well hang on see it's not quite friday but it is a fun day for some rumors hello patreon brethren how are you all doing today thank you so much for being continued members of the don spinball podcast community in such a strikingly productive way dude i i couldn't do it without your collaboration from the producers on down you guys sustain me not only that you legitimize this whole thing and when i have a legitimate fan base rabid fans that are paying to be part of this club it also lends legitimacy and then i get rumors handed to me and i can't keep them all so i'm here to share them with all of you tuck in man how you guys doing i'll recap how the day went and everything but i've heard some important things over the last 48 hours that i just have to share and see ya thank you for the intro music i'll take it from here bull peace and blessings to you all right first off our favorite company to talk about american pinball i got some damn news that made me damn happy so apparently the other day there was a webinar some sort of uh broadcast from the company to distributors and some buyers about their new game. Let's hear it for that. Now, I am under NDA about the specifics, but if you want to hear more about what the theme may be, our friend Kerry Hardy has done a great job over there, so go follow him. He's got some videos up. But apparently, they showed off everything about this game to some people in the distributor community, and that trickled down through channels and got back to me. So, holy crap, just a rumor, but this seems legit. Now, this can only speak to the fact that this game, God, it's coming out. Now, I've been allowed to say that I've played this game, and I'm allowed to give my impressions, which are that it is absolutely, unequivocally, American Pinball's best game. It's fun to play. I want to play it again. This is a game that I would not walk by in a lineup. I was at Leopard Jack Johnny's today in Appleton. There was a Galactic Tank Force Deluxe Edition with the tank treads and everything. and I walked right on by that to go play Big Buck Hunter Pinball. Holy crap, what a fun game that is to finally play it in person. I played Bond 60. I played Batman 66. I had great games on all of those and didn't think once to stop by and play Galactic Tank Force and I was there during a free play hour where it was $10 for an hour and I could have played it for free, but it was not compelling. I wouldn't play Strikers and Spares instead. I didn't play that. But I would not walk past this new game if it was there. I would stop and play it because it is compelling. So I like that. So hopefully that speaks to the fact that this game is still planning on coming out. Not only that, you want another tidbit? I heard that in the background of this web thing that they put out, Zoom or whatever it was, Mr. Ryan McQuaid was seen in the background. So dude was back in the building. Seems like he's involved somehow, which is awesome news because he's the designer of this game, put a lot of work into it. dude walked me through like how to play it which like that's phenomenal when like the designer of the game is standing there like showing you all the stuff and and coaching you on how to play it phenomenal so i hope this game is coming out i i'm like i'm not even officially part of the company or anything but like i'm on pins and needles like please let this be the timeline that this game can actually come out a lot of shake-ups fix is gone maybe this for the best you know he's always been cool to me but I don't know the inner workings but it seems like it'll be a streamlined operation and from all indications they're hiring for production so hopefully we will see American Pinball's most successful game come out and if they're showing it off to distributors now if they're showing it off to buyers of which the buyers are interested in this game after seeing it I'm thinking that it can't be that far from being done rolling out. So the game should be hopefully in production soon. They've got to get this out by Texas Pinball Festival. They've got to. If they miss that March date for that big show, big reveal, when's the next one? Expo? Come on. That's way too long. Nobody's going to care about that. Get this game out. Get some money in your pockets. American Pinball has got to do it. And if we're looking at making 300 games a year, which was their stretch goal last year, I mean the sooner the better, man. People don't want to wait two years for games anymore. They waited a year and nine months for Pulp Fiction L.E.s. That's too long, man. That's too long. So get it done. Get some money going. And hopefully we'll see something else from the company down the road. Or maybe the company will become a contract manufacturer. I don't know. If you were looking to build games, would you want to find a company that could do more than 300 in a year? Well, I don't know. I don't know the specifics on any of that. All I know is that this game is fun to play. I want more people to be able to play it. You know, whether it's a good seller or not, I think it would sell better than Barbecue by a far margin. Better than Galactic Tank Force for sure. And it may approach, like, I think Hot Wheels and Houdini are probably their biggest selling games. And, yeah, it could do at least those numbers, I'm thinking. I'm really excited about this game. I want to see that come out. So there's a little tidbit for you. But I hear you talking, Don. I like my old-fashioned lemonade with the juicy bits of pulp. What else do you have for us? Well, let me squeeze the rumored lemon a little bit more, and we'll go over to Stern Pinball. So there was a rumor that John Borg was coming out with this Indiana Jones game. Okay, back before Jaws, back before Foo Fighters, we were hearing Venom, Foo Fighters, Jaws, and then Indiana Jones was going to be the fourth game in the row. We got the other three, but when it came time for Indy Jones, we got, what, X-Men came out, which bumped Metallica or bumped this D&D or whatever. So I've heard now, and this seems legit, that the game that they were working on wasn't... Okay, listen. I've got a dream theme when it comes to Indiana Jones, right? Bally Williams' Indiana Jones, phenomenal game, kind of combined it, the whole trilogy there. Then we've got the Stern Indiana Jones, not a terrible player. You know, maybe not as good as Aerosmith, but I have fun playing it. but when it comes to Indiana Jones in the modern era Spike 2, Spike 3, what I wanted to see and I think this is perfect Looney Tunes just kicked on the new code update it's got to play the Looney Tunes music in a track mode it's kind of cool so if you're in the background that's what's going on so I've been saying independently without any input that Raiders of the Lost Ark would be a great theme for a pinball machine I mean think about it, that opening vignette you're in the jungle introducing Indiana Jones there's everything, there's a temple there's booby traps there's a golden idol uh there's the rolling ball the punji sticks him being chased by natives jock lindsey's seaplane reggie the snake that was in the cockpit where we reveal and we foreshadow that indiana jones is afraid of snakes you have the snake pit in cairo later on you've got the ark of the covenant you got nazis you got ghost smelting faces off uh you got maria what was the lady name all of that and then at the end when like he delivering the Ark of the Covenant and he recovered it and he been successful the government takes it and locks it away in this cavernous warehouse and then that like end scene right It a full adventure serial all buttoned up It would make a great, compelling pinball machine. And what I'm hearing, and this has me so sad, is that this Indiana Jones game that John Borg was working on was actually Raiders of the Lost Ark. Solamente. day oh my god man how did we get this close and then we're in this timeline of all timelines where we didn't get borg's raiders of the lost ark and instead maybe that layout has morphed into the prequel trilogy from star wars which is another juicy nugget that i'm hearing and i hate that i hate that i live in this timeline where i don't get raiders of the lost ark and i'm getting jar jar binks pod racing pinball adventure instead oh my god why it's going to have double left outlanes and those will be like two of the pod racing engines i don't know man i don't know i just get i don't want that to happen um so why would this happen uh killer theme come on how do you put how you not put this together uh when i heard about the development of john wick the final build that we got was like the team's third attempt at a pinball layout like you know came out with one trashed it came out with another one trashed it wasn't working and it's like okay guys look we got this license we got to get this game out you guys got to get something that's working. So then they played it kind of safe. Three ramps, you know, this car mech, a captive ball, and then it's all, you know, scoops and then, you know, the same right scoop from 007. You know, it's kind of Gomez-y kind of layout. And then that's what we got. So I don't think Borg, though, would suffer from the same fate as the team of Elliot Eismin on their first go around, right? You know, so it had to be something else. And this is purely speculation on my part at this point, but what would sandbag Raiders of the Lost Ark pinball from John Borg? I mean, come on, guys. Come on. Come on. It had to be made. So what if it was similar to Jurassic Park where they got the license to use the logo, they got the license to use the context of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but what they didn't get was film clips. What they didn't get was Harrison Ford's likeness. What they didn't get was call-outs by Harrison Ford, where you'd have to use Sala to do the call-outs or get a sound-alike. And it was probably like, look, we've got to do this right or we've got to not do this. And I'm thinking it may have been something like that, the sandbag, something like this. Also, it seems that they stuck with LucasArts or LucasFilms to do the next theme because Star Wars prequels, episode one two three the jar jar binks podcasting trilogy boss nass that whole mess sand it gets everywhere are you a space angel i'm gonna kill the younglings um that's also a lucasfilm license so maybe they stuck with the same lucasfilm person and when it came to harrison ford's likeness it was probably you're gonna be cost prohibitive to get him his likeness his uh voice the film clips something like that the john williams score um for the film like the iconic music like the things you need and then if you're sitting down you're like we're gonna make a jungle themed pinball machine that has the indiana jones logo and we can have a whip and we can have a hat but we can't have indiana jones how do we make that and i guess the decision was we don't we don't um so then that leaves us with with pod racing i was talking with some guys and it was like well what if it was like the other uh the other star wars pinball machine we have you know where you You go and you hit the TIE fighter on a spring, and then you can just mash the action button. And when you get 30 mashes or 30 TIE fighter kills, you get the multiball. So what if they did that but used that iconic scene from Episode 3 where Anakin is murdering the younglings? And so when you hit the youngling on a spring, you just start mashing that action button, chopping children's heads off. And when you get 30, you get youngling murder multiball, right? Execute code 66, right? Right? Remember that? So that's not a rumor. That's just me being bitter and putting that out into the world. But that's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm hearing. Star Wars prequels. All right. What's going on with Dawn now? I got three games coming in. I can confirm that now. I have Evil Dead from Spooky Pinball, and I also have an approximate date on when my game will be not only shipped but delivered, unboxed, and playing in District Dawn here. that date will be right after we return from Pinball at the Beach, so Pinball at the Beach, February 5th the 7th, St. Petersburg, Florida a new festival that's going on down there, the guy from Little Shop of Games who's in the Tampa, St. Pete region I guess he's the one headlining this one, what's that, Freeplay Florida was an event that was bigger and it was in Orlando and now it's kind of moved to Lakeland, Florida it's been operated by a separate person and I think this Little Shop of Games guy may have been the original one. I get confused in my Florida timelines here. Regardless, the whole idea behind this was like, let's sell 100 tickets. Let's get everybody cool together. Let's go hang out on the beach in February when it's cold in the rest of the country, although Florida's getting snow right now. What the hell is going on? So we'll all be down there at the beach hanging out, barbecues, after parties at the bars. The games are open late until midnight, and so we can just kind of rage and party with not 5,000 people and not huge pinball lines. So that will be fun. The first publicly available location to play Evil Dead, amongst other games, will be down there. Also, you can meet in person Mr. Cary Hardy himself from Cary Hardy's Pinball Channel. He'll be there in the flesh. I get to meet my hero. I'm so excited. I mean, me and him hung out the other day and played the new American Pinball game. But I'm waiting his autograph line. I'm going to have him sign something. It's going to be great. So good job, Kerry. That's awesome. So coming back from that, you know, second week of February, 10th, 11th, 12th, somewhere in there, seems to be when my Evil Dead will be coming. So I've been assured by the guys that they want to get me a super early build, all right? And I think they want to show that the game's coming off the line. They want a big public showing of it. Happy to provide that. Now, I'm not getting a game for free. Paying full price for this game. My deposit went in as soon as they opened while I was at IAAPA. but I think what they want to do is bring me a game and if there are any issues initially, loose bolts short bolts, plastics falling off or something, I can repair and remedy those, work with the guys on fixes and that's kind of like what these first few 50 games going out are just like, alright, we did the QC 7 times but we haven't played this particular game 500 times so Don, as you're doing that let's just finish up the beta testing, I'm happy to do that, to get an early build so I'll be reporting all that back but I gotta say their QC has like leaps and bounds in front of where it was just like two generations ago so very excited to get this game out I'm also excited for people to play it at Pinball at the Beach and get some more hands on. My buddy who I keep gushing about, Kerry Hardy he just drove to Spooky Pinball from Texas a few weeks ago, he's played the game now and he just did a video talking all about it, spoiler alert, he dug it even though he's not into the theme and to be honest when I first saw that game I walked in and I was like I was praying it was Beetlejuice and I saw it was Evil Dead I like okay I know people have been asking for this and people really love it I not like a big Evil Dead guy I never seen the films I still to this date I only seen the first one But the game was so fun and had so much stuff in it. And, you know, I know about Bruce Campbell. My Bruce Campbell is Briscoe County Jr. But, like, you know, I'm a fan of the star aura that's around this guy. And I'm planning on, now that I'm back home and I have a couple days off, I'm going to go watch Evil Dead 2 so I can get ready Boomstick, Chainsaw Hand, the whole bit But I'm not I've been pining for this game It wasn't in my top 10 of dream themes or anything But I was still impressed with The franchise art, the degree of the I can't wait to get in there and play these 8 modes 4 of the modes are from the first movie 4 are from the second movie, I've seen the first movie Now so I want to just get in there and just marathon You know The Evil Dead 1 modes until I get a hold on them. I'll be able to beat every one of them. And then I'm going to go to Evil Dead 2 and start playing through all those. And then I'll just keep getting better at the game. I love the sling flipper. I love loading the shotguns. It's super fun. So I can't wait until finally more people are going to get to play this damn thing. And I'm going to have it right here in the spot that Scooby-Doo was in. I'm so excited. So that's game number one coming. And that's what I know about Evil Dead. Avatar CEs are on the line right now. Cengiz, my buddy from We Are Pinball, and also RetroJango on YouTube, the Amiga guy. He's got him and his brother operating in Denmark and around Copenhagen, and he just got his Avatar CE, his import there. And I think he's already done a video, and I haven't been sitting in one space long enough to be able to watch that yet. More on what my last 48 hours have been like. But the imports have gone out. They've landed. Now, most of the imports are probably on a ship floating across the Atlantic right now. Jenga has went ahead and paid the extra money for air freight, So the game leaves the factory, goes to O'Hare, gets on a plane, shows up at his door like that day. So that's the way to do it. That's worth the money to me. $1,000 versus a couple hundred, and then you have your game like that day. You don't have to wait a month for shipping. So he's got the game out there. So games are on the line. Games are going out. Games are going in boxes. I had reached out to Mr. Ken Cromwell, and to his credit, he acquiesced a visit to Jersey Jack's headquarters in Chicago yesterday? Yeah, yesterday when I was there. And then he had a family commitment and he had to, he couldn't come into the office. So we had to cancel that. I was hoping to get on in on there and see what the CEs on the line look like. I want to look at them for one reason. And that's because I was so impressed with the UV lighting on the CE play field, the prototype one that they showed us at the factory with the UV flashlight in the dark room. It looks so good. The depth of field of the reds and the oranges in that game, in that, that play field were phenomenal. and so I was like that's it I gotta get this game that's part of the reason and then when I saw them at Expo really wasn't too impressed and so I'm hoping that those ones at Expo were still prototypical and you know because they didn't go right into production after Expo it was still a while later so I want to get in there and just see like okay is this as awesome as it was when I saw the prototype or is this more lackluster and I'm just like it's killing me that I don't know and so I was hoping to pop in there and just for 10 minutes, you know, walk the line and just like see what some of the final ones are looking like. Hopefully get some UV on there and see what's up. Otherwise, still excited for the game. It's going to be great in a home environment. I've never played it in a place that wasn't a cavernous factory or a show floor or a loud arcade. I haven't had this game like tucked up next to my bar where Big Lebowski was resplendent in its blue light from the undercab lighting, the backbox lighting, that big topper up there. night's coming in the eclipse is happening we hit the spinner we get the big uh the big rewards like that's what i want to play so i'm excited about that so uh that'll be happening soon that's game number two uh game number three will be stern's dungeons and dragons i gotta i gotta beat the crap out of that wharf dragon all right so here's the thing i had uh john wick that i had put about 400 games on played the crap out of it i dig it i played it again today on location it's still a fun game, you know, but Venom's still a fun game, and those are good location games for me. When I go to a location like Lumberjack Johnny's, or was that today, I played Venom LE, and I picked up right where I left off, like my last build, and yeah, you know, it was fun to play it. I got, I put a couple games through it, you know, got over 100 million points on my second game, like really, I got some multiballs going, did some modes. It was fun, man. It was fun, and I like that I can just go back and visit it whenever I want. John Wick is another game that when I'm on location and there's a Wick premium, well, this was actually a pro and I didn't mind it. When there's a Wick there, I can pop in, I can play a game or two on it and have a good time and like, that's okay. So I don't need to have the game at home anymore, which is good because I got some inbound. So I boxed up Wick and then X-Men LE I also boxed up. Now, when it comes to X-Men, I wasn't really in a great position to go ahead and buy a new game. I ended up buying two of them, because I came up with this idea to start selling made-over games. So thanks to Death Save there for picking up that premium. Hope you're digging it. It was super fun having it. So I had a premium, had an LE, and the expectation was that they were going to get made over, which they were, and then they would get sold off, and then I would kind of recoup those funds and then use them for other projects and things. I didn't use a credit card to get a pinball machine or take a home equity line of credit or something stupid like that, But I can't just waste the whole family's money on pinball. That's ridiculous. So I was trying to find a way to kind of moderate it where I could almost leverage myself out a little bit, get to play the games, and then get them back out again. And so that's what I've done. Between the two X-Men, though, I've put another 350, 400 games on X-Men Premium and LE. So I've gotten a lot of play into them. I've made some mods for them that I'm excited about. Other people are really digging them. learning more when I get games in and make things. It just levels up my own skills. So there's a lot of gain to be had from that. People were asking me, Don, why so soon did you sell X-Men? And it's because that was kind of the expectation. Although, I was hoping I could hang on to the LE a little bit longer. But I gotta tell you, man. Playing that game, it's fun. Innovative layout. For me, the code, and I know the code's too early, reminds me a lot of Foo Fighters. Where it was shoot two white shots and then pick a mode and then shoot two white shots and pick a mode. And then, you know, after three modes, you could do a wizard mode. This one, it's, you know, two modes go to the future, two modes go to the future, um, or whatever, but it was really similar. And the problem with that, and it's just this code style is that I end up playing the game the same way every time I do this with venom too. Like I always pick when, um, because I like her spots that are on the play field or ones that are easier for me to get to whatever, but you know, over time, over and over and over, if you keep approaching the game the same way, it's like, you know, walking down the same path every time, you know, a game like Godzilla, a game like Metallica, I can just start playing and then whatever targets I end up hitting more of off the bat, like that's where I then tend to focus, you know, Looney Tunes is like this, if I happen to get a couple of shots at the ball lock, I'll start going for that, you know, if I get into a mode, I start going for modes if I start looping shots then I just go loop crazy But games where I end up just all right I starting Okay let do Juggernaut first Okay let do the Wolverine one Okay those are two early ones We can get to the future get back out again Now I can do the more fun ones. I don't want to start with the fun ones. I want to get a couple under my belt. And then it's like, okay, I'm just doing the same thing every time. So it's just for me, I wanted to move on from it, especially once I played Dungeons & Dragons. And I'm seeing this completely unlinear, pick multiple characters, level them all up, unlock characters in the future. That's what I wanted to see. Like, what if X-Men gets to the point where you can unlock Cyclops and play as him or start unlocking other people? And I can't wait until the X-Men code gets to the point where when you go to the future, the X-Men that you've rescued in the past actually start to make a lot more sense. Hopefully it gets there. Hopefully it gets there. But for me, I had a game that I wasn't planning on holding on, like, too, too long term. I played it 450 times and Dungeons and Dragons was still available with Jeff he had like one game left and so I'm like hey Jeff and let me plug Jeff here for a minute because he's a freaking salt of the earth guy I floated him the idea like what do you say about if I just trade in this Wick LE and this X-Men LE and I go ahead and take that Dungeons and Dragons spot and then I'll get some future credit on something I'll take a gift card for the rest and he said give me two minutes Call me back. Let's go, man. And so I decided to help him out even more. You know what? I won't even ship these things. I'll bring them myself. So yesterday I got up early through two games in the truck in negative 16 degree Carl Weathers and traipsed my butt out to Toledo to go meet him. He was so nice. He drove from Cleveland to Toledo to meet me almost like a quarter of the way, almost like we were exchanging children if we were divorced parents or something, like how it was when I grew up. So it was fun. We met at a private collection in Toledo area. I got to go in there, hang out with the guys, play some stuff, did an interview with Jason from Flip for the Cure. That's a charity fundraiser that's coming up in the Toledo area in March. They did it last year, doing it again this year, raising money for epilepsy camps for kids, man, which is just completely awesome. So that interview is going to drop on the next Ons Pinball podcast, which will probably come out, I don't know, tomorrow. I've got a lot of stuff to talk about. So I was over there, and we hung out. I dropped the games off. Picked up some stuff, fist bumps all around, and then it was about 8 p.m., and my idea was that I would head back towards home, make it as far as Indiana, stay the night, and then be home the next day through Chicago. But I thought, you know what, Don? You always do that. Why don't we do something fun? So instead of going from Toledo back towards Chicago, I went north into Michigan, and I thought, you know what? I live on the other side of this lake. Let me just drive up the other way. so I made it up to about Saginaw, Michigan got a hotel room for the night tucked in and then got up early this morning and decided to finish my route well, there was a blizzard waiting for me right at the top of the lake there in the upper peninsula of Michigan I made it across the Mackinac Island Bridge or whatever that's right there it's like the Golden Gate Bridge, man, it's huge and then I turn on these two lane roads and then snow starts falling I knew it was going to be there I figured I'd just breeze right on through the snow I got a four-wheel drive truck. No big deal. Let's go. And I'm on this two-lane road. Snow is about 15 inches deep, and the wind kicks up. It starts snowing hard. And then with the wind blowing up all this loose snow, visibility goes to zero almost immediately. And so I'm plodding along in this road. Occasionally there's traffic coming the other way, a big line of semi-trucks and everything. I'm doing my best to try to see where the edge of the road is. I'm hearing rumble strips. Is it the rumble strip from the center line or is it the rumble strip from the shoulder? I don't always know. So it was super scary. And I kept passing cars and trailers that had gone off the road down to these ditches. And I'm like, man, it's not slippery. It's just invisible. It's invisible at times. The worst part of it was probably about 20 minutes or so of just going about five miles an hour, trying my best to see. I could see about two feet in front of me. So I could see kind of where the edge of the road was. occasionally I could see a car in front of me but like that's it but oh my goodness just crawling around the top of Lake Michigan was quite heralding should have took me about six hours to get around to Green Bay and it took about eight oh my goodness by the time I got to Green Bay I needed a break I went to Jets Pizza and got some pepperoni slices they do the Detroit style delicious if you find a Jets Pizza and then I went to Lumberjack Johnny's both locations had a great time axe throwing and pinball machines I didn't know there was two, but there's one in Green Bay, and I was talking to the guy there, and he's like, yeah, man, we have an even bigger location in Appleton, which was on my way home. So I stopped there as well. Shout out to the Pinball Junk Drawer, Craft Brew Sally, and Foghorn Langhorn. That's like their haunt, man, where they hang out. So I had a great time there. Played a lot of Bond 60th, Batman 66, Elton John CE was there, Big Buck Hunter, man. It was a good time. It was a good time. Galactic Tank Force was there and I walked right by it because I don't have a compelling reason to play that game anymore. I don't have a compelling reason to play that game anymore. So that's what I got. Harry Potter is a narrow body. It's not a wide body. It is happening for sure. It's just happening. And it's probably happening in March. And I've come around on it. Now, I did that tongue-in-cheek. I was trying to do some clickbait. Everybody's going to be disappointed in Harry Potter. I still think that there's going to be things that are missing because you can't just have everything in there. But honestly, if it's a narrow-bodied game, and it shoots as well as their last two, Avatar and Elton John, with the flipper feel and everything, and it's got Hogwarts Castle, and it's got the Hogwarts Express train, maybe a little bit of Hogsmeade down by the flippers, Hagrid's Hut, and then the whole play field can go dark when the dark wizards come out or something, and there's some neat lighting effects and stuff, I think it'll be fun. And if there are like little points of light all over Hogwarts castle, so like everything can go dark and there's just a sparkle on the castle. Um, I, I think it could be something special. I'm hoping for something that's like pirates of the Caribbean. Um, but Harry Potter, that would be ideal. but we'll just have to see what happens. So for a, what is it? Wednesday night. Um, that's about what I got rumor wise. So why don't we get Sia back in here? because I don't need money to have a good time well I need money to have pinball machines I need pinball machines to have a good time apparently but it's Friday night somewhere thank you for being Patreon members if you guys want stickers just email me your address and I'll fire out some that's no big deal I've had people dropping hints on the Facebook page and I'm like man just email me dude I got stickers I got a couple of D&D flyers left if you'd like to get one of those, just email me and ask for it. I got like two left. First two people to email me will get it. I'll throw some stickers in there. If you guys have any games and you want some mods for them and you just want to tip me on Venmo or something, you're already paying me on Patreon. Just tell me what game you have and I'll find some stuff I got and I'll send it out to you. No big deal, man. Pay what you want. Or you're already paying on Patreon, man. Just consider this a benefit. Don't be chodes Be cool to each other It's pinball man