Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle and Cosmic Cart Racing are both revealed at the Texas Pinball Festival. Stern Pinball hires Brian Eddy as a senior designer and Bowen Kerins joins Spooky Pinball. Iron Maiden is announced and the first machine has already been shipped. Pinball Expo is back at the original hotel and on the original dates. Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston. And I'm Martin Ayer. And this is the Pinball News of March 2018. So, of course, last month we had the Texas Pinball Festival, which is now a huge show. Jonathan, you and I were both there. We did the So You Think You Know Pinball quiz, didn't we? Yes, we did. We were the opening seminar Friday afternoon at 6 p.m. during happy hour in the bar, which is a very good spot, lots of people there. Yeah, we know how to attract an audience, basically make sure they get lots of free booze. And win free prizes. And free prizes, and great prizes as well from all our sponsors. I'm sure you have a whole list of them there to thank. Yeah, of course I do. Huge thanks to Jersey Jack Pinball, Stern Pinball, Spooky Pinball, Dutch Pinball, Double Danger, and I certainly hope I'm not forgetting anybody. I'm sure. Sorry? Did you mention American Pinball? Did we give anything away from American Pinball? Yeah, we did. Oh, yeah, absolutely. American Pinball. How could I forget that those wonderful people at American Pinball, we should definitely not forget those. If I recall, a couple of Houdini translates and T-shirts and all that kind of stuff. We gave away over 30 prizes, which is... That's amazing. And in an hour we managed to get through, I think, all our questions that we prepared and got through, at most, give away all the prizes that we collected. Very well prepared, I'd say. I'd say so. I think we tried it quite well. And despite the alcohol that was flowing everywhere, it all went incredibly smoothly and everybody had a great time, I think. I think so too. Good. Well, obviously that was the highlight of the Texas Pinball Festival, There were a few other side shows that went on that we might want to mention. Sure. Well, there's actually a couple. We have two game reveals at the show. I wanted to start with Cosmic Card Racing because that's the game that most people overlook. But it was actually a low-key introduction to the game, but it was introduced as the first. Right from the start of the show, the game was available. Two units of the game. I'm not sure whether they were actually linked together because it appeared that way. They were both standing under a display that sort of seemed to group them together. I'm not sure whether they were linked together. They actually were linked together because I think Jerry said he deliberately didn't want to make people think that you had to have two machines in order to play the game. Right. But it plays perfectly well and very enjoyably as a single-player game. So you don't have to play it against somebody else, but you can as well. so they kind of only that beat you back until a bit later. Right. So it's an interesting concept because it's a racing game, and the way I understood it is you have to make shots to keep your speed up. That's right, and to collect power-ups, which can boost you along your path, or to block other players to inhibit their progress. Right, and if I understood it correctly, at the start of the game, all the ramps and all the shots at the top of the playfield, they light up green. Yeah, that's right. Green shots are good shots. And as soon as you make a certain shot, it turns white, indicating that you already shot it. Yes, that's right. And eventually some shots become blocked if some of the other players get power-ups, be they computer-controlled or physical other players, they can invoke a power-up which can pop up a couple of blockers on your ramp shops or other places and stop you making the shots you need to make. Right. I had no idea why that was but because obviously I experienced those block-ups and I was like, why is that? Now I can make the shot. But that explains a lot. Thank you for that. That's right. Because you can do the same thing. You can collect the power-ups and you can activate them at some point and stop other people making any progress as well. Right. Okay. So yeah, Cosmic Kart Racing Of course was one of the first Two games along with Lexi Lightspeed That was announced when The P3 platform was really Launched and it Lexi was given the Sort of development time To give a full featured Sort of rounded traditional pinball game But Cosmic Kart Racing Has always been there as one of the First two launch titles really And it was a bit of a problem At the back burner but as now It's all been given the development time it needed. And it's a different type of game. I don't think Jerry wanted to launch the P3 with something which was also radically different from traditional pinball. It was a lot more familiar to people, so they got used to the P3 platform. And now they've got all the other games like Cannon Lagoon, and they've got games like Grand Slam Baseball coming up as well, and Barnyard and Rocks and all those out there. It's a good time to bring Cosmic Carp up to the market. Right. Okay. So it looks interesting, and I understood it's not completely developed yet. I think code was like at 50%, I'm not sure, but that's something. Yeah, it's outstanding. Yeah. So it's going to improve in code further, but what was there already was, I guess you could say, innovative for people. Absolutely. And they've got nearly 400 LEDs on the ramp, so all individually controllable, and it just looks stunning when you see it, first of all, just in the light show in track mode. Right. The way the colours, you know, the sort of rainbow colours go around, and they've got LEDs around the rings that are on the ramps, and, you know, it really is an impressive looking game from that point of view. And that's just the upper playing field, of course, you know, without counting the rest of it. Right, so obviously there were animations on the big LCD that is actually the playfield. Oddly enough, I have to say I wasn't really paying attention to those while I was playing. Well, I think probably the same here. I was so concentrating on just shooting the lit ramps and orbits, trying to get those and consistently managing the hit posts all the time without making the shots. Right. And then watching, giving an eye on the little meter on the right-hand side, which shows you how the other cars are doing and then you realize that you were first and then you were third and then you were back and forth if you don't make the shot, so you have to keep making those shots or you will end up last or you can complete the circuit in time If that game would be flowing like Dialed In for example, if it would have that type of flow, then it could be a very very good game But the game that I played didn't... I had the feeling I was still hitting too much posts that I couldn't get all the shots flowing right after each other, you know, so... Yeah, I felt the same. Funny you mention that too. I'm sure it's something which you'll get used to after a while, once you've gotten used to where all these shots are. But, yeah, because you really want to sort of experience all those clever things they've done on the game, You know, there's those locks, the magnetic locks on the ramps, which I think is almost, I think it's a first, isn't it? The fact that you can lock a ball on the ramp, and so it's held there by a magnet, just on a normal part of the ramp, but you can shoot another ball up and knock the existing ball out, and the ball that you just shot up becomes a locked ball. Right. So it's kind of like having a physical post there, but it's done with magnets. So I think that's looking pretty good, But, yeah, obviously you need to be able to make the shots to achieve that. Right. I heard about that. I didn't get that far. No. I was able to lock one ball, and I think I drained on the second ball that was brought into play. Gary did demonstrate that in a seminar that you had, though. So if you – I think they're actually on Twitch TV now, the Texas Pinball Seminar. So it might be worth checking that out on Texas Pinball Festival feed on their channel. he did have a camera over the top so I don't know whether the recording picked up that or whether that was more just a wide shot that showed Jerry and the machine but anyway it's definitely worth checking out the seminars from Texas on Twitch well we keep an eye on further developments for Cosmic Cart Reinvesting and other P3 games from Multimorphic of course indeed yes there's quite a few coming up including, as I mentioned, Grand Slam baseball from Jimmy. I think Jimmy Lippman was doing that with his company. So that should be out before too much longer, I think. Okay. Then the other, well, I'd say the biggest reveal. There was a third reveal, but we'll get to that in a bit. Spooky Pinballs, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. Yes, indeed. The game was out there on the floor from the very start of the show, but you couldn't see the actual play field because there were two machines and they both had a big sheet of white paper covering the play field and that was only actually taken away or the play field was revealed during the Spooky Pinball Seminar. On 7th and 4th of PM. That's right, yes. Where, of course, I was also privileged to be able to present the Pinball News Game of the Year Award to Scott Cooley. Yeah, for his amazing Total Neutral Annihilation game, which won hands down in the vote. But I don't want to get into that too much. But it was very nice to see him getting a really good standing ovation when I announced the award and presented him with the trophy for Game of the Year 2017. But that was just a little part of the spooky presentation, which Charlie was gracious enough to let me take over for a moment. But the main feature was most definitely the revealing of Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. Right. And actually, that didn't take very long. Charlie was quite nervous. I think anybody could tell. He was also quite emotional. and I think in less than 10 minutes basically was like okay this is the game we put a camera on top of it it was a pity that the camera was straight above the the play field not allowing to see any sort of depth and would have been nicer if the camera would have been sort of like a 3 quarter field was the play so you could see a little bit of what the the castle ruins or whatever you call them are doing. Yeah, and the guillotine as well. Right, which you couldn't see straight from the top, which was how the camera was positioned. But other than that, everybody got a chance to walk up to the game and obviously play them at the spooky pinball booth after the official reveal had taken place. Yeah, indeed, and I think, certainly from what I saw and heard, the reaction was very, very favourable. People thought it was their best game to date, it felt and played really well, and they liked the toys and the artwork and the colour scheme in it, and I think it's, well, I'm sure they'll have no problem selling all 500 if they haven't already. It is limited to 500, isn't that right, John? Yes, it is. What I understood, last update that I heard was on the Spooky Pinball podcast. They haven't sold out 500 yet. They're actually even reserving 50 for some charity event that includes Alice Cooper himself. They haven't sold out all games yet, but it is going pretty quick. It's interesting if people Name this their best game Does that include Total nuclear annihilation In that same mix or Are they just looking at the games that Spooky did without Total nuclear annihilation which is sort of It's got an easy design Yeah it's interesting I'm not sure whether people Whether you could Well it's fair to do a comparison between the two Because they're very different games So I think I think they're probably thinking of the America's Most Haunted and the Rob Zombie sort of generation of games that people were looking at Alice Cooper's game as the best of the traditional or the spooky games the spooky house games let's call them that yeah that's right yeah so yeah I think well if you haven't played it yet you should definitely give it a go because I only played one game on it but I was impressed. Did you play it, John? Yes, I did. The games at first were set at one ball play per game in order to make sure that as many people could play it as possible. They only had two machines at the show. Saturday night, after the show hall closed for the regular public and only the VIPs were allowed to stay in. One of the games was set to two balls per game. I played, I think, one or two of those games. That certainly helps getting a little further into the game. It had a good feel, but I had to still get used to, like the scavenger hunt that you're apparently doing. You're browsing through that castle, various rooms, depending on the shots that you make, and you're battling various monsters. But apparently, during a battle, you can also escape that room, and then you go somewhere else. And I still had to get a feel for the game to realize where I am and what I'm doing. But other than that, it's absolutely a top-notch job for Charlie and his team. Yeah, absolutely. The one I played was T-ball. I didn't realize there was only one machine that was on that, But yeah, I was playing a multiplayer game in two balls and managed to get quite a few multi-balls going in those two and didn't really know what I was doing. You just had to show off. No, because I didn't know how I started them. But I was going for the old shoot the locks, went lock, slip, just locked three balls and multiball seemed to start. So that seemed to be a reliable thing to do. But yeah, all credit to the Spooky Team for producing another great game. Oh, absolutely, yeah. So it looks like two winners in a row for Spooky Pinball. Yeah, so we'll see. So I wonder what the next one's going to be. They've got to keep the train going, haven't they? Well, I think that train will be going for quite a while now. I mean, they've got to do 500 of Alice Cooper, and TNA, Total Mental Annihilation, is near 400 games sold, and the production is currently, I think they are just under 110 that have been built and tested. So that's like close to 300 games to go. So basically they have to build 800 games. And they're still a small family. They are indeed. Yeah, and they want to stay that way, which is, you know, it all credits them for not wanting to become, you know, another Stern. They want to be spooky. Right. But if you think about it, if you have, like, orders for 800 games lining up, then I don't think you're... You're no longer spooky. Yeah, okay, I see what you're saying, but... I think that if they keep the production numbers, you know, the number of machines they make, and don't try to expand and get another production line going or something like that, then people understand that they're a small company and they're willing to wait for their games. Right. And I think there's an awful lot of goodwill behind Spooky as well. You know, there are more behind the bigger companies. So I don't think they've got a problem at the moment. But yeah, there's certainly no rush to announce another game, is there? No, actually, it looks to me like they have plenty of time for the development of another game, because they need to build these games that are currently being sold. They need to build these first, and in the meantime, there's all the time in the world to develop another new title. Well, not only build these games, they have to develop the software on them, because of course they're not software complete. Right. I mean, total nuclear annihilation could potentially never be software complete because Scott just keeps on adding more and more features to it. Actually, he mentioned that he's sort of done on that, and he will just be fixing bugs. But to touch on the subject of software, and in this case also hardware, at the Texas Pimple Festival it was announced that Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle is like Total Nuclear Annihilation also running on the P-Rock system for Multimorphic that was part of the reason why the software wasn't that far developed because they basically originally planned to do the game on the Ben Heck system and they had code further developed alone for that platform and then they decided to go with the P-Rock platform so they had to start from scratch on code for that one. So that explains why code wasn't developed but obviously the P-Rock platform has proven itself. There's at least four pinball companies currently using it as a platform for their games. for their games? I think it's a real testament to the original design of the P-Rock and the P3-Rock board sets that so many people have decided to use them because it's just made pinball manufacturing on a small scale or on a large scale so much more easy than it could have been if everybody had to develop their own individual different board set and control system and software for it. So I think Jerry and the whole team who worked on mainly in the hardware but the guys who did the software for that, the framework for it deserve a big pat on the back for really pushing smaller scale pinball manufacturing in a way which wouldn't previously have been possible without spending huge amounts of money developing not just your own software but making your own boards. Right. And I think you might even go further and say part of this whole pinball resurgence that apparently is going on has to be credited to the fact that because these boards are available, more people are getting into small scale pinball production and boosting that resurgence. That's true and it's also something which brings on the talent the next generation of pinball software programmers and game designers that they can actually access all this they can build their own games reasonably easily and program them and design their own rules in a way which was never possible before and those people can then either develop their own companies as some have or become employed by some of the larger companies Right. And since we're talking, well, we mentioned Total Nuclear Annihilation also running on the P-ROC system, Scott Benisi, designer and programmer, introduced actually two new features to the game code of Total Nuclear Annihilation at the Texas Pinball Festival, the so-called co-op mode, and there was a second mode where basically every... Oh, there's a team versus mode. So that means that player 1 and 3 are teamed up and 2 and 4 are teamed up. So you can battle in teams of two against each other. Well, that certainly makes, well, should make the game a bit easier because not everyone's bowing and not everyone can get to destroy the reactor 9 with a camera pointing at them and an audience expecting them to get there. So, yes, if people can have a co-op mode, either all players together or all teams, then that adds another element to it. And it would be great for parties as well in the home, where you can get more than everybody playing individually. You can all team up or split into pairs. Yeah, sounds fun. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, I believe Scott Danesi, he announced that that was sort of the last thing that he was adding, and from then it would just be fixing bugs, if any. Because at some point you've got to let it go. I mean, you can go completely overboard and keep changing and adding stuff, but... Yeah, yeah. But, you know, if something comes up with a really good idea, I'm sure it would be hard for him to say, no, I'm done with that game, and he might just want to try and sneak it in there somewhere in a future code update. Oh, well, we'll see. I think that runs Up for Spooky pinball Yeah absolutely but there was certainly Some other announcements At the Texas show which Texas show is A big deal these days it's grown And grown and both in Numbers of games number of attendees Number of vendors and A number of big names Who were there I mean one thing that really struck me was as you sort of walk the halls, you bump into people who were at the show, famous names, designers, programmers, whoever, artists who were there, but aren't even part of the building. You know, you come across Dennis Nordman in the corridor or Mark Ritchie or whatever, and they're not speaking, they're not doing any presentations, but that's the place to be, so that's where they go. Right. And, yeah, it's great running into these people. I don't know how your Saturday night went but I know that somewhere around 4am in the morning I found you in Mark Ritchie's room where a party was going on and to be honest I have no idea where I was prior to that I really don't, I've been trying to recall, one of the fun things at least for me so in the middle of Saturday night you run into John Borg in the Elevator, have a great chat with him. We spilled some very interesting notes on the development of Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh, detail! When John Borg was designing what became Guardians of the Galaxy, there was no theme announced to him what he would be working on. He knew that Stern had the Iron Maiden theme, and he was expecting it to become Iron Maiden so what he did was he designed the playfield and he left a big gap in the middle where he could place an Eddie toy and then instead of getting Iron Maiden he got the Guardians of the Galaxy license and he decided to use that to put Groot instead in the center. Okay so it would have potentially been very similar to Metallica I guess with the Sparky character but having an Eddie character up there or a Bash toy. Right and that might actually have been one of the reasons for management to decide not to give the Iron Maiden license to John Borg because he's already sort of the rock band's designer at Stern but it's interesting that not many people might realize that the current Guardians of the Galaxy playthrough might have been Iron Maiden. Yeah, it's interesting. In a sense, I suppose you could also say that Guardians of the Galaxy is a music pin too. Right, but slightly different. Yeah. Right. It's got some good music in it now, at least. Actually, there's an interesting comment that John Borg made about that as well, because I asked him prior to Pinball Expo in October, when I already knew he was working on the game, I asked about the music and he said, oh no, it's going to be fantastic. And then it turned out originally that none of the soundtrack songs were in the game. That's right, they weren't licensed, were they? Right. And then as soon as everybody on Pinsight and other forums started complaining about that, sort of understatement they went after that and put them in the game after all, but the interesting comment that John made when I talked to him at Texas was he says like, well all the action scenes are with the theatrical score, so all the fighting scenes and everything that they use for multiball, in the movies that's all based on scenes where they use the the music score and not the songs from the Walkman soundtrack, if you want to call it that. Yeah. In the movie, those songs are used when he's just walking around and kicking something or they're not in the action scene. So in a sense, it sort of made sense that the pinball game would feature the orchestral score and not so much the Walkman score. but that's not what the movie is remembered for. No, exactly. People remember the music tracks in it and even if they don't remember exactly how they'll be used. Right. Because you can't have that song without a whole bunch of tracks when you also mix Volume 1 or Volume 2. I think the movie only... Sorry, the game is only the first movie, isn't it? It is, yes. Which is also quite disappointing because the second movie was already out by then. Yeah, but... Okay. Yeah. We get it. But, and that's also interesting, apparently the license was sort of handed to them because the creators of Guardians of the Galaxy wanted Stern to make a pinball, and then they got all tricky about what was allowed and what not, and I don't get that. If you want a pinball machine, then just give all the assets and, you know. Oh, I agree, but it may not necessarily be theirs to give. You know, the movie probably licensed the soundtracks, and they can't then sub-license them to Stern. True. So you can use these, so they have to go back to the original publishers and copyright holders if they want to be able to use them. Right. Anyway, so we got to this because of running into John Borg at 4 a.m. somewhere at the Texas Pinball Festival on the third floor near the elevator. I point out that Jonathan and I were sharing a room at the Texas Pinball Festival, and I thought I was being reasonably good at getting back to the room about 5 o'clock or something like that, or 4.30 in the morning, 5 o'clock. But when I got back there, the room was empty. and I was enrolled up about an hour after I did. Yeah. I had to get out in order to... Was that Saturday night? I can't remember. It was Saturday night, yes. Yeah, okay. So I had to be out there Sunday, fairly early Sunday, to get back into the show hall. Because one of the things I find when I go to shows like Mike Texas and Pinball Expo, which we'll come to a bit later, is if they have seminars, then I tend to be in the seminar hall the entire time. that the seminars are running, which means that if seminars run all day Saturday, as they pretty much did this year, then until about 9 o'clock or whatever, then I don't get to get into the show hall until 9 o'clock, and then I'm sort of going around photographing and videoing everything, and that takes me all the way, and making a list of all the machines, that takes me up to basically the time they kick us out, which is, what was it, 2 o'clock in the morning, I think we got kicked out of the show all on Sunday or Saturday night, Sunday morning at which point it then started to get out and enjoy ourselves and meet up with everybody else so yeah, it's a late night and we have to be out there Sunday morning to pick up and cover the things that are happening that day as well because it's a packed show just as it is in Chicago too, but it's thoroughly enjoyable and fantastic and those two shows really are the the big two, I'd say now. What do you think, Jonathan? Absolutely, yes. Texas has, might even be more interesting than the Pinball Expo show, which I don't want to say anything negative about, but the fact that Pinball Expo usually doesn't have that many games, and over at Texas you have 400 games, and everybody's really trying to bring their best game to the show. The show is used by more and more companies to review games. Obviously, Stern was there with quite a large delegation. I mean, George Domet was there, John Borg was there, Steve Ritchie was there. So they're heavily represented. They realize it's an important show for them to make a presence. even if they didn't have a new game to show this year, but you know that might change. Yeah, the timing of these things is often dictated by factors they can't control, you know, things aren signed off for a show they just can show it But hands down to Ed Kim and Paul the organizers of the Texas Panball Festival and all their volunteers and everybody else who helps to make this a really wonderful show because it's absolutely a blast being there. You run into so many people that you either met at that show at earlier editions or people that you know from other shows. it's just the best way to say it it's wonderful that's the only word I can think of well I think the fact that we've probably been talking for nearly 40 minutes about things that went on at that show and we still haven't finished yet I don't think exactly because before we get to Stern there was another sort of reveal at the Texas Pinball show that I briefly want to talk about which was the remake of Kingpin indeed that was from Circus Maximus which obviously was James Laughlin, Paul Kiefer and Jimmy Lippum again Jimmy Lippum of course yes he's the man of a million games he seems to have his finger involved in or finger in the pie for every single new project that's out there I'm sure that's not true but he is a very busy guy not only just doing his baseball game, P3, but also doing the Wizard Blocks remake as well, which is also on display. Right. If you see that. But anyway, getting back to Kingpin, yes, go on, talk about Kingpin. So, what's interesting, for those who don't know, Kingpin was a game that was developed by Capcom in the mid-90s. It was designed by Mark Ritchie, who was actually also at the show, we just mentioned that. and what's interesting is that they currently built a prototype I think we should call it but what I found out at the show is that that entire prototype was built with parts that were collected over the years by a Californian collector who I'm not sure whether he wants to have his name mentioned so I won't mention his name but that's a good idea yeah But basically, so, to build this game, they actually didn't have to make that many parts themselves, because most of them came from this collector who had basically enough parts so the game could be built. It doesn't go for the hardware to drive it, because I understood this was running on a P-Rock as well. Yes, this is on a P-Rock game, yes, indeed. And the LEDs in there of course are new, and all the wiring of it is new. Right. Yeah, so that they had to do, that part, and of course that's where Jimmy Lippen was probably a very big help. But it's sort of, it's different when you're building a prototype from scratch scratch and you have to get all the side rails or whatever the guide rails you have to make them to spec for your game and instead of having them handed to you sort of. I don't want to talk down the project because it's a huge effort what they did but it sort of feels like okay it's It's more like, okay, we're putting, you get a kit and you build it, you put it together. It's not like... I think that's fair to an extent, but yeah, there was quite a lot of custom, well, all the wiring, I don't think they necessarily used the wiring. Well, the wiring, the... Lighting effects as well. All the programming and simulation of the original software. One of the interesting things... I'm trying to think whether I'm allowed to say this. I saw a photo of the Circus Maximus team together with Mark Ritchie, who designed the game. I think Mark told me that he didn't like the size of the display. He rather would see something the size of the way Chicago Gaming went with the big LCD on Attack from Mars. He thinks that would be more suitable. I think he's got a very valid point there for what they were showing at the show, because what they were showing was an emulation of the Capcom operating system and the Capcom original display and rules. So that display is obviously designed for a 128x32 DMD display. So that's not something which fits nicely onto the LCD screen, but that is only one particular direction they're going in. The first stage was to emulate what Capcom do, and the second stage is to completely rewrite the rules and create their own displays, which will fit on the display that they have in there. So, yes, they're right. If that's all they're going to do, just emulate, let's say, just, you know, as far as the display goes, they're only going to show the original animations and displays, then, yeah, it's not a great aspect ratio for that, But if they go the whole hog and write their own software and create their own graphics, then they can obviously fit it in the same way that Stern does with their displays and make best use of it. Right. Or they might still choose to use a different ratio display and go the Chicago Gaming route or the Dutch Pinball route, for that matter. because they had that wider display as well, which could actually work fine because then if people will get an option to choose between which games, you want both simulations that you're running to look good, I expect. But other than that, it was a very impressive effort of what they did, especially if you take into account that they hadn't started on that until after Pinball Expo of October last year. That's right, so it's virtually three or four months' worth from saying they were going to do it to actually having that game there. That is very impressive. Absolutely. So we'll see exactly what they intend to do with it and what kind of timescale they're looking at, because, of course, there's still the Pimble Circus project, which they were working on as well. Well, that's an interesting thing as well. What they mentioned, there's a couple of things I'd like to address, and I hope that Circus Maximus won't mind me mentioning it, in the sense that they mentioned that the Kingpin project is sort of like an easier game for them to get started on, and with the profits of that Kingpin game, they would be able to fund the Python Spinball Circus development further, which completely makes sense. But that sort of also means that Kingpin is going to become a rather expensive game. At least you might think, or you could think, that it would be like that. On top of that, they also mentioned that they have three options for manufacturing of the game, of which two, I think, indicate that they knock on either Chicago Gaming's door or Stern Pimble's door or Spooky Pimble's door. And the last option would be that they would develop manufacturing in-house for themselves, which would mean setting up an entire assembly line. but then you're basically if you have to invest in an assembly line for yourself for that one game that's going to be a huge investment so that's going to make that game even more expensive sure you can use that for the Python's pinball circus project after that and future games and future games of course but it's still a huge investment so that tells me that Kingpin is not likely to be a very well, it's not going to be a $5,000 game let's put it like that. No, I think that's fair enough. They had the kind of money to spend to set up an entire production line and production facility then they would probably have spent that in getting people's circus out the door rather than trying to raise money from in Kingpin. And you also have to wonder let's say they go, they knock on the door of Chicago Gaming, who are already busy enough as they are with their own remakes. Why would Chicago Gaming even be interested? Because they could, in theory, do it themselves. Absolutely, they could. So, why would they, I mean, they would really have to knock on the door with a huge bag of money, making it so interesting that it would be interesting enough for Chicago Gaming to say, we're not going to do this ourselves, but we're going to take your money and we'll do this for you. And then, again, if that takes a lot of money to get them to start going on that game, that means that eventually the people who are buying the game are going to pay for that. Yeah, and not only that, if you go to Chicago Gaming and say, I want you to make Kingpin for me, they'll go, well, hang on, we're already making Medieval Madnesses, we're making Attack from Mars remakes, we've got our next game coming up. We're about to start making that. We don't want you in the market taking money out which people might be spending on our games. Right. Yeah, so it's probably Sky Gaming. They're pretty much tied up at the moment. They're pretty much tied up with all the games that they have to make. So who else? Maybe American. Yeah. American might work. Stern Pinball might work because they at least have the capacity, then it's a question whether, as the same example that you just raised, is Stern interested in adding another competitor to the market? Yeah, yeah. Or I guess there are other companies outside the US who might possibly be interested in making the game. It doesn't need to be a US-based game, does it? It doesn't have to be, but then we still need to have these companies cranking out games in larger series. There's not that many doing that right now. No, and again, whoever that is, they will end up being a competitor in the end. Right. So, oh well. Thankfully that's not up to us to decide, but we, at least I do wish Circus Maximus all the best in getting this going. I think it's safe to say that I don't think we're going to see any production games of Kingpin if they get that for this year. That looks to be like a 2019 production title. Yeah, I think once you go through the materials and work out all the parts that you actually need to make from scratch for that game, as you said, You can make one using spares that are already in existence and owned by a collector. But to actually go ahead and fabricate all those parts is certainly going to take time. Right. Anyway, moving on from that, we mentioned American Pinball just now. We also mentioned Chicago Gaming. Where do you want to go? Oh, well, okay. Well, let's do it in alphabetical order then. We're American. Okay. Because they had an announcement Or a semi kind of announcement As to what their next game is likely to be I completely missed that Okay I know There's a rumour going around That it would be Oktoberfest Did they confirm that? They certainly raised that in their talk And I think there was a Let me say a mixed response to that that people were not entirely convinced that it would have a wide enough appeal. You could see it appealing to the barcade and bar crowd, but to the home collector doing something based around alcohol, drinking, I don't know, it might be a tough sell, I think, to a family home in the way that Houdini was pretty much a slam dunk It's a title which everybody knows and gives you a bunch of ideas to start with. Oktoberfest? Not so sure. What do you think? Well, I mentioned this on the Have to Have Pinball podcast about a month ago. They discovered that American Pinball had trademarked the name Oktoberfest and they figured it would be an upcoming theme, not only for Pinball Machine, They also deposited it for the use on slot machines, but that's another story. But the story goes that Python Anghelo was convinced that Oktoberfest would be a good theme for a pinball machine. And back in the days at Williams, when Mark Ritchie was working on Diner, Python had suggested that he should re-theme it to Oktoberfest because of international appeal. Williams management then said that they didn't like the name Oktoberfest because it would limit the sales window sort of. Right. And so then it was renamed International Cafe. He came up with a rather amusing sketch for what would be the back glass full of stereotypes of international characters ordering typical food for going for that character. But in the end, Mark Ritchie didn't want to do it. Williams didn't want to do it. Joe Bolzer, who is likely to be the designer of that game, also suggested the theme to Gary Stern early 2000s, something like that. And Gary wasn't interested in it as well because he wanted to sell games that people could play all year, not just in October. So I can see some of the resistance. But then again, if the theme is integrated in a good way, of course it can be a fun game that you'd love to play all year long. Where I'm having trouble is trying to figure out, like, so what would you do with an Oktoberfest theme? Are you going for Bradworth multiball? Yeah, I mean, it's a question of how Germanic, I suppose, you have to go ahead and make the title, whether it's more sort of just a generic bar theme. Right, and then still you have to see like, okay, so what are you going to do? I mean, it's not like Oktoberfest is a I mean, in the bar scene there's plenty of people who want to taste different beers and to find their favorites or new favorites or whatever you want to call it Oktoberfest is just like they serve beer and nobody's picky about what it is as long as it's beer Yeah, and there's lots of it And it's in big, big signs Big containers Right, you know, and Of course, the women dress up in these Dindles Or what are they called? You know that probably better than I do No, I don't know what those outfits are called Right, the guys are dressed in Lederhosen And there's also an outfit For the women I can see the appeal that the cleavage that these outside shoes we have would have on a male pinball audience although that's probably a comment that probably should not be made these days. Yeah we've probably moved on from that kind of artwork and theme haven't we? I think the industry has moved on but I'm not gonna say beautiful women are not out of style ever no of course not no but there's there's ways of portraying that right but in in the spirit of Oktoberfest I think it's a little bit of tongue-in-cheek would be okay you know I mean yeah yes you could definitely do it as a sort of almost like a pastiche or a wry look at what what people think Octoberfest actually is. Right. So, and then still I'm trying to figure out, okay, so how do you get a game going around that? So that's, but okay, I'm not Joe Balcer and that's, he probably has ideas for that else he wouldn't have stuck to that theme for almost 20 years. Yeah, yeah, I think it So that's what American are potentially working on as their next game. Chicago Gaming then. Talk about them. Well, that's interesting. They had originally announced to be revealing their third remake at the Texas Pimple Festival. And a week ahead of the show, they decided to communicate. They told everybody, sorry, we're working on a feature that's not done yet. It's not finished. were not introducing the new remake, much to a lot of disappointment of people at the show. Spooky Pinball probably did a lot of extra business because of that. If people wanted to spend money at the show, then they probably either bought Total Nuclear Annihilation or Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. But I talked to Doug Skor about it, and he said, the company is run by Doc Duba and he's a perfectionist. He has this feature for the upgraded models and he wants that feature to be perfect so it will really knock everybody's socks off. If it's not perfect he doesn't want to show it. So... I think everybody thought that was probably related to a topper for the game. Yeah, it could be. I have no idea. Because you're talking about it being the The LE or the Super LE or whatever they They had a special edition And a limited edition for Attack on Mars And I think they're sticking to that model again I'm not even sure How much demand there would be for a standard Version Remake I don't think they sold that many of Attack on Mars but probably still enough to Consider that as well But anyway When we were at, before the show, we went to Fun Game Room Superstore. In Mesquite. That's right. And they certainly had a large number of boxes of Attack from Mars is there, and I think nearly all of them there were stainless steel side rail ones, so I guess they're the standard edition rather than a limited or special edition. Right. So I think they sell pretty well. So I think it's definitely worth them doing, keeping that level of game going. It's worked for Stern in the past, worked for Jersey Jack in a way, in the same way, I should say. And I guess it works for Chicago too. Right. So I did ask Doug recently, that was last week, I talked to him on the phone. I said, when can we expect the review? If we're lucky, end of April, else early March. He gave it like a two week window. He said like, when I talked to him, he said like three to five, six weeks. So they're not even going to hit the mid-worth gaming traffic? Well, I don't know. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. I can only report what he told me. There was another interesting rumor going around about that third remake, in the sense that DocScore did do an interview with Replay Magazine. And in that article were a couple of photographs featured that included a bunch of playfields in the background, including of which one was a monster bash, the other two being Medieval Madness and Attack on Mars, which, of course, immediately resulted into people speculating that the third remake would be monster bash. Yes, to be fair, that's been speculated for quite a long time before that, but I can certainly see there's some kind of confirmation of that. Right. I asked Dog about that And his comment was that They'd like to put out Little teasers like that To throw people off Okay Well there are two ways of Well three ways of looking at that The first is Exactly what you just said They like to put out little teasers The second way is that it was a bit of a mistake And it shouldn't have been on there And the third is that they actually did it as a kind of soft announcement to those people who were thinking it was going to be announced at Texas and maybe had sort of money burning a hole in their pocket and they wanted to spend it on another game, to let them know that that game is actually coming, but they weren't prepared to announce it officially at this show, but don't go out and buy any of the other companies' new products because Monster Dash is coming. Right. So it could have been any of those three, But I guess you have to take him at his word and say it was a little bit of fun on their behalf, bearing in mind that they had intended to launch at Texas. But obviously, if you miss that window, then you might as well wait until everything is absolutely perfect. Right. So the other two titles mostly being rumored for being, if it's not Monster Bash, then either Cactus Canyon is named a lot, and Big Bang Bar as well. I can't reveal any sources, but it's not going to be Big Bang Bar. Yeah. I'm willing to say that. So anybody hoping for Big Bang Bar, it's not, remake number three is not going to be Big Bang Bar. I said it. Okay. So that narrows it down to probably two. well I'd be very surprised if it's not not so much well we'll just have to wait and see quite right yeah it's not been confirmed what the next title from them is but one game that has been announced before we go to that there were a couple of other announcements at Texas Actually, there is another announcement regarding Chicago Gaming that I might as well throw in there now. They announced they finally found a Spanish distributor. And I don't have the details in front of me. I just thought of it. It's a new guy who's starting up distribution. And he's also taking on Jersey Jack Pinball. so that's a new company in Spain doing distribution for Jersey Jack, Pinball and Chicago Gaming and hopefully that will get them started in a good way I mean Stern does have another company that is doing their distribution in Spain so there's going to be a little competition I guess But I have no idea how big of a market for pinball Spain currently is, because, well, Spain is not the wealthiest country in Europe, I would say. But they do have a huge history of pinball in that country. So you would think the opportunity is there. It's certainly a holiday country for a lot of people in Europe. So that means that there's a lot of holiday spots that could use fun pinball machines to be operated. Yeah, absolutely. So good luck to them, whoever they are. And good news for the Spanish pinball market and buyers over there. Right. So getting back to the other announcements that we had. So we had some new employment opportunities, I guess we could say, for a couple of pretty well-known names in pinball. Do you want to pick up on one of those? Well, we already discussed spooky pinball, so let's start with that one. Charlie Emery announced, after Bowen Kerins had shown how to destroy Reactor 9 on Tokyo Moon D.I. annihilation, that Bowen Kerins is now a member of the spooky pimple family. Indeed, and he's going to be working on software and rules, rule development, I think. Is that right? Yes. So that's going to be interesting, because obviously you have creative people designing a playfield, but then what do you do with it? And obviously as a designer you might have an idea, but when someone like Bowen throws in his two cents, I'm pretty sure they come up with a lot of extra ideas. And I think what I understood is that Bowen had already chimed in on the development of Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle, which basically resulted to him getting this position. Right, okay, well that's good news. It's always good to have talented people who understand how pinball plays involved in the development of games. And, yeah, with Keith having been snapped up by Stern as well, and Zach as well by Stern, and Josh working at Royal Thrills. Basically, if you want to get a job in the gaming industry these days, you just need to be a top pinball player. it finally pays off yeah there is some payback at last but also the other announcement which I'll mention then was during George Gomez seminar on his Union seminar and he announced that the designer of Medieval Madness Attack from Mars and Shadow who is of course Brian Eddy thank you Brian has now joined Stern Pinball as a senior game designer. And his first title will be coming out next year. Right. Now, we don't know what that is. And I'm not entirely sure quite what the title Senior Game Designer means, whether, in fact, all the designers are senior game designers. Exactly. Can you tell me? Well, maybe, I don't know whether Keith might even be a senior game designer Is there a junior game designer title? Well, I think the entire team for Iron Maiden To which we get in a bit Is called the rookie team at Stern So I guess they're rookie teams Or rookie game designers and senior game designers Well, it could be the case But anyway, so Brian is back and will be bringing his new game to market next year. We've got a little while to wait for that. But so, yeah, you touched on it there. Let's move on to what else has happened since Stern didn't release their game or announce their game. Actually, I still want to stick with Brian Eddy for a second, if you don't mind. Oh, OK. Yeah, no, go for it. Of course, Brian Eddy is a name that everybody has been hoping would get back to pinball. Because Medieval Madness and Attack from Mars are two absolute classics. And there's a very good reason that Chicago Gaming picked those two titles as their first two remakes. But Stern Pinball is Stern Pinball. And what we have seen with other designers is that not everybody gets the design freedom or liberty to do whatever they want to do or what that they were used to at Williams as where Brian was working before. So, you might be Brian Eddy and still get hung up on a license that you don't want to do, or, you know, somebody has to do it, and you're Brian Eddy, make it work. True, yes, it's a different culture, it's a different market these days as well, you know, and the market in the end drives what the culture is at the company, so they have to make games with titles that they think will sell, or designs that they think will sell. Right. Although that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't have unlicensed titles, does it? No, it doesn't, and I know where you're getting at, and we'll get to that in a second. But I sort of have a feeling that if Brian Eddy is doing a new title, everybody going to be hoping for another Medieval Madness or another Attack from Mars which actually both are original themes and with a lot of humor in there and that always difficult to put in a licensed game So I'm very curious to see what Stern and Brian Eddy will come up with in order to basically hide the game. I mean it's Brian Eddy so expectations are high which means He's on a pedestal. It's easy to get knocked off Absolutely. Yeah, but people will have very high expectations regardless of what it is, but I think it's only good news the fact that he's back. There is a very talented designer. We've seen that He's a very nice guy as well He is a nice guy And he's still relatively young as well in the game design business compared to some others So he's got a, you know, if he wants it, he's got a good few years creating new games for Stern. The other thing I was curious about, but nobody at Stern answered it yet for me, Brian is going to be working as a senior game designer, but it wasn't clear to me whether he was going to be working in-house or maybe he was just working as a part-timer or he's designing somewhere else. I mean, everybody who asked over the years whether Brian Eddy would be coming back, was told he's working in video games and internet gaming for Facebook. And apparently the money is very good in that. So I'm not sure whether Brian is 100% full-time being employed by Stern or whether he's still doing all the online gaming and that kind of stuff that he's been doing for the past decade and a half. Well, that's a fair point. I mean, imagine when Steve Ritchie joined, for instance, he had his own company, Steve Ritchie Productions, and he was licensing games effectively and working, designing games at home and then coming to the factory to get them made. Right. So, yeah. So, it's something like that as well, but we're not sure, and nobody commented on that so far. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter as long as he's producing great games. It doesn't matter how he actually, you know, what the process is. Right. So there's that. From there, it's an easy jump to Elvira 3, which is actually a game that is partly developed outside of Stern by Piml designer Dennis Nordman. And during a seminar, George Gomez confirmed that that third Elvira theme game is still happening. Yes, he did. He said that the basic design work on the game is pretty much done. but what they haven't got is anybody to work on it doing the software, because all their software team are already tied up doing existing projects, so that's kind of put to one side for the moment until they can allocate somebody to work on it. Right. Interestingly, that game is apparently already done for quite some time. In terms of playfield layout and design, you mean? Yes. Obviously it's going to be interesting. One thing that came up during the Texas Pinball Festival, there seems to be the curse of Elvira on Dennis Norgman. So he took his whole office bike and broke his leg again? No, but the first time, that was the first time that Dennis Nerman worked on an Elvira-themed pinball machine. Exactly like you said, he was involved in a dirt bike racing accident, broke his leg and was in the hospital for like six months or something. And he couldn't finish the game. The second time, when he was working on Scat Stiff, Dennis got actually laid off at Williams. And now the third design, he designed the game for Stern, and in the meantime he signed with Deep Root Pitbull, so that's the third time he's working on an Elvira-themed game and he can't bring it to the finish himself. Well, you're assuming that he can't. I don't know what the agreement he has with Deep Root is as far as finishing his design for Stern. Right. But Deep Root might be very liberal. I don't see them at Stern being that liberal, having the designer who is going to be working at a competitor walking around your factory. I don't see that happen. Well, I don't know what terms they have with the companies they are working for. But anyway, I take your point, yes, something seems to happen every time they have an Elvira themed game coming out. So, Dennis and Alvaro, there seems to be some sort of jinx. Let's hope it doesn't get any worse than this, because, you know, for Dennis' sake. Okay, so... Then you mentioned designers and original themes. Exactly, yeah. So while we're talking about Stern and upcoming titles, Steve Ritchie made a little announcement recently, didn't he, about what he's working on next. Well, the rumor was already going around, and I think he confirmed it several times on his Facebook that he's working on a non-licensed theme. He certainly did. He said it's great to have all the freedom now to design and create the theme himself rather than having to work with licensed assets all the time and all the limitations that come with that. Right. I think the buzz at Texas Football Festival all it was hard to ignore everybody seems to be sort of convinced that he's working on a third iteration of the black knight theme yeah black knight 3000 or similar yes or 3.0 or whatever you want to call it yeah it would make sense um because it's a it's a it's a almost a licensed and some are nicely playing, isn't it? Because some of the assets are already there, the backstory is there, the start of the artwork is already there from what's been done before, so there's a good launchpad to start a game from. Right. But that's not confirmed in any way, shape or form, because that's just speculation. It is speculation, although the rumors are very strong and speaking of rumors and Stern as other podcasts already mentioned what is in the pipeline for Stern I think the next six titles actually are already out on the street seriously they are Iron Maiden was sort of confirmed by George Gomez as Titanium Man being the code name for that project. And that game has since then been announced and revealed, and we'll get to that in a second. Then Deadpool has been rumored for quite some time. That's in the book for the June, July kind of window, summer. And then September, October, or the fall, two Kapow titles from Stern rumoured to be The Monsters and the other being The Beatles and then there's Elvira the third title and Black Knight so that makes it six titles for Stern so the next 18 months for what Stern will be doing is already out on the street I would be surprised to see if they did anything that isn't projected yet although we did see the Supreme title recently which nobody saw coming Yeah, although that's only a very small production And it's done as a, what do they call it? I forget what's the name of all those particular titles That they make for other people, contract games Right So, okay, so we've got those games We've got Iron Maiden, Deadpool, Munsters, Beatles That night, 3000 or whatever And Elvira So let's put some names to who we think might be working on those then obviously Iron Maiden we know was Keith Elwin's based on his Archer one we'll return to Iron Maiden in just a moment Deadpool who do you think is in the frame for Deadpool? I'd say George Gomez ok and I would even go further and say Gomez redrawing a former Trudeau layout. That's an interesting idea. Any backup on that or just what you've heard over the past few months? That's what I heard over the past few months. I've even seen a complete photo of the playfield. Let me look it up on my phone. Which was actually already, everybody apparently was sharing that at Texas Pimple Festival. There's a photo of the Playview with a piece of paper with artwork, an artwork sketch. The game is themed around a comic book, not really. Not the movie, right. I'm not sure whether that is giving them any extra assets to work with. Well, Stern would like to do that. It gives them more freedom and of course they don't have to license for characters or the actors do they? Yeah. Or we need to track? So, now I got the picture here, this is all with red plastics and a piece of paper in the center of the play field. There's a, what appears to be a three rank drop target with a Deadpool character on top of it. few mechanisms in the back. Looks like there is no ramp on the right side, but two on the left. And you might have an upper playfield with a third flipper to access that upper left ramp. I don't even know, do you have the same image as I have? I don't think I do, no Okay, so one of the other podcasters, I won't spill any names, was kind enough to share it with me So he didn't send me it, but he let me take a picture of his phone Right Which was good enough for me Okay, so Gomez the Deadpool, and then he sent you, got... Is it potentially two Kapow titles? Allow me to add to that, that when I ran into George at the EAG show in London in January, the first thing I asked him was, shouldn't you be working on Deadpool? He firmly denied that he was working on that game. Well, yeah. I can't see him confirming it either if he was. No. No. Okay. well okay we'll take that as under advisement then as people like to say so yeah so you were saying Monsters and Beatles both Capow titles yes okay um I um this is George Caron Cowell um company right Capow Pinball um who obviously were behind Batman 66 yeah and um They seem to be seeing games around, I'm sorry to say, 60s or early 70s pop culture. Yes, that would be the best description, I would say. I mean, obviously Batman 66 was from that era. Monsters apparently is, although I have to look it up, but I guess that's fairly right. Beatles is as well. And if you're looking for names, I'm going to say Beatles, another Gomez design. And I think it was you who told me that Monsters was a dream theme for John Borg. Maybe, I can't remember. We had these lit conversations as well, but mostly they were about... I think he mentioned earlier that, and I'm not talking about recently, but I think someone years ago asked him what the dream team would be for him and I think he mentioned Munsters, so if he still feels like that, it seems fairly logical to assume, or at least I think we tried to get it, if Stern would be doing Munsters, which apparently they are rumoured to be doing. Of course, John Trudeau's dream title was always Beatles, wasn't it? Right. So, I wonder whether he had a hand in that originally in drawing up a design. Could very well be, but since he's no longer working at Stern anymore, if there was a design, then someone either could start over or adapt to what was there and continue on that. I mean, I don't see Steve Ritchie working on the Beatles. Yeah, I agree. I asked John Borg He flat out hates the Beatles Well That's maybe too hard to say But he would not be interested in working on that Let's just put it like that Okay I don't see Keith Elwin doing Beatles either Especially since That game is up for Like I said fall of this year And he just has his game out And I think Keith even mentioned that he's not working he hasn't started on anything new so that would be out of the question as well so who else i mean there are not that many designers at cern it would be surprising though there were two uh capacitors brought out in close proximity to each other right um you would think one one fine and then maybe three or four months later another one to bring both of them out almost simultaneously would certainly sort of crowd the nostalgic pinball market somewhat probably true but I'm sure Joe has something in his head he must have some sort of idea of what he wants to do and if they are two very different games then it doesn't matter Well, no, but you can imagine it might be the same audience for both those games, the Monsters and the Beatles, both people of a certain age who would be interested in buying them, but putting them both out in close proximity might strain some people's budgets. Well, if we're talking about who would be interested in buying them, in all fairness, Being from Europe, even though the Beatles are British, I'm not sure whether that will work. And Monsters, I don't think Monsters was a very popular show in Europe. No, definitely not. I'm guessing it probably did air over here somewhere, but I can't remember it being shown. The only references I've seen to it are things like Family Guy, where it's referenced as a part of American pop culture at the top. Yeah. I haven't ever seen it over here. No, same for me. The only reference is I've seen it mentioned on the Internet sometime and I had to look it up. Never, ever seen an episode or anything like that. So internationally, I'm not sure whether that's a title that is going to work for Stern. I mean, Gary Stern has said at many seminars and talks that they need a license to get distributors to order games, but in this case, I don't see how that would work for monsters. But then again, I probably said the same about Wheel of Fortune, and I think probably at least another 10 licenses that Stern went with, and they did it anyway. Yeah, well, I mean, that would kind of give them a reason to produce two games. They could have like the Beatles for the non-US market and Monsters for the US market, mainly. Obviously, there's a big crossover if either market wanted to buy the other. Right. But producing two games, it's kind of like the NASCAR and Grand Prix versions of the same game that Pat Lawler did. Right. I heard a rumor that there is a limitation to Beatles, but I'm not sure whether that's limited to the entire production run or just one model, that there would be a limited run of 1,964 machines, which is like the year the Beatles started, I think, 1964. Okay. But I have no idea whether that would apply to a limited edition or a premium or a pro. It doesn't sound very limited, does it? No, it doesn't. You can imagine the entire production run wouldn't necessarily hit that. Well, it also depends on the pricing point, because since these are Kapow titles, one has to wonder, are we going to see super limited edition games again? Absolutely sure we will. I think that was a question that was raised in George's seminar, and I think he confirmed that it's certainly on Stern's radar to produce those kind of top-end models where the license calls for it, not on a regular basis. And I guess that was kind of code for whenever it's a compound title. Right. Okay, so that's looked at what's coming up in Stern's future obviously we know what Jersey Jack is working on at the moment as far as the parapears which was received very well at the Texas Pinball Festival and I think they had a couple of games there and they had lines for them the entire show. Yeah. It does... It's an interesting way that they launch their games, isn't it? Because the game's not in production yet, so it's worth pointing that out. It was unveiled at Expo back in October. It's been shown at various shows since then, so we're looking at the past six months, but it's still not in production yet. Right So And rumor has it That production actually Has been delayed Until the summer Do we know why? No I don't That was just what I heard Already at Texas Jack was only there for one day And then he went to the Arcade expo In Banning Didn't get a chance to Talk to him I have been trying to get a hold of some people at Jersey Jack Pinball this week. Sadly, not very successful in doing so because there was another rumor, which I will not address because I don't want to start spreading any false rumors if they are not true. But I had a good reason to call them to ask about something else. And this would have been on my list as well. But it's interesting to see how Spurren is very secretive of their titles, although not very successful at being so secretive about it. But when they announce a game, it's instantly into production and they're ready to ship out games immediately. Yes, indeed. so on that note let's get on to Iron Maiden which we mentioned several times but haven't actually talked about how it was revealed, it wasn't revealed at the Texas show not entirely sure why it wasn't revealed at the Texas show I'm pretty sure they could have yeah they could have it was only shortly afterwards that they first of all put out a little teaser video saying Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast is coming without any pictures or video or anything of the game just a logo and just three or four days later they actually announced it properly and they announced it in a, well properly certainly the right word because they came out with like 26 27 photos of the game there was a press release and And the same night, Jack Danger of Dead Slip was at the factory streaming, live streaming footage of the game, including designer Keith Elwin and the entire team being present, where Keith explained the objects of the game and what you have to shoot for and what you have to do and that kind of stuff. Yeah, and also Keith did a coast to coast with Nate, didn't he? Right. about the game, so that was all lined up in advance. Yes, well the video stream was actually live from the factory. Unfortunately, Stern did not permit Jack Danger to have that video recorded and stored on the Twitch TV channel so that people could watch it back. So either you have to watch it live or you missed it. That's basically it. Right, okay. I watched a part of it. I think I watched for 60 to 80 minutes. So I saw the entire beginning. I saw Keith explain all the shots in the game and what you have to do. Then I started playing the game. And no offense, but I found being here in Europe, being still, I had been ill. I was very tired, it was very late at night, and the music of Iron Maiden is very energetic with a lot of high guitar notes, and that's coming from a pinball machine lacking quite a bit of bass, especially on a live stream like that. It was just killing my ears. I seriously, I had to stop watching because I was like, okay, I see now it flips. layout is absolutely brilliant but it's the Archer layout that we I think we both played like two years ago at our Arcade Expo 2.0 I didn't see that many changes to the layout to be honest but the music in combination with that live stream over the speakers and that was a little too much for me so I was just too tired and I figured I can watch this again or I can pick up on this tomorrow and then it turns out I couldn't yeah yeah that was a little annoying for other people around the world who join us out in the middle of the night right but going back to the actual launch itself we've only seen the pro version so far haven't we haven't seen anything at the premium or the LE we have seen a what they what did they call that chart? The feature matrix. Exactly, yes. That's what we have seen. And actually you bring up something that I find rather interesting. What I don't get is we see pictures of the pro and the next thing you hear is all the LEs are gone. Yeah. Based on what? We haven't seen any pictures of the LE. We only have seen the feature matrix. There's going to be 500 limited edition games, and apparently distributors already booked all of them. They're all sold for. So if you want one of those games, you have to be hoping that your distributor was able to get you one, or you have to find a distributor that still has one. Yes, although you have to wonder exactly how nailed down these orders are. You know, if people say, yes, I want to buy an LE and tell the distributor that, and then later they see the game and change their mind, you know, is there a penalty involved or does the distributor know they can select somebody else? I don't know how it works. Usually what I understood is Stern is telling, a distributor might say, like, I want 30, and then Stern gets back to them and he says, you're getting 22. And then it's up to the distributor to disappoint whoever he wants to. Right, yeah. Well, that's typically how it's worked in the past, I know. But now they keep bumping up the number of LEs and 500 LEs, obviously the same as the entire run for Spooky. I'm not sure why I, I think I read it on Pinsight, but apparently there's like 200 LEs for North America and 300 for Europe, which makes me wonder, is Iron Maiden that popular over here? Obviously not very popular in Australia or in lots of other countries. I have no idea how they assign those but well that's up to Stern I'm sure the games will get their own way or the other I do have to say not only marketing wise did Stern do a very good job at the reveal of the game but if we look at the design of the playfield and the art package on it at Zombie Yeti absolutely hit one out of the park. Yeah, I mean, I agree. That's absolutely stunning. The only thing, the only criticism I thought when I saw it was there was a kind of lack of guidance as to where the shots were, which is something which, you know, on a crowded playfield like that, you could kind of do with a few visual guides as to where the orbit shots are, where the inner orbits, and that's all. But as far as the actual artwork itself goes, yeah, absolutely stunning. it stands up by itself, if it wasn't even on a pinball machine, it would be a wonderful art to hang on your wall. Right, and, well obviously it has to be your cup of tea, but this one really was, it gave me the impression that the Zombie Yeti really raised the bar for future games by any artist. Yeah, and we've only seen the probe so far, we haven't seen what he's done for the premium or the LE. Right. So you can probably expect different cabinet packages for that and back glasses for track lights. Yeah. On the stream, no there was an interview with Zsharp, that was it, and, sorry I don't recall who did it, I think it was Head2Head Pinball, correct me if I'm wrong. They had Zach Sharp and they asked whether the artwork would be different on the playfield for the LE and the Premium as well. And Zach didn't want to address that yet. So that could be interesting because usually we expect different art packages for the Premium and the LE on the cabinet. And now we just have to wait and see what they will do with the playfield as well. well yeah the others may may actually not be legacy of the beast branded they might have a different iron maiden take right based around a different album or why not see that's not the current tour is legacy of the beast it could be based around you know classic albums or any number of different things so we'll wait to see how that turns out that might might by itself the two different playfield arts. Right. Rumor has it that either the premium or the LE will have this Egypt theme that is part of one album I don't know which one because I'm really not that well familiar with Iron Maiden music. But I did see the that that that Sphinx with the with the Eddie face and apparently that is used on a wider scale on one of the models. I think even the codename is E-Gift for one of those, either the premium or the LE. Okay, that would make sense. Okay, so that's what Stern's been up to recently. Right. Now, what else? What's happening down at Seabrook? Do we know any news from them? No, no. apparently they're working on some sort of biblical title that's one personally I didn't pay that much attention to them Robert Mueller the owner of Deep Root said like they would be ready in 2019 and I figured okay we'll see what you got by then and in the meantime I'm not going to bother them that much Yes they have banners up at at Pimble at Texas Pimble show don they saying we reveal our game at X Show Well they planning the five days of Deep Root and apparently the fifth day of five days of Deep Root will be tying in with the start of the Texas Pinball Festival in 2019. So that could be interesting. Barry Osler who is a designer for Deep Root Pinball and actually already moved to Texas Yes, Antonio He mentioned that he is working on two titles, one licensed theme and one original theme for Deep Root Yes, he is, he mentioned that during his seminar That's probably what we know, of course, Dennis Nordman is working for them, John Popaduic is, and David Thiel is going to be working for them. I think I'm missing one other designer. Yes, I was just thinking that. We're going to be kicking ourselves when we actually realise who it was. Oh, Jon Norris. Oh, of course, Jon Norris, yes. Apologies to John, yes. So there's a team of four game designers down there and David Thiel. I guess David's still working from Seattle and he's not moving there. Right. But it's interesting to see. I mean, Barry Osborne is already working on two titles and God knows how many titles the other guys are working on. Yeah, of course, Barry's got some work he was doing at Highway Pinball that he had to see the light of day. Right. So we could have an awful lot of games coming out from Barry over the next year or two. Okay, well, good for Barry. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Okay, so that's the events down in Deep Root, in San Antonio. Right. So then... No use from Dutch pinball? I was going to say Dutch Pinball were not present at the Texas Pinball Festival, although there was a Big Lebowski game present at the show. Someone brought it. I did talk to Cointaker. One of the prototypes from Zytec that was approved by Dutch Pinball was apparently shipped to Cointaker and was supposed to be at the show. Yeah. Unfortunately, that game got crushed in transport. It fell over in the backbox and completely crushed, and nothing they could do. There's insurance companies discussing it, and they can't touch it, and that's about it. So they couldn't bring that game to the show, which is obviously a pity. It is. I'm sure people would like to see, especially if they had an original one there, and they could put the two of them side by side to do a quick comparison so people could see how the Zytek one compared to the Aura one. Right, like they did at the Dutch Pinball Open last November. That's right, although they didn't tell anybody about it. Well, they said they had both models there, but they didn't indicate which one was which, and people couldn't tell the difference so that's a good thing I did talk to Barry of Dutch Pinball earlier this week asking whether there was any news there was a rumor someone probably trolling mentioned on Pinside that he had been in an accident on a parking lot which is absolutely untrue Barry's not has not been involved in any accident whatsoever, thankfully. No, I don't know. I wonder where that rumor came from. I have no idea. Someone sent me a screenshot of that post, actually. I didn't even look it up myself. I just saw that, and I talked to Barry, asking whether there was any news, and whether it was true that he got hit on a parking lot by a car or whatever. so absolutely not the case as in terms of new development they are thinking of sending out a new newsletter to the people who have a game on order basically Zytec is in the process of ordering parts to start the production of the games obviously these don't come in on it's not like you order them today and Amazon delivers them the next day no, they also have a lead time and I think they ordered them some time ago and probably the Chinese New Year would have gotten in the way of that in when was that, February I think wasn't it right, so and there's also the situation of a trade war going on between US and China. So there remains to be seen, it's probably not going to be affecting Dutch people ordering Pimble mechanisms from Pimble Life or something like that, that there's a ban on Pimble parts all of a sudden to be imported into China. That being said, it's not easy to import parts into China, but I brought that up in the past a couple of times and and apparently the Zytec people are experienced in how to deal with that, and all the bureaucracy that is involved in Communist China in importing parts. So they are still pretty confident that they can get all the parts that they need. So let's hope that they do. Yes, there's a lot of people waiting for their games, and both original buyers and new buyers, and I'm sure everyone at Dutch is very keen to get their production line rolling and start producing the games so they can get the current orders fulfilled and get some new ones and then move on to subsequent games. Okay, so that's where we're looking at with Dutch pinball at the moment. Right. I don't know, I haven't heard any news from highway pinball at the moment. Yeah, I know. I think there's still a few aliens tripling out. There was a new one that just appeared in our local pinball club here in London. So that's nice. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but it indicates... I think that's just come in, so it's just come from the factory. So I think we're looking forward to playing that fairly soon and seeing how that goes. I'm guessing it means that they're still making them, But they do have a good number of games In the pipeline to release as well Right So hang on a second I got an incoming call Oh who's that from It's Gary Gary Easter No Gary Flower Gary oh right I wonder what he wants I do too but I I think I already have What Oh we'll find out what it is When we get back next time and find out I've always got some interesting news to tell us and so we can share with everybody who's listening yeah okay but you were in the middle of your story I didn't want to interrupt so that's very kind but I'm sure we'll find out what that was all about right yeah so well two things still to address in regard to the Texas Pinball show is the first I want to mention is Cosmic Chaos which is it was obviously the theme of the show and that theme came about when Mark Ritchie and Ed Van Der Veen the organizer of the show were hanging out at Mark's place in Illinois last year after the Texas Pinball Festival had a couple of drinks and they came up with like, we should do a game and they came up with this theme called Cosmic Chaos, which then had used and had artwork developed for the last edition of the Texas Pinball Festival we all have seen that but apparently Mark Ritchie is sort of looking into designing a playfield to go with that game. And at the show floor of the past Texas Pinball Festival, there actually was a pinball cabinet with a decal on the playfield glass with some, well, it looked a bit like movie credits, where Mark Ritchie was mentioned, but also spooky pinball. Yes, that's right. It was kind of like a movie poster really, wasn't it? Yeah. So the game had, the cabinet had artwork on all sides. So the backbox, lower cabinet, everything had artwork on it. It looked gorgeous, to be honest. Yeah, it was a very nice design in dark blue. And as you say, that was the artwork that they used, or the theme that artwork was used to promote the whole Texas Kinball Festival. My understanding, and I could be wrong about this, is that I thought Mark had actually done a playful design for that game already, and they were just looking to know whether they could take it into production in some way. The artwork package was done, and the design industry was done. Obviously, it needs somebody to actually create the rules and all the animations and the rules, put it all together, and make it into a package. Well, it's interesting. Mark is obviously working for Play Mechanics. That's right. He's a busy guy. Right. So if he would be allowed to design a game, at some point Play Mechanics might either want to be involved or they have at least to allow Mark Ritchie to be working on a game for somebody else. That's right, and go match Spooky, I mean we already said how busy they are with their production schedule, so they're not going to be probably not in a position to make that game any more tools for their list In the short term, it could work for Spooky if, let's say, that game would have to be revealed at the Texas Pinball Festival next year that might actually work Yeah, just do the numbers Run the numbers and see how that would work out How many games they can make A week They're probably busy enough building the games That they need to be building So that's one thing Charlie has already plenty on his head So if Mark Ritchie would be designing That game And Spooky would be doing it That would actually free up Charlie's hands A little bit So that might actually work for Spooky if that would be the scenario that all parties would be willing to agree to. Yeah, and one other thing about the Texas People Festival, I don't know whether this is a thing that you were going to mention, is that the rooms for next year's show went on sale, I think the weekend, or just before the weekend, and they all sold out in five days, I think, or less than that. Might be five hours. But certainly if you haven't booked your room for Texas yet, the first block of rooms are sold out, so you need to wait for a second block at the Embassy Suites to become available, and that will be announced, I guess, on the Texas Dream Ball Festival website and Facebook page when the rooms are available. But basically, if you want to stay at the Embassy Suites where the show is held, don't hang about getting your booking in as soon as you hear that the rooms are available again right so let me add to that that there are other hotels across the street which technically are actually closer to the show floor than the embassy suite itself is that's true because the show hall is down a long corridor which then opens out to car park and the other side of the car park are more hotels. But if you want to stay in the show hotel itself and be able to take part in the happy hour of manager's reception, or whatever they choose to call it in the evening, where you get the free drinks, basically, then you need to be staying in the hotel. Right, okay. so then the last item that we had on our headlines list was something that was already being rumored at the Texas Pinball Festival and Rob Berg was actually present and told me himself that he bought the name Pinball Expo from Mike Pasek and the latest news on that well I think you have it so I'll let you share I spoke to both Rob and Mike this week. Rob came to me and said he's got the full ownership of the Pinball Expo name, assets and liabilities. And what that means is that the hotel where the Pinball Expo has been held for the past, I don't know, ten years or nine years, since 2008 anyway, that was in the west end, Chicago North Shore, in Wheeling basically came to him and said, look you've got this contract in the name of Pinball Expo we expect you to fulfil it otherwise there will be penalties to pay and he said okay he got the contract redrawn in his sole name as he says he's now the sole owner of the Pinball Expo brand. So the contract's now in his name, and he will be holding his show, which he had previously announced as being renamed to Pinball Palooza and moved to Schaumburg in September. That is now not going to happen. Rob's show is now going to be taking over the West End on the original Pinball Expo date in October, which I think is the 17th to the 20th or 21st. I don't know whether they're actually going to include the Sunday in that, because in previous years, Sunday has been pretty much a dead day and not really anything has even been bothered charging people to come into the show on a Sunday because everybody was just packing away. So it may just be a Wednesday through to Saturday show, finishing with a banquet Saturday night, and that's the end of it. But the tournaments are also back. Trent Organsine is doing the big tournament there. I think it's even bigger this year. Flip Hours or whatever it's called. Yeah, that's right. So he's organizing all that. David Fix is organizing or helping to run the vendor hall. Rob Craig, whose well-known name in Timberwolves Show and Circles, both as a speaker and show organizer of the Heartland Show, he's sorting out the, or taking charge of the game hall, I think. The intention is to make both of those bigger this year than they've been in the past. Rob Burke said he's actually rented out, or he's contracted to take over the entire exhibition space in the hotel. Before, there would always be one or two rooms they didn't take over and could be used for other functions. but this year for 2018 he has taken over every bit of space there is in the hotel so there will be no other events possible during the show and he's also got the Stern factory to the back as well and he said that George Gomez is the banquet speaker so that's Robson news but it's not all sort of smooth and plain sailing on that front because obviously there's the issue with Mike Paysack his plans for his show which were going to be the same dates if Rob was holding his show in September in Schoenberg Mike Paysack was going to hold his show on the original Expo dates now Rob's moved into that slot so what's happening to Mike's show is a bit up in the air and I think it's fair to say that the split between the two of them has not been smooth or amicable. So there's that, and that's probably rubbed a number of people up the wrong way. So there's still quite a lot of tension surrounding the whole issue. I don't want to get into it too much because it's a contentious issue. but I suppose the headline to take away from it is that Pinball Expo is according to Rob anyway, it's absolutely set in stone for those dates back at the Western Hotel in Wheeling and it should be if anything goes to plan according to what he's saying, it should be as big if not bigger than it has been in the past well obviously I wish Rob and Mike the best in whatever both are doing. I'm afraid I won't be able to attend this year. Yes, I'm sure. Yeah, it is. Actually, I was quite happy with the September dates because those were very convenient for me. It's a pity that those are now cancelled. But, okay, so if... Well, Rob has the name Pinball Expo and he's putting up this huge show. I hope it will be a huge show and I hope it will draw a lot of people. I'm certainly supporting both of them if they both would be doing a show. I can see why Mike is now not doing a show because the way I understood it is originally the Pinball Expo contract was signed by him which sort of made him responsible for organising a show at the West End at those days. Well, kind of. He signed it, but it was in the name of Pinball Expo, not his own personal name. Right. So as Rob is the owner of Pinball Expo, that contract is effectively his to fulfil or back out of and pay penalties. But what is a shame, I suppose, in a way, is that Mike was going to team up with Dan from Midwest Gaming Classic it to the second MGC in those October dates. Now that Dan said he's not going to be doing that, at least not this year, because Dan was obviously looking at doing a second show six months out from the MGC, which is this weekend. Right. We wanted to do one down further south in the Chicago area, and tuning up with Mike for that seemed like a once Rob and Mike had gone their separate ways seemed a natural way to go but as that date's not available anymore and the location's not available anymore it looks unlikely that's going to happen unless Rob teams up with Dan, that could also happen, I have no idea whether there is any friction between Rob and Dan or whether that's even a possibility I'm just calling this from the top of my head. Just bring an idea up. I think it's unlikely. I think the whole point of what's happened is so Rob can have sole control of the show and not to have a partner and bring another partner in to replace Mike. That wasn't the idea, I don't think. He can't do it on his own. I mean, he still needs help, so... He needs help, absolutely, but I guess he thinks he's got that. He's spoken to enough people and got a lot of people involved, or agreeing to be involved anyway. Right. All I can say is, obviously, Pinball Expo is the mother of all pinball shows and events. I mean, it's the longest-running pinball show since, I think, 1985 for an annual pinball show. I know that the attendance numbers have dropped the past few years for various reasons that I won't get into, but I do hope that the public will support this show, and if they used to attend Pimble Expo and have reasons not to come anymore, at least give Rob the benefit of the doubt and see what he makes of it this year. Absolutely. I think Pinball Expo was the kind of blueprint for other shows which have sprung up since. They've shown how a pinball show, which is aimed at the public rather than the industry, can get support from the collective community, from the players and from the industry itself and can be both profitable and enjoyable for everybody involved. and Chicago obviously then and probably still now is the home of pinball. So it was a natural place for it to be. Neither Rob nor Mike actually live in Chicago. But that is where people come to. We were saying earlier about how many people went to the Texas show and that was notable how many designers were. and obviously you've got Deep Root and Multimorphic, who are based in Texas. You've got Jersey Jack out in New Jersey. So pinball is spreading across the country, and it's not concentrated in Chicago so much these days, but it's still the original and it's still the main show, I think, for most of the pinball collectors and designers and industry people to come to me. Also, there's still a lot of industry people still living in the Chicago suburbs. So for that reason, if you want to have speakers at your event, the Chicago show is the most convenient show if you want to have, I don't know, Jim Petla or Paul Faris or Kevin O'Connor. There are lots of people working at Stern right now, obviously. American Pinball is still Chicago based. Spooky Pinball is in Wisconsin, which is three hours from Chicago. Chicago Gaming, of course. Obviously that. And who knows what other parties as well. You know, lots of industry veterans still living in the area. I mean, Roger Sharpe is still, he's not affiliated with any company, but he's still living in the area. Obviously his fans are, who are both involved in coin and permusement and pinball, of course. So I can see why a Chicago show has some benefit aside from having a CERN pinball factory tour. And maybe we might even see an American pinball factory tour. Who knows? Or a Chicago gaming factory tour. That would be interesting because no disrespect to CERN, but I think that's been the only option for like the past 20 years. people might want to see how someone else is doing production of games yeah well it doesn't need to be an either or it could be a both you know you could do a certain tour in the morning and another tour in the afternoon somewhere else I mean I remember back earlier people would explore days away they used to tour a couple of locations if they were close together there's no reason you need to just have the one But anyway, we'll see what Rob and the team come up with for X-Pro, and we'll see what Mike and Lonnie has done and what they put together. I do hope, we mentioned the Schoenberg location which is currently not being used, I wouldn't mind if once the contract is up with the Westin and I wouldn't mind if Pinball Expo would move actually to Schaumburg because I think Schaumburg is a far more interesting area and it's closer to the airport it's closer to Stern Pinball for one thing other manufacturers as well in that area and there's just simply there's more to do in Schomburg than there is in Wheeling. That's true, but one thing to bear in mind with Wheeling is the contract with the hotel, okay, so they have to fill a number of rooms at the hotel. Now, they do that very successfully, largely because it's where the show is, but also because there's not an awful lot of other hotels in the area right but in Schaumburg there are dozens and dozens of hotels and new ones springing up all the time as we see that we you and I have stayed there every year for the past few years and the number of hotels to choose from has just increased and then weeks and bounds every time we turn up there's a whole new raft of hotels going up right so it may not be quite easy to guarantee those hotel rooms if it was at a location in Schaumburg. Well the upside for the attending public would be if it would be in Schaumburg chances are your hotel room will be a lot cheaper. Yes. So that's one reason to root for Schaumburg but let's see how things go and let's hope it will be a luxury problem for Rob to have to decide whether he wants to continue at the Westin or whether he wants to go somewhere else because the upcoming show has proven to be a success. Well I understand that the contract the Westin is for this year and next year so it wouldn't be moving into 2020. Yes yeah so well let's see how he does. Yeah absolutely I wish everybody who's organising shows, expo or competing shows or just other shows in other parts of the country throughout the rest of the year at best with their show. Right. So I have this whole list of topics to discuss and I think we covered everything. I think you're right. I think, yeah. And we said we weren't going to talk for a long time and here we are two hours later and we're still talking. Right. So at least it was two hours in the raw recording. By the time we've actually edited this down, it'll probably be like two and a half minutes or something of actual useful information. No, don't say that. I think it will be like I probably edit out two and a half minutes of information and the rest, let's keep it. Oh, well, I'll let you do the editing. I'll let you take the proverbial, the virtual knife to the recording, and I guess we'll wrap it up here. Right. So just for those listening, this was a trial. I came up with the idea to see whether this would be fun to do and useful to do. Obviously, as editor of FIMO Magazine, I have been sending out monthly recaps of the past month for, I think, almost two years now. And there was the idea to turn it into a podcast. Obviously, there's already over 30 podcasts, so you can wonder, do you need to? Well, we don't need to, but we thought it would be fun. And teaming up with Martin from Pinball News seemed like a very good idea, not only because Martin and I are very close friends. We travel to shows together. Yeah, and so far we haven't fallen out at any point. No, which surprises some people, actually. I got even people asking me questions about that. But, no, Martin's a wonderful guy to hang out with. And so if this actually airs, if that's the proper terminology, that means that we at least found it okay enough to continue with it and make this public. And then we look forward to being back next month with a new summary of what then will be the recap of April 2018. Absolutely. and if you've got any thoughts and comments about whether you enjoyed it whether you thought it sucked whether you think we could do something some things better include other things we haven't included or drop some of the things we did include then feel free to contact either of us either through the Pinball Magazine website or Pinball News website and we would welcome your feedback because otherwise it's just the two of us sitting here talking to each other like a pair of idiots well thank you thank you Jonathan thank you everybody for listening and here's to the next one hopefully ok hopefully thank you and until next month bye bye