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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast August 2021 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·3h 26m·analyzed·Sep 2, 2021
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TL;DR

Deep Root fraud charges, Sorcerer's Apprentice P3 release, and pinball industry updates from August 2021.

Summary

A August 2021 Pinball Magazine/News recap podcast covering three major stories: Robert Mueller and Deep Root Pinball charged with SEC fraud involving $58.7M in misappropriated investor funds; Multimorphic releases Sorcerer's Apprentice for the P3 platform as a re-theme of Cosmic Cart Racing; and upcoming American Pinball games and Pinball Expo announcements. The episode features interviews with Multimorphic leadership and the Sorcerer's Apprentice design team.

Key Claims

  • Robert Mueller and Deep Root Pinball were charged by the SEC with fraud related to two investment funds (575 and Growth Runs Deep Funds) that raised $58.789 million, which were supposed to be invested in life insurance but were instead used for Deep Root Pinball, Deep Root Studios, and Mueller's personal expenses.

    high confidence · Martin Leib, Pinball News editor, discussing SEC charges against Robert Mueller

  • Deep Root Pinball cost approximately $750,000 per month to operate and has been running for about five years, accumulating substantial financial losses.

    medium confidence · Jonathan Euston and Martin Leib discussing Deep Root Pinball operating costs

  • Deep Root employees have not been paid since July 2021 and have lost access to internal company networks.

    medium confidence · Martin Leib citing anonymous Deep Root employees he contacted

  • Sorcerer's Apprentice was immediately available for download to existing Cosmic Cart Racing playfield owners upon announcement in August 2021.

    high confidence · Gerry Stellenberg and Rory Cernuda, Multimorphic team

  • Multimorphic's business model for Sorcerer's Apprentice was to provide additional value to customers who had already purchased the Cosmic Cart Racing playfield without requiring thousands of dollars in additional hardware costs.

    high confidence · Gerry Stellenberg explaining the re-theme strategy

  • Rory Cernuda has worked with Multimorphic for approximately nine years, starting with the Lexy Lightspeed Escape From Earth character.

    high confidence · Rory Cernuda in interview

  • The team received universally positive feedback on Sorcerer's Apprentice from early players and streamers.

    medium confidence · Gerry Stellenberg discussing public reception

  • Deep Root Studios was intended to develop original animated characters that could be licensed to TV networks like Netflix, HBO, or Disney for long-term revenue generation.

    medium confidence · Jonathan Euston and Martin Leib speculating on Deep Root Studios' original business model

Notable Quotes

  • “Robert was in charge of running two investment funds called the 575 and Growth Runs Deep Funds which between them raised just shy of 60 million dollars, 58.789 million and now that Those funds were supposed to be majority invested in life insurance policies and produce returns of either 5 or 7% a year. But unfortunately, that wasn't how the money appears to have been spent.”

    Martin Leib — Establishes the core fraud allegation and scale of misappropriation

  • “I don't think Robert ever intended to get into pinball manufacturing. I think the idea was to build up a design studio, have a long pipeline of titles, which has already been announced, have some famous designers, some top-class animations, and some sought-after games, and then sell the whole lot to an investment fund to recover the cost that he's invested in it.”

    Jonathan Euston — Offers key speculation about Mueller's actual business strategy and how it may have unraveled

  • “You get used to it, you know, you just, kind of like we are right now, we're talking over Skype, and you find solutions for challenges like that, and you overcome them.”

    Rory Cernuda — Reflects on remote work capabilities in game design during pandemic

  • “This game is very much still physical pinball. Rory's kind of environmental concepts draw in some aspects of what we would call video games. But these are kind of separate supplementary tests. At its core, it's physical pinball.”

    Gerry Stellenberg — Clarifies Multimorphic's design philosophy for Sorcerer's Apprentice despite video game elements

  • “Our whole kind of business concept is giving people more value for their money. They've already spent money on the machine and on their Cosmic Cart Racing play field. So let's figure out a cool way to give them new ways to enjoy that hardware and ways that don't cost thousands of dollars to add that content.”

    Gerry Stellenberg — Articulates Multimorphic's customer value strategy and P3 platform ecosystem approach

Entities

Robert MuellerpersonDeep Root PinballcompanyMartin LeibpersonJonathan EustonpersonMultimorphiccompanyGerry StellenbergpersonRory Cernudaperson

Signals

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: SEC charges against Robert Mueller and Deep Root Pinball for alleged misappropriation of $58.789 million in investor funds; funds were supposed to be invested in life insurance but were used for Deep Root Pinball operations, Deep Root Studios, and Mueller's personal expenses (school fees, marriage/divorce costs, Hawaii condo).

    high · Martin Leib detailed SEC fraud charges; mentioned Mueller's lawyer background and speculation about whether consequences will be pursued

  • ?

    business_signal: Deep Root Pinball operating costs of approximately $750K/month over ~5 years accumulated to unsustainable levels; employees unpaid since July 2021; company studio appears empty; assets expected to be liquidated; personnel reportedly seeking employment elsewhere in industry.

    high · Hosts discussed operational burn rate; Martin Leib reported on employee status; photos from factory mentioned showing empty facilities

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Deep Root Pinball staff reportedly circulating resumes to other pinball manufacturers following company collapse and SEC charges; employees operating under NDAs preventing public commentary; staff lack clarity on company status or employment.

    medium · Hosts noted that Deep Root employees have been 'touting their resumes around other parts of the pinball industry'; Martin Leib spoke with anonymous former employees under confidentiality agreements

  • ?

    product_launch: Multimorphic released Sorcerer's Apprentice as a P3 platform re-theme for the Cosmic Kart Racing playfield in August 2021; software immediately available for download to existing CCR playfield owners; represents new business model of providing free/low-cost software updates to existing hardware.

    high · Gerry Stellenberg confirmed immediate availability upon announcement; designed to provide customer value without thousands in new hardware costs

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.619

0:00
Robert Mueller and Deep Root charged with fraud Sorcerer's Apprentice released for the P3 Stern announces Insider Connected Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined here with I'm Martin Leib and I'm the editor of Pinball News and welcome to our August Look Back Pincast, which we are recording on the very first day of September. And I think it's fair to say that August was a very interesting and active month as far as events in the pinball world go. Yeah, there's a lot of activity, if you want to call it that, a lot of stories to report on, lots of news to cover.
0:54
And we're not doing that just by ourselves. We actually have three interviews scheduled in this podcast.
1:02
It's going to be a long one. It is, yeah. Yes. We'll be talking with Mike Kalinowski from Homepin. We'll be talking to Jerry Stellenberg And Rory and I forgot his last name Senuda Right, Rory Senuda Who just released Sorcerer's Apprentice for The P3 platform Of Multimorphic And we'll be talking to David Fix Who will be addressing Upcoming games At American Pinball As well as upcoming Pinball Expo Yes, there's a lot to talk about, so we better not waste any more time, let's get straight on with our lead story, which is all about the comings and goings and the claimed shenanigans at Deep Root Pinball. Right, yeah, the Austin-based... Oh, San Antonio. Sorry, my bad. the San Antonio-based pinball company formed by Robert Mueller, who was very enthusiastic in his outings that pinball was easy and he would show everybody how it should be done differently. Yet, so far, there's only two prototypes that show for it and a couple of claims from the SEC. see. Now, Martin, you dove into all the Yeah, I've been looking into the details and the background to this story. What I wanted to say is you wrote a summary, which is available on pinballnews.com. Thank you very much indeed, yeah. Which is sort of well, the whole story in brief, but what can you tell us about it? Well, I don't want to go into too much depth to it because there's quite a lot of background to it but the sort of the 30 second takeaway I suppose for this is that Robert was in charge of running two investment funds called the 575 and Growth Runs Deep Funds which between them raised just shy of 60 million dollars, 58.789 million and now that Those funds were supposed to be majority invested in life insurance policies and produce returns of either 5 or 7% a year. But unfortunately, that wasn't how the money appears to have been spent if you believe the SEC's charges. That's the Security and Exchange Commission in the United States who regulate investment. So they are claiming that the majority of the money was actually spent on projects such as Deep Root Pinball and Deep Root Studios, which made no return.
Sorcerer's Apprenticegame
Cosmic Cart Racinggame
P3 platformproduct
Deep Root Studioscompany
SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)organization
Greg Goldeyperson
Ryan Tannerperson
Eric Ridgewayperson
  • ?

    design_innovation: Sorcerer's Apprentice demonstrates Multimorphic's strategy of creating multiple thematic game experiences on single playfield hardware; combines physical pinball with video game-inspired mechanics (spell learning, health management, item systems) while maintaining traditional pinball structure.

    high · Gerry Stellenberg emphasized physical pinball core with supplementary video game elements; Rory Sanuda discussed integrating role-playing game concepts within traditional mode structures

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Sorcerer's Apprentice introduces health meter system where player must maintain health throughout game or lose flippers and ball; described as supporting role-playing game aesthetic; represents departure from traditional pinball mechanics.

    high · Gerry Stellenberg identified health meter as unusual feature; Rory Sanuda attributed this to role-playing game background influencing design; noted feature gives game RPG aspect

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Sorcerer's Apprentice received universally positive early feedback from players and streamers; community praised visual elements and overall game design; some suggestions for difficulty adjustments but predominantly constructive criticism.

    medium · Gerry Stellenberg: 'so far it's been super positive...almost everyone who's downloaded it...we've had amazing feedback'; noted couple requests for difficulty changes but 'universally positive feedback'

  • ?

    community_signal: Multimorphic team successfully developed Sorcerer's Apprentice using remote work throughout pandemic; team members located in different places collaborating via Skype; demonstrates viability of distributed game design in pinball industry.

    high · Rory Sanuda discussed working remotely for 9 years; team collaborates across internet; uses simulation environment for gameplay testing

  • ?

    business_signal: Multimorphic's P3 platform strategy includes re-themeable playfield modules allowing customers to purchase additional game experiences as software downloads rather than complete new machines; positions company as software/content provider supplementing hardware.

    high · Gerry Stellenberg: 'our whole kind of business concept is giving people more value for their money...let's figure out a cool way to give them new ways to enjoy that hardware and ways that don't cost thousands of dollars'

  • $

    market_signal: Deep Root Pinball's collapse highlights challenges of pinball manufacturing economics; $750K/month operating costs unsustainable without significant revenue; pinball market lacks scale of early 1990s (Adams Family era); design studio monetization strategy (eventual company sale) failed to materialize.

    medium · Jonathan Euston noted pinball market 'nowhere near the numbers we've seen in the early 90s'; Martin Leib speculated Mueller intended to sell studio and pinball companies to recover investment but failed to do so

  • ?

    industry_signal: Major SEC fraud case involving prominent pinball entrepreneur Robert Mueller; involves allegations of using $58.7M in investor funds for personal expenses; represents significant credibility threat to emerging boutique pinball manufacturer sector.

    high · SEC charges detailed by Martin Leib; Mueller allegedly spent investor money on personal expenses including school fees, marriage/divorce costs, Hawaii condo

    • 4:01
    And Robert also spent a sizable amount on paying for his own personal expenditures, such as school fees, marriage and divorce costs, which seem to be divorce and marriage and divorce. and also a condo in Hawaii which having claimed that he wouldn't take any personal remuneration for running these funds so the SEC is basically charting in with fraud and it looks like the flow of funds to Deke Root Pinball will have dried up or will very soon dry up and he won't be able to continue running that operation anymore. We all sort of doubted how that could ever be a financially viable operation. Right. Given the fact that it takes so long. In the past, you mentioned that Deepwood would cost about $750,000 each month.
    5:08
    Well, and that's been going on for like five years, stacking up to quite a large sum of money invested, so to speak, which seems to me like very difficult to recoup with pinball. Yeah. As hot as pinball is, it's nowhere near the numbers that we've seen in the early 90s, like Adam's Family and what came after that.
    5:32
    No. Although in our pincast we tend to stick to the facts and avoid rumour and speculation as much as possible, I'll just add my personal suspicion about this, which was that I don't think Robert ever intended to get into pinball manufacturing. I think the idea was to build up a design studio, have a long pipeline of titles, which has already been announced, have some famous designers, some top-class animations,
    6:06
    and some sought-after games, and then sell the whole lot to an investment fund to recover the cost that he's invested in it, all the money he's invested in it, which would then fill the black hole and hopefully sell it for a little bit more than he invested, which would then cover his personal expenditure and pay for the interest on which he was due to give those who invested in the funds. But, of course, that didn't happen. I suppose when he was trying to take pre-orders on the game back in December, that was intended to be an indication that there was this huge market for these games, which any investor would see as a quick way to make an instant return. But of course he didn't have the manufacturing to build them, and when he did put them up for sale, he didn't get many takers. So that kind of all fell apart, I think. And we're at the point now, which is about five years after the funds were first launched, where he has to start paying back the money with interest. And I think the money just wasn't there to do that. And that's a point where people started blowing the whistle and the SEC became involved. Right. Okay. So there's one thing I'd like to add about Deepwood Studios. From what I understood, the idea was from the start to develop their own animation characters, which then could become stars in animated TV shows and such, which could be sold to or licensed to networks like Netflix or HBO or any other big TV network, maybe Disney even.
    8:02
    But obviously owning that content, let's say that there would be a comic TV animation series called, I'm just making this up, The Crankers, I don't know.
    8:20
    Once a network would air the Crankers and it would become popular, Robert would of course be the first to have all content available for such a pinball machine, or a video game, or what have you. And that way he could benefit from creating his own content. That was, as far as I understood it, the intent of Deep Root Studios. but then again, Deep Roots Studios kind of fell apart after a couple of years, and, well, I suppose that was the beginning of the end. I think you're right, you are right, and that's what Robert claimed he intended for Deep Roots Studios. But, of course, developing characters and building a fan base and making them popular is a long-term project, and even if you start releasing clips online, which obviously takes a big team to do. It's going to take years before they actually become mainstream and that's when the money starts coming in. And then of course you get the residuals and the repeat fees and as I always say, as soon as you make any content, that content is licensable for life really from that point onwards. So that's why we're seeing Spooky going back to Halloween movie, and how old is that? But it's still bringing in money for the studio who own the rights to it. So it's not a quick fix, it's not going to pay back the kind of money that was invested in it in the short term, just like the pinball is never going to do that. You have to sell another t-shirt to make 60 million I suppose.
    10:07
    Yes, so that unfortunately probably means that Deep Root Pinball will be liquidated. The assets will be sold off. We've already seen pictures from the factory, but the studio is probably a better description of it, where the games were being designed, for they certainly weren't being manufactured.
    10:32
    And it looks pretty empty, and looks a fairly sorry sight, to be honest. We also heard, haven't we, that various personnel from there have been touting their resumes around other parts of the pinball industry. Right. So, although nobody has really come out, nobody who worked there has really come out and just said, you know, it was terrible or we always thought it was a scam or we never thought it was a scam or it was like this to work with and it's definitely done and dusted and I'm out there or I've been made redundant or laid off or whatever. We haven't heard anything. No, I reached out to several Deep Root employees who wish to remain anonymous, and which I will respect if that's the professional thing to do. But basically, they don't know anything in the sense that they have no idea what the status of the company is, whether the company is still in existence or what they are supposed to do. There's a couple of people working remotely that apparently have no access anymore to the internal network, what everybody is using, all employees are using to communicate with each other. I guess I rule under a sort of NDA not to talk about the company's business outside of, well, without permission from Robert. Right. I did understand that several employees, or maybe all of them, haven't been paid since July,
    12:21
    which means, well, obviously they're in need of money, I suppose. It's a bit surprising given that the company did get some Covid payment from the government. PPP loans you mean, yeah. PPP loans. Yeah.
    12:40
    Yeah. Well, you have to wonder where that money went. Yeah, well, that's all we can do unfortunately because we have absolutely no idea. But I dare say this will come out in the disclosure for the case. There have been lots of people waving their pitchforks and their flaming torches and calling for Robert to be jailed and all that kind of thing. Personally, I doubt that's likely to happen. Yeah. I think he'll probably receive a fine.
    13:12
    He'll probably be banned from running any funds for a period of, I don't know, five years or something like that. and then the rest of it I'm sure he will have set it up so he's not personally liable for any losses in the fund but that doesn't mean he won't get sued by investors but again the legal process is both slow and expensive in the US so it's likely to cost a lot of money for anybody to sue Robert and if the working very rough figures the average investment would have been around about $200,000. So how much are people willing to put into paying lawyers to pursue a civil legal action against Robert to try and get their money back when it may well cost more than that in order to actually get it? And if the money's not there anyway, what are they going to do?
    14:12
    He could declare bankruptcy personally and that would be the end of it. But I don't know. It's a story that's got a long way to go, and of course we'll keep that stated with any other developments. Well, given the... I think it's a fact that Robert has a lawyer background, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, absolutely, yeah. So you have to wonder how much of all of this has been done intentional, in the sense that he figured, well, if I do it like this, I'll probably get a fine and then I'll walk. Yeah. But I'll give it a try. I don't think that was the initial intention. As I say, I think the initial intention was to sell the companies, probably the studios and the pinball, and make a nice profit from them both. But when they couldn't be sold, and maybe COVID has played a part in that as well, and slowed down development in both of their product pipelines, that's when he's left with a black hole in the funds but yeah, I think you're probably right he's a smart enough guy to realise that he's not going to go to prison he's not going to suffer any serious consequences he probably won't even get struck off as a lawyer for this without being too unkind this is Texas and it's not a huge amount of money I know 60 million sounds like a huge amount of money in investment schemes and funds and the financial circles, it's not. So I think he'll... I can't see the Feds being interested in actually pursuing a criminal case against him either. But I could be wrong. We'll have to wait and see on that. Right, OK. Well, I suppose that's all we can do right now. So as we have a long show ahead of us, I suggest we move on forward to Multimorphic and our first interview. Yes, I've got some good news then for a change, having started on a bit of a downer. So this month we had the release of the latest title for the P3 pinball platform, which is Sorcerer's Apprentice, which works with the Cosmic Kart Racing Playfield module. Right, and well the game was announced, I don't have the exact date, but second half of this month and it was immediately available to download for those who already own the Cosmic Kart Racing platform. And it's an interesting game, it's very different than Cosmic Kart Racing, yet it uses obviously the same playfield layout.
    17:04
    Yes, it does indeed. Why don't we listen to the interview that we had with Jerry Stellenberg and Rory Sunuda,
    17:13
    who is the game designer for Sorceress of Prentice. Yes. And he also created the display graphics, if I'm not mistaken. That's correct, yes. Yes, so they can tell us all about the game and the process that led to the development and release of it. Well, we're joined now all the way from the United States, and I was going to say from the Austin area, but I don't actually know where Rory is at the moment, but we're joined by Jerry Stellenberg, obviously head of Multimorphic, and Rory Sanuda, who is the game designer and does in-game graphics for the company's latest release, which is, of course, Sorcerer's Apprentice. So, welcome, guys. Thank you. Nice to see you, guys. Or hear you, whichever the case may be. Yeah, we're hearing at the moment, we'll see soon. I hope, yes. So, you two are obviously key members of the design team for Sorcerer's Apprentice. Jerry is the project manager, and as I said, Rory is the game designer and does the in-game graphics as well. Who else is involved in the design of Sorcerer's Apprentice? Yeah, so we had Greg Goldie, who is the main programmer, and then we worked with Ryan Tanner from the Flipping and Mashing podcast. He did all of our voice call-outs. And the illustrator on the game is Eric Ridgway, who also has done other artwork for us. He did the Heads Up cabinet artwork for us before. And may I ask, how did you guys meet, or is that not relevant at all? we met Eric through a mutual pinball homebrew designer he actually did the artwork for the Doom homebrew machine from Matt Bonama it's a P-Rock game, yeah? yes, that's right and then we met Ryan bought a P3 a few months ago and does a podcast and is really enthusiastic about what we're doing in the platform so he's been eager to help us in various ways and voice acting is one of his skills. Right. And, of course, Rory, you've been involved with Multimorphic for a long time, doing, I guess right from the very first game, the Letty Lightspeed character. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Almost nine years now, I think, nine years in November or something like that.
    19:41
    Wow. Okay. I mean, I've been, I mean, I got sold on it. Basically the first time I saw it, just because, you know, I had the screen in there, and I was always, like, into video games and stuff, but this is definitely more than just a video game machine, and it brings the whole physical pinball and stuff into it. So, yeah, I just thought you could really do something with that screen in there. So I've been bugging Jerry, you know, since the first day I saw it, and I've been loving every minute of working on it, Yeah. Now, it kind of strikes me as something which sort of lends itself to this way of working, but obviously like many people in recent months, you've not been able to work sort of co-located physically to develop the title. So is that something which just generally tends to work smoothly based on your different skills and collaborative skills, or are there certain benefits that you've found in the past from being able to actually sit together in a single location and brainstorm ideas?
    20:49
    Yeah, I think, I mean, it certainly had its challenges probably in the beginning, but you kind of get used to it after a while. I mean, lately I've been kind of joking that we've kind of been in a pandemic for the last, like, nine years ever since I started because, you know, you work from home and everything like that and you're just doing everything over the Internet.
    21:09
    So, but you get used to it, you know, you just, kind of like we are right now, we're talking over Skype, and you find solutions for challenges like that, and you overcome them, and I do a lot of my gameplay, for example, in the simulation environment that we have with the machines.
    21:33
    Most of the time I'm not even, like, playing on a physical machine, So, yeah, you get used to it, and then you just kind of expand out from there and really start figuring out what the limitations are.
    21:46
    And, yeah, I don't think it's anything that you can't overcome. Okay, sure. Now, you're, as I said just now, a game designer, as well as doing the graphics. Now, in a more traditional new game release, the game designer would be the one designing the play field. but obviously with the Sorcerer's Apprentice, the playfield design is already decided by the choice of your playfield module, which is the Cosmic Car Racing module. So how is the game designer's role different when you're using an existing playfield module?
    22:25
    Yeah, so that's actually a really good question. Coming from a video game background, as far as development goes, when I first got into pinball, like, designer, like you said, is the guy who, like, does the, you know, like, the shot layouts and all that kind of stuff. And that was different than what I was used to, where designer is more like gameplay and mechanics and all that kind of stuff.
    22:54
    So fast forward a little bit. Now that we've got a play field already, I look at that and I go, okay, maybe this shot will kind of, like, affect this kind of thing, or maybe this shot's like learning the spells and stuff. You know, it's not just me doing everything, but I'll admit that I did sit down in front of a document and kind of like write some ideas up, and I'll run that by the guys and see what they think, and then we'll kind of maybe play test in our heads first before we even bring it on to the play field that's already existing. And then once you've got those rules, you go and you play test it, maybe tweak them a little bit. But being that the play field's already there, Yeah, you're just kind of working with basically the shots that are there. And then since there was a game already on this play field, we did want to make sure that we weren't repeating a lot of what we had already done before. You know what I mean? So we wanted a whole complete new game. We wanted the feeling of a new game. We wanted the look of a new game. And I think the Cosmic Kart Racing upper play field really lended itself really well to that. Okay, so why a sorcery theme then? Where did that come from? Who came up with that? And from that, what does that give you as far as what the player's role would be and what kind of objectives they would have to achieve during the gameplay? I know Jerry, well he wants to give me credit for saying that I came up with the whole idea for magic but we had a discussion, it was before we even started this he had mentioned something about, he wanted to see something magical like something with some really cool effects and stuff like that something that we could make look impressive and I basically, I guess I ran with that so it was like a very loose definition of like what he wanted to see and because the ccr upper play field isn't uh it's not like very specifically defined as far as like you know it doesn't have like the spaceships flying around on the on the floor there so it has that like celestial feel so really you know that combined with the magical aspect really it worked well together so um running with that. I do have, you know, I guess partially I have bugged Jerry. I was like, hey, what do you think about like a role-playing game or something like that on the P3? You know, like maybe even like an MMO. This was like a long time ago. But we've kind of like tried to stick with like, you know, a certain set of what we wanted to do. And this was a chance to explore, at least partially, some of what I had been bugging Jerry about. So I took what he asked for and kind of applied my own personal wants and experiences into this. And that's what we came up with. And we also wanted something a little less traditional than the usual magic game, which would be like more medieval fantasy. So we kind of put a twist on it and did more of like a Persian kind of theme, I guess you could say. Right, so you travel through different environments, such as biopharmaceuticals. Tell us which environments you do travel through and what the aim is while you're there. Yeah, sure. Let's see. Well, you start off in the workshop, which is like, if you're an apprentice, you're working for the source or a kind of thing. It's kind of like where you would find yourself when you begin your apprenticeship. So there, basically you're tasked with what would be considered like doing kind of chores around the workshop, which is you want to light some fires, or I think we originally called them candles. So you light the candles around the play field, which lights your shots up. And basically when you've lit the correct shot that reveals the fire, you're offered the ability to learn the fire spell. So basically you kind of do that through all the environments, right? You go through, you complete certain tasks, and at one point or another you'll basically learn a spell within that environment.
    27:23
    And spells will give you the ability to reveal other things like keys, for example, and the keys allow you to unlock chests that contain items in them that boost your power. And eventually going through, so there's, let's see, there's the workshop. We have the, so that's fire spell.
    27:49
    There's the bazaar. I think we did ice spell in there because I think the original thinking was like, you know, there might be like food stuff or something like that, so they'd be keeping stuff cool in there. so that just made the most sense to put in there. Let's see what else we've got. The dunes, which is the lightning spell. Oh, yes.
    28:13
    And I think that lightning spell came from, like, sandstorms, you know, storming kind of thing going on out there.
    28:21
    And there's the oasis. And I guess because oasis would be kind of like a shelter out in the dunes, we put the shield spell out there.
    28:35
    So in a way, each spell kind of like, in a way, does kind of represent at least a park or a characteristic of the environment, you know, around each part of the world. And then eventually, you know, you kind of go through there, learn all the spells, and then you make your way to the final battle with the sorcerer. All right. So with you guys combining sort of video game elements and physical pinball, I got the idea, especially with maybe it's the theme coloring my objectivity, but is this sort of like a combination of like Age of Conan meets pinball, that type of video game play, but then combined into pinball, or am I way off? Let me take that one. This game is very much still physical pinball.
    29:38
    Rory's kind of environmental concepts draw in some aspects of what we would call video games. The fact that you have to learn spells, the fact that you have to use separate buttons to select the spell, you have to manage your health, and you have to do these things. But these are kind of separate supplementary tests. At its core, it's physical pinball. There are modes. In each mode, you're doing traditional pinball things like shooting a sequence of two or three or four shots to complete an objective to succeed or fail in that mode. Usually they're timed. There's some multiball modes. Just like most traditional pinball games are a sequence of modes or a parallel version. You can start any number of modes at any given time in a game, not work through a serial sequence. It's very much that. There are elements of video games, but I would never call this a... It wasn't even really inspired by video games. It's just very much a traditional pinball feel with the magical spell navigation concepts built in. Okay. Thanks for clearing that up. Now, when you first started designing the Source Wars Apprentice, was it always your intention for it to be a re-theme of an existing playfield module, or was there a time when you thought you might actually create a whole new module just for this? Yeah, no, this one was straight up, let's come out with a new, complete, full game as a re-theme for the Cosmic Kart Racing playfield. Because we had the Cosmic Kart Racing software with career mode and the racing mode, what we call arcade mode and the head-to-head play. But we wanted, our whole kind of business concept is giving people more value for their money. They've already spent money on the machine and on their Cosmic Car Racing play field. So let's figure out a cool way to give them new ways to enjoy that hardware and ways that don't cost thousands of dollars to add that content. So yeah, this was all the way through. It was from beginning to end, let's build a secondary game, a re-theme of that existing playfield. Right. And what did that playfield give you as far as developing the theme goes? You know, you've got ball locks, you've got magnets, you've got... Obviously, you've got all the LEDs, so you can do some amazing displays with it, ramps and loops and things, but did any of those immediately lend themselves to the magic and sorcery thing? Yeah, so my objective, what I challenged Rory with was simply take those features, those features you just listed, the primary one that I think drove a lot of the conversation, or the primary two, were the magnets. We can manipulate the ball in ways that look like magic, and we can take those 900 individually addressable lighting elements and do really cool colored effects all over the play field, which Rory interpreted as a neat way to show off magic and spells and those kind of things. So those two features kind of drove the whole decision making.
    32:49
    Absolutely. Right. Cosmic Card Racing was the first game where you could connect with other P3 owners, players all around the world, and play simultaneously on various or multiple games at the same time. Is that connectivity also applied to Sorcerer's Apprentice? No. Sorcerer's Apprentice is very much a traditional style game. It doesn't have networked elements. It may someday. The only networking it really has is it works. It has the Twitch connect feature that we've built into most of our games. So people who are streaming it on Twitch can have their users connect. And through the chat bot on the Twitch channel, they can interact with the game. But no, this game isn't intended to be a head-to-head kind of battle game or even a head-to-head or networked co-op game or anything like that. It's very much a standalone game. And it's quite an unusual game because it's also got the health meter feature, which means you need to keep your health up throughout the game or your flippers will die and you'll lose the ball. Who came up with that concept?
    34:06
    Do you remember who came up with that? I don't know. I would say you, but I don't know for sure. It's certainly something we all discussed together.
    34:16
    Yeah, we definitely had some discussions about it for sure. I think, I can't remember when that creeped into, like, some of the, like, the initial designs and stuff. But I will say this, that kind of like what you were talking about on that podcast, or the, what was it, that stream last night, Jerry? How you were saying, like, the health bar really gives it the, that, like, role-playing aspect. so I would like to say that maybe it crept in there because of, you know, like I was saying, my past experiences with role-playing games or something like that.
    34:47
    But, yeah, we definitely, we all had our input on it, so, like, everything you see in there, we definitely, you know, we all come to an agreement and so on, and, you know, we want to make sure that we're making as many people happy as possible.
    35:02
    And what is the public reaction to the game so far? How has it gone down? man so far it's been super positive and i think that's a credit to the visual elements of it people that are seeing it on stream or watching the promo video whatever they see these really dynamic visual elements but so far i would say almost everyone who's downloaded it no by the way this is an add-on game it's a software game for an existing playfield so people were able to purchase it, download it, and install it the same day we announced it. But we've had amazing feedback. We've had a couple people suggest a couple changes to make it easier or more difficult for them, but overall, universally positive feedback. It's really impressive.
    35:52
    Okay. And this feedback is something that you are going to take into consideration? We take all feedback into consideration, Jonathan. So, yeah, we have... It's not a given in the sense that not every manufacturer does that. Well, we do.
    36:09
    We always listen to everyone. Some people suggest changes. Some people explain why they have certain opinions about things. And other people just say, I like it or don't like it with no real supporting data. It's harder to respond to and internalize non-constructive criticism. So we generally respond really well to the constructive aspects. But, yeah, if it's too hard for someone, then we usually think about ways we can add operator settings or give them a way to make it easier for them so they can enjoy it without making it so easy that other people wouldn't enjoy it. People have suggested ways of making things more diverse or adding features. But generally speaking, Rory's come up with a fairly comprehensive design, And so we're not at this point looking to add a lot of new content, but we're absolutely interested in hearing ways we can take what we have and tweak things in little ways to make it more enjoyable for people.
    37:12
    Very good. Right. Yeah. Well, we said several times that this plays on the Cosmic Cart Racing playfield module. Now, when you're developing a new playfield module and you do this on a fairly regular basis, I'd say, and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment.
    37:35
    As far as giving people, as you said before, the maximum value out of that hardware purchase, how much of a consideration is it in making that vehicle module easily re-themable for future titles rather than locking it down with title-specific or launch title specific things like models, signs, details, and artwork all over the game, which will only relate to the launch title for that module.
    38:08
    Interesting question. There's a balance there, of course, that you have to consider. You don't want to put out a new game, a new play field, with a really cool theme and a really cool story that's built around that theme and not deliver the fully immersive experience that people want. So we actually don't really think about re-themability too much when we're designing new play fields. Our last major release was Heist. We put out a game with very detailed, fully immersive, well-illustrated artwork with buildings that represent the city the game is based in, features like the crane, diverters that are inside of buildings,
    38:55
    cool, what we call high wire type things that the cat burglar can scale while breaking into buildings. It's fully immersive, and that's the experience people want. That's the experience we want to deliver. So we all almost see it as a negative to try to mute down a play field to make it redeemable. So you don't have any sort of characters from the game as models? on the play field. That's true on the play field. Because the printed part of our play field is the upper third of what you would generally consider a traditional play field. And then we have content on the screen below that. And the screen is where we're able to add all that dynamic stuff where we can show the characters, we can animate them, we can show them doing cool things. And we don't generally throw the characters into the artwork simply because there's not a ton of room up there to do it.
    39:51
    Okay. Well, you obviously only just launched Source of the Apprentice, and congratulations on the success of that. As you say, it's available on the Multimorphic website for $499. But we also know that you've got your first license title coming up, and I guess you're going to be rather restricted in what you can say about that, being as you want to focus on Sorcerer's Apprentice at the moment, but are you able to pin down when that will be revealed and also can you tell us whether that will have its own playfield module? So I can tell you for sure it will have its own playfield module and it's amazing. There's lots of really cool stuff on it. What I can't tell you yet is an approximate release date simply because there are approvals involved and a licensor who has to make sure we're representing the brand and everything else to their requirements. But as soon as it's ready, as soon as the approvals are there, as soon as we're ready to, as soon as we have production-looking play fields that we can take promo pictures and videos of, we'll be showing it. But unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly when that's going to be. Okay. I can tell you we're extremely excited about it. There's a lot of people on our team that are huge fans of the property,
    41:20
    and basically I would call them super fans. We have a team of super fans of this property, so we're putting pretty much everything we can into this game to make it something special.
    41:31
    So I'd really like to try and work out for yourself what that theme might be and speculate wildly like everybody else does.
    41:40
    When you are developing a new game, or indeed just building regular P3 base units, do you, or have you, suffered the same kind of supply chain issues that everybody in the industry, and multiple other industries as well, seem to be suffering from at the moment, with lack of parts, lack of chips, lack of components, and huge price rises in wood and other materials? the materials? Yes and no. Yeah, there's been a lot of fallout from the pandemic. The shutdowns caused a lot of things to basically get behind. We had a little bit of warning on the circuit board and the chips from our suppliers. So we were fairly proactive there where we pre-bought a lot of inventory so we could keep making our boards. didn't work for every board we have. There are still a couple of chips that were having a little bit of difficulty sourcing. But generally speaking, the supply chain or the flow of boards from our supplier has continued. The biggest issue we've seen so far is freight. Freight takes forever now. Our suppliers have parts. We've been able to buy our metal and our wood and our plastic. Yes, they're all a little more expensive. and no, we haven't raised our prices. We've absorbed the cost differences. We haven't pushed them onto our customers. But the biggest challenge for us is getting things in on time. Something that used to take two or three weeks to ship overseas or something are now taking two or three or four months. I think even now there's a huge backlog of ocean freighters outside the ports of L.A. in California because they don't have enough workers on the docks to take care of everything they need to do. So the ships just sit offshore for literally months at a time, and you're just sitting there waiting for your parts.
    43:44
    So that's not impacting on your timeline for releasing your next title? So far it has not. We, like I said, haven't seen too many issues on the circuit boards. We have the supply there. the metal and the plastic and the other pieces for the new game. So far, our suppliers haven't had slowdowns. They've just had price increases. So, yeah, we're a couple months delayed on shipping things just because it takes longer for the parts to get here. But we haven't had anyone come and say we can't build something because they simply can't deliver a part. We've been okay there so far. Good. Right.
    44:25
    And since you haven't increased prices on your end, And this might be a good time for people to, if they're second-doubting, like should I get into P3 or not, maybe now is a good time to do so before, in case prices will increase, they go up. Well, it's always a good time to buy into P3, John. And that's because we deliver what we believe to be the best value in the industry. Yes, all machines are expensive, whether you're paying $7,000, $8,000, $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 for a limited edition of something. Our machine is in the middle of that range. And the content that we add to it, I mean, we've done some really cool things for customers for free. We shipped the P3. We started shipping four years ago. And even those original customers have all gotten for free all the updates we've made over the years, Bluetooth and USB headset support, the head-to-head networked gaming of Cosmic Car Racing, platform features, things like player profiles and the ability to save your states, restore your states, and play games with different settings per player. All these things have been basically free upgrades for all of our customers. And then on top of that, we add all the game content. So we're now up to four full Playfield modules. I think we're up to 13 unique software applications that run on top of those play fields to deliver these pinball experiences. We have a development kit that's letting third parties develop games for it. Overall, it's an entirely different business than what the other manufacturers are doing, and we think it's a tremendous value.
    46:06
    Okay. Well, again, congratulations on the launch of the new title, both Jerry and Rory. Well done with that. and we look forward to being able to play it very soon. Yeah, we hope to see you at the show sometime. We'll be happy to meet you in person and walk you through the game. Do you have any plans for shows yet? I know it's hard to nail anything down at the moment with the way that things are changing on an almost weekly basis, but where might people be able to go to a pinball show and experience this new game from you, rather than an owner who brings their machine along? Yeah, so there are a couple of shows that owners are taking their machines to, but we currently plan to be at, and of course things may change given COVID, but we plan to be at Pinball Expo in Chicago. We will definitely, unless something bad happens, be at the Houston show in November, and of course we'll be at TPF, Texas Pinball Festival, in March. Anything besides that is currently up in the air.
    47:11
    Right. Excellent. Okay, well, uh, Jonathan, do you have any more questions? No, I think Jerry was very, very clear.
    47:19
    Okay, well, uh, Rory and Jerry, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for having us. Yeah, we appreciate the support, and, uh, looking forward to seeing the next magazine and news articles. Always a fan. Okay, well, much appreciated, and thanks for your time. Alright, thanks, guys. And there you have it. Yeah, thanks very much again to Jerry and Rory for telling us all about Saucer's Apprentice Right, and all the other stuff going on at Multimorphic and I just realised we completely forgot to address the fact that they expanded not that long ago I think we mentioned that in an earlier video We mentioned it, but we didn't address it in the interview That's right, we didn't, yeah So, sorry about that, but still a great interview Great talking to Jerry and Rory And thanks for coming on the show Good, well I think we covered pretty much everything That's been going on in Austin In that interview So let's move on to Our next story Which is about the Announcement of Stern's new Insider Connected program Right, yeah Originally the idea was to have George Gomez come on the show And George was more than willing to but not available until a few days after we published our podcast.
    48:41
    Yeah, unfortunately it wasn't to be this time, but I'm sure we'll get George on again soon, because he'll have plenty to talk about. Yeah, and we'll get into that as well. So let's talk about the Insider Connected platform, I suppose you can call it. Yeah. from well there is a lengthy podcast from Nate Shivers on the Stern Insider page where you just have to register but it's available for everybody where the Insider connected platform is explained I'll try to do it very very briefly basically Stern Spike 2 games, games running on Spike 2 can be there's a what do you call it, a QR code reader which can be installed in the apron of pinball machines players can register themselves on a special website where they will get a QR code that can be scanned by the machine so the game will know who the player is and the player can get rewards for achieving certain tasks or a number of games played or...
    50:10
    Yeah, achievement, start a stream. Yeah, exactly. On the other hand, the platform is also intended for operators to, for example, stimulate gameplay and inviting players to come play at a certain location within a certain period of time. and if they do so, they might get a free beer or a free cheeseburger or whatever is associated with the location where the games are available.
    50:44
    And of course, the game could also indicate to the operator not only how it's earning, but also if there's any malfunctions and so on. So in that sense, it could be very interesting for operators. although I also wonder whether operators have to be educated how to actually target their player demographic because that's something that they're not really used to. Yeah, it depends on how big an operator they are, apart from a big operation. They've probably got people who already work on this kind of thing, but if somebody operates a few sites, that's an awful lot of information and It involves a lot of marketing as well to try and set up promotions such as you described But the interesting thing and I always getting back to a Gary Sternism here but this is almost like a three stool Because the players get information about their achievements, their previous games, and their history and promotions that are upcoming. that are upcoming, the operators get information about the operation of their game, feedback on the usage and earnings and error reports, and the other leg, where the data goes to, yes, the stern people themselves, they get a huge amount of data from all these machines about who's playing them, where they're playing, what achievements they're making, how much money they're spending and also how the games are holding up as well. So if there are error reports that are going to the operators, they're going to stone as well, so they will know. So it should actually allow them to enhance their future games and maybe software for current games. If they find that, for instance, they have this super wizard mode and only 0.01% of players are ever getting there, maybe they need to go and address that and make it more achievable.
    53:01
    Right. Well, it's interesting and I highly recommend checking out the George Gomez interview on the Stern Insider website. As George is, much to his own surprise, as you may recall, his last game that he designed for Stern Pinball was Deadpool. And that game sort of had to be rushed, so they didn't make it that complicated, and it turns out to be one of the most appreciated titles that George ever did. Which is kind of interesting, because the focus seemed to be at Stern that the game all the games have to be deep, and then there's one game that's not, and it turns out to be very popular.
    53:48
    Well, I've said this before, and I'll say it again, that the feedback I'm getting from players, wherever they're playing the latest games, is that they're all far too complicated, that they're coded by top players for other top players, and for the average player, they haven't got a clue what to do. Right. So, yeah, I think that's not entirely surprising, Although, you know, when you produce a simpler game, often, like, I'd say The Munsters is a good example, that tends to get slated as being far too simple and not having enough rules. Yeah, I don't think Deadpool got slated as such. No, I don't think it did. So it's, you know, maybe it's a mixture of things. But, oh, interesting talking about George Gomer's games and George talking about, of course, the QR code reader that the Spike 2 games can now have. Spike 2 games, of course, being the ones that had the LCD displays.
    54:44
    So one previous to that would have been the Spike 1 systems. But, yes, of course, George is not unfamiliar with the use of QR codes in games because we brought out Transformers. It was actually plastered with QR codes, left, right and centre. There were like four of them on the back glass and about half a dozen all around the playfield, all linked to various pages on the, I think it was transformers-pinball.com website, where people could learn things about how to play the game and get more information.
    55:20
    I checked that out not that long ago, and that website wasn't active anymore, so there's a lot of QR codes on those games that don't link anywhere now, so it's kind of a shame, but I don't think that's going to be the case for the entirely connected thing, because it's... But there are a lot of unanswered questions at the moment because the system isn't live yet, and it's coming. It's not all going to arrive in one big lump either. There's going to be a player path. Yeah, they're building it up slowly. Yeah, but when you take your phone and you scan the QR code on the machine, you are... Or you log in, I should say. You log in. Well, the QR code on the machine, There is a QR code on the machine which takes you, I think, to the Stern Insider website, Insider Connected website, which also doesn't exist yet, or isn't made public. And you'll be able to register, if you haven't already registered, or log in, and then you'll get a QR code shown on your phone, which you can then show to the reader on the machine. but once you've got that once you've registered and got that image you can keep that image, you don't need to keep logging in because that image is associated with you personally so you can print it out, you can take a snapshot of it on your phone but the obvious thing I thought that you would do is you would have a Stern app on your phone which you just call up and it immediately shows the QR code and it could be with a fingerprint or a facial recognition password if you wanted to do that, but it's not something that's got any monetary value. But you could just have an app and then you wouldn't have to try and remember either a printout or where that snapshot is, because I don't know if you're the same, Jonathan, are you? If you're using your phone to take pictures, take a picture of something now and then when you come to need it again next time it's 100 pictures down in your film roll. of trying to find the QR code after a while is going to be a pain. So having a little app, it doesn't need to do anything really other than just show you the QR code and maybe take you to the website if you need to change the details. But that hasn't been mentioned. So I'm not quite sure exactly how that's going to work. And also, no one's said anything yet about whether at some point or even immediately there will be any charges for this. I think it's going to be free for players, but are the operators, the pro version of the Insider Connected, are they expected to have a subscription to this, either now or in the future?
    58:04
    Because... We'll write it down so we can ask it George hopefully later on. Because other than that, other than the stream of data that Stern get back from this, they're not getting any financial incentive other than I suppose that they will probably be able to bump up the price of future games to pay for the embedded QR code reader as well which might make them a slight profit but they have said that they are going to sell the kits to upgrade previous games everything from the current title back to the very first LCD Spike 2 game they will be available and they will be very cost-effective and they won't be looking to make a profit much on the sale of those so that's good to hear so yeah you any QR any yes or any spike to system will be able to have this this QR code installed by replacing the bottom apron with one that's got a reader on it Right. So, well, since it's not live yet, I suppose it was just an announcement, let's move on to other news from Stern Pimble while we're at it.
    59:26
    Okay. Is there any other news from Stern Pimble? Well, I'm trying to think. Are there any code updates worth mentioning? I don't think so. I didn't note any, but then it's been a busy month. for Sterling, the Insider Connected stuff. So even if there was, then I'm sure they'll forgive us for not mentioning it in this one. Right, okay. So, well, the one exciting news item, I suppose,
    59:58
    George Gomez confirmed that Keith Elwin's next game is the next Cornerstone game that will be available from Sterling Pinball, which is expected to be announced On the safe side I say in a couple of weeks, but most likely already maybe next week. Second week of September is what I've been hearing.
    60:22
    Okay, right. And that game is rumoured to be Godzilla. What's interesting is that George Gomez indicated that Keith went down a route that they haven't seen in Pimble for quite some time.
    60:42
    So, and he's very enthusiastic about it. Now, that's usually the, I wouldn't say this is the standard Garry's Turn talk, but, well, it makes me curious, you know. I'm curious what Keith is going to show us in a couple of weeks.
    60:59
    Yeah, yeah, so it doesn't sound like it's just another standard game, if there is such a thing. but it's going to have some radical elements to it anyway. And so we will no doubt be covering that in our look back on the events of September, the start of October. Right. So personally I was expecting a John Bork game to come out, but apparently Keith is quicker. Well, John's pretty quick as well, so Keith must be lightning fast. But I expect we will... Well, we are expecting to see a price increase, I think, on this title, which is kind of understandable as it will have the Insider Connected QR Code reader installed.
    61:45
    But as we have heard and will hear, there's a general increase in all prices and supply shortages as well, which is something which George also addresses in his interview with Nate. So I'd definitely recommend checking that out. And yes, so component prices, wood, everything has gone up in price and is in short supply. So yes, it wouldn't be at all unexpected to see a price increase for the next Keith Elwynn game when that comes out in a week or so. Okay, so now, speaking of announcements of new games, there's a very nice bridge crossing over to Homepin in Taiwan. It's a long bridge, yes. Well, it's a very long bridge, but Homepin is...
    62:47
    Well, they were supposed to announce their upcoming license title this coming month. But we're actually calling with Mike Kalinowski, and I believe he's going to reveal it on this interview. Yes, I think it's the first official confirmation of the title. Joining us from Taiwan is Mike Kalinowski from Homepin, who is going to be revealing his next licensed game, which should be out later this year.
    63:24
    Mike, welcome to the show. G'day Jonathan, great to be here Well we're happy that you're coming on our show as well and we understand you have a scoop to share with us Is that correct?
    63:38
    Yes it is, yes I'm very pleased to say that we're contractually obligated to present This is Final Tap Pinball Yay, that's what we'll be waiting for Wow, that's a title that has been I've dropped a lot of hints over the past few weeks. I think you did. Yeah, it was quite obvious.
    64:00
    Well, yes, most people guessed. The ones that know Spinal Tap have guessed, of course. And, you know, it's probably not a great deal of point hiding it much longer.
    64:10
    Right. So, well, congratulations on landing that license. I understand that several other pinball companies have shown interest in that license as well. but it wasn't available at the time. No, that's right. There was a lot of legal wrangling going on and they were spinal tapped themselves. The actors were all held up in limbo with all sorts of legal actions all over the place and it was a complete mess which is why probably nobody else probably wanted to touch it. It took quite some wangling to sort it out but we got there in the end. Yes, I understand it. there was a point, a very sort of fine line when the licence became available where the various parties had settled their differences and it was then available and you were right on the ball there and got straight in and grabbed that. Well, we're very lucky because, well, I guess it's a case of being at the right place at the right time, partially, and being a little bit, you know, staying on the money and keeping on with a few themes that we've had our eyes on for quite some time and we don't let up on them. Something a lot of people may not understand is that organising a licence, not only is it complicated, it takes a very long time and it's complex, it's haggling backwards and forwards, it involves money and effort and these things can take potentially years. Not that this one did, but it did take some considerable time and it isn't just the Spinal Tap licence there's all sorts of other stuff that have to go with that we've also got a licence from Marshall Amplification England to use their logo on our machine and in our visual section of the machine as well and from Mapex Drums Mapex which is a brand of drum I'd never heard of previously and they were used extensively by Spinal Tap mostly on their live performances, but we felt it was important to include that in the game. So as it turned out, something I was never aware of, that Mapex drums are actually manufactured in Taiwan. Oh, right. Mapex belongs to a company called KHS Musical Instruments Company Limited right here in Taiwan. So we didn't have too much trouble nailing them and getting a license from them to use their logo either. Sure. Now, getting the license, Spinal Tap, or this is Spinal Tap Pinball, that's just the name, but what else do you get? As we've seen with plenty of other licenses in the past, there's the music, there's the likenesses, there's the call-outs, there's a whole bunch of assets that you need in order to fully encompass the theme within the game. What did you get with your Spinal Tap license? Yeah, sure. Our license is actually for anything to do with the actual movie, This Is Spinal Tap. We can't use anything from the prelude that they showed, the introduction movie they showed, which was I think a 15-minute one prior to that being released, and there was a follow-up one that was released a few years later. We don't have access to those ones. We've only got access to This Is Spinal Tap, and anything within that movie, any audio, any themes, any concepts is 100% to us, which brings, you mentioned music. That's a different problem for the licensing as well. You've got music companies to deal with to get licenses for the movie because Spinal Tap don't own, that's not quite true. Spinal Tap owns some of the rights to some of the music in some countries. So that part of it's dealt with. But then for other countries, and because we aim to sell worldwide, and our license for selling this pinball is worldwide, we need to obviously make sure that the license that we secured for the music is worldwide. And the problem then becomes who owns this for this country and that country and whatever. And then there's the performance rights. So that's a different company again. You can have the rights to use the music, but then you have to have the rights from a different company to put that music in a public machine, like a pinball machine that could potentially be played in a pub or club or whatever. Right, yes. As I said, the licensing is far more complex than it might seem on the surface. So did you get everything you wanted out of that? Pretty much, pretty much, yes. There's a few little gaps that we've had to fill, but that's alright. We've got pretty much everything we need and we're very comfortable. We're still doing some final tweaks.
    69:00
    That's what happens, but But as with Thunderbirds, it's going to be tweaked to 99% when we release it. I'm not interested in sending a machine out that needs a code update every four weeks. That's not going to happen. Right. So, obviously, you're probably likely to use voice calls from the movie because you are entitled to do so. Will there also be custom voice calls by members from the band? I can't say that yet we're still negotiating on a couple of points remember I'm announcing this a little bit early because we're a few weeks away from the actual announcement date so there's a few little tidy up things we're still working on and I can't quite comment on that just yet, sorry okay, can you tell us what kind of mechanisms we might see in the game what the key iconic moments or icons are captured within the, on the play field itself or in modes or software. Yeah, sure. As Spinal Tap fans will know,
    70:14
    exploding drummer is quite obviously or spontaneously combined. Drummer is pretty much a given. So that's obviously going to be in our machine. and another iconic part of the movie is where Nigel gets trapped in the pod and so we've extended that to the pinball as well. So your ball will get trapped in a pod.
    70:36
    And, yeah, we've sort of taken on board the movie as it is and we were wondering, our initial discussions some time back, were wondering which direction to take with the game and we decided, because our license basically revolved around the movie only, that was it, this is our license,
    70:58
    we've decided to run the theme of the game through the movie. So you start at the beginning where you're in the 60s and playing Give Me Some Money and you move through the game as the movie would progress. So that's the concept behind our theme and the game itself. right but it'll be it'll have sort of multiple parts I assume it won't just be sort of very linear transition from beginning to end it will be a game you can just walk up to and bang the ball around and not have any interest in the movie or Spinal Tap or anything else it will be a game that has drop targets you can hit and you know other things you can aim for and all sorts of stuff like that but we've built stuff been obviously that is specific spinal tap such as getting lost backstage which is another feature of the movie and indeed in Pinball Machine you can get lost backstage and you have to work out how to find the stage and so on and that's what we've worked on. We've kept the thing light and fun. There's some pinballs that are out there, reasonably recent release ones that are just not humorous in my opinion and you know to the point of being a bit gruesome and that just doesn't turn me on i'm afraid and i wouldn't have some of them in my house so we wanted to make sure that and we always want to make sure with licenses including ones we're working on currently future licenses that that they are fun they've got to be fun and that's what pinball is about in my opinion it's got to be fun light happy not gory kill them dead stuff I just don't like that okay and your your first title Thunderbirds that was a dot matrix game now obviously with SpinalTac you're gonna have a lot of movie footage available to you which wouldn't look entirely great on a red l and red DMD display so you've got a monitor in the game as well is that Yes, we have a 27-inch high-definition monitor, as well as an orange DMD. It's probably, apart from our Porsche machine, it's the first commercial machine with both. And basically what we've done is kept the DMD for credits and scoring and things like that, and some, obviously, DMD animations included as well. but the monitor itself can then show clips from the movie, for example, at appropriate moments in the game. And we're entitled to use anything, as I said earlier, from the movie. So we can chop bits out that apply to the part of the game you're playing currently on the screen. But I'm not a fan of screens. We've sort of been forced into a corner to include one because that's what people expect these days, in inverted commas. and I do take on board the fact that a screen certainly enhances spectators' view of the game as you're playing it yourself. But games I play that have got a monitor, I never look at the monitor. I rarely look at the DMD.
    74:18
    And that's not where the game is. The game is mechanical and it's on the play field. but I do see how the monitor can certainly enhance the whole situation for observers, there's no doubt. Right, okay. Now, this is Spinal Tap, it's a movie about a rock band,
    74:40
    but if you take it to pinball, it's not just a rock band pin because you're integrating a movie. Does it make that more difficult or easier for you to implement that theme? It's sort of a failed rock band, if you like, trying to make a comeback, at which they fail miserably. So it's sort of a Debbie Downer, really.
    75:09
    But the movie manages to be very humorous without being down and out and negative about things. and I think that's something that is the genius of the people that created it. I mean, they've managed to make a movie about something that you certainly wouldn't usually want to see a movie about.
    75:31
    Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure how to answer your question. Sorry. Okay, well, that's okay. Aside from designing and working on the design of the spinball machine with the team.
    75:48
    Any other activities you've been up to that you would like to share with us? Well, we've cemented our aftermarket boards situation. We've got two dedicated staff working on those boards now. That's pretty much a cemented ongoing business for us, which is great.
    76:08
    And those dedicated staff, we can pull them off that job when needed and they can assemble boards for TAP, for example.
    76:18
    We still do all our boards and we'll continue to do all our boards in-house so we can keep tabs on all that. All of our boards for TAP are new and they're all, with the exception of a handful of components, they're all through-hole again so that any servicing needed is very simple and easy to do. And I know there'll be people out there that say it's easy to work on service now. Well, sure. Yes, it is for many people, including us. We're quite conversant with surface mount stuff. We manufacture for some outside companies as well in surface mount. But for the average person repairing a pinball machine, replacing a blown transistor or something, they don't need to be mucking around with surface mount. And again, in my opinion and in my view as an electronic engineer, surface mount is basically throwaway. And that's not what we're trying to build. On that kind of point and associated things one of the points we've brought up a few times in the past is about the availability of parts and supply problems and also the cost and the cost of actually getting those components in and getting a completed product out how's that impacted on the process of building this game and your board as well in getting the components and shipping the completed products to the buyers. Well, it's been very tricky this past couple of years and I'm sure everybody's had lots of headaches as we have. Basically, there's practically no airmail out of Taiwan and hasn't been for a couple of years with the exception of a couple of countries. It's been basically DHL or EMS only for shipping. So out the window immediately goes any sensible shipping costs to anybody. And we can see this now with the toppers that we've completed, the underdogs for pre-order buyers. We've got a big stack of them there sitting finished, and I had hoped to be able to ship them out because they only weigh 3.4, I think, kilos. But the problem is they cube at 10.4 kilos. And the shipping cost to Australia, for example, is just a dollar or so under $200. to ship the thing.
    78:40
    And we've had half a dozen pre-order buyers happy to pay that $200 in order to get it because it's pretty speedy delivery. They get it within four or five business days. So they've been happy to pay that to get the topper. But others, of course, have balked at the $200 and fair enough too.
    79:00
    When we start shipping tap, we can obviously include them in the container at no charge. But then, of course, depending on where that container lands in Australia, they're still going to be up for some sort of delivery cost to their place from the container arrival depot. So there will still be some sort of cost. But, yeah, shipping cost has been one big problem for us. And I've got to say that, you know, as we started ramping up maybe a month or two months ago and started ordering some parts in quantity to build Spinal Tap, the price of things has just gone through the roof. It's just phenomenal. You know, things that, and it's not any one thing. It's across the board, you know, from components to blank printed circuit boards to motors to anything, to printing. Every single thing we touch has just gone through the roof, and some things have, like, not just doubled in price, they've gone up more than double in price. It's just crazy. And, you know, it really makes us shake our heads thinking, how can this be justified? I don't know how they're justifying it, but it's simple. They say you only want 500 of them. That's the price. Otherwise, you get a dial tone on the end of the line. Take it or leave it. They're not interested in haggling. That's the price. And I'm sure everybody's having the same problem. It's just the prices of things are going through the roof, just the price of packing, the price of packing for the Thunderbirds toppers. I think we ended up at about 25 Australian dollars. It might be more. It might be closer to 30 Australian dollars just for the packing for the time.
    80:44
    And, you know, we'd sort of budgeted $10 or $15 for that. We still think it's quite a lot, but okay. A lot. Well, yes, but we're only making a small quantity. You know, it's only 50, 60, something like that for the pre-order buyers. It's not like we're making a huge quantity of them. Right. And are all these things sourced locally, or do you have to import any of this? We source probably 80% of what we use in Taiwan. Right. And we prefer locally made where we can. We prefer, again, as we did in China, we prefer to deal with small mum and pop businesses where possible.
    81:26
    I find it's far easier to get better service like that. And there's a couple of places we use, like there's a Perspex place that we use to get plastic cut. They're very, very good because we get on very well with a couple of people there. But it's a huge business. And, you know, we go there and order 100 pieces of Perspex cut to this particular size. And they're just not interested, you know. And it's a quantity thing. This is the problem we've been battling with right from day one many years ago about the quantity problem making pinball machines. you know if you make a widget and you make a hundred thousand widgets you get the attention of all the suppliers but when you're only when you're only going to make you know hundreds of pinball machines they really just lose interest you know i mean the power supplies that we picked up today i went to the to the um the the um meanwell factory and picked up a hundred power supplies today and you know they just weren't that bothered you know do you want them or don't you know, that's funny, we don't really care, you know, if you want 10,000 we'll talk to you, sit down, have a cup of coffee, you want 100, you know, they don't even want to open the door.
    82:38
    Yeah, sure. So when's the official announcement due then, when are distributors going to be able to put this game on sale and start taking orders for it? Our official announcement was scheduled for about two and a half weeks time from today and shipping was going to commence before Christmas. But again, costs on that. I sent a pallet to Canada and the quote we originally got for sending that pallet about, I don't know, about a year ago, I guess, it was something like $250, $300 to send a pallet to Canada from Taiwan. When we eventually shipped it, it was $1,100. Wow. And not only that, we had to wait about three weeks before they would even pick it up. They just, you know, they're so behind and so back. You know, I'm being quoted now for containers to Europe.
    83:38
    I'm being quoted, you know, two, three months delivery time and $8,000 to $10,000 for a 20-foot container. It's just absolutely crazy. And this is obviously reflected in the cost of the machine, I'm afraid. you know all of these costs are going to add to the to the bottom line on on the cost of the machine and there's very little that we can do it's it's either it's either that's the price or we just don't build it it's as simple as that because there's nothing that we can do as a small manufacturer about all these costs and i'm sure there's many many other companies in the same situation it wouldn't change if you even you weren't in taiwan you know if you're in australia say, building, you still have the same issues. I think we'd have worse issues because we'd be importing most of the mechanisms from America and so on rather than making them ourselves.
    84:28
    And as we've just discussed, the shipping costs have gone through the roof. So, you know, we wouldn't be any better off. We'd probably be worse off. Right. Yeah, apparently there's a huge shortage of containers from basically the East China, Taiwan, that area to Europe. So that might explain for those not aware. A lot of this problem was brought on by the virus because lots of ports and so on were shut down and shipping was shut down. And so the availability of ships to move the containers was limited and the availability of ports to handle the ships, load and unload them, was hampered. And I think all of that has kind of compounded the entire problem.
    85:19
    Right. Oh, well. So the announcement was supposed to be like two and a half weeks from now, and you hope to start shipping games before Christmas. Yes.
    85:36
    One of the things that you mentioned, you're in Taiwan now. you were originally based in China, it seems to me you sort of downsized the size of the company, so to speak. How's that working out so far? Very well, yes. We've got leaner and meaner. We've refined the tiers we work on. As you know, we were fairly advanced on Ride the Wave, which is sort of an ice cold beer clone, if you like. we've given that project to our good friends at Weechee. They're a very, very huge company, very close to us, and we get on very well with them. And they've done a remarkable job of modernising it and made it look quite smart. It's a very snappy-looking machine, far better than we could have done.
    86:29
    But it's relieved us from dealing with the finalising of that machine and the trimming and the selling and all of that sort of stuff. Now, on that subject, too, I would like to point out to your listeners that we, HomePin, don't sell direct. We are a manufacturer and we sell to agents. And we certainly deal with any issues or problems or servicing issues, and that's not a problem at all. Anyone is welcome to contact us at any time if they've got a problem. But as far as new sales go, we only deal with agents. the agents deal with the end customer and they're in the best position to deliver machines, set them up and so on, take trades and offer finance, whatever. We're just not geared to do that. So we don't sell to end users.
    87:18
    So being a relatively small company at the moment, I guess you'll be looking to bring some more people in to actually start producing a tap. And what will happen if this turns into like a massive hit and it's hugely popular and and you'll your distributors get thousands of orders how will you be able to cope with that well we we intend to stay small we're not we're not we've got no intention of uh of being a competitor for any of the existing companies whatsoever we run our own race we don't copy or do what anyone else does we just do the best thing that we can do sure but you can still end up with a runaway hit even if you if you try not to get one Yeah, we could.
    88:03
    We just don't want to get too big because it's just, you know, I've been there, done that. In China, we had a staff of 20. We had a fairly large factory.
    88:16
    And, you know, it just was too much drama. And I would much rather stay small, keep it lean and mean. and all I can suggest to people is if they are interested in the machine, then they should contact their distributor as early as possible and express some interest in it. And we're not doing pre-orders. We don't, as I said, with Thunderbirds, we made a very big mistake by doing pre-orders. I felt that was necessary at the time because we were brand new and I wanted to gauge how much interest there was in the machine and before I sort of launched into a multi-million dollar overseas business, And I was quite surprised, actually, at the response and the people who did, in fact, pre-order. It was quite amazing.
    89:07
    But then, of course, we had the complications, as everybody knows. We had delays. It was delays because of lots of matters, and then my wife passed away, and that created more headaches, and on and on the delays went. And in the end, I'm pleased to say we were able to complete all of those machines and make everybody whole. and now that we've completed the toppers, they're sitting there and people are getting them and that's the end of our obligations for Thunderbirds to pre-order customers, if you like.
    89:37
    We're still helping people that have problems and if they have a breakdown or something like that, we're more than happy to help them with anything. They need any assistance or parts or anything, no problem at all. That's not what I mean. It's just that we don't want to get big. It's simple as that. We want to stay small. And we learned our lesson about pre-orders. We're not interested in dealing directly with customers for sales at all.
    90:05
    And the agents can deal with all of that stuff. So my best advice is if you are interested in this is final tap pinball to see one of our agents and tell them that you're interested. That's the best thing you can do.
    90:20
    Would you remind us which agents people can contact? Happy to, happy to give them some free advertising We've got Stefan, RS Pinball in Austria who's handling most of Europe stuff he's got some very good setups there and he's most certainly the man you need to contact there We have Nitro Pinball in Canada and he's 100% on our side Highway Games of course in Australia still our agent despite what some of the weird keyboard warriors like to say. We're still very much happy with Highway Games as they are with us. And we have Pinball Star in the USA, Joe Newhart. He's the top guy and he's got his own contacts and things. They're our four agents. And again, we don't particularly want to spread ourselves too thin and have agents in Afghanistan or Argentina or anywhere else.
    91:25
    Just keeping it small and lean and mean, that's what our aim is. And will those agents or distributors be taking orders now, or do you have to wait until New York to officially announce it? Well, I'm announcing this a little bit early, and they will be caught by surprise, but I'll be emailing them in the morning and advising them. The cat's out of the bag and we'd better open your order book and whatever.
    91:55
    There won't be too much of a wait. We know how to make machines now. We're not new. We're not unknown. We haven't taken pre-orders. None of that stuff that seems to attract lots of bad publicity.
    92:09
    And, you know, if you place an order and you place a deposit with your distributor, that's got nothing to do with me. and if the game takes a month longer, well, it takes a month longer, so be it.
    92:23
    That's just how it's going to be. Right. Now, people might be interested in the game based on the theme, but it always seems to be the wise thing to do to first, well, either play a machine yourself or at least watch some gameplay video. when do you think we can expect some gameplay video from you to showcase what the playthrough looks like and what the game is actually about we're not going to release anything like that at all and I don't believe that that's our business to do so, our business is to design and make the machine and ship it out and I'm going to leave that in the hands of our distributors to deal with that the best way they think they need to deal with it in their area, whether they want to have a launch party or an online thing, that's entirely up to them. I know that some other manufacturers have all sorts of razzmatazz and online stuff and show it in its glory and so on. Well, that's great. That's their approach. And they need to sell multiple, multiple thousands of machines to make all of that work.
    93:35
    And, you know, we're just not in that business. so I would rather leave that glory, if you like, to our agents and let them exploit that to their advantage, really, and say, well, here's a brand new machine out of the box, come on down next Friday for beers and let's open it up and see what it's like. I'm sure they'd be very keen to do that, but the key thing then is when are they going to get a game so they can start working, they can start promoting it? If they can't promote in that way, until they can't show pictures, can't show gameplay, video, they can't let people put their hands on it, until they've got the machine, when will that be?
    94:17
    Well, that's... Like I said, we're not taking pre-orders. The games will be shipped when we finish them and they'll be available to buy when they arrive at agents. It's that simple. But all the agents are going to buy some, aren't they? Well, our goal is that... Oh, of course. We've got orders on the books right now. And those machines, we will start manufacturing within the next 30 days and those machines will be shipped out of here commencing before Christmas. But due to the vagaries of the shipping currently, who knows when they're going to arrive. Usually I would say, you know, 20 to 30 days maximum for shipping, but at the moment it's just, who knows.
    94:58
    So I'm really not going to comment or be drawn on that because all we can do is build them and have them ready and advise our shipping agent that there's a container ready to go. So I would imagine that machines are probably not going to arrive in time for Christmas, but they certainly should early in the new year. I assume air freight is not an option then?
    95:23
    Oh, we can air freight, but who wants to pay the $4,000, you know? It's just not worth it. Well... In my opinion, anyway. you know maybe some people will that will be up to the agents to decide I'm quite happy to call the AGL for them and load it in their trap but you know I'm not going to get involved in AIS anywhere okay well exciting news I suppose this is Spinal Tap a theme that has been on the wanted list of pinball enthusiasts all over the world I would say finally getting realized. Congratulations on landing that license. At this point, anything else you would like to add?
    96:11
    Not really, other than that we've pulled out all the stops and we, as I said earlier, learned a lot of lessons from Thunderbirds. We've moved forward from the good and the bad that we learned from Thunderbirds. It was a lot of good things as well. And we're doing our very best to make this a fantastic game. I think it's a great game. and yeah, one thing that I will say is if you're looking for a game with deep rule sets, don't buy Spinal Tap, simple as that, because that's not what Home Pin makes. We make a fun game which has got rules by all means, but it's not going to be 10 fathoms deep, and that's just not our business.
    96:56
    So yeah, there's fair warning for those that like games with deep rule sets. Okay. Well, fair enough, I suppose. So, well, thank you for coming on the show. Yes, indeed. Thank you. Thank you for the scoop. No problem. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're very welcome. And if there's any other news, we'd be happy to have you back on our show in the future. Sure. I'm sure I can update you with some things as production actually starts to ramp up. Like I say, that's going to be within 30 days. So there might be a few interesting snippets there. if anyone's interested in the actual manufacturing process. But like I say, we're well versed on that. We know how to do it and what to do and what not to do. That's hard-won information, hard-won skills that cost us dearly. It cost us huge amounts of money and time and effort to learn those skills. As some other companies recently have found, pinball is hard. well we will hope to have you back next month you can update us on the progress of TAP and thanks again for coming on this month's podcast thank you Mike great to talk to you thanks very much well thank you Mike for coming on the show so lots of interesting information hearing from Mike it's always good to hear from Mike It's kind of refreshing to have him on the show. Not everybody may be pleased with everything that he says, but...
    98:35
    No, he's running the company, and it's his company, and he'll produce the games that he wants to produce, and he will continue down that route. And it's also very interesting to hear about the sort of the behind-the-scenes and the financials of running a pinball company like he does. and the way that the price of shipping has gone through the roof, and the problems it's causing, not just for him to make games, but for game buyers to actually get their games, and toppers as well, like Thunderbirds. Yeah, it's almost ridiculous how postal companies are charging so much extra if something that doesn't weigh that much, but has a big size, then you just still have to paint.
    99:30
    Oh, well, on one hand I can understand it, but, oh, it was so much easier ten years ago. Yeah, probably ten years ago they were saying it was so much easier ten years earlier than that as well. Yeah, no doubt, yeah.
    99:46
    Okay, so, well, I think Mike's pretty much told us everything that's happening at Homebin that he's able to at the moment, so we'll look forward to seeing details of the Spinal Tap, or this is Spinal Tap, to give it its correct title, as soon as it's officially revealed, which won't be long.
    100:10
    Yeah, we hope to have pictures within a month, although I wouldn't be surprised if there could be a slight delay, but hopefully not in the production of the game.
    100:23
    Oh well. And from one delayed announcement, I would say we can bridge... We can bridge back to another sort of delayed announcement for a game.
    100:42
    Chicago Gaming have announced at the Southern Fright Pinball Southern Fright Gaming Expo I should say have announced their next remake will be Cactus Canyon yes, no great surprise there we even trailed that last time so, but what was interesting was that they were we were expecting them to and it was Ryan White who was at the show talking We're expecting Orion to bring with him some examples of the Cactus Canyon remake. But unfortunately, that reveal had to be delayed due to delays in licensing,
    101:29
    getting the approval for licensing, licensed assets, and some parts as well. So the Monday before the show was due to start, Monday evening, he called it and said, no, we're not going to be taking the game. but he did make the announcement that it is the next title and he revealed some details about it in his presentation saying that they already had 850 printed playfields for the game all ready to go into production they have completely rewritten the operating system as well which allows them to well first of all it allows them to combine the Chicago Gaming specific menus which were kept separate from the standard Barry Williams ones in the settings and adjustments menus. But now they've been able to combine those into a unified system, which obviously makes a lot more sense. But probably more importantly, certainly as far as players go, it allows them to change the game code and add more features, new modes, adjust how other modes work. And that's something they're definitely going to be doing on the Captor's Canyon game when that is released. One part of that is a mini-game they've added, which uses the new topper for Cactus Canyon, which I haven't seen yet, but I believe it going to be a sort of shooting gallery type topper So it actually interactive and the game stops while that game is played out So that a new mode kind of like a video mode but it not video it physical So that's a new development. I don't know if you're able to expand on that at all, Jonathan? Well, I think Ryan mentioned at the seminar that the topper in itself has more input than a traditional electromechanical game. which means that there's a lot of, well, switches or optos that can respond to whatever the player is doing, because interactive toppers suggest that the player should be doing something. And the shooting gallery, considering the theme, does make a lot of sense. Hmm, yeah, whether there'll be a light gun as part of the game that you pick up and shoot at it, or whether you control it with a flip of buttons, I don't know. But it's certainly a new idea, and it's great that they're able to add it to an existing popular title. Right, yeah, and well, the interesting thing is, if you're familiar with the Cactus Canyon game, obviously that has the capability to sort of stop the ball in the in-lane. Yeah, for showdown. Yeah, for showdown, which normally is the four stand-up drop targets that pop up on the playfield. They might have switched that completely with doing something interactive with the topper. So it could be very interesting. Yeah, and also it obviously opens the door for changes to be made to other existing or future remake titles. I don't think they intend to go back and redo anything and add any more features to Medieval Majesties from Mars or Monster Bash. They're pretty rounded games, I think, so I don't think there's that desire amongst the buyers or the players, but it's an option, and it's certainly something that should have been done with other games in the past where code has been enhanced. obviously Cactus Canyon itself was enhanced with the continued version because there was a lot of stuff that could have gone into the game but didn't necessarily and although the Cactus Canyon continued version is not what Chicago Gaming are producing they do say they have gone back to the original game designers to find out what features they wanted to put in the game but couldn't and they're trying to incorporate those into the remake. So it's like to be significantly different from the actual production of the Cactus Canyon game. Right, okay. So now the whole seminar with Ryan White is available on the Pinball News website, which I highly recommend checking out, that seminar. One of the other interesting highlights, I would say, is Ryan White indicating that he has currently five pinball projects in the work. yes, and busy and he's hoping to get to two games a year yeah, and they also intend to bring Medieval Madness back onto the production line, the remake version but that won't be until early 2023 so we're probably looking at the best part of 18 months before that game will be back in production right, ok, so originally the plan was to have Ryan White come on the show and talk about the seminar that he did I reached out to him, I talked to him yesterday and he suggested that at this point he doesn't have much more to say than what he did at the seminar at Southern Stride Gaming Expo, but he's very interested to come on our show next month hopefully obviously we can't look in the future he will have more info to share with us back then so hopefully we'll have him on the show next month yes so that's George and Ryan already lined up for next month's Pincast right ok but for that that's coming up hopefully here's a note to pinball designers and owners of pinball companies if you want to come on our next podcast pick a number well let's get back to this pin cast because we've got more to talk about and let's head over to not a million miles away from Chicago Gaming but to another part of the greater Chicago land I suppose and go to American Pinball up at Palatine and they're I keep wanting to say they're their new factory but it's not that new now. They've been there for quite some time.
    108:17
    But we've got a... Well, let's bring in their director of operations and marketing, which is our good friend David Fix, who also happens to be heavily involved with Rob Burke in the organisation of the annual Pinball Expo show, which this year is in a new location in Schaumburg at the Renaissance Conference Centre and Hotel there. So there's an awful lot to talk about, not only the announcement of their upcoming fourth title, but future games and development and what they've got coming up in the next couple of weeks, I suppose, and longer term what's going to be what we've got to look forward to for Pinball Expo. Yeah. Joining us right now from American Pinball is David Fix, who is also heavily involved in Pinball Expo. So let's quickly talk to him briefly about the new developments at American Pinball and also what we can expect at the upcoming Pinball Expo. Hello, Dave. Are you there? Yes, Jonathan. Good to see you and talk to you and Martin again. Martin, how are you? Always a pleasure to hear from you, David. And, yeah, so what are you able to tell us about what's been going on at American Pinball? Well, I tell you, you know, this pandemic has been kind of interesting just even globally. I mean, it's been kind of we had high expectations of releasing two games this year. But, you know, it looks like we're probably still shooting for two, but definitely we're going to have one.
    110:03
    We've been delayed a bunch of times just because of shipping containers and so forth. And when you think about it, listen, it's not affecting just us. It's affecting every economy. I mean, if you have billions of dollars from Ford and General Motors with cars sitting there with no chips and so forth, Listen, a small pinball factory is going to have its own problems as well. Granted, we've had a bunch of issues with computers, which we've kind of nailed down, but that's led to, unfortunately, some little extra surcharges until we get through this pandemic. But American Pinball wants to continue to give a great product, and we put temporary surcharges on, but we don't want to make them permanent. We keep evaluating. If we can get things locked down and we can get these surcharges off, we want to continue to give you guys a great game for the price tag.
    111:01
    I mean, many of my competitors right now have raised their prices across boards, and some are talking about raising more, but we try to keep that line for American Pinball where you know what you're getting and we want to give it to you. And are these supply chain issues mostly affecting the release of the fourth title, or do they also impact on the previous three? No, you know, it's funny. The previous three have been doing very well. Let me just say, in the last six months, we've been selling an awful lot. We have all three titles are on fire, as I would like to say. In fact, I was sharing with Jonathan earlier today, we have literally two lines running with all three titles, like, running on each line. So we are fulfilling orders. There are canyons being boxed up and get chipped out. I mean, you know, if you look back, I mean, the owners at American Kimball are, I mean, the cash and I, we look at it like December. We were like, Houdini and Oktoberfest were kind of like dead titles. And then, you know, Hot Wheels was doing okay. Now, Houdini and Oktoberfest are right where Hot Wheels was, and Hot Wheels is on fire. So people are loving it. And the other thing is we continue to re-release Houdini and Oktoberfest with some upgrades. So the game's not over with. You know, there's some surprises coming, and we're kind of excited about that. In fact, I'm going to just do a little promo here if you guys don't mind. This coming Friday, Jack Danger is going to have a special show from American Pinball. actually it's going to be right at his studios and we're going to make an announcement on Jack Danger's Twitch and it'll be awesome I mean we're kind of excited about that and then we're going to do it again probably in a few weeks and again in a few weeks and then again in a few weeks and my goodness that will be title 4 so you know we're finally getting over that threshold with title 4 and it's just been driving me crazy so I mean what kind of announcement can we expect on Friday, do you say, this week? Well, yeah, Thursday, but we'll be Friday in the UK. Right, Thursday night, okay. I mean, this isn't to do with GamePause. Nope. Okay, so this is related to your current product. I suspected this could be, and I'm just speculating here, because Dave didn't tell me earlier on, I suspect we might see code update with some new features?
    113:55
    You'll have to tune in, Jonathan. You'll have to tune in. But here's the thing. We continue to perfect our titles. We continue to work on our titles. And we continue to work on the new one, 4. So we keep looking at it both ways as what the collector wants and what the operator wants. and we're kind of excited with what's coming out the pipe right now and there's some secrets that will be announced later in one of our titles that most people don't even know about so that's going to be exciting too you'll be demonstrating these things in Jack Danger's streams yep the one is kind of hidden in one of our games that I was flabbergasted. I didn't know it existed. I think five or six other people didn't know it existed. I mean, half of management at American Pinball did not know that this was developed in one of our games and is actually shut off. Nobody knows about it. So it's in there. So we're going to talk about that Easter egg. I mean, it's kind of pretty neat. I actually kind of put it back to almost like, you know, the black lights and the UV stuff that was done on all the play fields for Stranger Things. That was on there. Most people didn't even know it was there until they revealed it, you know. And then all of a sudden it was like this flow away. Well, there's one of our games out there that's had a secret from day one.
    115:37
    And I'm going to say a lot of people don't know it's in there. So we'll talk about that a little bit more later on. Very good tease. Always fun to find Easter eggs in games. Yes. And it's just kind of neat that that's out there. We also have been working very hard because we've had a ton of European orders and a ton of other information, and I think I told Jonathan this a little earlier today, that we're proud that very shortly we will have our manuals in German, French, Italian, and Spanish.
    116:16
    So the four big languages, there's probably a couple more languages we're probably going to look at doing, and we probably will do those. But for now, to support a lot of these games in other countries, We wanted to make sure that they had a manual that's from beginning to end in their language. Is this a physical manual or a PDF? It'll be a PDF, but you can print it right out into it. We're even thinking about at some point we may, for operators, because that's one thing we've been really, really focusing on in our foreign markets, was to get the coin op guys. And for that, we will probably print out those orders, the physical manual in that language for those operators. So that they'll get it from the U.S. and they're going to be like, wait a minute, this is for me? You know, that kind of thing. It's just a touch. We've done so much already with the new webpage of American Pinball and the support aspect of all the quick videos that we now have online, we have a plethora, an absolute library of videos that show you quick tutorials, quick ways of repairing commonly mistake problems, not even just on our games, but on all games. Things that have been injuring pinball players for a long, long time. Or even just the newbies. some of the newbies who just, you know, we welcome them to the club or, you know, help them to understand what they bought. You know, it's kind of like, you know, we kind of refer to some of these high-end cars that you buy. Sometimes come with a video to show you how to work all the gadgets in the car. Well, we kind of have videos to show you how to work all the gadgets on your $6,000 or $7,000 pinball machine.
    118:14
    Okay. Cool. So, well, you mentioned game four. Obviously, you're not going to tell us what it is. No, I'm not. Can you do a prediction when you expect it will be announced?
    118:30
    Probably sometime end of September or middle of October. It will probably be announced before Expo. And the reason I'm going to do it before Expo is because we're probably going to have, We're working on having an open house at American Pinball to welcome people in on Wednesday, the day before Expo, for just an open house to see American Pinball, see what's going on there. I think it's kind of cool that people can come in and see our facilities. And we will probably have the current title on the line at that time. And we might even set it up that if you want to buy Title IV, you could probably put it in the truck that day. So we're working on that very hard to get that out the door for people to see. So we don't get the title, but I think this is kind of a scoop in its own sense. Yes, it is a scoop in its own sense because we've been working very hard to get this. And trust me, we're going to make, I call it a media splash. When Title IV is released, there will be a media splash. In fact, I think most people are going to be sick and tired of hearing about Title IV.
    119:47
    But, hey, it's the way to get the announcement out. And what we have been planning is something that uses some of the history of releases from Williams and Bally back in the 90s, stuff that I was privy to, and some people in the industry haven't seen it in a long time. So I think this is going to be awesome when this does get released. Okay. I just hope that the quality is getting better. If it is what I think that it is, then... Jonathan, you know me. I know you. Oh, yeah. I definitely am. First of all, remember, everybody should know this, that I was the collector first. Then I became an operator. Then I started working and doing shows. I had my own show and then working at Expo. A guy who has over 100 machines. And, you know, you take a game and you definitely move it around and you work on it. And you're going to make it into that piece that people are going to really, really love. And will be blown away by. A lot of fun stuff coming out. So I'm kind of excited. I don't want to go into any more detail. That's a little too much. But I think for everybody, they get the idea that, you know, hey,
    121:08
    American Pinball has done an awful lot of changing. I will tell you that Game 5 is already well in development. And we have shortly, we will probably, after Game 4, we will make some small announcements of all the new members who are joining the team for Game 5.
    121:31
    And that will be in itself a little teaser. And Game 6 is very well along the way, and so is Game 7. Wow. And we've already been talking quite heavily on the licensing aspect. Because, you know, it takes a year for a game to have a license, you know. And, you know, Dennis and I and the rest of the team, we didn't get in there until January and, you know, February, March. And then when we start working on a game, it takes a good period of time to get that game, you know, and get everything licensed, secured. so we're working hard to make sure that we bring you a game that everybody loves and at a license that will not make everybody go what were they thinking it's going to be good I'm kind of excited about it after your first two titles were not licensed although obviously Houdini is a well known brand already correct and I suppose An Octamer Fest is a known entity as well, but going from Hot Wheels,
    122:40
    would you say that licenses are the way forward now for American people? No. You know, and I want to get criticized by all the podcasters, and I know that there's a guy here in the U.S. who will scream to you, license, license, license, license, and he's the kind of guy that buys license, license, license, license. But, you know, at the end of the day, there's this market that most collectors don't see.
    123:11
    And that is the giant driving force behind the pinball industry. And, Jonathan, you know what I'm talking about because we're talking about operations. Right. You're talking about, you know, I mean, everybody says, oh, you know, Spooky. And Charlie's a great guy. Don't get me wrong. I love Charlie. I love what he does and so forth.
    123:36
    Halloween, can't wait to play it. Can't wait to play Ultraman 2. I'm kind of interested to see how that all works out. I'm really excited about it for him. But 2,000 games is a really nice number. But trust me, it's not the number that kept Stern in business all those years. You know, 2,000 games is like what one distributor in the U.S. will buy in a year. So think about that. That's, you know, and I mean, Jersey Jack will say, oh, we sold 2,500 or 3,000 of Guns N' Roses. Again, that may be the two distributors in the United States. We're not talking about Europe. We're not talking about Australia. We're not talking about South America. So there's this giant world that drives the market. And, yes, licenses are great, and trust me, they are good. But they also have their demons. And what I want to share with you on that is that licensors control a heavy market. They want so much in payments, okay? And, you know, when you're dealing with a licensor, you have to play by their rules. and if you don't like it, you kind of get yanked one way or other that you may not want to.
    124:57
    I think of, hey, you know, Steve Ritchie, I think it was always a big Led Zeppelin fan. But think about it. He just got to do Led Zeppelin, and now he's sitting in a different company.
    125:12
    So what happened? You know, and I know Steve has shared with some people that the handcuffs are off. so what's that mean? You know what I'm saying? There has to be some blessings and curses when it comes to licensing. So, granted, think about it. Houdini, think about it. If we had a deal with a licensor, they might have said, well, we don't want you to do this trick because Houdini got killed in this trick. We don't want you to do this because Houdini's feelings weren't that way. We don't want you to do, you know, X, Y, and Z with Houdini because that wasn't his style nor his comedy or his, you know, way he thought of life.
    125:53
    So it gives you a little bit more creative license to go out there and design games. Well, those are the classic games as we remember them from the 90s, I would say, where the licenses were, or the designers were kind of more free to run with the license the way they felt it would be best for the game. Absolutely. Now it's more restricted because the licensor now wants to know everything.
    126:25
    One of the big movies that came out this summer is a movie called Mortal Kombat. and that's based off of a non-licensed right it was a design concept by the Williams guys okay they sat down and they came up with this whole unique premise of this game called Mortal Kombat they came up with all the characters and everything it wasn't like it was a story that was already there it was developed in-house by Williams and you can do that with some of the most classic games that Williams has done. They basically developed their storyline, they developed their own humor, they developed all this stuff into this great game. I mean, you think about it, some of those classic games. I mean, I know my one competitor, Ryan at CBC, already announced that Cactus Games is coming out. And that was a Western. It has all the characters in it. It was developed by a whole team at Williams back in 99. It has a bunch of things in it. It's just a cool game. You know, I'm, you know, yeah, I work for American Pinball. I may be the director of operations, and I'm running the day-to-day operations of American Pinball, but it doesn't mean I'm not a pinball enthusiast or a pinball fan. I mean, I've played every game, including the new Guns N' Roses, you know, and I have my favorites. In fact, I played, when I was in Chicago, I met up with Eric Meagher. He was up at 257 at the league night, and I got to talk to him for a few minutes, ask him how the kids are, how the family's doing, and I told him what I thought of his game. And I said that, you know, it's a very pretty game. It's got a nice flow, you know, to a point, but it's an interesting game. I mean, I have my little, you know, questions on it, but for the most part, there's a game for everybody, you know. So, you know, at first point when people say, oh, he's just all American or, you know, the famous line from Gary Stern is, oh, I love Mandalorian. Because it's on the line, right?
    128:31
    I have a lot of favorites of Pinnacle. And I'm very candid about, you know, liking a lot of his favorites. Well, obviously, you were passionate about pinball before. And that doesn't stop if you're becoming the chief operations manager of a certain company. Correct. Right. So, speaking of American Pinball games, so you just mentioned that you basically have four games currently in development.
    129:02
    Dennis Nordman is on board, as we know, as a sort of overseeing designer, but I believe he's also working on his own game. Which of those four games is Dennis Nordman's game? Game number five will be Dennis.
    129:19
    Game number six we will talk about later because that may jump. Game number seven is definitely Dennis'. Game number, there's another game in the middle there that may jump in ahead of there, depending, that may be known as Junior Designer. And then the Junior Designer has already started talking to us about his next game, the one who's doing game four. So we're kind of excited. It's a good time. And you know what? There's a lot of, you know, I'm just not going to say that there's... Yeah. There's a lot of things happening in the industry right now. So just keep watching.
    129:56
    It's going to be interesting. Oh, wow. Our podcast is getting longer and longer every month, so there is a lot happening, absolutely. I mean, with that series of upcoming titles,
    130:11
    in the current situation where, you know, there are shortages of certain parts and chips and so forth. Would you be able to increase the speed at which you bring out new titles? Or is that going to hold things back into the immediate future?
    130:35
    So let's talk about that. So, you know, I came from ICE. I'm not opposed to telling everybody that story and so forth. But at ICE, we had many avenues to receive parts, okay? At American Pinball, there was one avenue. Now we are definitely going out and getting multiple avenues for parts. So instead of having just one main guy that we get all our metal ramps from, now I have an American guy I get my metal ramps from, and I have a guy overseas to get my metal ramps from. And I got parts coming in from this country. I got parts coming in from that country. I also have an American part, too. So, and we base it on the quality. Listen, Zofia Ryan, I can't say enough about this woman. She is an amazing mechanical engineer, but she takes no guff, okay? She will look at a part and say, this is, you know, this is dung. This is garbage, okay? or absolute rubbish, as you would say, and reject the part, okay? And then she will send it back, and she'll get on the phone or send an email, and she will definitely light the person up and say, you know, this does not meet our standards, okay? And, you know, Martin, me and you have talked about the American pinball standards. They've always been a very good game, and there has to be a towing of the line to keep those standards up. So Sophia, as a mechanical engineer, is tying that line up. Josh is doing that with software. Dennis is doing it with design. My team that are building games, they've gotten a lot better, and they look at parts, and we reject it. I have a guy there who will literally, we got five playfields in, and he went through all five playfields. Out of those batch of 100 playfields, he found five, and I asked him, where's the problem? And I couldn't find it. But his standards are so high because we know that our customers have come to love those. So keeping those standards is absolutely key, but also having development of a system where we can bring parts in from all over keeps us running. You know, whereas when we first started 4, we only had one source, you know, and it was like trying to full piece to get the parts in on time and stuff coming over. So it just works for us to now have more avenues to bring our parts in to give this great thing. Yeah, it makes sense to be able to multi-source parts. And that's really kind of the crux of, you know, if you've got one distributor who's sending you parts and he's got it bad, you're waiting for three weeks for him to send you another set. And then that could take, if it's bad again, then you're doing this. Meanwhile, when you now have established three or four sources, you're getting samples from everybody, and you have your standard.
    133:50
    You're like, okay, we're going to go with this guy, And if he fails, guess what? There's two guys right there ready to help out and jump in at the business, okay? And it creates that competitiveness, but it also keeps the product rolling. And that's what we've been striving to get on there for the Houdinis, the Oktoberfest, and the Hot Wheels. And now we're just, like, we're cranking at it. We're just, you know, we're getting those levels going. And people are finding these things, too. That's another thing. a lot more promotional stuff on Houdini and Oktoberfest and Hot Wheels. And people are just now discovering these games. I mean, it blows my mind when somebody says, you know, I've never seen this game Houdini. It's absolutely cool. I mean, the game's been out for five years. It's like, really? You know, and he just bought one. He's just loving it because he just bought a new Houdini.
    134:44
    And, you know, some people will say, Dave, the market is saturated with Houdini. Really? I mean, you go on Pinside or Mr. Pinball and see how many American Pinball games are up there for resale.
    134:58
    Not a whole lot. In fact, I find it kind of funny, if they're up there, they're gone probably faster than anything.
    135:07
    American Pinball games are even on the Facebook marketplace or anything like that. Unless it's new in the box, those games, if they're selling for a little under the price, people are picking them up because they're a strong title, they're well built and I want to give you guys an update because we had this conversation back in, I can't believe it's already May, end of May, beginning of June Martin, I never got one phone call, not one phone call on those playfields, remember I said that? Yeah. And it also led me to ask a question because, you know, me and you have had this discussion many times about playfields and, you know, we talked about it in the 90s that that was done and dusted and the play fields were clear-coated and diamond-coated and they were done and there was nothing wrong with them, right? Well, I've been looking into, you know, why these play fields have been having issues. And it was interesting. I had a nice long conversation with my play field manufacturer, and I will tell you that Jeff Bader is a great guy. And he kind of shared, you know, there's some secret in the sauce. But one of the key points that I want to point out to you, Martin, and this might be great for your listeners, is that the 90s play fields were silkscreen. Okay? So that's forcing the ink, a very aggressive ink, into the wood, and it saturated the wood and went in really deep. Okay? A lot of the new play fields we have are being ink jetted on, which is a very, very thin layer of ink that's going down on the play field. And it's usually all the colors at once. It's not the red screen, the blue screen. You know, it's not these different colors. It's not the thickness. And it's not eating into the wood. So, you know, Jeff's got some techniques that he uses to help it eat into the wood and to really secure itself so that when we put the clear coat down, it's going down and it's locking it all in. It's not just covering a thin piece of paper that can be damaged very easily once the clear coat starts breaking down.
    137:16
    So that I wanted to share with that and your listeners, because you and I have discussed that about how play fields in the 90s were done right. Indeed. We discussed it on this podcast several times with yourself and with other people in the industry as well. And obviously it's a bit of a touchy subject for some companies. Yes, it is.
    137:38
    And, you know, I mean, it's just like, it's continuing to develop newer games, newer stuff. Now, I will tell you that one of the things that CPR, my buddies up at Classic Playfield Reproductions, they have a giant machine up there, and they're still screening the playfield. All right? So, you know, there's a reason that CPR playfields are really, really, really good, and people love them is because they're still doing the old tried and true method of silkscreening. Now, granted, it's a big machine to run, and it's a lot of stuff, and I give my hat off to Kevin up there at CPR for doing it, but, you know, he still, the guys have got the passion to make the play fields and make the back glasses and plastic sets. And here and now I sound like I'm being a sponsored podcast for CPR, but I'm not. But I love those guys up here in Halifax, and trust me, they're doing a great job. It's the love of Mike Persol and Kevin. Hats off to you guys. Keep doing the good work you're doing. And, of course, you have to make the screens, which is probably the hardest of all the things. Absolutely. If you're going to use still screen printing. Yes. That's a very niche skill, I think, these days with all the movement of digital printing. Absolutely. And listen, I was on the, you know, I try not to say I was on the forefront, but I remember looking at digital printing. I think I shared with you back in the early 2000s, Martin, when I was up in Halifax and I was with John Greatwich, and we were doing silkscreen, he was doing printing on playfields, you know, and we did a backlight, a Paragon backlight. We did a test print on that. And that video is still floating around there that we ran that glass through a big giant printer back in the 2000s. So it's just kind of funny where we are in an industry that that's now kind of like that's what's being done, you know. So I find it very interesting. I love being in this industry. It's been fun.
    139:47
    Well, it's not over yet, of course. There's still a lot more to do. And, of course, things move on. and one of the things that does move on is Pinball Expo. So maybe we should have a look at that, because that's moved, or has moved, to a new location in Schaumburg for this October's show.
    140:10
    And, of course, Rob Burke is in charge of that show, and you are heavily involved in organizing it as well. So anything that needs to be found soon... You're absolutely right. I'm still heavily, you know, my wife thinks I'm nuts because either I'm on a podcast with you guys, on the phone with, or in a meeting with Rob Burke and Expo, or I'm doing work for American Pinball. You know, so there's a little vacation coming up for me shortly, and I'm kind of enjoying that. So a little time to get off. But I will tell you, it was at Expo. We were at the hotel, and I'm going to tell you. I walked in the hotel and I immediately looked at Rob and went, okay, you went out and got the Taj Mahal.
    140:57
    Yeah, we were full of this. Yeah. I'm like, you know that we have people that come from all around the world. I mean, this is not a hotel that's faint of heart. Now, listen, they are an amazing hotel. We spent an entire day. I flew over to Chicago for a week, which I do, and I was at the American Pinball on Monday and Tuesday. I went and picked up Rob when they flew in, and we went over to the hotel, and we spent the rest of the day at the hotel, and then I went back to work. And I'm telling you, I walked through the hotel, and I'm impressed. I was like, wow. You know, it's something when you go from, you know, the original venue, right? So you're at the old Westin, and you're thinking to yourself, this is a ton of room, right? And when it's all said and done, it's 30,000 square feet, maybe 35,000 square feet. Now I'm walking through the venue, and it's 60,000 square feet. And it's kind of intimidating. I will tell you, it is very intimidating. And to sit there and to design up the floor plan and to work with people like Stern and Jersey Jack and Chicago Gaming and my own company at that time, because we're all friends still. We know each other.
    142:21
    And I give them what they want, and they get, you know, and I get American Pinball what they want. I mean, it's all equal billing, man. It's also the love of the game. and I'm just amazed the size and all the you know I kind of shared this earlier in a podcast or not a podcast but a phone call earlier this week when somebody asked me how Expo is going this is the end of August and I'm laying out the floor plan and the reason I'm laying out the floor plan at the end of August is because we already have so many vendors and so much already secured okay When I looked at years previously, I was always doing the layout sometime mid-September, end of September for all that, because that's when all the vendors were getting their forms in. New web page, new everything. People are submitting their stuff, like records, in numbers. We have vendors that are just, like, coming out of the woodwork to fill the hall, which I'm absolutely, you know, And it scares me a little bit because we're like, okay, I'm ahead here, but I'm behind over there. But we're working together and we're trying to get this all together. It's going to be a phenomenal show. And then Rob comes to me, like, at the beginning of last week and says, okay, kid, you ready? Here we go. Davey, get ready. Here it is. And he hands me this list.
    143:51
    And Martin, he's got everything filled. on the seminar room. I mean, everything. There's not even a lunch break. Oh, that's great. I feel sorry for you. In fact, I said to them, I said, okay, there are certain people that we're going to have to arrange for food to go up to the room because they're never going to escape, okay? And Martin, we're going to take care of you. There are other people. I'll make sure that my boys get some food up to you because I know it's going to be like you're going to pull your hair out. Now, granted, we've had some hiccups, and Jonathan and I talked about this today, that some of the European vendors might not be coming because there's still the Delta variant, there's still some lockdown, there's still some people not getting out. So it's going to be a little tricky. However, I have a feeling that a lot of people will be looking at Pinball News during the expo to get their updates, to see the videos, to see all the special announcements that are going to be made. Oh, Jesus Christ, yes. Yes. You know, I see, you know, Martin going to be a busy person, and he's going to love it. But, you know, I mean, I'm just looking at this show, and I keep thinking to myself, got a lot of work to do. We've been having tons of meetings about everything. We're getting things arranged and done. we're ahead of schedule and we're just you know we're trying to stay ahead of it because it's you know it's going to be a huge show yeah you were picking up the hotel or the convention center it's the renaissance in Sharmwood but that is all sold out yep there are adjoining hotels is that right? that's correct and one of them is already sold out as well oh right okay And then the other, I think Rob's working on a fourth hotel now because the, you know, it's kind of like we had two and three, one spilled. And now that, so now we need three and then four so that we have them. Nice thing is that a lot of these hotels have a trolley in between them. So they'll bring in people to the expo.
    146:13
    It's, like I said, it's going to be huge. It's going to be big. And I'm more nervous that, you know, the city of Chicago or Cook County comes in and says, okay, we're shutting down the show because Delta variants and all this other stuff. So it kind of makes me nervous. However, right now we're green light, and the city and the people of the health department are saying, in worst-case scenarios, you may have to all wear masks in the thing. If not... Isn't that the current situation in Cook County, that you'd have to wear a mask indoors in a situation like that? Not really, no. No? Okay.
    146:59
    Actually, you know, it depends on the area and the location. Some companies have mandated that you have to wear a mask to be in their facilities, especially because there are some people who are vaccinated and not vaccinated. Hey, unfortunately, it's become more political than it should be, but, you know, it's never their decision. Just like masks are, you know, whatever, you know, your choice, that kind of thing. I laugh because somebody, a friend of mine, shared a cute little video, and he says, could you imagine a guy laying on the operating table, and the doctor walks in, and he's not wearing a mask, and the patient looks up and says, Doc, what is it? And he says, don't worry, I'm fully vaccinated.
    147:48
    And, you know, it's like, okay, where is that going? So, you know, it's just one of those things that, you know, whatever you're comfortable with. We want to have a show. We want to have a pinball show. We want to have, we're rolling out the red carpet to Stern. Stern is already kicking it into high gear. JJP, they get into high gear, those Americans, Chicago Gaming, they're doing their best. So, I mean, everybody's, you know, stepping up to the plate. So, you know, there's a reason Expo's been around for 37 years now. Yeah, something like that, yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. And last year, yeah, and last year was the, the virtual show, which broke all kinds of numbers and people loved it and Rob and I had a great time and I want to tell you that show was really special because we had a guy by the name of Jeff Oiler. Jeffrey was the man behind the scenes putting so much together, and it was more than just two guys standing in front of a camera. There was many people behind the scenes, and Jeff was one of those guys to make sure that things were taken care of. So hats off to him, and he will be there at Expos Interior too, supporting us as he always does. and we always keep things in the background in case we need to do things. So I'm really excited for this year's Expo. I think it's going to be just, I just can't say enough about it. So now you mentioned last year's Expo, which is, or was a virtual Expo. You also mentioned that the current plan is that Martin will be sharing videos from Expo on his Pimble News website and so on that worked great in previous years.
    149:45
    But what if, God forbid, Martin and I and other Europeans aren't able to travel into the US due to the restrictions that are currently applied? Is there a plan B that we still can follow Pimble Expo virtually? Yeah, yeah. And that's where Jeff Oley comes in. So we're still looking at many options.
    150:12
    And, you know, I really want, you know, Pinball Magazine. I want Pinball News there. I even want Jim Shelbert with Pin Game Journal. You know, I want him there. I want that famous guy that's on your show every once in a while and you let him in, Gary Flower. You know, I would love to, you know, to have him there. You know, there's so many people that I talk to. And the pinball community is made up of a lot of friends and people that have put their blood, sweat, and tears on over the years.
    150:41
    So here's my schedule, Martin, is I'm going to be in Chicago for Expo, of course. Then I'm staying in Chicago because I've got to be at Midwest Gaming Classic. And then I'm coming back to New York for about three days. Then I get on a plane to go to Orlando for IAFA. And then just at the very end of IAFA, I got to get on a plane to fly to Massachusetts or Connecticut. I don't know where it is, but Pentastic's going on. Oh, yeah. So Marston wants me there. So then I'm going to, I mean, that's the weekend after IAFA. So I'm going to be like, I'm going to be coming in like, I can't speak. And then the next weekend we have Thanksgiving. And it's just like, it's just crazy how quick all that's going to be. Like, you know, the month of November is going to be like that, and it's going to be gone. Lucky you. Yeah, I don't think you're garnering an awful lot of sympathy here. I have quite a lot of jealousy of being able to not only go to all these events, but be paid to go to them as well. It's even better. Okay, all right. Guilty. I'm kind of excited, but also deadened. But, you know, it's like, you know, you know what it is like after you do X-Files. and you're walking to show, and then doing five shows, it might be my best weight loss plan I ever did. You know, I mean, frankly. It depends where you go out to eat. Yeah, well, that's true. Every time I go to Chicago, they keep taking me to new restaurants. It's just unbelievable food, and I'm like, I'm finding all these great places, and it's just like, I come back from Chicago, and I swear that the airplane is going to be charging more because I put on weight while I was there. Sorry, sir, we're not going to charge you for two.
    152:29
    Those seats keep getting narrower, don't they? It's a problem. Well, anyway, thank you very much for talking about that and all about Around Expo. The 37th Pinball Expo is held, as I say, at the Renaissance Schomburg Convention Central Hotel October 27th to the 30th. Yes. And one little thing I want to point out. As always, Pinball Expo is going to be supporting the homebrews. And Ed Owens is putting together the whole homebrews, and we definitely want to have a big homebrew presence.
    153:11
    And Marcos wants to do something special with the homebrews, and we're going to, you know. the future sometimes I think is you know in the homebrews to a point you know yeah I wanted to bring that up because you know the homebrew guys are you know they're the young guys they're the young people in the industry I mean they're the I mean look at some of those homebrews well thank you for that bridge obviously you're working for American now You mentioned you're working with, I believe, two junior designers right now. With all these homebrews coming in, are you looking for another junior designer maybe to join American Pinball?
    154:00
    Stay tuned. That's all I have to say. You know, the homebrews are, the young guys are the young people in the industry. Listen, I like Steve Ritchie. Steve Ritchie and I are buddies. Pat Lawler I know very well. There's a lot of guys in the industry.
    154:25
    But you and I all know the age of those young gentlemen is not getting any younger. We need the young blood We need the young blood And I will say that you know Dennis is enjoying working with some of the young blood and we continuing to build within the community here, because, you know, hey, listen, Zofia Ryan is, you know, she's an amazing mechanical engineer, but she's also, we have some young mechanical engineers underneath her that are getting trained, so they learn the best way to build the mechanisms and create the toys that are going to be in the future, you know. And we're embracing that, and we're definitely embracing to be the longevity and have the team that has that, you know. Even we're looking at young software guys, too, you know. It's not like we're just sticking with, you know. So we definitely are continuing to grow and to build from within and give new fresh blood to the industry.
    155:42
    And that's one of my pet peeves at American Pinball is that, hey, guys, let's keep thinking out of the box. Don't fear, you're going to hate me. And we have another young guy by the name of Rajesh, very talented mechanical engineer.
    155:58
    He basically, I show him something, And I said, let's do this. And usually within about an hour or two, he has something hobbled together. We show it to Zofia. She goes, okay, you guys are, you know, juniors at this. And do this, do that. And before you know it, this thing is just coming together like magic, like butter.
    156:22
    So, and the young game designers are working with Zofia also. And they're like, you know what? Zofia's right. She's got it. She's always correct. Very rarely do you ever hear anybody in the company ever say Zofia got it wrong.
    156:39
    And she really thinks about things. And she's got a passion. You know, she worked under Kordak and the rest of the team there at Williams and WMS. She wants to share that information, same thing as Dennis, with these young guys. And, you know, I only see growth. I don't see problems for America. I see it just growing and continuing to grow. I think it's going to be awesome. Okay, well, we look forward to seeing the fruits of all this labor, so to speak.
    157:11
    Can't wait. Can't wait. You know, it's funny, it's like I think I do these podcasts. I've been on a couple podcasts in the last six, eight months, and I'm thinking, great, I want to listen back to these things and go, wow, what an idiot you were, or why did you say that, or You know, what were you thinking? And then I'm thinking, no, you're passionate about it. This is what your goals, this is the direction you want American to go in. And I'm going to tell you, the management of American are fully behind me in the decisions, and they are excited. And we really turned the company around 180 to the point that our numbers are just ridiculous on Houdini, Oktoberfest, and Hot Wheels right now. and they're going to continue that way. So we're excited. Well, very happy to hear that. Oh, and by the way, like I said, game's not over, so I keep challenging the team. If there's a way to make Oktoberfest or Houdini or Hot Wheels better, let's keep looking at it. So who knows what's going to come out of that. So we keep challenging the team for that stuff, too. So it's going to be fun. Okay. Well, thank you very much for taking the time of your free evening, I suppose it was, to join us on our podcast and talk about work.
    158:31
    But we appreciate it very much. I appreciate you guys and the passion that you guys bring, the journalistic integrity that you bring towards your podcast,
    158:42
    and that you are very, you know, you're there. Definitely, you know, Martin, all those years with the BBC, you can tell he's got that feels like he's right there on the front lines taking care of the nose and same thing with you Jonathan with all the magazines you put together and the good stuff that you guys have done over the years especially with your podcast there's reason there's a lot of people that listen to you guys thank you again David we look forward to hearing from you very soon about the release of the fourth title got it sounds great yeah thanks very much David that was excellent So, some very interesting points there from that interview in particular. I would highlight that they've got games 5, 6 and 7 in development as well, which they haven't even announced 4 yet, and that 5 and 7 are both going to be Dennis Norton designs.
    159:38
    So Dennis is busy. Now he's got his feet under the desk there. and 4 and 6 will be from the more junior designers. Yes, so plural that is. So it's not just one, but the way I understood it, it's at least two. Yes. And, well, who knows what announcements will be made after Game 4 has been announced in terms of personnel joining American people. Yeah, there's a whole series of announcements obviously coming up. Number four, who else is working on it apart from the designer of that game. And we've got, of course, Jack Danger's Deadflip stream starting, I think, this Thursday. Yes, Thursday. Wow. So that's soon.
    160:34
    My guess there is that it's probably going to be new code for the existing three titles to do in the Oktoberfest and Hot Wheels, with Jack demonstrating it. Yeah, and I'm expecting Jack to demonstrate one game at a time, so that makes it already three different shows, I suppose. Yeah, that's right. And every two weeks... And they might have new code developed for an older title, so they might keep coming back. Yeah, I don't think they'll be bringing out any code for Magic Girl, though. No, no, no, but let's say this Thursday they show Houdini, and two weeks later they show Oktoberfest and then Hot Wheels, and after that they could go back to Houdini, for which newer code has been written in the meantime. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So good to see that Those three titles are still selling well And Hot Wheels especially Is on fire As Steven said So Okay, well thanks Dave For coming on the show and also very interesting To hear all the plans for Pinball Expo, hopefully you and I Will be able to go there Although I have to admit I'm Not counting on it Yeah, I think it's 50-50 at best, as it has been for several months. So we'll just have to wait and see, because so much changes so quickly. But unless America actually allows either UK or EU visitors in, then we're not going. So that's the big one that we need. And also they need to recognise whatever vaccinations we may have had as being valid and allowable. So, yeah, there's a lot that needs to fall in place, and hopefully it will, but as I say, 50-50 is my best shot at the moment.
    162:37
    So, I'm only booking things which can be cancelled, so I'm not doing anything that's non-refundable. Right, okay. Well, so there's a couple of companies that we haven't discussed yet. I suppose there's well I tend to say there's not that much news so I expect we can go through them quickly but who am I kidding yeah who is meant to find something to whittle on about right ok so Jersey Jack Pinball yes new version of code for Willy Wonka which is very interesting this Joe Shobo has rewritten the basically the entire game, but to make it easier to reach the wizard mode. Obviously they were getting feedback that the ultimate wizard mode in that game is almost unachievable and it maybe wasn't that much fun to keep trying. So there's a new version of it, version 2.0, which is the general numbering system for completely different versions. So as in Bride of Pinpot 2.0, we now have Willy Wonka 2.0 as well. Willy Wonka two blocks away from me on location, so hopefully they will install that code so I can give that game a try. Fantastic. Look forward to getting your feedback on that. And there's also a new code for Guns N' Roses, which is not entirely unexpected, as it's the current title on the line, and the pictures from the factory have been put on the Dirty Jack Limbaugh social media feeds and it's a heartening view really of the production line and seeing rows and rows of guns and roses machines in being built on the on the production lines right um so uh yeah new version of code 1.23 was uh on the 25th of august which um supports the the topper which is a kind of surprising omission i thought but um that previously the topper wasn't fully supported in the software and now it is and it has a new desert demolition album mode, as well as adding in a few bug fixes, as these things always do. Right, so, yeah, then the Jersey Jack podcast made a reappearance, I would say, it's not a very frequent podcast. It's an occasional one, yeah. Yeah, occasional one, which has interviews with Steve Ritchie, who, as we discussed last month, switched companies and joined Jersey Jack Pinball. And there's also an interview with Joe Schober about the updated Willy Wonka software that we just discussed. So that's definitely worth checking out. Those of you who are regular listeners, well, first of all, thank you, and secondly, we're sorry. But also, we'd like to address the last Pincast. We did say that we were hoping to, well, we were planning, in fact, to get an interview with Steve Ritchie about his move from Sturm Pinball to Dirty Jack, and what he was planning to do there, and the reasons for his leaving, and his take on the pinball industry as it is at the moment. But he's been in it long enough to have a good experience and see a lot of changes. Right, and the reason to sort of announce that interview is that, first of all, Steve has reached out to me personally, indicating that he wanted to come on our podcast, and second because Jack Guarnieri promised that we would get that interview once the Jersey Jack podcast had interviewed Steve Ritchie. So that was reason enough for us to announce that interview. Unfortunately, that interview hasn't happened yet. I'm probably to blame for that. Sorry about that. Well, there are various reasons why it hasn't happened, but we are still hopeful to get Steve on and so we can talk about so many things. And at least now he's had a good time at Jersey Jack Pinball and probably started working on his next title for them. And he'll be able to give us a very rounded view of that move, really, rather than just only having been there for a couple of days and saying how wonderful it all is and how warm his greeting there was. he'll be able to tell us what it's actually like working the street over from where he was working before. Yeah, so once we are able to interview Steve, of course, we'll be available as soon as possible. We hope to bring it soon, but there's, at this point, no timeline. No, it's beyond our control, I'm afraid. Yeah, okay. Anyway, moving over to Haggis Pinball, all the way in Australia.
    167:40
    I'd say not much news other than delays and a video explaining the delays and also a factory tour of the new facility. Yeah, I thought it was a very extensive video. I thought it was going to be a quick look around. Well, the factory tour took a lot of time. It did, yeah. Yes, so it was good. That was the... They hadn't had an update for a while, and we haven't had one since either. But it was good to see that they obviously have been building up their factory facilities there to actually build games, which is something that people need to see these days for obvious reasons. And they seem to know what they're doing there. It was good to see Damien walking around all the various areas you'd expect to see, know from the clayfield manufacturing the assemblies the wood shop the spray booths and all that kind of stuff and the cutting machines all the things you would need in a football factory but yeah he like everybody else in him we were just hearing this over and over I'm afraid that everyone's delayed everyone's got supply chain issues and price rises right And I think you mentioned in the video that they were going into their sixth lockdown at that time. So yeah, that makes it rather difficult, you know. Obviously, Covid is still something that
    169:14
    some parts of the world control better than other parts, I would say. And I'm not saying anybody's doing it right or wrong, but if you're in your sixth lockdown, then something must be up, I'd say. Yeah, it's something we all hoped obviously would be done and dusted by now, we'd be out the other side, but it just keeps rumbling on and that's another potential issue for us going to Expo. That's assuming that they're actually allowed to hold Expo if there's another outbreak of either the Delta variant or another variant in the Cook County area, which is where Expo is held, then maybe there will be an out-of-hold. It might be mandated to have any inside conferences or events like that. So, anyway, fingers crossed and we move on. Yeah, so, Pimble Brothers.
    170:17
    Yeah. Well, that's the company behind the Alien pinball, former highway pinball title and now being produced by Pedretti in Italy, they have been shipping games, I think the first games just arrived in Australia, and they have been announcing some details to come up for the, or they will be announcing details for the limited edition or limited version as they call it on September 24th and that game is supposed to go into production in the fourth quarter of this year it's interesting that on the box in which the game ships there's three boxes that can be fixed, SV for standard version, LV for limited version and then there's also a box that says XV.
    171:23
    Extended version, maybe. I have no idea what it is. It sort of leaves that up for speculation, but it could indicate that there could be a third model of the game coming up. Yeah, that would be interesting. They also announced price for the limited version as well, which is higher than it was originally announced in December. At that time, they said the limited version would be $99.99,
    171:54
    and the standard version would be $777. So that was easy to remember. But now the new price for the limited version is $696 higher at $10,695. There's also a price rise for the standard version of $818 up to $8,595. So, yes, the price rise is there of around about £700 or £800 on those two models.
    172:27
    Right. So, what I'm curious about, and this is slightly off topic, but since we're talking about these price increases, which obviously have to do with increased shipping prices and shortages of work and so on, which is all related to COVID. Now, if I make a comparison, for example, to a snack bar or snack corner where they sell French fries, I am used to see occasionally that there has been there have been problems with the potato harvest I think that's called and as a result the price of potatoes went up so the price of french fries at your local snack corner is also going up I've never seen it go down even after if the next harvest was good, it never went down. Would that be the case here with shipping expenses and so on as well? Because obviously we've heard the price of a container to ship from China to Europe or America has tenfolded. Yeah. Is that going to be reduced again once containers are back in place and ships are back to their old normal, I would say? because companies might also figure like, well, they are used to paying it right now, so we keep that price. Well, that's right. I think they need to look at the numbers and see whether they had fewer sales when the price went up or whether the sales numbers remain the same and they're not making any more profit at the moment, but if the costs of fulfilling those orders goes down, then, yeah, that'd be more profit for them.
    174:22
    Yeah. In due course, of course, there will be inflation. Inflation is really negative on the sort of parts that go into making pinballs and the price of shipping them around the world. So in due course, even if they were making more money now in a couple of years' time, the inflation means that that extra profit would have been absorbed. It just means they wouldn't have to put the price up again later. Right, but it probably also indicates that the prices of second hand pinballs will continue to increase because people make the comparison like hey for that kind of money I can buy a new game. In a couple of years where your theatre of magic for example could now do, if you're lucky and I have a beautiful one, $6,000 for example, in two years time that might be $8,000. Because you're not going to buy a new Theater of Magic anywhere else, and if you want to buy a new game, that's probably also $8,000 to $10,000. So people tend to pay more and more and more. Is there no limit to the market for pinballs? It seems like all these companies are pumping more and more machines into the market.
    175:49
    Most of the existing ones are still there. They don't get broken up or they don't wear out. If they do wear out, they can get refurbished. So the market must be growing continuously to take all these extra machines.
    176:04
    Right. Which is great. Hopefully it means that there are more people getting into pinball and not just to people's collections and get it bigger. Well, probably both. Yeah, but if the industry is able to expand the market base, then that's great. And pinball is still hot, as we've seen. It still gets plenty of coverage in mainstream media, which is a nice bridge to our next story, which is about spooky pinball. because there's not a massive amount of news from them, but there was an interesting article in that, in the mainstream newspaper, about the artist on the Ultraman machine, that's Matt Frank, and that was in a San Antonio artist. It said San Antonio's getting a few shout-outs in the pinball business, both good and not so good. This is definitely one of the good ones. I could review the link to the article but it's a lot easier if you just go to Google or your favourite search engine and just type in Ultraman Matt M-A-T-T Frank F-R-A-N-K and it's probably going to be the top search result top result from that search it's Express News anyway it's the paper or the news feed and it's an interesting article on his work and the work he's doing for bookie on the Ultraman. Right. Okay, so, and if this was all too much for you to remember, I will be providing the link in the Pimble Magazine newsletter as well, so make sure that you're subscribed to that, and that will save you searching on Google to find the article. Yeah, good plan.
    178:02
    Okay, so, let's head over to your side of the pond, and also your part of Europe. as we see what's been going on with Barry at Dutch Fibble. Right. Well, I happened to be talking to Barry earlier this morning.
    178:20
    There's a couple of his employees currently on vacation. School holidays and so on are in this period, so that's not very strange.
    178:31
    And they are soon expected back at work, which means that he can ramp up the production of the Big Lebowski further. In the meantime, Dutch Pimble did review a new code update, version 0.56,
    178:55
    with a couple of tweaks, some changes to the test menus, and quite a few bug fixes. I haven't played the game with the new code yet, but I look forward to playing it soon. And it's also interesting they've got some new people joining. Well that's always good news I suppose. Yeah, yes. Apparently there's a new sound engineer and video animator as well who are going to be working on the Big Lebowski code with the intention to bring it to version 1.0 which is the fully featured version, as soon as they possibly can. And one of the key things that's currently missing is the wizard mode called the Do Divides, and that's a priority for Dutch Pinball to get that code completed so they can start working on future titles. Right, OK. Well, that's about it for Dutch Pinball. Of course, I did talk to you. We discussed many things off the record, so I can't repeat them here. Sorry about that.
    180:04
    Okay. Well, one place we're not going to get any news is from Pinball Adventures. And no news from them. Their website at pinballbuzz.com is still offline or still down. It's been redone, as it has for several months. The Pinball Adventures and Pinball Buzz is the publishing arm of it which is where the website was hosted The other business of Andrew who runs all these operations is called Pigeon Patrol in Vancouver I think it is Pigeon Patrol Pigeon Patrol.ca That's still online and still being updated, there was a new blog item just yesterday So, not all these websites have vanished, but unfortunately no news out of Pinball Adventures.
    181:00
    Right. I did check the Team Pinball Facebook page as well. Team Pinball has been designing some of the games that are supposed to be manufactured by Pinball Adventures. But their latest update is also from a couple of months ago. Now I do recall that you attended the UK Pinball Show or whatever it's called. I did, yes. UK Pinfest is the name. UK Pinfest, okay. Which I'd like you to talk about as well. But what I'm tying in with this subject, did you happen to run into any of the Team Pinball members? Funnily enough, I did. I ran into Janos, who was there to buy some parts from the vendors who were set up there. We didn't actually talk about the Pinball Adventures game.
    182:01
    What did he say? No, we didn't talk about it, because we were talking about another potential project, another re-theming, which I was able to send their way as a promotional pinball that was re-themed for a particular company. And if it had happened, then I would have been doing a story about it, but unfortunately the timescale was just a little bit too tight for that to be pushed through in the time available. So that's something which is probably going to happen in the future with an upcoming product launch. But right now that didn't happen. So we talked about that. We didn't talk about Pivotal Adventures because basically it seems a pretty dormant project at the moment. No one is showing any signs of any progress on it. Right. Okay. Well, if there's any news, hopefully we can report it soon. Yes, just on the talking about UK Pinfest and going back to something we talked about earlier, they did have the Pinball Brothers Alien machine next to the Highway Pinball Alien machine, so it was interesting to do the comparison between the two, I didn't get a chance to play them because they were in use all the time and I was busy reporting and didn't have that much time to play, but I kind of still like the look of the Highway Pinball one. It looks more interesting. The sort of standard cabinet shape, I think, doesn't make it stand out in the way that the more rounded, taller back box of the Highway Pinball one did. And, of course, it doesn't have the rotating beacons on the top either. So that's another feature that's missing. And it doesn't have the big screen, which is also a shame. But, on the other hand, it's a production version and it's going to be more reliable, one would hope. But I was interested to see the same code from Brian Domney, as he was doing the code for the Pinball Brothers ones, and also done the code for the Highway Pinball ones. So those two are basically running the same software now, even though completely different board systems and from different manufacturers.
    184:21
    Other than that, it was a great show. congratulations to everyone involved in the organization of it particularly Phil Murphy and thanks for his assistance in that there was 101 pinball machines it was definitely quieter I'd say 101 free play pinball machines there were 10 in the main tournament there were eight in the classics there were two NBA challenge machines as well so and there were another four that were set up in the lobby which were the on paper play or high school tournament machines and they were the most recent ones they had things like um the mandalorian there a couple of mandalorians there and um avengers in the infinity quest was there as well and turtles but so i think you had a chance to play those absolutely yeah i still haven't played anything new after stranger things yeah i didn't get a huge amount of time but uh one game that i did play probably about three or four games on was Avengers Infinity Quest. And I quite liked it. I thought it was an interesting game. It had some nice shots. And the rules seemed understandable to me, which is something which everybody there was saying. Now, I said this just now, and it's very repeating that the rules are too complicated for the majority in modern games. But people seemed to understand that and appreciated it. So it was a profitable show, apparently, even though there was probably only about 60% of the normal numbers there. That meant it wasn't packed and you could get on again.
    185:58
    It wasn't too hot and all, and overall it was a very pleasant show. I spent most of my time talking to people, which is probably why you will hear I've got a slightly deeper voice now than I normally have. You're both sexy. Oh, baby. But calm down, steady drumming. Yes, so I spent a lot of time talking to people and ended up the horse voice at the end of every day. It was after two years of not going to shows and not going to any mass gatherings at all, spending the entire day talking to people did take its toll. But it had nothing to do with all the beer that was consumed at all, of course. No, of course not. No, no, no. You have to keep your throat wet if you do so much for it. Oh, that's right. Well, you can click in and test what we've got next year, and I thoroughly recommend it. And, of course, there's a full article about it on Pinball News. Right. Yeah, I regret not being able to go, but... You were missed. Yes. A lot of people asked whether you were coming along, and a lot of people were also complimentary about this particular podcast. So thank you for all the nice comments. Right. Okay. So Let's do a quick round up of All the other news That is Currently available I'll let you take the first one Okay Our old friend Christopher Franchi Famed pinball artist And artist in general really He's not doing Pinball stuff at the moment At least not for production games Maybe games in development but he is doing the Batman 66 artwork amongst other games and he's offering some Batman posters limited to 66 prints they are 20 inches by 32 inches and basically show Batman and Robin climbing up the side of a building pulling a rope with the Bat-signal in the background in a typically stylised way that matches what's in the Batman 66 pinball. These are available, as I say, limited to $200 each, and which includes shipping in the US. I think it's $175 plus $25 shipping. Only available in the US. No, he's not prepared to send them internationally. If you want to find out more, go to his Facebook page, which is facebook.com slash metalunar5media
    188:31
    that's M-E-T-A L-U-N-A 5 and then media, and it doesn't matter whether the casey on it, just facebook.com metalunifiedmedia, and he will have details of how to contact him to order one of those. Yeah, there's actually more news about Christopher French. He has, last night, he announced, or he actually showed on the same Facebook page that you just mentioned, an alternative Translite for Halloween by Spooky Pinball but apparently he didn't get the permission to move forward with that and he doesn't want to go into too much detail but you can take a look at what the artwork looked like Yeah, he seemed a bit annoyed shall we say that all the work he put into that then wasn't ultimately able to be used Yeah, so But do take a look at Metaluna 5 Media on Facebook, and the link will also be available in the Pimble Magazine newsletter, as I mentioned earlier. Longer pictures, I'm sure. Oh, yeah, definitely. Okay. Then we also have some news from Ryan Claytor, who is a comic book artist, I suppose you can call him that, an illustrator. And lecturer. Yes And He published Coin Up Carnival number one Which featured the story of Wayne Nyans Which is also extensively covered In Pimble Magazine number five But Ryan actually featured it As a sort of comic book story In Coin Up Carnival number one And well there's some news about that which is that the first issue of Coin Up Carnival will be in the upcoming Diamond Previews edition which is sort of a catalogue for comic book stores where they basically order their stock so that could mean that lots of more American and international comic book stores might decide to stock up on Carnival number one yeah absolutely again the link to that will be in Jonathan's newsletter which will be available in what a couple of weeks time you think no no a couple of weeks time later this week oh right that's soon ok yeah yeah if you can't wait for that then the Diamond Previews edition is available at previewsworld.com slash catalog American spelling of catalog C-A-T-A-L-O-G so if you go there then I'm sure if you search for Coin Up Carnival or browse some of the more recent editions then you'll be able to find it there right, and I believe there's more news about Ryan Claymore certainly is, yeah Ryan had previously done a collaboration with Mr. Jones Watches, who are based in London, to produce one of his artworks onto the dial of a physical watch, not a smart watch or a digital watch.
    192:11
    And he's had another collaboration with them on a different design, so a new model called Ricochet which shows three robots playing pinball with the time shown on the score display of the electromechanical game it's a limited edition model and the bad news is if you fancy getting one of them you're too late because it's already sold out and the price was 245 UK pounds which is around about I guess about 300 euros or a little more in dollars but the good news is that there are plans for more designs to be produced so if you would like to go and see what you missed out on or even be put on a waiting list for future releases then if you go to mrmrjoneswatches.com and then have a look in the men's watches and there's the Ricochet one you can see how it looks Apart from the actual numbers appearing all the time, appearing in the school window, there was also a sort of second hand, like a disc which spins, but it's underneath the playfield and it makes it look like the lights are changing colour or flashing on the playfield every second, which is a nice added feature. So yeah, it looks a very attractive product and I'll be certainly looking out for the next one. The only downside, the only negative I could possibly say to it is it's not great if your eyesight is not perfect and you want to know what the time is because the actual digits are quite small. But it's a very attractive looking timepiece and as with all Mr Jones watches, it's very nicely put together. So here's waiting for the next Ryan Clayton and Mr Jones watches collaboration. Okay. Well, in previous episodes we already mentioned that the Museum of Pinball in Benin is closed, and they will be auctioning off their entire collection of over 1,100 unit pinball machines and arcade games. and the news is that this auction will take place during the month of September in two weekends, spread over two weekends. The first weekend is the 10th to 12th of September and the second weekend is the 24th to 26th of September.
    194:54
    Yes. The auction is being organized by the Captain's Auctions Warehouse and there's a catalog available on their website and you can register or you need to register to to place a bid of course and it's well of course once you go through the catalog each item has a catalog number and the the schedule for the date also indicates which lots will be auctioned off when. So if you're interested in buying one or more of those games and you can easily find out which dates you should be keeping a close eye on that auction. Yes you can bid either in person if you happen to be wanting to go to Banning and browse the machines themselves which you can do actually on the morning of each day of the auction. The ones, the machines that are up for auction that day, you can take a look at them for a couple of hours before the action starts with the auction. Or, of course, they're all available online on the Captain's Auction Warehouse website. Right. So I haven't, well, I have seen some of these auctions taking place, but I've never a bid on one of them. I will be curious because there are games that I might be interested in. Although you also have to wonder, okay, there's like obviously a markup for the auction house as well as shipping, and with shipping being so expensive I'm not sure it's... Yeah, it's just, he's going to go for a premium I'm sure, and with the buyers premium on top and there's tax to pay on that as well but it does seem to add up to around about I think what 25% above the hammer price by the time everything is included and you do have to get the machines out of there quickly I think you've only got a few days if you don't.
    197:08
    It will be interesting to see of course I think there's a 1322 lots that are being auctioned or at least the numbering goes up to that number.
    197:21
    Now, usually when there is a huge amount of pinball machines being offered, prices tend to be on the low end, in the sense that, especially with, I suppose, electromechanical games and so on, I can't see those doing a thousand, two thousand dollars for each and every one, which would be, in my opinion, only high-end for electromechanical games. On the other hand, yeah, there's quite a few Stern Limited Editions in the collection and some rarer games, which there is already a lot of talk on Pinside. But the question is, or, well, it will be interesting to see, like, okay, if those collectible games are up at the end, will they go for top dollar or will everybody already have spent their money on other games because they tended to go for prices that they weren't expecting to be that attractive. And they might be out of money so the top rated games could go for less as well. There are plenty of possibilities of what might happen, but my suspicion is that things will, in the first auction, will probably go for top dollar, and probably a little bit lower in the second one for anything other than the most valuable or most sought-after titles. But I think it's still going to be, I don't think you're going to get many bargains there, because I think there are so many eyes on that particular auction.
    199:03
    Not everybody is looking at the same items, of course. No, absolutely not, no. But there's going to be the collectors who are eyeing up those, and I suspect that there won't be any bargains to be had. That's my guess. Well, I assume we can cover the auction in our next monthly... Oh, we certainly will. Yes. Yeah. So let's see how it turns out next month.
    199:34
    Yeah. Moving on, I suppose, because I'd really like to round this up. Yeah. Well, there's a bit of odd news, I would say, from this week in pinball. Jeff posted on his website, Jeff Peterson, what is it? he posted an article in which he explained that he will be taking a break from This Week in Pinball for an undecided amount of time.
    200:07
    And it suggests that it has to do with some of the deep root coverage that he did. And he received some threats about that, which is highly unusual, I would say. Yeah, and it's obviously unacceptable for anyone who's trying to offer fair and balanced coverage of the news in the pinball world to have to suffer that kind of thing. If that's exactly what it was, we don't really know because he hasn't gone into details. But we're surprised, I think we're both surprised at that. but also that most recently then in the coverage that he gave to the current deep group situation that we've reported on here and is on Pinball News and elsewhere and heavily on Pinside that there was I think it was like three sentences about it this week in Pinball which is indicative of there being some concerns over the coverage And more than that, though, we've no idea how many got... Well, we'll have to wait to see what the story is that comes out about that. But we obviously can't support any threat to the freedom of sites like This Week in Pinball to report their news. Yeah, so, well, we hope that Jeff is okay And that he will be back Whenever he feels comfortable coming back Yeah, certainly in time for the Twippies in March next year Yeah, so, and, okay This is in danger of turning into a bit of a downer at the end of the podcast No, well, I've got good news for you Or maybe not My phone is ringing Oh, great, oh, really? Oh, but we're just saying how long this is already. Have we really got time?
    202:08
    I'm not sure. So for those not aware, Gary Flower is a regular wannabe guest on our show. And he happens to be calling in right now. But we just have one other news item. Yeah. I wanted to round this up. And we already had three interviews. I think we've had enough. I think we have to postpone this one and I'm sorry. Sorry, Ari. Yeah. Yeah, Sue, honestly. Yeah. So, um... He needs to get in earlier, that's the thing. Yeah. No good calling right at the end like that. No. And we already had three guests. We had, yeah. Well, four guests, three interviews. Yeah. Right. So I'll be talking to him later to see what he has to... Yeah. What he was calling about. Maybe next time Okay So the final news item Is also a bit of a bummer I suppose It has to do with John Yowsey Who is As many of you might know A artist Graphic artist I would say Known for his album covers But also especially if you're into pinball For the artwork that he did for games like Funhaus and Whirlwind and Dialed In is his. Yeah, close collaborator with Pat Lauder on his titles.
    203:38
    Right. But also done other titles as well. Yeah. Yeah, very distinctive, very detailed, and things like Funhaus, of course, which is so iconic. But anyway, tell us what's happened with John. Well, he suffered a flood in his house August 17th. That was after a plumber broke the main water pipe. That resulted in quite a few damaged artworks.
    204:10
    The good news is that the most valuable ones were in cabinets and were untouched. But in the meantime, John has posted some of the images that were damaged on his Facebook page. and it's still not enough. There are a few there which probably aren't going to be salvageable, but fortunately, most of the, as he says, most valuable ones, or most, I say iconic again, but most recognisable to anybody in the pinball world were not amongst those that suffered the damage. But you can see the range of his work as well by having a look at the pictures on his Facebook page. as John Yeltsin Y-O-U-S-S-I right and that rounds it up for the month of August 2021 indeed, yeah well we're very happy if you're still here that you're still here and if you're no longer here well first of all you won't be hearing this but we understand this was a very lengthy podcast with three interviews so we'd like to thank Jerry and Rory from Multimorphing David Fix and Michael Inowski from Homebrewing from coming on the show. Thank you, Martin Eyup, for being here and discussing the news with me. My pleasure, Jonathan. You too.
    205:36
    Yeah, and well, we'd love to continue next month and maybe even sooner if we're doing a special coverage on whatever Stern might be bringing us the coming month, September 2021. So hopefully, well, until next month, and maybe earlier. Yeah, we look forward to seeing you there. And in the meantime, stay safe and enjoy some pimple. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye. Bye.