Pinball mod discussion of black & white Godzilla, IC paid access, and historical context of monochromatic pinball designs.
Summary
A live stream episode discussing Godzilla black & white pinball variants, the history of black & white themed pinball machines (Centaur, Twilight Zone, Addams Family, Monster Bash), and controversies around Stern's Insider Connected paid membership model. Hosts interview Todd Russell (playgames more) and Erica (Erica's Pinball Journey) about community sentiment regarding paid IC features and Stern's media tour announcements.
Key Claims
Todd Russell paid $40/year for Insider Connected All Access membership but received no promised exclusive forum access
high confidence · Todd Russell stated he paid $40 for All Access, expecting forum exclusives advertised by Stern that do not exist; he's written articles about this
70% of the pinball community is adamantly against paying for Insider Connected features
medium confidence · Todd Russell's assessment based on community feedback: '70% plus uh adamantly or strongly against paying for anything associated with Insider connected'
The $40 Insider Connected All Access membership primarily grants early access to limited edition machine purchases
high confidence · Todd Russell explains membership benefit: 'gets you the ability to maybe maybe get uh an Le when it first comes out you can buy them directly from Stern thir maybe I get a ticket in line to pay $113,000 us'
Stern received criticism for not removing false marketing about exclusive forums despite Todd Russell messaging them about it
high confidence · Todd Russell: 'I've written an article about that i' I've messaged Stern about that and they still haven't taken that out but yes they need to get rid of that'
Erica was invited to a Stern media tour and heard sidebar discussions about Insider Connected pricing
high confidence · Host: 'recently Stern did a big media tour uh brought in a bunch of people and you were invited' and Erica mentioned 'there was a bit of a side chat if not a sidebar about Insider connected'
CPR's colored reproduction playfield for Centaur received negative community reception due to poor color choices
high confidence · Davey: 'it did not go down particularly well at all to the point' and Rob: 'they got a lining for this one' referring to backlash
A Twilight Zone black & white conversion by Great American Gaming was first shown at Expo 2023 and has never been played
medium confidence · Rob: 'I first saw this one at Expo 23 Great American games' and 'it had never been played actually'
Notable Quotes
“70% plus uh adamantly or strongly against paying for anything associated with Insider connected”
Todd Russell@ 9:28 — Quantifies community resistance to paid IC features, key market sentiment on monetization
“I paid $40 not very smart on my part for that that's it that's it you can get everything else for free you don't need to do it”
Todd Russell@ 10:29 — Exposes perceived poor value of All Access membership, demonstrates user frustration
“it looks like if you bought a coloring book and you were just like hey you know I'm gonna SP five minutes and color get some Crayon”
Rob (host)@ 19:44 — Colorful criticism of CPR's Centaur playfield reproduction color choices
“there needs to be a reason for doing this and obviously Adams Family was was a black and white TV show wasn't it”
Davey@ 29:14 — Establishes design principle: black & white conversions require thematic/historical justification
“I absolutely love it um the P3 Community has been incredibly welcoming they have a Discord that anyone's welcome to join”
Erica@ 14:10 — Positive sentiment about P3 community engagement and accessibility for new collectors
“there can be cool things that could be done playwise with corners and shadows and that would be cool with the black and white setup”
Todd Russell@ 30:20 — Suggests lighting and shadow design opportunities for black & white machines beyond pure aesthetics
product_concern: Stern Insider Connected advertises exclusive forum access for $40 All Access membership that does not exist; Todd Russell paid for this feature and messaged Stern about removing misleading marketing without resolution
high · Todd Russell: 'I paid the 40 bucks a year thinking I was going to get access to Forum exclusive Forum they advertised that it does not exist um I've written an article about that i' I've messaged Stern about that and they still haven't taken that out'
$
market_signal: 70%+ of pinball community opposes paid features for Insider Connected; community sentiment strongly against monetization of code updates and features
high · Todd Russell: '70% plus uh adamantly or strongly against paying for anything associated with Insider connected'
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product_strategy: Insider Connected All Access ($40/year) primary value proposition is early access to LE machine purchasing; positioned as FOMO-driven enrollment incentive
high · Todd Russell: 'gets you the ability to maybe maybe get uh an Le when it first comes out you can buy them directly from Stern'
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community_signal: Homebrew black & white pinball conversions (Twilight Zone, Addams Family) driven by thematic/historical authenticity; conversions require significant effort and investment; community celebrates detailed restoration work
high · Davey: 'there needs to be a reason for doing this and obviously Adams Family was was a black and white TV show' and Rob on Twilight Zone conversion: 'how stunning it actually is in person um now it wasn't it wasn't there to be played at that show was it'
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Topics
Godzilla black & white pinball variantprimaryInsider Connected paid membership controversyprimaryHistory and aesthetics of black & white pinball machinesprimaryPinball community sentiment and FOMO dynamicssecondaryAftermarket pinball modifications and LED lightingsecondaryContent creation and community engagement in pinballsecondaryP3 (Multimorphic) platform and communitymentionedPlayfield reproduction and restoration qualitysecondary
Sentiment
neutral(0)
Transcript
youtube_auto_sub · $0.000
[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome everybody to in before the lock where we talk about all things pinball and pinball mods we've got episode 16 up and Davey we're going to Dive Right In how you doing man Hi man I'm doing really well I'm doing good man how are you good good so uh you ready to talk about some Godzilla black and white today oh as best as we can mate yeah as best as we can it's uh it's an interesting topic isn't it there's lots to get through yeah there's a lot you know we got uh we've been kind of putting some uh Vibes out on the airwaves I know there's a lot of opinions around this one um so we're going to get into it uh we're also going to be talking about Insider connected you know we've probably got some new code coming from Godzilla and curious to know you know what that's going to look like for all owners there's been a bunch of new stuff with Insider connected in terms of these contracts for John Wick which are pretty cool so good to see Stern finally making some Headway and of course that creates the topic of are we ever going to have to pay for this stuff so we're going to talk about that today um we've also got uh uh some people coming on with us we've got Erica from Erica's pinball Journey uh with us she's got an awesome Instagram account we're going to hear a little bit about that and hear about what she's been up to we also have Todd Russell from playgames more.com I learned about Todd recently he's got a ton of content on Insider connected over 25 articles in the last year just about Insider connected alone uh so really going to be cool to talk with them and they're going to join us for the majority of the show uh so we're going to talk about all things black and white Insider connected and then we're going to talk a little bit about our mods uh as well uh when we get into that so before we dive in Davey I want to hit you for this or that man pick one of these two topics I'm curious what you think what do you think pick a left or right El J andon will they all sell uh did they all sell um mate let's do the pin Stadium versus pin lights thing um this has been quite topical of lace um I know that Carrie Hardy um just recently did a full full sort of rundown of pin lights and uh I didn't actually catch the show did you catch did you catch the show I know a lot of people in the UK have been talking bit man a little bit you uh are you feeling them oh yeah absolutely man like you know I am a i a comy boy from from way back I'm a massive Fanboy of compy I think he does fantastic work um I've always been so impressed with everything he's done from the from the Twilight Zone uh screens that he was putting in the on the backboard of of Twilight Zone and I think they did it for Tron as well I'm just a very uh technical dude who's you know always at the Forefront of pinball modding um but you know alongside that he's just very approachable um and and supportive guy um so when yeah when he sort of came out with this product I was you know very excited for him um and you know I think the reception to them has been fantastic so far um and you know a lot of people talking about them I know there's a group bu happening in the UK at the moment for people who are trying to bring them over I think they're really uh competitively priced I think uh technically you know he's got great app support for them great configuration capabilities for them great support across uh a large number of uh historical architectures you know everything from old B Williams games all the way up through Sam and the latest spikes so yeah man I mean it's it's it's uh a pretty tasty time if you're in the pin Stadium penlights uh uh you know Market um you there there's a lot of options what are your thoughts yeah well I want to get my hands on them so let's uh you or I get our hands on a set and we'll cover it all in the show but definitely excited and there's some definitely some things about them that look great so uh yeah so we've got Todd and Erica in the in the green room so to speak um it looks like Erica may be having some some video issues but Todd how you doing man welcome to the show hey thank you for having me guys I'm doing great hey Todd great Todd so yeah like I said you know I uh I came across some content recently I was doing some research on Insider connected and I came across your site which is looks like it's about a lot more than pinball but I was just like Blown Away by like how much you've been covering uh Insider connected and and all over the last year can you tell us a little bit about your site and kind of what we might find there as far as IC goes well play games more uh it is completely ad free first of all it's how many gaming sites do you see there's no affiliate links there's no sponsorship there's no referring URLs it's a completely clean Gaming website which are very rare out there um and there's I think there's 400 and some articles on there now and we're coming up on our one-year birthday here July 15th I am the I'm the editor and the principal writer of the site we do have other writers for the site um we just recently added by request we didn't even launch with the email you know everybody wants to get your email on every site we didn't even start with that it took 10 months before we even gave any sort of email notification which you can unsubscribe for it's very very clean very nice site as far as um and there's a night mode day mode there's search all that everything you need in there um and uh we cover yeah we cover pin mall we cover Stern a lot we cover non Stern we cover arcade stuff we do uh events I mean we could be here for hours talking just about all the that our group does but we're we're game Chasers that's the play games more is like we get a game like you see I'm in Jaws mode right now behind me here a jaw mode um because my son got this beautiful premium machine here 116 days ago we have almost 4,000 plays on it in that amount of time so I love to play the games not just talk about them um and this whole household everybody's just been loving this game yeah and I know I know you've faced some controversy around even talking about Insider connected on a on a paid basis so want to hear your thoughts on that um have you uh found people are more on the side of like keep giving me everything for free or it's been a couple years in like I'm happy to pay for something new no no I would say it's 70% plus uh adamantly or strongly against paying for anything associated with Insider connect um I'm actually an all access member I paid the 40 bucks a year thinking I was going to get access to Forum exclusive Forum they advertised that it does not exist um I've written an article about that i' I've messaged Stern about that and they still haven't taken that out but yes they need to get rid of that um line that says there's exclusive Forum access if the forums don't exist um you know that that's unacceptable um to do that money from people what does what does the 40 pound what $40 give you access to well David you're GNA laugh when I tell you what $40 gets it gets you the ability to maybe maybe get uh an Le when it first comes out you can buy them directly from Stern thir maybe I get a ticket in line to pay $113,000 us for a that's all I get so I paid $40 not very smart on my part for that that's it that's it you can get everything else for free you don't need to do it that's what my article is about guess I guess as a I guess as a content creator it was the other perks that were you know more um you know tempting to you you know to get access to exclusive forums or whatever that is you know that as a content creator that must be very enticing for you but you know if they don't exist uh that's not the best I'm guessing their plan was to add maybe some discussions with developers behind the scenes maybe Keith elwin other people would have some direct but instead they're going straight out to YouTube and putting videos out and talking to everybody for nothing so there's really if you're not going to make anything walled content off I don't there's really no apparently when they first started they were sending out gift packs and you would get stuff when you paid that I didn't get any of that when I saw I did get a gold I did get a really cool challenge coin uh which was awesome the first year then when the $40 came back up I was like hey send me another coin or what well we got we got Erica back uh I want to bring Erica on Erica can you hear us yeah definitely sorry that was like my mic awesome ER with uh Erica's pinball Journey uh thanks for joining us today yeah thanks for having me so Todd told us a little bit about what he's up to uh putting out some awesome content and and I I found you I guess maybe six months ago uh just to like bring in something different to the table as far as Instagram goes uh tell us about your side and kind of how you got into the hobby uh well I bought a Lord of the Rings in February of 2022 um I had a friend that bought a Jurassic Park Data East and he's like er you need to buy a pinball machine I had started a new job and I wasn't traveling as much you know like with covid and stuff and um yeah I just had always really liked pinball and I just I bought the machine and then I like went full force into it I was like oh my God this is amazing learning everything kind of just ex exposing myself to as much pinball stuff as possible learning that there was things as shows and people bringing their games and like that there is an app pinball map I absolutely love pinball map it's always fun when my friends and I go out to eat and they're like whoa Erica there's pinball machines here this is a great place I'm like oh yeah I had no idea there would Beall machines here um um uh yeah so I just kind of and I have a film making background I used to work like on movies and TV shows um and now I'm more like in the corporate scene so um I as I was going on YouTube looking up videos for pinball I was like where where's like the stuff I'm thinking of and looking for like how do I get into a tournament or like how do I know what kind of machine I want to buy and then I would see videos and there are there is some content but like they're like six years old eight years old and then like me I kind of question that I'm like oh does nobody like need to cover this again or like what's kind of like does that scene not change so I just had a lot of questions and um I just was like oh I could film this like I could film my journey because my job being incorporate is not as uh it's not as uh glamorous as the fun film stuff that I was doing and working on uh so it gives me a chance to have a little bit of a creative Outlet as well which is cool and you are the new proud owner of a weird owl I heard recently how's that going so far I I am I absolutely love it um the P3 Community has been incredibly welcoming they have a Discord that anyone's welcome to join and I I'm so stoked to have Weird Al like I've been playing it my friend Manu he's got mystery pinball Theater 3000 he is amazing a big shout out to him he came over to my house and just like he has one and then I really wanted one because had one and yeah I'm just stoked are you guys going to swap modules Erica you going to swap the modules well right now we both have Weird Al and he also has Heist so once I like play Heist or once I play Weird Al a bit more then maybe he's gonna get Princess Bride maybe I'll look to borrow um Heist from him so I can play some dungeon door Defender as well because that game is so fun I want to brag on you a little bit uh recently Stern did a big media tour uh brought in a bunch of people and you were invited uh which we're all jealous of um and you had mentioned in yeah in the pre-show you had mentioned there was a bit of a side chat if not a sidebar about Insider connected and some of the stuff coming down the pipe so uh when we get to that point in the show we'd love to hear about you know anything you heard about Insider connected uh what's coming and I and I think you you guys even talked about uh cost a little bit too so would love love to get into that but welcome the show thanks yeah no it was the turn tour was really great um I'm still editing that video I want to make it as good as possible so it'll come out um I'm hoping before the end of the month I have to like that's my it's my nice looking forward to seeing it so Davey man uh let's let's get into it you know we're we're going to talk today about the history of the black and white machines because there's been a lot of them both you know done on the side and by the manufacturers as well and I think you've got some some stuff to share with us so let yeah so obviously obviously the the topic of the show The the sort of the theme of the show is this rumored black and white Godzilla machine that's um you know sort of been bouncing around in the forums for a while and then I think I think Rob you're going to you're going to sort of take us sort of a bit more in detail about sort of what the changes in that story have been sort of more recently um because there has been more chatter around that um but before we sort of get into that I thought it' would be fun to sort of just do a bit of a retrospective into black and white games cuz there's there's been a couple um and I suppose it all starts uh back with centa u all the way back in 1981 I mean you know this is this is not strictly speaking uh you know black and white game it wasn't designed as a as a black and white game um but it certainly you know you can you can see the parallels of the design elements that they used here that have sort of carried through all the other all the other black and white versions you know we're talking you know um you know very monochrome black and white art but then with Colour pops here um and that's I guess an interesting characteristic that we'll sort of see play out through through these games CU sometimes it's used sometimes it's not sometimes it is like strictly black and white um but centor obviously um used very monochrome black and white art um the theme is let's let's TR what is what is this we've got a a half motorcycle half orc uh SNM themed uh leather and metal and I mean you know for anybody that's played center I mean it's it's very fond in a lot of people's hearts of this era it's a b game from 1981 single level um very drop Target heavy um I think I've not played a lot of Cento how about you guys Erica um have you you have played Centaur yeah I've played Centaur and I've even played the new one that haggus had at the Northwest pinball show um and it's kind of fun actually because centaur was the first game I played in a tournament uh like my at my first tournament and I won okay and that was really cool but um I was told later I probably won because the guy that um would probably would have won he tilted out so once you tilt on that game I guess you're you're you lose all your balls so he like tilted like ball one and so and that it I was like yeah I was feeling all good and someone's like oh yeah he would have won but well if you uh if you win on a in a tournament then uh you know it's always going to have a special place in your heart isn't it so um uh yeah and so it's sort of I mean sento's sort of I guess gone through a little bit of a history of its own um so CPR which is a Playfield manufacturer classic Playfield reproduction s produced a number of different playfields for centaur the most uh interesting I suppose or controversial was this one um which was a color reimagination of the Playfield um now guys Todd how do you think this went down in the community yeah probably not well probably not well as my guess yeah yeah bang on mate back on it uh it did not go down very well at all to the point selling Dave it doesn't even look like the colors look wrong I mean they look washed out or something it's not even like when they first colorized black and white that the colors were wrong colors don't even well it looks like it looks like if you bought a coloring book and you were just like hey you know I'm gonna SP five minutes and color get some Crayon and go on the color Playfield here yeah so it didn't it yeah correct guys you guessed that one right it did not go down particularly well uh yeah they got a lying for this one um yeah mind it was there was there a price on those playfields did you did you come across that inarch d uh it's the same it's the same I don't think they priced it any more than they did their original reproduction so I think they sell them for 700 us or something like that um so this one went for that as well but uh yeah I I don't I don't exactly know what happened to them but um they're certainly not on the site anymore cuz I checked today about this is like we're going to be talking later about desaturating things after we made them and and these guys are saturating things I guess sometimes you got to try stuff out yeah yeah yeah yeah you do you do you got to throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks anyway this did not stick um yeah and then this is the so uh Erica alluded to this one earlier this is the haggus um 2023 version of centur um and now you can see it's I guess a sort of a cross between the two isn't it um it's got a lot more color they used uh a lot of um like like colored acrylic uh plastic protectors underneath all the Plastics um they've got a Topper on there um they've used colored GI uh there's color LEDs in the backbox um now you know it I don't think I mean you know we all know what happened to haggus so this was not the game that saved them let's let's put it that way um I thought it was a Miss personally um although I've not I've not played it it wasn't it wasn't um tpf I think if I recall correctly but I didn't get a chance to jump on it um this time around but Erica you said you'd actually played it yeah I played it and the thing is I haven't played the original like in a hot minute so I couldn't like some people can play a pin be like oh no that doesn't feel like original Monster Bash you know but I I was being kind of new into this um I I uh yeah I couldn't tell the difference but I liked it a lot um I think I lost when I was playing against people but um that was fine because I still had fun I love drop targets so this game definitely oh yeah drop targets are great so uh I've played uh fathom Revisited by haggus um and the and the and now the way that fathom Revisited works is there's two versions of the game that you can play there's the classic version that reproduces the original as closely as possible um still in emulation but as closely as possible and then there's a version two now uh the version two uh I thought was really good but there was an Australian you know I'm I'm an Australian too but there was an Australian doing the The Voice work which I thought just sounded completely wrong um did now does anybody know whether this version of centur has a version two that you can play with like extended rules ball save that kind of thing to make bad jokes but probably doesn't matter considering we're not going to see too many of these yeah that's true that's true yeah I think fa was much better than this that's that's what I will say is fathom the Revisited was a much it had that projector along the bottom with the you know that was I mean they they had that was a much better version yeah play that one too I just think the topper was a big Miss on this one as well I just thought it just looks like a bunch of like stuff happening and nothing's happening up there I don't I don't see what I don't see the drop yeah yeah let's let's move on from revisit sorry AG there's a lot of people with there's a lot of people with deposits on on that machine that are probably not too happy to be hearing about it all let's not yeah let's not stay on that for too long yeah that's a very good call there Rob um okay now alongside so okay so we we sort of went through the a 1981 uh CPR did that Playfield 2020 haggus did that 2023 but alongside this um there's been uh a bit of a sort of a home brew push for black and white games as well um now it' be really interesting to hear in the comments um but I believe this is the first person that that did it sort of on a on a on a home brew basis um somebody who took uh their Twilight Zone and converted it piece by piece um in you know all the ways that they possibly could into into a black and white game so we're talking uh the decals on the cabinet we're talking the Playfield itself um you know all the Plastics uh the backboard you know you know the uh the sculpts uh the back glass you know anything that they can possibly do they they will then do now this this was 2013 um the this first got announced I believe or first started getting worked on um I believe this is the first uh I guess uh um game that's been done by a punter um in this in this way but it'd be great to hear whether uh you know anybody's got any better information on that subject um well I first saw this one at Expo 23 Great American games I don't know Great American gaming I don't know if they're the ones that did this it looked looks like it probably is um and I know they've got some plans to do a couple of these they've been sharing you know on their Facebook acquiring parts and whatnot but yeah uh it's it's I mean I've seen it in person myself like it's done as good as it could possibly be done from what I can tell there's there's definitely no know shortcuts yeah you can't and you can't really see it from this picture on the left here cuz the the shot isn't great you know but how stunning it actually is in person um now it wasn't it wasn't there to be played at that show was it Rob no no he said it had never been played actually uh which I assume ex excludes him testing it out uh but lot a lot of work that went into it and I think it is worth noting like one of the reasons this was done is because it was a black and white show when it originally aired like that that's I think there's got to be a reason to do this type of thing uh which is also what we're seeing with Godzilla but black and white show let's make a Black and White Version yeah yeah yeah for sure um and this is sort of I guess a work in progress shot that you can see on the left here um sort of building it up um and I mean you know when you look at it sort of in Rel now I personally don't think and I'll probably get fled for this in the comments but for me personally Twilight Zone The Original isn't a very attractive game to me you know it's a lot of uh you know a lot of very strong Reds and Blues um and a bit of a mish mash of sort of stylistic sort of elements I guess um I know some people are absolutely adore it it's a favorite game and stuff but for me it sort of it doesn't quite sort of push my buttons I guess um whereas I think taking it sort of in a black and white Direction completely sort of you know changes that look uh you know and I think for the better um so I think that's an absolutely gorgeous example of what we've been talking about um this uh as so as far as I know uh we were talking about uh this we were talking about The Adams Family a little bit uh just in the sort of the warm-up to the show um I think I think uh Adams a black and white Adams Family popped up on Erica's feed um earlier today so it' be interesting to see um you know whether these two are the same now uh you know I pulled these images from the pinside thread uh which was started in 2018 so obviously this this um you know the Twilight Zone predates this one um this is a black and white Adams Family uh now you can see I sort of was alluding to it earlier with centur is that um you know some stylistic choices get made when these black and white games uh you know get embarked upon um now you can see with both Twilight Zone and Adam's Family they've made the choice to just like literally make everything monochrome and that goes you know it almost looks like the photo has been completely desaturated um you know and that that comes down to like you know all of the inserts are now white uh you know all of the lighting is is now sort of cold white GI uh cold white LEDs um you know and both of them made that choice to make it completely 100% black and white um I personally think it looks better with a little bit like a little bit of color just added here and there and we'll see that a bit later in some of the other games that have attempted this um but obviously you know it's still an absolutely stunning sort of piece of work that that somebody's done and you know just the amount of effort involved in you know doing something like this must just be absolutely Monumental um so again another beautiful and and like you were saying rob sort of that there needs to be a reason for doing this and obviously Adams Family was was a black and white TV show wasn't it so it does make a lot of sense that that this one was done in and we did we did get a fair comment just now from uh Carrie like this movie wasn't black and white so that's I do I mean not that anyone's bringing this game to Market black and white but if you're bringing this to Market like I think you've got to nail you know all those specific points uh so pretty cool but not not nearly as spot on as as uh as Twilight Zone I think the Twilight Zone that the if those it's my favorite classic TV show of all time I mean it's it's Rod Sterling is a brilliant and what they did with light and and Shadow in that program I don't know that it can be rep replicated very well on a pinball machine it's hard to see from these pictures from the lighting but there's a lot of cool things you could do with darkness in pinball and and and and that isn't really done a lot of times because people go and buy these lights and light everything up to you know to 100 degrees and then everything's lit up but there can be cool things that could be done playwise with with with corners and shadows and and that would be cool with the black and white setup I can't tell if they're doing that in this or if there was any if there was that thought put into it or it was just the art alone but you need the light the lighting is critical for the black and white with the Shadow with this I don't sorry I was going to say I don't think they have to because it probably just replicate exactly what was in the original code I mean I know that people are you know do have the capability to you know hack ROMs and stuff but there's you know particularly from this era of game there's only a few people around that are you know that have the the knowledge and the capabilities to you know start hacking assembler and getting in and changing those things and some people have done it but I would I would I would probably say that hasn't been done in this case um I think probably something that's possibly more doable um from a from a technical perspective for these games is changing the colorization of the DMD um you know because obviously uh you know the original Twilight Zone would have been an orange sort of standard plasma DMD um but it looks like they're not using that here it looks like it's possibly a color DMD that that again has been desaturated so um you know that's that's a sort of an interesting aspect as well it's neither an original orange plasma and it's and it's and it's not a color DMD sort of colorization as well um and I think from a technical perspective that's probably a lot more doable and than sort of you know getting deep into the assembly ROMs and and changing sort of you know lighting lighting GI and stuff um we're probably getting a little bit uh nerdy here now um but anyway let's let's move on so monsters as well uh had a black and white version now I was sort of uh maybe somebody's got a little bit more information on me than me about monsters but as far as I'm aware um the pro the premium and the Le of monsters all got released and they were all colored and then an alternate premium got released that was the Black and White Version does does anybody is that correct does anybody know I don't know I don't know the history of this one as far as the versions Erica do you know anything about it uh no I should have uh could have uh studied a little harder I guess before this test Carrie says uh we're gonna let we'll let Carrie fill us in here premium release black and white yeah I thought I I mean there's a lot of the black and one white ones out there um I think the general consensus is like this is the preferred you know design I think I think it looks absolutely stunning this one um you know and I think this is a really good example of you know black and white but then with using sort of spots of color just to sort of less is more that green pops it pops yeah 100% 100% um you know I think I think it looks absolutely beautiful um now this is this and this is actually an interesting one isn't it because you know we were talking a little bit before the show about if Stern were going to release Godzilla and we'll get to this later you know where is it going to be positioned is it going to be a super Le is it going to be an Le is it going to be a premium um and this is an example I guess where they've done a premium re-release of the Black and White Version uh as as a black and white version um and positioned it so that it I guess it doesn't piss off I think this one was actually I think this one was actually like black and white and then they added a color um but but but with alv with Alvar definitely worked out that way um yeah yeah yeah yeah as in pissed off Leon as you mean yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean that looks rad that looks rad okay so this this is another interesting one too I almost forgot this before the show and then I and then it occurred to me that I had forgotten it so I went and found it now this is uh this is called Bram Stoker's this is BSD so Bram Stoker Dracula it's called the gothic Edition uh and it was made in 2020 um so this is an Aussie dude uh so I pulled these photos from Aussie arcades um and I don't think it's intentional but I love the fact that all of his pin covers are like red Marc Silk or whatever in the background cuz it matches the gothic Edition like perfectly doesn't it so yeah uh yeah yeah totally totally like cords yeah um so yeah again he's used uh sort of spots of red uh on this to uh I guess add that sort of that contrast with the black and white um I mean I've seen a couple of you know really tasty uh bsds over the years you know people who sort of uh you know paint the insides of the cabs black and then you know use red paint splatters on the inside to make it look like you know blood and stuff um and you look I I think that sometimes people can go too far with that stuff and sometimes I just think it's like such a cool idea that it just totally gets pulled off and obviously it's always going to be a subjective thing whether you think that a refurb should take that sort of that poetic license and sort of go in those directions or whether you think it should stay true to the original game as closely as possible and everybody's going to have their own opinions on this um but you know I think particularly with a game like this that you know really lends self well to that sort of that you know Gothic overtures and I know that pin sound's got an amazing uh alternative soundtrack for this that really heightens the atmosphere and the dread and um you know I I think that sometimes uh you know it's just really I think sometimes people pull it off uh you know really really well um and you know I'm a big fan of this one I think I think it looks fantastic I mean look at that picture on the right there you know it just looks it just looks so badass doesn't it you know I just say I love it um there go great yeah so he's redone I guess all of the uh sculpts they repainted all of those um so they're you know very much more black and white I know a lot of people sort of repaint these sculpts in the background um there um and you know obviously if you're redoing a BSD that would be one of the first things you'd look at um yeah and then we've uh got uh and we talked about this a little bit earlier is air blood red kiss now I don't think um anybody would deny that this was an you know an absolute sort of you know Smash Hit I suppose in terms of design everything everything except for the shooter shooter Rod that is like a plastic sword that would that would be the first thing that would come off if I if I ended up buying this but everything else you know was absolutely you know absolutely gorgeous and obviously it didn't come without controversy um you know this got position pretty much as a super Le um and Le owners were very upset with Stern for having having done this um I think it was it was priced sort of around the same same Mark or possibly slightly more expensive um and it was just a load nicer so I could imagine that if you did buy uh a house of hor elvar Le and then this came out 6 months or a year later then you would be pretty upset well I actually think this one this one was actually quite a bit less than the super L um that came out which I think contributed to the issue because it's you know probably not even arguably better um and cost I want to say maybe five or $6 thousand less um than the super Al which was probably controversial in and of itself too um but yeah this thing I mean they definitely everything about it the cabinet art the choice of color it really really pops yeah yeah I mean they used that uh that sparkle glitter effect on the decals and on the Playfield itself I think even the Playfield Plastics sort of had a glittery effect happening um and it just really is stunning to behold particularly in person it just you know absolutely you know I think it for me personally it's like the nicest machine I've ever seen in the flesh um so you know I would definitely be market for one if it was what's that Erica I said facts like this machine is beautiful absolutely yeah I mean but what about the shooter who who's a fan of the shooter knob guys I've held it it's like the thing you would buy from the the carnival it's it's pretty bad oh I didn't I didn't hold the shooter Rod but I thought from a distance um I thought that looked cool okay it it does look pretty cool until you touch it it's like in ex cheap plastic I think that's probably where a lot of the the hate comes from I just understand the context of it as well like it's it's a sparkly dagger you know does I guess what AAR does have a dagger doesn't she in a belt yeah she's got a dagger she's got dagger that's like a part of her outfit yeah you're not going to like put her hair as the shooter Rod to you know what else is like what you're going put High I guess Birds yeah yeah um yeah so I mean yeah it's a cracker but I mean I think that I think the whole controversy around this is you know like I think that's really key to this whole story uh in a way because you know if if Godzilla black and white did come out um then you know what are they what are they going to do Stern have said that they're not going to make any more L after they build the L of a game so if they were going to go down this path again and release like a special edition how are they going to position it you know um so you know anniversary editions aren't considered uh Ellies are they so they can get away with it with you know Jurassic Park well if it's limited I think the big thing is is it limited you know I mean that's what they've to not doing again is putting out another limited of the same machine um because that's what happened with Jurassic you got you had Jurassic Le that was the premium machine and then you release another limited machine with a limited number of units and all of a sudden you know the people who have something that was supposed to be well it's still limited it's like trumped by a new limited version wonder if they're G to do something like Star Wars you know like with the IC book versus the the regular Star Wars you know that might might be a bit of a precedent there for because you know they're going to I mean Jaws it's going to be what another what they're goingon to have an anniversary for that at some point you know that it's gonna happen so I wonder if they're going to do you know I wonder if that's their path that they're going to do like they did with Star Wars just did alternate don't have the don't have the plate don't have the the numbering don't give us a piece of John Wick's suit or a shark D whatever they're doing yeah you're not gonna get that little bit of EX you know maybe the powder coating which we talked about off before we again but maybe that's stripped off but where's the price come in on this is it gonna be $ thousand doll more in between yeah yeah so let's talk a little bit about what we do know or or we don't know I mean this is all my own observations I don't know if it's all perfectly accurate but I know in January uh Zach Minny on his show straight down the middle they shared this image I think they're the ones that created this this is just a concept uh shot but they started to tease this idea of like what if they did a black and white and some of that had to do with um the fact that it's the 70th anniversary of Godzilla so that's when you would want to do something like this to celebrate that you've got the number one rated machine on pinside and probably the bestselling pinball machine in a long time I don't know how many units but it's been very successful most people that collect finball machines either have it or thinking about buying it um and then also the show was originally in black and white I mean there was a Godzilla minus one came out in theaters this year which was an homage to that movie it was excellent I think there's a lot of lot of VI Good Vibes around you know black and white with Godzilla um this one has some of that light that color tracing in it which I think everybody uh that is either thinking about this or somewhat wants it wants to see some color in it so it's probably not going to be you know purely black and white um a couple months ago some more rumors around this kind of started bubbling up and then as of I guess maybe a week or two ago uh nap arcade which if you guys don't know this website there's these guys cover a lot of news in pinball uh they they basically broke that this is absolutely coming to ComiCon uh this month which is near the end of this month um they credited Don's pinball podcast on this I I shot to Don and he was like I I heard it from a third party Source but they're very confident it's happening uh part of it is tied to Wick sales so like Wick sales have been uh you know not great allegedly um and the thinking is that you know Stern's got to make hundreds if not many hundreds of machines per week uh they're not necessarily making Wicks they've got to start working on something they're probably not ready for their next game so there's a lot of rumors around Godzilla black white and then also met a Metallica remake uh as well but what's interesting about this is like we know they're not coming out with a limited numbered machine so fortunately this thing hopefully doesn't cost $113,000 uh the premium version which is the one with all the stuff which is is going probably based on is normally around 9500 so are they going to price it up a little bit if they do come out with it we're going to assume it's not not numbered but this is it going to have powder coating is it going to have um side blade shaker like all the things that you know we typically expect out of an Le um and then of course like is it going to come with new code because we did see a little bit of a new code update with Jurassic Park 30th when it came out which I felt like was part of them kind of like softening the blow for all the owners of the current uh games but it also brought people back to the game because you had like an outlane save that wasn't there that was super brutal and like a bunch of little a bunch of Insider connected achievements uh as well so that's what I know do you guys kind of know anything else about what what we might expect out of this one no there was no hints of it on the stern tour so uh and I'm not going to ComicCon uh Carrie unfortunately I used to go a lot but yeah I will not be a Comic-Con I mean mean I'm in actually in the it's the one machine that I would buy is Godzilla but I wouldn't buy do you have it today though do you have it today no no yeah it's my favorite game my favorite game even though Jaws is behind me but it's my favorite game of the the spike twos but I would not I I would buy the the the the zombie the existing premium is the one I would buy over that what I saw that that looks de it looks cool but it just kind of looks dead to me almost compared to the vibrancy of the color of the other one and you know they're not going to charge the same price as the existing one and there's no way I I I don't want to eat my hat if I say that but I'm guessing it's it's gonna be $500 or $ thousand dollars more than what let's say that it so that was a concept shot let's say they take it as far as they did with the blood red kiss you know would that sway you at all or you just like for500 or, yeah but it's then it's 13 and then now it's a different different situation I think at that point because the Shaker mode is not worth $4,000 the the the speaker girl light what they're adding for the Lees and the and the plate is not worth I don't care about again John Wick's suit or whatever they would put in Godzilla from I don't know if they have a movie prop from 19 whatever but it's there I don't know how many people are buying for that that's probably why John Wick's doing so poorly one the code was released not even good and two you know it's it's there's not a compelling reason to go out and rush to go get it right now because you know like James Bond it's going to get better it's G to get better so you might as well wait see what's going to happen is it Metallica coming out is this Godzilla gonna come out that's what people are going to do they're GNA wait they're going to wait and see what there's a lot of there's a lot of really big titles in the pipelines too I mean not just from Stern you know there's rumors obviously of the Metallica remake but Pokémon potentially down the track as well that we've all you know known about for ages um but then you know at the same time uh you know Dutch uh have got you know rumors of some major major titles uh you know coming out uh possibly not this year but early next year and um and you know the market is tricky at the moment so people are being a lot more conservative I think with splashing out the kind of cash um that is quiet on a new in boox game if they think that maybe they're going to you know not like it and then it you know they're going to you lose two 2K on it you know just taking it out of the box so you know I think I think the the the atmosphere has changed over the last 12 months um and I think you were alluding to that earlier Rob that you know it's that same atmosphere that's probably dictating a lot of these decisions with these re-releases both with Metallica and the potential god Godzilla buck and white as got a B new Factory you they've got a lot of sta they've got you know higher rent even though they you know there's rumors they got a good deal on that um new Factory but um you know they need to keep those they need to keep those production Lines Moving don't they so um you know while games like Pokemon or Metallica possibly aren't ready they need to fill those production loans with something well I'd love to see them price it the same as the premium I think that achieves a couple of things one it lets all the fence sitters which there's a ton of them out there get in on the game and therefore they're filling their pipeline which at the end of the day we we want them to be able to do that right it's it's important for them to keep making games if people want them it also makes it the Le is still the Le right like you're you're not creating a situation where you've got a equally priced item that's now going to start eating away at the pricing um and then if somebody wants to lose a grand or two on their premium color to get the black and white they're feeling better about it because they're not paying $1,000 on a $7,000 sale they're paying $99,500 on a $7,500 sale and and that's their prerogative if they want to do that um and I and I think another thing worth mentioning is like the amount of money that people have invested in Godzilla from a mod perspective has got them way more upside down on that machine oh we've lost you there Rob I was just going to while we uh while we wait for Rob's uh video to sort itself out I was just going to pull in um I was going to pull in Andy's comment here there's no reason for stern to care about the secondary Market um which is an interesting thing to I would I would argue against that um Annie because I think I think they very much need to care about the secondary Market because if they if they if if the secondary Market tanks and everybody starts holding on to their games um then there's no room to to put any new inbox games I mean these are these are big machines um we've all we're all running out of space we've you know we've all got you know small houses and you know garages and you know there's only so much SP and you know we're you know I think space is one of the biggest uh clinches uh in the in the hobby at the moment um so if there's not a strong secondary Market um you know doing doing its thing and moving through games quickly that nobody's able to rotate um plus if everybody thinks that they're going to drop 2K or a K on a game that they've only bought like six months ago on the secondary Market they'll just hang on to it and that means that people will will forego new on box games as well so yeah I'd argue that they I mean I think that historically they haven't cared about the secondary Market but I definitely think they should I think I think the people that are going to be most interested are people like me that are in the market to buy a new box Pinball it's Godzilla they've played it on location and then they're just going to decide which one you know if it's the premium they want or this model what whatever that's going to be and that I think that's a very very small percentage of people um in that in that market existing owners are going to sell their and buy up to this one and get CH I don't think that's going to happen so other people that would be sold told that they would be buying this and do what do you guys back back let me click a bunch of but until I get this thing organized there we go there so just to just to recap you on the last five minutes Rob we were just bitching about you um dramatic Paws he had the dramatic squirrel Paws right there Frozen in a really good point you're making a really good point now bro don't don't let don't let that dissuade you did did we talk about the mods I just want to make sure everyone knows how upside down we all are on the mods on these things yeah well no we haven't talked about yet so obviously this is we haven't talked about that yet um and that's particularly when it comes to Godzilla um one of the biggest problems that a lot of people got with Godzilla is the fact that you know like me have been filling it with mods and may He so that it's very difficult for well you know like okay say okay say you've got a premium Godzilla you filled it up with mods um you're 1000k in the whole uh for all those mods and you you've been 2500 in the um and you know I mean we've all loved Godzilla you know it's been it's been such a wonderful game for pinball um and you know really was the peak of uh you know I guess the second Golden Era Pinal or third Golden Era whatever is but it was it was a golden era you know that was you know really what sort of encapsulated that period um and we all filled it with mods and you know we all had a great time doing it but if now the black and white entices you um you know to the point where you want to trade up your game for the black and white what do you do with these mods do you do you transfer them over are they going to look out of place uh in the new black and white game are mod makers uh like Rob and myself going to support that how are we going to support that don't know well I did see that I just was checking pinside um there are 2,627 people that say they have Godzilla in their current collection and there's about a, 96 people that have it on their wish list so there is like yeah maybe those people that would want to sell theirs and you know I feel like when it comes to mods um there are very few that people that add value I think to when you sell a game you know like color DMD I would say definitely adds value to a game and um maybe expression lights and and whatnot because that is uh costly um but yeah that's that's a hard one to tell though if people will switch them over or if they'll keep them and put them in maybe it'll be nice to have those splashes of color um in the game depending on how the art is done um so but I could see them running it like a premium because they did make a statement or I think George or somebody said something we're like we're not going to do this like 's anymore um we're GNA do this more of like a print kind of thing where it'll be maybe like a premium Godzilla and they'll just kind of yeah anything any other details there because I think that's the key thing here right it's like it it works if they take that approach I hadn't heard that he had said that directly I feel like I read something thing somewhere where someone had something where they were like we're going to try to not piss off people like that or something no you're right George George did say that I didn't I didn't hear the interview but I heard people talking about it um you know Le buyers in the UK who were very pissed off about uh the dilution of the Le Market um and George assed those people very bluntly that it wasn't going to happen again because they had felt the blowback from doing that and you know not only did they you know I mean just from a business perspective it didn't make sense for them to do that anymore so I think I think if they did do that it would be incredibly shortsighted decision um both in terms of the repercussions um that the you know the hobbyists you know I think I think it would you know they'd be going back on their word or George would be going back on his word and I think that those two things combined uh you know particularly in a tricky sort of marketing position for stern at the moment considering that John Wick um didn't do that great um I feel like maybe Jaws probably underperformed for them too potentially um although I've got no data to support that but I get the feeling that being an Elin title um they probably expected it to be an absolute banger and I think it was successful but probably not on the scale that they were anticipating so so let's let's let's talk a little bit about code too because one of the issues with getting a new Godzilla that you're tentatively going to be excited about um is the fact that for a lot of owners and I I I formulated this opinion myself and I know a lot of others have to you have to play the game for a really long time to really get any enjoyment out of it and and that creates a situation where you're you may be tired of the game um and you want something new out of it um I you know we're we're three plus years in on this game like I would love to see a completely different mode that just creates a much shorter game time um one idea I threw out to Dave was like what if there was like a different mode that you select from the menu and it's each ball is a bounty so it's like you're trying to achieve this particular goal if you don't do it in the ball the ball's over if you finish the mode the ball's over and then you do that three times and maybe maybe that mode changes every time but I want a 15minute game that I care about out of this game I certainly don't want to see it exclusive to the Black and White Edition because I don't want to have to buy the Black and White Edition to have it so then are they going to give that to me for free and for me I'd be happy to pay you know I'm I'm scared to say a number because I know the community gets upset when you start talking about big numbers here but I I'd love to pay 50 or 100 bucks for something to make my game feel fresh to me um I'm curious you know a little bit of a round table here what do you guys think about paying for major content way past the 1.0 is that something you're interested in Todd start us off because I know you've covered this closely yeah well I was thinking actually um and I didn't put this in my wish list article but I was thinking that what's this is going to sound great crazy to some people but I'm going to say it anyway because I look look the LCD is a game it's it's basically a place where additional stuff could happen I know some people don't like the video modes but hey open that thing up Stern let developers come into that but like a P3 type of development situation on that LCD with your you could have different mini modes um it I don't know about letting developers get into the pinball side of it but letting them at least make m mini games or the video mode type stuff that would be separate from the pinball experience and I think there's a market there I think there's there's an interest there it's whether or not they do that I don't know but whenever I've um whenever I've raised this with people because I mean I agree with you and being a mod maker I would you know I mean we're clamoring to sort of get sort of a closer relationship with the manufacturers so that we can sort of get more data out of the game and you know change things in that way and that the the thing that um I've always been told uh whenever I've raised this with people in the know is that they've said that licensing restrictions basically prevent that kind of access to to to people because um if the license holders suddenly got whed that the game you know was changing or the you know the IP was changing in a certain way then then they'd get in the for it so yeah I mean I would I would love for to get into a position of that but I I think that you know it's going to be it's going to be a long way to go before before that's possible yeah with just licensing alone I couldn't see like Jaws or any of these big licenses being like yeah make a game like figure out like I sorry this would be really cool which um I like that I I have a P3 so I just got it very happy um and it's cool that they have that whole third party you know you can make your own games on this system but um also as coming from like my film background I understand licensing is really tough in all sorts of ways you can't show a coke bottle on screen without like CO's permission you know so like there's all different factors that go into that but it would be really cool to have uh it would it'd be really cool to let people in and have little extra Integrations but yeah I could see the licensing would just be like awful we got we got a comment comment from Rocket City there is some elements of this right so you can play the final wizard mode uh in these games that's a shorter game for me I I tend to not want to play those because I want to earn them although in most games I never have but maybe I'll change my plan but getting getting back to the question guys like a major new mode like a mini wizard mode uh that's exclusive to a different selection before you start the game right not a new mode in the game but a a new way to play the game would you be happy to pay for that and we're talking about Godzilla specifically let's talk yeah Godzilla specifically yeah I mean I love those extra modes stranger things has like the best one like I'm every time I go to a stranger things I always go to the challenge mode on that one because it's just so fun and I'm I'm not an excellent player I know that and it's nice that I can get a chance to play the wizard mode so yeah I'd love to see Godzilla have some extra modes so they did a little bit of that with with Jurassic Park right with having that Co-op thing that released so I would think that they would have to have something in the works to double press those buttons and have something new I thought I saw a statistic that 70% of the the buyers are at home okay so that's true if that's true that it's 70% of have you guys heard that figure because that's a figure that I've seen yeah but it may be true yeah if that's the case then now you got it somebody's home so from licensing standpoint one of their issues was when they like they did John Wick was well we couldn't have guns on it because right kids could come in well this is in the privacy of somebody's home now so I wonder if that doesn't open up a whole other door licensing Wise It's a technical Le this is an attorney questions beyond what we're probably able to discuss but I I wonder if there's a door to open there with that where hey if this is for home use because we can differentiate where this goes we can that where this content goes you know they have the verif thing is they'd have to write that into the contract from the beginning I think to open that up and maybe they will go there and some licenses are probably more open to that I I do think that's an interesting point in that you know if if it's not going to be out in the public market like maybe that could loosen that restriction yeah I want a John Wick mini game where I'm just going nuts in the Mustang and taking a pencil out and going why I wanted that that's what I wanted but you you know it's not there and maybe it's coming if you gave it to power to the developers and the people I guarantee you it would be there it would be for the pencil mode it would be quickly there and and I don't know if they could do that but that's something maybe Spike three maybe that's part of what they're thinking about maybe that's the direction they're going who knows yeah I um I had a recent interview with or I had an interview with Mike talking a little bit about Spike 3 he can't I mean obviously they can't say much and my video he talks a little bit about it but yeah it seems like they would be able to have more features CU Insider connected came later right like Insider connected had to be installed later into machines so now with this new one my thought process is like okay Insider connected's already there what are they doing with the screen like what's gonna are they going to change where the speakers are is the whole cabinet going to change yeah there's so much with that soorry I think we went off topic lead that's to your question Rob bucks give us the home leader boards everybody wants it yeah the home leader boards would be cool I mean I would like to see one of the things that I thought Insider connected was when I first got it was like you guys remember word with Words With Friends where you could do the little thing and then Dave you could play it whenever you wanted and then it would tell us what the score is like why can't I play a game on Godzilla and then my friend within 24 hours play a game too and then whoever did better gets the win like where is the thing things that make us feel connected I would I pay $40 a year already like why am I not getting anything that makes that feels special they did the DJ mixer mode on Jaws for it's DJ mixer to mix the Jaws sounds let me Bluetooth from my phone and play you know ACDC through here or something else why on Earth is DJ mixer mode playing the Jaws music stuff I I don't want to I can already hear that what what what is that I mean that makes no sense give us the ability to do something that's been around for what 25 years come on let us do that put our music through that that's a home run idea like let me play Beasty Boys on my Avengers without hacking oh Beast it must be the copyright cops got scorp he's hit the basty boys boot code yeah yeah as soon as Beasty Boys get mentioned I'm talking too loud that's my problem elato anyway so all right I wanna I want to do a little bit of um we're we're getting up on oh we've lost your sound again Rob sorry buddy your mic might lost your sound um I was just going to say scor bit though like scor bit's got a lot of really great stuff going on for that connectivity and I think that that was a loss on um I mean I don't know what what jjp is doing but I think it's a loss on them that they didn't keep them within there 100% yeah well I know Stone worked really hard to uh stop score bit from getting access to their data as well and it's it's unfortunate isn't it you know like the scorby guys are very clever very switched on dudes and you know i' like to see them you know be utilized more by by those manufacturers for sure yeah I'm yeah can you guys hear me now yeah God just don't meast again man so yeah Beasty Boys I did it no I I love Todd I love love love that idea um there's so many like Bond music remixes if just get it in does they wouldn't even have to get licensing approval just let people use it as a jukebox so so Davey and I have made the mistake possibly of promising our fans a little bit of a teaser of our Godzilla black and white mods um Davey did you want to share anything or you want to say yeah sure man yeah yeah I'll I'll just be quick now I'm so sorry guys because um you know we showed Zack man's U mockup of Godzilla earlier and I was just looking at it and just thinking oh geez man his his Photoshop skills are better than mine or maybe he just put in more than 15 minutes work but anyway so i' I've mocked up uh hang on let me just get my windows correct um so I've mocked up uh so these are my Godzilla mods this is the first one that I came out with Tokyo neon so this is how it looks in black and white yeah so I've left the splashes of color and desaturated everything else I guess the trick with these ones are going to be you know how's Godzilla going to look is it going to lean into the blues is it going to lean into the the greens um you know it's it's a big unknown really so I think which have a direction that goes in you'd probably the problem with my mods is you know they're they're LED based so they're always going to be you know I need them to be colorful in some degree because otherwise you just you know the patterns just don't look right so um so there's going to have to be some color coming from my mods and if if the if if Godzilla black and white is 100% black and white then probably it's a bust for me and I won't be able to do anything but I think um I think well Rob and I were talking before the show is to exactly what do you change what do you do and how do you make that available for people and I guess we'll get to that in in just a little SEC but I'll just quickly take through the other ones this is the noodle bar that I did for the back right building this is how it looks in black and white um you see that the the main paint colors Chang the LEDs remain the same the acrylic on the right's gone black and white this is the subway um which goes behind Godzilla in the back left corner uh and this is how it looks uh desaturated in black and white um I got to say they look okay I don't think I wasn't you know when I changed them I wasn't Blown Away with the the look of them um I think probably in the context of um the entire game uh they probably look a bit different um you know when everything sort of you know is matching in and looking great and you the colors are all matching and stuff but you know it is what it is um now Rob do you want to show yours and then we'll uh we'll talk a little bit about sort of kind of what we thought in terms of what you know what position the Highlight is and the Highlight for you is I think like sending out replacement parts is going to be a little little iffy right I mean yeah it's the one thing that we've talked about is like making sure to be really careful about the level of effort the customer would have to go through to to update that so this is our Godzilla topper obviously you know very colorful um we've actually kind of ahead of time taken some time to mock up actually like physically what this would look like so here's like a little video of what this would look like um in black and white um and then we've done I think I took one photo uh that you guys can see here so um just desaturated it at this point obviously if they incorporate color into this you know we want to match that um I too don't really feel like setting out replacement Plastics is gonna be viable just because it's like literally like taking the entire thing apart uh and putting it back together um but you know I think it's fun to think about as a uh person who's modded the hell out of Godzilla already if you can if you are interested in it and you can happen to sell it at a price that works for you and reacquire the black and white like starting from scratch you know like what are the things that you really loved along the way uh that you may have kept or got rid of uh because there was upgrades and really you know making it something that is never going to leave your home because you love Godzilla and you love the black and white you know so I I think for brand new fans it's exciting or brand new owners of the machine is exciting and then if Stern can just put that thing out there without a crazy high price point like those that want to get in can and mod yeah cuz I I was sort of tossing up particularly with the Tokyo Neon um you know not much on that has to change other than the acrylic so really all I would have to do is like send out a single acrylic to somebody um and go there you go and then it works for black and white so certainly for Tokyo neon it might be viable to modify that for the black and white very very simply but for things like the noodle bar and stuff you know it's literally you would have to take off the whole facade which is double side you know was never built for removal so it's double-sided tape there' be a chance of breakage from the customer I mean how do you deal with that from a supp P point of view um and then even besides those points does somebody really want to have like the old facade just sitting around you know after that you know this is an expensive piece of you know molded painted resin you know but it's essentially useless to them after that point what it just goes in a shoe box and gets put on a shelf so you know that's it's really a bit sad just to have these parts lying around and then you know if they're then selling their Godzilla you know not going to sell that facade with their Godzilla they're selling it with nothing they're putting the original Plastics back in so you know how does that work it's it's just a complex sort of set of ideas I mean it's almost like the only way you could really do it is by selling a whole brand new piece but again from a modmaker point of view you know you feel a bit saying that you go oh you have to buy a whole new mod and that's that's the only option you know but I just I just can't quite conceptually think of another way to do it at the moment that's not going to lead to wastage and or uh bad experience from the installation point of view potential breakages and problems with that yep yep all right so we've covered a lot on this show um I still didn't get a answer from you guys if you would pay uh for this stuff but maybe maybe you're protecting your social media identity because it's very controversial to acknowledge paying for anything um with Insider connected um I would I would pay for Insider connected more I'm already paying I told you that I already pay yeah I'm already the answer question was answered yeah I'm pain and I would you know depending on what they bring uh I got the coin but if they okay let's let's make it really we make it really suct if if they brought out new code for Godzilla black and white but they made original and you had a you had a Godzilla Prem in your in your garage the color one you're not going to replace it with a black and white version but they said all those customers who have the origin Godzilla can pay 100 bucks and get access to this brand new code that's available for the Black and White Edition rather than giving it away to free those to those users I know I know that that would probably piss off a whole heap of custo existing customers that don't get access to that code because that's not how they've done it in the past but would you do it uh I I don't own a Godzilla um but I do really like it it was in my top five um I think that 100 bucks would be probably the most i' want to pay to um upgrade my Godzilla to have the thing if they change it um but you would also maybe hope that it would be for free since you already spent the money on the machine um yeah I guess like a hundred bucks would be I don't know the most it' have to be something really cool for me to want to put like a decent amount of money down you know um and like alvara and Jurassic Park didn't have any extra costs people so that would feel a little weird um I think only Insider connected would cost more if they go into like homes leaderboards because of like the servers and stuff like that like how they host um and it's easier to host for like a bunch of arcades but if they started hosting in homes that's like a much larger number of people I think I mean Andy makes a point here it's a dangerous PR and opens up the door for DLC subscription models just quickly show to be the big one yeah I mean you know thinking about it to answer your question directly like if it was like 20% new content like a lot right I would definitely want to pay for it if it was as much as was changed in Jurassic I would be upset about paying for anything um the way one thing that's interesting about how Apple does it with their their their special game section is you can pay like 20 bucks a month and you get access to hundreds if not thousands of games it'd be cool if I could pay Maybe a little bit more than $40 a year but every game that I own including maybe even when I go to play Wick out on site I scan in there's a special mode so I basically feel like I got this wealth of content for five T bucks a month hopefully not 20 um and I get everything right I'm not paying like allaart because I think that's the big thing is like people just don't want to feel like they're getting nickel and dimed on this um Todd what are you what are you kind of feeling like you're I know you're I know you're Pro you know expanding Insider connected and probably paying like where is that bar for you well after I go outside and strangle the landscaper that's mowing right outside the window where I'm trying to do a interview on a show after he's cutting my internet man's he's cutting my internet yeah he's after that um look I just spent over $100 on Steam games in the summer sale um Gamers I spend thousands of dollars on games and I've been playing games all my life so the concept of spending a 100 bucks or 50 bucks and getting my rule thumbs like an hour a dollar dollar an hour is if we're so if it's a hundred bucks am I gonna get a hundred hours worth of entertainment out of whatever's happening that's what I'm going to analyze and look at and if I have M I think the argument is like you're also not buying 7,000 10,000 Xboxes or or seven $10,000 PlayStations like that's where feedback I bought just about every console that's come out the Neo Geo in the90s was but not of them $700 and each game was $200 to $400 each game for the system was 200 to $200 which in today's money is $400 for one game so I mean I'm probably a bad person to ask about that cuz yes I would pay it if it was not like a John Wick situation where the code isn't finished yet that's a very important you know we got to make sure it has to be finished yeah I'm not paying for I'm not paying $7,000 or $113,000 on a machine and then having to pay you a fee to finish it that's what everybody's afraid of and I am and I'm right there with them in that if that's the road we go to that's oh that's bad news and I hope that's not where it goes but additional content to three years you said with the god I think 100 might be pushing I think the 50 they've already settled upon the $50 or $40 fee that they have for the stern Insider a all access give you access for all the stern games you could have leaderboards at home that's a great price and I think a lot of people would jump on that they might not tell you that publicly or they may not admit that but I think a lot of them would because that what is that four bucks a month or something I mean that's I mean that's I don't think people they go to Starbucks and pay five six bucks for a a cup of bad coffee or something but you know you're not going to pay that for additional content for a game you spent all these thousands of dollars on and to reinvigorate so I think it's I think it's an easy sale if the price is right and the content for the time value and is there if it's not everything there then people are just going to be outraged and and say no you they're not going to do it yeah Davey any final words on this uh topic for us well I was going to say and it's you know like I think that I think that a subscription model like that is very attractive from a business point of view from Stern's point of view you know it's it's a known uh Revenue stream they can predict it coming in every month um they you know and they can build on it and they can get more people signing up to it now if if they've got that consistent Revenue coming in that gives them a level of confidence and security um you know to continue making games you know they don't have to be in these pressure situations where one bad game or two bad games on the Trot really puts them in a difficult financial position where they have to do black and white Godzillas or Metallica you know like you know if they had this consistent Revenue stream come on that that alleviates a lot of pressure for stern and it means they can keep making great games and potentially not having to do price hikes and like that so um but it needs to be there and and it needs to you know be consistent needs to be growing and um and it needs to not piss off your customer base as well so if they can achieve all of those things then yeah I think it's a good thing yeah like you know reaching the monthly fee or the yearly fee to have value is a is a pretty high bar but I think I feel like they've got to do that I hope they don't go this alakar route um it's gonna get I mean we already have the pricing feels out of whack I think if they start charging and they charge too much and then you know you're not getting what you expected just like start making that what we're paying for worth it and and maybe increase it from there um well guys thank you so much uh for joining us I I'm excited about what's GNA happen with this Godzilla black and white just because I'm a big fan of the game and I'd love to play it if nothing else um so guys uh thank you so much for contributing the story we love to have you back on uh sometime as well yeah thank you guys awesome well guys we're we're going to get back on our two we schedule here I think Davey do we got some uh some some stuff lined up we'll figure it outa be here in a couple weeks yeah yeah we'll work it out um but uh yeah we uh we we've enjoyed having you guys um definitely make sure to subscribe to the channel so you get notifications uh we're also sending out emails and stuff um so and also be sure to check out Erica and Todd's uh stuff uh show game or play games more.com and Erica's spinball Journey on Instagram I know Erica has got a really cool video coming out soon I'm going to put some pressure on you to get that is coming out it's a so yeah yeah I'm also on YouTube so not just the yeah awesome awesome YouTube as well all right signing off everybody uh we will see you soon
The Twilight Zone original aired in black and white, justifying black & white game conversions
high confidence · Rob: 'it was a black and white show when it originally aired like that that's I think there's got to be a reason to do this type of thing'
Erica purchased a Weird Al (P3) pinball machine after her friend Manu inspired her
high confidence · Erica: 'I am I absolutely love it um the P3 Community has been incredibly welcoming' and discussed borrowing Heist from Manu
Todd Russell's household has 4,000 plays on their Jaws Premium in 116 days
high confidence · Todd: 'my son got this beautiful premium machine here 116 days ago we have almost 4,000 plays on it'
“I think the Twilight Zone that the if those it's my favorite classic TV show of all time I mean it's it's Rod Sterling is a brilliant”
Todd Russell@ 29:46 — Underscores thematic authenticity motivation for black & white conversions
“I bought the machine and then I like went full force into it I was like oh my God this is amazing learning everything”
Erica@ 12:29 — Documents rapid immersion path for new hobbyist, highlights rapid community onboarding
product_concern: CPR's colored Centaur playfield reproduction criticized for poor color choices and washed-out appearance; community reception was severely negative; playfield no longer listed for sale
high · Rob: 'it looks like if you bought a coloring book and you were just like hey you know I'm gonna SP five minutes and color get some Crayon and go on the color Playfield' and Davey: 'they got a lining for this one'
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design_philosophy: Two design approaches to black & white machines: full desaturation (Twilight Zone, Addams Family) vs. accent color pops (Monster Bash). Community preference appears to be selective color accents for visual impact
medium · Davey on Monster Bash: 'green pops it pops yeah 100% 100%' and earlier: 'I personally think it looks better with a little bit like a little bit of color just added here and there'
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leak_detection: Godzilla black & white variant has been 'bouncing around in the forums for a while' but details and official confirmation remain unclear; positioning (Pro/Premium/LE) and timing uncertain
medium · Host: 'the sort of the theme of the show is this rumored black and white Godzilla machine that's um you know sort of been bouncing around in the forums for a while'
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content_signal: Erica (Instagram/YouTube creator) invited to Stern media tour; new voice in pinball content space with filmmaking background; represents younger demographic entry into pinball hobby
high · Host: 'recently Stern did a big media tour uh brought in a bunch of people and you were invited' and Erica mentioned hearing IC pricing discussions
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manufacturing_signal: Hagans' Centaur 2023 release received mixed/negative reception despite effort; Fathom Revisited considered superior; suggests variability in execution quality between projects
medium · Davey: 'I thought it was a Miss personally' and 'I think fathom the Revisited was a much better' product
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community_signal: New collectors like Erica experience rapid immersion; P3 community actively welcomes newcomers; Pinball Map aids venue discovery; strong community support for entry-level players
high · Erica: 'P3 Community has been incredibly welcoming' and 'Pinball Map I absolutely love pinball map it's always fun when my friends and I go out'
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historical_signal: Black & white pinball designs have precedent in manufacturing history (Centaur 1981) and are being revisited as collector/enthusiast conversions; thematic authenticity (TV show origins) provides design justification
high · Davey: 'back with centa u all the way back in 1981' and 'Twilight Zone The Original... it was a black and white show when it originally aired'