Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. It is March 27th, 2016. This is episode 5 and this is our Texas Pinball Special. As always, I'm Tony, joined by... Dennis. Hello, everyone. And we are going to spend this entire episode talking about the Texas Pinball Festival. We were originally going to record at Texas, but, you know, it was just, there was too much going on. We were too busy and by the time we got back to the room, we were too tired. So, we just kind of put it off until now, but here we go. All right. What we're going to go ahead and do in terms of covering this is we're going to start with some general thoughts that we had about the show. We're going to talk about the Texas Pinball Festival Wizards Tournament, the new releases that Tony and I were able to play and what our thoughts were on those, and thoughts about any of the other games, the displays, and just basically the other items that consist of a festival of this magnitude. So, Tony, do you want to get started with just sort of general thoughts about the Texas Pinball Festival? Yeah, sure. Just as a general thing, I enjoyed it quite a lot. I didn't have any major issues with anything. It was a lot of fun, all in all, other than the construction on the road coming in and heading out took us way longer to shut up to drive down there. But otherwise, it was a pretty good time. I liked the venue. I liked the hotels. I liked that our hotel wasn't that hard to get to the venue. I mean, it was just a run across the street. And I'd been worried about that when I saw it was a four-lane street we were going to have to cross. I was worried that we might have to drive anyway, even though we were right there. But we didn't. And it was nice. Even on the colder days, it wasn't much of an issue. Yeah, I agree. We couldn't get into the main venue because we registered too late for that. And my understanding is there wasn't a very big window to be able to get in at that point anyway. So being across the street was excellent. Overall, my experience with the festival was my first pinball festival to go to was very positive. I think overall it was structured very well. One of the things I think I'd go ahead and start with is noting is that they did arrange to have food trucks. And there were a variety of them that were always just right outside of the hotel. And I thought that was awesome because they were easy to get to. It was affordable. The lines weren't bad, so they were able to actually serve at a decent speed. And so that's what we relied on other than we had lunch with a couple of friends of ours who live in Dallas. So other than that, we relied on the food trucks for any of the meals that we ended up getting, especially because there wasn't complimentary breakfast at the hotel we were at. So that was our sustenance reliance, and it met all of my needs at least. So I was really pleased that they had arranged for those because it was extremely convenient. It was extremely convenient. I mean, I've gone to a lot of conventions. This is my first pinball-related convention, but it's not my first gaming-related convention or my first fan-related convention. I've gone to a whole bunch of them, but this is the, uh, the, the, the food trucks were good variety and it definitely made things easier. You didn't have to go leave the venue and go hunting for an hour or two, trying to find some place that had food or, or trying, or just, you know, living off a, I've gone to the conventions where it's just living off granola bars and stuff until you can get at leave and grab something in the morning or something like that. It worked out really well. And the food was good. It was really good. Yeah. Yeah, everything I had was good. So credit to the vendor, the food vendors for that. I didn't take note of what their names were, but it seemed to change up depending on what was going on. So, you know, I used different trucks each time. I did too. I actually, I'm trying to, it started with the G, the something or other deli. It was a New York deli was the one, it was the first one we ate at, and that one was really good. and the other one I just cannot remember off the top of my head what it was. Well, anyway, so kudos to Frisco area, Dallas area for having such quality food trucks and credit to the organizers for the Texas Pinball Festival for arranging for that. They did not disappoint. Venue overall, the hotel facility, they were housed at the convention center they were at, I thought was nice. The ballroom area where the main setup was, I think, worked really well. It didn't feel overcrowded other than a few bottleneck areas. So the entrance in particular, I did feel, was pretty congested. That's not too surprising given that people who weren't pre-registered kind of had to funnel through there to be able to get their wristbands and pay their fees. but overall when like going around and playing the games even though it was packed it didn't feel like i was a little sardine trying to navigate my can from from uh game to game so overall i think it worked out really well i don't know how much bigger they can get using that space i bet there's probably potential because they're uh the layout can obviously change quite a bit depending on what they want to do with the games so i'm sure there's potential there before having to move to a larger venue, but I don't know. I've read that there is some talk that given the growth levels, they might have to start looking for another place. I would say they're not there yet, but I mean, I think the count on the pinball machines was somewhere in the over 330. And I think if you threw in the arcade games, they were around 400 units available for play or display. And given that, I just, I don't know how much more they think they're going to get and just what the threshold is when they're going to be like, okay, that's going to be too many people with too many machines. We're going to have to try and find a bigger location because that location is pretty large. So I don't know what's available in the Dallas area, but for the time being, at least I think it works just fine. Yeah, it does. I'm not sure what's there. I mean, I've been to a lot of really big conventions and with big conventions, it seems like once you hit a certain threshold, it doesn't matter how big the place is, it still feels really tight and hard to get around. And this didn't feel that way at all. I enjoyed it. The flow around the floor was pretty nice. You never felt like you were really stuck anywhere unless you were waiting in line to play a game. But for the most part, it was just nice. You could go anywhere you wanted with very little slowdowns. Yeah, I think the layout was all right. Now, in terms of travel, in terms of being able to walk around the room, I think the layout was really good. But the thing is, from an outsider perspective showing up there, there didn't seem for me to be any rhyme or reason to the layout. I'm guessing that it was an arrangement, so like a lot of games were displayed by pinball clubs or leagues or something, and I think they were all clustered together. But from an outside standpoint, it was difficult to know, like if you wanted to try and find a particular game because things weren't arranged by era or anything so it wasn't like there was an em section and an early solid state section everything was all interspersed and i have mixed feelings about that uh the good thing i think that that setup allows for is most of the time there were no lines for em machines so anything pre-1980 generally you could hop right on and you didn't have to wait whereas almost everything that had a dmd display They usually had someone on it. Now, usually the line was only one person deep. You just had to wait for that player to get done. But you did have to wait. So with the spacing arrangement, you could be on an EM machine and keep an eye on a more modern machine that you want to try and then just hop on over once the player was done with their turn. But on the other hand, I found, especially looking back at the photos that various people took that I completely overlooked games that I don't recall ever seen at the festival. And it was just given the layout. If I had something in mind, I wouldn't be able to go, well, let's see, where would a Johnny Mnemonic be? I would have no idea. There wasn't like a map or anything provided with identification about where the games were. And I'm not surprised about that. But I found it confusing. I also found the vendor placement confusing. All the vendors weren't grouped together. They were interspersed throughout the hall. And I'm used to there being vendor halls with conventions where all the vendors are arranged in one particular location. So when it's time to shop, you know exactly where you want to go. And I found it odd that they were kind of placed row after row after row and spaced out like they were. There weren't a lot of vendors. But again, you had to have someone tell you or you just had to look everywhere to be able to identify where things were. I didn't have any layout to know, oh, okay, if I want to buy a pinball nightlight, where do I go for that? Where do I go to find the double danger shirts? You had to just go around. There was not just one section that you would be able to figure all that out easily. So those were a couple of layout issues I had that I think could probably be managed in a different way, not necessarily a better way, but could be managed in a different way. Yeah, I like the way that they interspersed the games. so it wasn't just I feel like that if it was all DMDs here, all early solid states here, all EMs there the DMD section would be a lot more congested and be a lot harder to get around and be more of a pain so I actually think having everything interspersed worked really well and part of me I think a lot of how the setup was was probably based upon well, we're here and we've got games. All right, we've got holes up front. Go and put you in. And they just stacked things up as they came in. It was my guess of how they did it. I could be wrong. They could have had an entire plan, but I think they just filled in a lot. And I didn't have any problem with that. Now, the vendors, I could see stacking all the vendors together in one place instead of having them spread out quite like they were. Because I know it took me a while before I found, like, Double Danger pinball spot. or spot and they were somebody I was specifically looking for. And it took me a while to find them. It is kind of weird. Everything else, every other big convention I've been to, the vendors have all been locked in one little spot out of the way. And then everything else was took up the rest of the space. But there was the vendors that were there besides just the major game vendors, the smaller people that were fun, the people with the nightlights, whose name I can't remember off the top of my head. And I should have taken notes besides just their nightlights. They had a lot of really cool game room accessories and lights and stuff to put up on your wall. I liked all of them. They looked really good. I really liked that place. And, of course, Double Danger. Double Danger had great shirts and pens and stickers and everything else. I know I bought a couple things there. I mean, they've got a great selection. Yeah, I think the vendors that they got were very appropriate. Obviously, there were a lot of vendors that were oriented towards parts and mods, which isn't something I spent a lot of time with personally. So those weren't of interest to me, but I understand why they would be of interest to a lot of people at the show. And then they did have a lot of decorative shirts, things along those lines, which kind of, I think, helped promote pinball and can give you a kind of pinball ambiance to your home without having to invest in machines themselves. So it was a really good selection. And they did what I call the – and I'll use air quotes – the back wall. The back wall areas did tend to be vendors. It's just they weren't the only locations with them, so you actually did have to check the rows, and there just wasn't really any guidance to know. So you had to walk around and look. It wasn't overwhelming or anything. It's just – it's something I thought was kind of odd. But the only other thing I'd note generally about the festival was – and this, again, is just something I wish. I sure wish that the free play floor opened up earlier than they did. So it was a 10 a.m. open on Saturday. I think it was due to the world record attempt on the number of people simultaneously playing pinball that they wanted to go for. And then it was 9 a.m. on Sunday. And on Friday, I believe it started at 5. You know, it just seemed a little late to me. I would have liked maybe an 8 a.m. open on the Saturday, Sunday days. I understand the Friday day being the later time that it was, but it would just been more convenient. But that was just because when I was up and ready to go and start doing things and hoping to beat crowds. So I imagine a lot of people are probably hung over or something and don't want to do it. But just personally, I kind of wish it was opened up earlier. I'm less I was less appealing to me how late they had it open than it was how early they had it open. Yeah, I'm a morning person. And I mean, obviously, I woke up. I was the first one up every day, but I think having an open earlier would be nice for me. But I know that for the most of the people who actually attend, the later open works better because most people weren't leaving until, you know, right at close at one, and then most of them probably went out drinking and partying and room parties and everything else. So I can see it both ways. I would have liked it to open a little earlier just because, you know, I'm a, oh, I went to bed at midnight. I'm going to wake up at 4 a.m. Oh, I went to bed at 1. I'm going to wake up at 4.30 a.m. type guy. So that's just how I how I roll. But I know not not everybody's like that. So but all in all, I had no real complaints. I mean, everything is, you know, this is our stuff. Super, super minor. Yeah, this is all this is all what I would consider the sort of tweaks. And a lot of these tweaks that may please me would probably not please other people. But that's really all I can critique on the broad broadly. I think it was very well run. I got a lot of opportunity and I got to play a lot of stuff, so that was a lot of fun. Yeah, I've been to a lot of conventions that were way, way worse run than this and in way worse shape. I think this was one of the better conventions I ever been to for just how easy it was to get around see everything and how friendly everyone was and just how much of a good time everybody was having I can I did not have any any major issues whatsoever with badly behaved people A couple instances where I was in line where there were people that had started four player games, but all those instances they had started those before anyone was behind them. So while it's poor form to behave that way, even if no one's behind you, it wasn't a huge deal. I never had anyone be rude about anything. I never had anyone start a game up again when someone was behind them. So yeah, everyone I thought was very polite and it was a really good experience. So let's go ahead and transition over now from our general thoughts to talking about the Wizards tournament specifically. This was the major tournament that we touched on in episode four that was capped with 160 players. I believe 156 showed up and you needed to qualify. You had a 12-game bank. You needed to submit on 10 games to determine your ranking, and top 16 went into the finals, which were broadcast on Twitch on Saturday night with a couple of commentators. So, Tony, how'd you do, and what'd you think of the Wizards tournament? I did poorly. I ranked 121, so that wasn't that good. I wasn't very strategic like I talked about in the last episode, I actually ended up playing all 12 machines. And the interesting thing is one of the machines in particular, the first time I played it, I was like, I hate this machine. This machine is terrible. And I talked to a bunch of people, and I'm like, this is a terrible machine. And everyone I talked to was like, oh, yeah, that machine's horrible. We all hate that machine. And then I was like, well, you know what? I want to go put another score up on that machine. I played it a second time, and it's like, you know, now that I've figured this machine out, it's not that bad. I kind of like it. And then on Sunday, when the machines are open on free play, I played it like three times. It actually ends up being probably my favorite machine that was in the tournament now and probably one of my favorites. I played it the whole thing. I like me some Campus Queen. That was a good game. Yeah, it's interesting because I've read before other people who have maybe hated a game initially, And then as they've gotten more time on it, they've grown to appreciate it because they start to figure out how it works. Because obviously going in cold on a machine you've never seen before, I mean, especially if you never even heard of it and had no concept of the layout, it can be difficult at first because you're struggling with trying to figure out how to play the thing. And if you're able to, then you might actually have a good gameplay method to it and it could be enjoyable. My rank was not great either. I ended at 101. I had hoped that maybe I could get in the top 100. I didn't have a very high expectation for myself. I did, by and large, stick with my play strategy. Unfortunately, I stuck with it to such a degree that I hurt myself. I could have been a lot more strategic and probably moved up a few ranks. The only game I did end up adding a game in because I struggled so much on one of the DMDs that I had chosen and both of my scores on it were poor. And I had a decent score on a solid state game. This was the one strategic element that I was glad I did. So I took that second play that I was going to do on one of those early solid state games, and I put it on a third DMD game, which I did actually get some points out of for the tournament. Not many, but I mean, it was better than my other one. So the only game I didn't play in the bank was Game of Thrones. So actually, let's go. I guess we can we can walk through and I'll go and start in terms of the how the structure was. There are 12 games, broadly three banks, DMD, solid state, we should say early solid state since technically DMDs are solid state games, and electromechanical or EM as we call them. So the four DMD games were Game of Thrones, which I didn't play, Star Trek, which was my best DMD game as it should have been, Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is the one I added on and got a few points out of, and Demolition Man, which I did terrible on both times I tried it. And then the four solid state games were Frontier, which was my best solid state game, Whirlwind, which was just behind Frontier for points for me. And that's the one I only did one try on because I was surprised at how well that I had 3.4 million, which is not a good score on Whirlwind. But apparently that Whirlwind was tuned pretty hard. Torch, which I barely got any points out of, and Nitro Ground Shaker, which I did terrible on both times I played it. And then the four EM games, Campus Queen, which you mentioned, which I didn't get any points on. I didn't get any points on any of the EMs except Atlantis, which was actually my best scoring game of all of these machines. But in addition to Atlantis and Campus Queen, there was also Cleopatra and Fireball. So I ended up out of the 10 that you could submit points on, I got six games that counted. So over half of mine did count for something, but it was what it was. A couple of those were single-digit game points for me. So my total score was 213 across those 20 tries, which wasn't very good, obviously. But it was a first-time experience, and I thought that was pretty interesting to do. Yeah, as I said earlier, I played every game. I only had three of my games hold their point score through the end. and those were Fireball, Campus Queen, which was my best score by far at 81 points and makes up the vast majority of my final score, and Torch. Torch I only played once. I played once and I got a solid score and I never touched it again. Fireball I played a couple of times. And like I said, Campus Queen I played twice in the tournament and several times on Sunday after it was on free play. I did pretty good on several other games, but not good enough. Yeah, I mean, and given the – I looked at the list when IFPA posted the scores, and I saw that there were very few people that did not already have five games in their lifetime. So in terms of counting to the point pool. So that told me, unsurprisingly, that a lot of people who entered the tournament that went to the Texas Pinnacle Festival are at least semi-regular tournament players. So it was good quality competition. The qualifying itself, I thought, went pretty smooth. Obviously, we had expressed concerns because of the fairly last-minute changes that had been announced essentially the week before the festival started. There were some games that went down, and that did cause backlogs. There also tended to be some long queues on certain games, namely in the DMD Bank. So it seemed like Game of Thrones and Star Trek tended to have fairly long lines. Also, other popular games, namely like Whirlwind, also tended to have a long queue as well. And that wasn't, I didn't think, too surprising. Those are the games that are out on location a lot, and a lot of people love them for various reasons. Now, they did allow us to be able to queue up and then walk around. So you could either queue up on your phone, or you could have one of the volunteers put you in a queue. And that was neat. I mean, it was pretty cool. I liked that. So I was able to go and start enjoying the free play floor while the tournament was going on. But unless you were really deep in the line, you couldn't really drift away from the tournament area because the announcements weren't loud for when it was your turn. And they didn't wait very long for you to claim your spot, nor should they have because they needed to keep this moving. But the whole place is like a dull roar. So it's sort of loud and it's hard to hear. So generally, if I was no deeper than fourth, I felt I had to stay in the tournament area because I didn't want to go to the back of the line. But given all of that, I am still glad that I used up all of my qualifying attempts on Friday night. Strategically, I should have held some over and waited until Saturday to see what scores were going to fall off the edge because I did have certain games that some of my EMs were up on points. like I had campus queen points Friday night, but sometimes Saturday my score was too low and it dropped me to zero. But because I was able to get it all out of the way on Friday, I was able to just enjoy the free play areas on Saturday, which I really appreciated because that was the primary reason I went. Yeah, I agree. That's the same. That was the primary reason I went. And I like to get all of our stuff out of the way on Friday. I know they were using them. They were using the Never Drains website. website. It was how they were running the tournament through, and I loved it. I thought that was a wonderful thing. It made it very easy just to check on your smartphone, do your cues, and keep track of your scores and everything. The only complaint I have about that had nothing to do with the tournament themselves and was just to do with Dallas and the fact that there was no free Wi-Fi access and I didn't have any of the locked Wi-Fi accesses that I got passwords for. And I only ever had like one or two bars of 4G inside the venue. And with everybody else hammering it at the same time, it wasn't uncommon for me to take a long time to reload a page and to check my queue status and stuff. And like I said, that's not the venue's fault or the show's falls or anything. That's just what happens when you've got a lot of people in an enclosed building hitting on one little bit of cell tower. But I did hear from one of the tournament volunteers that everyone who wanted qualifications did get their qualifying tries in before the cutoff at five on Saturday. So it did go really smooth, thus demonstrating that the changes they made were sufficient to make the event go well. They had had issues in past years we had heard. We never experienced that ourselves. So I'm hoping they learn from this, make any tweaks they need to, but I think they're on a good path at this point. So I was pleased with how the tournament turned out and I would be more than happy to participate in it again because I do think it was executed quite well. Same with me. I mean, I think it's a, without having any experience, I think it was run really well, and the volunteers were all really nice, and everything went real smooth. I had no problems anywhere. It was good. I'd definitely reenter the tournament sometime, hopefully with a few more skills under my belt and a better play overall. But, I mean, it was definitely good. So with the tournament discussion out of the way, let's go ahead and transition over to new releases. We did not play all the same new releases. It just depended on who was willing to stand in what lines. But broadly speaking, this is what I am aware of that was available that could be construed as a new release. And some of these are out yet. Some of them have been out for a little while, but they haven't been broadly distributed. And some of them have not been released for the public at this time. So what I was aware of that we're going to count as a new release is Ghostbusters, Big Lebowski, Full Throttle, the P3 platform. So Lexi Lightspeed and then any of the others that Multimorphic decided to announce. The Hobbit and Rob Zombie. So starting with that discussion, I think the one game that both you and I did not play was The Big Lebowski. Is that correct? Yeah, the lines were always really long for The Big Lebowski, and I just never got around to playing it. I talked to some people who played it who loved it. The Translight was awesome. It looked even better than it did in the pictures. I really liked the look of the table. I actually almost bought, they had Translites for sale, and I almost bought one because I liked it so much. Okay. So, yeah, and I agree. It looked really nice, and the Translite, I thought, really evoked the movie. But unfortunately, we can't give you guys any commentary about how the game played because we didn't bother to play it. Now, I'll go ahead and transition to one. And I think you didn't play Rob Zombie, but I did. Yeah, I did not play Rob Zombie. Okay. Just briefly, I got one try in on it. The cabinet and back glass art looked as awesome in person as it does in all the images. Well, I'd say even better. It was really neat. I actually went up a couple of times to look at the side cabinet art because it's really nice. I would say anyone who wants a cabinet and wants a bookend in their collection and is only concerned about that, that that cabinet is going to be really hard to beat if you don't mind the horror theme. The toys on the playfield looked a lot better than the toys or really just toy, I guess, on America's Most Haunted, which was Spooky's first game. The playfield does feel full. The playfield art, however, was not impressive to me. It wasn't impressive when I saw the pictures of it, but when I was playing it, it wasn't just the art itself, which, again, it's not a big deal to me what the play field art looks like. But it seemed like the game wasn't very well lit in terms of general illumination. The room wasn't super dark, but I did have trouble tracking the ball. And it just compared to other games that I was playing, other modern games, I should say, because GI issues I ran into on some of the early 80s games as well. But it just didn't seem very bright. So it was hard to pay attention to where the ball was because it just didn't seem like there were very many lamps throwing illumination around the field. I also didn't care much for the shots. Again, I only played once, and there was a huge caveat on this, and it was the game I was playing was having some pretty serious issues. The flippers just shut off a couple times during gameplay. I pushed the buttons and they wouldn't flip anymore, but the ball was still in play. The game was also getting confused I was playing a two game and it just kept getting it would would just start all of a sudden it be player two turn And so I be like well but I didn drain And then it would say player one and then go right back to player two. So something was going wrong. And whenever you have something buggy happening with a game, it completely kills the experience. So I don't want to say the game has bad flow or doesn't shoot well when so much of my problem I was having was stemming from the fact that the game had probably been played all day. I got to it in the evening, and it was very clearly exhibiting some form of bug when it was trying to operate. However, it didn't leave a very good first impression. So that was my thoughts on Rob Zombie, and then a game that you played that I didn't play was Ghostbusters. So, Tony, what did you think of Ghostbusters? Ghostbusters, of the new releases, was probably, I think, the highlight of the games I did play. It was, the line for Ghostbusters was always insane. It was worse than anything except Big Lebowski. I got there right when the doors opened Sunday morning. Me and one of our friends went up to, got up to it and made a run through with it. and even then being one of the early people in the door there were still probably six people ahead of us it was a really popular game now when it comes to the actual table it was a pro model so we didn't have the magnetic slingshots or anything else but when it uh it looked good the uh shots felt amazing the um call outs were a ton of fun they did they had a lot of great stuff in the DMD that worked with the call-outs and with mode activations. I had the nostalgia to hit, and it was definitely something that was like, well, that's going to hit my nostalgia buttons, and it hit every nostalgia button. But it was also a solid table and a lot of fun to play. I know when you activate one of the modes, it's just like in the movie. You hear Janine yell, we got one, and you see a hand come down on the buzzer, and then Ecto-1 comes flying out of the firehouse on the DMD and taking the corner, and you hear the siren going, and the ball's going. Oh, it was just tons of fun. It just hit every single button of fun. It is going to be, I think it's going to be a huge release this year. I mean, it might be the big release this year, but it's too early to say that for sure, but it is going to be huge. I think it's going to be hyper popular on location. I enjoyed it a lot. well the preliminary buzz by and large that i've been seeing is very positive from other people who've gotten a chance to play the the pro version of ghostbusters or have seen the footage and obviously the theme is really resonating with a lot of people because that's a classic movie i'm i'm sure that the studio is really happy that something like this happens to come out while they're relaunching a new ghostbusters but the old ghostbusters is a classic the new one no matter how bad the movie may be is going to tarnish that. So they're able to capitalize on a true 80s classic that still can hold up in terms of its humor today. So I probably should have suffered through and sat through that line. I just I decided not to. So I think you should have. I definitely have to say of all the ones we played, that was the best, the best of the new games. It was something that was very, very good. Well, let's go ahead and transition to the games that both of us actually did end up playing. Let's go and start with Lexi Lightspeed and Multimorphic in general, because they did actually unveil another game that they put out on the floor. And we did play both Lexi and the sort of the pirate ship game. I don't remember the name of the pirate ship game. But my initial thought in terms of Lexi and the Multimorphic platform is It has a lot of potential. I maybe built it up too much in my head because it didn't wow me as much as I hoped it would. However, I do still really think that this cross between what I consider virtual pinball and physical pinball to be a worthwhile way to go. The ball tracking on the screen, I thought, looked really cool, and it worked very well. And I liked how the modes that you're going through could change that screen. So, you know, when you activate a special mode, it's not just the display on the backbox telling you that you're now in a new mode. You can actually have that play field change. So maybe now you're in a room instead of being outside. And it was really immersive, and I could see a lot of potential with that. I also thought that Lexi's shots, they felt fine to me. They didn't blow me away, but they felt decent. It felt good. It felt like it was designed well. so while I wasn't like okay this has got that Steve Ritchie sort of flow which feels really really good to shoot it didn't blow me away like that but it did feel as full featured as a number of other modern machines I've played so I thought that was really nice and then in terms of the pirate game that you know it felt more like a mini game to me I could see potential for people wanting to practice shot accuracy because it was really about trying to hit these ships and the ships start to move because the game's able to kind of keep track of that. But by and large, it was the equivalent of sort of chasing a particular lit light. So while that wasn't much of a game in and of itself, I thought it was a really good demonstration of what you could do with this sort of platform. So in terms of having different games without having to change out all the modules. Yeah, it was really interesting. I really enjoyed the way Lexi Light Street not only changed with the screen changing, But, I mean, there were little things I hadn't expected, like when the boxes popped up in the middle of the field from just above the LCD and changed the whole shape of the field so you couldn't even get to the back ramps and this and that. All that kind of stuff was really interesting to me and unexpected because I hadn't played it before. I think that the P3 system has – I think it's got a real chance. chance. It feels like, I don't want to say it feels like the future, but I think it definitely feels like something that once all the bugs are fully kicked out and it's really running smooth, I think it has a place. It definitely has a place in pinball. I think the cross works really well. Yeah. The main thing after experiencing it that I'm curious about is, will this only be appealing to the home collector or our operators going to be interested in this? And I'm not clear. I get the sense that this is more targeted towards the home collector. I could see an argument for, you know, having this sort of a platform where you can drop in a new game and not have to buy everything new. And that concept isn't particularly fresh in the sense that Pinball 2000 was supposed to allow that. We also see that Highway Pinball is trying to do that with their cabinets. I think this way could actually be, though, a lot cheaper than those particular options. However, with a $10,000 starting price, it's got a lot of upfront investment. And so I'm not clear whether or not at the price point, they're going to have enough awesome tables for this machine to be popular for people to want to go ahead and get in on. I think they've got enough announced now that you could justify the price tag by thinking about how many games you're actually getting with it. But my suspicion is a lot of people may be wanting to hold out because they still just aren't convinced that there are going to be more tables after this. And they don't want to run into a Pinball 2000 situation where all you had was Revenge from Mars and Star Wars Episode I and there were no more games to drop in. And I think that Multimorphic is trying to head that off by their announcement at the Texas Pinball Festival about the five new games that they had. yeah i definitely think that's the way to go and i think that's going to be the big decider i mean are there more games how do they get games fit how do their games flow as they build up into them and i think a lot of that comes from right now the way i look at it and i think the way it is is lexi and the other games are more technology demonstrators than anything else and once everything gets locked down really well and they start turning out more and more and they get more more practice with programming and coding and doing everything else for the tables, that they're going to be able to set it up more and get things that go even deeper. I mean, it's going to be, they're definitely going to have the ability to sink really deep like a lot of the new games go with their deep rule sets and their deep this and deep that. And it's going to be able to happen. It's just something that they're still building on. I mean, all the pinballs now are working on something that's been around for a long, long time, and they're just doing minor refining to it. It's like, okay, now we're pulling the DMDs, which were a new big thing, and we're replacing them with LCDs, which are basically DMDs but do more. And they're doing, well, we're doing more work with magnets, and we've got more computer control that lets us do more interesting things and create a deeper rule set and make the field act differently based upon modes and this and that, where the multimorphic is really starting from a completely new space. I mean, while it's using, it uses bits of video games and bits of pinball, but it mixes it together in such an interesting way that right now they're just on the cusp of starting out, and they're really building themselves up and building themselves forward into what it could be. And I think that's the big thing to remember when you're looking at the difference between how that is and how the multi-morphic stuff works is, I mean, Ghostbusters is an amazing game, but it's building on the back of every pinball game that's ever been built, while the multi-morphics are just pulling some of the pinball stuff and then some stuff from video games and some stuff from virtual cabinets. and it's combining it in a way that nobody's really done except for Pinball 2000, which was nothing like this. I mean, that was just the lightest beginnings of what the multimorphic stuff has moved into. It seems to be something that as it grows, as long as they're able to keep going and keep building and keep progressing, I think it has a real future, but it's going to be completely based around getting over this beginning hump because once they start iterating and getting more refined, I think we're going to see some amazing products coming out of them. Well, speaking of a product that had a lot of amazement in terms of visuals at the very least, we did both stand in line and play The Hobbit. Tony, what did you think of that? Uh-oh. Uh-oh. I hear the uh. I hear the droning uh sound. But I still have to ask. We got to entertain the masses here. So, Tony, what did you think of your experience on Jersey Jack Pinball's The Hobbit? It was beautiful. The table was beautiful. In person, it was even prettier than I had ever seen in the pictures. The play field looked great. And then the play, it wasn't bad. I mean, it wasn't a game where it was like, oh, this is terrible, and I never, ever, ever want to touch this game again. But it was definitely nothing that jumped out at me as anything special. And the things that annoyed me were things that have annoyed me in a lot of games in the past. And it wasn't a real surprise to me that I didn't like them when they happened. What with, you know, all the heads popping up around the field, like the trolls in Medieval Madness and blocking shots, which, I mean, it's an interesting idea. I just didn't really like it. And I've played some wide bodies. I don't have the wide body hate that I know you're not a fan of wide bodies. But this one actually felt pretty slow. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was playing it wrong. Maybe it'll be like Campus Queen and I get some more plays in it. I'll like it more. But as is, I was just kind of eh. I agree. Visually, it was impressive. And I wasn't surprised at that because that's what I had been hearing ahead of time. I did think the screen integration with the movie clips and stuff, I felt it looked better than Wizard of Oz did. So I thought they did up their game with The Hobbit in terms of what was going on on the backbox. But I did not like playing it. It was not as slow as I feared it would be. I had heard a lot of people saying that it played slow, and it wasn't as bad. It wasn't as floaty as I thought it was. Like, you know, certain EM games kind of feel floaty, and that's how pinball was with those. So I sort of expect it because they tend to be at a flatter level. This didn't feel floaty to me, but it did play slow. And the shots I didn't think were particularly impressive to take. I wasn't as annoyed as I was with Rob Zombie, but as I noted earlier, Rob Zombie was bugging out and the flippers weren't working right. And that, you know, there were mechanical issues that were frustrating my play on that. This didn't feel like the game was malfunctioning to me. I just didn't really enjoy any of the shots. And I think a lot of it was, we've got a wide body here, but the play field looks really, really open. And if you compare it to Wizard of Oz, Wizard of Oz does not feel like an open play field. You've got two upper playfields, and the shots seem to, you have to, you know, there's a lot of accuracy, a lot of really tight shots. and having now experienced Hobbit, it seems like the reason why the play field looks so open is because they've got pop-up targets all throughout the mid to lower section of the play field, like, as you noted, Medieval Madness' trolls. Well, they looked good, but it just seemed really excessive to me. I mean now I know part of it is the trolls for me are like the worst part of Medieval Madness They look great but no one likes them when they pop up and at least by no one I mean me And so I not a huge fan of them coming up and blocking my shots all the time The thing is with medieval madness, you kind of know when you'll activate a troll mode. It's not all that common of a thing. We played a three-player game with three different people, and everyone got the pop-ups. So it just seemed like that was the gimmick. That was the thing that you were going to have to deal with. I'm sure there are modes that didn't involve those pop-up targets, but it didn't matter. At least as far as newbies shooting on the table, that's what they got were a bunch of pop-ups blocking their shots. And so I didn't really like it. They looked great, but I didn't think it was any fun. It gave you something to hit and then drain off of. But, yeah, I just – it wasn't – it didn't amaze me. I didn't think it was terrible. I didn't think it played overly slow, but it was a slow table. It didn't feel like it had good flow. And I saw the flow chart on the side of the wall over when we were standing in line, and it looks like it's already got a really deep rule set. But, you know, I'm not interested in playing it. Yeah, I'm the same way. I mean, I had really, really high hopes for it because it looked so nice and everything else. And it just didn't play that great to me. Like I said, maybe it's one of those things that once you get to know the rule set and you get to know to shoot and you get to know everything else, it just grows on you and gets deeper and you really learn to love it. But after the limited number of plays I was able to do on it, I was just, eh, it was just there. It's okay. It's not a terrible machine, but it's not. I mean, if it's lined up with a bunch of other machines, it's not going to be on my top list of machines to go drop my quarters in. Yeah, it was disappointing to me. So our final game that is in our new release list is Full Throttle. And Full Throttle has actually been out for a while. It's just Highway Pinball is not an American company. It's English, I believe. And so there aren't a whole lot of them available. So to a lot of people, it's new. And that was demonstrated by how long the lines were to actually get to play it at Texas Pinball Festival. I'll go ahead and start off and say that I actually thought this one played really well. And it is a wide body, so I don't always hate them. I just mostly hate them. So I thought it had a lot of shots. It felt full. I enjoyed it. It didn't seem too slow or anything. I really actually liked it quite a bit. And so it was well lit. And we actually have one now on location here in Kansas City at the 403 Club. They just put one in. And that one, as of now, is having a little bit of issues in terms of the ball launch and the flipper strength. but you know i was impressed i was i was pleasantly surprised because as with a lot of people the theme does nothing for me i don't i don't care at all about the theme but i i really liked having that little uh play field digital display the little lcd in the middle of play field that's as soon as i got used to it which didn't take long i found it a much more convenient way to look at scores i think that's their big innovative thing that they've done that i hope they stick with because from a player perspective, I think it's an excellent decision. But for being their first game, I thought it was a pretty impressive showing. Yeah, it was a really impressive showing. I enjoyed Full Throttle quite a lot. I agree with you. The screen in the play field, which we've talked about in the past, how just the thought of I thought would be cool, actually using it is amazing to the point that honestly, I would not be surprised to see it becoming a more common thing. I mean, it's possible it might remain a highway-only thing, but I could see other people picking it up because it's quite nice and quite enjoyable from a player's standpoint. The game played well. I don't really have any issues with it. I mean, the theme is just kind of a huh, but I kind of like that they started with not a licensed theme with their first machine. and if Aliens plays as well as Full Throttle did, I think they're going to have a huge future I really do think, I mean it was a solid game that brought in some nice things and yeah, it's a lot of fun Okay, well let's go ahead and transition to our final part about talking about Texas Pinball and that's sort of other show thoughts we already hit on the vendors So I don't think we need to go back over those. But in terms of game highlights that weren't new games, Tony, did you have any particular machines you played that you saw that really stood out to you and that you wanted to mention? There were a lot of older games. Freedom. There was a Freedom EM there. And it was amazing. It was hands down the favorite game I played the entire weekend. I played it like six times. it is a very fun game and it was a limited, it wasn't the standard freedom. It was a, uh, I'm not sure if it was a prototype version or what, but it had a pop bumper between the, uh, the paddles and it was just a lot of fun. It was fun watching the ball drop into that pop bumper and bounce around where you couldn't even get a flipper on it. And then it would bounce back out into the play field. And, and the most amazing thing to me was just, it looked like it was fresh off the factory floor. It looked amazing. It was definitely my favorite game overall to play of everything I played. I had Freedom on my list as well. You're right. It was a prototype version, so there weren't very many that had that pop bumper feature. Freedom's not a particularly rare run on an EM machine, but the one with the pop bumper is. and it was a premium specimen. But I played a lot of EMs while I was at Texas Pinball Festival and I would agree that one felt the best to me of any of the ones I tried. I'll also give a shout out in terms of I finally got to play America's Most Haunted. Game does look a bit homebrew, but it played better than I heard it played. I'd heard from some people that didn't really care for how it shot and I thought it shot okay. Humor in it was excellent. So I really thought that it was quite funny with the call-outs, but few I could hear because it was really loud there. The idea of being able to select your skill shot, they have that in Rob Zombie as well, where it's like you have three potential skill shots and you kind of choose which one you want to go for. I thought that was a clever, innovative software thing they went with. So I was glad I got to try it. I have no interest in owning one, but I did appreciate because there was only a run of 150 of them. So I was glad I did finally get to play that. Finally got to play Game of Thrones Pro model because the one that is on location here is a premium. There is now one on location that is a pro, but I haven't gotten there since they put it in. So I did think it played really well and felt a lot faster than the premium does because without the upper play field, it did seem to have better flow. I don't know which one I would say I preferred, but I would say that after trying the Game of Thrones Pro, I sure wouldn't mind owning one. It was like, oh, well, do you only want the premium or not? And it's sort of a case of no, no, I think people would be very happy with the Pros and might even prefer them from trying that. And other than that, I would just note that I did get to try a lot of older games that I wouldn't mind owning, particularly the early Solid States, which I just don't get to play very much of. So I tried a lot of Bally machines. It seemed like I played more Ballys than anything. That's probably just a virtue of what was mostly on the floor. But Stern Electronics, not Stern Pinball, but the Stern Electronics from the early 80s, I liked some of those early games of theirs I had tried. Big Guns, which is not a Stern game, but I really liked that. Swords of Fury was neat. So this is really cool to be able to try a lot of those older machines that I always heard about or maybe played virtually but never had an opportunity to play in person until now yeah i played america's most haunted and i enjoyed it it was um i heard like you i'd heard a lot of people who didn't really like it but i liked it it was a fun game i thought it was a funny game uh and it was interesting you could tell it was their first game but there was nothing really wrong with it um the game of thrones pro i'm going to agree with you on that one too i can't decide if I prefer the throw to the premium or LE yet. I think I need more time on both of them to really make that decision. The pro is faster, but it's a lot of fun. You don't really feel like, or at least I didn't feel like, I was really missing anything with the upper play field loss, but they're both a little different, but I think they're both solid games for being that way. One game I played that was enjoyable was Fire. There were a couple fires there, one of which just was amazing looking. That game was a lot of fun. Also, games that stand out to me, Spinal Tap, the Spinal Tap game, which was a homebrew with a whole bunch of customization pulled off of a Flash Gordon. So it was a Flash Gordon field, but they had added a DMD. They had a bunch of coding into it and programming with modes and stuff, and that was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that game as well. There were a lot. I played so many games. I can't even remember half the games I played, but there were some really nice ones. There were several very nice Bride of Pinbots. I got to play a Bride of Pinbot 2.0, which was interesting and fun. I got to play so many games. It was amazing. It was an amazing weekend. Yeah, there were a lot of really interesting ones. The Pinball 2000 games, got to try those. They were pretty cool. I did like the hologram effect that they had. homebrew wise in terms of customs. The reverse flush was an interesting idea. The Mirror Universe Star Trek looked really nice. The plexiglass looking machine where you could see all the innards was really cool visually. And outside of the gameplay, I will go ahead and note that one of the interesting moments that happened to me was right after I wrapped up my qualifying on Friday night and I was looking for the four of us who went down, I was looking for one person who had wandered off to play games so let him know that we were all going to go ahead back to the hotel and when i was looking for him Steve Ritchie uh came up to me just randomly and he he wanted to know if i was having fun i said you know i said yeah and it was my first pinball festival and he he immediately just said what how many games do you own of course one of them that i do have is uh is star trek the the pro version that he did he designed at stern and so he and When I told him I had a Star Trek, he asked if it was the latest one, and I said, yeah. And he asked me if it was the Pro, a Premium, or an LE version. I said that I had the Pro. And he said, well, he leaned in, and he said, well, you know, that's really all you need. And he was just really cool about it. And I told him I really enjoyed the layout and how it shot, and he seemed very appreciative, and he thanked me. And anyway, it was just really interesting because I wasn't going to go up and talk to any developers specifically. It's not really my thing. I'm not trying to go out and get autographs. But it was just weird how he just randomly came up to me and struck up a conversation. And I just thought, well, it was pretty cool because at least of all the games I've tried, he is my favorite pinball designer. So I just thought, wow, that was really neat. And then I got to go back and fall asleep because it had been a long day. It had been a long day by that time, Friday night. It was a lot of fun. One other thing I want to talk about is the raffle. They raffled off a Spider-Man Vault Edition for charity. They were doing pinball for Patriots, and I thought the raffle went really well. I didn't win anything, but I stole stuff from you when you won stuff. But I thought the raffle ran really well, and that pinball or that Spider-Man, it looked nice in person. It looked really good. I was really hopeful that one of us would get it, but we weren't that lucky. But it was a nice-looking game, and I think the raffle ran. I thought the raffle was really good. Yeah, it was interesting. I didn't know they were doing door prizes based off the raffle. So, yeah, I won a grab bag full of stuff, but none of the shirts fit me, and the shirts weren't all the same size. So the shirts had to go. I've given away a number of the other items as well. But, yeah, I got a neat little bag I can use for groceries, a little cloth bag and cup and some other stuff. And one of the two coupons I got I'm going to be able to use for some new rubbers for my Star Trek. So that's pretty cool. But, yeah, it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad we went. Yeah, I am too. I think that, all in all, it was a great trip, and it's definitely something we should consider doing again next year. I think it would be well worth it. Yeah. So anyone, we give our thumbs up to Texas Pinball Festival. If you're in the area when the event's going on and you want to have a really good experience with getting to play a lot of machines and friendly folks, definitely try that one. Well, I think we'll go ahead and close out our episode now. A reminder to our listeners that you can reach us on Facebook. We're at Facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast. You can also email the show, Eclectic Gamers Podcast at gmail.com. and Tony do you have any final comments for everyone? I just have to say two flippers up on Texas it was a lot of fun and hopefully traffic won't be as bad next time on the way down and back yeah that was a pain well everyone we're probably going to be back on our normal schedule now so have fun everybody drop some quarters