think i really um i don't know i don't think i really did that as much justice just because uh i you know the time the time limitation so i'll talk about a couple of things first that I had a side conversation with George Gomez and those things were more spike three specific things because you'll probably have heard this on many podcasts this isn't like the everything spike three is going to offer I'd almost think of it like when a gaming console comes out and it's new hardware it takes a while for the developers to fully exploit everything that hardware can provide them right sometimes you don't you find you don't get the best games to like almost toward the end of the generation of that platform because the developers haven't figured out how to fully exploit everything i'm not saying that they don't know how to but this yet but this is one of those things where it's going to be in phases so this first game yes it's spike 3 you're getting the 18.5 inch screen you're getting the upgraded audio which is a better amplifier and then obviously the pro and premium are going to have sort of the basic level speakers and then the le is going to have the best stuff but what why this is why this amplifier is kind of important for me at least is that I always upgrade the speakers in my system, but then I upgrade the amplifier too. I prefer pinwoofer over pin sound for that for modern games, but they both are really good. You'll probably have a very good experience. So it's just a matter of preference which one. I'm not going to tell you which one to get. It's whatever one you really want. I'm just saying for me, I prefer pinwoofer over pin sound for the amplifier and a spike too. But this is one of those things where now that you have a better amplifier, for some users those the speaker upgrades may be enough and you don't need to add an amplifier but again that's going to be like where you are in the journey if you're someone that's like an audiophile and you really want the best of the best then you can't go wrong with something like pinwoofer and then so maybe that if you're a modder or someone that always enhances their games this is one of the things where i would evaluate it first the way it comes and see if that's satisfactory to you and then if not then you can still upgrade the audio but i like that they finally did something with it so you're seeing a better audio system in in in spike three now what was interesting is uh if you look at the cabinet expression lights you only have those on the le and you can add those to the premium right can't add them to the pro uh but right now as you see there's still the spike two expression lights kit right so that's the that's the spike two cabinet expression light So I was initially disappointed by that because I was like, oh, man, this is Spike 3. They're going to be able to do so much more with the lighting. So that will come a little bit later. I don't know exactly when. I did ask George, and he said in the next game release. But he didn't specify whether that meant remaster or Cornerstone. And the reason why he probably didn't do that is because he really can't confirm that the Walking Dead is, you know, he's not going to tell me that the Walking Dead is coming out. So I'm like, all right, well, so I have to read between the lines on that. So it could be in The Walking Dead. I don't know, but they may not even do expression lights in Walking Dead. So whatever, it'll be the next game release. So I would probably, if I'm going to deduce that down to something usable, my guess is that the next Cornerstone non-remaster will maybe have the new lighting in it. Now, the other thing that was interesting is there's like these speaker enclosures they're going to offer that will like enclose the it'll sort of put like some enclosures behind the speakers and there's also going to be a speaker upgrade kit so there's going to be further enhancements to make the speaker sound even better now if you know uh if you if you've ever looked at the inside of a spike 2 or most pinball machines that are modern they don't have anything that's they're like open air speakers right they're open to the backbox and they sort of use the backbox as the enclosure for the speakers. There's going to be some kind of thing offered there that I thought was interesting. And then what else was there? There were some other things too that for some reason they're escaping me. Oh, so this is really cool actually. So if anybody ever added expression lights to a modern machine like Metallica, like if you owned a Metallica remastered and you went and bought the, if you couldn't get in on the LE and you got the premium and you were going to add expression lights to it or any other stern where you added expression lights into the cabinet you have to take the entire play field out That a daunting task especially when you a moron like me and you decide you going to do it yourself why why i would decide to do that myself makes no sense because honestly you if you drop the play field like it's done like you're going to probably break a bunch of stuff right now it's not done but you're probably going to really damage things but i did do it myself on metallic remaster so then there's also going to be a new cabinet introduced now i don't know if that new cabinet's going to come with the walking dead remaster or if it's going to come with the next cornerstone so i'm not sure um but i believe it might be i don't know i don't know i couldn't get clarification on that so just know a new cabinet is coming now i don't think that cabinet's going to be radically different looking i think to us it's going to look probably very similar if not the same but it's going to have convenience features in it like you don't have to now take your whole play field out to replace the expression light to put the new to put the cabinet expression light kit it's in and i love that because honestly that would be a deterrent for me if i was like a casual who wanted to upgrade my machine that would be kind of a daunting task to remove the play field so i like these kinds of things so they're thinking further ahead on a lot of these items and i think a lot of that i could be wrong but it seems like a lot of that might be driven from seth trying to push the limits of hey guys, let's, let's like modernize these things so that we now have the spike three platform moving forward for the next 10 years or whatever it is. Right. Uh, the other thing about spike three that we talked about is like, obviously there's a significant amount of improvement of processing power, memory, and things like that. But here's, what's also interesting is if you guys look at like, um, and this maybe isn't the best example, cause it does look really good in John wick. They use 4K video assets that they've – that was the source assets. Now, obviously, that screen is not even – it's not 1080p. It's like – I don't know. It's below that. I want to say it's not even 720p. I can't remember what the actual native resolution of the 15-inch monitor is. But now they have a higher resolution monitor. But also, if you notice, if you looked at video assets in the past, and depending on how high quality they are, they try really hard to make them look as good as they can. But the thing is they didn't have the right – not the right, but in order to do it on their old platform, they had to use different codecs. Those codecs, you might see some artifacting from time to time, like as it's displaying the video assets. It's very minimal. Most people don't even notice it. You're going to get a very crisp video output on this new display, and you probably won't ever really see much artifacting because they're using better codecs now. But the reason why they couldn't do that before is like they're doing a lot with Spike 2. um you know they don't have the processing power to do hdmi out and have the audio video assets be you know i mean so it's they're working on an older platform now with the newer platform they've got much more headroom to do things like that and then with the better codec they're gonna be able to make the video files look better right so they're gonna look awesome uh and when you're dealing with a display that size they'd probably be more noticeable if you had artifacting and things like that and um so i think you're gonna see a big improvement there too like so that's kind of exciting uh i know some people don't get as excited about the screen because they're like look i'm not looking at the screen when i'm playing but um i think they did a good job they they were able to i don't know how george i'm guessing they use solid works for stuff like that or whatever but i don't know how he got in there and figured out i mean it had to be like down to this very like the engineering that had to go into making that screen fit within the same panel so that they could maintain the regular size translate or or back glass is pretty awesome so so that that was pretty neat too so those are just some little tidbits that I found that that maybe we weren't shared in other videos because I geeked out with Gomez for a good I love that guy like I really like that you know he did say something to me that's kind of interesting he's like Ralph you know you know you have relationships here you can call us or text us or whatever when And you don't – before you do a podcast, you don't – he was being nice about it. So you don't say, like, incorrect information. And he had just recently corrected me on a video that I did. It was an old video I published. I republished, and it was about the Transformers Home Edition game. And I said some things in there incorrect, so he corrected me. But that's the cool thing about having those guys. They're everywhere in social media. So whether you're the starting out content creator or the largest one in the space, they are always looking at your content. So just know that you could be just starting out and you think that no one's watching you. They are absolutely watching you. These companies are watching everything, and they want to see what people say. And sometimes they take that to heart, and sometimes they maybe ignore certain comments because they're incorrect or it's something they just can't address. But they're always there, and a lot of times they will chime in. George is very active. If you look at like the Stern Enthusiast Group, he's all over that thing. So anyway, so let's get to more the gameplay, because I did feel like I didn't really get a chance to talk about it much because I didn't really have a whole lot of time to to to really discuss it. Because I didn't have enough time to even break anything down in the 30 minutes I really got to play. And then and then the 30 minutes I had to film everything. So I think what you'll notice is obviously there's some things about it that have probably been brought up, I'm assuming. But these are just basic stuff. You know, the game was designed by John Borg, and then the lead coder was Raymond Davidson, or Ray Day, as people call him. So it's got nine core shots to it, and it's in a fan layout. So just know, like, that's... If you're, you know, just taking it from the basic level, if you're not, like, a giant fan of fan layouts, then, you know, this game might be less interesting to you. I think fan layouts are really good for someone that is newer, because it's very obvious where all the shots are. They're all really in front of you, and none of them are all that complex to understand how to shoot at. They're not hidden. If you give someone Kong and they see that right flipper and the shot that sort of goes along the backside and you can kind of keep doing that with the mini flipper, that's something that's a little bit more advanced. Plus, people that are new to pinball, they're just trying to figure out how to manage the two flippers, let alone the third. So it is a two-flipper game. So it's not complex to pick up and play. The other thing that you'll notice about the game, like, right away, before we get into, like, all the shots, is that there's some easy multiballs. So there's the straight-up-the-middle shot, which you can just spam, I think it's, like, four times or five times maybe, and you'll get a multiball there. Then, like, to the left of that, you have the – oh, shit, what the hell is that thing called? This is how much I know Star Wars. Wait, it's, like, the main thing of Death Star. So you have the Death Star shot. Now, when you hit the Death Star, it opens up, and then you can lock three balls in that. So that's also an easier multiball. Now, why I'm bringing those things up is because I think having those, if someone new comes over or someone that doesn't play pinballs often or it's on location somewhere, those are two things you could tell someone to do that they can immediately get some satisfaction or feel like they're making some progress. Now, the straight-up-the-middle shot is fairly simple. The Death Star shot, however, is not. It is a tighter shot. I was actually struggling with that shot. Keep in mind, 30 minutes, toward the end of my 30 minutes, I think I was starting to get more consistency as to where on the flipper I needed to hit that in order to get that shot. I was trying to see if I could backhand it. I think I backhanded it once, but it's not, I wouldn't call it easily backhandable from the left flipper, so I would probably go with the right flipper to make that shot. Now, maybe more time in it, or maybe someone that's also played it might say, no, no, you could absolutely backhand it if you keep practicing, but I couldn't do that that easily. I think I did it one time. And so that's it. So, so get breaking down a little bit on the layout because I think it's interesting. There's these pop bumpers that are on like either side, right? And those things are interesting because if the ball does get caught up in those pop bumpers, because they're, they're spread apart, they're not clustered. They're on the right and left side, like all the way to the sides. I can cause some chaos. So, you know, if you get, you find yourself, if you find yourself that the ball ends up there, you're going to want to be ready and prepared because it could really go anywhere but i thought that was cool kind of gives a little bit of uh i don't know it kind of brings a little chaos to the game makes it makes it more fun uh there's the the darth vader scoop which is located on the left side that starts that starts dark side mystery uh and the other vader modes when it's lit but that to light that you got to complete the empire return lanes so that was one i didn't really get uh do much with that because I just didn't have that much time to play. I was kind of focusing on the easier stuff first. Now the left orbit and the right orbit, you know, that, that orbit that goes along the backside of the game, that's how you spell Luke. Now, when you spell Luke, that's how you can use your Jedi saver, that Jedi ball saver thing. Now that Jedi ball saver will work differently depending on which model of the game you have. The pro, the pro is going to act like, um, like the life ring on jaws, right? You'll hit it and it's just going to give you the ball back where on the premium or the limited edition, it's a magnet. So it like grabs the ball and then it throws it back into play. But that magnet is actually beyond the flippers. So it takes some time. It's a timing thing, right? I don't know how many of you guys have ever played Black Knight Sword of Rage, but it's funny. Rudy and I joke around and we're always late to hit our magna save. And it's like we hit it. We hit it. Sometimes we just hit it because we're like, oh, we might as well hit it now. So we hit it and the ball's way, way, way past where it's supposed to be. uh i actually really like um i want to say it's theater of magic i think it's theater of magic where those balls say like it does that automatically like as a magic thing right it it will grab the ball i think it's there i'm pretty sure it's theater of magic correct me if i'm wrong in there but um but that you don't press anything it just does it so i don't know you it'd be interesting like what do you guys think is it better that it's like a button that you press to do it or would it be better if it just did it automatically like would it be cool if if it just because I think that with Theater of Magic, and I hope I'm not getting that wrong or mixed up with a different game, it just happens and it feels really like magical when it happens. So I don't know. I guess that was a choice to make it a button. I think making it a button makes it more stressful, right? It puts you under some pressure to do it. So I think that's kind of cool, but I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how that goes. But then you have the AT-AT, right? Or the AT-AT. It's like kind of to the left of the Death Star. So that's kind of like a mechanical device, right? And you don't bash it or anything like that. And I don't remember what you have to hit. I think it's the spiral ramp. So when you hit that spiral ramp, that's simulating the tow rope that they used in the movie to go around it and pull it down. Now, the funny thing is, I'm a little disappointed that that thing is as small as it is. I don't know how they could have, you know, I'm not a pinball designer. I don't know what's actually possible when it comes to that. But like, I wonder if that ramp could have been a little bigger and like it, it would have, I would have like sort of stood taller than the ramp. I don't know, but I don't know if that's even possible. But I guess when I look at a game like Kong and you see Kong in the back, you're like, holy crap, it's very, it's big. Like you're like, whoa, that thing is gigantic. When you're playing D&D and you see the dragon, it's like, oh my gosh, or the Sentinel head in X-Men. I'm using more recent games. Those things are big. So you almost forget that it's there, and I think that was a little bit of a miss. So I don't know if that was just like a cost of goods thing, like they couldn't get it down to the right price with the licensing cost. I don't know. I know Stern is very – well, actually, I don't know this for a fact. I just think this is obvious by just like looking at the context clues. I think Stern, because they have this big factory, they got to maximize margins and profits and stuff. I think they probably do have to hold back on the build of materials, and I think they have a set cost, and I don't think there's that much wiggle room one way or the other. Like if a designer wants to put something really cool in the game but it's going to have a massive cost, I think they would be challenged by the leadership at Stern to say, what other things can you take out if you're saying that thing is that important? And where me working with Jersey Jack for the period of time that I did, I think this is how I think it goes there. designer wants something cool the build the materials is a certain cost i think they just make the case and if someone comes back like i don't know if it's brett abbis or how far it goes up or jack himself they might go hey do you think this is something that it's just like too cool to leave out and i think they figure out how to make it work um now now that could mean that could mean that that could impact maybe the overall profit they're going to make on that game but I think they would rather put that in. So I think that's where they differ. Stern's like a bigger machine. They got to pump more of these things out. So I don't know. By the way, I have no factual evidence that that's actually true, but that's what I would imply based on when we were out there for the John Wick. We were out there for the John Wick that day, media day. George pulled us in and showed us the project timeline from start to finish and how precise everything has to be. And so I think Stern really sticks to that bomb. Whatever that build of materials cost is, whatever they need to have as their budget for that, I think they really are strict about maintaining and sticking within that budget. So maybe that's why. Maybe that's why it's smaller. So now you got that. You have the droid stand-up target that's next to the AT-AT. That's used for certain modes. Then there's the Death Star mech, which we already talked about. So that's a physical lock. I think the physical lock is – actually, that I don't know. Let's see. Actually, I think that's on all trims. So I think all of the models have that physical ball lock. I hope I'm not wrong on that. If I am, correct me, but I believe that to be true. The hyperspace ramp we already talked about, that's the center ramp. That's going to be stationary on the Pro, but then that's a motorized lift on the Premium and LE. It's a really easy shot. so it's supposed to stimulate uh stimulate simulate the the falcon jump to hyperspace and then it feeds that wire form that returns to the left flipper that one um it's fun actually it's fun to shoot that now the hyperspace thing i i think they're i'm sure they're because keep in mind it's new code and i don't think they've really put all the lighting orchestration stuff in yet but my guess would be they're gonna add some really cool lighting effects around the uh expression light kits for when you, when you hit that, uh, hyperspace ramp. There was some stuff in there, but I don't, I think it's not quite where it needs to be now. There's the Millennium Falcon toy that's illuminated. Um, it sits above the center ramp and then shooting underneath that qualifies the Falcon features and then it triggers the light speed sequences. So I, I haven't, um, you know, I, again, this, when I was there, I wasn't really putting this all together. This is my notes after the fact, where Jabba the Hutt is that Jabba ramp has that whirlpool plastic ramp and then there's a drop target I think in front of that ramp if I remember right so passing the target lets the ball spin down that pit and then that start starts Jabba events and then there's an illuminated that sculpt is illuminated on the premium and Elliot I don't think that sculpt is in the pro at all Now, I joked about this with Mason in the car. I was like, thing is, Mason had no idea what I was talking about. I was like, Mason, remember those nightlights with like the plastic things on top, but the light kind of doesn't diffuse out of them as well? And he's like, yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about. So anyways, if you remember those kinds of nightlights as a kid, or maybe even the toys you would get at like Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus that were like the flashlights that you turn on and there was a plastic thing on top. it kind of reminded me of that and I only say that because it feels like they're not always illuminated by the way but when they are illuminated the light diffuses out of them in a way that's like unpleasing to me I feel like the result of that is that that plastic is not quite thick enough so the way it diffuses the light it doesn look good to me but again I don know maybe that like a cost cutting thing like hey we do the sculpts but we got to do them in thinner plastic I mean every little bit of money that they can shave off of it counts So I think modders are going to have a field day with that. I think the only thing I'm worried about there is our modder is going to be afraid to kind of touch that because, you know, it's Disney. And I don't know, they probably come after people. So I don't know. We'll see what happens there. I hope the modders can come up with some way to enhance those things, because what's great is if you have a pro, I'm sure those would be easy additions to your game, right, because they don't exist. But if you have the premium rally, you're at least getting those. So I don't think they don't look bad when the light's not shining through them, to be honest. It's just when the light shines through at certain times, I don't like the way it diffuses the light. It, like, almost blows it out, and it just makes that look a little cheesy. So anyway, now Zach's going to bust my balls about that. but before it was the Spider on Kong. I didn't, I still, I'm slowly warming up to the Spider on Kong, but I just don't, I don't know. It just, I don't know about the Spider. It just, it seems cheesy to me. I'm shocked right now. Is there not a Spider mod for the game? Like, has no one decided to mod the Spider? I don't know. Anyway, so then you have the TIE Fighter wire form ramp. That's on the right, and that's got the TIE Fighter sculpt there, but that's premium and LE only. You're not gonna get that on the Pro, and that returns the ball to the right flipper. uh then you have the right orbit with the spinner and i the left orbit with the spinner too again that's how you're going to spell jedi uh and then you know obviously have the jedi force magnet and that's going to be that magnet that i was talking about before that's between the flippers and it's activated by pressing the action button once jedi is spelled um it can grab the ball you know as it's draining and then um you know kind of fire it back up so the pro again And like I said, it's just virtual. So that's kind of like the main layout of everything. So if you don't love that, then that's okay. If you don't like that kind of layout or design, then maybe this game is one that you pass on and just play on location. But for people that like fan layouts, I think it's a pretty fun fan layout. I love the little swirly ramps or whatever you want to call those. I think those are pretty cool. So I had fun with it. I wish I had more time on it, and I think until I actually get one in my hands here at the house, I don't think I'll be able to say any more than I already said because I feel like I just didn't have enough time to play it. Now, some of the people at the media event, like VicVP, you know, shout out to Vic. I really missed that I couldn't see him, man. He's a cool dude. I really like Vic, and every time I've ever spent time with him, we've always had a good time. The other person I was kind of hoping I'd see is there's – shoot, I don't want to forget their names. Oh, man, they're so sweet. It's a couple that – I don't know their actual names. They're going to kill me if they listen to this because they're going to think I'm leaving them out, and I'm not meaning to. But they're newer. They just – they have like – they do like punk rock music, and they just got into pinball. I'll put the link to how to see their content in the description, but I love them. they're great people and definitely doing positive things for the hobby and community. They're approaching it in a way that's very approachable to newer players. And I love that because sometimes I now am at a point where I can listen to a podcast like Wedgehead and feel like I'm not being – I'm not like – I'm following what they're doing. But when I first joined the hobby, I think some of the podcasts were talking about such advanced things that I was like, I need somewhere else to start. Like what podcast can I listen to that will be, for me right now, when I was first entering the hobby, so I kind of get a good base. And a lot of the podcasts tend to – you might be a little lost if you're newer to the hobby, but you'll get there. But they're great because they're taking it as a – I think from a basic approach but also providing both content, both deep and lighthearted, and I think that's good for the hobby, right, as you have people that come in. Obviously, Ian from Nudge Magazine was there. there's so many I'm not trying to leave anybody out I don't remember I don't know the whole list of people that went but I think Erica probably went I would love to see Erica but I'll see everyone at at Expo providing everyone decides to go I'm thinking most people are going to go to Expo so that's where I'll be able to see everybody but I was bummed I had FOMO I had FOMO I wanted to go but it's just because it's really cool to all hang out and it's really cool to experience the game as a group and I tend to learn more that way so you know I didn't expect Ray Day and Zach to sit there with me the whole time. They showed me some basics and then they had to move on because the dealers were there. So we did get the room to ourselves for a little while, but it was a short period of time, like I said before. But it's nice to experience it together because people will pick up on certain things. But then how I end up learning long-term is I go listen to Triple Drain or I listen to Travis on the pinball company. He always breaks it down to me in a very basic level, but he also goes advanced too. So that's usually how I end up learning. So for multiballs, there's Battle of Hoth multiball, Death Star multiball. And I think those are the only ones right now, unless I'm missing something. Yeah, I think that might be it for right now. So as far as Spike 3 stuff, I'll go back to that for one second. There's some key things that I wanted to point out. So they're using a Raspberry Pi platform custom processor board. now i was talking to george about that he's like it's about four times the computing and video power than spike 2 and they've got about two times the memory so that's on their power their their processor board uh they have a micro sd card slot that's uh three times faster so they'll you know i don't know i don't really know what benefit that would have really i guess i guess maybe it would like boot faster i'm not really sure because if you ever take if you ever take that sd card out and try to boot your machine it will not boot it'll just sit there i've actually been working in the backbox before and accidentally hit it thought i like broke my game and because you know he looked at it it didn't look like it wasn't in the slot but it was just out of the slot so i don't know i i don't think sterns take a long time to boot up in general i really don't like they're up pretty quick like you can turn them on you're pretty much playing within a couple minutes so i don't think that's that's excessive i mean it's not like an old game where you turn it on you're basically playing almost instantly they almost instantly boot uh you know so it takes a little bit of time the hdmi out is great because if you're if you're want to get into streaming so if you're newer to pinball but you're like man i want to be a content creator this is a cool feature because in order to capture the lcd footage you know a lot back in the day people would just point a camera at it you know that it looks okay but it doesn't give you the full effect and now you're not seeing those video assets in like the highest quality you can so people started using this geek worm device which that was actually kind of interesting to me because i was familiar with the geek worm device because um people use that a lot when they're modding like arcades with displays that use lvds so i was very um in tune with that already before i joined the community then there's i'll give you a little fun fact is there was a module that that and you can find it on the internet but you can't buy it like it never was for sale but there was a module that was created that stern had at one point but i they were only using it for themselves, I believe, but it was their way of easily being able to capture the backbox video. They never sold it. And I think the reason why they never sold it is that if they sold it, then they would be the ones providing you access to the video and audio assets of the game via the LCD. Now, what I think is the new processor comes stock with the HDMI output. So that's kind of like user can do whatever they want with it and i think that's that's cool right the user can use it they didn't provide an add-on for you to do anything so i think um that's how they can provide now video and audio output so why i love that is because hdmi now routes video and audio so that'll be a lot easier if someone wants to like put an elgato capture card at the end of that thing they could put that right into their laptop and capture that so i think we'll start to see a lot more people get into the content creation space and that's great like more streaming of pinball is great because there's so many people that i feel like they just don't they don't know how cool this hobby is and if we can make people see this more and experience it more and it's easier to produce content then i think that's a win-win for everybody if you're stern it's easy public you know it's additional content that people can create on your systems and create it easier so that'd be more people easier point to entry and you know it helps people get into the hobby now on the display so there's 125 more pixels and it's 256 times the color depth compared to spike 2 and you can really tell i don't think they're exploiting the full capabilities of that net right now and keep in mind they're using 4k they did use 4k source assets uh like the remastered versions of the original trilogy on this so they look really good like you're going to be blown away at how good they look but keep in mind that that source content is from what 19 70s late 70s 80s so if it's a new movie or with new assets i can't even imagine how good that's going to look or any animations that they create in-house new are going to look awesome on this display so i'm very excited about that now uh the other thing too and i mentioned it before it's going to look good in your lineup because they didn't decide to like creep up into the back glass and like have to readjust the artwork and everything so i think it was smart they provided a very large display on the original form factor and i think that's that's good right i mean that's good because people aren't going to feel like oh man this thing looks out of place so i don't know i i tend i have my i have my harry potter on the other side next to evil dead because those two cabinets i wouldn't i do i don't want them in my stern row just because i want the stern row to look look the same we talked about the audio already uh connectivity is better so they now I believe the old Wi-Fi was only 2.4 gigahertz. The new one's five. So you're going to have better connection capabilities. You do still have the Ethernet though. So you still have Ethernet if you want to do Ethernet, but now you have better wireless connectivity. And I believe that's all on board. I don't think, I didn't get a chance to look at that. I believe it's on the board. I don't think it's a module that's plugged in. Man, I'm so gassy right now. Oh, sorry guys. And the wireless headphone capability. So this is going to be Bluetooth. thing is it wasn't in the code i don't think that i was looking through the menu i couldn't find it but it will be in the spike 3 if you buy a star wars you will have bluetooth audio capabilities i like to wear headphones sometimes at night uh to crank it up and also you know what's interesting about headphones you pick up on things a little bit better that maybe in an open room you don't you've got ambient noises and stuff that you have to contend with but i really think you'll find that playing with headphones sometimes is really beneficial. Um, but, but the audio system is obviously a lot more upgraded. I will talk about that for one more minute before we jump in, jump back, jump back into other stuff. So in the normal LE and, uh, well, I'll start with the pro and premium. The pro and premium used to have four inch speakers. Now, a lot of people would upgrade those. You get new speaker mounts. Uh, you can get them from, I used to get them from speaker light kits. You can get them from everywhere. Now I believe you can get it from pinball life. Uh, and then I would put the five and I would put new five and a quarter inch speakers. Now that's changing now because now across the board, that speaker hole is four inches and that's all you can fit now because the screen takes up more real estate because the screen, imagine the screen's wider. So now you only have, you have like a narrow strip to keep, to put your speakers. So on the LE, they put upgraded four inch speakers on the pro and premium. You're going to still have the, they're going to be the standard versions of those four inch speakers. And then they did add that tweeter to give you a better range of sound. So that was always my problem with stern pinball machines is that the range of sound wasn't that great like it felt like man i'm missing highs i'm missing some highs and some mids that i just don't capture with these speakers so on the le you're going to have that tweeter in the mid range and the combination of that plus the subwoofer on the new amp it sounds pretty good we've we cranked it up really loud and it wasn't distorting and at the time it might distort at super high volumes the thing is it'd be so high you wouldn't even play it that way like i don't know what situation you'd play it that high. So you can put it at a reasonably high level where it's probably the highest most people would play it, and it doesn't distort. So that's great. The one thing I will say, though, as a little tip, even if I didn't replace the speaker, I would always take the subwoofer out and take that speaker grate out. That speaker grate that's in there, I feel like rattles against the subwoofer sometimes. I hate that. I don't like that. So if I bought an LE, I would take the subwoofer out, rip that grade out, put the subwoofer back in. And I think you'll find your system will sound even better with that. So that's just a little tip that I would have it in. And when I do pin sound or pinwoofer, sorry, I always, when I put their subwoofer in, I take that grade out. I think they recommend you take that out, but that would be something I would say you'd probably take out just to make it sound the best. Now, the extra processing power is going to give them smoother animations and all that stuff. But I just I wanted to be clear that, you know, George corrected me a little bit on I had said at one point in a podcast that the Spike 2 platform was being pushed to its limits. They probably could could have kept the Spike 2 for even longer. I mean, I think you look at games, more recent games like D&D and the animations or even what they did with Metallica Remastered. They're all pre-rendered. So the but the thing is, now they can have higher quality images, right? They can have higher quality images. They have enough processing power to do HDMI out and all that stuff. So there's definitely benefits to Spike 3. But I think you're going to see Spike 3, you know, you're going to see those continued enhancements roll out as the games roll out. And then eventually you'll have a point where they've got Spike 3 is going to be everything Spike 3 has to offer. And then, you know, but it's a journey, right? It's a new platform for them. You're going to see them continue to do that. So I know there's probably been some disappointment on why don't I get all the Spike 3 features now. I think they were like, look, we got to get this thing out there. Let's get it out there and we'll kind of enhance it as time goes on. So I think that's a good thing. And as far as video clips and video assets, if you're wondering, there's a lot of them. I don't know. I think they might have said the quantity. I know there's like 1,000 audio clips or something, and I don't know how many video clips are there, but it's a lot. So there's a lot of video clips, and I got to think there's probably even more they haven't put into the code yet. So that's really cool, right? And I'm very excited to see what the enhanced expression light kit looks like. I like the Spike 2 expression cabinet expression lighting kit. but I think it's going to be quite the upgrade when we have the new one because I think they're going to be able to do a lot more and address a lot more RGB lighting so I think they could probably start to do a little bit more complex stuff I did get a chance to play Dune finally at Interium I was really shocked by the lighting that they did in that game like you almost don't even notice that the lighting rails are there and there's I don't know they did a really good job with that. I'm still not like the biggest Dune fan. I don't know what it is. Normally a game can get me into a license even if I don't like the license. I just, it's not that I don't like Dune. I like the original Dune and I struggle with this because I didn't see these movies. So maybe I need to go back and watch the new Dune movies and maybe I would be like more into it. But I don't know. I just, it's not, dude, it has a very creative shot layout. Like the shot layout is very creative and when I was playing it at Interium, I was like, oh, this is kind of like this is kind of cool it's taking risks for sure it's definitely more unique now what what it made me kind of think about is wow star wars doesn't really take many risks if any at all but i think what their thought logic was that i think their thought process was this i think they're like look we're gonna make a star wars game we're gonna probably we're gonna try to we're gonna try to put way more assets in it video wise than we've done before but we want to but because it's star wars and it's such a big license and it's going to appeal to so many people let's make it um more approachable so maybe that's why they said fan layout would be good and a two flipper game would be good but i just don't want you to watch this and think oh it has no depth because it does like it already has depth so i feel like what what they did here which is not easy to do is create a game that could be appealing to the advanced player but also for someone that's brand new to pinball and that's the hard that's the best hard balance man And that the line they need to figure out how to tow right Because I give someone and Evil Dead probably my favorite Between Evil dead it tough for me to really give you my favorite between evil dead harry potter and kong because i appreciate them all in different ways but if i had to say if someone said you got to put a steak in the ground you have to you can't waffle you got to tell me what your favorite one is of last year i'd be evil dead but but very close to harry potter just because the fun factor of potter is just through the roof. It is such a fun game to shoot. But then, you know, like everything, positives and negatives, Potter's Code, I feel like, they have this game that's almost great. I'd say it's, I'd call it great, but it could be amazing. And actually, funny thing is, I'm going to side show, we're going to do a little side quest for a minute. I did stop by Jersey Jack because I wanted to see Eric real quick. So I pulled into the parking lot and I text Eric. I'm like, hey man, are you around? and uh the funny thing is he didn't respond he just came out so i'm sitting in the parking lot i'm like i'm in the parking lot like this is weird like is it weird of me i was even asking mason i was like is it weird of me to like text eric and be like i'm in your parking lot he's like yeah kind of i'm like all right whatever i'm gonna text him so i said i'm in the park so he comes out and we geeked out on potter and he's he's evaluating a whole bunch of new code that joe wrote uh he was even telling me about some things that that are not because he's like do you have you know he's like do you have this yet it was like no i don't i don't so don't hold me to this date and i know eric would kill me if i get if i said it's definitely going to be this date so don't hold me to it and he didn't give me a definite definite date but it sounds like at the end of september there's a pretty major code update coming for potter that's going to add a whole bunch of new stuff and then i tried to ask him about this the high inquisitor there's some if you're all right i'm not i'm probably not gonna mess up if you own a hot potter in your in movie mode five there is something in there where you you don't want to tilt the game but you want to get one nudge morning warning and if you do and i don't know when within that movie sequence you do it but if you do it you'll complete the movie sequence but don't tilt i thought that he said you needed to tilt so if you remember my my original featurette he said something about it he said you'll know what to do and i was like dude i still don't know what to do help me out he was laughing at me he's like dude and i was like i keep tilting like you're saying he's like no you're not supposed to tilt it i'm like well shit so anyway so he told me that so I'm curious. I haven't had a chance to like my my schedule is so crazy. This is probably going to be the last podcast you get for a little while because we're going on vacation next month or not next week. No, hold on this coming week. I'm going to go going to California for another work trip. So it's been so far. My month has been work trip, work trip, work trip. Then we're going on vacation. So you can imagine it's been really hard for me to squeeze in content. So that's why I felt a little disappointed in the video that I put on Retro Ralph. It's still very entertaining video. I think, I think, but I just didn't go to the depth that I'm going to in this podcast. And so I'm sorry about that. I just, but I, hopefully you guys saw like, it was fun. And I just, I like bringing you guys along the journey and not every video is going to be that deep, deep video. Uh, and quite frankly, I I'm not, I don't enjoy making content about every single shot and all the code depth. I leave that up to guys that are much better at doing that. As a matter of fact, if you're looking for someone that's fricking stellar at it, go over to the electric back cast so surge is probably one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet and he really wants to help people get better at pinball it's ridiculous how helpful he is uh him and kale started this thing called pin pals which is like a separate it's like a podcast within like a side quest podcast on there on the electric back cast youtube channel you got to check it out surge is like he's brilliant man i mean he is brilliant but the cool thing is i feel very lucky to have him as a as a regular at electric bat someone that's very ingrained in the culture there because if you're if you're if you're like struggling to play a game i don't know how i don't know it makes me feel like man why can't my brain absorb this stuff like he can he can remember every rule man and it's like crazy i still have games in my lineup right now that i think I'm just starting to learn, like learn at a deeper depth that, you know, like it takes time for me. And it's crazy because I feel like in my work life, I have to remember so many technical stats and information, how to pitch to certain products and all of our product specs and stuff. I don't know why, like maybe I just use so much of that brainpower and I'm getting older that it takes me a while to learn a pinball machine. And some of these modern pinball machines go to such depth. Jamie and I talk about this a lot where I'm like man I just can't remember everything although Jamie will like almost be a sleeper but like oh man I don't know this game very well like he'll mess with he messes with me so much sometimes he messes with me so much I'm easy to mess with but he's like Jamie would be like oh well yeah if you pick that game I don't know it very well and then all of a sudden he knows all the multiplier rules I'm like dude I'm like dude okay like like he'll tell me oh I haven't played this game before and he'll come in he'll beat me I'm I'm like, dude, whatever. I mean, a lot of times he can be a much better player than I am. I don't know. But him and I go back and forth. I will say when we were at Electric Pad, I kind of whooped his ass for a little while. Then we played more, and he kind of schooled me hard. But he was doing this. Jamie likes to get fancy. And sometimes you get fancy, and you fumble rooski, and that's it. By the way, the fumble rooski thing comes from the State Farm commercial where Patrick Mahomes is in it. Now, I'll be honest. Don't unsubscribe because of this. but in this household we are not Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey fans so that makes us non-Kansas City fans and because of that I this is what I do I do this at home all the time my wife gets kind of annoyed because she's like all right calm down settle down now when Kelsey misses a catch or or something or maybe like which doesn't happen very often or if Mahomes gets sacked I look at the I look at Kim and then I go Famborowski Famborowski so I just I love it and I send those clips to my friends who like Kansas City just to mess with them I was like I'll like zoom into my homes looking disappointed I'll be like Famborowski Famborowski so if you never saw that commercial and you're like what the hell are you talking about and if you're not a football fan you're like I don't care so anyways that's what I do that's what I do all right what else what else can we talk about I mean I guess like just to conclude it I I know we're going we're almost an hour i can't if i spoke for an hour on this um i'm having a hard time with this game like it's i didn't leave it going oh my god it's my favorite game ever i gotta own it but i am gonna buy it i'm gonna buy the premium but here's the cool thing so i'm trying to work out something with zach and flipping out because i i want to i want to buy the premium but i want to showcase the le so i'm trying to work something out with zach where maybe i can borrow an le for a little bit so that my video is on the LE. But here's why that's cool. If he agrees to this, then I will be able to showcase an LE. So I'll be doing an LE unboxing and then a premium unboxing because that's the one I'm actually buying. So I am going to buy the premium. Now the thing is, I will say that as I've gotten deeper into the hobby, I enjoy games with more flippers, with more unique ball paths, and things like that. So this game doesn't really provide that. so I think um that might be where my reservation is and all I think that is is me starting to evolve in the hobby to a point where I know what I like and I know what I don't like or like less and I think I like basic fan layouts less and I don't want to have a bunch of fan layouts in my collection because then my variability of what I have to offer as far as pinball experiences goes down right so i will keep i will get it i just don't know i'm gonna get it and hold on to it and see how the code evolves and if i really start enjoying it then i'll keep it you know but i did i did enjoy what i played of it but again this is the problem someone that plays a game i don't know maybe i played it less than 10 times that's not enough for me to go oh i love it or not but i will say there are games that i've jumped on into my first game i was like oh my god this is so cool this is so unique like my response to kong when i played kong first versus this was very different kong i was like oh this is cool like look at the look at the um biplane ramp like that is neat or like look at how you can combo these shots and so and i love the um i love having a third flipper like i well four on kong i i love all that like it it because it it's it's more advanced so you have to start like building up more advanced skills and strategies not that you don't with this but it's different right i don't know so it i hate making this comparison because i don't feel like it's fair but like you you play a game like stranger things it's like fan layout they're all in front of you it's like left ramp or yeah left is on the side left right left ramp right ramp center demogorgon like that's kind of your major shots in that game like there aren't there aren't that many other things to do um you know venom they're all laid out in front of you now this is why I didn't like Venom Pro because I felt like oh god there's not enough variability I like the premium because you can change the shots and also that was the whole like tagline you know change the game or whatever it was so I liked that it gave it more variability so I think this is more my evolution so I'm sharing with you like why I feel like I may or may not keep it is that I don't know if I'm gonna like that fan layout long term because I'm really liking like i love on on you know the reason why i like the reason why i like evil dead is i love that hidden flipper now a lot of people don't use it i think that's a miss there's so many cool things you can do with that third flipper on on um you know harry potter you've got the quidditch you have a flipper up there you've got the right flipper you have your other you know your two standard flippers for flipper game same with kong it's like so a lot of these games i think this you know people are saying this is a safe game i do think it is a safe game but i i also think there's variability to it and some depth to it that ray day has put into the code so it'll be interesting to see how that goes like when it starts getting closer to 1.0 and i think um you know there's gonna be a lot of interest in it obviously because it's star wars so that was that was i wanted to really just give you guys that like i felt like in my video i felt like disappointed in myself because i felt like in that video you really didn't get a whole lot of that but i want to thank mason for coming out on a whim like that was really cool of him to come out if he was not there i'll tell you straight up if he wasn't there there would have been no way i would have filmed i would have been able to film a video by myself because i would have been playing the whole time and he knows this because i said one more game like 700 times and i and thank you zach for having the patience of me it was like you had a five-year-old kid experiencing star wars and you're like uh yeah we got to get out of the room soon i'm like yeah but zach if we just spent like 10, 15 more minutes. It's cool. So, Zach, thank you for not getting upset with me. If you did, you played it off really well. I think I overstayed my welcome maybe a little bit. Now, the good thing is after we were done playing and we got out of that room, he didn't say we had to leave, but we just couldn't be in the room anymore. So, we're out in the lobby and they, oh, this I wanted to tell you guys. I should have said this up front. I did not get to see the Pro and Premium because the Pro and Premium had gotten shipped out. So, that was a benefit to the people that were at media day so it was hard for me to say like without just seeing pictures whether what I thought about the artwork I wasn't crazy about it was like weird I like the pro back glass because it's got these greens in it and I kind of like a little bit of the pro artwork but then I love the le back glass and I love the le artwork on the side so I hate when it's like that because you're like oh I wish I could take this one from that one and that one it's kind of like how i felt with with jaws because with jaws i loved the jaws pro back back glass that was the movie poster so i put that one in my premium i didn't love the premium side art on jaws i liked the side art on the le so i'm like ah um one other thing that i failed to mention but i think i mentioned it in the video is that there is no foiled artwork on the Elliot model of this one. So you, you don't get that. Now I did ask Seth was in the room at the time. I was like, Seth, what's up with the no foiled artwork. And he's like, well, we played around with the foiled artwork, but it made the whites look rather blue. And so it made the snow look blue and we didn't like the way that looked. So I have no reason to believe why he would tell me that story if that wasn't factually true. So I'm going with that. I really do have a lot of respect for Seth in that meeting. He, um, he did a really good presentation to the dealers just kind of giving us the the breakdown of it went into very deep detail and i i knew we couldn't record that but i had a notebook with me or my i should have i should have taken notes because there were some things in there i'm sure someone i'm sure like colin or someone has already has an article with all that stuff or maybe nap but uh but yeah go check that out they probably have a deeper you know breakdown of that kind of stuff and then oh dirty pool did a really good little breakdown too like his breakdown was really good so um so Check those guys out. There's going to be a lot of content. I'm sure Erica will post some content. I don't know who else was there because I know Loser Kid wasn't there. Triple Drain wasn't there. I don't know the full list. When they email us for these kinds of things, they BCC everyone. So I don't know everybody that was invited. I know Vic was there. So yeah. Really quick, I feel like if you guys can hang out with me for a minute longer. I really don't want to... I don't know. I'm so bad with names sometimes. Like I start getting into, I don't know why I've always sort of, okay, okay, okay. It's, it's live, live from the rock, rock room, live from the rock room. Go check that, that's, go check them out. So they, they, they just kind of started, I think it's, it's called Punk Rock Pinball. Really good people. And I think their content is great because it will definitely appeal to someone that's maybe newer on their journey, but they do go deep on stuff too. So definitely if you're looking for another newer podcast to check out, go check that out. I think you'll really enjoy the content. And we were going to do something. I'm really bummed, but we have this idea that they're – I don't know if they're a couple or not. I don't want to say that it's husband and wife. I don't think it is. I don't know that. I don't know if they're married. Honestly, please don't be offended by this, but I would watch and feel like you're husband and wife, but I don't know if you are. So I guess we'll find out. If not, then that could be weird with you. Did I think that? But I think that. Okay, maybe that means that your on-screen chemistry is so good that I think you're married. But I don't know. Maybe you're not. And then I'm going to feel stupid. But definitely I'll get an email from them, I'm sure, saying like, hey, no, we're not husband and wife. But thank you. Thank you. So go check them out. I'll have a link in the description to them. Really good people. But, yeah, that's all I got. i will say what's interesting is we got um we got expo right around the corner so definitely if you you gotta go to expo i mean oh i'm trying to make sure my audio levels are good i got people complaining about my when i do my intros and outros i'm a little too loud or i'm i'm yelling over the the audio so hopefully i hope i did it good this time so uh you gotta go to expo man i mean you have to you'll be able to meet everybody that you listen to most likely everyone goes. I know a lot of people either go to TPF or Expo and some don't go to both, but I've never been to TPF. So maybe next year I'll forego Expo and go to TPF. But Expo just it's I've gone to Expo ever since the what was it? The Godzilla launch. So it's been a lot of years. I want to say this is my fifth year at Expo. It's either my fifth or sixth year. I love that event because so many of my so many people that uh are fans of the show go that i that i'm that i'm used to seeing every every time i go there and so we always like tend to hang out in in different areas and play games together and so i love that i love the interaction and being able to not only see them but see some of my content creator peers too so anyways that's it that's all i got hopefully enjoyed this podcast i hope you enjoy your sunday or whenever you listen to this and we will see you On the flip side. See you guys. Thank you.