Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. Pinball is a game of spill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for the Pinball Show. It's pinball with personality. And away we go into episode 31 of the pinball show. We're your hosts, Zach Minney and Dennis Creasel. Dennis, have you had a great week, a bad week, a fair week? Tell me all about your week. Hey, you guys. It's been fine. I see what you did there. Are you prepping for your brand new deep root game yet? I think I got some time. I think I got some time to prep. How much time do you think you have until you can purchase and receive one? Anyone or... Anyone. Okay, anyone. Oh, gosh. Well, let's just say I'm not worried about 2020. Okay, I think that's fair. Are you worried about 2021? Not so much. yeah we will certainly get into that anything interesting happen this week Mr. Creasel yeah I mean in terms of last week yes it was a holy cow okay so I did three podcasts I know you did two podcasts and a very like two hour long video stream with TPN correspondent and all around nice dude Chris Chandler And so the thing at least about all the – you at least had that latest piece with Chris. I just thought it was – there was to me a humor to that I did three different podcasts, and none of them are accurate anymore because things kept changing so much. Because we did Loser Kid, and that was after we did TPS, and also I'd done my Eclectic Gamers. and every piece of what was happening shifted. When we did the pinball show last week, it was still before the reveal. And then by the time we did Loser Kid, we heard about that the reveal was now a non-reveal. And then the next day, the non-reveal became a sort of reveal. It has felt like it's been longer than a week since all of this has transpired. I have aged 10 years. I have been put in that Princess Bride torture thing. Not to 50! Hey! Any gray hairs? Oh, yeah. You really? I didn't know you had gray hair. Oh, sure. I have for years since I was 29. Really? Yeah. You sophisticated early. Mm-hmm. Do you have any gray pubes? I think I did a couple months ago find my first gray pube. I'm like, oh, come on. Poor Zach and his dusty old balls. I know. Maybe my balls are sophisticated. Give us a pipe. Bring me the cognac. Butt-chugging cognac. I'm trying to think what I've done this week. Your family was on vacation, so you had to live that bachelor lifestyle that you've forgotten of. My wife came home, and she was like, so what did you do, honey? Did you have fun? And I'm like, no. I sat in the same chair as I'm sitting in right now doing this godforsaken podcast, and I've done nothing but edit for you people. What do you want from me? They're pretty ungrateful, aren't they? Some are very grateful. Some of you are turds, but they all tell their opinion, which I appreciate. I don't always appreciate it. Well, you never appreciate it. I can't think of the last time you appreciated it. Oh, well, I guess that's true. Do you appreciate me, Dennis? I appreciate that you do the editing for this show, so thank you. I will formally thank you, Zach, for taking that effort. I always surround myself with people who don't like giving me positive reinforcement. You, my wife, my parents. What's wrong with me? Speaking of fans, that's why I do this. It's my only... We're getting a little deep now. I've got something for my fans. See, if you would give positive reinforcement, maybe I'd send you an Avengers Pro. Yeah, right. Stroke my ego. So we've got something to give away again. I just, in the mail last week, Dennis, received from Stern Pinball their brand new, beautiful Avengers Infinity Quest banners. People love banners. I don't know why, but they do. People love banners. Those sent on Pinside sell for $200. Ouch. With us, they're less than a topper. That's like, and you can get three of them for a topper, but who am I to judge? Maybe I should have a program, a frequent banner program. Hey, that's not a bad idea, actually. Do you really want to track banner points on people? That's just another thing to track. Don't do it. Where are the video adapters? We'll talk about that later. The spike system. I thought it would be cool to give away a banner to one of these people. That would be cool. We gave away a Turtles banner to someone who did a review for us, so why not give an Avengers banner away? This thing is really funny. We should do something different than a review this time, though. I agree. I agree. So why don't we do this? I have been working and collaborating a little bit with you, but to make some swag, some t-shirts, some The Pinball Show merch. And I want to include the listener. So the way that we're going to do this, Dennis, if you're okay with it, why don't we give away an Avengers banner randomly to someone. You've got to do a little bit of work here, listener. But if you can come up with a t-shirt idea for The Pinball Show, you could win, free of charge, a Stern Pinball Avengers banner. How's that sound? Yeah, that's a good idea. Sure. Yeah, Pete over there, he's one of our best listeners. He's already pulled over the truck that he drives, and he's doodling up stuff as we speak. Pete, a Ford Explorer is not a truck, so quit calling it that, Pete. Sorry, Pete. It's jacked up, though. So all we need you to do is draft up something visually. And try your hardest because if it's great, if you have some experience with Illustrator or Photoshop or something, we want to potentially use your idea for a t-shirt that can be cherished and loved by the entire world. That's almost a gift in itself, I think, Dennis, but we're going to give them an Avengers banner on top of that. Keep in mind whenever you do submissions, they don't have to be – we don't want any stick people, right? You've got to put some effort into it, and it's got to be good. Why don't you just demand that they make a vector-based file while you're at it? Absolutely. Extra brownie points for those. Okay, so get out of Inkscape. You guys better learn how to do vector graphics. We've got to step to scale. we don't want to take this idea in some JPEG and lose all the quality when we blow it up to proper shirt size. I've been there. If you could submit something we will give it away an Avengers banner. I guess MSRP is $200. I don't know where they go. But yeah, I think that's a good idea and it's fun, it's creative. We might share some of those submissions on social media so follow us there at the Pinball Network. And maybe people can, not that we'll take your vote, but you guys kind of give some feedback as to what some of these t-shirt design ideas look like. No rules. I don't think any rules. You can be as kind as you want, filthy as you want. I don't care. It could be pretty toxic. No wieners, but other than that, I think everything's good. No, actually, if you want wieners in there, it's fine too. So submit that to the pinballnetwork at gmail.com, and we will enter you in to the winnings. If you do not live in the United States, you'll have to talk to Zach if you win about shipping. Yes, I appreciate that. Yes, we'll ship it free of charge to the U.S. I've even tried to do what I can for our northern Canadians. But, yeah, if you're in, you know, Melbourne. Melbourne. Phew. Man, I shipped off those video adapters to Marty and Dr. John. My wife wasn't happy about that, Dennis. She just doesn't understand that you're a giver. She's like, why do we, what, like these things cost more to ship than they did for us to buy. Not for long. It's time for TPN Industry News. TMNT Tournament Time! And past the torque wrench, we've got orders to build. Hey everyone, Craig here again, the pinball show's Stern News Correspondent. Missed it live? well, be sure to watch a replay of the inaugural Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Stern Heads Up Pinball Invitational, hosted by Twitch personality Jack Danger, a.k.a. Deadflip, Stern pinball software engineer and top-ranked competitive pinball player Tim Sexton, and well-known pinball personality and ambassador Emoto Arcade. This action-packed competition took place solely on the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pinball machines, as some of pinball's most elite players raced against the clock and each other in objective-based challenges with the ultimate winner bringing home a brand new TMNT pinball machine. Who won? Tune into Stern's YouTube channel to find out. And other than that, it's Assemble City over at the Stern factory these days, as it's most likely we've seen the last of the 2020 reveals, With Stern undoubtedly setting sales records for both TMNT and Avengers Infinity Quest, not to mention a new run of Batman 66, they probably have more than enough on their plate to take them into 2021. But we shall wait and see. For the Pinball Show, I'm Craig Bobby. Catch you on the flip side. Matt Morrison here with a quick Chicago Gaming Company update for the week regarding topper light boards and extended displays for Medieval Madness remakes. There's some complaints in the Pinsider forum thread, everything from missing parts, wires too short from the new pop bumper lighting, but Pinsider ED-209 has a great post detailing some of the obstacles with all three installs. That's post 7370 if you want to check it out in the Medieval Madness Remake Owner's Club thread. Also, Pinsider LTG, as usual, has been a saving grace for quick, accurate fixes for a variety of problems. Last but not least in regards to any upgrade You make to your medieval madness Make sure you're running 3.0 code It should be noted the shaker motor Is turned way up in the new code With no software correction So moving the weights on the shaker motor May be necessary to suit your personal taste Hopefully the shaker and certain light tests Will be corrected in a future code release As far as Cactus Canyon And any future titles Nothing but crickets on my end But if you still need to scratch that new in box CGC itch For now, there are a few new in-box Attack from Mars still available from the recent short run they did. But that's it for this week at CGC. I'm Matt Morrison. Hi, everybody. This is David Dennis from Silver Ball Chronicles. I'm going to be this week's Deep Root correspondent who isn't under an NDA. In Deep Root news this week... Oh, Deep Root. You're funny. I was going to say, always great hearing from our correspondents, but Dennis, how in the hell did, David Dennis is your boy. How did he sneak in behind the scenes here? I don't coordinate correspondence, much less special correspondence. I didn't approve of that. He just kind of. Why is he encroaching on Chris's turf? Is it going to be like a knife fight? Deep Root Turf Wars. It's going to be like Anchorman. They're going to have to go at each other with a trident and stuff. I'm going to take pinball rubbers and tie their hands together, and then the other hand is going to be free with a knife. Switchblade. I'm trying to remember. I saw a movie where they did that. There was a term for that style of duel. I can't remember what they called it, though. So getting into the news term, pinball had some recent news. Surprise, surprise. Did you know that Avengers limited edition models are now shipping? I did know that, yes. Woo-hoo! So mine should be coming shortly as well as all of you other flipping out customers. Ooh, fancy. Just waiting. Just waiting for that Avengers. Are you going to do anything special to unbox it? I've got a really good idea, but I don't know if I'll be able to get the resources together for it. The resources? I need lumber. I need ore. That's kind of how it is. I need some water. Yeah. I ran it by Greg because I was like, let's face it, Greg, you're not going to be able to record with me. Here's my solo idea. And he was cracking up. He was like, if you can pull that off, then please do that. We shall wait and see. Remember, everybody, after the LE's ship, they have pros coming right after that. So I've already been contacted by Stern and says, hey, you're getting a hefty amount of pros coming right after that. So I think we see pros in the next maybe two weeks. Wow. So those are going to be ready again, and then they will start on that desired premium run that everybody's waiting for. But I didn't get the first pro, so now I just have to wait and see what GNR is. Now you're going to have to play it and then play Game 6 by JJP. Oh, Game 6. It's so quaint that you still refer to it as that. Play by the rules here. I understand. No, I understand. I understand. There's price to being a distributor. Well, there actually is. It cost me a lot. I heard on a podcast, I was listening, I don't know which one at this point. I heard Quixel is maybe looking for a new machine. Eh? That's what I heard. Are you sure? You alluded to potentially thinking about adding a machine. I have games that I would be willing to sell to make room for new games. And I always try and maintain that. Don't ever want to get to, well, it's not a question of want, I suppose. It's sort of a, do I get to the point where I say, because I have room in the game room for seven pins. And I'm comfortable saying I am not at the point where I would say these seven can never leave. So based off of that, I still have the potential to add more. I have been trying not to ever be in the point where I would say all seven have to always stay. And I find that eventually after you put enough time in the game, you're like, okay, I still like the game. It used to be I had games I didn't care for. I just ended up with as projects or whatever and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I liked to play originally. And now I'm at the point where every single game I own, I enjoy. But, you know, there's only so much to eventually, it's like, okay, I've hit the very target in the spinner on Super Orbit enough. It can, you know, if I find something else, it can go. See, I would, knowing your collection, I would have guessed, do you still have Buck Rogers? I do. I would have guessed that to go first. Buck Rogers would be on the short list as well. The thing is, I think I need to fix something on Buck Rogers, and I have never sold a game that wasn't fully working. Oh. So that would be part of it. Plus, as a birthday gift, I got the back glass restored from BG Resto. So it's one of my nicest looking back glass gifts. Yeah, it'd be hard to get rid of that then. And because I've not, I've also got some extended leg levelers I want to put on and try it much steeper, much steeper than you'd normally go with because I think it might make the game more enjoyable to play. So I want to try it like that too. I just haven't felt like crawling under there. And I don't know why not because just yesterday I crawled under Star Trek like five different times to adjust the leveling. Well, you wouldn't have to do that with a deeper game, trademark. That's right. But they haven't made Star Trek. Is that maybe one of their games that's coming out? I doubt it. Okay. I doubt it. What about Star Trek? Hey, you guys mean Star Trek Episode 3, The Search for Spock? That's data. That's next gen. His name's pronounced Data. Well, whatever. Data. Number two. What's the fucking... Wesley. Why does he have such hatred towards Wesley? Just because he's kind of the stowaway because his mom took off? No, he was supposed to be like some savant-style, brilliant kid. Yeah, the engineer, man. Yeah, but, I mean, come on. He was a teenager, so he was annoying. He was always annoyed Picard, it seemed like. Picard's like, oh, the bastard engineering child at it again. It was hard on him for no reason. I was trying to show off, trying to show his ambition, but he didn't have any wisdom. Spoiler alert. Don't ruin it for me. I'm only on, like, season two or three. Going back and watching. Oh, okay. Well, I don't remember the individual episodes well enough to. Next Gen had a lot of weak episodes. There are some that are iconic and really good, but I'd say overall, after finally having a chance to see it, like, Deep Space Nine as a series is stronger than Next Generation was. Hmm. And it got better storytelling. Strong take. Yeah. Well, I mean, when Star Trek first started, it was very, I mean, Patrick Stewart, who plays your son, Luke Picard, he was, I believe, looking to leave the show because he felt his character wasn't ever really developed the first couple seasons. It was just, you know, he's just being the captain and that's it. There wasn't a lot of dimension to the character. His felt like the most developed, so. Like Riker? Yeah. I liked him with his beard. I don't know. How the hell did we get on to Star Trek? because I was talking about leveling it because you talked about deep root technology. Avengers are coming, people. On to other CERN pinball news, Dennis. Something happened this last week. They put Aerosmith back on the line? No. No. The toppers would sell, though. No. Something happened where I sat back and I smiled. I've been preaching. But you never smile. I can't not smile. I've been preaching about the production of pinball tournaments and competitions and creating an atmosphere and media that can be consumed by all and not just deep pinheads, right? I've been shouting that from the rooftop. We've been giving ideas. I've kind of went all in on that. Well, Stern is now evolving. They're growing up, Dennis. Before you know it, they're going to be married. They're going to be off like a flicker of electricity or lightning. they're starting to ignite. And they're starting to finally listen. Something happened this week where, do you have any songs in your life that when you hear them, you just feel like you can defeat the world? Things are just lining up. Any of that? No. As you guys hear the music right now, that's right. I can see a new horizon underneath the blazing sky. I'll be where the eagles fly and hurry and hurry up. Gonna be a man in motion. All I need is a pair of wheels. Tell you where the future's lying. Say it almost by, yeah. Oh, Dennis, it's here. Their TMNT heads up invitational happened this last week, and it was a revelation. This is how you put some production into your pinball media. So nicely done. What they had done is they had prerecorded this competition series, the heads-up stuff that you've talked about, Dennis, where you have a task and you're trying to compete back and forth, right? And who can get the task quicker? It's very short. Boom, boom, boom. Keeps attention. And they're off. I'm not as wild about it. I still think it is a second-rate type of way to show pinball. But nonetheless, they prerecorded these competitions. Then they had commentators. They had Tim Sexton. They had Jack Danger. And they had Emoto all on the green screen studio After Effects template kind of thing that I like using. It looked very good. And they would cut in and back and forth, commentation, doing these things. It was short. It was sweet, concise. It looked good. I'm so happy, Dennis. They did it. Yeah. He was doing it heads up, like I said. there was a couple shortcomings that in my opinion was one of them but I can overlook it it's progress it's like in St. Elmo's Fire all these relationships in high school they're all changing they're trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be in the future have you seen that film? do you know the song? nope you don't know the song? it's a great song nope nicely done Stern Pinball I will say, though, all transparency is a little raw. Not full tilt. No, those nerves, they're exposed. I was a single danger whenever I watched this thinking, man, some guys and gals have all the luck. Dennis, I can, why can't we do this? Well, you can do what you want. I don't know if you can match the prize, but. No, I'm saying why couldn't we? I wonder if there's tryouts. So I want to be able to try out to do commentary on one of these Stern pinball things. I mean, oh, so you're upset that you weren't the one doing it. Yeah, I think that they did a fine job. But I can only imagine what that show could have been with me on color and you on analysis. The banter, the back and forth. Oh, Dennis, it would have been gold. that I don't get included in that kind of stuff. I get it. I don't, but I get it. Whatever. Maybe it's my singing. Maybe it's that you're a distributor for Stern and you're not in any way associated with doing their video content. More so then. We've got ideas, people. Bummed me out. But, it's okay. They're going in the right direction and I'm happy for them. See, pre-recorded stuff. Oh man, you can actually pre-record stuff and still air it live and have it fully edited and be the best representation of your company and your product? Hot damn! Do you think they'll do more of these in the future? That's a good question. They said this was the inaugural, so I'm guessing yearly. Oh, yeah. Maybe we'll get our chance in 2023, Dennis. Yeah, I'm sure. I don't, they don't need me for this stuff. I need you. With you, I can see a new horizon. And then if the players... Go ahead. I've done commentary before. I know, and I haven't. Yeah, but you're like a nobody in the competitive scene. I want to stretch my wings, Dennis. Maybe you should go to a local tournament first and see how your wings work. I want to be their man in motion. All I need is a full production crew. Oh, did you know this? The Jurassic Park toppers? You know how people on Christmas Eve were breaking into all these stores and fighting over the Jurassic Park toppers? Well, we thought they were gone, but they're back. The second and possibly final run of those toppers have now shipped. Ooh. Did you buy them all again? No, they limit you. I can only get what I can get. But you know me. I was like, I'll take 50. They're like, no, we can't give you 50. Like, what can you give me? I'll give you five. I'll take 15. So, but the good news is, if you want to see how easy it is to sell something, mark the time. Timestamp here. We're going to air this about 8 a.m. on Monday. I have, I believe, two spots of people who found some in between. So call now, 812-457-9711. Text me or email me at zhph at fliptheletterinoutpinball.com to grab one. I can guarantee you they'll be sold by noon. Man, people love toppers. Is it bad if I recently sold a game from my personal collection that had a topper and I did not advertise the topper to the person wanting to buy it and I kept the topper? no I mean it's a separate accessory I don't view it as good or bad well why keep it no I mean I don't get it I don't get why you would want it I mean I guess the idea of selling it for more later no and that's not even it well that would be the it that I came up with I just wanted to display them oh my god they're not knick knacks I know I think I'm going to make a comfy shell for them have you sat to wonder if maybe you're doing some of these things not because you love toppers, but because you've kind of made yourself the topper guy, and this is the little dance you feel you must do to entertain the folk. Well, I'm no, right there, I stopped listening after you said topper guy. It's topper king, and I'd appreciate it if you addressed me that same way. This is America. We don't do royalty. I'm President Topper. Have you seen the post? Mail in your ballot for topper of the year. I'll own it. I'll hold it over my head as I go to Dennis Creacher's yard and I will sing to him. That was a good visual, actually. I'm going to give myself a lot of credit for that visual because I pulled in the old 80s song with the Say Anything film and took the boom box and replaced it with a topper and my undying love for you. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why we will not win a Twippy. On to Deep Root Pinball. We've got a lot to talk about here. Do we? Yeah, if anybody wants to follow along, you can go to thisweekinpinball.com because that is where all of the information was allowed to be aired. So as you were talking about in the intro of this show, Dennis, they pushed back when we spoke last in the podcast, episode 30, they pushed back and delayed the release and the reveal yet again. But the following day on a Tuesday, well, there was leaked images, right? between that, a couple leaked images from Lord knows who. And then on Tuesday, all of a sudden on this week in pinball, we get this whole plethora of information about the products that are going to be developed potentially by Deep Root. Now, the other five correspondents? They call themselves the Deep Six. Is that what they've been? Is that? That's pretty clever. Yeah. Unfortunately, well, maybe not unfortunate, But to me, kind of unfortunate. That makes me think of the horror movie Deep Star Six. I've never heard of that, much less seen. 1989, one of my favorite horror movies. Oh, I'll have to watch it. It does not end well, so I worry when they call themselves the Deep Six. You know, I appreciate and respect when films don't end well. Because that's life. In horror, I'd say it's the majority of the case they don't really end well. I don't know. The bad guy was just burned or blown up. Yeah, but then usually at the end it's like... Yeah, he comes... So, yeah, so we saw this info dump maybe as a way to, I mean, it was massive. I could see that characterization, yeah. But the five others still had their NDA pretty tight, it felt like. Yeah, my understanding is that per the This Week in Pinball piece, that the information was released to give context and perspective regarding the leaked images of Raza and that the VIPs, as they were referred to in the piece, or the deep six, were released from the NDA, but only in terms of being able to talk about what was in the article. So it seemed like, and I did not consume all of the content because it started to feel very repetitive after a while, but most of these deep six folks then kind of went out on various platforms and talked about the article. But I had already read the article, so I didn't get it. You understand? I didn't hear a lot of opinion in most of those follow-ups. It was more almost like just reading the article aloud to me like I'm fucking five. And that's what it felt like at times when I was participating or listening to this as well. Do you think it was planned like this originally, or do you think this was circumstantial? No, no way. No. Careful. Think about it. I've been wrong about a lot. You can just assume that my assumption was wrong as well, because I miscalled everything so far. Well, yeah, but rightfully so. But no, I assumed that it was going to be, here's a thing, here's an event. The Deep Six go, they cover it. I'm sure a lot of the content in this article was probably prepped by Jeff during when he thought it was still going to be a reveal. Yes. But my assumption would have been that there was going to be a set date and time where they were all allowed to speak about whatever was on the tour. With anything to, you know, possibly some things disclosed saying, okay, this stuff can't be public yet, we're showing you anyway, just because. But that, you know, Kerry Hardy would be able to give his thoughts on everything he saw. Here's the main thing that was missing for me. Like, no one talked about their thoughts on how Raza played. Of course. Did they play it at all? Yes. Okay. There was one machine available to play. So, that's really weird to me. But, I mean, not in the context when after the fact it was, okay, you can only talk about what's in the article, and the article did not focus on Raza gameplay. So, I get why none of them said it, but to me it's like a glaring thing that that's the first game. And we've known more about Raza than we have anything else about Deep Root. Where are the opinions from the Deep Six? There's just like a – this is like – Well, don't you think that they're scared of the Indians? A dearth of opinions. They're scared to give an opinion. I would say if – I don't think they would be as – this is just me. This is pure speculation. But if they were in love with that game, Dennis, I don't think they'd be as scared to rejoice. Is that fair? Yes it is But if you really worried about breaking an NDA then I could see them regardless of their opinion of the game being like you don want to step on an NDA in a landmine This has been a company that has not, in my view, been shy about suggesting they'll take legal action. And that, nothing can put a chill on a lot of people, especially if they're not very familiar with the law, than a threat of the law being used against them. If the deep six are thinking that they'll get to come back and learn more later, if you did something that upset Deep Root, that invitation might not be coming. And do you think that all six would come back if asked to come back? Yes, I do. Do you? Yeah. As we look through all of the details here, they had a note from the tour group talking about some technical issues with Raza, some of the concerns they had, the interactions with the people there, whether it be Robert Mueller. They were all very cordial, and they had positive things to say about the team working at Deep Roots. That's always good to hear. and then Jeff went into visually describing and showing different elements of the Deep Root package, I suppose, including a different look to the cabinet and backbox. There's three models to Deep Root games. Some may only have one model, some may only have two, but you've got your more arcade edition, which is kind of a standard edition. Then you have an X edition, I believe, which is like a premium version. And then you have an extra edition, if I'm reading this correctly. And that's like the super limited edition version. I don't like the naming scheme. I don't either. I really don't. X and extra sounds too similar. That's really the big issue. I get the idea of the arcade edition. I mean, I get the idea of the extra edition. I don't get the idea of the X edition. I think that... Yeah, play on words, I get that. To me, this is a Xbox One X versus Xbox Series X, or Wii versus Wii U. It's really... I think it's really confusing. You know what's a better name? Premium. There's got to be some synonyms to premium here. Yeah, but, I mean, come on. Every pinball manufacturer is doing this stuff where it's like, other than possibly LE, they mean different stuff. Except, of course, it's extra weird because for Jersey Jack, LE is the middle model. So, what does that mean? I just can't stand this whole, I've never liked any logos, any brand representation with the X on it. I just, I still play it. It's very 90s. Yes, yes, thank you. Exactly. No fear, dangerous sports. X-treme. X-games. X-games. So those are the models, but the cabinet looks very much different, I guess, on the X and the X-extra. What is it? Is it X-tra? X-extra. X and X-extra. X-extra. Okay. So it's like a floating head. Yeah. What are your thoughts? I'm fine with it. All right. Yeah, for me, Dennis, the head is interesting, to say the very least. I said on Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, which you should all go listen to if you want to hear a middle-aged grown man, Scott Larson, lose his mind. That was really entertaining. So go listen to our takes, Dennis and I's, over there. Our appreciation for those guys asking us to come on. But I talked about this feels so much different that either it's going to look really cool in person with the wraparound graphics that light up the entire head, or it's going to look like complete shit and cheap and dated. They're going for this new retro neo type of look, right? I mean, I don't know how I describe the look. And inherently, I don't. Contemporary. I'm okay with it looking radically different. I'm not put off by it. Size-wise, it's supposed to match up to like a Bally Williams style, height, width, and all of that. And I like the looks of that illumination in the back, but the stainless steel worries me. The wood furniture value city look with the columns and stuff worries me. The fish tank looking top worries me. The whole thing, the only thing that goes into that head head is, I think, lighting. Yeah, that's my understanding. I'm not sure about that. We do have a hinge system to lift the glass instead of pulling glass out. Do you like that? Yeah, I do. But it's also not very innovative. How so? Bally was doing that, I think, in the 60s. Oh, interesting. Experimental. What did they do? I mean, they produced it. Wasn't Fireball, didn't it have a weird, like, I've never opened a Fireball. I had a fireball once and I'm thinking that something was weird on that maybe the whole top came off with the side rails or something I forget, emails to the pinballnetwork at gmail.com I'm taking a look at pin side and there was a thread from a couple years ago which seemed to suggest Bally was using lift up glass from 68 to 72 I've not confirmed that those dates are accurate but that was the speculation Let's see. And in that thread, Chuck Wirt, who screens under straight down the middle, noted that his odds and evens game had lift glass, and he thinks that was 73. Okay. All right, so around that era, we had something like that. And then Highway Pinball with Full Throttle and Alien had a full-piece system where you didn't pull out the glass either. It's still cool. I worry about the hydraulic pumps going out just like they do on everyone's SUV Windows. Your windows? Oh, you mean like the back? Yeah, the back hatch. Okay. Who has not had an SUV and had to replace one of those damn things? I've never owned an SUV. I did have a hatchback Camaro once, and I did not have to replace mine in that. Oh. I can see you in your IROC. It was the year after the IROC was discontinued, but it was the same basic body. Your body is like, I think some of the parts inside still said IROC, in fact. Please tell me you've rocked a mullet at some point in your life. No. Never? Come on, Zach. Dennis. I rocked a mullet. I'm not surprised you would. Hey, I rocked a mullet in the fourth grade. Thank you very much. You're just like, I ain't doing a little rat tail. I'm doing the full mullet. Yeah. The full glory curl back there. As we're looking through these, we'll see. They do have some different ways of doing cabinets. They're either vinyl wrapping them with just a wee bit of extra gloss coating coming standard, or you can get a direct print on the wood with pin armor coating, providing high-gloss hammer-tested protection. Why in the hell do you need hammer-tested protection on the cabinet? That's going to slam the game into the side of the next game. That's going to do damage. I don't care what they say. Or you can get a backlit, double-printed PETG lighted side art panel featured on the extra limited edition. Now, these are the things that did not come in in time. They came in reportedly the next day after SEAL Team 6 left. Do you think they have them on that machine right now at Deep Root? No, I don't. I'm going to guess no as well. But that sounds cool. Only if they don't do the highway pinball single panel. Oh, the teeny panel, yeah. I don't like that. Like, it looks cool. It looks better than nothing. But find a way, I said, Robert, find a way to light up that whole cabinet. Yeah, Zach, the thing that I'm wondering is where I guess I'm hopeful on that is Highway, they have that model to make them really easy to change and put in front of the light because of the cabinet swapping. So I'm hoping that this isn't designed for end user changes so they'll go ahead and use more of the space. I do think it's a – I mean, I guess we'll keep going through stuff. But part of my concern here is, is this too much a la carte? Are there too many choices? I always worry about that because when you're manufacturing, doing all of this custom stuff, you see Spooky doing it all the time. But they're a small run and they're still trickling out things. This is supposed to be a competitor with Stern and Jersey Jack Pimble. Yeah, I think I know. I know a lot of people do like the a la carte. Especially the difference for me is Spooky is not putting out three different tiers. It's like here's the thing and then here's the a la carte. whereas this is we've got three tiers and we've got a la carte and i just i find it i'm i'm skeptical of it let's yeah it just it seems like more of a pain and time is not on their side i would have made that more efficient they also have what they're calling other options we're talking about the a la carte standard glass or anti-reflective fingerprint resistant glass isn't normal anti-reflective glass very fingerprint prone yes that's why i think this might have been a typo. I've never seen a piece of glass that is fingerprint resistant. Maybe they're engineering a piece. Possibly. But they should have made fingerprint resistant stainless steel, if that's the case. No. Hey, maybe that's a little harder. I mean, refrigerators, you can get them, because there was fingerprints all over this thing. So the tour group sold the main cabinet stuff, the extra model they did not. Then their Their biggest revolution or their biggest innovation, what I think is what they're focusing on, is called Pinbar. Pinbar. Trademark. Copyright. Tim. Ding. Pinbar. Pinbar. It's not just for Jack on the Rocks. Can you tell the listener what, in your opinion, the Pinbar is? Sure. To me, the highlight of it is it's a touchscreen UI interface. though. It can also do display animations and effects during gameplay. Perfectly said. And it's located right where your lockdown bar would be, where your hands go. So it's easy to get to those options. And you look down right by the flippers to play the game. So why not put a display right there? I get the idea of it. The implementation may be revolutionary. I don't know until I play it. But there were were some concerns about the placement on the pinball machine and whether or not it would obstruct the normal feel of your hands when playing a game or whether it's needed down there in the first place. Because a lot of the settings are what you open up the coin door and you just press the buttons and there you go. But I guess you get maybe some video modes down there. You can have a Magnus save. We saw that in one of the picks, a Magnus save right by your thumb, which is nice. But it seems like your hands, looking at Steven Bowden's here, seems like the hands would be resting over that display to me, but maybe not. Yeah, I mean, the width of the frame around the pin bar looks fairly beefy. I know I read online a lot of people have been concerned about the corners, that they're not rounded enough. That's too much like Stellar Wars lock bar, and it's going to be painful to do a lot of aggressive nudging and movement. I don't know if that's true or not. Overall, I like the idea of this. I think the concept of this is a good idea because I think maybe it's easy for people in pinball to kind of forget about this, but I think the navigation of the menu system on pinball is quite tedious, and it's improved greatly from what it was in the 90s, but it's tedious. That three or four button little setup, you're scrolling through menu after menu after menu. I think my Walking Dead had over 70 options under one submenu. Yeah, Lyman likes to do that. A screen showing you stuff like, I see screens like this on modern-day copiers, and it's just faster. It's just a lot faster. But that being said, the average player doesn't have to go into the menus, but like once. You get your settings in there, and then you're not really worried about it. I think from the gameplay perspective, that is a good spot for viewing. It might not be the most ideal versus putting a screen on the play field somewhere like we might see with a Jersey Jack game, but this is a lot larger. Or like a highway in the play field. If you're wanting to take advantage of the touch screen for video modes and stuff, this is really the only logical place to put it in my view. And this would be standardized on all their games, so you don't have to worry about, okay, well, what mech am I taking out of the play field to stick a screen in? Yeah. But you've got this. It's taking up the lock bar apron area. You know, I've really warmed up to this idea as well. I really like this idea. I think it's visually very stunning. Where it's at, the display itself, the quality of the display and the animation they're using, the resolution, it really does look top notch. I'm going to give them credit there. I wonder if the display is the same size, Dennis, as in the head. It looks like a very similar size. Yeah, maybe. they might play a video and stuff at the same resolution if they want to like that would make it easy for them if they want to put both at certain points maybe have both displays outputting the same content I don't like that redundancy to me that's a that's a well we want to keep the we want to keep the pin bar busy and we didn't customize every single element to always show something different but I don't know I don't know if that's the intent or not so I'm actually okay with the pin bar I think it is cool and that's where you load in like your profile and stuff via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It doesn't matter where you're at. If you're at a DeepRoot game, you can log into your profile. I don't know. I think it stands out, and I think it addresses an area that technology could improve pinball at. So in that regard, whether or not this is the best implementation of it, I don't know. But conceptually, I think this is something that brings in modern technology, and it does not truly disrupt what pinball is. Do you ever, when you're playing a game, hit that lockdown bar when you're nudging or when you're frustrated or anything? Yeah, I mean, like, on the edges. When I'm nudging, I usually am either doing a... You mean like punch it? Like a fist, like a... Damn it. No, I don't do that. I've done that. No, I know a lot of people do. And I've hit the top when I'm nudging, too. I flip off the machine when I'm angry. I've done that too. Yeah, I did that to Rick and Morty last night. So I worry about the wear and tear of these things. If they were only in homes, okay, when you get them out on location, all bets are off. There's always that guy. No, my biggest concern about pin bar is the price. Actually, that's my big concern about a lot of these innovations is just how much. how much this stuff lift glass with hydraulics is not cheaper than just putting in plastic channels and people slide the glass in and out putting in a touch screen i don't care how standardized it is putting in a touch screen into a pin module machine is not cheaper than a flat bent piece of lock bar metal all this is going to add you're either having to sacrifice on the bom and the licenses to afford all this to keep the pin at the same price or this pin is going to be more expensive because of all this tech. And it looks like an OLED display. It looks really good. That's my concern. Not that this isn't a really cool idea, but I mean, with the talk about DeepRoot wanting to sell these or allow these patents to be used by other companies, I mean, how many people who want to just play pinball and aren't going to go in the menus all the time or whatever are going to say, yeah, please add $300 to my pinball machine for this? That's where I'm worried. That's where In terms of launching a pinball manufacturing company, all this stuff is more expensive than what's currently done. So where does innovation start to lose and money start to win? I don't know the answer, but that's a really good question. It will vary by person. But that's my worry. If you start looking at all this stuff, I mean, the pen is becoming more and more expensive the more and more cool stuff they stick in it. And I just, you know, with my, you know, and this is my stance, and it might not be the right stance, but I think that for a new company that wants to be a sizable producer of pinball machines, you can't be going in at, like, the JJP price point. You've got to compete with a Stern Pro price point. Otherwise, you'll never see significant market share. Nobody can do that, though. I know. Especially not like this. Some of the issues that I'm having when I'm looking at these on set of pictures here, so the pin bar looks cool. it needs to have round edges simple enough you don't have round edges to fail yeah those are things that can still be tweaked i think the idea of the screen itself is is fine the problem i'm having is i don't know if i can trust all of this innovation all of this new look when there are very basic things that even i an untrained eye can see and worry about for example you're not You're not going to talk about the two flippers not being aligned in the photo, are you? I mean, come on. Why? Yeah. I don't know why. Why? If you're going to have cameras there, you're going to have people experiencing this. You have one machine. This isn't like a location you've got 20 games to maintain. You've got one machine to show off. Why are the flippers misaligned? Now, what if, since the prototype of Raza and the redesign of the game, they have gone with non-aligned flippers like Middle Earth? Then that is a complete fail, and I wouldn't own that game because of that fact alone. Yeah, middle Earth did it. And I don't own that game. I know, but there are lots of games you don't own. I would never own a game that has misaligned flippers, period. That symmetry cannot be changed. It's not all about you. Well, I did it if they want my dollar. It looks like shit. Why would you misalign those flippers? And while you see that, you're looking down at an apron that has screws, exposed screws in the top of it, and unfinished stainless. Why? You have stainless steel like mirror blades, but they're stainless steel? Why? Do you not think that that's just part of the prototype? This is their launch, Dennis. I don't know what the, I don't know. I don't know what those stainless steel tires. Was this their launch? I don't, was it supposed to be? was, is this supposed to be some sort of like quasi-reveal? I don't know. Because remember, I don't know if they plan to show this or not. This is all ostensibly, according to the Twip article, the only reason we're getting any of this is because of those leaked Raza images. And I know Deep Root will probably strongly disagree. Those leaked Raza images, therefore, are the best thing to happen to Deep Root in 2020. Because if they weren't going to show anything after they aborted this reveal, they would be in a... This, as actually gotten some people talking positive things about Deep Root. Most of the forum commentary is still negative, yes, but there are others who have liked things about the pinbar or some of this other tech that they weren't going to show at all. So to me it's ironic that a leak that's greatly frustrated Deep Root is the only reason they actually ended up doing something right. But I question the amount of info dump. I actually think they have revealed far too much with this. Yes, I would tend to agree. It's like, again, it feels like there wasn't really a planned out strategy, and then they weren't going to show anything. And then they ended up showing everything, including stuff that I don't think is remotely ready for people to view. Exactly. And maybe those screws are part of it. Well, why so much stainless steel? Instead of wood rails in here, they use stainless steel. Instead of wood, they're using stainless steel blades. I don't understand. They have the vents up front. Stainless steel. I don't get the whole. I get if you're going for that look, but it's got to be something that doesn't show. Stainless steel is, okay, I'll stop there. But that's where I'm like, this is not finished. This is not what the planned production models are supposed to look like. I totally understand that. But there's still a purpose for them being on this machine currently that I don't understand. Okay. I mean, I don't know. They were just looking at, hey, what does this look like if we do metal here? What's this going to look like? That's still conceptual phase. Yeah, but I don't know. One of the many things that I did not get any sense of in this article is how close they are to production at all. Yeah, we didn't get pricing. We didn't get timelines. We didn't get, they said, maybe an update. We might get an update. We hope. We hope to update you. Oh, my. I don't know that. Poor phrasing. If you guys want to see all of what the pin bar has the capability of doing, go to thisweekinpinball.com and check out the long list of different things, including news, ads, custom content, achievements, interactive touch video modes, etc., etc. And they even have future features of the pin bar. Now, this thing, this pin bar was one that wasn't working. That was one of the biggest issues here for the SEAL Team 6, right? Yeah. Yeah, as my understanding is that there were a number of technical challenges related to the pin bar. Okay. As we move on to the play field and the dimple protection, This was another questionable experience. Pin armor. I love pin armor. It's not my favorite innovation, but I love it. What I don't love is why do you have to put hammer tested, a big logo on the play field and a drain link? Come on, Robert. They're really just owning that statement. That's just one of the things that they really wanted to stand behind is this lean into this hammer thing. When you're looking at these playfields, they show one to the left without the pin armor. I believe it was one of the prototype playfields that they showed last year. It was in one of those two games that was at that show. The art saturation and color looks better on the left one, I will say. I don't know if that's a pin armor thing or just a print thing. I don't trust that because there seems to be a lot more exposed direct lighting over the one on the right. Fair. That's fair. I don't think those pictures are close enough. There was a lot of fluorescent lighting in that room. We could tell from the shots of the pin bar. They did have a lot of different mechanisms to show the pin armor and show that there wasn't going to be no dimples. I'm going to give a lot of credit to Dennis because the six members did say, in fact, it did not dimple. Their coding did not dimple these games. However. I know, Zach, but it was already orgy. That's my favorite part. That's so big brain. I love it. You can't dimple something that's already dimpled, wink. So they said the early runs of this pin armor, the early, I don't even know. Basically, it looks like a lemon peel or an orange peel already because of the type of coating they are using. And you can feel the texture of it when you run your hands along it. Doesn't change the path of the bowl. Neither do dimples, though. Well, that's why I thought this whole thing is, and I admit, and I know some listeners are going to not agree with me, and that's always fine, but I've always thought the whole dimple thing is overblown anyway. It's not like it was affecting gameplay. Yeah, it doesn't. I'm used to it by now. I mean, I understand some people want this, like, aesthetic purity. They want to be able to play their game and not see that it's ever been played. As they noted, Deeper did say that this was not the finalized version of the pin armor, that it will be smooth ultimately. Correct. But to shut, I mean, again, I understand why they would not have wanted to reveal this publicly to say, yeah, we have pin armor. It does prohibit dimples. It only comes at the price of your play field feeling like it's already dimpled and looking that way, too. Because what is orange peel? That's what everyone said. The dimple's even out over time, and you get a nice orange peel texture. Here's where I'm at on all of this. Deep Roots, three biggest things that they were showing in these new products all come with issues thus far. We've got the orange peel coating that's dimple-free. Good for it. We've got the pin bar system, which is their biggest innovation, but it was glitchy and didn't work. Then we've got the cabinet being so much different, but the parts weren't in stock yet. I do like the Gottlieb idea of printing on the back of the playfield assembly. I like that, too. I'm good with that. I like that. Audio, Deep Root Correspondent said that the audio is spectacular. It's awesome. This is a 4.1 audio system that is included on the extra edition that they were talking about. But there's two mid-range speakers on the front, crotch speakers, that point up towards the player's ears. Yeah, to ride the body up to the ears. Or scare the hell out of golden retrievers that live in your home. Possibly. So the sound's going to be good. That's great. It sounds not hard. You just put in a little money and you can get a good sound of anything. A potato can give you good sound if you crank enough amperages. But can it look good? You're supposed to say, well, that's weird. The audio doesn't have a look. Well, it does when you use stainless steel vents on the front of the cabinet. Again, maybe those are prototype vents. We don't know. Everything is stainless on this whole game, but then the coin door is... Oh, don't bring up the coin. That's the coin door everyone uses. Didn't make it stainless. No. They spent enough money. The extra edition should have all the stainless as chrome. Period. electrical there's a lot of mosfet 48 volt letters and numbers and cpu at 3.6 gigahertz i'm not going to back to the future so i don't sounds okay i guess other things let's not forget the assisted leveling that sounds kind of neat they've got uh something in effect where it's going to level itself so you don't have to do the turtle approach anymore on your star trek Yeah I hate turtles You'll still have to do it on your Star Trek That's true So a one person setup Where it has some type of plate On the bottom of these games Where you can install an accessory To do it I don't know how this is going to work Nobody has been able to verbally Tell me how this Would work and be easier And better But maybe it can I don't know just knowing how to unbox games and doing so 100 plus times. I don't know what other way there is, but that's what you said in the last episode. That's why it's innovation. I don't know. Do you know, Zach, did the Deep Six see the kickstand thing for the one-person setup? No, no. I'm glad you asked. No, they did not see that, nor did they see the assisted leveling system. They did see the pin pod. Pin pod. That's my favorite. Trademark. Pin pod. Pin pod. Pin pod. is a way to crate and ship pinball machines. It's a wooden crate, and I'm excited about this because it's primarily why I don't like shipping used games because a lot of times, like my shipping broker, you have to have it fully crated to be fully insured. And that's a pain in the ass to do, and it's expensive. It's expensive to buy all that MDF and crate it all up, and it takes a lot of time. So I don't like doing that, but this may be a fix for that. It looks like an encapsulated wooden crate that you can put your pinball machines in with clipping systems throughout, and it kind of looks cool, too. It's got rubber, hard rubber or soft rubber footing, so it can shift a bit and be fine. They did see that, and they said it worked well overall. It seemed like a heavy-duty way to safely move a pinball machine. It looks pricey, though. Yeah, I mean, it's got a lot of clamps on it. It's got a lot of clamps on it. It's a crate, but with lots and lots of clamps. Looks like Houdini's trunk. I think this is of limited appeal. Yes, I can see that. Because most people aren't shipping games all the time, so they're going to just want their game to arrive in cardboard on a pallet, because they want to recycle it. And typically it's safe enough. I mean, I can see you shipping this and maybe trying to make arrangements and say, hey, I'm going to ship you. I'm going to fully crate it so it's insured. And then when you take the box apart, it is collapsible. So maybe it's cheaper to send just the box back. Like, can you basically flat pack it and ship it? Like, where are you going to get your crate back? That's true. You know, we saw someone on Pinside selling a cardboard box for $100. So this has got to be more than that. It's got to be $500 for this. It's just a lot. And I don't know how it secures itself. So surrounding, preventing it from forklifts and stuff, that's nice. But what are you doing with the game in the box? Because you don't want that fumbling and bumbling around in the box because it's hitting wood, which is going to cause damage. Some cool stuff in here. They go on to talk about the software and the ecosystem, omni channels, pin access. There are some pretty cool things here. Read through it. There's some nice stuff in here, conceptually speaking. shot logs and playing Mario Kart Ghost, right? Yeah, I know. I was talking with Nicholas Baldridge from the For Amusement Only Pinball Podcast, and he's developed a couple of games for P3, and I know he's noted a number of these items are also in P3. I guess both systems use Unity. I don't remember well enough to be able to say exactly what was done by Multimorphic first, but again, there's stuff involved with this on the tech side that sounds like it's already out there in pinball. So again, not that it means it's not cool anymore. It's just, is it innovative? I think it's safe to say, though, that if Deep Root is able to launch in the manner, even in half the manner that they think they'll be able to, it will still get much more exposure than Multimorphic will. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah. I think that we could do a whole segment on where I think Multimorphic has made its mistakes in terms of trying to sell their P3 units. There's some similarities between the companies, though, I must say. Oh, absolutely. Sure, sure. But, I mean, one of the things that a lot of people who don't buy complain about is the lower third being the screen. And with this, you know, with Deep Root, you've got art. It's going to look like a normal pinball machine when it's turned off. except for the pin bar, but that's just where the lock bar would be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In a way, it sticks closer to the traditional guns than P3 does, and for a lot of people, P3 is that. The screen thing is just too video game for them. For whatever reason, it's just too video game. Yeah, we've talked about that a lot, and Jerry got a cool system that has some potential but I don think it near the potential that it could have But Jerry makes games That true That a big difference Even if they trickle slow, he does make them. Do you think it was a good idea for Deep Root in this article to announce many of their future playing titles? Nope. I don't either. It felt like they were just fed up with the way this is all going and just said, here, take it all. I don't get it. Yeah. I'm covering some of the ones that were sort of already known. Like we knew Fire and Rimstone, for example. So kind of explaining the concept and features on that, I could sort of see it. But if Roz is the only thing that's going to initially be available, I would not have revealed my cards on all of this. To me, it felt like by doing it that there was an almost desperate attempt to say, still back, I still want us to succeed because you're going to get Goonies. Hey, we got the Who and we got Goonies, so you should care about us succeeding with our unlicensed themes and you should still be rallying for us to succeed. And for your Goonies, you have a food truck. That's the thing. We've got food truck. We've got Merlin's Arcade. none of this stuff can be presented as original themes that excite in the degree and manner in which they are presenting them in my opinion so why do it i don't get like no one is going to ever care about merlin's arcade nor will they care about the premise the only way for you to get people to care about merlin's arcade is to show why it's cool that's it there's no that's Where talking about the features kind of tries to hint at that to get your imagination going. Based on 8-Ball Deluxe with flow and precision. With flow and precision around new mechs, unique gameplay HUD. So do you even need to say Merlin's Arcade? Or do you just say we have a new game based on 8-Ball Deluxe? No, no. Again, I wouldn't have discussed Merlin's Arcade at all because it's not ready to be shown. But that being said, I don't know if that's the right game. I don't know. I'm judging this just off of pinball. And I don't know if that's the right answer. We find out about planned movies and planned video games well before they're revealed, and that doesn't sabotage those industries. And I might not be right in thinking that they shouldn't have done this, but in pinball we're used to not really knowing much about the announcement other than the game that's being released. I think it's okay if companies were to loosen their grip a little bit about the game that's about to come out. I don't see the big deal about not, you know, refusing, Stern refusing to say Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles until the raid actually show the play field. Like, yeah, our next game's going to be Turtles. I just, I don't think that really hurts things. I get the Josh Sharpe argument on the you know, raw thrills philosophy. We've got to keep the, you only want to sell what's on the line because it's what you need to sell. That's very operator-oriented, though. And the model in pinball is shifting more and more towards homeownership. And in homeownership for things like console and PC-based video games, it's like, yeah, we're doing StarCraft 3. It's coming out in five years. You know the name. Are you excited? And they are. But again, I don't know if it's apples to apples, because you're like, yeah, but I only have to keep $70 in reserve to buy that. Exactly. Yeah, there's so many different... So I don't know the right answer, but in regards to me thinking about future planned titles in all of this and all this focus on innovation, again, it's an info dump. We don't need to know about these future plan titles. We want to see them. We want to play them. In a way, I guess, where it might have been smart is this distracts from some of the delay stuff and the innovation stuff that wasn't working. Because if you go on to a forum like Pinside and you read the Deep Root thread, something on the order, I would say, between 33% and 50% of the discussion is about those themes now, not talking about, the rest of it is complaining about the pin bar. Yeah, but do less people want Raza now? I would say yes. I don't think Raza had high demand no matter what. Exactly. That's why you don't want to compromise what little sales you were going to get on that pin. With announcing all of, like you, Con Yeti, I can see that being really intriguing as a follow-up to Whitewater for a lot of people. Yeah. They're going to hold out now. Gladiator, not so much. The Who, it's licensed. But does it change it that much versus people already knew Dennis Nordman had done a few designs for Deep Root. There were already people that I saw saying, well, yeah, I've seen Raza. I'm not impressed by it. I really want to hold out for what Nordman did. Okay. Well, that's fair. Do you like the direction Yukon Yeti is going in? What do you mean? Because I don't know much about it. It looks based more off of by the sketchings, more a children's type of game. Unless they're raunchy. No, come on. He's mischievous and lovable, not raunchy and lewd. It sounds like describing you. Lovable. And mischievous. Well, I, so, I mean, if you're asking, like, my assessment, no, I don't. I think it's, cuteness is not fitting with the, I think silly and goofy aligns with Whitewater. I think the, I wouldn't have gone with, like, little adorable teenage Yeti. Yeah. Pokemon Yetis? Yeah. I mean, they're not like chibi cute, but it's... I don't care about the art. I don't care what the sketches of the Yeti look like. It's a story, though. I don't want a sequel to Whitewater. I don't care. I do. I know you do. A lot of people do. I don't. I never loved Whitewater in the first place. Watch your tone. No, I will not watch my tone. Whitewater is good. Some people think it's Nordman's best game, so they're probably excited about this. I'm more interested in, it says that there will be new mechs. I don't see much in terms of the great multi-level flow, because, again, if it's the sequel to Whitewater, I'm going to expect it's going to have great multi-level flow anyway, because that's what Whitewater was known for. So I'm curious about what the new mechs might be, but other than that, I'm not really curious. I would have just shown raw new mechs kind of functioning. That's what I would have shown. I mean, I wouldn't have mentioned this. No. I wouldn't have mentioned this. I wouldn't have mentioned Machine Age. I wouldn't have mentioned Gladiator. What about titled TBD? Would you announce that? Yeah, TBD, Osler's Space Pirate Game? No. Make up a title for now. Don't put titled TBD. It just shows that you're a magic girl. I mean, if they needed to mention other games to distract or whatnot, I suppose what I would have done is only mention The Who and Hey, You Guys. And those are your two, those are your bangers. Yeah, they came out with a slide on this, it looks like a presentation. It just says, hey, you guys, 2021. Sounds optimistic. To me, though, it sounds. Good enough for me. Good enough for me. Why say, hey, you guys, quit singing. I'm sick of the fuck of the songs. I'm going to make a rule that if you sing anymore on this podcast, I'm hanging up. Because I'm tired of it. I don't want it to be a thing. It's a decent rule. But I'll break it. Yeah, I'm pretty generous. I never did that to Mark. I don't like to give ultimatums. But, I mean, this is like the third or fourth song. This is the second song, thank you. And people have been complaining. They're all good songs. Yeah, but you didn't write them. Cindy Lauper did. Yes. Oh, I can write my own music? Well, can't. Is it the loophole? You may. I don't know if you can. There's no loophole. Then it's the Goonies. The Goonies. Grail. Why didn't they call it the Goonies? Grail theme. Why are they hiding it? Why are they not saying the title? Probably because their licensing agreement doesn't start until 2021. Who knows? I don't know. But the Goonies are coming. That's all I care about, and it is good enough. I don't care about any of this other stainless steel, horrible design bullshit. I don't care about nothing. You are what's wrong with pinball. I am what's right. I saw someone else, I think, do the same thing regarding the Who. was just like, oh, I love the Who. I'm buying that. Really? Yeah. Yep. I will buy the Goonies. Don't care. If someone asked them, like, you haven't seen anything about it yet other than the theme and you're already sure you're going to buy it? And the guy's like, yeah. I'm saying that with a caveat. If. If. It is the Goonies. And what I'm saying is it has to be the Goonies. You can't give me Jurassic Park and it not really be Jurassic Park. You create your own universe. No, no, no, no. It's in the world of the Goonies. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the Goonies. All you need is one-eyed... What's his name? One-eyed. Willie? One-eyed Willie. Yeah. There. It's Goonies. I got my inhaler ready. Love you, slaw. There have to... It has to be the Goonies. And it's purchased. It doesn't have to be all of them? Maybe not. I mean, remember with Alien and Aliens with Highway, the big thing that was debated in some people was... It didn't have Sigourney Weaver. And you don't have it. It had a lot of other pieces from the films. I'd say no. Not it. I mean, I said no, too, but... Gotta have the Goonies. Everybody's gotta be there. Ma Fratelli. Such an ensemble cast, and some of them aren't important. They all are. Every one of them. Every one of them's important. That's what I said, booby traps. So, the Goonies, I'm sold. I don't care about anything else. I just want them to get the Goonies. Goonies are bust for me, and I don't care about a pinball. I'll love the pinball. I'll love everything. They got the Goonies. It is what it is. That's where I'm at. I'm good. Thank you, Robert Mueller and Deep Root. I mean, it does demonstrate the power of theme. Yes, which brings me to my conclusion of Deep Root. I am the armchair quarterback. I realize that. But how I win my armchair Super Bowl is by taking everything you've worked on, Robert Mueller and Deep Root team, every single thing, and re-theme everything. Put it all in the can. Everything. Time Machine, Time Transporter, Gladiator, Merlin's Magician's Arcade. All of it. Get rid of it. Focus on the Goonies and focus on getting Raza out. Focus on Alice in Wonderland. The Who, that's fine. It's licensed. And focus on Yukon Yeti. Everything else you have. Yukon Yeti and the J-Pops, those are the only acceptable original themes. Everything else, you've got to go out. get you some cheap 80s horror themes, get you some cheap licensing, and re-theme the entirety of these unlicensed games. Then you may have a shot. Otherwise, I might not see my Goonies. That's where I stand. You think it's fair? Unfair? I don't know why you've decided, like, Alice in Wonderland is worthy. Because I saw the foam core of it, and it was a spectacle. Yeah, but it's probably unplayable. I mean, Magic Girl in its finished state, per the American Pinball products, was an unplayable, beautiful diorama. But that style of the classic literary piece, Alice in Wonderland, with the art and the theming, was close to perfection. I don't know if it sells well. Close to perfection. I don't know if it sells. That could be a collector's... You could do a $20,000 for something like that. remember all that Zidware stuff was supposed to mostly be ultra limited that was it's attraction well and it worries me too because Zombie Yeti was attached to that as was he Magic Girl but we see a Magic Girl rendition here that oh yeah you're not getting you're not getting Jeremy's art that's not Packer's Magic Girl no it's not it doesn't look bad this is the new Magic Girl no I'm not into her as much nope alright can we stop talking about Deep Root sure oh shit punny factory update punny it's not any better it's going to be limited 112 units alright let's go this week in pinballs got the scoop on punny factory damn company had some surprising things for it too so they're wanting to cash in on the exposure stuff so they're showing the different phases and features of punny factory and the new company that is Pinball Adventures is creating pinball machines. This seems like your kind of street-level game, Dennis. Oh, sorry. Not street-level. Single-level. It's got a Xenon tube. I'm sure it does have a tube. Try Tube Shop. Oh, man. High-end wood cabinets, full interior graphics. I'm going to give special consideration here to the gang over there at Pinball Adventures. The full-height interior direct-to-wood graphics are pretty spectacular. I like how the graphics looked on Mafia, which I believe was put together by the same who are now the contractors for this. Yeah, Team Pinball. Yeah, Team Pinball. So that's nicely done. I like the attention to detail on the top or two with the smokestacks coming out. I don't know what in the hell is going on with those vents I feel like I'm looking at deep root stuff again in the middle of the head yeah I see what you mean what is that I don't know what that is do you think they have the speakers there I think so but I don't want that to be true why what are they going to fit in there tweeters I don't know Then you get a little sneak peek of the game to the left That looks atrocious What else can I say about this It looks interesting I don't know what's going on With the honey I blew up the pinball apron It looks like the biggest monster apron ever Talk about one thirds The fucking apron is one third of the game And it's plain and boring It's got a cool shooter knob There's no way this fails right Maybe sells a few like Mafia did. Pricing's better than Mafia was. And if you look in the final picture, in the final phases picture, you can see the sushi or something all the way to the left. Mm-hmm. Yes. See, they announced multiple titles up front. They actually have games here, though. Each machine is built by two of their staff, one for the cabinet and trim and one for the play field hey if it works it works 10 to 20 games a month so their production speed is about 1 fourth that of Spooky wait a minute so 10 to 20 a month that's how fast they can build them and there's only two people putting them together yes world's most quickest and efficient manufacturers well I guess there's a third person that does the once over for the test for QA, you know, quality assurance. Wow. Could you, if you knew all that there was to put together a pinball machine with your Lego pieces, could you put one together in 1.5 days? I don't, I mean, I don't know. I'll let you have Harrison Drake from Stunner. I think if I had done two of them at least, you know, with anything, if I do it more and more, I do get faster and faster. It is a single level game, so there's not a lot of ramp mounting or anything. No way. So a lot of these components, I think, go in pretty quick. No way. There's no way. I think you can. There's absolutely no way to put these things together. I think you can. I think it's fine. I think I could do it. Okay. They didn't tell you the whole thing. It's 20-hour work days, by the way, because you're sleeping four hours. Punny Factory, we'll see what happens with that. I don't know why I'm so angry about the news this week. Oh, this never makes me angry. Let's talk about Multimorphic. Okay. Fruit then pinball adventures then Multimorphic. I kind of missed a couple weeks ago speaking about Nick Baldrige's Ranger in the Ruins. I did too. Yeah, so I figured we can mention it here. I did get a chance to go back and watch some of the stream reveal from Buffalo Pinball. I watched it when it came. I watched that live. Probably about 20 minutes, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Some things that were interesting to note for me was that Nick was able to create this game code-wise in 72 days. See, he could probably put together a punny factory in one and a half days. There's no way. I want to see somebody do a speed run on putting a punny factory together. Maybe you could. Maybe you could contact Pinball Adventures and ask them if you could sell one of their games if you build it yourself. I would start it on fire. I'd be so angry trying to put that thing together. I could see the really horrible IKEA instructions and be like, what's a flugelsnag? No, there's no way. You don't have to build any playfield for Ranger in the Ruins, though. It uses the Cosmic Cart Racing module. That is true. It's based off the Cosmic Cart Racing module. It's $150. So if you have the Cosmic Cart Racing module with pinball numbers, it's not a bad price for a brand-new game. It's a program. Right, it's just software. You have to have the P3, and you have to have the Cosmic Kart Racing module, and then you can go to the Multimorphic site, and you can buy the game for $150. Correct. Thank you. It is really kind of coded as a one-ball game. You can change it higher if you want to, but yes, it is designed to be a one-ball. I think he was talking about... The roguelike is the theme. Yes. I think he was talking about, he has it coded in a way, it might be an option, that if you do add subsequent balls, then they're kind of... The scoring is... Yes, he diminishes it. Thank you. What is the word I'm looking for? Decay? Yeah, decay. Yeah, I think that's fairly accurate. We've seen that in other, you know, in EMs. That was pretty common, too. If it let you switch between five ball and three ball, a number of them, I believe, also changed the scoring value. Or maybe that was early solid state. Anyway, I've seen it done before. Affecting scoring based off of balls. The gaming itself looks more, I don't want to say simple, because I know it's not simple, but it's not graphically advanced. Correct. And I don't think the rules are elaborate. No, it's got an EM feel to it. Yeah, for better or worse, Dennis, I don't know if this is fair, but it feels like a phone game, but on a pinball machine. I could see that, yeah. Well, because it's a roguelike style, and for those that haven't played roguelikes in the video game world, Normally you have one life to go and accomplish something. They're usually fairly hard. There's usually some randomized elements to them. Some of them, especially the ones that are, you know, it's called Rogue because the first game, Like It, was called Rogue. And so a lot of them might let you have certain power-ups or certain carryovers that you can use to advance yourself, but that's not a requirement. And, in fact, Rogue did not, I believe, do that. so in this instance the kind of randomized elements seem to be the ghosts because there are these ghosts that are based around internet connectivity so other people are playing Ranger in the Ruins when they die or lose or in some capacity their spirit their ghost remains in the game and your version that you're playing is aware of this because of the internet connectivity That's cool. And shooting the ghost, I guess, gives you some sort of gift. And much like a roguelike called Binding of Isaac, some of those gifts are useful and some of those gifts are not helpful. What the hell did Isaac do to deserve that, though? Well, he was just a bad boy. Poor Isaac. According to his mother. So was his mom. Where's dad at? I've got the issue. Dad wasn't around. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever played Binding of Isaac. It's kind of creepy. I have no idea what you're talking about. It is. It's my favorite roguelike by Dina Jim Weisz. Oh. Something odd and creepy, and you love it. Interesting. I like a lot of creepy stuff. But you're the kinkiest fucking dude in pinball. Back to racing. You always have to take it too far. I know, I know. That's the fun of it. I want to play Ranger in Ruins with the Myths. I want to be the Ranger. The former ghosts Can gift you stuff Like you said Some good Some bad That's a That's a really cool feature I love that Yeah I think Getting the items Is important to being able To get a good score In the game Yeah I like how if you tilt it Your game's over It doesn't matter If you had Extra ball It's over Unless you had like the That's That's Nick Wanting to force feed you His EM philosophy Like you will like This bingo game You will like Tilton's game Steven Bowden, you will like it. B-12. Steve hates that. So that's why I name dropped him. Yeah, so I think Twitch integration, I guess that Nick's looking into something along those lines. Yeah, where you can interact live with a Twitch player of like Ranger in the Ruins by offering bits or in chat. Maybe you can interact with the game that the person, the streamer, is playing. And that's really cool too. Yeah, I've seen that on video games, not quite the same way, but there was a modified version of Zelda, Legend of Zelda, I don't remember which version, I don't think it was the very first Zelda, where people could go into the system and you could spend money, you'd have these points, and you could do stuff to the player. You could help them, you could say, okay, you get more arrows, or no, I'm taking all your arrows away, I'm taking all your health away, one hit kills you. all sorts of people trolling except for the oh yeah no they uh there was a charity stream where i watched them do this for two and a half hours and you could just hear the because there was a live audience pre-covid people laughing with glee as people just trolled the player incessantly like now left moves you down and right moves you up and just you know messing with his controller and all sorts of i don't know if i like that and they raised a lot i mean this was tens of thousands of people were watching this. They raised thousands of dollars through that game for whatever charity they were. I can see the, I can see like the moderators. I can just picture like, leave Jack Danger alone. Some moderators really looking up and praising them. Yeah, but if it's like, if you're like getting bits and stuff for it, I mean, that's, I mean, I mean, I'd be like, yeah, mess with my game. Make me, make me, pay me and make me something. Oh, this is so sad. Okay. I just picture the equivalent for pinball like Keith L. went up on the main stage of Pemberg. Oh, here comes the water balloon. Try to dodge it, Keith. Yeah, I don't know if competitive is going to let that stuff in. Oh, somebody flicked his ear. Now he's chasing after him. Don't drink, Keith. Oh, okay. Ranger in the Ruins. I think that something like this, conceptually for Multimorphic, is a hit. $150, you get a noob game You already have the module for it If we have a catalog of 50 to 100 Of these kind of games Yeah, you might push forward This company a little bit But it's ideas like this That we need to ever see Multimorphic as a player In this industry, in my opinion I'd say maybe I still think the actual moving of P3 units Would gain more ground With a licensed team With its own module but obviously the more independent games that you can have especially they're very affordable games I mean I know Jerry talks about the affordability of the individual modules but I'm talking serious affordability $150 is lower than toppers we're not, these modules are over a thousand bucks so in that realm as you build out the library that creates an attraction to where you think that you'll still you won't get bored of your P3 that's, I think that's an issue P3's had, is that the game output is not fast enough, and a lot of the games are fairly simple, so people lose interest and get out of the product. I think this model for the company is very much built around the idea that people will buy a P3 and then it's bolted to the floor, because there's always new stuff for it. That's a fantastic point, actually. That's a really good point. But you need more than Nick doing it. And I still think you need more than Heist. Yeah, I mean, Heist is, I I think all the module tech that I've always seen, I've liked all of it. I like the ball staging, magnet lock stuff in the Cosmic Kart racing. The crane is super cool in Heist. And then, of course, Lexi has a really cool, like, huge ball lock thing. But it's not a platform seller. Heist isn't a platform seller. Yeah, I think. It's not Mario. I know a lot of people who love Heist, but most of the names I know that have bought Heist already had P3. And they were all really big fans of P3. Oh, yeah. No, there's a lot of fanboyism that goes on with P3. I know from EGP. I will. If I neglect to say something, I get people writing in to me saying, you didn't talk about this. I appreciate P3, but there's only one way to go forward, and that's with a big license thing. Period. Period. Do you think Jerry would even refute that at this point? It's the killer app thing. And in pinball, killer apps need license. Would Jerry refute that? Possibly. Maybe we'll have to carry on that. I could see him disagree. I mean, maybe we're wrong. I don't think we are. No, I don't think so either. I mean, what's the most – in recent memory, what's the most successful original licensed theme? It's Total Nuclear Annihilation. But I would argue it's really an amazing selling machine. 550. I don't – yeah, I don't – For spooky, it was. But then look what Rick and Morty did. Seven hours, 750 units. You see the power of theme. And that's not fair, too, because we have the 750. I don't know what the original dialed in sold more than 550. Yeah, I'm sure. But it was not a successful theme. No, no. In fact, I've been reading, I just started the other day reading, there was a little pin side thread about people voting on what the best JJP game that's currently out is. And a lot of people are providing their ranked lists. There are a lot of people in there that said they really enjoyed dialed in, but the theme didn't click for them, and they either didn't buy it or they sold it right away because it's like, I just don't understand the theme. It means nothing to me. I'd rather have something that I care about. I think original theming, Houdini could have been a hit industry-wide, a hit if it was. Houdini's like Alice in Wonderland to me, Zach. That's not an original theme. They just don't have to pay a license for it. Okay. Well, but there's no film or series or music attached to it. They created that story of Houdini, and that could have been a big hit if it didn't get panned for the way it shot. I don't know if it would have been a big hit. It could have been more successful. People are really behind that new company. People are always behind new companies. Yeah, look at me. I'm ready to buy a Goonies machine. I hope they change the story again. I hope it's like Goonies in the ruins. Oh, God, no. When I will, he's a ghost, then he'll give you items. I don't even want to think about it. I'm worried now. Goonies is a roguelike now. This is out there. Because I'm worried that they're going to mess it up, and they'll ruin my entire experience of pinball. Please. You lived through Back to the Future not being the game you wanted it to be. I didn't live through that. I'd entered into that game already being created and fucked up. But if I'm around when it was created and fucked up, I don't think people are going to listen anymore. You won't hear the end of it. I think it's fine. I think it's going to be fine. All of this is fine. Maybe it'll be good enough. Oh, my God, no. Anyway, good job, Nick, on creating a game for the P3. Yes, nicely done, Baldrige. What time is it, Zach? I'm no longer going to be grumpy. Maybe that's what time it is, because it's time for Pimba! Fuckin' truth! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I just get louder and louder. You do. And people complain, but you don't care. I tell them don't complain because it just reinforces the bad behavior. My compressor's on. There's only so much power that technology can do. There's only so much a compressor can do. You're like, I have activated all safety controls, Captain. I'm like, no, you've overridden them. You've redlined everything. The reactor is in meltdown now. You just turn it off You can't stop It's a nuclear reactions act You can't stop it once it starts Oh, speaking of I thought my home was going to explode Because I was outside yesterday Or the day before And we have this box And it's got these like ghostbusters lights on it Like it's the worst facility And it goes And it was lit I've never seen it lit in the time I've owned a home And it goes And it didn't stop And then the ghosts came out I was waiting for the ghosts to come out No one is going to be like, it's true, this man has no dick. But no. Then we had to call, it was the sump pump. So it was a warning for the sump pump. I was about to have shit coming from the grave, coming from the ground, like a little turd. They buried your ass over an Indian cemetery. But you didn't move the bodies. I didn't move the bodies. I was waiting for it. So we called the local waste people, and they came out, and they said, look, lock your motors by it. And I was like, okay, well, what's that? Well, I'll come back Monday and install the motor. And I was like, well, what happens in between now and Monday? What if I have turds floating up from the surface? And he was like, no, it's fine. No turds going to be coming up. I assure you that. And you might see some water coming out of that sewer pipe over there. And you see that? Little water is okay. Lot of water, maybe call us back. And I'm like, well, this is shit water. So what constitutes? And he just looked at me blindly. But hurry up. This week is something very familiar. It's a stern ghostbuster. Housebusters. I don't know, Zach. Mr. Hankey, I've been coming up past your shop. Took out your motor. That's right. Your house smells like flowers. Now it smells like turders. Turders. See you later, Zach. Have fun with your market trip. Such a Zach joke. I'm so wearing off on you. Turders. All right. But no, turning off the door. I'm thinking of Mr. Hankey now. South Park is trending up Buy it I a great game Just keep shooting the ramp This game is fun Give that game some credit I a lot of fun Oh my gosh I back to the future of Stern Oh, don't ruin it, Hank. Okay. Compose yourself, Dad. What's trending up, Sam? Besides me in your sewer pipe. I want a Safari shirt that has two chest pockets. It's one for Henke and one for my Creasel clone. Both of them. If I were to crawl inside your mouth, would you suck on me? Come on! Oh, my God. Trending Up, we're going forward. Trending Up is Ghostbusters by Stern Pinball. You heard it. It's still up there. People are still asking a high amount of money for them, and they're selling. They're selling. They're selling. Plus with the topper. Everybody wants that topper. This game is maybe a Stern classic. I'm going to put it out there. A Stern pinball classic. Certified classic. Certified. When are they going to vault it? What's that? When are they going to vault it? Don't classics get vaults? I don't know. Maybe. I think they'd be smart to vault it. I think that'd be a good one to vault. I think we might see a vault eventually. Not this year. Keep the artwork? I think this should be the vault 2.0 system that Stern should come out with. That's my idea. change a flipper gap, incorporate LCD into it, we're good to go. You don't even have to give me assets from the same because... Yeah, I don't think they're going to go to that much trouble, though. Those hobbyists can finish that out. I just don't think they'll do that, especially the LCD conversion. Too much time. No, not really. It could take a while. I know it's been said, like, moving the programming over to Spike from Sam isn't necessarily the most arduous thing, but you're asking for a lot of assets to be created, And for a vault, they're definitely not going and renegotiating the license to have movie clips. You don't think they should, like, transcode whatever DMD animations into... I think it would look way too crappy for people. I think they'd be... Because those animations were designed, you know, it's not like Iron Man where they just digitized film into dots. So, no, I don't. I think you'd have to have the animation team really work at it to make it look attractive. And that's a lot of... No, what I'm asking, though, is for them just to simply do that so that we as hobbyists can fix it. Oh. Yeah, I just don't see them doing it like that. I don't either, but it would be great. Also turning up this week is a piece of art. Well, that's strange. Well, it's not strange when it's Christopher Franchi doing it. Turning up is Voltar, the pinball swami. Did you see this? No, I don't know what you're talking about. On Facebook, if you follow Christopher Franchi or Saps or Metal Luna 5 or whatever, all his... I must have missed it. I follow Saps. Oh, he's been drafting up for the last week or two this original concept. I don't know what he's using it for, but it's called Voltar, the pinball swami. And it's very much his idea of that Voltar, right? But with a pin. It looks beautiful. It looks so good. Now, that is an unlicensed theme that I could potentially get behind. Buy, buy, buy! That looked really cool. And he had a, for shits and giggles, which will probably get him in trouble later, he has a voodoo doll up at the top of the Translight, and it says J-Pop on it with needles in it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that Christopher Franci would draw my portrait? Yes. Do you think he could paint me like one of his French girls? Turd boobs. Turd cleavage. That's a movie reference, Zach. I get the movie reference. I just think of boobs. And Franci's going to show me drawing boobs. And then I picture poop boobs. and then, yeah. I didn't mean to convey that. Not that I have boobs on the mind or anything, but see, you're ruining Hanky for me now, picturing Hanky with boobs. What movie reference was it? Please help me. Titanic. What did you say? Kate asked Leo to draw her like one of his French girls. Oh, okay. Are you like a Rolodex of movie quotes? Maybe. I think you are. Who cares? A photographic quote memory. You're successfully throwing me off on this pinball market trends. Congratulations. Well, it's the sucky segment. The pinball swami. Hopefully he does something with this besides create another original trends light for people to back a light. That's really well done. Franchi's probably still angry at me, but I don't care. When people shit on me like Del or Franchi, I don't care. If their shit's good and their work's good, I'm going to still trend it out. because we only report the facts here, and pinball numbers sure as the hell do not lie. You know who else doesn't lie, Dennis? Uh, Jesus? No, but it's somebody that maybe fled the fifth a couple times, and that is, truly up this week, TPM Deep Root correspondent Chris Chandler himself. You haven't created a nickname for him. I just call him Chandler. I'm calling him Hanging Chand. Hanging Chand. The Hanging Chand. He couldn't say anything. But just like a hanging chad can't tell us how someone voted. Sorry, Florida. But if you see, I got that reference. But I'm proud of you, really. See that one. I missed the Titanic, which I'm obsessed with reference. But I caught the the political hanging chad. If you guys tuned in to my live stream, I'm flipping out pinball on Twitch dot TV slash flipping out pinball. You would have seen Chris Chandler and I discuss and overview the Twip article about Deep Root. The reason that Chris Chandler is trending up is because post-production, I went back and re-watched this. I can see why I don't do interviews, Dennis. I was not easy to deal with. I was throwing out questions that were really hard to sit in front of, especially if you have an NDA in place. So he maneuvered through them and was still entertaining and informative to a degree that I could have never expected anyone to be. I thought I was firing on all cylinders, and I didn't think about how fair or unfair it would be to put him in the line of fire. But he was a pro, and that is why he's our TPN Deep Root correspondent. Nicely, nicely done. I earned a lot of respect hearing him. And look, this might sound like dramatized and hyperbole here. Go back and watch the stream. I was cringing watching it. I was like, oh, Zach, come on. It's not fair. It was all fair, but to put him in that situation. You need to watch it, Dennis. I did. Oh, see? I didn't realize you were doing it live, so I watched it on YouTube. We're doing it live! Bill O'Reilly, Inside Edition. so chain man you're training there it is chant man oh it's so chain man you're training up the training down this week your nicknames are not healthy anyway so i shouldn't have brought it up but training down this week is amy amy good gorilla good gorilla amy not amy in particular but congo itself they're in a flood marketplace a little bit. We've seen a lot pop up. Hippos! Yeah, hippos. And besides that plunge skill shot that is genius, Kongos are good lower fours. It's just the city of Zinj. Yeah. That I have been searching for all my life. I trend up so much in that game. Curry, I'll trend up. That game is super overpriced for what it is. It's a fun game. I really like Kongo, but when I found out it was over $4,000 It's always like, it ain't that fun. The premise of the code is perfect, too. I love that code set. I just need to double its depth. That's all. Yeah, but, you know, it's a 90s game. It is what it is. They should go back and remake those and redo the codes, because chasing those diamonds, but going into the modes, all of it. I got Thunderstorm here, so. Oh, do you? Yeah. Are you hiding under your bed right now? Yes, I'm afraid. Fear is the mind killer, Zach. It is the little death. No clue. Dune. Oh, of course. I haven't even seen the film. Well, you can watch the new one that's coming out. That everybody's already shitting on? No, they love it. I haven't heard great things. So mean. Also trending down this week, unfortunately, is Cabin Fever. No, not the psychological distress that you feel once cooped up too long during COVID. No, no, no. We also call that AKA Creasel Mode. No. Cabin Fever. The operations up in Toronto. I think it is one of the favorite spots for pinball competitions and just hanging out playing pinball. And they even have IFPA-sanctioned tournaments for internationally-ranked players. Why is this trending down? Well, it's because they need some help. Cabin Fever would be trending up, but without your help, it may soon be trending down. So you've got to help them. There is a GoFundMe page. 20 years ago is barely a couple of pinball machines on location in Toronto. Some really nice people who have, I've read through who's donated thus far, some really respectable people in the community. They have a goal, and they're already a third of the way to that goal. So with your help, they can get all the way there. Ultimately, if we're being real with ourselves, will this ultimately help save them? I don't know. Who knows? That's so hard to say, the impact of the pandemic. Yeah. And typically, you know, I would love to give to every one of these locations, so it's hard to designate this one to tell you guys. But I know it is in the heart of a lot of people in the Canadian Toronto area. So I just wanted to do a solid and give them a shout out. I like it. It's kind of creepy, but they're putting like shower curtains in between each pin. So that could be fun. So they're doing everything they can to sustain operations over there. but Twitter hashtag safe cabin fever go help now and also trending down this week I told you about it Dennis I told you to come up later and here it is the Stern video capture adapter where in the hell is this thing yeah where are they how long ago was this a promise must be kept the Stern video capture adapter I don't know where in the hell it's at I don't know when the hell it's coming in but thanks a lot Stern Pinball because I have to answer fucking emails every other day about it Hey, I heard you're the guy with the video adapter device. Hey, I heard you're the guy that's going to sell these things. Do you have any more? Can you sell them anymore? No, no, no. I got nothing. They told me to stop selling them. I can't sell them. They didn't send me any more. I can't ship anything. Maybe they gave up on it. I feel like it's a spite move. It's like, out of spite, we're not selling it anymore. We prematurely announced or we prematurely unrolled this thing. We can't get back in the toothpaste jar. Yeah, it's hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube. Who in the fuck has a toothpaste jar? Zach, what are you doing here? Yeah, that was strange. Not as strange as not freaking shipping these things anymore. It was too successful. Man, they're pulling my old topper deal again. To make up for it, let's jump right into your deals of the week. Buy, buy, buy! Deal of the week this week is an L-Virus House of Whores signature edition. How about this, Dennis? $16,800. Now, which one's the signature? I don't remember these weird... The top of the line one with the couch patch in it. Couch patch. The couch patch kid. Yeah. And the chromish side art. And the glitter powder coat on the armor. Don't hate. Buy, buy, buy! Now, you might think $16,800 is... Shut your mouth, Zach. That's way too much money. What are you smoking? But I'm telling you, 16-8, new in box. It's kind of a deal. How many times, listener, have you seen these things? The deal of the week is now kind of a deal of the week. No, I'm being facetious. It's kind of a deal. Kind of a smartass here. You know, that's what I'm being. 16-8 is a good price because they don't go up for sale. Have you seen any for sale, listener? No, you haven't. This individual also out of Johnston City, Tennessee, going by the name of AT at, no, it's at 1105, is also selling a Batman 66 Super LE. 18-spot. Which version is the Super LE? That's the high-end version with the sparkly, oh, God, you're going to do it again and laugh at me, sparkly armor and the chrome cabinet decals and the topper and the specific call-out. Does it have a piece of any furniture with it? No, it's got a specific call out. So you might get a Mark machine or a Greg machine. I want one that says, ah, ah. Let's see if this one has the description of whose it went to. Now, I wish it would be like, this is a Tony machine. Still wrapped to the pallet. 18.5. I don't know how much of a deal that is, but it will sell. Oh. God's angry at us then as I hear the thunder. They're really long, rolling thunders. If you wouldn't have threatened me with walking off the show, I would have sang a little Garth Brooks, The Thunder Rolls. And the lightning strikes. Sorry, that's it. Don't hang up. That's all. I don't want to sing that song. Another deal of the week this week can be found at Flip N Out Pinball. It's a shadow. Have you seen my shadow that I'm selling? I saw you with the shadow. And I must immediately make fun of the price, immediately felt bad and deleted my comment. No, it's a deal of the week. Buy, buy, buy. Buy, buy, buy indeed. $49.50. You think that's too high? I just, for me, it would be, would I buy a B-tier WMS game or a new Stern? And it's like, that's the answer. So I decided, well, that's just me. I'd probably go with one of the greatest 90s pens and any pen ever made as well. Because I don't like to go around and just poop on everyone's sales threads. I don't normally do that. Well, one guy did. He'll get the dick of the week. He came in there and was like, what's the world coming to? A $5,000 shadow? But my friend Jason Owsley pointed out on the thread, he said, this coming from the guy that's selling a $15,000 Slappy the fucking clown? It wasn't $15,000. What was it? Five. I did see that. No, it was more than five. I did see that. And, yeah, Punchy the Clown. Punchy the Clown. Which I don't believe is a very good game. Flappy the Clown, Punchy the Clown. I've never played it, though, so. Punchy the Clown. Yeah, so, thick of the weed goes to him. But I think it's priced right. When's the last time you had somebody clearcoat a play field? That's not free. When's the last time you saw a shadow out of dirty things? Sometimes when you do things to games, you don't get all your money back out of it. That's fine, but some of the things that are hard to do like that, you do get your money out of. or you should. I'll pay $1,000 extra for a clear coat of play-kill. They didn't need a new coat of clear. You just wax it. Says the person with the dirty sanctum. Sanctum's been repaired. You didn't even know what that special shot thing was. Yeah, but the... Yeah, we talked to Ray Day about that. Yeah, the similarities were... He was very judgmental. Yeah, but he was wrong still. I love you. You're the greatest pinball player there is in the world, but you were wrong about that. I knew what he was talking about after he talked to... It's just a loop. so when the loop doesn't go around all the way. It has nothing to do with the skill shift. I think with that attitude, you will never be commentating their heads-up tournaments. Come on, Ray Day. Have Dennis Greasel and I in there. Just put in a good word for us. A clear-coded play field. It's got no saying somewhere. The Auric package. The cabinet's good. Why hasn't it sold yet? You had that listed like a week. I know. We're going to make it a deal of the week this week. If you mention the podcast and you want that shadow, the deal for you is now $4,000. $4,500. So? Buy, buy, buy! $4,500? Now they sell for about that, Dennis. You might get it. The wire forms have been brass. The gun has been chromed. Look, chrome is not the solution to everything. God, it sounds like you work for Google as much as you shill chrome. What an expense. How else will my theater magic as well? Ugh. Far as a game. $6,500. $63. $63 feel good? It's got brass on it? $5,500. $63. I wouldn't buy theater. It'd have to be a project. And if you want to know what not to buy, let's segue right into... Deals of the... Get it! Your shoes are dirty! Get it! Go! They're dirty. If you don't walk around backyard, there's shit in the water back there. That's the deal with the WTF. Dennis. WT. Deal of the how do you sleep at night can be found on Pinside by a lovely person, probably a lovely person, by the name of Callie Boy. So I say Callie Boy. I'm a Callie man. Son's Callie Boy. who's not selling an Iron Man. Right out of Camarillo, California, is an Iron Man. Game's practically new. It's in great condition. Coin door legs have been custom powder-coated to the Iron Man candy apple red. I'm in agreement. The powder coat is perfection. This is a perfect choice in color for this game. All the lights have been upgraded to LED. Wait. Oh. Oh. This isn't a vault. This is the original. Uh-oh. I don't like that. The screen's upgraded to the color LCD screen. It's called a color DMT. Lighted speakers. That's 50 bucks. Upgraded lighted backbox. Good for you. Shaker motor. Hinge covers. Blah-ba-dee-blah-ba-dee-blah. It looks good. But not for $9,000, Dennis Creasel. The mother f***er is firm. Firm. You could have said, or best offer, and nobody would be calling you. Yeah, given the recent revolting of Iron Man, I imagine he'll struggle to sell it at that price. You imagine? Yeah, I imagine. Just imagine. I reckon it'll be a challenge. I'm fixing to send him a hate letter. It's not going to sell. It's not going to sell. It looks good. But a nine to... Hold up. I see a plate. A plate? Like a dinner plate? No, there's a special placard on it that says Marvel's Iron Man. I don't even think it has the apostrophe for Marvel's. It's plural. Marvel companies now. Nimble Pin Limited Edition. Oh, you just lowered the value there alone. Nimble Pin, you did a good job. I hope people know that I'm not poo-pooing the job that they did on this one in particular. The Translight looked good how it was. You don't need to change that. Nope. Nope. Nope. $9,000. Get out of here with that shit. Take your shoes off before you come into my house. Do you take your shoes off when you go into people's houses? That's a house rule. How does one know? Oh, trust me, Zach. Shoe people tell you. I tell people. My wife and I do. Don't wear shoes in my house. I find it deeply unwelcoming. Really? To put a demand on a guest. I find it encounterance to proper decorum with guests. Well, would you rather us corral y'all's asses up in the garage? Because we will do that, too. Because I'm fine with cleaning out a garage floor. Maybe don't have people over if your floor is that precious that you don't want to vacuum. Oh, you can just vacuum out dog shit. You can just vacuum out hospital floor HIV and freaking hepatitis. Can you merely fucking hoover that out? Did you ever lay on your carpet, Dennis? Yeah. What are you talking about? If you lay on your carpet, you don't want somebody's nasty-ass shoes that have walked around outside in a poo. This is overthinking. No. Yes, I lay on the carpet. No, in this carpet, people can walk with their shoes on. I don't care. Ugh. Step in a big pile of dog shit and then come over. Oh, no, you don't care. Just carpet. I can see the argument if it was like hardwood floor or something. Take your damn shoes off. Be polite. Don't be nasty. Email thepinballnetwork at gmail.com if you're pro-shoes off or pro-shit on your carpet. I'm those people. My wife and I are big about that. Yeah, I can tell. We kind of judge people if they don't at least ask either. I think it's okay to just walk through. Yeah, no, I can't think of ever being over where a shoe-off household didn't make it clear. Yeah, well, it's a rule that you have to take your shoes off in this house. Yeah, it feels like we're part of family. Take your shoes off. It's like an Eastern culture kind of thing. Take your shoes off. Yeah, and that culture has a different setup. That's a cultural decision where it's expected everyone knows it. That is not a U.S. culture thing. That is a hypochondriac invented thing. Oh, I thought it was just a decent person thing. It's like, hey, do you care if I take my pants off on the couch, rub my chode all over here? It's clean. My chode is cleaner than the bottom of my shoes, Dennis. So why is that not okay? Because that's a violation of the cultural standard. Why? Oh, God, with these definitions. You don't care why. You're like a toddler trying to distract via questioning. It's pointless. Why did they change the green skittle to be a green apple now instead of lime? No one ate the lime ones. I did. I did too. I liked them. You like black liquor? They were the orange ones that had to go. Oh, I love them. I'll eat them all. I'm too cheap to throw away food. I do like the green apple. A little overwhelming at times when you do a handful of Skittles all at once, but I... Oh, you handful them, okay. A couple. Three or four. I mean, I will too, but I segregate them and only eat the same color at the same time. Wow. Skittlist. Jeez. And I eat them in reverse quantity order. Oh, my God. But you can't take your fucking shoes off when you go into a guest house. I'll make you eat the skin on my way. Be like, okay, I got three orange out of this handful of 20, so I'm going to eat the orange first, and then I have four limes, so I'm going to eat the four lime next, and then I'll end with the 13 cherry. Or I'll eat the ones I like least first, and then I do them numerically. it just depends I mix it up I mix it up like your fridge except not all of them at the same time like the whole bag no I mean it's like it's like people like the Pringles and they sell them and they're like here stack these three flavors and you get this whatever I don't know I just stack three of the same flavor Pringle and eat that and then I can try the next flavor next you know the next handful when I was a kid I used to roll up Starbursts into balls before I ate them I don't know why yeah no I do the same thing with Starbursts I organize them by color, and then I eat them. All one color at a time. You do that with M&M's as well? No, because they're all the same flavor. Oh, it's a flavor thing. And I don't eat M&M's. I don't either. As a general rule, I don't. We had them too much growing up, so I don't. No, I do the color thing with Skittles, Starbursts, Gummy Bears. Because the flavors are different. I like to keep the same flavors together. That was your Pinball Market Trends. Come back next time. Doors always open. Take off your goddamn shoes! One of those people. Wow. That's why the people behind it are like, let's not go to the mini-sales. They always make us pick up the shoes. I always have to worry if I have a hole in my sock and I'm going to be judged or if I grab the wrong pair and they don't match. I feel like I'm having to strip for them, like I'm in strip keys. I have to do the fancy dance to try and be the hottest showgirl in town. I'll welcome you over with shoes on if you do that for me. I don't wear socks, so when I go over to the Bones house, I just take off my shoes. He's like, oh, shit. I'm like, hey, you're playing backfired. As I like nestle around my big toe into his carpet. Dennis, where can people find you? This is a shit show at this point. Let's close it down. Yeah, yeah. CollecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com. If they want to email, facebook.com. It's the last of Collectic Gamers Podcast. If they want to use Messenger. Those are the two best ways to reach out. Aren't you on Twitter as hashtag the skittlist? No. I am not. I don't promote my Twitter. Somebody now just opened that up. Like, I got it. Does Twitter have a .net? We'll have to use that. Yeah. No, my Twitter handle is taste the rainbow, motherfucker. I had to drop all the vowels out of it, though, to make it fit. Oh, God, I hope and pray that you have that bumper sticker on the back of your Prius. You can catch us at thepinballnetworkatgmail.com. Please reach out to us. You and Mike Winnie have had quite a conversation. lately. Oh yeah, he did email us both. I'm not going to lie, Michael. Deep root. I love you to pieces and think you're a hell of a provider here when you did the off the record stuff. But I was having the worst day ever and I opened up that fucking thesis and I was like, nope, not going to do it. Thesis. Yep. It wasn't that long. To be fair, pretty long. It was a high school thesis at least. Pretty long. And I was like, oh, there's so much thought into this. I pray that Dennis takes on this one. And you did, so thank you. You can follow me on, here's what I want you guys to do also. We've got some pretty fun stuff coming up on Straight Down the Middle, the video series on YouTube. Go ahead and follow that because you're going to want to stay up to date with the most current news, especially within the next month or so. So go ahead and do that. Got some cool stuff coming out there. And I want to do a bit of an expanded plug here for Flip N Out Pinball, the company that my wife and I own and distribute pinball machines from. I want to give you a quick updated inventory with all this COVID stuff. It's hard to know sometimes what machines we have in stock. Your preferred pinball dealer. We have Deadpool Pros right now. We do have, I think, one Iron Maiden Pro left. We have one Guardians of the Galaxy Pro left. We have Avengers Pros are coming in next week or so. And some don't have names on them yet. So if you want one of the Avengers Pros, let us know as quick as you can. Stranger Things Pros and Premiums, Black Knight Premiums. Remember, it's the last call for Black Knight. They're no longer making pros, so if you're looking for a pro, you're going to have to probably buy off the secondary market. But premiums, there are still a select few left. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pros are coming in November, but the premiums, I think we may have one left for the October run. If not, more November runs coming. Jurassic Park premium coming in October, so get your name on one if you need one. Batman 66 premiums, we have a couple unnamed spots for the November run. Willy Wonka, you can get all models. And that's been taking an uptick here recently. For whatever reason, I'm not sure. But people are finally figuring out that's a damn good game. JJP Games number six. We have a, it's getting lengthy, this interested list. So I would suggest if you guys want one, get on that list. You don't have to know what model yet, but just get on the list so we can contact you when that is revealed. Monster Bastion Sacks from Mars. You wanted AFM, so come and get it now. they are in stock ready to ship as well as american pitbulls octoberfest and hot wheels we got hot wheels rolling in in a week or two escalators they're climbing hand trucks are still selling well but if you haven't experienced one for yourself and you're as crooked as a politician with your back you might as well call me and we'll get you set up with one of those i'd say that we have a new puppet palace coming this week but i have no clue what's coming up for tpn we just have The final round, it was a bit delayed. Yeah. That was good. Larry just hit. With Travi Meary. Yeah. Talking about the Geek Group. Marvelous Travis. And just for another pinball, they've been pretty, Joel's been pretty proactive about putting out content. Just another episode twice a week. Yeah. And the numbers don't lie. People are loving that show. Are we going to have a, when's Chronicles? What are they brewing next? I think it's to finish the second half of the Valley Art episode, though. Oh, they're going to go right back to it? That's where I'm not sure if they were going to take just like one episode. David Dennis did indicate at the start of the last episode they were not going to do what they did with Steve Ritchie and make it that long out. If I were them, I would encourage them to just do the next Valley one and finish it off. Okay. But I don't know. Hopefully we get a Puppet Pals. Hopefully we get all the other beloved shows on this network. Streaming everywhere now, too. All the TPN affiliates. They're killing it with the streams. The top ten list. Follow us on Facebook for that. That's a lot of fun. And YouTube is still dead. That's okay. For Dennis Creasel, I'm Zachary Manning. Remember, don't be odd. Get yourself a pin pie. And always practice safe pinball. And don't spread germs and poo. Take off your shoes. Ah! So long, everybody. I think if you were to... No, that's not good enough, Bill. Yeah, don't tell your not good joke. That wasn't good enough. Bill didn't... Deal of the week this week. I'm trying. Kill me. alright yeah good deal good episode Taste the rainbow, motherfucker.