Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

BDYETP 79: Venom Revealed, Centaur Revisited, Punny Factory Ships, and mods to avoid.

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 45m·analyzed·Jul 24, 2023
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Venom shows promise but early code; Centaur Revisited criticized for over-designed color cosmetics.

Summary

Buffalo Pinball hosts discuss Stern's new Venom pinball machine and Haggis's Centaur Revisited remake. Venom features a dynamic playfield that changes based on character selection, Brian Eddy's layout design, and progressive RPG-style rules. Hosts praise the mechanics but note the game is only at 0.72 code version and caution against early purchase. Centaur Revisited's expensive limited editions ($10k-$17k USD) with colorized LEDs and toppers are criticized as missing the mark on what made the original appealing, with poor sales momentum despite 300 total units available.

Key Claims

  • Venom is at 0.72 code version, indicating significant development remains before release

    high confidence · Hosts note they saw 0.72 on the code during stream; audience member mentioned seeing 0.83 code at Comic-Con

  • Centaur Revisited Beast Edition has 250 units at $15,000 AUD (~$10k USD), Oblivion Edition has 50 units at $25,000 AUD (~$17k USD)

    high confidence · Direct pricing announcement from Haggis on July 5th as discussed by hosts

  • Venom pricing: $7,000 Pro, $9,700 Premium, $13,000 LE (same as Foo Fighters)

    high confidence · Hosts cite official Stern pricing

  • Centaur Revisited is Haggis's third game after Kelts and Fathom Revisited

    high confidence · Hosts confirm announcement on July 5th

  • Venom features dynamic geometry where character selection changes shot layout

    high confidence · Hosts describe Brian Eddy's gameplay reveal video showing character-dependent shot changes

  • Centaur Revisited still has stock available and did not sell out despite high prices

    high confidence · Host Kevin states 'these they're only making 300 of these total and you can still totally buy them they're not they did not sell out'

Notable Quotes

  • “the game's accessible and the shots are easy and my joke is like a baby game we've got a baby game on our hands”

    Host discussing Brian Eddy's design philosophy for Venom @ Venom discussion section — Raises concern about potential over-accessibility trend in modern Stern designs

  • “when I hear 0.72 it's like man that's uh there's a lot missing from the game right now there's a lot of ways to go in this game so I don't I don't it could take a year before we even see what this game is going to be”

    Host Kevin @ Venom code discussion — Expresses concern about early code version and long development timeline ahead

  • “the worst thing that can happen to me, and maybe you might not share that, is beating a game. Being a game is like the kiss of death.”

    Host @ Game accessibility discussion — Articulates experienced player perspective on difficulty balance vs. long-term engagement

  • “I think you guys missed the point here”

    Host Kevin about Centaur Revisited @ Centaur discussion — Core criticism of Haggis's design choices for the remake

  • “they're not they did not sell out so um they're expensive i think they missed the mark on what people want out of centaur”

    Host Kevin @ Centaur sales discussion — Notes market rejection of the expensive limited editions

  • “is this the case where they're running out of money to build fathoms so they had to get this out and they're using sales of this game to fund the previous game”

    Host @ Haggis business speculation — Speculates on potential cash flow issues at Haggis

  • “There going to be problems There going to be a lot of things missing Look at Bond I Like I be very cautious of buying a game this early when it kind of it still somewhat of a shell of a game”

    Host Nick @ Venom purchase recommendation — Advises against early purchase of games in early code versions

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyVenomgameBrian EddypersonZombie YetipersonDwight SullivanpersonHaggis PinballcompanyCentaur RevisitedgameFathom Revisitedgame

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Secondary market for pinball machines showing price cooling; used game purchases now more attractive relative to new releases at early code stages

    medium · Host Kevin: 'prices on the second-hand market have chilled out and you can get it...There's no reason to go out and buy a game that's at .83 code'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Venom's character-based dynamic geometry mechanic designed to add replay value and shot variation depth to foundational fan layout

    high · Host: 'depending on the character you pick, the literal geometry of the shots change...That is really cool and interesting because you get a lot more mileage out of the design of a game'

  • ?

    product_concern: Haggis may face cash flow issues; Centaur Revisited timing and aggressive pricing potentially driven by need to fund ongoing Fathom Revisited production

    medium · Host speculates: 'is this the case where they're running out of money to build fathoms so they had to get this out and they're using sales of this game to fund the previous game'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Centaur Revisited's colorized LED updates and toppers fundamentally misaligned with original's black/white aesthetic appeal; hosts view as aesthetic failure

    high · Host Kevin: 'they don't understand what made centaur centaur like that's not that's not a centaur anymore that's just so whatever...that looks gross where it doesn't work man'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Venom shows trend toward more accessible, casual-friendly gameplay ('baby games') with longer rule progression to compensate, potentially at expense of skill differentiation valued by experienced players

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.318

0:00
Coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, guess what? We got stuff to talk about this month. Can you effing believe it? That's right, we've got Venom. We've got a new game to talk about. We've got Centaur Revisited. We've got Luma Legs. All that and more, coming right up. Double Super Jet Pod!
0:30
I need a loop I want targets I can hit I need the scoop I need a double super jetpack In my life That's right They bring their talk To my backstage area And they, you know, they have a podcast They have like a Twitch channel A YouTube show They eat, sleep breathe pinball and they come here and i put on a clinic and i don't know if shame is the right word humbled humiliate i don't know what the right word is but i just want to send my love to nick kevin and martha from buffalo pinball who came here and had the good graces to have a trophy made for my victory last year and then i had to repeat the victory this year i'm the one with the mic so i decide the truth doesn't matter what i say really it's not up to you we played some pinball it was kind of whack but when you left you felt like you had been shellacked It was nice to have you here today But I really, really, really, really, really got to say You lost So badly I played you Second time, gladly Thank you. Buffalo Pinball, everybody.
2:15
I love them very much. They're good sports. And they learned a lot today. Hang on, I've got to play that again. It didn't work.
2:33
No, it's still not working. Come on. What are you doing? You got your soundboard? Can't hear the soundboard. Well, it's Boom Shakalaka. Ladies and gentlemen, it's us.
Foo Fighters
game
Buffalo Pinballorganization
Ed Sheeran / Barenaked Ladiesperson
NAP Arcadeorganization
Mandaloriangame
Attack from Marsgame
Mark Tremontiperson
Jerry Thompsonperson
Metallicagame
Bondgame
P3 (Pinball Platform)product
Keltsgame
Centaurgame

high · Host states Brian Eddy said game is 'accessible and the shots are easy' and hosts express concern about dumbing down games while praising accessibility features like character progression

  • $

    market_signal: Haggis struggling with production velocity; Fathom Revisited still in manufacturing while Centaur Revisited announced, suggesting capacity or funding constraints

    medium · Host notes 'they're still building fathoms and from what i can tell they have not been building them at a rapid pace'

  • ?

    community_signal: Dwight Sullivan's code work on Venom characterized as inconsistent quality ('hit or miss'); high-scoring tendencies evident in playtesting

    medium · Host: 'dwight on code has always hit or miss he does a lot of things that i love and he does a lot of things i just do not like at all' and observation of 2-billion-point multiball vs others at 30 million

  • $

    market_signal: Centaur Revisited's premium pricing ($10k-$17k USD) combined with design missteps resulted in poor market reception; 300-unit production still has available stock

    high · Host: 'they're only making 300 of these total and you can still totally buy them they're not they did not sell out...they're expensive i think they missed the mark'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Venom at 0.72 code version indicates substantial development remains; expected to take year or more before feature-complete

    high · Host Kevin: 'when I hear 0.72 it's like man that's uh there's a lot missing from the game right now...it could take a year before we even see what this game is going to be'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern implementing RPG-style character progression and unlockables (character unlock system, save state progression) to address player accessibility concerns while maintaining engagement

    high · Hosts discuss Venom's carryover system letting players save progress, unlock characters after beating game, similar to P3 save states and Metallica unlock features

    • 2:43
    Yeah, what's going on? It's another episode of Brody Talk Pinball. Nick, what did we just hear? Yeah. Well, it's fucking Groundhog Day again. I remember we did this last year.
    2:59
    He played that when we got taunted from the stage. And now here we are a year later. Ed beat us in pinball again.
    3:08
    Yeah, I don't know. What can I say? He's got a carnival game. I cannot beat him on his carnival game. Yet we try and we try again. We're basically at this point like the Washington Generals. You know, coming, playing against the Harlem Globetrotters And we know what's going to happen But it's just the show along the way It's the show along the way I got to go and see the Barenaked Ladies out in Red Rocks in June Since the show And I got to play pinball against Ed then And I lost But like, Martha beat him, by the way Which we don't hear him talk about It's funny, he didn't say anything about that But it does show It's very, very, very silent And then, you know, I mean, he got like 130 or something. I got like 100. So it wasn't like, it's like, whatever. A win's a win, but whatever. Martha got 200-some. When we played against Ed when he came last week to Art Park in a little north of Buffalo, he got 400-some on a game that he's played slightly less than 2,000 times. But who's counting? Who's counting? But who's counting? So that's a proper score He did a proper shellacking He is correct about that I will give him that Because he made such a god damn stink about it last year We presented him a trophy That commemorates the 2022 Art Park Pinball Champion And God only knows What he's done with that trophy But I wouldn't Touch it So congrats to Ed once again We love you too you are good at pinball. My challenge remains out there that one day we go to a neutral location, an open tournament, and then we see who wins. God bless you. I like it. I'm looking. I want to find the post where he showed the trophy. He's so proud. We were standing out there watching the opening acts, and my phone dings, and it's like, Bare Naked Ladies tagged you on Instagram. I was like, oh, I know what this is. There he is with his Art Park Pinball Champion 2022 trophy. I love that. That's hilarious.
    5:23
    He says, so proud to be the Art Park Pinball Champion two years running. I absolutely destroyed Nick Lane, Martha, and Kevin Manning. Seriously humiliated them. I can't believe what a shellacking I put on them. So my response was talented and humble. And I think that really sums it all up. It is a master class in humility. It is. It's incredible. We love you, Ed. Thanks for hanging out and having a good time. Great show. I think they just did their last show last night.
    5:51
    So I'll give a plug for Bannaken Ladies because a lot of people have not heard of them. But in addition to being good at pinball, Ed's a pretty good musician. So I highly recommend catching them when they're on tour again. I think you just wrapped up. But always a good time. We've seen their show a number of times in the last few years, but it's always a different show, and it's always fun, and it's hilarious. Yep, it's a good time. It was a little rainy at our park, but we stuck it out. Everybody stuck it out. They did a good time.
    6:19
    The scaffolding above them was kind of like swinging in the wind, but it was all right. We got through.
    6:28
    Good times. Thanks. So why don't we jump right into it? We're not going to have our boy give us the intro here, but it's the latest pinball news. So hot it's on fire. Let's jump over and get right into Venom. and remind me Nick after we do Venom we'll do the ads okay alright let's talk about Venom so Venom the new release from Stern Pinball announced about a week ago and Nick was like let's podcast I was like let's wait till we see Venom we held out so we could give you the hot scoop that you're hearing from everybody else but you're gonna hear it from us now and that's all that really matters so Venom the new pin from Stern it's got art from Zombie Yeti It's a Brian Eddy layout, and Dwight is on rules, right? Yeah, that's the, here you go. Jerry Thompson, lead sound engineer.
    7:23
    Mark Tremonti, cheating on JJP and doing music tracks on this. Yeah, we're going to talk about Mark a little bit later when we talk about JJP's update, but he's really two-timing him.
    7:35
    And Price is holding steady from the last release, Foo Fighters. So $7,000 for a Pro, $9,700 for a Premium, and $13,000 for an LE.
    7:49
    So what do we want to say about Venom so far? What's your hot take on Venom? I think there's four stages of talking about impressions or a review of a pinball machine. First stage is you see the pictures. Maybe you get the grid about the features. The next stage is you watch some gameplay video. Stage three is you play a few games out on location or whatever or at a friend's house. Or maybe you just got the game and you played a few games. And then the fourth stage is you've spent a considerable amount of time. You understand pretty much 99% of the rules. You really understand the game and you've put a lot of hours on the game. So we're now at stage two.
    8:32
    We saw the photos and we saw some gameplay. So I'll take you through how my opinion kind of changes and morphs over time. And, you know, I think that's somewhat interesting. So when I first looked at this, nothing grabbed my attention about the play field layout. It's a fan layout. And it's not like I like or dislike fan layouts. It's just that that's some of the most common layouts in a pinball machine. And at its heart, just looking at it, that's not too exciting. to look at. It's not like, oh, that's really interesting kind of deal. This is just talking about the pictures. The next reaction is that it's zombie Yeti art. Once again, I've talked extensively about my opinion about zombie Yeti art. I think if I was Stern, I'd be doing zombie Yeti art all day. I get it. People love it. People buy it just for the art.
    9:24
    I think his art's always too busy for my taste, and I think that the fact that Stern keeps on using zombie Yeti, like your collection, all these games kind of mush together in terms of their look and the lineup. which to some people love that, and maybe the majority of people love that. I kind of don't. However, I think Zombie Yeti is at home and is at his best when he's doing kind of comic book art. I think that's the best fit for his art style. And I also see clear lines for the shots farther back, which is, I think, really good. He highlights that with like a black line. So in that sense, I do like and appreciate the art. but I think it works for this game, and I like that he kind of delineated the shots a little bit more in his art, so that's good. And then as a whole, I'm not into comic books. I wasn't as a kid. I'm not as an adult. The theme does nothing for me. It makes me want to buy it. So first impression, I'm like, here's a game that my money's safe, at least stage one impressions. Why don't you talk about your stage one? Then we can go on to the gameplay, Kev. Yeah, okay, so I don't know. I had no—so the rumor was Venom, right? And it was like—it was very much a whatever theme. So it wasn't like—I don't have huge nostalgia for Venom or anything like that. I kind of remember it being around in the 90s with comic books and stuff, but I never really read comic books. Like, you know, most of my knowledge of Marvel stuff comes through the movies. We've watched pretty much all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, and I like those. So I am open to comic book themes. It does start to feel like Stern is doing a lot of Marvel stuff. And like you said, I love Zombie Eddie's art. I do like how you mentioned that he's kind of got the lines delineated in the art. So it's not quite as just like one huge collage on the play field. It's kind of leaning itself more towards effective pinball art. But yeah, so the theme didn't do anything for me. the reveal um kind of got me excited at first i was like oh this is interesting with uh with especially with that first teaser video when they showed the that center shot moving and changing and the fact that like the character you pick changes the shots on the play field and things like that i'm like oh this is kind of cool like there's something different here even though it is a basic fan layout um you know they're doing something interesting and unique and the i wasn't sure how the um those like canon locks on the sides were gonna work out but they in in the stream they looked pretty cool and fast and frenetic which i guess we'll we'll wait to actually see and play it but um it's got me interested what i'm kind of like hesitant because well at first i'm like well i don't really have any basic fan layouts in my collection uh i tend to buy three flipper games four flipper games five flipper games because that's what is interesting to me. I think having a flipper on the top gives you more shot variations and makes for more interesting layouts.
    12:36
    But, you know, I still like Attack from Mars and games like that. Those are fun. And, you know, Brian Eddy was the guy behind those, so maybe we'll get something new and fresh, and this will be kind of like a more modern version of that. But then I'm like, oh, I have Final Resistance on order, and that's a fan layout. I'm like, I'll just get my fan layout fixed with that, and we'll see what comes with this. So that's kind of my first take on Venom.
    13:03
    Yeah, so off to stage two, let's talk about my impressions of the gameplay video. So I watched the 10-minute portion where Brian Eddy is going through kind of how the game works and what happens on the play field and really kind of very general rule description, right? So I by no means can say I really understand this game. First of all, I generally like Brian Eddy's games, no matter what layout he comes up with. I like him as a designer. And I thought he did a really good job in terms of discussing the game. And his enthusiasm for it seems extremely genuine. I think he's a good kind of genuine salesman. for that. So it was fun watching that video. And then I probably watched, unfortunately, maybe 10 or so minutes of the gameplay. I definitely became more interested in this game as Brian Eddy was discussing what it's about, what's going on. There's things that I particularly, there's things in this game that I like. I like when the geometry of a pinball machine can change and that is like the definition of this game, right? Like depending on the character you pick, the literal geometry of the shots change.
    14:32
    You know, what might have been a ramp comes to like an up post now or like a turnaround now becomes available on the character. That is really cool and interesting because you get a lot more mileage out of the design of a game and now it takes what could just be a fan layout, which maybe been there, done that, way more interesting. So I think that's really cool. I love when games do that. That has gotten me now into the thing of, like, how maybe I really got to pay attention to this game. Maybe my money is not safe. It's still pretty safe, but it now has moved into the realm of it's got potential. And the other thing is, too, is I think that Brian Eddy, there's a lot of mechanical stuff going on in this game, which I do like. I like how that the Carnage character, I think that's his name, he moves back when you hit him. So we're like a very target. Okay, that's cool. That's mechanical. Things are happening. You've got the doppelganger swings out. Now, the interesting thing about the doppelganger that swings out is that I think Nap Arcade said originally they were going to have it come up from the play field or something, and they changed their mind on that. There he is. It's like that's the doppelganger swinging out is, at least from my understanding, this seems way more gimmicky. and it just seems like maybe it's, I don't know. I'm not, I I'm, I'm sort of neutral on it because when it comes out, it doesn't change the shots at all. Like you're going to hit those targets. The ball's still going to flow through it as if it wasn't there. And I, you know, compare that to something like when the buck comes out in big buck hunter or the crane comes out, all those things influence the, um, what happens to the ball after it hits it. And I don't think that's the case on this thing still it's cool i rather have it than not have it i just don't for for you know the mac maybe the money that went into in the time i went i'm just not convinced it's gonna be that much of a big deal but i'll wait to see um bell tower like yeah that looks cool uh and then the fast lock thing was interesting the game certainly seemed fast so i i have moved to the stage of i'm interested let's see more this is uh i saw a post the other day that people were comparing the shot layout to mandalorian and like the shots being the same and that's kind of interesting maybe yeah maybe maybe it is maybe this is like mandalorian with the shots moved back and during the stream brian eddie said that what he liked about the game is it's this is this is almost an exact quote is the game's accessible and the shots are easy and my joke is like a baby game we've got a baby game on our hands i suspect you know here's what might have happened what's going on yeah i liked mandalorian because it was not a baby game it is like every shot could be death death okay there we go uh every shot could be death and it's it's total control and you're very much punished for just hitting things on the fly. It is not a baby game.
    17:39
    This looks like Brian Eddy might have saw that criticism and said, okay, well, I like the shot layout of Mandalorian. I'm just going to move everything back, maybe potentially widen things. But if I move it back, it's not instant death usually if you miss a shot, and that's what you got. So, fine. You know, I've thought about, I see this trend towards more baby games, and making the lowest common denominator pinball, making games really... You're making it more accessible, but at the same time you make it not too easy because usually in rules they adjust for that by just making the game longer to beat. So now what I don't like about games like Zeppelin and Rush, as I own and spend more time with it, those games are just too long to play.
    18:28
    That's the problem. They're safer games. It's easier to keep the ball in play. So what do they got to do to compensate for that? Well, they got to make the game longer for better players. So I don't envy designers these days and people doing rules of just trying to please everybody. It cannot be easy. And I think generally they have been doing a good job. You know, it is what it is. The other thing that's interesting is, you know, in the rules they have this, like, carryover kind of like an RPG system where, like, it's almost like hitting continue on a game or getting more lives. Like you play a game, you get so far in the game, but you save your, you kind of save your character's progress. So then when you play the game again, the game kind of becomes easier and you can progress further into the game. I think they're trying to solve for like people who whine on forums and complain like, Oh, there's all this stuff in a game. I never get to see it because I can't get that far in a game. So again, this is Stern trying to solve for that by saying, yeah, you will eventually see the wizard mode. It might take, you know, Nick and Kevin five games. It might take you 50 games or whatever, but everyone's going to see it. And it's, and again, I think that's, that's interesting. I don't know until I really play it and spend time. If I don't know how that plays out, I, as a player, I worry about the dumbing down of games. I think if you can thread that needle where you can make the people who are complaining and saying that happy, but you don't compromise what we take as pinball and trying to beat it in one go. I think that's great. If you can find a way to balance and do both, that's great. If you start taking away and dumbing these games down and making it too easy, then I think it's a problem. So just going to have to see how it plays out. And a word to people who say that on the forums, and I'll say this before I say it again, the worst thing that can happen to me, and maybe you might not share that, is beating a game. Being a game is like the kiss of death. because then I'm ready to move on. There's nothing left to do. Sure, I'll play it. I've beaten Zeppelin. I still have. I love the game. But I don't play it as much anymore because there's less for me to do and try to accomplish. I'm trying to go after other games I haven't beaten. So as a player, the more years you have in a pinball, the more time you spend on it, you will get better. You will get farther, and that's the reward. Everybody wants things instant, easy, baby, and crying and complaining.
    20:48
    I just hope that they're careful in catering to that crowd and not the cost of everybody else. So there you go. That's my long-form opinion on what we've seen so far. Yeah, just to tag on to some of the stuff you were saying, as far as the logging in and the progress, I like that. That's a feature that P3 has had save states, and it's been interesting.
    21:11
    I can't speak to exactly how it's implemented on Venom yet because I haven't played it, but I like it in, say, Weird Al. I can play Weird Al to a certain point and say I get to wizard mode I can save it there and then when I just want to do that speedrun wizard mode I can it's kind of like an earned version of Escape Nublar on Jurassic Park but you had to go through and actually do the work to get there and play it yourself so I like that I do like that it makes games more accessible because not everybody's a really good player and they want to play and see different things so uh i like that they're trying to to find solutions to that because for you and i we could always just like if i want to just play the game i can just not log in with my stern insider and try to do it from from the ground up or i can try to log in and continue my progress level up my my characters and then one thing you didn't mention that is that i like that it has like the unlockables at the end too so there's three characters that you can't play until you unlock them by beating the game. So we saw little hints of this in the past, like Metallica, when you beat the game, you would unlock another song, right? So there's interesting features in that. That, to me, is more interesting from an Insider Connected standpoint versus leaderboards and things like that. More like gameplay feature-y kind of things for me personally. So I like that.
    22:42
    Yeah, look, I think this game has a lot of potential. We'll just see how it comes down to execution. I'm way more interested, after watching the reveal and some gameplay stream, I'm way more interested in this game than I was watching Foo Fighters. That's not a nod to Foo, it's just that's what I feel at this time, right? And what I know about myself and what I look for in a game. The other interesting thing that I caught on the stream is that they said they're like at .72 on the code. it's really interesting to me because Venom, and people get rumors wrong, but everyone said like Venom was going to be when Bond came out it was going to be Venom and then the story kind of was, and this is not like I don't know if Stern ever said this but it sounds like they pushed up Bond because of the 60th, to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Bond, so then it's like okay well Venom's going to be the next game and then Fu comes out and now Venom comes out and so i i expected given that and given hearing about venom longer than these other games i expected that they'd be at code like 1.0 already and like it'd be like 98 done and we're just seeing like you know polish and bug fixes but when i hear 0.72 it's like man that's uh there's a lot missing from the game right now there's a lot of ways to go in this game so i don't i don't it could take a year before we even see what this game is going to be and uh dwight on code has always hit or miss he does a lot of things that i love and he does a lot of things i just do not like at all so it is it is just like i don't know what we're gonna get with that so yeah it's a huge wait and see with the uh i was i was watching some of the stream and then they had um the the dude from stern with the long hair was playing and he started a multi-ball and got like two billion points and i was like oh there's the dwight scoring you know everybody else had like 30 million and he's just like just blew right past all of them so yeah i that's why i i definitely will need to play this before you know any consideration of of buying um but yeah i think uh one other point i wanted to make was the the safe the quote-unquote safe shots i think they're they're there's some trade-offs there like they're they're trying to like yeah it might be easy to make the shot but you got to react quick because like as soon as you make the shot you don't have time for the ball to come back it's automatically like firing out of those cannons so um yeah you got to be on your toes it's not going to be like a slow like casual game i like a fast frenetic game kind of like uh black knight you know it reminds me of that a little bit from a gameplay perspective except the shots are a little further back so it looks more forgiving so yeah it's like a fast flowy game but you you're also going to pay the price if you're not paying attention yeah look it It looks fun. That's my impression right now. It looks fun. I hope it lives up to the potential that I see for this game. And then who knows, maybe I get a game that I just didn't expect to ever own. It's not kind of geared towards me necessarily in terms of theme. Yeah, in the current market, I feel no need to run out and buy any games right now. If anything, you're better off waiting and buying at use because prices on the second-hand market have chilled out and you can get it. I know, Nick, you'd prefer to buy a new Mbox usually, but I have no problem buying a used game for sure. Yeah, well, totally. I do prefer the new Mbox, but there's no good reason to run out and buy a game. And somebody put it in the chat that they played it at Comic-Con. It's at .83 code. There's no reason to go out and buy a game that's at .83 code. There going to be problems There going to be a lot of things missing Look at Bond I Like I be very cautious of buying a game this early when it kind of it still somewhat of a shell of a game At least knowing how Stern uses numbers and code that means it very early to me So, as always, you know, Buffalo Pinball advises that unless you're trying to get an LE and you've got to act fast, the best thing to do is don't get the first batch of games, right? Like let the people get the first batch of games. They're going to discover issues with it. Like, you know, if there's something that's doing damage on a play field, some part that's breaking, you know, you want to be like in wave two or three of, uh, purchasing a game. So that's the smart thing. Do it. Yep. All right. Um, that was the, the big news. Uh, let's, let's stop and thank our partners. Nick, uh, you can do the honors this month.
    27:18
    All right. We want to thank, These are the folks that make the stream possible. Extremely grateful for them, and these are products that we're happy to highlight. So let's start off with our premier partner, Pinstitium. Pinstitium lights, the lighting kits for your pinball machine controlled by iOS or Android. Tons of functionality in that app. I love the new low-profile atoms that they have that they put out. I think that they're slick. I think that they're a great lighting solution. So if you've got a darker pinball machine, and oddly enough, even though there's more LEDs than ever in pinball machines, they're still, especially Stern, they're releasing games that are pretty dark if you're playing in a not-well-lit place. And especially if you have a game that has great artwork, you want that artwork to pop, so I highly recommend Pinstadium Lights. Other partners to highlight really quickly is Comet Pinball for LEDs. Flippin' Out, if you're going to buy a pinball machine, head over to FlippinOutPinball.com. pinball edu go to pinball raffle.org for your chance to win a pinball machine almost every month and to support charity titan pinball for silicone rings uh pinballs not pinball machines but pinballs uh and other other cool accessories uh pinside.com is a great place to look at to sell games to read about new games that come out and weird mods and all that good stuff JerseyJackPinball.com, makers of the most beautiful pinball machines on the planet. And then, last but not least, Multimorphic.com. All right. Back to that hot news. Let's move on to the second big announcement of the month. It is Centaur. So there's been speculations. And so this is from Haggis. Haggis, this is their third game. The first was Kelts. The second was the Fathom revisited remake. and it was long rumored that Centaur would be their third game and that came to be true when they announced this on the 5th of July. So lots to unpack here. So Centaur Revisited is going to be available in two limited editions. The Beast Edition has $250 available at $15,000 Australian dollars. That translates to just over $10,000 US for Centaur. Okay, this is like an 80s. 80s pinball machine. Okay. And the Oblivion Edition is 50 units at a price of $25,000 Australian dollars. That is nearly $17,000 U.S. dollars, plus sales tax and shipping. So I add that all up. it includes shipping to the US but then you have to pay from I think Planetary Pinball in the US to your house so yeah there you go so Centaur they both have toppers which I don't love they're kind of tacky from what I'm seeing they may look better in person but they're still toppers on a Centaur I also don't like that they're putting color lights in Centaur. Everybody loves Centaur because it's mostly black and white with hints of red in the original. And now they're color bombing out the lights.
    30:39
    Even the toppers has colors all over them. It just seems like... I think you guys missed the point here. Yeah, it definitely seems like they did not focus on the right things when they were updating these games. there's like a color play field option for I think only for the super limited edition one so gross dude that looks gross where it doesn't work man that's like that's oh my god like yeah it's like you guys don't they don't understand what made centaur like that's not a centaur anymore that's just so whatever yeah so it's got you can play two versions of code the classic and 2.0 code which, honestly, we talked about this last month with the, what was it,
    31:32
    Earthshaker? No, Whirlwind 2.0. You know, I've not been impressed by any 2.0 code, really. They're fine, but the classics are classics for a reason, and there's no need to update these 2.0 codes. If I want to play Centaur, I just want to play Centaur. You know what I mean? I also like that they didn't even align the flippers in this promo photo that's nice, seems to be a trend but they've got the LCD screens and the apron here for when you play the updated code so you can make sense of the rules God, I do not like that color at all it also has these red edged plastic protectors around everything which just adds way too much color to the playfield, in my opinion honestly this is obviously a subjective thing but this looks terrible yeah like i'm with you kevin like it's just swinging a miss yeah that and it's i think it's playing out in the sales because these they're only making 300 of these total and you can still totally buy them they're not they did not sell out so um they're expensive i think they missed the mark on what people want out of centaur um and yeah it's just it's just ridiculous the other thing you need to think about is you know they're still building fathoms and from what i can tell they have not been building them at a rapid pace so is this the the case where they're running out of money to build fathoms so they had to get this out and they're using sales of this game to fund the previous game i can't say but it's that's what it seems like to me and i don't know it just seems like a lot of time has gone by um they haven't made they haven't sold a lot of uh fathoms the fathoms that they have sold aren't holding their value so i think people are like a little more gun shy buying games from them um i don't know that's those those are my concerns those are my thoughts when i when i saw this game what do you think maybe maybe i missed i was trying to I had just a lot of information to read the chat. So is there a straight up version that is just like the original without the colors and stuff? Can you get one that looks like it is like I can trick somebody and say this is an original. Sort of. I think, cause I think even the, the original has like the upgraded. Yeah. That's this one here.
    33:58
    So that's the like black and white version. So there's no color in the art, but they have like all the little red edges around the plastics and stuff. Oh, that's weird. If you're going to do a recreation, you've got to be faithful to it. If you want to do another model where it's like, okay, this is our take on it, it's adjacent to it, that's fine, but that's just an odd choice to me.
    34:21
    Yeah, the... I was just going to say something, I forgot. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like this is not what the market wants right now, And I wonder how long Haggis can keep going if this game doesn't sell out.
    34:40
    Because there's so many games that came out earlier this year that have already taken away people's money.
    34:46
    We'll talk about this later during the Q&A. I think people are just not buying as many games as they were during the pandemic anyways. And then you're trying to relaunch this Centaur, which tends to sell. the original it does not sell for as much as as fathom did and they're trying to sell it for more than they sold their fathom for oh the other thing i wanted to mention was the the 2.0 code so the other thing that i think is making people gun shy on hag is is that they they with um with fathom they launched the 2.0 code but it was only available i think to the collector's edition buyers and not the classic edition but then later like a month or so ago they said oh yeah anybody can get the 2.0 code so it was kind of a to me that felt like a bait and switch where you're saying all right buy the super expensive version it's the only way you're going to be able to play the 2.0 code uh if you buy the cheaper version you're only going to get the classic code so probably got a number of people to step up to that more expensive version and then they they've flipped the switch later on when theoretically they need money to to keep the business going. Again, this is all speculation, but it makes sense from what I've seen of the, of the company. And then, you know, so that, that erodes trust in your customer base, right? So the, the diehard Haggis fans may feel slighted after something like that. Do you agree? This is, this is, this is simple. If you want this game, buy it when they're ready to ship it. They say, hey, there's no deposit. There's no this. Like, yes, we have it. Got it right now. You pay. We'll ship it out immediately. Okay, that's a safe bet. Be very careful. Very careful. Because there is, again, I think we're trying to be careful when we say this. We've seen problems in the past where people have done this and it's led to bad things. It's not saying that this is going on in haggis, but we've learned to be very wary of, you know, pinball machine companies, especially smaller ones. And so the stunts and tricks that they got to pull to make things work could be going out here. I don't, I don't know. I'm cautious. I listen, I stick with Stern and I stick with Jersey Jack, right? Like I'm very careful of my money. Um, you do you, but the best thing to do, if you, if you want one of these, I would just say only order it. If it's ready and they're ready to ship it is the smart thing to do. Yeah. There's, there's some talk in chat about, you know, RLM says there's more than 300 whales that will buy just about anything well they haven't bought all these uh um centaurs so i think that says a lot because i think you're right i think there are there's just enough people with money and pinball who want something that everybody else doesn't have that most games you're going to be able to sell about 300 of the fact that this hasn't sold and that is that is true but there's also now more options on the market more things on the market kind of compete. So that might've been true a few years ago, but now it's, it's harder for that to, to, to be a thing, especially when as you cited with things that are going on with fathom. So, you know, maybe they're banking on that. Like, Oh, we'll solve 300 because it worked in the past. Well, you know, things change over time, right? The economy changes, your competition changes. It's a interesting watching it play out. Yeah. Spooky used to sell out every release they did too. And you know, Scooby, you can still buy those. So things are changing and things have changed. So that's where we're at with Fathom and Haggis and Centaur. All right, let's move on to item number three on the rundown. It is the Multimorphic update. So they just sent out an update. So they do a semi-regular email update. This went out to everybody on their mailing list, and it got reposted on Pinside, giving an update. So I'll read some of it. It's pretty long, so I won't read the whole thing. But Jerry says that the last couple of months were a huge turning point for P3 production. We reached our staffing goals, brought our cabinet inventory back up to match our stockpiled sub-assemblies, hired a production manager to focus on manufacturing efficiencies and help upper management dedicate more time to other aspects of the business. As a result, we are now shipping more machines per month than our original estimates for this timeframe. In May, we were approximately 16 weeks behind our shipping estimates for existing P3 orders when we brought that down to about 10 weeks. So they're starting to catch up a little bit.
    39:09
    Lead times on new machine orders have come down significantly, too, to about six months. Customers who ordered in the last few months expecting a 12-month wait will likely receive their machines much faster than that. So he's talking about full machines here. So that's one of the things that gets kind of confusing because he ends up talking about machines versus modules, and I'll try to clarify that as we go here. um customers uh let's see we'll continue to bring down the lead time likely until we release our next game kit at that point we expect it to jump up again so if you've been considering a p3 and don't want to get stuck behind a long queue now's the time a good place to ramp up your order which makes sense so it's like you had you had the weird al uh everybody bought in for weird al you had a bump during final resistance and now it's starting to chill out they're starting to catch up but you know anytime a company announces a new game there's there's increased demand so um now might be a good time uh as expected our production ramp also cleared the backlog on existing game kit orders excluding final resistance all customers receiving their p3s in the next few months should have little to no wait for additional game kits so the game kits themselves they're caught up on so so that's when an existing so say i just want uh to add uh canon lagoon to my P3, there's not a huge wait time for modules anymore. You can just go up and add it and you'll have those pretty quick. Final Resistance is the only game kit awaiting with production challenges remaining. We expect to begin shipping Final Resistance game kits earlier this month, but we're waiting on replacements for some parts that didn't meet our specs. So it'll be another few it may be another few weeks before Final Resistance production begins. So they're catching up on everything but Final Resistance, it sounds like, which is good. It's a bummer that Final Resistance is delayed, but they're continuing software development. They said they're testing our 1.0 release, which is great to hear, considering we were just talking about Venom, and it's only at .83 or whatever it is right now. We're looking at 1.0 for Final Resistance. And they're also going to have Weird Al and Final Resistance at Southern Pride Game Room Expo in Atlanta from July 28th to the 30th. So if you want to get your hands on those games, you can check them out over there. You can see some of the final resistance parts from the email that they sent out, plastics and speaker kits, and there's some ramps it looks like, and rails and things like that. So parts are coming in. They're just getting everything in order and shipping these out. I'd much rather have them get it right and then ship it out as good as it can be. so looking forward to that can't wait to get mine as soon as I get mine I'll be streaming it so finally gonna have a Scott Denise in a game in my collection which I'm stoked for yeah they are saying yeah if you want to buy one of these from the show you can they're giving priority to people who have already placed an order for a p3 but and I think one of those is gone already but there might still be one available if you want to take one home from southern fried check it out so that is our Multimorphic update.
    42:22
    Similarly, another Multimorphic-related update, Bingo Podcast from For Amusement Only Games. They released updates for all of their new P3 games, all of their existing P3 games, I should say. So new code, version 2.0 for Drain, adds in Metal System, so they basically added achievements to all of their games. So they're in Drain, Ranger in the Ruins, uh flipper foxtrot and silver falls drained has the metals new light shows and enhanced performance new options for network and time network time and vampire battle progress retention and enhanced indicators for item completion progress uh ranger in the ruins metals light shows new secrets and unique integrations um filter foxtrot this is the one i don't have but again the metals have been added new options for note speed adjustments uh performance improvements and light shows and then in silver falls they have the metal system in there a new option to remove the crosstown shot requirement which can be one of the the trickiest shots on the game uh ask me how i know the uh uh so that reduces a barrier for play for folks who can't uh who struggle hitting that shot and then again light shows attract displays and enhance performance so the only one i haven't played that I have is Silver Falls. I played Ranger in the Ruins a bunch, and I played Drained on stream a lot. Had a lot of fun going for those medals, so that's a nice improvement there.
    43:53
    Let's jump over to JJP. With JJP, they have started shipping their collector's editions. About a few weeks ago, they started shipping them overseas, and now they're shipping to the U.S., so if you're waiting on a collector's edition of Godfather, it's on the way or has started to arrive, which is great to see. Good to see those rolling off the line. All blinged out. The other thing that's cool is, uh, so they've been doing this, um, promotion with Mark Tremonti and, uh, and slash. They both recorded audio for the game. And Mark has, uh, has a charity fundraiser going for, um, his, his album. And he did a full album of singing Frank Sinatra songs. And, uh, part of that was a speaks lawfully love. a 7-inch that he released with Slash and they signed him. Those are all sold out.
    44:46
    So if you want to support that, you can go to TremontiSingsSinatra.com. So this is all a collaboration with JJP. What's cool is that you can try to win a Godfather pinball machine. So if you find this page, I had to Google it. Like, I didn't find it linked from the main page. Maybe it's there and I just missed it.
    45:05
    Maybe it's in the nav or something. But if you just Google Godfather pinball giveaway, you'll find it. or Godfather Pinball Raffle. And you can just put your name and info in, and maybe you'll win a Godfather. And Nick and I both love those games. So great one to get in your collection, especially if you can get it for free.
    45:26
    Let's talk about that. Let's talk about Godfather for a moment. Okay, yeah. Number one, there was an update in code, a couple updates in code, and very happy with those updates. There's some nice polish. There's some important bug fixes.
    45:43
    And, yeah, I think that maybe one more thing of polish on there, for example, like when you're beating up the bad guy, like there should be punching noises or something. I know the lights flash, but that's absent. There's absent, like, sound when you get an extra. There's some sounds missing from an extra ball. It does say extra ball. So there's some small things, and people mention, like, spinner sounds. But I continue just to be absolutely impressed with this game. it is it's always like a one more game game for me and i've had mine since early april and i i still play it i still like it as much and i think you know for me um when i've played a game this much and had this game for these many months i'm really happy to say that and i'm happy to kind of continue to report back to the chat there's always games that you you maybe play early on and you like and then you kind of like maybe it dips over time but um that's not the case with this game um i was like looking at game sales and i find this really interesting i don't want to get too much in the reasons why but um you know this game's been shipping i think end of march is hard shipping because you got years around then there's only if i look at the number of owners for the Godfather LE, there's only 78. That is crazy low for how good I think this game is. Look, they might be a sponsor, but I don't have to buy any of their games. I don't have to talk about any of their games. I have no under zero obligation. I want to be very clear.
    47:21
    I'm happy to go on record for this because Kevin and I said Pirates was amazing. We loved Pirates. and then it didn't sell well and then you couldn't buy Pirates and they may never run the game again and now the game's a $20,000 game and so many people would love to own it, right?
    47:38
    I don't know what's going on. I have my theories. I know it's obviously this is a $12,000 game versus what was Guns N' Roses when it came out, Kev? It was like $9,500 or something. $9,500, yeah. Yeah, for the LE and then they bumped it up to $10,500. You know how many Guns N' Roses sold for LE? A lot. I'm just wondering. Yeah, so there's over 1,000.
    47:59
    All right, so I think 78 has got to be a really low number right now. I'm wondering, and I said this before. I've said this, I think, on the forum. I think I said this on the podcast. I wonder if we're gearing up for another pirate scenario where they're just like they'll sell a bunch, and then they'll move on to the next game and out order parts. I think all companies get to a moment, and they see how the game's selling, and they're like, do we spend more time on this game? Do we order more parts? Because we've got to order parts in bulk. Parts are hard to source. Or do we move on to the next game? Because they've got, like, Richie's got a game. They've got, what's, sorry. Mark. Mark? Yeah. Mark who? Mark Seiden. So, like, they've got other games in the hopper that have got to come out.
    48:45
    As when I go on record early, it's a great game. I understand why maybe it's not selling as well, but I'm also shocked at how good the game is versus the number of owners right now. Now, CE owners are a different story. There's actually 94 CE owners, and CEOs are starting to roll out.
    49:05
    So we will see theirs. But great game. Don't sleep on it. Play it if you can. I know there's a lot of good games, and there's a lot of buying options. I get that. But I don't want to hear anybody crying if they stop making this game, and then this game shoots up and people want it, right? Like, go out and spend some time on it. Go out and spend some time on it now. If you think you might be interested in the game, find a friend, play it, look at videos. All right? If you buy it and you don't like it, that's on you. But my thing is, like, I am super happy I got this and not Foo. No, not to Foo. Foo I always love. If I see it in somebody's collection or location, I'm happy to play a couple games. But Foo is never the type of game where I want to play one more game. And there's no there there for Foo. But for this game, after I'm done playing it, I think about, I kind of think about it. I think about strategies. I think of multiple ways to approach it. You know, as people say that, look, sometimes JJP games really shine when you get in their home and you understand it. It might seem chaotic at first because everything's happening all the time and at once.
    50:08
    But that's my thing to try to help. Look, every game's not for anybody. I think I wrote a pretty decent review of this game on Pinside. I don't necessarily do it on the podcast, but I tried to highlight why somebody might not like this game, but why it appeals to me. I think it's fantastic, and, yeah, we'll see if my prediction is correct over time.
    50:30
    Awesome. Oh, by the way, one more help to everybody, so I don't forget. I did a fix to mine. I noticed that the ramp that comes up and down a lot in the game, when I first got it that the ramp flap like hovered above the playfield a little bit so it didn't make contact and I'd watch it come up and down because I'd worried about it doing damage to the playfield and there is some thick mylar there however after like a couple hundred games that flap gets bent a little bit so it was starting to dig into the mylar and what I did to solve that issue and so far I've only had it on there for like a week is the the solution by the way the solutions in the owner's thread that I did. Right? So, again, I'm not saying this is perfect or anything. I'm saying after a week, it's working for me. I bought this thin neoprene foam, and I put the foam under the ramp, right by the ramp lip so you can't really see the foam. It's very thin. It's like one 32th of an inch, 32nd of an inch. I can't say these things right, guys. But it's very thin, and that's what, when it slams down, that's what's making contact with the play field not a sharp flap so you know maybe they'll do that from the factory going forward but i wouldn't count on it i think that um if somebody asks is cliffy gonna do anything i don't i want to wait to cliffy look you can this was seven dollars on um amazon so you can see that yeah that's a good picture you see how that flap is now floating That is that thin piece of foam I put there.
    52:06
    It's held up. It hasn't, knock on wood, it hasn't fallen off. It doesn't affect the ball negatively at all because, like I said, when I first had the game, the ramp actually, the flap was actually floating like that by itself. It just gets bent over time. And apologies. My first fix was to put double Mylar on there, but I'm like, that doesn't make sense. First of all, it looks terrible. It really does. and second of all it's just going to delay the inevitable of the that sharp flap digging through the mylar and hitting the play field so i did actually end up pulling the sticker off and then putting a vinyl clear sticker so it looks better i do kind of obsessively watch that because i'm still worried about maybe that adhesive falling off or whatever but um if you get the game pay attention to that area try to come up with some solution that what is working for me so far Hope that helps you guys out There you go Nick is your go guy on play field protection I would trust him with all of my my play field uh concerns Cause he he like what is this happening on your game? I'm like, I haven't even looked at that.
    53:06
    I have a natural identifying, like where things will wear on a game and damage the play field. I have a talent for it. I'm not going to lie. It's a, it's, it's your superpower. I would say. All right. Uh, let's go to, wanted to talk about the rumor mill a little bit specifically indiana jones so this came up on the last thing somebody says i can't stand weak flippers on jgps the flippers are not weak on uh on godfather at all yep they've significantly i don't like i don't like weak flippers either my friend trust me yeah it's from uh on toy story and and godfather they've significantly improved honestly like i play pirates and i don't feel like the flippers are weak on pirates i never thought they were weak on dialed in and only the only one they really dialed in dialed in totally yeah no i i can rip those shots on mine like i don't um even toy story the shots are i have to mentally from playing a stern to playing that like uh like even toy story but like the other games i have to calibrate my mind of where to hit on the flipper now like that's less true on godfather Like, my – I saw the – every game system you go, you go from a Stern to a Williams to a Spooky, right? Like, there's going to be a little bit of calibration. They're different systems. But the difference between where I had to calibrate and adjust on Stern from Godfather now is much smaller than it is on any of those other games we mentioned. That's fair. I don't want to dwell on the flipper thing because I get tired of running over the same topics over and over again that's a tired meme and trope but they're better but anyways my whole thing my action item for everybody is go and play it judge for yourself see if you can see what I see the flipper will be obvious but go and play it don't wait 6 months to get around for it if you're remotely interested in this game, because who knows what's available to get. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to pan out. I just saw this happen with Pirates. All right? We tried to warn you guys then. Not strong enough. I didn't know that, you know, they would never make the game again or they would end production, like, six months after they started shipping. But because it's happened before, here's another game that I think there's something really special about it. I don't see it selling... I don't see it selling great like it should be. For whatever reason. but I'd say go spend some time and go look give it a hard look, that's all yep, super fun game and by the way, prices are not going to tank on that game if there's not a lot of them made that's only true when there's a ton of games made and then people start selling it, if there's not a lot made and then, because it is a good game it will get scooped up slowly rather than rapidly like Pirates only goes up There's one direction of pirates and that's off. Pirate stonks. The Godfather, we were talking about Venom earlier and all the cool like shot pass and diverters and things like that. Godfather's got all that going on too, which is another aspect that I really love of that. The play field is super fun. The shots return in different ways. It keeps you guessing and it keeps, you know, you've got a limited amount of things in space you can do in a pinball machine with all those diverters and stuff. It keeps it interesting. So definitely highly recommend it. I'll echo Nick's sentiment. Get out there, give it a shot, play it, see what you like. See if you like it. All right. You want to talk, Indy?
    56:39
    Yeah, very briefly. So was it Nap Arcade that had it? Yeah, yeah. So I think the gist of it is a couple weeks ago, Nap Arcade said that allegedly somebody has secured the license to Indiana Jones. So it's looking like we might get an Indiana Jones machine. I have no idea from, you know, it's most likely probably Sterner or Jersey Jack, but I have no idea from whom. I'm just very excited, even though the last Indiana Jones 5 is total fucking garbage. And I left the theater absolutely depressed. I was depressed for about 24 hours. But I'm excited for the prospect of an Indiana Jones machine. You know, in this day and age, we're firing on all cylinders from lighting in games to rules to LCD to really good sound systems. So I'm excited. I'd like to see, you know, kind of like what Pirates did. There's five Indiana Jones films. There's five Pirates films. Sort of like in that theme where we – I'm sorry. You know, I actually went back. I'm not going to try to get too – I actually went back and watched Crystal Skull a few days after watching Indiana Jones 5. And even though Crystal Skull turns into a cartoon at certain points, it's still Indiana Jones to me. And that makes Indiana Jones 5 makes the Crystal Skull look like a goddamn masterpiece. Wow, hot take. Hot take.
    58:05
    What about the Stern Indiana Jones pinball machine, though? We had some hot takes on that. Garbage.
    58:12
    It is like, if somebody's like, what is chopping wood in pinball? What do you guys mean by that? I'd be like, I can tell you. Or I can show you. Go play Indiana Jones from Stern in 2008. wait let me guess let me guess that's a Lonnie Robb game that game is is maybe Stern's worst game it's it is like when you if you start getting into discussion of what Stern's worst game and it's just a crime uh that they butchered in Jones the the cool thing is the arc multi-ball that is cool other than that it's just garbage there's a reason why you never hear that game imagine because it's never see it yeah you never see it I mean think about that it's a great theme indiana jones right like you never see it you never see it mentioned like god that they they just really we should i i would love to spend really i i don't i wouldn't say love but it would be interesting to spend time playing it again and just talking in detail like why what makes the pinball machine not work like and maybe it's just a simple look look it's just a grind fest of hitting the boring shot over and over and over like on endlessly maybe it might just be as simple as that the play field's not great anyways i i'm getting derailed yeah you got you got a lot of hot takes going on in the chat then uh all right so yeah i don't want to do it but i think we need to talk about punny factory again you want to do it you want to do it you love it you love this is why you got up this morning that's really why we're the only reason we're doing the show like venom's cool but let's talk about funny funny factory so after the four years or five years however long we've been talking about this damn game they finally shipped a couple um they were at northwest at the northwest pinball show pinball and arcade show um they shipped one to an arcade and another one to to a private owner and uh you know it was a little sad but also not a huge surprised to see that oh my god look at this play field so the art looks like the art didn't adhere to the wood properly and it's just coming up all over the place is that those white things that we're seeing is yeah so that's like like art lifting out there's a better one down here that shows it really bad like that one's really bad you see it just like that's just the art separating totally from the play field i gotta say kevin i i'm just shocked to see this yeah who could have possibly seen this coming no one could have like no reasonable person would have ever expected this to happen this is what an anomaly yeah i mean look at if you ever have uh trouble and you need to track down which wire is causing the trouble good luck because they're all black why why do you know what all these football companies waste time getting different colored strands and different color combinations of wires so you can troubleshoot and track things down nah just make them all black it's so much easier so you know and why give yourself any slack when you hold the head down either one one other thing i just noticed like why is there a uh there's a pool noodle in here wrapped in bubble wrap that's like their their shipping solution like okay uh yeah there's some oh you look at that i'm sorry people listening on the podcast look at this is uh oh my god that playfield is done all right so nick you're like the the playfield connoisseur describe what you're seeing to the listeners at home i've honestly never seen this this is i've never seen this this is just total how would i it looks like somebody dropped acid on the playfield and it's just kind of crinkling up and peeling off like it is that is just inexcusable that's not like some quick wear that's just pure garbage cheapness not knowing what you're doing this game is total fucking trash.
    62:07
    A pox on anybody who buys it and they will get a fucking pox on them. You're buying this game. You're fucking out of your mind. And you deserve what you get at this point. I'm fucking serious. I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired of talking about the most obvious thing that we've seen for years. Somebody fucking bought this, Kevin, right? And then they complained on Pinside? Fuck you. You deserve that.
    62:29
    Tell us that story. You got that queued up? Are you prepared to do that? Which one? Oh, his story that he posted? Yes. Yeah, I can read it if we want. All right, here we go.
    62:39
    Be wary of buying a game from hashtag pinballadventures. I got the very first engraved. Yeah, no fucking shit. You think? I got the very first engraved one of ten limited editions Pony Factory pinball games, and it's absolute horse shit. The play field looks like someone threw salt in it before they clear-coated it. That's a good way to describe it. Uh-huh. The game's display didn't work out of the box. I had to wait six days for them to ship a part to fix it. So many problems on this game that I am still fixing them and even re-engineering other poor choices they made when designing the game. Andrew McVane's solution was to send me another new in-box game, a standard edition, that I could swap out the play fields by applying five connectors and take the standard edition game to Southern Pride Gaming Expo in Atlanta, set it up for him, and hopefully resell it. Jesus. Well, you got a fucking homework assignment, And now you're an employee at the Punny Factory. What is the stupid pinball company called? Pinball Adventures. Yeah, now you're an employee at Pinball Adventures. Congrats on beta testing their garbage product. Yep. That changed recently to, we're going to send you an unpopulated play field, and that's it. The advertised, quote-unquote, pipe handles are missing. My plexiglass back glass, I think it's supposed to be on my plexiglass back glass. I could go on and on posting pics that would make you ask WTF what they were thinking uh from the highest mountain with a lying POS Andrew McBain is please be really careful buying a game from them because this is what they think is acceptable to send the very first customer of their very first limited edition $7,000 game so this is a guy like this person who posted this is sharing a post to somebody who was banned from Pinside because he's too much of an asshole so this guy is like he's terrible to begin with. So it's like, they're like perfect for each other really, these two guys. Zero sympathy for this guy. Zero. This guy got banned from Pinside because he's an asshole. And then he's the first one to buy this garbage and is shocked that it's a piece of garbage. Like, absolutely deserve to lose your money, sir. You guys are perfect for each other. Alright? It's a match made in heaven. I find this hilarious. I find it absolutely fucking hilarious. And I love to see it so keep on keep on buying these posts i want to see all the owners i want to see everybody i think we've seen all the owners we're not going to see anymore that's all in some ways i hope so but like in some ways you also deserve this like all right so uh in our in our never-ending uh uh battle to uh share our thoughts and opinions and our expertise, our subject matter expertise, all things pinball. I wanted to introduce a new segment this month. And this is, you know, you remember a few months ago we did a segment about the pox that was on the pinball community, the pinball hobbyist community, where everybody decided they needed to get matching towels on their pinball machines because, or what was it, the pin whatever, the yoga mats, the pin shields. that, okay, we're going to, this company's going to take a yoga mat, cut it to size for a pinball machine, slap their logo on it, and they're going to upcharge you three times what a yoga mat would charge. In theory, okay, it's protecting my play field, but the pin shields leave marks all over your glass. So you take the thing off and you've got to clean your glass anyway. So why are you wasting your money?
    66:15
    The pin shield are towels. The pin shield are yoga mats. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you could possibly scratch it if there's dirt on there. Well, it's got a coating or something on it that leaves stuff on the glass of your pinball machine. So if your goal is to keep the dust off so you don't have to dust your machine, it's not doing you any favors. Yeah.
    66:38
    I'm going to make sure I get on record saying this. There's two legitimate things in my mind. Maybe there's more that I'm missing, all right, about putting a covering on your game. One, if it's getting sun exposure and you're trying to protect the play field from fading, then I understand. Two, if you're like, look, dude, I have a cat and the cat is jumping all over the game and I don't want him on the glass, then I say, I understand that as well. If you're putting it on there just for dust, you're crazier than I am. And that's saying a lot for my OCD. This is somebody who's paranoid. OCD wants everything to be perfect. and I struggle to understand this behavior.
    67:24
    Okay, so along those lines, we digress. I couldn't help myself. There's a new mod on the market that you just need to avoid, and I'm going to bring it over to you now.
    67:35
    I'm going to read for the listeners at home. I'm going to read how these are introduced on Pinside. The thread is titled Luma Legs with a Z, two exclamation points. You need these exclamation points. All right. I'm like, all right, what is this? The luma legs? This guy says I need them. What are they? I'm going in. I'm going in to check this out. You need these in all caps, two exclamation points. I just got my set of luma legs and I can't tell you how incredible they are. Three exclamation points. Check out their website and Facebook. Three exclamation points. You can thank me later. Three exclamation points. The owner is also incredible to work with. Three exclamation points. Yeah, he's getting wrecked in his downvotes. um hard to believe weird wait wait ready here they come oh my god look at that it like checks so many boxes of like things that i don't like in pinball mods i'd say we jumped the shark but that happened a long time ago yeah this is just like bad so this almost seems like it's parody but it's not it does so they're showing a medieval madness pinball machine with legs on it that have cutouts on them that read medieval madness that are lit up with leds and they're these are like 400 for a set of these legs and to get them to work you have to drill holes in the bottom of your pinball machine to run the wiring out the bottom get the fuck out of that i didn't even know that part yes get out it oh jesus christ drill four holes in your pinball machine make it It's super tacky.
    69:06
    Repeat the name of the game on the game. It says Medieval Madness all over this game. You don't need to put the name of the game on the legs.
    69:14
    Stop it. How are you going to know what the game is, though, Kevin? Let's be honest. The room's dark. How are you going to know? How would you ever know? Oh, the backlash, because that's lit up with the name on it, too. That's how. Yeah, so Medieval Madness. Luma legs. Ladies and gentlemen, luma legs. Luma legs. Yeah. these guys just got lit up on Facebook if you're looking for a good time check out the Luma Legs thread on Pinside and it's full of great memes and animated gifs of people just like as I say before, look I'm an advocate for therapy just get therapy at this point lighting up your legs is not going to make anything better alright, seriously I'm a huge advocate for it if you're looking for something There's far better things for you to spend your time and money on than Luma Legs. Okay?
    70:04
    So that's Luma Legs. Pinball mods to avoid. That's the segment. It may come back. We'll see what else crazy stuff pops up. But you definitely don't need those.
    70:14
    All right. I think it's time for some game room updates. You want me to go first or you want to go first?
    70:20
    This is a perfect opportunity for Nick to go to the bathroom. All right. Potty break for Nick. Take your time, Kevin. You and I are going to just chat about my game room updates. All right, so what is new? Oh, I can start with this. So this is a, well, I'll come back to that. We'll talk about it because Nick can probably chime in on this to you. So the first thing I want to show is I got the upgraded Statue of Liberty mod. This is from Measle Mods. So this went into my Godfather. So if you're looking on the left there, that's the stock booty rate plastic. that goes in the back left of your godfather. The limited edition just has the booty, right? The collector's edition has a sculpt on it. But this is cool. This is nice for limited edition owners to upgrade that area of their pinball machine. Here's the mod by itself.
    71:13
    It's nicely painted. I believe it is 3D printed, but it's so nicely painted that it looks great. It comes on the plastic already, so literally all you have to do is unbolt two nuts, and drop this in place and you're good to go the torch lights up which is cool and it's got a like a flickery led bulb in there so it uh it flickers a little bit uh gives you a nice effect in the back left corner of godfather highly recommended it's about a hundred dollars all said and done because you have to get the the mod itself and then there's also a cable you buy that It has a fuse in it that attaches to the power in the back of your JJP. It connects kind of where the back box LED strip is. You put it in between that, and off you go. So that's that.
    72:06
    Kevin, did you get the house for the compound house? I did not. That feels like too much to me. What do you think about the compound house? I think there is the opportunity for somebody to maybe do something in that area because it does feel a little lacking or missing, and the compound is like an important thing. It's got a whole multi-ball center around it, and what's there is – I don't know. There is an opportunity, right? Right. I just saw a post, though, where it's like interfering with the ball's movement the way it is, and people are like, oh, you just shave it down. Like, eh, no, I didn't use it at that point. Nope. So maybe somebody will come along with something that is compelling to get. But, yeah, I get it. I bet Leora's going to do something awesome. He'll probably do a better Statue of Liberty mod, and then I'll have to get that one, too.
    72:56
    It is definitely pronounced booty rate, and I'm going to keep pronouncing it that way every single time. Because it's more fun to say that way. Okay.
    73:06
    All right, what else? I got an Atari VCS. so Atari is weird now but they make this little mini computer called the VCS and it went on sale for Memorial Day so I may have actually had it before our last I know this would have been after our last podcast I think no before but I don't think I mentioned it so it's cool I don't really have an interest in so it's basically a mini computer that they have their own Linux operating system on and I just modded it to be a little like PC that I can use when I want to play games PC games so I have Windows 10 on there a bunch of emulators and stuff like that so it's a cool little uh desktop edition because i run a mac on my day-to-day computing and so if a game comes out on steam or if i want an emulator that's pc only i like to have that um available so it's a it's been a fun little thing to tinker with modding it out and like hacking it a little bit to get the uh get windows 10 on there so if you're looking for a little mini pc it's pretty cool i mean you know i'm a sucker for atari stuff So that's why I went for it. And mostly I've been playing Legend of Zelda. I mentioned it last month. I'm still hooked on it. I went after last night. I'm like almost to the end.
    74:18
    You know, I'm not going to give any spoilers, but you kind of you kind of know how Zelda games go. So I'm at the end about to like go and maybe do the big final battle. And I was like, let me see how long I've been playing this game. I have over 100 hours in this game. I could not believe it. Like very rarely do I play a game for 100 hours. but this game it does not feel at all like I've played this game that much it's just like so incredible I love a good Zelda game I love the last one this one's even better having a blast so highly recommended I mean everybody likes Zelda so go play Zelda if you haven't last but not least I wanted to mention that I went to Past Times Arcade I think I teased this on the last game room update but I got to go out to Past Times Arcade in Northeast Ohio Gerrard, Ohio. We played some amazing stuff. Knight Rider. They have Humpty Dumpty there. If you don't know the history of Humpty Dumpty, it's the first pinball machine with flippers on it. They're in a weird spot, but there are flippers and you can actually play it. I've seen Humpty Dumpty's at other places, like the Strong Museum has one, but it's just sitting there so you can look at it. I don't think it actually works. Here you can walk up, you can play it. Basically playing your way through the history of pinball and arcade games which is really really fun um we got to play computer space which is the first ever arcade game ever released so this everybody kind of thinks pong was the first arcade game no it's actually computer space and it's there and you can play it um so it was cool too because i went with my son so i get to like share some history of pinball and arcade with him because he's a he's a big gamer too so that's him playing computer space i got to play this is the if you've ever seen me stream and there's the play field on my wall this is the the play field from the atarians i actually got to play the actual game atari pinball machines are terrible they are so bad but it's fun to be able to play them right like i would never own one i love the art that's why i have the play field on my wall but i would not have this game taking up room in my arcade but the fact that you can go there and play rare pieces of history are super fun and you know weird like international games with crazy inserts and this was my favorite uh I think this is an Italian game. And it said, instead of multi-ball, it says time for several, several balls. This is so funny. We played ringer, which is a cool like EM, uh, arcade game. And then I played galactic tank force and got a multi-ball and got 1.3 billion points. So, uh, there you go. And we had some of the, the candy, uh, soda bottle thing. So good times cannot recommend it enough. The, uh, the past times arcade in Girard, Ohio, definitely check it out. Had a blast. We'll be back. Anytime we can make it out that way, I'm definitely stopping. So that's what I've been up to. Nick, what have you been up to?
    77:10
    Speaking of Duke Electric Tank Force, I just want to see how many of those have sold. It says 20 so far. That's a surprisingly high number. Yeah, I've not been paying attention to the – I'm kind of over it right now.
    77:22
    You know, why bother? But so, all right, here's an update for me. Let's see. I got to go I was out in Colorado specifically Denver but I also went up to Boulder and I met up with Ryan from Comet which was certainly a treat I got to see his place which is Lions Classic Pinball very very cool place out in Lions Colorado which is like roughly 20 minutes north of Boulder and he's got a lot of he's got like multiple rooms of games and like including like a hidden room and stuff. And he's got modern games. He's got classic games.
    78:01
    It's always cool to go to a place that's owned by somebody who loves pinball, right? So highly recommend. He was able to show me and Martha that space on a day that they weren't open. Got to play some disc golf with Ryan, who's pretty good at that. So it was a lot of fun. So shout out and thank you to Ryan from Comet, who's an all-around good guy. And definitely check out Lions if you're out in that area. I also went to Arcade 1-Up or whatever in Denver. There's a number of those locations. They had a Scooby-Doo there, so I finally played that game. I can't talk about it in a meaningful way because I think I played two games of Split Flipper with Martha. What I can say is that it's a nice-looking game. Like, it is visually, and I didn't go over it with a fine tooth and, like, really look for things, but kind of, like, first impressions. It just looks great. It looks great in a lineup. I can see it, like, having that curb appeal, like, in a lineup of games in an arcade that will just pull people and draw people to it. So I always try to be fair to companies, even though I spend most of my time criticizing Spooky. I think it's for good reason and I back up my criticisms but at least from that perspective it looks good hopefully James keeps his long enough I know we gotta get over there to do an official stream on it Kevin hopefully we can do that maybe sometime in the next couple weeks if he still has the game I love to stream it I love to play it more and understand it So there that And yeah I think that it for my updates. Awesome, yeah. Alright, so let's get into it. We got some Q&A. We'll start with an email that we got from Krista. She says, As background, I am seriously looking to buy my first pinball machine, and I don't expect to buy more than two in the next few years. This would be our... Yeah, I'll say, Krista. This would be our everyday practice machine. If this did not come out, I was going to buy the Godzilla Pro. Okay, so she's thinking about Godzilla Pro. I watched the YouTube videos to get the physical change on the play field. You have to buy the premium. This is $2,500 more, and limited edition is, of course, almost double. What is your opinion on the upcharge versus what you get in estimates on resale value? resale value one year after and five to 10 years after. So I guess let's, let's start with that. What do you think about paying more to get the premium or limited edition and which one holds their value more for resale?
    80:36
    So the, that's a harder question for me to answer, which one holds their value more for resale. I've never really looked at the numbers, so I would just be like, I'm trying to speculate, right? I don't know. I think realistically you're going to have a larger percentage of people who can afford a pro, and then as the price goes up for something that obviously some people just drop out of, like that group that can possibly purchase and afford it. Does that come into play in selling? I don't know. I'll see if anybody says in chat and has a good backup. I struggle to answer that. My gut is that there's not a huge, really terribly meaningful discrepancy. So in trying to determine if you want a pro or premium, there's no hard and fast rule on it. It really depends on the game. And it also depends on your financial situation. I don't know how much discretionary income you have to spend on what amounts to a toy. I personally purchased the premium Godzilla. I'm glad I did. I think that there are cool things on the game that definitely justify the premium. Namely, in the building going down, it's cool and all. I can get old. I can see somebody not caring about that. But I think the bridge is awesome, how it breaks and the ball will fall off the bridge sometimes. I think, again, the play field changes because of the Mechagodzilla thing rotating and it changes targets. So to me, it's worth it. But Godzilla is a great game. I want the best version of it. I think the best version of it and the additions to it justify in that case. I've also been collecting pinball machines now for over 10 years. My space is full. My income is higher than it was before. So now, because I'm kind of like when I buy a game, it's one in, one out, I tend to try to buy the premium if I can. I'm automatically looking at the premium, and I automatically want the best version of it. Because I can. If I had space for 10 games and I only had three games in my collection, then my strategy would probably be to buy the pro and get more pros and fill my space up quicker. And then once my space is filled up with pros, maybe get the better version of a game, right? I think more pinball machines is better than less pinball machines. That's my simple math on there. And if buying pros allow you to get that next game quicker and you have the space, then that's not a bad strategy. So that doesn't give you an answer, but it gives you kind of maybe a thought process on how to think through that.
    83:19
    Yeah, so like Nick said, it comes down to the game because there are some games where the upgrade isn't worth it as much, I think. I think it definitely varies game to game because designers do different things. They cut the cost to get it down to a pro versus the premium or LE. I'm not personally and I think Nick is in the same boat where like the upcharge to get all the way up to an LE that's not worth it to me like with the money I make and whatever I just want the full playing game I don't need like a little badge that says I'm special you know the thought is that by quote unquote limiting it it's gonna hold value better that may or may not be true I know for Godzilla they've sold a lot of premiums so it may be the case in the case of Godzilla that the LEs hold their value a little more I can't say it, they've just sold so many Godzillas that I don't think they're going to go up in value that much but it is a great game so I do think it's going to hold its value at least Alright, so let's move to part number two of this
    84:30
    I'm also not sure if I will like all these fanned out shots all the time but I do love the experience level of with Insider Connect so to me that's that sounds like Venom that she's talking about there sure yeah so that comes don't rush into buying Venom I would say there's gonna any stern there's like gonna be Venom's on location around you go out play it hopefully you'll have the opportunity to play the pro and the premium so you can weigh the differences yourself if not go to like find a pinball show that's going to be happening near you and play it there and then then jump on it after that which after you decide which one you like better um uh uh godzilla versus venom again yeah it's hard to say with that but the you know godzilla is a known quantity everybody loves it i see a lot of people buying it as their first game it's it it's it offers a lot so it's not a super punishing game but uh you can achieve a lot and there's also still a lot to do as you get better at pinball if that makes sense so there's there's the code depth there uh it does a lot of fun things even if you don't get super far into the game um and it's it's a fun theme well well implemented um a license um yeah it's cool toys there's a reason why everybody loves this game, right? Yeah, it's a great, it is, I think it is a great first game. It's an easy recommend for a first game. You know, I don't love it as much as everybody seems to love it, right? Like, I don't it's hard for anything to live up to the hype, so I kind of start looking at the negatives and like, ah, this doesn't do it as much for me as it clearly is doing for other people, but it is a fantastic game, right? If it wasn't hyped up so much, I'd probably be cheerleading for it, right? If people were sleeping on it and not buying it, like, they're buying it as fast as Godfather, I'd be like, you guys are crazy. This game is amazing. Go out and play it. But Godzilla doesn't need any hype. Godzilla, everybody owns a Godzilla in the way that back in 2014 everybody owned Metallica. It is the 18th.
    86:39
    Yeah, so bottom line, buy a pinball machine, have fun, make room for the 13 other pinball machines you're going to end up buying, and then you'll be just like the rest of us. It's all good. Here's a question from chat. I'll just jump to that. Have y'all ever put precision flippers on a game? I have never, and I don't intend to ever put precision flippers on a game. Number one, I don't see the point. Number two, I think it changes the game maybe too drastically. Number three, I played it once. Our good friend Dr. Ben had it on a Lebowski, and I did not like the feel of it at all. Yeah, I haven't even played with them. So the only game I probably would have considered is on Guns N' Roses. I ended up putting the Flipper fans on those because, you know, just over time those Flippers got super weak. And the fans did the trick, so I never felt the need to upgrade. But that's one game I could see them being useful on. Yeah, I just don't – I just struggle to see a reason for it, and I think it takes away from, it's too much of a change, right? Like, if the designers want to move to precision flippers and tomorrow Stern started putting it on there, it's like, okay, that's the way the game is. Like, I'm not going to rip the precision flippers out and put the other ones on. I try to stay to what the game is as it was designed, right? Like, that is something that's important to me. Sure, I do change the flipper rubber out sometimes, And you can argue that does change it, and that's true, but that's about as far as I'm willing to go on a game. I think the precision flippers change it more drastically than that. Yeah, and again, I haven't used them, but I did read some comments, like drop catching and stuff is different on them. Did you feel that way when you were playing or no? I haven't spent enough time to really give a detailed answer, so that's like the first impression. But yeah, that's the kind of stuff I worry about, right? it will throw me off from most games don't have precision flippers. I play other games. I'm not going to upgrade them. I'm all like games I play in tournaments. I don't want to get used to that. If you tell me that the tricks I'm able to do, I drop catch all the time. I so often have my flipper up and let it just drop on it because it's fun for me to do and I've gotten good and I can do that. If I couldn't do that in a game, I'd fucking rip them out and throw them in the trash because now you've taken away a skill that you can employ in the game. So, yeah. All right. I have a late-breaking addition to the Pinball Adventures. If you like them, great. And they're, like, you know, that's all. This is, like, different folks, different folks. Kevin and I have strong opinions on some things that are just like, dude, this is garbage. I'm not saying that. I don't know enough about it. I'd like to learn more at some point, but I can't ever see myself using them. I think you're going to have a strong update on this. Goran sent us something Pinball Adventures related that I'm going to pull up here. So this is from Yagpin. And it's a pinball tournament going on up in Canada right now. It's the Sushi Mania Backglass. Look at that.
    89:47
    Wow. That is bad. That is so bad on so many levels. Wow. Yeah. So this is, you know, Punny Factory, to tie it all together, the company that makes Punny Factory. Allegedly, this is one of their other themes. and they decided that this was a good idea to put this art on the back glass of their game. Not only theme-wise, but rendering-wise, all the things. It's amazing when you get to see somebody in life who somehow has money and can do things like this and nobody can stop them.
    90:25
    I mean, it's just something else. It gives us content, so thank you. I don't need to say anything. I think just look at it and, yeah, I don't know. It speaks for itself. Yeah, it speaks. It says a lot. There's a lot being said. It says a lot without saying anything at all. It sells itself. All right. Thanks, Gordon, for that.
    90:47
    Well, I do have a live update, too. Oh, okay. Somebody in chat earlier said that, hey, the link to pinballwaffle.org is not working. So I pinged Joe Saeed and said, hey, just a heads up. And he said, oh, we're not doing that anymore. it's ran its course. There you go.
    91:05
    Sponsor's gone. No more free sponsorship for him. Live update. We're doing it live. Today we learned. Mystery solved. We still love Joe and PinballEDU is great. Go out and check out Spinner's Arcade. If you're in Frederick, Maryland, that's where they are. They do great work out there. Thank you, Joe.
    91:25
    Okay. Next question from Sergeant Ski. Did the manufacturers blow their load too early with all these releases early on in the year, and is that contributing to the impression that the marketplace is cooling, or is the economy itself factoring into a cooling marketplace? This feels like a nickeling question to me. Oh, I love to. All I do is think about finance and the economy and the market these days as much as I can. So let me look up something.
    91:54
    I don't know how to get this right. I actually had it up. I forget what it's called. I might get this exactly wrong, but the concept is right. So I heard something like a talk on the economy and the idea of a cardboard recession. And one of the signs that we're in a recession is that there's less cardboard being ordered, indicating that like people are shipping less things so people are buying less things and it's like this this chart of this has coincided before of when we've had other recessions and i and i think that's really interesting right so i absolutely think that we're in a recession right now like no one no one's come out and officially cut the ribbon and set it but i think that's happening um i think we're long overdue from that i think there's a lot of problems on the horizon. And I think indicators like the cardboard box kind of charts on that will show signs. Not that that's a conclusive thing, but I think it's interesting. So yeah, I think it's, look, we've got kind of an oversaturation. We've got a lot of games, got a lot of companies, which makes sense. A lot of competition for your money. I think the economy is cooling from what it was. I think you see layoffs of jobs and stuff. So yeah, I think it's, I said before, maybe in the last six months, that I think that things are going to get bad, and I think we're going to see some pinball companies go out of business. I don't think Jersey Jack or Stern's going anywhere, but I think the other ones are when a recession hits, the ones who are not crushing it and maybe hanging on, that they're going to be the ones to go. Plenty Factory is going nowhere, though. never never underestimate how uh long the fed can kick the can down the road that's why it's hard to predict these things but all the uh all the conditions are there in my book for a bad storm coming yeah i think there's other factors too like people are you know specifically related to pinball sales like during the pandemic we couldn't go anywhere and we had expendable income and you know we got those 1400 checks so people were like i need something to do all day So they put money into stuff they could do in their houses like pinball machines. So now we can go out again. So people are going on vacations and doing other stuff with their money. And also, you know, the interest rates have gone up. So you can do less with your money than you could before. So people are tightening their belts a little bit. And also, like, Stern was way behind for a long time, which drove prices way up on pinball machines. So, like, Godzilla's were selling way over what they were because they couldn't produce them. But now that they're catching up with demand, you know, the price is coming back down on those used games. So there's a lot of factors, but, yeah, that's my thought.
    94:48
    RLM asked about the co-op. I'll read these, and you can offer as much or as little as you're comfortable offering at this point. So he says, I'd love to hear co-op updates from Nick, if possible, on the podcast. What price per square foot makes a co-op possible? How painful was the nonprofit process? And how many pins do they think it needs to start? All right. So let me, I'm kind of in my mind thinking like what I'm willing to share and what I can share to provide some updates. So number one, I think that if things go according to plan, we'll be open maybe start of summer next year. I did get some people who reached out to me from my last call to action who are interested in putting games there.
    95:34
    There's absolutely a market for, there's definitely a demographic of people. who have overflow of games that love the concept of what I'm doing and the vision for what we're going to be putting in place for the co-op. I toured the space a few weeks ago after seeing pictures of it.
    95:57
    Our buddy Matt from the show is working on it diligently, and there's a lot of demo that needs to be done. and I can say like you know kind of guesstimating like half ass measuring trying to visualize I think comfortably we have room for 50 games which I'm excited about I mean I already have like 8 games of my personal collection that will go there I've seen friends like Dave Sousa start buying more games you're enabling I am incredibly excited to do I love kind of getting a vision for something and then putting it and then seeing that that come to fruition and dealing with the challenges that come along the way again about saying too much i think we're doing something it's not like we're the first person to do the co-op not at all there's plenty of those that have been coming through existence but i think we're going to do it in a way that's different than other places but i don't want to show all my cards right now i don't want to say too much because we'll see how it goes. I've not, I've, I, I will deal with, um, sort of like the, uh, legal structure of it and stuff like that. Like later in the year, I don't, I don't need to deal with it right now. And there's a lot of stuff that I need to figure out, but yeah, I also got to work on the design, the cost and raising money for making it look nice. I mean, one thing is like, I want, by the time it opens, I want it to look, I want to blow people way like kevin's not interested in in the co-op from like joining it as a member but i want to create something that somebody like kevin who might not be interested in will look at it and say jesus this is this is something right like not that you would join kevin but i i want to be impressive out of the gate and i and i i think i have a good roadmap to do that so i look like i said i look i look forward to revealing more as it comes along but there probably won't be any like significant updates until maybe even early next year in terms of like, you know, maybe being able to show like the interior once we have it designed and, you know, talk about the cost model for it. Cause obviously I will start hyping it up more to get members. I think it's going to be a big undertaking, but I'm excited because it's going to allow me to start running tournaments again. You know, the tournaments will be open to the public.
    98:18
    You know, You don't have to be a member of the co-op to play in those tournaments is what I'm envisioning. So people can get access to it without being a member.
    98:28
    You know, it's kind of been a bubble pinball, like, I don't know, two steps forward, one step back, or maybe sometimes two steps back, one step forward.
    98:38
    We've had a pivot. We had a change. Life has changed a little bit. But I like this. I kind of like the new chapter of what we're headed into. So I'm optimistic and excited for what's to come. Yeah, and for the folks who are watching and listening from afar, I'm sure we'll do streams and stuff from there to show off games. And so you'll be able to get to see the space through stuff like that and kind of interact with it that way.
    99:04
    Yeah. All right. This is a very important question from Digital Jedi. He says, is Spider-Donk the juiciest ham in all of pinball? And I think the question is undoubtedly yes. I mean, look at that. so i was uh i was telling kevin before the stream i was i was out at uh our friend patrick had a show last night and i was out there and and uh digital jedi was there as well and uh during the show he's talking to me about i thought he was saying spider spider-man's juicy ass or something and it's just like i had no fucking clue i had a vague clue like but i didn't see this i didn't like so it was an interesting conversation to anybody that might have overheard that that's all that's that's that's uh yeah i mean uh that's all i'll say you know what so far no dick on the playfield and by the way i will say uh i'm back to scooby-doo uh the dongs are even more so sometimes you see pictures or something be like ah you know like oh that was like dongs on the playfield and you get there like it doesn't really look like that no fucking looks even more So, like, the dongs are just really, wow. They went all in. Yeah, they went all in. Yeah, so follow Pin Butts on Instagram for more content like Spider-Man there. If that's your thing. Pin Butts. That's Tio Pin. That's the thing? Yeah.
    100:25
    Is there Pin Dongs? Oh, I don't know. Maybe that's our chance to really. There you go, Tio. Like, branch out a little bit. Time to monetize that on Instagram, you know? Oh, okay. Oh, so funny. All right, so Chris the Pinser, and what do you think is Stern's next release and is Venom good? You get one-word answers to both of those.
    100:47
    What do you think? One-word answer? Yeah, just give – Maybe? Sure, maybe. Okay. Stern's next release is Barbie, and Venom is amazing. There you go. We did it. Chris the troll. That's what he gets in response. All right, so don't go anywhere. We got episode 20 of Topper Talk coming at you. But in the meantime, visit buffalopinball.com. Click the merch button at the top. Get yourself some hot Buffalo Pinball swag. We got T-shirts, mugs, stickers, all that fun stuff over there. Yeah, we had a donation come in randomly from somebody a couple days ago. So thank you very much. I responded back thanking you, so hopefully you saw that. But it's unexpected, and it makes my day. so thank you it's just uh it's it's a nice token of appreciation yeah we appreciate it for sure that's what it nice way to say thank you um if you don't yet you can follow us on all our social media channels links are below we're on threads now but i've posted like two times i don't know if i'll ever do it again but if you want to follow us on threads we're over there um email talk pinball at gmail.com if you have a question like chris that sent us earlier uh you can send it that way. If you want to support us, you can subscribe on Twitch or if you have Amazon Prime, you get a free sub to Twitch. You can share that with us every month at no extra charge. You can do like our friend did and send a PayPal donation if you want to do a one-time deal or you can drop a review on your podcast host of choice and that's a great way to support us as well.
    102:23
    Until next time, here's an amazing episode of Topper Talk. He's going to talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles topper so get hyped for that we'll see you guys next time it's topper talk with gordon right now let's all have some fun this is about plastic on top of your pin they go and buy one now there's a topper here and a topper there here a topper there a topper everywhere a topper it's critical to the gameplay experience. You must buy one now. It's your monthly fill of toppers right now. Topper Talk with Gorin.
    103:04
    Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Gorin, the part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Now, today we'll be talking about the topper for Stern Pinball's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pinball machine. So let's head into the office and talk about that now. All right, so here we are in the office. So let's dive into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles topper. Here it is pictured on Stern's website where it retails for $999.99. Now, at the time of filming this, it is out of stock on Stern's web store, but I did check with other distributors and retailers, and it is in stock there. So this topper is obtainable for MSRP. So now if we take a look at this topper, we have 2D plastics that are mounted at different depths of the four turtles. We got the technodrome, which is the main focal point of the topper, as well as a city backdrop. And then there's also the logo mounted at the front in 2D. and one of my biggest topper pet peeves is when you see imagery on the back glass that's repeated on the topper just inches above it and that happens here so it's a bit odd to see teenage mutant ninja turtles and then teenage mutant ninja turtles again but otherwise I really like the look feel and vibe of this topper obviously as I said the main focal point is that technodrome and that's where that main interactivity happens the eyeball on top moves around and blinks stern released a video actually showing this, so I'm going to show you a bit of that now.
    104:39
    So here it is. Here's some close-up. We can see that when you alternate between the turtles, that eyeball moves around as the turtle lights up, which is pretty neat.
    104:50
    So it looks around, and then my understanding as well is that there are certain events in the game that have certain topper choreography that cause the lights to flash and look around, and that eyeball will move around depending on what's going on in the game, similar to Rudy in Funhouse, for example. So overall, I feel that this topper really adds to the environment of the game, especially for onlookers walking by. It's something that really draws you in, which at the end of the day is the purpose of a topper. So for $999, that's quite expensive, but I feel like if CERN released that today, it'd be in that $1,500 mark. So if this is something that interests you and you have a Turtles, go ahead and buy it now before they're gone. Thank you so much for coming to this episode of Topper Talk. Tune in to the next podcast for another episode. And as always, get out there and buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my Topper Talk.