Welcome to the Collective Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 9th. This is episode 258, and my name is Tony. I am Dennis. Tony, what's been going on in your world? I've been playing Dispatch, which is the new game from Ad Hoc Studios. It is very much in the vein of the old Telltale games. So like Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead. Yeah, The Walking Dead. Very timely reference. Very timely reference and several others. Which makes sense because the studio was founded by a lot of former staffers from Telltale Games. But it's similar to those games as in it is very narrative driven and it's being released episodically. But it is not the same kind of terrible, terrible quick time event stuff. There is some quick time stuff in it, but you can literally turn it off and it's fine. And I turned it off. The actual gameplay loop of the game, when you're not doing part of the narrative stuff, is fun. Because the narrative stuff is the story goes on and you have decisions to make. And depending upon the decisions you make, it changes how the story flows. Okay. But the gameplay loop is you are a dispatcher for a superhero group. so what you do is you have a small team of superheroes you have a certain block of the city and as things that come in requiring hero intervention your job is to dispatch the heroes with the best skill sets to cover things while covering the fact that there is stuff multiple things coming in so you can't just send the whole team to go do one i mean you can't but you're probably going to miss and fail some stuff otherwise so you have to take some chances and balance stuff out and people have to rest. It's an enjoyable gameplay loop. But I think the big thing that really pushes it up above is that the voice acting is really quite good and the narrative, the whole story itself, is really interesting. It is not child-friendly. Well, okay. so it this this is definitely not a game for kids um there's that violence language drugs alcohol sexual situations the whole nine yards it's basically like watching most modern tv at this point okay but yeah but it's been quite enjoyable i've been uh I've been playing it. Uh, it came out late October and I picked it up last week and played the first four episodes. Uh, and then Thursday, the next two episodes came out and I played them and next week, the last two episodes will come out. And I can already say quite confidently that I'll, I will probably go through this game again after I finish it, making different choices. Okay. So, We'll see. Exciting. And have you expanded your horizons in any way? That is the other thing. I've been reading The Expanse. I know I've mentioned it a time or two. I finally am past the point of the TV series because originally I'd only read some of the books. I'd never read all of them. But now I'm past the TV series. So I then started going, well, I'm going to rewatch the TV series to see the differences in the books since it's all fresh in my mind. but I'm forcing myself to only rewatch episodes of the TV series while I'm on a treadmill. Okay. So, uh, I have been, cause, cause typically I've been doing, I've been going to the gym three to five days a week. Uh, and now I'm going like seven days a week so I can watch an episode of the expanse. Cause I don't spend a lot of that time. I'm lifting weights instead of being on the treadmill. So I'm going extra days. Like I was going to go this morning before I came here and I woke up and I'm like, oh, my legs hurt. My knees hurt. I'm so tired. I'm like, and I'm looking at my exercise thing. It's like you need to take a break. You're overtraining. I'm like, fine, I guess. So there, I took a day off. That's it. That's all I've been doing. What have you been up to? Not a lot. I have been working my way through Alan Wake 2 I'm very close now I think I got to the point in the game where it said are you sure you want to continue you will not be able to explore anymore but it also at the same time said would you like to take this opportunity to basically play this DLC which I have as part of the purchase of the game with a side character so I'm actually doing that I think it's called the Lighthouse DLC right now where I'm working as a separate agent who's trying to figure out what happened at one of their facilities. Kind of a lot of this stuff ties into the game Control and the agency, the Federal Bureau of Control, that comes from that Remedy game. So that's kind of what that's about. So that's what I've been doing lately. Plus, I do, because you reminded me, because apparently the hotel was about to be sold out. So I have our reservation for Texas Pinball Festival at the Drury. And then this morning, in fact, I went in and I put in the request for media passes for us. So I will let you know when I find out because Joel with Triple Drain gave me the information how to request the media passes. No, we've never done it that way before. I didn't even remember. I never really knew until we were there this last year that they had them. Right. But that's what Travis was using. so and from looking at it it will allow a little bit of early access maybe during that period like we had or at the very least if they it looks like it's an hour before it opens on the other days so that works again the main the main value to us for such a thing is the ability to kind of knock out the quote-unquote new releases without the lines so that we can actually kind of like provide feedback on the show about them and be more likely to get more than one shot yeah it's because once the show's really going going you get in there and it's just like do i want to sit in line for another 45 minutes to give another play on this game yeah it's just it's a lot of time investment for for a single play whereas you could you know there's other things that you can do there that don't take that that are quicker to get through during when the crowds are there so yeah they're trying to be strategic so anyway we'll see um i mean we've only been at this for about 10 years but I don't know. We might not be big enough for them. Speaking of big enough, how about this pinball section, which looks kind of big in our internal notes, but it's actually not as bad as it might sound. We will go ahead and segue right over into that. I've always heard size doesn't matter. For spooky pinball, I think the only thing that matters is sales, and that's what we're going to start with. That's a good start. So we talked about that Beetlejuice was announced as the game by spooky pinball around our last episode, or on our last episode. They didn't announce it on the last episode, but we mentioned that that would be impressive yeah like bug you don't come on here i like it's been a while since we've done a done a third person and there's a way to do it with this device the switcher that we use to wire it in and and use a laptop and connect a third person and we'll hear it and they'll they'll come in as their own track yeah but i've never done it so uh uh it's just easier to plug in more microphones but i don't think they hey bug if you want to come out to kansas so let me know right we can have you over to record yeah i'm i'm sure the first place that that spooky's gonna come to to talk to you about their stuff is us i you know what maybe probably not but maybe all right so anyway uh they have since then as of october 26th in fact dropped a teaser trailer so that's meant we got a little bit more information about uh beetles it definitely is a teaser. Very, very limited information. You really just see a woman saying Beetlejuice and the game appearing to react. You do get a shot of the back glass with that. I have that internally for us so you can see it. But there is additional detail about the game. So, Beetlejuice is limited to 999 units. It will be $9,999. If you want to purchase, it requires a $2,000 non-refundable deposit. And these are all spoken for through distributors is my understanding from what I've been able to gather. When the game launches and the game officially comes out November 14th, so this is really quite a bit of lead, I think driven by what we talked about last time. There were some distributors that sort of jumped the gun, and then I think Spooky ended up saying something before they had planned to. That's how it feels at least. But anyway, Spooky the day of is going to have a certain number of games for sale. I don't remember how many. It's less than 100. so those in theory are the only ones that are still available without getting on a wait list or buying someone's spot right uh which again we've seen this historically but it's been quite a while since we've seen uh games move without i mean because okay winchester sold out really quick like within a day and a half but people saw the play field when they got to make that purchase right we haven't seen any of that for beetlejuice um there are extras did you want to add something about Beetlejuice? Yeah, I mean, I think it's 100% a sale on theme here for so many people. I don't know, but for some people, I'm sure Beetlejuice is a touchstone. It's a movie that I remember and I watched and it was fine. I don't know that it's a touchstone for me like it is for some people, but there's a certain niche that this really calls to. I'm not surprised that this theme is that popular It's not I've watched it several times But I don't know I think, wasn't there a cartoon? I don't remember Watching the cartoon There was a cartoon That was that weird period of time where there were all sorts of cartoons About stuff that didn't necessarily Make sense to be a cartoon Did Robocop have a cartoon? I don't remember But I remember there was like Like there was like the like there was a John Candy cartoon that was like Camp Candy. And there was the real Ghostbusters cartoon. I remember that. Yeah. And Beetlejuice. And there's just all these different weird or sometimes weirdish tie ins that you wouldn't necessarily think about because you don't really think about Beetlejuice being a thing aimed at kids. And honestly, Ghostbusters really had some scenes in it that didn't necessarily warrant being aimed at kids. But they weren't rated R, so. No. I still could kind of. That's why I wondered about Robocop, because kids should never have been watching Robocop. But there were toys. I remember there were toys. There were toys. Oh, there were so many toys for Robocop. So it's kind of like, oh, guys. But I mean, was there a Robocop cartoon? I don't recall. Anyway, for Beetlejuice Pinball Machine, there are extras as well. I believe the game comes with a default topper. However, you want the awesome topper. Oh, my God, there was. I thought I had seen something about it. So the additional topper for Beetlejuice is $1,599. If you want the butter cabinet treatment, that's another $1,599. And they're also offering custom plaques for $125. So basically, this is a $10,000 game that very quickly can be over $13,000, depending on what you want to do with it. Standard body width, that's been confirmed. Three-flipper layout. And the girl talking to the game is, I guess, an attempt to highlight something that Spooky is emphasizing. this game has a feature called spooky speak that the way the trailer made me feel is it's some sort of way that you can talk like the game has got a microphone and you can talk to have certain things happen that's my suspicion but i don't know that's true or not but but they are advertising spooky speak as a new feature that and not just for this game yay my pinball machine has ai now So what are your overall thoughts? I mean, you've already mentioned the theme is not a touchstone for you, but obviously you understand that some people would have nostalgia for it. Hello, spooky pinball machine. I love spooky. So your thoughts on spooky speak? Please don't have the spooky hit squads come and hunt me down. I'm less curious. All right, I have an intellectual curiosity about how they plan to have it used in other games. But I... I mean, it depends upon what it can do. But man, the hilarity that that could be in tournament play. If it can do... There's things that you can say that will affect game state. Right. right i've wondered i mean the way it looked in the trailer is if you you could if you had this turned on you could say beetlejuice three times and it would start a game that's what my impression was so for home use okay yeah like it's a gimmick though like it long term does anyone care i don't like likewise right but if there was a vocal way to activate say a ball save sure oh that'd be great and that and that'd be hilarious in tournament play well just get just get crowds chanting i i yeah i i'm imagining this is a feature that tournament play would request to be turned off or i don't even know how well it would work in an arcade environment which i mean there's a lot of questions again we don't really have any details on it but that's the latest on beetlejuice uh so when we have our next episode i think we're we'll finally be ready to give some more information if i'm keeping the calendar straight but i don't remember i mean yeah Yeah, I guess. Should be, probably. Maybe. So let's talk about something we can go into. Stern Pinball. All right. They have revealed the Walking Dead remastered. Shocking nobody. But slightly disappointing those of us who were hoping maybe it was actually Tron, even though we knew in our heart of hearts it was absolutely the Walking Dead because we've been hearing this for over a year. Right. I do have a link in the show notes to an article about this with Nap Arcade for those that want to read more and look at some of the photos. Again, only two versions, pricing unchanged, limited edition is at 500 units, price is $12,999, premium is $9,699. Unsurprisingly, this one is Spike 3 driven, so it's got the larger LCD screen versus the Spike 2 systems. As a reminder, Walking Dead was not a, it's not a Spike system at all originally, it's a Sam system game. several mechanical improvements have been made according to stern much like they made some mechanical improvements to metallica the main ones of note in this instance are they've improved the barn door that could be finicky on some of the games bicycle girl ramp which was a common complaint on premiums and le's that i remember from the original and apparently now the well walker scoped has the ability to move independently versus it reacts like my my pro one when you the ball hits the well walker he's kind of hinged he flops around to have movement but only if the ball is hitting him so that you know there's there's that aspect as well another thing the generic uh southern call outs that everyone knows and not so loves uh the one thing that was like you've got it you've got to do better than this uh at the very least get different generic calls no they've actually uh they did actually turn to a couple of cast members um the voices of Michonne and Merle. Merle is Michael Rooker. So that one, you know, Mary Poppins, you know, but with zombies. Yeah. People will be pleased with that because they're both popular characters. It's a definite improvement. Yes. Instead of, because it's not a DMD anymore, we got the LCD. They have done, and their teaser showed this, which I didn't particularly care for, though it was instantly recognizable. And that is they've done 3D rendered art versions of the dots. So that seems to be the approach. I have not seen movie, excuse me, TV show clips in anything. But trailers normally can't use those because there's additional licensing that often has to be satisfied for that. And I haven't seen gameplay out there yet to be able to vet it. Knapp is reporting that Stern took clips from the show, but then they basically drew over them. So they're all artistic interpretations. So there might not actually be literal TV show clips. And then finally, the art. The art on Walking Dead, the original, is not a particularly loved package. In fact, I think it's pretty poor by and large. You look at the play field and you don't see the show at all, other than maybe on the slings. and then the the cabinet had a very zombie theme to it which i i liked better than the it was really the playfield that always bugged me so they've redone all of it this time the playfield still does have zombies on it but uh front and center there is an assortment of some of the more popular cast members rick uh daryl uh glenn and michonne and then the le version has a back glass and at least and a side of the cab where uh daryl's on his motorcycle which becomes has been a very iconic part of the show uh along with some other cast on the on the trans light and then the premium version has the standard kind of silhouette shot with a bunch of people with their weapons and it looks like the governor is at least on one side of the cabinet i'm only looking at the one sides right now so um anyway all of them and the playfield have an orange blue color scheme approach your thoughts on the remaster tony i mean it's a really good game i always like the walking dead uh i think it makes sense to be the one of the games that they would put back out um i gonna i just gonna assume that the improvements are actually improvements mechanically I have to actually see the LCD to see if the differences and the changes are worthwhile as it were the big thing is I don't think the art package is that much better if any better than the original I don't really have a big draw special thing to this art package uh at all yeah the um okay so positives for me yeah i'm gonna agree with you i think the mechanical i'm gonna assume the mechanical improvements are improvements everything that they highlighted i mean the moving well walkers kind of whatever but but the um the improvements to the bicycle girl ramp in the barn door uh But those are areas that were known to be issues. So it's good that they have said that they focused on fixing that stuff up. Likewise, big win on the decision on the callouts, I think, especially having two people. It was a surprise. But just having one would – trust me. There's no way it really could have gotten much worse. I know that's not true, but it feels like it couldn't have gotten worse. I would argue no callouts would have been better. Okay. I would probably disagree, but since I do think people want an audio cue of what to do if they're not looking at the screen. I didn't say no audio cues. I said no call-outs. But the call-outs are things like shoot the left ramp and stuff. Right, but it could just be different sounds of bells. Or even chimes. No, those, nope, I don't agree. I don't agree. I don't know. Those all worked in an era before it will shoot the left ramps. So I would – Shoot hill and hill. I mean, we maybe don't need it that obvious at the start of the game. But, yeah, I would push back on it. I do think they need the call-outs. But the animation, so the 3D rendered art, I agree they couldn't or shouldn't just do the DMDs on an LCD. That would have been a weird choice. That would have been a really weird choice. That would have been a weird choice. But the one that stood out to me is the extra ball shot with the pinball flying through the zombie skull and the eye popping out thing. Like that's the one they showed on the teaser. And 3D rendered art, just – it was underwhelming. And I'm not expecting it to be whelming. So the – You desired to be whelmed. I had it in my head. I had it in my head. Probably foolishly that this was going to be The Walking Dead and the remaster would be the graphic novel. And that's. See, that was my thought originally, too. And so let me transition to the art then, because. Wow. OK. Is it better than the original? Nice. I. Oh, that was heavy. I like. Oh, man, you could feel that it had pressure. I'm going to say yes. just for the play field. I do think the play field, I don't, I don't like this new play field, but I like it more. I never liked the original play field. It's so like the splatters of blood are a nice touch, but it's Brown with red splatters. And the problem I have with it is when you look at it, it looks generic zombie and not the walking dead. At least this makes it clear that this is about the show, the walking dead. Yeah. Finally, the sides of the cabinet and stuff now featuring the cast is fine but orange and blue born identity you know color scheme of you know movie posters of the action era tooth that light it's it doesn't feel at all appropriate obviously it's not at all the art style of the graphic novel which taking the show and doing it in a style like that could have been really cool i've seen some suggest and And I will agree with this, even though I've pushed back against a lot of these black and white with red anniversary additions that Stern keeps doing. This would have been something – Sin City, this thing. Yeah. And black and white it with touches of red. That could be something. So even – and because this is still the AMC property, don't get me wrong. It ain't subtle, the AMC logo on the original game. But this still just stands out a lot, too, in my opinion, where you see this black AMC logo at spots. It's not – the art would never keep me from buying it. But I guess the way I feel is I – like if I had to pick, I want the new play field. I'd probably take the new back glasses, but I'm kind of on the fence about whether I prefer them more. And when it comes to the size of the cab, I'd probably just keep the originals rather than just because the orange and blue just stands out so much on those. And I'm just like, it's so colorful for no obvious reason other than it's pinball. Now, in the images, when I saw the video of the release, they didn't look as oversaturated as the stills Stern put out. So I do think this isn't going to be quite as glaring. Yeah. Like, let's turn it to 11. but you know that's been my joke about pinball is how do you get a pinball buyer on art you just oversaturate everything because that's where tastes are it's just like I need it extreme I need it extreme so I I just I really thought it would be a lot better here's the problem with having I really expected the art to impress me and it just does not overall I would say it's a it's a better put together package i've just i had such higher expectations biased from the graphic like i thought something in the spirit of the of the you know like a comic book and something that stern normally loves to do like comic book style right and this but not like not like this not like this so anyway uh i'm sure the game will be great though i really do enjoy The Walking Dead. It's a great game. Am I going to upgrade to this version? I'm not losing sleep over that decision. Oh, so you are for sure. You're not losing sleep. You've already made the decision. Yeah. You're 100% upgrading. I'm not going to get it. You got your Ellie order in already? I'm not going to get it. No. You know, do you think the Ellies are sold out already since they limited? 500 is pretty small. That is pretty small. That's less than a Winchester. It's entirely possible. But like this art Even though I do like the LE art more Like Daryl on the motorcycle is better than just Genera montage But it's still not I mean again the sides of the game I'm ever only going to see one side Right If I put it on the end row I guess it just depends upon how much Of a Daryl fan you are Yeah I was a Carol fan that was my character My favorite I mean yes But not when we talked about this before. We did. Not when they did the spin a wheel of emotion and decided to break her. I like her in Peak. You are not making my friends into donuts, Carol. That's the Carol I like. So anyway, so that's The Walking Dead. We have emails, Tony. Oh, do we have emails? We have a few emails. So let me go ahead and start with Richard A.'s email. He wrote in. In honor of Walking Dead's original version, I'm going to do this in the Walking Dead voice. Hi, you might have enough pinball topics and discussions for this week, but here are some possible topics for when things get slow. A quick thought on the fall of the empire. Well, although not super exciting, I wonder if it fills a spot for them. I once heard a TV schedule programmer talk about why there are so many NCIS, CSI, Law and Orders and Chicago, whatever. He said those shows are easy sales to advertisers. They help pay and make the other new shows and concepts happen. I wonder if Star Wars is something similar. Maybe Stern knows it will sell a certain number out of the gate. Maybe Stern also knows that over time it will be a steady seller. It may not be the hottest title out of the gate, but it will be a steady title over time. Last episode you were making fun of Juicy Jack a little bit, especially over Toy Story and it being Toy Story 4. Is Juicy Jack taking the blame for licensor demand? Yes. If I held the rights to produce the games, I want to do the whole franchise, but I would not have turned it down either. And I let another company do it. How about ranking the Jersey Jack games, even if you had very little time on certain games? Richard. OK, well, thank you, Richard. Actually, I think some of these are quick enough that that's why I included all of it as discussion topics, because really only the ranking would be very time consuming. me let me let let's start with the toy stick since you opined in while i was busy uh daryling my way through it the so you do blame jersey jack for the toy story decision i do okay why because they as part of doing their job can at least walk away that's always an option they could always walk away i understand why they wouldn't walk away that does make sense but it's a thing that they could have done and i feel like overall while i sold fine and it's a fine game it's not half of what it could have been and if it's a license that walking away to have a chance to come back to later could have made better it would have at least been something that they quite probably discussed but yeah no i'll still blame them for it okay i blame them as well uh maybe for a little bit different reason, but not really. Because, yeah, ultimately it was because of Jersey Jack's own decision making. So I don't know if we've ever discussed this. I don't know how widely public it's been discussed. So I'm not rumor cornering this because I feel like I've heard this information from enough accurate sources. But I will note these are let me just say these. This is alleged. So keep myself safe. So, allegedly, the whole reason why it ended up being Toy Story 4 is because Pat Lawler was doing the design, and he took so long doing Toy Story. It was supposed to be out well before there was a Toy Story 4 movie. Then, when they finally were ready to move forward, that's when the licensor said, oh, well, now that you want to continue to hold this license, we want you to do Toy Story 4. so had they worked on a appropriate time schedule it wouldn't have been four it would have been one and it would have been better but it would have been a better seller for sure whether the game played better or not i don't because actually i think toy story 4 plays just fine like as a game like it's too easy is the problem but that's because they have the the little left uh lane that can be turned on to ball save forever and that's the one spot the ball likes to drain so Right. Anyway, neither here nor there. My point being that it was Jersey Jack's own decisions that put them in that box with Toy Story four before we even get to the maybe you should have walked away or maybe you should have tried a little harder to negotiate and say we still want to do the first one or we want to do all of them. Or, you know, maybe as a compromise, like my impression allegedly is that Jersey Jack didn't fight this after they were told it would now be four. They just they basically accepted it. And so there may have been room for negotiation. Maybe four could have been more prominent in the game, but it had been all of them in some capacity. Don't know that there's no slinky dog ramp, I think, speaks for itself in terms of the outcome. back to his first question his thought about wondering about like follow the empire do you think that um the reason stern went ahead and and and chose it is to fill a particular spot like the spot of the the long steady seller do you think that was the motivation for stern or i think it's a consideration that definitely would have gone in anything tied to that franchise is still going to sell halfway decently. I just feel like there are so many options in that franchise that they could have stepped away from the original trilogy to try something. Because here's the thing. Even if it wasn't the original trilogy, it would have still been a steady seller because it's Star Wars. Yes. So I agree that I think it was factored in. I think Stern knows that Stern, excuse me, that Star Wars has legs. The Steve Ritchie version, Soul. I mean, they had it in production for years and years and years. And the Home Edition even. It's like their best-selling Home Edition because they constantly brought it back. They did comic art versions for both. I mean, pretty obvious. Where I will, one of his questions where I disagree is he wondered kind of in the realm of the TV shows. If Stern does Star Wars to – he used the TV example of how they use shows like NCIS to pay for the new stuff. For Stern, no. Stern – and no offense intended to anyone who's working for Stern, listening. Stern is only commercial. I don't get the vibe like of Hollywood where it's like we have to sell this – we do a blockbuster so we can make some art films. What art pen do they do? They're not doing anything for the love of pinball. They do it to make money. Every game is designed to be profitable. There's nothing. I don't think they did Star Wars to subsidize anything because they aren't doing anything that is designed for one purpose only and to be a creative expression. It's all commercial. Right. That thing is I think that would make more sense if they were kicking out non-licensed games every once in a while. That is a good case in point. Like I can't even get as far as that this is to subsidize experimentation because everything is done super safe. And I'm not saying that's wrong. In fact, if I was an investor, that's why we talked about the last episode. Stern would be the one we would want. Yes, because these are the smart decisions. But there's not like movie making is the one always stands out to me. There's such an art love thing going on. The people who make movies are so passionate about it that it's the only way some of these things get produced and released into theaters is because, especially historically, there were bigger things that paid for a lot of it and paid for the experiments. Well, and we've even heard of the like actors and directors and producers have even said in interviews. Yeah. Part of my contract for this movie was to get backing to do this other movie that I wanted to do. Yes. Yeah. It's like I was in this movie to get support for that movie. But I don't you know, I've never heard anything that would suggest that like John Borg was told. Like if he did a Star Wars, he'll finally get to do the skateboarding pinball machine that he always wanted. Like I've never heard anything like that. Yeah. And we know it's not happening. Right. So that's why I disagree. It's too late. It's too late for a Tony Hawk. It's too late. I don't know. The nostalgia may be stronger. If it was branded. I mean, to be fair. If it was branded, maybe. There is. They are doing remakes of the old Tony Hawk skateboarding video games. That's true. All right. And his last thing was a request to rank the Jersey Jack games against each other. I've actually already done part of this. I did a top five. Actually, this was paywalled over on the pinball show. We did some. Getting behind the scenes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was a while ago. It was kind of in response to a straight down the middle video where they picked the top games. But I didn't rank all of them. So just real quick so people know. Here are the games Jersey Jack pinball has released. They've done. I believe this is in order chronologically with the oldest first. Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, Dialed In, Pirates of the Caribbean, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Guns and Roses, Toy Story 4, The Godfather, Elton John, Avatar the Battle for Pandora, and Harry Potter. So 11. 11 total games so far. um you want to stop at the start at the top of the bottom uh let's start with the bottom okay all right so my this one was and you've already tony's already criticized me a little bit um so he can feel free to continue to do so so for 10th i put wizard of oz um i think it's a solid choice dennis it i disagree with it it yes but it is a very good i mean it's the game that put Jersey Jack on the map. I think a lot. I think many people will disagree with me of putting it at 10th. The reason I did is I have fundamentally found it incredibly unfun to play. I don't like any aspect of the layout. I don't like any of the playfield levels, any of them. Visually, it's an incredible confusing rainbow spectacle, but it's hard to get anywhere in it. And I don't know what I'm doing, which is I respect the former. The latter frustrates me. I just never could get into it. And not a theme that is, you know, being in Kansas, we've been wazzed to death. So anyway, for its technological achievements, it deserves to be higher up on the list. But if I'm ranking, I'm ranking based off of gameplay, really. And I just, I really don't think it's a very fun game to shoot. I'll tell you right now. And listeners, I'm ranking off of personal opinion and feeling. Yes. Okay. So, bottom of the list, Pirates of the Caribbean. Gasp. But that's like a $30,000 game, or maybe it was just $20,000. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Here's the thing. What's the thing? Quite frankly, Stern's version was better. It was more fun. I do agree with you on that. I do. And Pirates is not high on my list. I mean, I'm not even going to touch the whole tease and denial of the triple spinning ring and all of that stuff, because here's the thing that it comes down to the bottom of the day is. It is literally a remake of a game made by another company, and they did it worse. Period. Okay those are good arguments My ninth Oh I should note I not ranking 11th I started 10 because I haven played Harry Potter Oh that valid I refuse to rank Harry Potter until I played it because I ranking off of gameplay That's valid. Yeah. I don't have a single game on it. So mine would have been 10 then. Okay. Yes. So I'm skipping that one. All right. So my ninth one is The Hobbit. Okay. Oh, my gosh. All right. Opposite problem of Woz. This game plays forever. forever that tournament that tournament has scarred you for life yes it has but and i did terrible in that in that game against a person who put up a 30-minute game and this was the launch party for this game and it was ball one it was ball one it was and i did terrible but later on when i didn't have the pressure against one of the best players in the state i also had really long games on it and it's just like the annoying this one's got a mix of things So what you're doing, it's got like all the worst ever things about it. Honestly, this one was so close to being 10th. The issue is because I have so much more time on Hobbit, it frustrates me even more. All right. Smog is not a bash toy. You can't touch him. His head's spinning around. He's, I guess, saying stuff. It doesn't really matter. You can't hear anything over the clicking of those drop targets. Oh, look, they're independently controlled. Cared nobody ever. Click, click, click. So you had that. Oh, you remember the worst part of Medieval Madness? The trolls? Let's have lots of trolls. There's trolls everywhere. And in this game, they're up all the time. All the time they're up. The middle ramp, baby's first middle ramp. Nobody can miss that ramp. The flippers, both flippers could not be working. You would hit that ramp. That's how that ramp is. And not to mention the Hobbit movies, not good. Not good. This was a case – this was like the 90s Williams where they would guess and be like, I bet this will be a big hit. And they're like, oh, no, we've got Johnny Mnemonic and we don't know what we're going to do. Can we get out of it sort of thing? It's so – it's just taste the rainbow, which is a common thing with JJP with their color. Like they hide behind the RGB lights. We have RGB. Yes. There's still people who get excited about RGBs for no obvious reason. But, oh, my gosh. I'm arguing this a lot more than Wizard of Oz. I probably should have put it at 10th, but I mean, layout wise, it shoots better than Woz. That's why I ended up putting it up here. I don't like how this plays. I don't like the toys. I don't like the theme. I don't like how easy it is. But as a shooter goes, you're going to get somewhere on it at least. So that's why it's 9th. Anyway, I went on longer than I should have about that one. What's your 9th game? Ditto. Okay. It's just what it is. I cannot make that argument better than you already have. But, yeah. Well, my eighth is Pirates, so I had it pretty low. I, you know, most of the time was on the prototypes where they've done the changes. But with the final version and everything, again, layout-wise, I just didn't really enjoy shooting it. The ship, the rocking ship, it's – like visually it's interesting, but, you know, I don't know. I feel like theme immersion got in a little bit of the way of enjoyability, but one of the things I do want to ding it on. Maybe part of the theme immersion is we needed to drink more rum before playing. Perhaps. I completely agree with you. The Stern Pirates is a way better game. Oh, yeah. I really like Stern Pirates. I'm a little surprised I've never owned it as fun as it is. but I also want to criticize this was the one where I feel this was the game where I started to embrace the notion that and it's not been true for all of the games but Jersey Jack felt like they started to run into this issue where we're going to have code that's a mile long and an inch deep and the case in point for me with this was like the 22 characters I remember this was the prototypes at the shows the lines were so long not because people were playing this game forever they were busy reading the text on every character to decide which is the proper one to play and what a shock when the game finally got into people's homes with over 20 characters there were right answers and there were a bunch of wrong answers because it was not balanced in any way pirates is i don't i'm amazed it commands what it does i think they made a thousand of them that's why i'm surprised it's not like they made a hundred of the things. I think they made a thousand units across the trim models. In my mind, it is either, A, those people have never played Stern's Pirates, so they don't realize how superior it is. Or, B, they are one of those peoples that just have a love for the art, for some reason. Or they could be just the pure J.J.P. people. This also was a good example of jjp when they don't get good licensing assets so you got you get a lot of uh johnny depp's back right walking on beaches and stuff because they just couldn't do a lot with the film but anyway um what was your eighth was okay yeah i really just swapped was and and and Pirates with you. I just, Woz is not a great game. And it generated the hilarity of having like every possible edition. I'm waiting for the Wicked Witch of the West Left Big Toe edition. Wicked theme ones. Isn't there another Wicked movie coming out? There is another Wicked, but that'd be a whole other set of licensing they'd have to get. Because isn't Wizard of Oz I don't Is Wizard of Oz still in license? Or is it open now? I would assume it's reached public domain I would think it reached public domain But Wicked, I doubt Wicked has That's true, good point My seventh is Godfather Okay I don't have a lot of time on Godfather Here's the thing I have Godfather this high up Because Everything else is that bad? Well, kinda, but the layout's okay I think the layout's all right. I remember when it came out, I think they overemphasized a lot of the, like, this has got 26 return paths. It was kind of like we're celebrating some stuff that maybe isn't necessarily worth celebrating. I think maybe that's something you put on the flyer but not necessarily lean a lot into. Pretty cool topper, though, with a little Tommy Guns, right? Yeah. Loud stuff. But again, we don't play the topper. And they might have been a little loud. It was loud. And I think the concept for the rules here was actually, of all the games we've covered so far, was the best idea behind the rules. The idea of, okay, we're going to do a territory taking over risk sort of thing, or the Mafia games. That's how they work. All that was, I think, pretty good. And it shot, I thought, shot relatively well. The fountain, nobody cares. like then again it was like here's this rgb fountain that was like supposed to i don't know there's this fountain i'm just like it's rgb i love the rgb i'm just not i'm just not just just like it was 13 years ago an rgb something special yeah they had stuff like the punch out stuff with the video modes which was intro you know it's clever but i you know again it's not that's not pinball per se i well i guess you it's just a way to express i here's the thing the theme is terrible oh it's so bad like wolf i can't believe this was decided and i love the godfather movies like they're really good not third one but but godfather godfather part two like you if you are into cinema you should see those movies but yes this is like i still remember all the jokes i made about like what's next citizen kane the pinball like like there's just some things that are not for pinball And Godfather was one of them, which is why the gameplay is feels like it's not at all related to the clips. They have clips from the movies and it's like I'm not in the world of the movies when I'm playing that. I feel like I'm playing a mafia video game while watching Godfather and it doesn't work. It just feels disconnected. So it's not that they failed at the thing they normally succeed in the world under glass. I didn't feel like I was in the movie of the Godfather playing Godfather. except for the screen. Right. I have Godfather ranked the exact same place you do for similar reasons. The only differences that I'm going to put in is not a difference so much as an expansion on the theme talking is the ideas were good. And I can think of gangster-related games that would have been a better theme cover. The Untouchables would have been better. one of my favorite face would have been better i am a hundred percent convinced that this game happened only because of the slash guitar version of the theme i wasn't gonna mention that one but uh i i don't i i assumed godfather honestly i assumed I have assumed that Godfather happened because the billionaire ownership insisted on it. Oh, yeah. No, that would make sense. And whether that was because of Slash or not, I have no idea. But this feels like a decision that you got ordered by corporate to do it. And last episode, when we talked about it, I flat said that I would ride or die JJP because, while Stern is the correct answer, I would ride or die JJP because I would be doing the exact same thing to them. I would be forcing them to make my stuff. except for I think my choices would be better than this one. But that being said, if you do see one, I do encourage you to play it because it actually shoots pretty well. And I think that the rules, by and large, from what I've experienced with them, are good for the game. Like, the game's not a bad game. It's more – it doesn't feel right in a lot of ways. That's why I have it a little below half. But it's actually fairly high up the list at this point. I think it could really do with a re-theme. Yeah. I guess basically because there are 11 games. Oh, man. You know what it would be good as? Didn't even think about it. Saints Row or GTA. I still think they're sold more as good fellas than any of that. That's very valid. But I did have enjoyed Saints Row. No, maybe GTA. Maybe that had flipped it, but I don't know because so many people have played Grand Theft Auto. Right. All right. My sixth game is Guns and Roses. unfortunately most of my time has been on the standard edition which didn't fully give me the proper experience so the reason why it's kind of at the halfway-ish point essentially just below since i've thrown harry potter out it's a little bit below half is i don't like the geometry on this game uh but again most of that's from playing the standard so much uh the songs had different again there were right songs to play versus other songs so just going like and this is common with like stern has had this happen to uh with kiss and stuff but uh which is a little bit frustrating uh and this game is multiball city like several of their games are multiball city but nothing to me is the stereotype of that mantra as guns and roses which the first plunge i had uh like within In 15 seconds, I had a multiball the first time I ever played it. And I was just like, this is too much multiball. However, what a theme experience. What a light show. And I don't normally praise light shows, but capturing that concert feel, nobody has done it better than this. And the fact that they had full licensure access is really obvious with this game. You have the entire discography. And I do like their version of Live and Let Die. and the light integration with the music on this, I feel was maybe an underappreciated turning point. I can't really say that in the sense that this game sold super well for a lot of reasons, but some of those were driven by the fact that the pandemic was underway. That being said, while I don't care for the geometry and I don't think the rules are at the top of JJP's game, this is, I would argue, their best theme immersive game they ever made. So Elton John is pretty good, but I think this one has just they have all the boxes checked. So that's why I have that sixth. What is your sixth? Avatar. Because once again, the Stern version is better. You see it, don't you? Yes. Yeah. I've played Avatar only a handful of times. it's possible that if I spent a bunch of time and went deeper on it that it would be a higher rated game but what I have played of it just has never really grabbed me the whole I don't know maybe it is just my whole why are you remaking something that's already been made but it just doesn't do it for me this is interesting so I went ahead of time to rank things and I've apparently made a mistake and I don't have Avatar in my list I saw it when I was looking at my list. Do I have something twice? You do. You have Guns N' Roses twice. Okay. I typoed it. Okay. All right. Guns N' Roses is not sixth. I see where I was supposed to have said it. Thank you. All right. Well, my actual sixth is Avatar. Yeah. It's Avatar. I actually thought that the layout – I don't know why I mistakenly typed Guns N' Roses twice. Okay, so we'll get back to Guns N' Roses really, really quickly because it was almost right there. So the reason why Avatar is, I think the geometry is a little more interesting than Godfather, so I want to give it credit there. I have no idea what's going on with it because all the stuff is straight up from the second movie and all the statements like, you're going to access the ba-da-da-da-da. Nobody cares. I don't know what the ba-da-da-da-da is. Also, the game is held back by that stupid Kung Fu grip knife that moves. Like, it's punished for that. Like, why did you put that in? Like, okay. Yeah. No, it definitely does not have. That movie is a thing. Even the original movie is a thing that it was the big 3D spectacle, but when you sit down and look at it as an actual movie, it's not enjoyable to me. and I have not even bothered to see the second one. And yeah, the machine has no interest in me. But hey, you know what? It's better than Pirates of the Caribbean. All right, my fifth. So now we're getting up into the better games. But my issue, and I think you have a similar situation, is I don't really love a lot of JJP games, quite frankly. So I'm going to just qualify that now. if it wasn't obvious from the criticisms. My fifth is Toy Story 4. Guns N' Roses is going to be fourth, just so people know where it's at. So with Toy Story 4, it's the wrong movie to have done. It's like the worst choice you could have made. Like maybe you could argue Toy Story 2 would have been the worst choice if you had to do a standalone, but one in three would have been better than four. So wrong movie, way too easy. The Duke Caboom ramp is pretty cool though. Layout feels pretty good. I actually like later era Pat Lawler to his early stuff, and I think his layout works pretty well. And the rules, actually, I like the rules on Toy Story 4. I think they've got good rules. It's really just hampered by that they went with the wrong theme. It plays a little easy for my taste, but it's okay. So it's my fifth. And my fourth is Guns N' Roses that I mentioned. Okay. What were your fifth and fourth? I'm going to go with Wonka on fifth. and for me it's just a bit of i was always burned by the art to the point where i hate looking at the machine it feels like a throwback to everything that is wrong with the art that i thought we'd gotten away from and when it comes to actually playing and shooting the game it's not that enjoyable. I know some people love it. I know some people who consider it JCP's best game. And I think they're wrong. But for me, it's number five. And then my number four is Toy Story 4. Because, yes, it's the wrong theme, but it still does have some things that are fun. It's got some very serious fun moments in that game. My third is Wonka. I just like the layout a little bit more than Toy Story 4. Toy Story 4's bow peep loops kind of piss me off, I guess. Wonka feels better for me to shoot. I like the rules on Wonka. Okay, our package is pretty bad for what, you know, it's too much cut and paste Wonka. But shooting-wise and rule-wise, I think it's a really solid game. So that's why it's third for me. Yeah. I'm going Guns N' Roses for third. Okay. Because of the theme integration. and as much as I dislike the giant pile of multiballs, the theme integration, the music, the light show, all that stuff you talked about, it's all true. It does things. Guns N' Roses hits high points that not very many machines have hit, and if only it was a little more fun to play and wasn't quite so multiball stacked, I think it could be higher. Yeah, I could see that. But thematically, it plays just – it is a beautiful, beautiful note thematically. My number two is Dialed In. For a long time, this was the only JJP I ever even considered owning. Yeah. Hate the theme. Don't like the art very much. Rules are easy to understand It fun geometry I like the little center thing that you shoot into Yeah some card shot pretty hard at least with a cliffy on it But the game, I think the game is a decent length player overall. So it doesn't, it's, I think it's really good. It's just too bad the theme is terrible. Yeah. Dialed In is my number two. It was my favorite J.J.P. game for a very long time. And number one is going to be Elton John. I think it's hard to argue. Yeah. It's a, so really good theme immersion. I don't put it quite on the same scale as guns and roses on the theme immersion. Right. I'd still feel like guns and roses feels more like the concert experience. That being said, what a player, uh, Steve Ritchie did a really good job with that layout. Yeah. It uses a lot of the Steve Ritchie tropes, but whoa, did they need it? Oh, and it doesn't hurt that Elton John was finally where JJP fixed their flipper issue. And maybe that's because Steve insisted it. Right. But, uh, so it plays very well. It does. much more aggressively than what you would normally associate a JJP with. So definitely try one out. Even if you're not a big Elton John fan, I'm not a big Elton John fan. I thought that he was a very odd musical style choice for pinball. It does work in the pin, though. It does. It works really well. And like I said, I'm in the same place. I agree with you. I think Guns N' Roses is a slightly better thematic tie-in. But overall, Elton John is such a great player that it ticks all the boxes. Okay. All right. Well, thank you for the rank game. So we've done that and it took up a whole huge chunk of time. So we got two more emails in pinball. They're both pretty short. Michael W. wrote in. Hey, guys, I'm getting caught up on episodes. I was just listening to your Winchester episode. It's not Winchester that I want to talk about, but it's your spooky comments. the games that Dennis all listed as good were not designed by the Luke and Bug team. They were designed by Ben and Hilton. All of the meh layouts were Bug and Luke. It is the reason I did not preorder Beetlejuice, because I don't know who had designed it. FranchiArt is going to be awesome, and I hope that they have grown as designers enough to give us a really great game. Can't wait to see it, though. Cheers, Mike. Well, thank you, Mike. Yeah, I should have probably looked up, like, what's the common denominator about the things that I, the layouts that I like. Okay, so he was pointing out that there are designer differences that I was not really thinking about. Yeah, I guess we kind of always think of spooky as kind of a monolith. Yeah, I just historically – it's not like they haven't advertised their designers. Right. I just – Don't think about it. Yeah, I haven't been connecting the dots on it. No, I think he brought up a very valid point. Yes. So we also have an email from Jay. Jay wrote in to say – this is going to be about Stern, though. Hello, Tony and Dennis. I just wanted to clarify the fix that I posted on Pinside for the Death Star ramp issue. It sounds crazy and drastic, but it really is only removing the edge width of a dime from the guide. It's very little material, but just enough to be a problem as the guide deflects the ball. Our game suffered from eight out of ten shots being rejected prior to the fix. Now it shoots fine. Only emailing you because I listened to today's podcast and heard you say someone wanted to dremel one-fourth of an inch of it. it's not that much and it's only only has to be even with the catch ramp behind it stern should offer a fix but our game is a location game and we get a lot of complaints about it and fixed it asap i make a lot of ramps and wire forms and saw the issue as soon as i looked at it whoever the supplier is for that part is off a few thousandths of an inch hopefully they fix it for owners great podcast never miss it thanks jay well thank you jay i do want to note and i did write back to jay on this because I went back and checked when he wrote this. My statement that I made on the show was not about his post on Pinside. It was, as I mentioned, it being something I saw on Discord, and I found the post I saw. It wasn't on our Discord. It's another pinball Discord I'm on. But that person on Discord did, in fact, say they were thinking about opening up their Death Star by one-fourth to one-half of an inch. So now maybe they were thinking millimeters or maybe they were just like the desktop. It's got to look. We ain't just dropping things on one press. OK, we're got we got to drop an app, an app right in that that. It was funny in my head. I really hope it was. It was. All right. So that's it for pinball. So jumping into video games, Richard also wrote in separate email from the one we did with the game. Just a note, he had a small virtual pinball update in terms of releases. Zacharia, they have released three new things. One is a four-table pack that's based off a video game, Postal Brain Damaged. Have you played that? I played the first game I can think of called Postal briefly. I didn't get into it, though. I've not played Postal Brain Damaged, though. They have a new deluxe table called Aerobatics Deluxe. I have played the virtual version of the original Aerobatics, which is an actual Zocaria game. And then they now have an EM Plus pack. It's called Pack One. It's four tables for eight bucks. And the idea is to honor the mechanical roots of pinball. We're exploring how far imagination can go when old school meets high tech. That's from Zocaria, from the video game maker. So Nintendo news. Okay. Yeah, no. Nintendo had a whole bunch of news in the last couple weeks popped out there. Pokemon Legends ZA sold more in a week than their last full-up Pokemon game did. Half of them were Switch 2 sales. They've already got DLC slated to come out in December. We knew about that before launch even. They've been talking about that DLC from the beginning. So far, the Switch is 10,000 sales, the original Switch, from bypassing the DS to become the biggest selling machine Nintendo's ever put out. Wow. And they are 6 million sales behind bypassing the PS2 to become the best, which is the best selling Sony console. And just for if you're wondering, they have 150 million units sold of the Switch. PS2's at 160. wouldn't that mean that I'm sorry 154 million I was going to say my math tells me that's 10 million that's a typo because they were like at 154.1 and the DS is 154.2 million and that's from the end of September so Switch quite possibly could have bypassed the DS by now because Switch sales are still high even with the Switch 2 out So, also, we spoke a few weeks ago, a few weeks ago, a few episodes ago. It was probably actually during the summer sometime that Nintendo had that, like, absurd patent about sub characters that came out and controlling sub characters and all of this other. The head of the U.S. patent office has ordered the organization to reexamine that patent. it's also come out that nintendo attempted to push the same patent through in japan and in march the japanese patent office was like no this is dumb and apparently part of the reason for the pushback on the u.s patent office is uh several cases have been brought up like three other patents that existed before this patent that cover similar things by other companies. Interesting. Well, not too surprising either. No, I think that, but this definitely falls into the period where I think game mechanics like this should be patentable. I mean, I patented the game mechanic where you roll a dice and something happens based upon what the dice say. That's the level of game mechanics you're talking about here. I think allowing a patent to go through on something that way is just absurd. EA, we talked previously about their big buyout, and there's been a lot of concerns. And they put out a discussion, an announcement, and they talked to their internal staff about it, saying that they are going to retain full creative control. Their headquarters will remain in Redwood City, California. And that this buyout will not affect in any way the freedom that they have in making games and what is allowed to be in the games. There's no way it will be affected. Totally not. Great. It's perfectly fine. I'm sure they're all feeling great now. Yeah. That answered all the questions. Yeah, I mean, definitely. There's definitely no way that the people who own them are going to tell them what you can and can't do. Yeah, they would never. They'd never. Obi-Wan would never. Red Dead Redemption 2. Rockstar's, I would go ahead and say Rockstar's best Western game. Yes, I would agree. Well, people would agree for more than that. It is the fourth best-selling video game of all time now, period. The only games above them is Minecraft, GTA V, Go Rockstar, two in the top five, good for you, and Wii Sports. And it is not very far behind Wii Sports. It is like a few thousand sales behind Wii Sports. It's fun. Once you get past the intro, the first couple hours can be a bit slow. Yeah. Some people do. Once it kind of loosens up. Yes, exactly. Yeah. But they're doing a lot of narrative building in the first part. Right. Which is important to me. But this is some good news to come out because there's a lot of bad news. because Rockstar announced that GTA 6 is being pushed back again, this time to November of 26. So earlier in the year, it was pushed back until spring of 26. Now it's been pushed to November of 26. Take-Two, which is the publisher that Rockstar is a subsidiary of, took a pretty heavy stock hit on the announcement. Well, that's quite another delay. I mean, it's not like a week. No, no, yeah. It is an enormous delay, and their stock hit was massive, which means that apparently they think that the six-month delay for polish is worth it. I mean, it's been 13 years since GTA V came out. Yeah. So we are definitely approaching Duke Nukem Forever levels of distance between games. Sure, except this wasn't in development the entire time. True. Like Duke was supposedly. Right. And here's the thing. I don't think GTA 6 at its worst could be anywhere near as bad as Duke Nukem Forever. It was a bad game. But, yeah, this has definitely taken a big hit overall. Rockstar Games has also been hit because they did a small layoff pattern. They laid off 30 or 40 people who coincidentally happened to be the 30 or 40 people who were involved in the unionization attempts at Rockstar. But that's not why they were fired. No, no, no. They were terminated for gross misconduct and leaking information about GTA 6. That's why they were fired. It had nothing to do with the unionization activities. Okay. Okay. So they're not union busting. Yeah. They're definitely not union busting. Because that never happens in video games. Yeah. Rockstar themselves haven't even commented at all about it. Take two, his lawyers came out to talk about it. They're the ones who dropped the gross misconduct stuff because it was the initial reports were going real bad, real fast. Yeah, no. It showed up on a lot of my gaming Reddits. Yeah. And the thing is nobody believes it's anything but union busting. I don't. It's 100% union busting. You know what? If they fired three or four people who happened to be part of the unionization attempts but not fired everybody, but they fired 40 people who were all the major people pushing the unionization attempts, man, that's real. Yeah, it sounds a little bit like the gross misconduct was thinking you could have a union. Right? There was a – I mean, after all, what they need to do, they don't have to worry about unions if they just replace everybody with AI. Well, you know, with all of this stuff, it makes me wonder if the GTA 6 delays are in part related to discontent amongst the staff and these union efforts. It could be. It could be part of the ever-popular crunch. And it could be entirely that they were leaning towards a spot where to hit their original window in the spring. they were going to have to go into a six months of crunch to do it. But there's no official word other than for polishing reasons. So we'll see. Square Enix, who is all about getting aboard the latest train, look how well NFTs worked for them. And they love their NFTs and their blockchain games. They've done so well for them. It's been great. made in their announcement that they are planning to have 70% of their quality assurance handled by AI by the end of 2027. so and and and they also wanted to make very clear very clear uh the the like 1200 layoffs they announced two hours after making the announcement about the ai had nothing to do with the ai okay it was completely coincidental different non-qa jobs different non-qa jobs what's interesting is Square Enix is also part of a group of Japanese game producers that have put together I don't know, I don't think it's moved to the point of being a suit yet but they've banded together and they have requested that I didn't write down the name of it, there's a specific programming AI that has been being developed by a company here in the U.S., and they've all specifically demanded that their games not be used in the training of the AI. So that's a thing that they signed on to just ahead of announcing that they're going to have AI do all of their stuff. Okay. I will say, with the AI doing their quality assurance work, most of the layoffs they announced were actually in their U.S. and UK divisions because they are reconsolidating most of their stuff to Japan. Okay. So they're reconsolidating everything for being spread out around the world to just their primary Japanese offices. And while we're still talking about the joys of layoffs, Amazon's huge round of layoffs that were announced just a few weeks ago, It has now been fully outed that it has included getting rid of most of their gaming division, almost everything. Pretty much everything in development is gone. Their New World MMO that launched not that long ago will have no more updates. They haven't announced the closure of the servers yet, but they are no longer updating it. and it sounds like once again a Lord of the Rings MMO has ceased to exist before release because the one they were working on is gone. Not surprising. No, not really. We'll just have to see. It's been a rough year. We keep saying it like every year we say it. It's been a rough year for layoffs in the video gaming industry. But it has been. It's been really bad this year. I thought a couple years ago when EA laid off everybody because they set their highest profit margin ever, but it was like a quarter of a percentage point lower than they thought it should be, so they laid off 20,000 people. I thought that was bad. But this year, the sheer number of people that have been laid off and the sheer number of them tied directly into AI taking over their roles has been a pretty impressive number going into the year. So that's where we're sitting. We've got some good times coming soon in video games, though. There's all the big game awards coming. We don't already know who's going to win almost all of those at this point. and the real interesting thing, I think, is going to be to see what the actual sales numbers, especially of the Switch 2, PS5, not the Xbox. We already know the sales numbers of the Xbox are going to be garbage. Right. But the Switch 2 and the PS5 are going into this holiday season, given the economy, because typically this is the best time for those sales. so that's what I got nice and simple alright well we might have more Beetlejuice news hopefully I would hope we would so anyway if you want to reach out to us you can email eclecticgamerspodcasts at gmail.com or you can go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast or you can support the show for as little as a dollar a month at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers or go on twitch and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and we'll be back in a couple weeks Until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.