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PNP 626- Predator: Top 5 Rad& 1 VERY Bad

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·47m 6s·analyzed·Jun 19, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Orbital Albert ranks Predator's best features but criticizes missing Arnold Schwarzenegger despite praising shot design.

Summary

Orbital Albert reviews Pinball Brothers' Predator pinball machine by ranking its top five best features (artwork, toys/mechs, predator drop-target toy, shot layout, and Old Painless Gatling gun) and identifying one major flaw: the absence of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the machine despite the film's iconic star power. He praises the game's design quality as a significant step up from previous Pinball Brothers releases but notes that cabinet art, backglass, and call-outs are underwhelming, requesting extended gameplay footage before final judgment.

Key Claims

  • Predator is by far the best pinball machine Pinball Brothers has ever made, a clear step up from ABBA and Queen

    high confidence · Host directly states this comparison multiple times in episode

  • The Predator toy with drop targets goes halfway up and halfway down, which is a novel mechanic

    medium confidence · Host cites Kerry Hardy's observation about the drop targets; host notes he hasn't seen this verified in video

  • The shot layout is reminiscent of Pat Lawlor design philosophy rather than Keith Elwin or Steve Ritchie level flow

    medium confidence · Host's design analysis comparing shot layouts and ball flow

  • Arnold Schwarzenegger appears only in the background of LCD screen content, if at all

    medium confidence · Host cites Kerry Hardy saying Arnold is heard to be in background running around on LCD

  • The Gatling gun (Old Painless) feature requires widebody format and may cost $1,000-$2,000 extra, which may not justify the cost

    low confidence · Host speculation about design tradeoffs and pricing impact

  • Cabinet artwork is 'mid' compared to playfield artwork, opposite of Harry Potter Collector's Edition

    high confidence · Host's direct assessment and comparison

  • The toy molds do not look 3D printed and appear to have professional heft, possibly McFarlane toy-quality

    medium confidence · Host cites Kerry Hardy's assessment of toy quality

  • The helicopter toy is the least impressive mech on the machine, with only spinning motion and no playfield interaction

    high confidence · Host's extended critique of helicopter design vs. reference machines like Jurassic Park and 9-1-1 (Rescue 911)

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm going to judge some stuff out of ten here, just to give you an idea. To me, Kong is a solid nine out of ten... To me, Harry Potter is probably a nine out of ten... Well, I probably could never afford the CE.”

    Orbital Albert @ mid-episode (approximate) — Establishes host's rating scale for recent boutique releases and affordability concerns

  • “Without a doubt, can I just say this? I'm going to jump ahead a couple here, but it is by far the best pinball machine. In comparison to ABBA and everything else we've seen from Pinball Brothers, this is by far the best pinball machine that they've ever made.”

    Orbital Albert @ early to mid-episode — Key comparative statement about Predator's quality vs. previous Pinball Brothers output

  • “I think that Pinball Brothers has a winner on their hands here... nothing on this machine, to me, looks like a dud. We don't know about the code. I don't think they have any legitimate coders over there...”

    Orbital Albert @ mid-episode — Qualified optimism about mechanical design but concern about code quality capability

  • “I think the biggest bad for this, now that we've talked about all the good, okay, I think the biggest bad for this is very, very, very obvious. And it's the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is not on it.”

    Orbital Albert @ near end of ranking — Core criticism: absence of Arnold despite film's star power; parallels Alien/Ripley criticism

  • “Do you really going to go down to just having four and just have a big empty gap, like just to have one wide body if it's not big? You know, so I know that's rare and that wouldn't happen often, but here's the thing.”

    Orbital Albert @ discussing Gatling gun feature — Practical operator/collector concern about widebody format justification

  • “That upper right flipper, you can hit the, it looks like a repeatable loop... if these flippers are not strong as hell, especially that upper right flipper, and it can't hit that tough shot, it actually is reminiscent of that tough upper loop shot on Kong.”

    Orbital Albert @ shot layout discussion — Technical design analysis comparing shot difficulty to Kong

Entities

Orbital AlbertpersonPinball BrotherscompanyPredator PinballgameKerry HardypersonDaniel JohnsonpersonHarry Potter PinballgameKing Kong PinballgameJack Dangerperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Host has lost real-world friendships over refusal to support character-absent games (Alien without Ripley, Labyrinth without Jareth); frames Arnold absence as equally important franchise betrayal

    high · 'I've lost friendships like multiple friendships in real life over saying that I cannot support Alien because it doesn't have Ripley... I think they're equally just that important.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Host requests extended gameplay footage (10-20 minutes uncut minimum) instead of marketing's short cut video; cites inadequate presentation for proper game evaluation

    high · 'We need a live stream, or at the very least, not just a two-minute gameplay. We need at least a minute or two of gameplay uncut. We need at least a 10- to 20-minute gameplay video.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Helicopter toy design criticized as bland and lacking interactivity compared to reference machines (Jurassic Park, Rescue 9-1-1); only spinning motion without ball routing

    high · Extended critique: 'Could they not have put a sticker or two on it, or a little bit of paint, or a little bit of color?... it's just like a flat matte black... even if it just grabbed the ball and went six inches and dropped it'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Shot layout design follows Pat Lawlor style (stop-and-go with combo potential) rather than Keith Elwin/Steve Ritchie continuous flow philosophy

    medium · 'It's not going to be Elwynn level or even, you know, it's not going to be that level... This is going to be more along the lines of Pat Lawler.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Possible licensing constraint on Arnold Schwarzenegger vocal performance; host speculates 'choppa' pronunciation issue may indicate only Arnold can use the iconic phrase

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.141

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, miffed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, We're going to get more listeners for the Pinball Nerds Podcast.
0:32
Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert, Nova Scotia. Why can't we be friends? I see you around for a long, long time. I really remember when you drank my wine. Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Why can't we be friends? Welcome back, pinball nerds, to episode 625 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Albert, and I was still hearing Smash Mouth in my ears because my other laptop has a lot of lag. So it was hard to even do my simple entry. So let's try that again. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, episode 626 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast. My name's Orbital Albert, and on today's show we're going to be talking all about Predator Pinball from the Pinball Brothers. We're going to be counting down, in order of how rad they are, the top five most rad things about their newest release. And new pinball day is always a good day, so let's just jump right into it. Okay, number five is the art. Now, originally, I had wire forms here. I was like, wow, reaching, like, come on, you can find something more rad. Because they do have really cool, and I kind of slipped that into a different category. Okay, so the wire forms are pretty rad. They actually appear like almost like a, you know, honestly more like stern-esque or something like that. They did a great job on those, and they look really fun and kind of cool. They honestly look like, with the whole spinning loop-de-loops and everything, kind of almost like fantastical and whimsical, like they could be in Harry Potter. But they're not. They're in Predator. So I don't know if thematically they really make sense, but they do look really cool. And I do think, you know, I do think they did a good job with the wireform. So let's leave it at that. But number five is the artwork.
2:44

  • “I need to see a lot more gameplay. That very short video that kept cutting weird, it really didn't show off the game properly. We need a live stream, or at the very least, not just a two-minute gameplay. We need at least a minute or two of gameplay uncut.”

    Orbital Albert @ concluding remarks — Calls for extended gameplay footage before final judgment; notes marketing material is inadequate

  • “I've lost friendships like multiple friendships in real life over saying that I cannot support Alien because it doesn't have Ripley... I think they're equally just that important.”

    Orbital Albert @ discussing Arnold absence — Illustrates community sensitivity around IP representation; personal stakes in missing iconic characters

    • Keith Elwin
    person
    Steve Ritchieperson
    Pat Lawlorperson
    Arnold Schwarzeneggerperson
    Todd McFarlaneperson
    Alien Pinballgame
    Labyrinth Pinballgame
    Jennifer Connellyperson
    Star Wars Pinballgame
    Flintstones Pinballgame
    ABBA Pinballgame
    Queen Pinballgame
    Poor Man's Pinball Podcastorganization

    low · 'I have to wonder if licensing was like, look, there's one man on planet Earth who can say choppa... And you don't have the rights for Arnold, so you can't say even choppa.'

  • $

    market_signal: Host questions widebody format cost premium ($1,000-$2,000) and whether Gatling gun feature justifies space requirements for arcade operators with limited room

    medium · 'Do I think it's worth, A, hurting your back and making it a wide body for that? B, the extra expense... If this thing wasn't a wide body, they could have probably charged everybody a thousand or two thousand dollars less.'

  • ?

    announcement: Predator Pinball officially revealed by Pinball Brothers; widebody format with Gatling gun feature and novel drop-target mechanics

    high · Host extensively analyzes confirmed features including drop targets, Gatling gun (Old Painless), predator toy, shot layout, and helicopter mech

  • ?

    product_concern: Cabinet artwork and backglass assessed as 'mid' quality; call-outs not yet heard in available video footage; concerns about game not being properly showcased

    high · 'I thought the cabinet art was kind of mid... I thought the back glass was kind of mid. The call-outs so far, we've heard none of them, so they're less than mid.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Host's expectations for Predator exceeded after disappointment with ABBA and Queen; notable positive trajectory for Pinball Brothers quality

    high · 'This is blowing my expectations out of the water. After looking at Queen and Abba, You're like, what? This company is not going to make anything that's like... I'm going to judge some stuff out of ten here'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Host expresses skepticism about Pinball Brothers' coding capability; questions whether they have 'legitimate coders' for complex rule sets

    medium · 'We don't know about the code. I don't think they have any legitimate coders over there, but if they're going to code this more like an 80s, 90s, Bally type of Williams machine...'

    • Excuse me. I really like what they did with the map there, although I'm sure if you're Stern, you're going, hmm, did you kind of copy what we did with Jurassic Park there with the kind of the beige map right in the center of the playfield leading you on your way? Maybe a little, but let's be honest, all pinball machines take inspiration from those before them. So I think that that's fine. I don't think that's anything they're going to be like, hashtag you're dead to me or suing them over or something silly, right? Like, I don't think they really care. In fact, I'd be shocked if anyone at Stern loses a wink of sleep from the Predator release. Now, if you had Arnold in it, they might have had to sleep with one eye open and been half-woke. But, you know, let's move forward here. So, what really stood out? The map is cool. I don't mind the artwork. It is very minimalistic. It does look more like a valley from the 80s or early 90s, which I'm guessing that's kind of what they were going for. the palm trees or whatever those ferns, I guess it would be ferns, wouldn't they? Not palm trees. Come on, we're not in California. These ferns that they have all over, it looks okay. I think I like the play field better than the cab. This is the exact opposite of the Harry Potter CE. Everybody who's anybody knows that the Harry Potter CE is by far, that cabinet is by far the most beautiful artwork on any pinball machine ever. I don't think we can say that for Predator. it's not bad like it's not like pinball adventure's bad it's not like home pin like bad artwork it's just not like good okay it's not bad like america's most haunted i i would even argue it's not bad like uh you know game of thrones i don't know you know it's arguable the back glass is decent it looks fun it's got the predator on there it says predator across the top they've got the big LCD screen. Without a doubt, can I just say this? I'm going to jump ahead a couple here, but it is by far the best pinball machine. In comparison to ABBA and everything else we've seen from Pinball Brothers, this is by far the best pinball machine that they've ever made. So I do want them to at least, you know, take a little mini bow for that one. I don't know if you're going to get all the way down on your knees there like the Predator toy, but you know, at least take a little mini bow. I think that's, it's definitely a step up from everything we've seem for them. So let's get right into number four. Number four is all of the cool, I'll call them toys or figurines or whatever, like between the Predator one and just not even that, but even the, now I guess the tiny exception, basically all the molds that are on there. There's one of a truck that looks like it's silvery. There's that whole like that whole hut that I guess that's part of camp or something. I am going to watch Predator. I found it for free on Crave, which is a portion of Prime here in Canada. So I don't have to pay a penny for it. So I've somehow talked Hayden into it. I may have had to barter with him. And for him to watch this movie in the middle of the jungle with all this greenery, I may have had to do some trades with him, okay, to get him in the right mood, the right mode to be able to put up with two hours. No, I'm just kidding. I actually don't think it's a bad movie. The movie is... I'm going to find out. I haven't watched it since the 90s. I've been a little judgy about it. So I'm going to try to just be positive Pete here. I'm not going to be a negative Nancy or a Debbie Downer. I'm going to try to be a positive Pete, a positive Paul. Be like Pauly Shore, really. Pauly Shore is always in a good mood. Even when his last 15 movies were flops, he was still always like, oh hey guys, smoochy boochies. Okay, I don't think he does that anymore, but two minutes, one and a half. I love Encino Man. I love Biodome. I don't think I love much about Pauly Shore past that. The son-in-law or father-in-law or daughter-in-law or whatever that, I think it was son-in-law, that one was okay. That one was like on the borderline of if you were on a movie, or sorry, you were on a flight and you had nothing else to watch and you forgot to download an awesome pinball podcast on said flight, okay, fine, for free, you'd watch it. Am I right? Anyways, let's get back to number four. So those molds. Kerry Hardy said something interesting. He actually, you know, he wasn't the one who originally revealed the video, but he did show the video again before the video actually came out with the sound. I saw someone posted it without the sound. I'm like, I don't want to watch this without the sound.
    7:09
    But a lot of those molds look really good. They don't look 3D printed at all. That's something Cary Hardy said. He obviously knows 3D printing better than I do. It's hard for me to tell, but they didn't look cheap. They looked hefty. They didn't look like they were in any realm or way or shape or form a cake topper. Do you know what I mean? They looked like they had heft.
    7:28
    And both of those, I guess they would be predators. There's different predator machines, right, I think? But both of them, both the toys looked really well done. I think someone in the chat said they looked like a McFarlane toy, kind of like cut in half. That could be possible. They could have made a deal with McFarlane toys. I wouldn't be shocked if they did. You know, he's obviously, Todd McFarlane's toy company makes some of the most premier toys in the entire world, especially as far as, like, action figure type toys go. So that wouldn't surprise me. But I also like the look of the hut and all the different ferns. I was going to call them leaves, like palm leaves or something. But, no, all the ferns coming down off them. I thought all the toys and mechs looked good other than that chopper. The chopper's just very bland and just very... Could they not have put a sticker or two on it, or a little bit of paint, or a little bit of color? Or even, I was thinking about this, leave it just how it is, but just have those windows be shiny, so it looks like the windows are blacked out, like tinted, you know what I mean? Like something, it's just like a flat matte black, and yes, the helicopter spins, but I swear to gorsh to you, people will do this, they've probably already done it on Pinside, if I know Pinside, you're all ahead of the game over there. If you take the chopper in 9-1-1, whatever that game was, Rescue 9-1-1, and you look at how cool it is when it spins, it doesn't just spin. It moves across the frickin' playfield. That's what we wanted to see there. Something like James Bond or like Mick on a Stick. We don't want to see anything like Mick on a Stick, but you know where I'm going. We wanted to see it at the very least move or have some movement. Even if it was just like six inches, even if it just grabbed the ball and went six inches and dropped it into a ball lock or dropped it into like a spinning like river type thing or just something. But it kind of, I guess it stops the ball in brackets. It doesn't quite actually touch it, but there's a magnet near it that stops it. Oh, and if you were going to make it so it wasn't on a stick like Reno 911, then Reno 911, man, I miss that show. No, Rescue 911. one, if it wasn't going to move around like that helicopter, then you should have at least made it like the helicopter. I think the helicopter on Jurassic Park was even cooler. It just looked cooler. It looked neater. The blades had some type of artwork on them. I think the ball shot between it or around it or really near it. I don't know. So, I just feel like the helicopter is the only toy or mech or figurine that kind of was not that rad, but everything else on it. Ironically, the guy, I don't know if anyone else caught this, the guy in the trailer, instead of saying get to the choppa, You know, with an A, choppa. With an A at the end, choppa. Choppa. Okay, but he doesn't say that. He says, get to the chopper. In like the most, like, he puts the ER on it. So I have to wonder if licensing was like, look, there's one man on planet Earth who can say choppa, and it's Arnold. And you don't have the rights for Arnold, so you can't say even choppa. I don't even know if it gets down to that nitty-gritty, if there's something. You know, this has happened in recent times. It could have been something lost in the language there, right? We don't know. But it sounds like they got the music. That was good. The music sounds decent. I mean, I don't remember the music from it, but I know that they got the music from it, so cheers to them for that. But I'll say the toys. The toys look really cool. And to just grind in on that even a bit further and get more specific, the same way I said that the helicopter was the least rad of all the toys, of all the different toys, of the cool hut, of the Jeep, the silver Jeep, all that kind of cool stuff they have, By far the coolest is that predator at the top with the drop targets in front of him. Apparently they go, I didn't fully understand this, but Kerry Hardy was saying they go like halfway up and halfway down. I had to keep pressing fast forward. I usually never listen to pinball podcasts on fast forward. So it sounds like they're talking really fast. Like this, I talk really fast. Like, hi, Chipmunk, welcome to the Chipmunk segment. So I usually never listen to podcasts like that, but I was trying to get through all of my Kerry Hardy. So it wasn't too late for having, we're having lasagna here on the homestead. That's right. Made with some of our own fresh ingredients from the homestead. Well, to be fair, that's not entirely true. I think some of the spices are grown from our homestead. We have no tomatoes yet. We have no peppers. I did gather yesterday for only maybe the second time and for the first time enough to write home about I did gather some incredible house cat berries The lasagna beeping Okay so sorry guys I probably I sorry I probably just hurt your ears. Usually for the last 10 or 15 minutes of the lasagna, my ever-patient, wonderfully talented EM player of a wife, Drop Target Danielle, will remove said foil from the top and let that sucker just, you know, finish off. Finish off beautifully. Get it all finished. And speaking of getting it finished, the only thing about the Predator that I was like, really? You guys got that close? He only goes from waist up to after. It looks like you hit the drop targets, and maybe they go halfway down as well, which is, that's really neat. That's cool. I've never seen that before, so that certainly is what makes this Predator so cool. We didn't see it in the video, so I don't know if they're still working on the code for that, but apparently, and I don't know if it's them or the sweepable drops. Those are cool as well. But apparently, some of the drop targets can only go halfway down. You would assume it would be like the Predator's shield. Like, you hit them all down, and they go halfway down, then you hit them all down again, and then they go down. And then you have to hit the Predator, which is actually a Bash toy. So that is a really cool mech. And I'm just trying to think about this. Other than Evil Dead, I would say out of all the boutique companies... Sorry.
    13:02
    Oh, my God. I found some 7-Up nerds. Hold on one sec. Hmm. Oh, I thought it was 7-Up. It's just H2O. I don't really drink water a lot. I either drink coffee or tea or water or craft beer or bubbly or some type of Stevia frickin' nerd drink or kombucha or kefir. Anyways, let's get back into it. I've gone off top. I'm sorry here. Okay, so that predator up there, that is, like, I'm spooky. I don't want to get you to get upset with me. And, I mean, oh, Dune. Okay, Dune's toy. that protruding butthole that is probably cooler than that Predator toy. Less interactive I guess, like in a way, because there's not the three drop targets and you can't bash it, or you can? I don't know. It's right up there. It's really cool. I don't know. The protruding butt might be cooler. I'm not sure. I'd have to think about it. I'll get back to y'all on the next show. But here's the cool part.
    13:59
    This is blowing my expectations out of the water. After looking at Queen and Abba, You're like, what? This company is not going to make anything that's like... I thought it was going to be like a three... I'm going to judge some stuff out of ten here, just to give you an idea. To me, Kong is a solid nine out of ten. They keep working on that code, it could maybe even get to a ten. To me, Harry Potter is probably a nine out of ten. They keep working on that code. And maybe get a new topper, it could easily be a ten. Well, I probably could never afford the CE. Even when I sold my house, I don't know if I could justify one Harry Potter CE for what would be the cost of at least three, if not maybe four, somewhat modern sterns or like solid states, right? So I don't know if I'll ever be able to justify it, but I cannot wait to see that CE art in person. And I better make sure that I'm properly prepared because I really think that if I had the money in my pocket, I'd be like, sold! Let me buy your CE. You name a price. I'll buy it. This is the most gorgeous pinball machine I've ever seen. And anyone who tells you that artwork isn't bootiful may not have the eye of the tiger. I started with the eye of the tiger from the 80s and somehow went into Katy Perry. Screw you, Katy Perry. You're such an earworm. You little earwormer. Okay, let's go into number three is the predator with the drop targets.
    15:29
    That kind of does look like the Iron Monger, but he only goes to his knees and not that there's anything wrong with that. I would never get mad at someone who enjoys going to their knees. I'm just suggesting it would be cooler if he went all the way down or all the way up, right? Am I right? It just, it goes from waist to knees to waist to knees. That's what it appeared. So again, we, we haven't seen the LCD. I will say this. I'd like to see more of what's going on in the LCD. I only saw two little bits of the movies and like that was it. So I'd like to see more of that. But number two, number two, and this arguably could have been number one. I kind of just, I used something a little bit, you know, number one is going to be most people's number one, but number, this is probably the most underrated thing of this, and the thing that shocked me the most was not number one, but actually number two, and it is the shots and the layout. Wow, congratulations. I looked at both designer names. I think the one guy is one of the Pinball Brothers. The other gentleman is Daniel Johnson. I don't recognize his name, but shout mother freaking out to Daniel Johnson, and And the whole team who worked on this, because is it a fanny fan layout? Yeah, pretty much. Like, it's got three shots to the left that fan out to the left, you know, like two above the orbit. It's got exactly the same thing to the right. But that upper, some pinball companies add an upper flipper to the upper left or the upper right, and you go, but what's that for? It can only hit one shot. Or in Stern's case, with Led Zeppelin on the pro, it just hit that dead end shot, which was a little bit of a dud. I think we can all agree that one shot there, not the whole machine, certainly not the code, but that one shot was a little bit of a dud. And I would say that, honestly, I mean, nothing on this machine, to me, looks like a dud. We don't know about the code. I don't think they have any legitimate coders over there, but if they're going to code this more like an 80s, 90s, Bally type of Williams machine, which they probably will, the coding for that isn't that complex. So I think that Pinball Brothers has a winner on their hands here. And I wanted to come in and be a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a critical Christian. There's got to be a better name for that. But I wanted to be a little bit, you know, I was going to be a little bit negative. I was. And I thought, like, I don't love the theme of Predator. I love Arnold. And I just, can I say this before I go to number one? I love Arnold Schwarzenegger, okay? First of all, Kindergarten Cop, incredible. Remember seeing him in Throw Mama from the Train? No, me neither. Sorry, Slamto. But do you remember seeing him in Twins? Which is, I think, what I was thinking of. Yes, that was incredible. Do you remember seeing him in... Well, come on. Terminator. I'm the Terminator. I'll be back. Come on. There's more than one content creator who likes doing Arnold's voice, okay? I don't do it on the air very often. I have to hear it first, and really, I have to be five or six beers in. And even then, I'm not as good as many other content creators at doing Arnold. But I enjoy doing it as much as the next guy. Hell, doing that beautiful bastard's voice is half the fun of just watching an Arnold movie. Learning those lines, right? It's not a tumor. Come on, that was okay. Would you give me a C- for that? I would. But that's not my specialty. I'm more Dutch, as you know. I'm not that German. Where is he from? Antwerp, Sweden, Switzerland. I don't remember where. I can't remember right now. This is horrible. Here's the cool part.
    18:57
    The shots look really easy. They look fairly wide open. They don't look too tight. There's lots of them. That upper right flipper, you can hit the, it looks like a repeatable loop. Then you can hit, it looks to be the only way you can hit that upper left. and I will say this, if these flippers are not strong as hell, especially that upper right flipper, and it can't hit that tough shot, it actually is reminiscent of that tough upper loop shot on Kong. There is a ball diverter at the back, so it looks like there's more ball paths on here than any other Pinball Brothers machines, of course. I mean, I don't want to compare to Alien, because I know Alien was only completed by Pinball Brothers. It wasn't fully designed by them, of course. So I'm not really comparing to Alien, because from what I've, I remember Jack Danger. I was there for this. This is how long I've been following Jack Danger. I remember Jack Danger doing the world premiere of Alien Pinball. Now, to be fair, I think it had already been out for a while, but it was like the first time it was in America and live streamed. And I remember being in the chat for that. And wow, what a cool wild ride. Pinball has been one of the most positive things in my life ever. Like I can't even say that about skateboarding anymore now that I've broken, between skateboarding, BMXing, and rollerblading, I'm probably in around 20, 26 or 27 bones broken. That's not including more than 14 fractures of specifically my left ankle. So when you are a skateboarder and you're skateboarding regular, you're often landing your tricks coming down on your front left ankle. And believe it or not, when you miss it, or if you're a big dude like me, 200 and something pounds coming down on a skateboard and you snap the skateboard, you usually also roll your ankle. I rolled my right ankle quite a bit as well. I remember actually having to drive all the way to Toronto and back with my left foot. This was before I was a driving instructor, okay? Don't judge me for this. Before I was a driving instructor. And I had to drive all the way to Toronto and back with just my left foot, which was very challenging because I'd never driven with my left foot before. And you're having to remember, oh wait, no, you go this way for gas and this way for brake, and you're having to reach all the way across. I had no cruise control on my Gulu. My first car was a 1984 Chrysler 6000 LE.
    21:19
    And then I ended up getting a Plymouth Sundance and then a Chevy Daytona. And then, I think, a Mercury Sable. And then a Ford Taurus. Oh my God, I own some Schatz boxes. Holy cow. Okay, we've gone off topic. But there is so many incredible shots in this game. It looks like it's going to be smooth. It looks like it's going to have flow. It does have some stop and go. It's not going to be Elwynn level or even, you know, it's not going to be that level that you would see of someone like, you know, when you're looking for the flow of like Steve Ritchie or something like that. It's not going to be. This is going to be more along the lines of Pat Lawler. So I think it does have some good combo shots, though. and number one on this list. Let's just get to it. I had originally written down Old Faithful, but of course Old Faithful is a very predictable water geyser in Yellowstone National Park in the good old United States. One of the top ten places I want to visit when I finally get to go back to the U.S., of course. But it's called Old Painless because when you get shot with this sucker, you just die immediately. That's how many bullets you get hit with at once because it's like this big articulating, like Tim the Tool Man, man's man gun, right? It's like spinning in circles and it's, I don't know, I don't know what you call those type of guns. A Gatling gun, there you go, a Gatling gun. I probably only know that from video games. But that is really cool. Now is that Gatling gun, it's got its own shooter lane and the part that makes it really cool isn't the spinning part with the lights coming out there. We'll have to see how that looks. That's not the part that makes it really cool. The part that makes it really, really cool is actually how the ball gets there. So it's kind of like, you know, the Hyperloop shot in Star Wars that goes under your flippers. And Flintstones also does that to get back to that shooter lane over there. Now, do I think it's worth, A, hurting your back and making it a wide body for that? B, the extra expense they would have had to add? Like, if this thing wasn't a wide body, they could have probably charged everybody a thousand or two thousand dollars less. I think every person listening to this could agree the Gatling gun is kind of cool but if you took it out and could save me two grand yeah that would be better or if they could have figured out a way to put that Gatling gun somewhere else and not have that whole extra I not a wide body dude anymore I used to love wide bodies I still like playing future spa sometimes and it's not in a tournament it doesn't kill me but is it worth is the cushion worth the pushing so like is all the extra space that it takes up the extra weight, the extra room it's going to take up in your arcade, especially if you're an arcade where you only have limited space. Say you have a row and there's only room in that row for exactly, I don't know, like in your arcade for five regular width machines. Are you really going to go down to just having four and just have a big empty gap, like just to have one wide body if it's not big? You know, so I know that's rare and that wouldn't happen often, but here's the thing. I think that the biggest bad for this, now that we've talked about all the good, okay, I think the biggest bad for this is very, very, very obvious. And it's the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is not on it. If he was doing Call of Duty, it's cool. I guess Harry Hardy was saying he's heard, he hasn't seen, but he's heard. Arnold's in the background running around. You sort of see him on the LCD screen. Who cares? That could just be another person that's dressed up like whatever, Rambo or whoever, like the Predator, well, not the Predator, but you know what I mean. His character in the background, okay? so anyways I commend Pinball Brothers but the number one bad thing and I said this before with Alien I've lost friendships like multiple friendships in real life over saying that I cannot support Alien because it doesn't have Ripley now I am way more attached to the Alien franchise than I am Predator I am way more attached to Ripley being an alien than I even am Arnold and Predator but I think they're equally just that important It was the same reason I couldn't stand behind Labyrinth. And now that I've said, I will admit this, a little Canadian fairy tale for you. It appears that after I've spent a large amount of time speaking with people in my hometown, talking to my two best friends, and talking with chat and Google to do a lot of research, that I in fact never asked out Jennifer Conley on a date, nor did I flirt with her or all that kind of stuff. From what I can gather, it was her cousin who was five years younger than her. And Jennifer Connelly, although was there, was not the one that I was romantically attempting to have a crush on. So that was a lie. I'm still working on proof and I will find a picture of Jennifer Connelly. And if you're listening right now and you live in Elgin County, anywhere near Shedden, Ontario, and you're part of Rosie Rhubarb, which there's probably zero people there doing that. But, you know, if I can, I'm going to keep asking friends and family, and every time I go back to my hometown of Shedden, I'm going to ask to look at photos, because I remember lots of people there were getting pictures that day. I had a picture on one of my cell phones. This was long before anything, but like with Jennifer Connelly when she came back after she had been in Labyrinth. And everybody knew who she was, so I'm looking for that picture. If I can find at least a picture with me or a picture of Jennifer Connelly at Rosie Rhubarb and Shed in Ontario, I think that would go a long way to saying, look, it might have been a little bit of an exaggeration or Canadian fairy tale. But all my stories are, there's at least a hint of truth. I'll say that, you know, in Minecraft, in Minecraft.
    27:05
    So anyways, I can't really totally support this. And I'm not the right person to support this, but I will watch Predator tonight and I will report back. I need to see a lot more gameplay. That very short video that kept cutting weird, it really didn't show off the game properly. We need a live stream, or at the very least, not just a two-minute gameplay. We need at least a minute or two of gameplay uncut.
    27:34
    We need at least a 10- to 20-minute gameplay video. That's what we need. And when we get that, I'll be back with five more rad and five more bad. Just to be honest, a whole bunch of things about this pin were mid. Okay, I thought the cabinet art was kind of mid. The playfold art was decent, but the cabinet art was kind of mid. I thought the back glass was kind of mid. The call-outs so far, we've heard none of them, so they're less than mid. We've heard that one dude talking. His voice sounds cool. He sounds like a movie dude, but he doesn't sound like anyone from the movie, from what I understand. He definitely doesn't sound like Arnold. But I don't know. Maybe there's a narrator in the movie. I guess I'll find out tonight. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed the show. It was fun talking about it. I'm not going to go down the route, not on a positive day like this where I'm talking about new pinball day. I'm not going to go down the route of tariffs, but I think if I was actually going to purchase this and I lived in Canada, I wouldn't be worried about tariffs.
    28:28
    If I lived in the United States, I'd be very worried. If I lived in Australia, shout out to all my Australia homies, I would not be worried. If you want to buy this in Australia, you don't have to worry about tariffs. I don't think like wherever pinball brothers are from, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland, France, wherever the Pinball Brothers are from, I don't think they're all of a sudden going to become enemies of either Canada, we play nicely, they're not going to become enemies of Australia anytime soon. So you don't have to worry about tariffs. If you are an arcade in the United States, and you're a prominent arcade that prides itself on always being the first people to get the first machines, I think I would still order Predator, because I think you will earn your money back on it. I can't speak to the consistency, I can't speak to the quality. I can't speak to the LCD screen because we haven't seen much of it. I don't really know about the gameplay. The shots look really good, but we've never seen it really flipped. I don't know about the quality of their flippers. And what I mostly don't know about, like again, I think if you're an arcade, get it because you'll earn your money back, even if you have to pay a 10% tariff or God forbid higher, it could be higher. I mean, these things change sometimes daily, sometimes hourly. I think he's flip-flopped on Canada. My favorite Cheeto, he's flip-flopped on Canada three times in the past 72 hours where he said, oh, that's it, the tariffs are going to get worse. And then he said, oh, no, we're going to be nuts again. And then he's like, the tariffs, they'll be huge. Like, okay, I can't, my Trump is the worst one out there so I will never do that again. But the thing is, I've mellowed on that whole situation because it's like, I can't just, I can't just keep spiking my cortisol and get upset about it all the time. Also, my son never lost his job due to it, which is just incredible. In fact, he might be getting hired at a new job So that would be really good. That job would pay a little bit better and be much better hours. You wouldn't have to work midnight shift. I wouldn't have to make sure. I could actually do interviews during the day, guys. I wouldn't have to worry about the dogs and everything else because a lot of times I can't do shows or whatever because he's just going to bed at 8, 9, or 10 a.m. when I'm starting to record and I don't want to wake him up because I don't have a very good indoor voice, as you can tell. But now I'm just blabbering on and going off topic and not talking about anything important.
    30:37
    I did want to add in one other thing here that I had written down from Facebook. And I don't talk about Drew and Ian here from the Poor Man's Pinball Network very often. Honestly, I'm a little sad because I miss those dudes. There were some flickers of light last year, two, three, four times.
    30:56
    Oh, here's some news for you. Hold on, hold on. Break news. We'll go back to Drew and Ian in a second. But the dote, the pinball degenerate himself, Joe Chervino, my boy, he says two hours ago so this is at 6.16pm Eastern Standard Time I believe he says at 8pm Eastern Standard Time so that would be in like an hour and 45 minutes from now and I know only about 100-200 of you will listen to this before then or less but he's going to talk Predator Pinball tonight at 8pm and I'm going in there because Joe you know your hashtag dead to me I forgive easily I might bring you back to life if you admit that watching Harry Potter each Harry Potter episode once would be better than watching Predator eight times. I'll try to forgive you, buddy. And I'll bring you back to life. How to save a life. Do, do, do. Ba, ba, ba. Okay, but going back to Drew and Ian, I miss those dudes. They did one or two lives two years ago, and then they did one live a year ago.
    31:54
    And now, and then we had some single Drew episodes in there in between Drew and Ian, but we haven't heard from them for a while. So I would like to challenge them to call them back. Hashtag, you're not dead to me. Come back, Drew and Ian. Come on back from the dead. Come on, bring your corpses to life. Bring me to life. Okay, I'm not singing Evanescence because not even in my dreams can I sing that. All right.
    32:23
    Message expired. What does that even mean, message expired? All right, so the other day, Drew, my buddy Drew,
    32:31
    Here, one of the original founders of the Poor Men's Pinball Network, of course, of the Poor Men's Pinball Podcast, which, you know, such a cool, fun thing. Let's see here. Okay, he wrote a comment on Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, and it was basically, you know, to the tune of talking about just go play some pinball. Life is too short. Go enjoy life. And this was the type of talk that we would often get from Drew before on the Poor Man's Pinball podcast that I loved. And I can't find it right now. I did copy and paste it in here. I really did copy and paste it. But I can't find it right now on this laptop. Some of my messenger messages are missing. But I am going to try to remember to read on my next show. But the point is, Drew basically just said, you know, Kaneda was being a little bit overcritical as per usual. I think about the Potter code. Drew just said something to the effect of, go play pinball, go enjoy life. Is it really worth, you know, being a bit of, I mean, in lesser words than more, a bit of a crybaby about it. So I will find that comment, and I will read it on the next show, okay? Until next time, pinball nerds, I love you, I'm in love with you. Go listen to my last show about Jack Danger. I think it was really good. And go, obviously, listen to Craft Beer Sally and Foghorn Leghorn on the pinball junk drawer. they got to go play Harry Potter so go listen to that, I haven't got to listen to that there's been so much pinball news I think I've already listened to like 3 or 4 pinball content things today, plus another one this morning so thank you so much for that it was nice to hear my boy Dennis Creasel and I say my boy just because he's so awesome and I love him we're not like best buddies or anything and Zach Many of course, it was so good to hear them on the pinball show again and Zach, wow, I think he was actually, he said the one thing Him and Jenga's said the one thing on, I don't usually listen to WAP, but my boy Retro Ralph was over there on it. And Jenga's and Zack both said there wasn't enough Snape.
    34:34
    And I agreed. And, you know, that's, sorry, that's more what Zack said. But Jenga's said that he didn't understand why there was a Death Eater, but there wasn't more Voldemort. And of course, there's a small, tiny little picture of Voldemort in one of the Outlands or something. We don't want to designate things down to Outlands. Like, who cares about an Outland, you know what I mean? but I agreed and I even said the Death Eater looked kind of weird and I thought like but if that's supposed to be you know Voldemort then why didn't they make it Voldemort like that would have been so much more cool and I get I know Eric said well Voldemort's only really in the last two movies but yeah you're seeing flashbacks of Voldemort when he's a kid and all that even in the first few movies you seeing you going in through Voldemort eyes in every single movie Voldemort is like in the top five main characters you know what I mean like you could argue maybe Hagrid and Dumbledore outside of the Golden Trio are more important So he maybe number six in the entire movie. And not only is there no scalp of him, he's not prominent on the artwork. I mean, I know they use him for the LCD in the Final Wizard mode, but that would be, that was something I never even thought of. As a huge Harry Potter fan, how did Genghis, who doesn't even like Harry Potter, admittedly has only seen the first movie or something like that doesn't really know much about it even he looked at the trailers for Harry Potter and was like whoa it is missing like more Voldemort right like where's Voldemort why isn't Voldemort in here why is it just as Death Eater dude and and and then Zack brought that up now I think Zack's okay with bringing that up because he wants to and and tries his best I do think he does try his best to be somewhat you know fair and neutral and criticized from both sides of course uh you know He's got pinball machines to sell. But at the same time, if he just praised everything about Harry Potter and didn't point out some of the negatives of it, he'd be just called a shill, and people wouldn't necessarily listen to the show or even trust his judgment anymore and therefore buy less pinball machines from him. So it is obviously smart of Zack to do that. So cheers to Zack for doing that. And the final thing I'll mention is Kaneda brought up the fact about the AI art on it. And to be honest, I looked at the thing with Hermione's collar. It looks just like that in the movie. I don't see anything weird with that. the thing with Dumbledore's finger was like okay that seems a bit weird but that's so zoomed in it's like you would have to be like are you going to be that guy in the arcade who's like um excuse me let me take out my jeweler's loop so I can look at the size of my micro finger on my micro art before I go take a micro bathroom break like no of course not so I mean if they used AI I'm not going to be like shame on you I know pinball companies need to take shortcuts when they can and almost every other company is going to be using AI to some extent but if they didn't catch you know the thing with the dragon on with the two eyes or something that didn't seem that horrible to me but if it is true that they did use AI and they didn't catch it then that's horrible that's really bad if they did use AI and they didn't catch that at the same time do I think there's maybe like that one hardcore dude who's like I hate everything AI and artificial intelligence and I don't like the AI music slop and I hate the AI YouTube videos like I just mentioned this Aaron Fast from Fast Pinball I just mentioned this on his Facebook page he was talking about all the AI slop that's coming out and I've been a big proponent against the music and especially the videos there's a video of like a freaking pig flying that saves a baby it was the number three watched video I think it got like 78 million watches last month on YouTube and it's just horrible it's just and they're saying now up to 60 70 80 even up to 90 of youtube and content that's being made next year not watched but made 90 of content being made could be ai next year by by next year like this is it's getting nuts so we're gonna have to choose where when and how to push back and i definitely you guys heard my beautiful singing someone messaged me i forgot who they even were and they're like i love your singing at the start of your episodes i was like really? The singing at the start of my Deborah Talman episode. I'm sorry, Deborah. Hopefully, I didn't ruin it for you. I was trying to ruin something for someone else. What a negative Nancy I was being. Let's just be positive. It is good Pim all day. Am I mad at the fact that they used AI not specifically? Should they have been more open and honest about it? Sure, that would have been rad. But, and I don't know if they did use AI, but if they did use AI and those mistakes got through oh my lordy that's bad like that's oh niche niche that's not a good thing so overall though the harry potter code seems like they're they're kind of working on it the attenuation for being able to hear you know hermione and and and ron and harry's voice a little bit louder and maybe mark silks not as much or changing how the flow of that code works they're working on this This is Eric Menier's baby. And this is part of why I want you to go back and listen to my last show, episode 625, because I explained why everybody who's panicked about the X-Men situation over the last year, I've been covering pinball content for almost a decade, I'm not panicking about early code. I saw people panic about the early code with Munsters. Oh, wait, the code is still there. Okay, Munsters didn't get fixed, but that's a Dwight machine. I'm telling you, Harry Potter, not that it's even, I don't even think it's that broken. Let's say the code is only a C+. I think they're going to get it to a B-. Is it ever going to be an A++? Probably not. You're probably going to need to go to a, not even just Stern, probably going to need to go to an Elwin team to get that. That's just my thinking for the most part. That's the way it seems right now, you know. And I'm so stoked to hear, I knew Jack Danger would never abandon a baby. This man is too concerned.
    40:13
    This, and I don't want this to come out like he's too egotistical, because he's not. but Jack Danger is too concerned with his future. I don't know, the term for it is not his legendariness, but he's too concerned with just, you know, putting his stamp on the pinball world to ever leave an abandoned baby like X-Men, especially a machine that looks that good, that has that many unique shots. He's not going to just leave it at the side of the road and just leave it. He's going to make sure that code gets better and better and better. again will it ever be an A++ like Jaws or Jurassic Park probably not or Godzilla probably not but it will be decent it will be good it will get better and I think the same thing will happen with Kong and I know the same thing will happen with Potter so I'm excited to play all three of those games I may be the only pinball podcaster not that hasn't played Potter of course but that hasn't even played X-Men yet okay it came out shortly after I came back to Canada, and I missed getting to play it by a couple weeks. And nobody on the east coast of Canada has it here that I know of. And if you're on the east coast of frickin' Canada and you have X-Men, invite Orby over. I will bring the craft beer. I will bring the Five Guys burgers and fries, okay? I will bring us Happy Meals if that's too fancy for you. I will do it. They got Squish-a-Mellon. Is there Squish-a-Mellon? Squish-a-Mello? Happy Meal toy boxes that are pretty cool with these little toys right now. So anyways, okay, I've gone off topic. Once I started talking about Happy Meals, cut myself off. I'm too hungry. I'm going to go eat some lasagna. I'm going to go enjoy waiting and walking and surrounding myself in the green that is the luscious ferns of the predator. And I'm going to watch Arnold. I got to tell you this one last Arnold story on the way out. But in the illustrious words of Christopher Franchi, I'm not talking about any more pinball. So get the hell out of here. You guys are dismissed. Schools out for summer. All right. So in the summertime, I used to live a mere two traffic lights, like three blocks away from Wally World in London, Ontario. No, it wasn't as cool as the Wally World and the National Lampoon's Christmas or not Christmas, summer vacation. Okay. Wasn't that cool? It had like two bullet slides, one called the bullet and one called the caterpillar. It had like one really fast, really awesome tube slide that was like, had tons of water. And then it had, you know, I think four other like mid slides that were fine, but they weren't incredible. And what would happen is every day past 6 p.m. from 6 till 9, they would do five bucks to get in through the door. Well, I, my dad was literally on social assistance. I lived with my dad, my mom, my stepdad lived like an hour away in good old Shedden, Ontario, like I told you guys about the Rosie Ruberb Capital, but I lived in London, Ontario in grade seven and grade eight and up through most of high school. And while I was living there, I couldn't afford to pay, I think even back then it was like 25 or 30 bucks to go to Wally World for the day, but it was just five bucks past 6 p.m. And they knew 90% of the people would go at like 8, 9 or 10 a.m. whenever they opened and stay most of the day. and after dinner by about five or six you're just cooked you've been in the sun all day you're doing the it was the most gorgeous lazy river you guys have ever seen again i'm sure nowadays there's cooler lazy rivers out there but it was like a half an hour of just pure joy of having fun and there was like a hot tub you could run and sneak into and but the coolest part and this is where the pinball comes in don't worry frangie thanks for sticking around i appreciate you enduring my story sir they had a last action hero and i'd always liked pinball and i played it up at my grandma's trailer and I played EMs and such but I had never played any and again this I could be off on the year because I don't remember the last action hero game I would it it could have been grade 9 or grade 10 but I know through many summers all the way from grade 7 to grade 8 9 or sorry until grade 10 or grade 11 I would go to Wally World and when I would pay the five dollars I would go on five or six slides do a lazy river and inevitably I would always end up saving I don't even think they had toonies back then but I would save like two loonies to have four quarters to go play eight games and those guys would know right around eight o'clock when it started to get cold and the sun was going away and I had already cooled down lots and I had already gotten all the slides the maximum number of times I would decide, hey that's right I want to go play a little bit of my favorite pinball machine at the time which was Last Action Hero and Last Action Hero really, really got me into pinball quite often. I would leave with four, five, six credits on that machine and I would put all of my quarters in. I think it was a quarter of play, maybe 50 cents a play back then. So I'd start with four or five credits, but between winning free games, breaking GCs, doing whatever, hitting that minimum that you had to get to get the free games, between doing that and just being there, quite often my friends would have to come get me a nine. They'd be like, Albert, they're closing the park. You got to go. I'm like, no, I'm about to get the GC. Anyways, so I do love Arnold. Last Action Hero, not his best movie. It's just not. It's mildly okay. Honestly, I might go back and enjoy it better than Predator. Maybe I'll do that for the next show and give you guys an update. Anyways, thanks for listening. Go back and listen to my Jack Danger episode. I feel like not that many people listen to that show. Now, I had put out a lot of shows. Y'all are probably getting sick of me. And don't worry, I'm going to take my little summer hiatus soon. But I think I want to come back with that wonderful person that I've lined up an interview with who took art at the university level right here in Ganda and discussed the most, well, it was contentious for about 72 hours. There was multiple pinball personalities saying how bad the artwork and how they didn't like the artwork. And their visceral reaction was horrible to it. I think there was at least three, if not four, pinball content creators saying they did not like the artwork when they first saw it on the CE. Most of them have came around to say, yeah, it's okay. If it's okay, are you going to spend $15,000 on it? No. If you're spending $15,000 on it, you love it. No one spends $15,000 on a toy that, yeah, it's fine. It's all right. Yeah, I'll spend $15,000 US on it. No. You at least like the artwork if you're spending that much on it. So if you tell me you're buying a Harry Potter CE, but you don't think you like the artwork, I'm going to call hogwash. I'm going to say phooey. I'm going to say that's not reasonable to think that. And I'm going to call you a bit of a weirdo. All right, pinball nerds. Until next time, remember to eat, sleep, and breathe Predator pinball. Get to the chopper!