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BDYETP 56: Alien Anew, Fix-ing American Pinball, Dredd Review

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 39m·analyzed·Jan 24, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Buffalo Pinball discusses Alien reissue, American Pinball restructuring, Multimorphic updates, JJP shipments, and Stern pricing changes.

Summary

Buffalo Pinball podcast discusses Pinball Brothers' re-release of Highway Pinball's Alien machine (with significant reliability concerns), Dave Fix joining American Pinball as director of operations, Dennis Nordman joining as senior game designer, Multimorphic's new Shoot Scoot and Boogie mini-game and customization options, Jersey Jack shipping Guns N' Roses Collector's Edition, and Stern's $500 price increase on Batman 66 and Elvira House of Horrors reissues.

Key Claims

  • Pinball Brothers is re-releasing Highway Pinball's Alien machine at $7,777 (standard) and $9,999 (limited edition, 500 units)

    high confidence · Kevin and Nick directly state pricing for the new Alien release

  • The original Alien machine had significant reliability issues including light board problems, out lane ball switch sensing failures, and playfield screen design flaws

    high confidence · Both hosts discuss their firsthand experience streaming and reviewing the original Alien; detailed description of technical failures

  • Dave Fix has joined American Pinball as director of operations and marketing, with a new designer announcement coming Monday

    high confidence · Direct statement from American Pinball press release and confirmed by Nick messaging Dave Fix that morning

  • Dennis Nordman has joined American Pinball as senior game designer, replacing Joe Balser

    high confidence · Direct announcement discussed; hosts note Joe Balser designed American Pinball's first three games

  • Joe Balser has a reputation for 'interesting work methods' and had a similar trajectory at Jersey Jack (designed couple games then left)

    medium confidence · Hosts reference Dave Fix interview on 'This Week in Pinball' mentioning work method concerns; described as 'recurring theme'

  • Multimorphic currently has approximately a 4-week lead time on new P3 game orders

    high confidence · Kevin states this directly in comparison to other manufacturers with longer wait times

  • Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses Collector's Edition features sparkle artwork similar to Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road edition and is signed by all band members

    high confidence · Hosts describe the CE specs based on pictures and streams they've watched

  • Stern is increasing the price of Batman 66 and Elvira House of Horrors by $500 each for new production runs

    high confidence · Direct official Stern message quoted; hosts note these are new limited production runs, not existing inventory

Notable Quotes

  • “I would never give money to this company because I just don't trust it. Right. It's just, it's a lot of money to throw at a pinball company trying to resurrect a flawed product, right? You're taking a huge risk.”

    Nick @ ~12:00 — Expresses skepticism about Pinball Brothers' ability to deliver a fixed Alien machine; warns buyers about emotional decision-making

  • “Buy pinball machines that exist once once they've got these in boxes and you've played it and you know let somebody else be the guinea pig”

    Kevin @ ~13:30 — Core advice for new manufacturer releases; establishes conservative buying strategy for risky products

  • “Joe Balser had an interesting way of working with people...it's a recurring theme throughout Joe's...we can't really talk about.”

    Nick/both @ ~21:00 — Hints at workplace/collaboration issues with Joe Balser that are 'private' but known in industry; repeated pattern across companies

  • “Dennis Norman tends to design more flowy games which I think will resonate more with a wider swath of players so I think that's risky right to do a flow game less interesting in my opinion but a safer bet”

    Nick @ ~22:00 — Analyzes American Pinball's strategic shift toward broader player appeal over niche complexity with new designer hire

  • “Multimorphic is down to about a four-week lead time on games...some of the other folks are are further back in the queue”

    Kevin @ ~32:00 — Production capacity signal; Multimorphic moving product faster than competitors during supply constraints

Entities

Pinball BrotherscompanyAlien (Pinball)gameHighway PinballcompanyDavid FixpersonAmerican PinballcompanyDennis NordmanpersonJoe Balserperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball Brothers attempting to resurrect a flawed product with unknown track record and unproven manufacturing capability; hosts warn against early adoption despite emotional appeal of Alien theme

    high · Direct statements warning buyers; comparison to other failed manufacturer scale-ups; advice to 'let somebody else be the guinea pig'

  • ?

    community_signal: Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses Collector's Edition beginning shipments to day-one buyers; community response positive based on image/stream feedback

    high · Direct observation of pictures and streams; hosts discuss visual features being well-received

  • ?

    design_philosophy: American Pinball shifting from Joe Balser's complex layouts to Dennis Nordman's 'flowy games' targeting broader audience appeal; strategy shift toward safer, wider appeal over niche complexity

    high · Nick's analysis of design philosophy difference; stated as intentional strategic move with Dennis working alongside newer designers

  • $

    market_signal: Multimorphic maintaining 4-week lead time while competitors have longer queues; suggests stronger production efficiency and/or lower demand relative to capacity

    medium · Kevin's direct statement comparing lead times across manufacturers

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Dave Fix joins American Pinball as director of operations and marketing; Dennis Nordman brings design expertise as senior game designer; Joe Balser departure follows pattern seen at Jersey Jack

    high · Official press release confirmed; hosts have direct contact with Dave Fix; Joe Balser's departure from American Pinball after designing first three games mirrors Jersey Jack pattern

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.299

0:00
Coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we've got news and updates and everybody's favorite news segment, Topper Talk. Last but not least, we've got a review of Judge Dredd. All that and more coming right up. Double Super Jet Pod! I need a ramp.
0:28
I need a loop. I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super jetpack and my wife.
0:41
That's right. And now, the Hall and Oates of pinball podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Woo-boom-shakalaka!
0:57
Evening. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon, good evening. What's going on? It's Kevin over here and Nick over there, and we're coming at you with some more pinball talk. Nick, what's going on, man? not much not much another uh pandemic day and another remote day i i see your games in your background that i've not played at all and it's gonna be like a year since i've been over to kevin's house which is crazy uh kevin now doesn't have any hair in his head and he's got several more pinball machines other than that i guess things are normal big changes this year big changes yeah i mean we're still doing what we're doing things are looking better uh vaccine wise So maybe, maybe one of these years we can get together and hang out again, but I'm low on the list of folks who are going to get a vaccine. So it's going to be a while. I got to say, I do enjoy, I really personally, I'm curious what your thoughts. I really enjoy the Saturday morning. I'm talking pinball because I think I told you, I'm like, a lot of times we do the podcast after like a full day of work, you know, it's later at night and somehow I still managed to summon a lot of anger and energy for that. But I feel fresh now. I've had some coffee on the weekend, so maybe we can maintain this in some capacity when things get back to normal. But I am looking forward to doing the podcast with you in person because that's kind of always something that I thought was special about our podcast, not doing it remotely. I think our podcast is still good. I'm a little biased, but I can't wait till we get back to just doing that too in person. Yeah, I mean, the worst part about not doing it in person is you can't hear all the sound effects when I play them.
Multimorphic
company
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Guns N' Roses Collector's Editiongame
Stern Pinballcompany
Batman 66game
Elvira House of Horrorsgame
Kevin Manningperson
Nick Laneperson
This Week in Pinballmedia
  • $

    market_signal: Stern increasing Batman 66 and Elvira House of Horrors prices by $500 for new production runs; described as premium-priced games receiving further premium increase

    high · Official Stern message; hosts note these are already at premium pricing before increase

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic expanding P3 customization options with new slingshot/side target artwork kits ($40) allowing modular aesthetic customization across different playfield modules

    high · New product feature described; Kevin has ordered kits for Heist and Cosmic Cart

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic Heist received code update adding McGuffin token collection mechanic for score boost strategy, similar to Bram Stoker's Dracula scoring system

    high · Kevin describes update details; characterizes as positive scoring strategy addition

    • 2:35
    You have no idea what I just played. right now you know that's that's for the listeners at home no idea what kevin displayed there you go you'll have to listen back and find out all right uh before we get into the uh the meat and potatoes of the show uh why don't we thank some partners i did it last month so you're up this month happy to do so just get it on screen i should know this uh by heart all right want a special shout out and starting with a special thanks to our premier partner pin stadium Pinstadium.com. Lighting kits for your pinball machines. Work on Jersey Jacks, Stearns, Pony Factories, what have you. Get Pinstadium. It's a lighting kit that's app-controlled. That's the key to it. There's so many app combinations. You can take a picture of any color on your play field and match it with the lighting scheme. New products coming out all the time. And guess what? When you use coupon code BUFFALO, you save 10%. I just got a lighting kit, Kevin, the other day for Walking Dead, which is a notoriously dark game. So I'm looking forward to getting that installed when I muster up the courage to do some pinball work, which is always a frightful thing, even though, like, I've installed pin stadiums myself. So that goes to show just how easy it is. Pin stadium, special shout-out and thanks to them. All right, our partners that we love and that have been with us for many years, Double Danger Pinball, ddpinball.com. say 15% when you use pinball code buffalo shirts and swag the mod couple pinball.com go to the mod couple pinball.com for your modding needs i still got to put the the crack in that i bought from um that but i got the monkey on it and it looks beautiful i got some uh some mod couple pinball mods on my willy wonka that i got oh that's a teaser so you're gonna show are you gonna show a picture just during the stream no well we'll talk about it i don't have any pictures Okay. I'm curious to see it. I love their mods. And what I like about... I always say I'm not a huge mod person, but when the mod looks like it should have been there from the factory, that's when it's like a no-brainer for me, and that's the level of work that they do. Flippin' Out Pinball, FlippinOutPinball.com. You in the market for a pinball machine? Then look no further. Go to FlippinOutPinball.com. That's Zach Manning. He'll take care of you. Good guy alert. He'll take care of you from your purchase to when you open the box and your Stern game is broken. and he's there to help you out. Flip it out, pinball.com. Pinslide.com. Pinslide.com really, truly helped me get into pinball when I started more than 10 years ago now. There's forums. There's the Top 100. It goes beyond the Top 100. You can review games, read ratings, get pinball tech help, everything, man. It is the source to go to when you're in the hobby and you want to learn more. That's pinslide.com. Jersey Jack Pinball. Kevin and I are shills for this company We love Jersey Jack Pinball They make the most beautiful machines on the planet They're crushing it right now With their guns and roses People are just blown away with the light show And the gameplay of that They have also Willy Wonka Pirates of the Caribbean Wizard of Oz And The Hobbit Jersey Jack Pinball, we love them Pinball.edu, pinballraffle.org Go there for a chance to support a charity doing good work by getting kids with autism to play pinball in an effort to help them out. And you can also buy a raffle ticket that will allow you to perhaps win a Stern pinball machine. Not too bad. Community Beer Works, communitybeerworks.com, local brewery in Buffalo, delicious beer. Hillcycle.com, Dan Burfield, huge fans of Dan Burfield. He is a good guy, and I love his artwork. I just did a game room video. I should have mentioned that in the updates. We can talk about that a little bit later. but I did a game room video that's on YouTube, and I always showcase and show off Dan Burfield's art piece that I have hanging up. Kevin's got his art.
    6:24
    We'll do custom upcycled artwork. Reach out to Dan Burfield. Love him. Great work. Cometpinball.com, our friend Ryan Wenger.
    6:32
    If you need LEDs for your pinball machine, look no further than to go to cometpinball.com. He'll take care of you. He throws candy in with the orders. He's got some fantastic shirts. Pinballmix.com. If you want to make a custom soundtrack in your pinball machine, look no further than pinballmix.com. You can also save 10% and get a free Easter egg when using coupon code BUFFALO. And last but not least, Titan Pinball. Titanpinball.com for your silicone rings. Just got my ring kit for Bad Girls I still need to put on. Maybe I'll do that within 2021 sometime. But we love Titan Pinball. Also, Snag-O-Mat. Everybody should have a Titan Pinball mat. No excuses there. Congrats to them. All right. Kevin, over to you. My stream's messing up. Are we still live? Yeah, we're still live, but barely. We're hanging in there. All right. The important part is the audio will come through. Are the pipes and tubes clogged? I think so. They're a little jammed up on Saturday morning, I think. Okay. All right. We'll get the repairman out to unclog them. Yeah, exactly. All right. Let's get into some pinball news. Here's the tip. It's the latest pinball news. Show hot. It's on fire. Oh, man. It's time for the Pinball Brothers. We haven't talked about this. So you remember Alien Pinball? That's a pinball machine that came out, what, like, I don't know, four years ago, I want to say? Three or four years ago? Seems like ages ago. We played it. Yeah. We had one on location at a place we not talk about, but we played it. And I actually played a few games before it broke on me. Yeah. I played it there, and we also went to James' house and played it. He had one for a while. I remember that. Okay. I missed that stream. So you had a better experience than I did with Alien. Well, yeah. I mean, it still had issues, but... He got rid of his, too. Yeah, I mean, he kind of rightly... Yeah. So, if you don't know the backstory on Alien, so Highway Pinball was this company out of England. They were coming out of the gate. They made Full Throttle was their first machine. Yeah. And then they came out with this Alien pin, which for a lot of folks is a dream theme. It's got some cool mechs, TM. I think that's a thing we can trademark now. um like the uh tongue that comes out from the xenomorph and eats the ball and never worked yeah exactly the screen in the play field which is now gone spoiler alert um but they came out they made a few and then they went under um andrew highway you know took off and he's making boats now or something i don't know what the hell he's doing hydrofoils i don't know but um so he The they went under Pinball Brothers is the company of the bottom out. I don't know the ins and outs of all this, but my understanding is that's how it went. Bottom line is now a couple of years later, they're going to be re-releasing this machine.
    9:22
    It's one that I felt was it was fun. It's fun. It's got an interesting, unusual layout. It's a wide body, but it's got some different shots, different kind of layout. and but the biggest concern and we actually reviewed this game and when we reviewed it we did not give it favorable reviews mostly because it's broken all the time or it was broken all the time we couldn't really we couldn't really even review it right because we just could we tried to review and play but it just it just was like basically non-functional right um i had a little bit but you know we got through it when we streamed the uh the game at james's house we you know we played for two hours i think it mostly played good um the uh there's weird if you watch the stream it's on our youtube channel there's a the lights down by the flippers would like freak out the whole time so it's like light board issues and there was something with the left out lane not registering right so it's got like those um the magnetic like sensing ball switches So there's not physical switches on like the out lanes or anything like that. It's got the ball rolls over the, that area of the play field and it knows that it the ball rolled over it. So I think that was having some problems.
    10:37
    But what do you think? So your thoughts on, you know, a new version of alien from a new company, we can talk about the difference. There are some differences in the game.
    10:49
    The main differences. So one of the big innovations from a highway was that they put a screen right in the play field which i always thought was pretty cool because you got heads up information and on alien it was pretty cool because you it was like the motion tracker like from the movie so it's very well integrated theme wise um so i think i think that's going to be a big negative overall but apparently there were issues with having the screen under there too where they were falling out and stuff so jesus i don't know maybe that just needed some better engineering because you know yeah my screen on my p3 doesn't fall out so you can do it so what do you think overall alien coming back out well you know i had limited time on the game but i when i did play i was really impressed with the presentation you know david theo worked on on the music uh it was the presentation was well done from from my experience i never really got a good sense of the rules and i felt that the game played a little clunky it kind of shots never felt like where i would think they would go it just it didn't have a good feel off the bat now that can be overcome during time so again i don't have enough time on it to really give a reliable view on how it shoots i i don't know man i it's like highway knocked it out by making a good theme a good theme choice that's a theme that i think choice that people want the game always looks nice right like the build quality just from a quick look at it the art and and what's on there look good um i'd worry about reliability, right? I'd worry about reliability. And I didn't realize Kevin, that they took some, some things out of the game too. So I don't know. I would, here's the deal. I would never give money to this company because I just don't trust it. Right. It's just, it's a lot of money to throw at a pinball company trying to resurrect a flawed product, right? You're, you're taking a huge risk. And I think, unfortunately, the people who are susceptible to losing out on this are people who this is like a dream theme for them and then emotion takes over and overrides kind of logic here and they just they sort of want an alien pinball machine and they want this to work and they'll disregard maybe some warning flags and uh they could be buying problems i know i i don't know i'm just speculating at this point um i don't know man i i'm very skeptical of things like this i really hope that they can resurrect and i hope they can fix problems and i hope the machine uh um kills it and everybody who who really wants an alien pinball machine this is their chance to get it so i i'm rooting for them i'm rooting for this but personally i wouldn't touch a 10-foot pole yeah it's you know it goes back to our old adage of buy buy pinball machines that exist once once they've got these in boxes and you've played it and you know let somebody else be the the guinea pig the people that are like dying to get it and You know, it's always a problem with new manufacturers scaling up, building stuff reliably, getting it out on time. You know, we've seen people wait years to get machines like with Lebowski, and they're still not caught up. So I don't know. You know, I know nothing about Pimmo Brothers. They could be amazing and just start cranking out machines. But over the years, we've seen, you know, learned the lessons of other pinball manufacturers past where take your time, don't rush into it, you know, grab one down the line once they've been cranking them out for a while. One thing I didn't mention was the price. So the standard version is $77.77. So $7,777 for some reason. and then the limited version is 500 units at 99.99 so ten thousand dollars so it's it's in the ballpark of other games i think from what i remember playing of it it seems it feels like a premium level game from stern if you want to put it in the ballpark of a game as far as mechanics and and rules and things like that um so i don't think these prices are totally out of line um but again it's the it comes down to is this game we're going to be reliable and are they going to make it and not just take your money and run yeah i think feel a lot better if like you said like chicago coin and gaming right that's that's their name if like if they were the ones who bought this and they said they're releasing it then it's like okay well they have a proven track record with uh medieval madness and monster bash but i also think it's not just like replicating a game it's also fixing things in a game fixing some inherent flaws in this game so there's there's that added step so again uh a new pinball company trying to resurrect a flawed game those are two warning signs so you heard it here buffalo pinball just says the exercise extreme caution on this yeah i think they uh they implemented some like uh design changes too i think there's a way to better feed the upper flipper so you can hit those upper shots better they may have but they may have put a magnet in there or something. I'm just speculating, but I seem to recall seeing something like that in chat. If you guys know better, you can correct me.
    15:54
    So they did take into account some of the issues, the playfield design issues with the original and refined that, so that's cool. I'm excited because, again, it was a fun game. Theme integration was really cool. They definitely integrated the movie assets and the feel of the movies into this game. So if it's something you want and it ends up being a great game, I hope you really enjoy it.
    16:17
    I don't know that I'll be buying one, but I will happily play somebody else's. How about that? That's my endorsement of Alien.
    16:25
    Okay. Next up. Okay, I had to throw this in there because you know him, you love him from past episodes of Brody or even Pinball. David Fix from Pinball Expo and of, what games did he play with us? Whirlwind. Doctor Who. Dialed in. Oh, he did Doctor Who, too, because we had the Doctor play Doctor. Yeah, and Centaur 2, when we played it, he was there for that. Oh, wow, he was also on, we had him on the podcast in person, remember? He came over to your house. We talked about Expo. I don't even remember that. Him and I sat right next to you, Kevin. Day Fix was in my house, and I don't remember it.
    17:01
    Well, that's your loss. We have to roll it back and watch that episode. All right. He's probably been one of our most head-on guests, right? We don't even count Mark Nagy anymore, because he's practically a bro. Exactly, yeah. So why are we talking about Dave Fix? He joined American Pinball as director of operations and marketing. So I know you talked to him a little bit about this. And, you know, do you know if he's going to be moving out there or, you know, what his role is going to be, that sort of thing? Well, not, I mean, I don't think he knows if he's going to be in the area per se. It's certainly not during COVID, right? And in this environment, you can do a lot of things remotely. So hopefully he stays as an asset in Buffalo so we can have him on the bro show and stuff and live and in person. Other than what he's doing, maybe other than with the press release. So I don't have too much intel. I asked him, Kevin asked me to message him this morning and to see if he had any news on any American pinball news that we can ask him. And he said they've got somebody new starting on Monday or there's going to be an announcement of somebody new joining the team. And it's not Dennis. The person's going to be working with Dennis Nordman. So that's all I got right now. We'll have him on, though, for sure. I've already talked to him about being on the bro show. So when we get back to doing the bro show, he'll be one of the first guests. Nice. He's got to get us like a Hot Wheels or something to play, right? He probably has a ton of stories since he's last been on. I can only imagine. He might have to have like a four-hour bro show.
    18:24
    So the other news from American Pinball, which you mentioned, was Dennis Norman joined as their senior game designer. So I think that's huge for them.
    18:33
    Joe Balser has been their designer on the first three games, and they've been, eh, you know. Joe is hit or miss in my book as far as play field layouts and Dennis Norman tends to design more flowy games which I think will resonate more with a wider swath of players so I think that's risky right to do a flow game less interesting in my opinion but a safer bet right and that's what you need when you're a new pinball company you gotta go with the safe bets and then you can get a little riskier I think agreed and you and it's also good to have him on because I heard somewhere Dave said that Joe Balser had an interesting way of working with people. I think I read that on Twip this week on Pinball. Oh, Dave was interviewed on that? Yeah, it was like a recap of a podcast. He did an interview on it. He said something like that. I've heard about Joe Balser having an interesting work method too. Yes, me too. That we can't really talk about. Not only from Dave, yeah, exactly. So that's a recurring theme throughout Joe's. But Joe got him off the ground. He designed their first three games, and now he's not there anymore. Very similar to the story that he had at JJP. So he designed a couple games, and then he's out. Weird. You draw your own conclusions. But it's private. It is. Very private. Super private.
    19:51
    So there you go. New stuff coming from American Pitball. I think having Dennis on board to work with newer designers, because they did say they were going to bring some younger folks in, or newer designers, to work with Dennis on making new games. So it's not going to be all Dennis all the time. So that's good.
    20:09
    All right. From the multimorphic front, let's take you over here and we'll go. That's not it. Over here.
    20:17
    They launched a new mini game for the P3 called Shoot and Scoot, which I got wrong. Shoot and Scoot. Shoot, Scoot, and Boogie. Yeah. I can't resist the name Shoot, Scoot, and Boogie. I kept calling it Scoot and Shoot. But you can really Scoot and Shoot or Shoot and Scoot in whatever order you prefer. That's the beauty of it, right? When you play the game. Yeah, exactly. um so this is uh an add-on mini game for any p3 um playfield so no matter what module you have in the back of your game you can play this on it um and it's it's cool because you so this is a screenshot of the playfield and you have either like this is the dungeon level where you're uh knight in an armor running through the the level but there's cars where you drive through the jungle or the city and you can you're trying to collect coins and you collect coins by shooting the shots around the play field so you say you need to move all the way to the right to grab a coin you shoot like either the far right orbit or a stand-up target on that side of the play field will move your character on the screen over there so you can collect it um this is like if you want to practice your flipper control skills and your sharpshooting skills uh this is a great way to do that i believe it's 150 on the on the app store for multimorphic which in pinball terms that's like that's a drop in the bucket you know that's like a tenth of a stern topper yeah you can you can uh you can buy some i don't know like a a action figure for your playfield or you can get a whole new game you know yeah so pretty good um pretty cool it's fun uh i did a stream on it when it came out so there's a stream a couple weeks ago with i did i put the cosmic kart racing playfield in and i played cosmic cart um ranger in the ruins this one's scoot and shoot uh rocks and barnyard so five different games all in one playfield is pretty cool pretty fun as a streamer to be able to swap between games like that all in one night and keep things fresh and interesting so highly recommend checking that out from multimorphic um also there's one other thing here um so if you're looking to get a multimorphic game if you're if you're in the uh in the market for a new pinball machine and uh you're looking for something soon uh multimorphic is down to about a four-week lead time on games i know some of the other folks are are further back in the hues you gotta wait a longer time to get your game so if you're looking for a current game that's in production uh multimorphic you can grab one uh in about a month so it's not too bad sounds like they're doing well then yeah it's uh it's good to see the the progress that they're having and i think um heist i can't say enough cool things about heist they had a code update for that which added a new so they did a lot of score balancing but they also added a new incentive in so when you run a heist and uh you or when you do one of the character modes at the end there's a scoop that pops up and if you if you hit that it collects a thing called a mcguffin it's a little like token you can get uh and if you collect that now it it adds to your bonus through the extent of the game so think of it like bats and rats on bram stoker's dracula So ideally you want to grab as many of those as you can early in the game, and you can really boost your score. So it's cool to see some more scoring strategy being built into the game like that too.
    23:29
    Well, I think it's cool of you that you invested in one, because we do have a platform to really showcase games.
    23:37
    And a thing like P3, a lot of people won't get the chance to experience, and I think it's something that you have got to experience in person. So I'm good on you for doing that and doing a lot of streaming and sharing it. So we've got a lot of content on our YouTube channel that I encourage people listening to this podcast to check it out. I can't wait to play it. I know you speak highly of it. So I really admire what Jerry's doing with the P3 and just kind of taking pinball to the next level.
    24:04
    It's awesome. So, yeah, good on you, Kev. Good job. Yeah. You're doing the Lord's work. It's great for us, too, because, like, we get to show new stuff all the time. And I don't have to keep hauling games in and out all the time. So it's great for both of us, I think.
    24:18
    Bookie just got his GNRL. He's nice. And Chris is trolling about Led Zeppelin. Chris. All right. Let's talk about JJP a little bit. So they've been cranking out. Oh, this is one other thing from Multimorphic before we move on. So they introduced new slingshot and side target artwork. So if you want to customize your pinball, the lower part of your pinball machine a little bit more, they do this a lot, let you pick and choose ways to customize the game. So you can swap out the art on the side It magnetic You can change the apron art when you change your games in there Now you can change art that goes along the sides above the side targets and the slingshots So I have this on order. I'm getting it for Heist and Cosmic Cart, which is really cool. I think it would be a nice way to kind of customize your game a little bit more. Each kit is $40. So $10 of plastic, that's pretty reasonable in my book, especially, again, in pinball terms. You're talking good value there. a nice way to kind of mod your machine and spruce it up and make it look good and it's all this cool hand-drawn art that they've been doing lately so it looks really nice so that's that's multi-morphic all right on to um the jersey jack pinball update they're shipping out guns and roses ce the collector's edition so if you've been waiting if you're a day one buyer of a gnr ce congratulations they're starting to hit your homes and it's looking amazing i've seen some pictures of ones um i was watching a stream of one yesterday looks really cool uh it's got the cool like art in the play field with the sparkle on it like the wizard of oz yellow brick road edition side blades it's got the coma lock in the apron um what else it's signed by the band members uh not just by the designers yeah so all the band members signed it um i mean and it's got the appetite for destruction theme so if you're a guns and roses super fan this is the one you want this is uh this is it or if you're just a fan of really awesome looking pinball machines it looks cool um so that's that uh can i ask you is that your uh since you've got you know all the jjp games other than wizard of oz yes what's your top two what's your first favorite and second favorite man it's such a it's such a hard question because they're all so different right um well it probably changes over time what I'm playing most right now is Guns N' Roses and Waka right let's play this game if you can only have one alright you have to for whatever reason you can only have one right now what would it be I mean it'd be Pirates because I can get the other ones eventually that's a bullshit no no no alright we gotta play this thought experiment you can only have one you can't get the other ones back ever You're just stuck with one for the rest of your life. What do you pick?
    27:14
    I guess Pirates, I guess. I don't know. Nick Sertuna is yelling at you. He's got all caps. He's got the Goran keyboard problem. Yeah. People love asking these hypothetical questions. It's fun, though. It's fun. I'm one of those people that like asking that. I do that with Martha about things, and she gets upset. Yeah.
    27:33
    People always come and chat, and they're like, what's your favorite one? And I'm like, well, I like them all. Well, that's not fair. You've got to pick one. He's like, no, I don't. I could just play them all because I have them all. All right. Well, I appreciate you humoring me and picking one. So thank you for doing that. I haven't been playing Pirates, though. So it's hard, you know. Well, understand. I mean, you've played the shit out of Pirates for several years now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which makes sense. But I wouldn't get rid of that one. So Gorin's keyboard problem. Gorin's keyboard. His keyboard's stuck in caps all the time. Weird.
    28:02
    Oh, and happy birthday, Eric Menier. This is his birthday today. So happy birthday to him. Thank you for making amazing games. We love them.
    28:10
    Okay, Stern Update. I picked a great Stern Update for everybody. They are increasing the price of Batman 66 and Elvira House of Horrors by $500 each.
    28:23
    Interesting. Which is weird. Do they say why? I mean, like, I guess normally when there's a price increase, they don't say why, but... The news release was pretty sparse, from what I remember. Let me look it up. That's a weird thing.
    28:37
    Elvira. And just those games, too. I mean, there's already a premium price on those games, which is odd, right? Like, they're already, like, these, I don't know if they have a special term for these kind of games, but they're not their standard pricing for games. They're already paying a premium for these. All right, I have the official message from CERN here. Would you like to hear it?
    28:59
    I guess. I'll use your judgment. It's increased Batman. It's short. So, Batman 66 and Elvira, order now for these limited runs at the new CERN prices. So these are not games they have in hand. They are new runs of the games. Oh, so maybe it's an incentive to, maybe because they're trying to, they're using some of the line to do a new run and like to buy parts. I guess that would make sense, right? Like they'd probably have to charge a premium because it's probably such a small run of them. Yeah. So here's what they say. Since we began production of Batman 66 in 2016 and Elvira in 2019, material and labor costs have increased. Cost increases affect these models more than our cornerstone games because of the smaller volume purchases and shorter production. Called it. which do not result in production efficiencies. Our manufacturing costs are further increased by the complexity of these games. Okay. That's fine. No, honestly, I like that they put that out there. Like, you don't have to give us a reason, but I think it helps give a reason. And, like, that was my guess. It makes sense. I think, especially with the pandemic, there's a real struggle and challenge to get parts for production of anything. Yeah. Well, two things. Because I don't think these games are necessarily more complicated to build than, say, Jurassic Park. No, but it's a shorter run. They're a shorter run of them. So you make less of something, your profit margin is going to go down. Yeah.
    30:17
    Pixel Picker makes a good point that I forgot about, too. It's like people had orders in at the old price, and then they increased the price on them after they had their orders in, which is not cool.
    30:29
    Well, Bergbookie said Chinese tariffs, so tariffs went up, too. I saw people talking about like the new video cards came out that were like $700 and now they're $1,000. Oh really? I don't know anything about that. Yeah. So yeah, that's also, yeah, that's, that's a problem too. There's a number of things going on. The other thing too is Skip had a Batman premium and he had to sell it for less than he bought it for. Like nobody wanted it. So that's interesting. I don't, I wonder if the demand's there for Batman. It might be there for Elvira, but I guess they'll find out. I don't know if they're doing pre-order runs on this or what. Yeah, well, as Chrome Candy pointed out, I'm sorry if I missed you saying this, because I was reading the chat.
    31:09
    People who had already ordered at the old price, they weren't locked in. People went back and told them you still got to pay $500 more, which is messed up. I mean, they should have honored the price. If you ordered it at the old price before CERN changed it, you still didn't get your game, you don't jack it up then. That's it. So that would leave a bad taste in my mouth. Imagine you ordered that game, and you locked in the price, and then your distributor had to call you and say, actually, Stern just changed the price to $500 more. Fuck that shit. I'd be like, cancel my order. Seriously, though. What kind of extortion is that? That's BS. Yeah. So, oh, you really want it, huh? Oh, here, $500 more. That's when they do stuff like, Stern's notorious for just making, what I would say, decisions that upset their customers. They should have honored if locked in. You change the price, then going forward, that's the new price. That's fine. That's understandable. Whatever. You do what you want. But, like, it's too bad. Who doesn't get upset when that happens? Yeah.
    32:04
    Oh, you ordered an Xbox. Oh, now it's $250 more. Sorry. We didn't plan out the production well.
    32:14
    Yeah, so DOS Reboot says he had a quote that got increased on Elvira House of Horrors. That sucks. Yeah. Well, you know who would take your money, DOS Boot? Jersey Jack. Jersey Jack won't screw you over like that. Call them. Get a better game. If you're going to be paying those premium prices for a Viral House of Horrors or Batman, you might as well just get a Jersey Jack game. There you go.
    32:36
    All right. So, Scorbit. Let's talk a little bit about Scorbit. Nick was asking me about it the other day. He's like, what is this? What do you know about it? I was like, we could talk about it on the show. So, here we are. We're going to talk about Scorbit. Thank you, Kevin. Let me pull up their website because there's a lot going on. I want to get the pricing.
    32:55
    The pricing seemed crazy. Yeah, basically it's, so it started out as a way to capture scores on older pinball machines, particularly for streams and tournaments. So I could see this being super valuable. Say you're running a tournament, right? And scorekeepers have to run with their iPads and put your score in manually. There's room for error there. if the machines could read the score and report it when they're done automatically and enter it as your score that'd be great right it removes that level of of human error and automates things a little bit more for the tournament director so awesome also if you're running a tournament stream and you want you know you've got cameras all over the place and you want to capture just the score you can do that and integrate right into the stream very cool stuff so i can see it being great in those instances but they're also pitching it for home use which i don't see as um i don't know i don't it hasn't so it's in my it's in guns and roses so they they've evolved over time and now that like games like guns and roses ship with internet connectivity built in it's they've added it right into the software here there's no additional hardware it was a free upgrade for guns and roses users um and so i connect downloaded the app connected it you can like add your add your location and your machine and then you can log your score which i'm like okay cool like i already have pindigo that i can do that on without having to buy a 300 piece of hardware and a five dollar monthly fee if if it's not a game like gnr that it's built into um i don't see the benefit of it for the home user they're talking about ways you can integrate it for streams where you can put the score on your screen or show like what uh modes are qualified and things like that i'm like that's all information that is already being captured on the back box this will buy or the the back smaller screen on jjp so like i don't see it i don't i don't see the benefit especially for the cost right like i'm not gonna spend another right three hundred dollars plus have a monthly fee ongoing as long as I want to use this to Damn, yeah, that's the other thing. I was looking at the pricing and I saw the pricing and I was like, whoa initially it was like, oh, this could potentially be cool then I looked at the pricing and then I looked at the monthly fee I was just like, yeah, I see no practicality because they even have features for operators but it's just not worth it, man I don't see a use case in any of my scenarios Yeah, so from your perspective as an operator, would it be beneficial to you to be able to see this reporting remotely that this provides versus just like checking on your machines once a month or something like that. Well, I'll answer this question in two parts. Is that a cool functionality? Sure. Right. But then you got to add in the cost associated to get that functionality, and it's just not necessary. So if the cost was like nominal, then I'd say, yeah, great, let's see that. Does that really change the business or help me that much that I need to pay that and I get a return on my investment? I don't think so whatsoever. Yeah. The profit margins are so low in operating.
    36:10
    It's crazy that you just don't want to spend that money as an operator. Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. You're barely making money running pinball machines anyways. It's hard to justify additional costs on top of that. Correct. The cool idea. I give them credit for the ingenuity and what they're able to pull off, especially in the older games. Tons of credit. I like what they're doing. But when I think of the cost benefit, it doesn't make sense in my mind, from my perspective. Yeah, so the price for one Scorbitron, that's the hardware, plus it's $299.99. So $300 plus $4 a month or $40 a year.
    36:48
    The cost goes down a little bit the more you go if you buy in quantity. So if you buy two to ten games, it's $269 plus $7 a year or $7 a month, $70 a year, just under that. So the cheapest you can get it, if you buy for 26 plus games, it's $200 per unit plus $20 a month.
    37:10
    I could see Carl doing this at InDesk, for example. Sure, sure. Or if Papa were still around and they wanted to do that and take Pemberg production to the next level. But as we learned, they were barely making money or losing money as it was. So even the biggest events out there are going to find it hard to justify buying units like this and also paying a monthly fee on it. Yeah, speaking of which, like I said when we talked about Pembroke last time, we need somebody who is in this hobby, is into tournaments, to step in and do a business around it. Really create a business around tournaments around the country and have one big Pembroke-style tournament. but charge what's appropriate to make a profit on it and continue and pay people. Because I've always said about Pinberg, you know, it's like, you know, $100 to get into Pinberg and then $100 to replay. $200 is nothing for the experience that you get at Pinberg, you know, and $200 is nothing for people in this hobby because people in this hobby have money.
    38:13
    Dude, that experience is worth easily $500 for me. People would pay that, especially when you have the demand. Yeah, it would knock some people out. There's some people I would never pay $500 for that, but there's more than enough people to do it and keep it going. So waiting for that person to show themselves. I'm not a millionaire. Listen, if I had all the money and I didn't have to work, I would do that. I would find a way to make a business out of that.
    38:39
    Yeah, so just some comments in chat. Goran's saying, for free it's nice. GNR doesn't cost you anything, not even monthly fee. Agreed. mentioned that a few times already but are you using scorebit on your gnr but you have to pay a monthly fee right no i don't oh you don't but here i downloaded it i installed the app i set up my game and i've never touched it since i see absolutely i've had no no reason to i've seen i've no compelling reason to connect this or hook it up or report my scores on there i just don't see the need well it's also bullshit because your game plays different than everybody else's game right like if you get a score of i don't know how it's going on on on guns of roses but you get a score of five million somebody gets to score in 10 million on their machine that's that's me absolutely meaningless to me it means nothing every machine plays different they can have different settings they could whatever it's just nonsense yeah you get to have your game set the 10 ball and your outlings close and like you never know or even if it's the same the pitch could be different right it could just be slow game like whatever yeah you could change the uh the posts yeah the game even if the software is so sophisticated on score bit or whatever that it knows when you change to five ball or something it doesn't know when you move a post around and make it easier doesn't know that stuff yeah so anyways there you go so it's there use it if you want i don't see the i don't see the the use case behind it but again like if you if that would make more sense on a location if we're all going to the same spot playing the same machine and we want to compare scores on there but again there's leaderboards built into the games already i can compare scores with people at that location on the machine um you know it's been there for years so i want to get the grand champ on the game if i want to be number one i don't necessarily want to have it in the app chris the pincer and says uh nashville gonna be huge hub for pinball in the future market okay i'll mark it listen somebody somebody here's a entrepreneur somebody come up to buffalo there's so many old warehouses in space that you can live up cheaply and do do it here i mean you know just saying come to buffalo we're looking good kevin will sell you the ads on uh on buffalo living that's right it's also good for canadians across the border so there you go if you want to get beat down by canadians and pinball tournaments come on out come on up to buffalo that's right when when the border opens again you can experience that for yourself uh okay so uh last thing in news and updates uh david theale posted a very interesting thing on Facebook before the end of the year, right around the holidays. He says, February will mark a 15th anniversary for my consultancy. It has been a while since a machine was being manufactured that has audio by DDT. 2021 promises to be different. Without going into details, there will be four pins that I've provided the audio package for from four different pinball manufacturers. Stay safe, don't overeat, and keep playing pinball. So I thought it'd be fun to kind of speculate and figure out which four games will be from David Thiel. So my guess, well, one is going to be Raza if that actually gets released because he did the sound on that. Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland from Deep Root Pinball. He did the sound on Alien. So if that's getting rerun, that'll be two. What are the other two? I have no idea. right did he so um uh spooky and uh chicago gaming are making one together i don't know if he did he's done any work with chicago gaming before gonna do any more is he done with jjp or is he essentially doing work with them maybe he's doing maybe he's going back to jjp he did do sound on lexi light speed for multi everyone's saying everyone's saying that the next jjp will be toy story i mean they've been saying this for four years now right maybe that like lawler and toy story is is the rumor so maybe he did maybe he did it on that because especially if that game was in production or being made for so long then uh that's a possibility yeah well and uh you know if they're tightening up their timelines at jersey jack if they want to start cranking out more games they're going to need more like more people to serve on different teams so i know they've had uh vicas working on he did um guns and roses and waka so if they're going to speed that up they're probably gonna need another sound person so maybe they'll start doing um contracting some of that out to folks like david thiel uh but i i think multimorphic is a good possibility too you know they have a history relation uh of a working relationship and uh so i'd love to see him come back and do something with them as well so maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part for the nice multimorphic game but hopefully yeah oh we love david thiel um i love his work audio is incredibly important for me in a pinball machine. It's something I can easily recognize when it's well done. Like, Pirates is fantastic. And if you guys are listening to this podcast and you didn't listen to our three-hour interview, I think, with David Thiel, and he went through, like, his career on games, you know, people have told us that that was just a really good podcast and they really enjoyed it. So I highly recommend going back and listening to that. You know, break it into chunks if you need to. but he was a great guest to have on and really interesting stuff from him. Yeah, he told some great stories that I think all of our listeners and viewers will appreciate. Yeah, he was very open, right? And it's kind of a refreshing thing. So it's nice, and he's got a lot of energy, so God bless him. If you've ever wondered why certain sound packages turned out the way they did, he talked about them, you know, X-Men, stuff like that. Just go back and check it out. okay uh all right that's it for news and updates let's let's give some game room updates and i'll kick it off with uh here i'll if i switch over here you can see it kind of over there it's my brand new willie wonka pinball machine i was able to sell my jurassic park because that's a game why'd you sell that kevin why'd you sell jurassic park because stern is dumb that's why Stern and their dumb end user license agreements and asking permission to get to stream which they've now changed so that we can't give you permission to stream it's just like decision after decision with them I'm fed up and I'm like I'm not going to promote a product you're currently selling if this is how you're going to Gary Stern's gone on podcast and called his customers criminals who make mods and stuff I'm done I love Jersey Jack, I love Multimorphic I'll play Bally Williams games There's plenty of other ways I can spend my time I still think Jurassic Park is an amazing game It's a very good game Keith Elwin's a great designer But I'm over it You were pissed off I was like, get this game out of here Are you saying you wouldn't buy another Stern? Yeah, that's what I'm saying Really, you're done with Stern? Period I don't see It can make a bad religion pinball machine that's amazing. Yeah, I'm like, I'm over it. You wouldn't get it? Yeah, probably not. Even if it was the greatest pinball machine of all time, you'd hate Stern that much now? Maybe I'd get it once they stopped selling it. You know what I mean? Wow, wow. Okay. Kevin's upset. You think I get upset about things. Kevin, this is like coming at peak anger. I'm not throwing my tron. You loved Jurassic Park 2. Yeah, it was a great game. And you were pissed off. You went into a rage mode and just like so much that you're like, out of here. Yeah. So I'm not selling Tron because they're not selling it, right? It doesn't matter to them if I keep it or sell it, right? Sure, sure, sure, sure. But yeah, we talked about talking about Eula, and we sort of – I mean, it's not – there's a lot that's been said about it. We didn't want to make a whole segment, but Stern does these kind of things that it's like – Like, it's just not – it's the way they convey the news or the info sometimes. It just doesn't come out the best way. Like, Kevin's in PR. You do communication in PR for a living. And it's not necessarily what Stern is saying in the EULA. It's just the way it comes out. And it comes out in the worst way, and it just upsets a lot of people.
    46:47
    They do this time and time again. And, you know, look, Stern is not a huge Fortune 500 company, So they're going to make some mistakes, but it's just too bad. I think that they do themselves a disservice sometimes because they're just not careful enough of how they communicate. Right. You know, how many times have we heard that people have bought games after we've streamed them or, you know, reviewed them or whatever? All the time. I bought, like, A Walking Dead because of you, Nick. All the time. You know, because it's, like, one of my favorite games of all time. All the time people tell us that. I know that we influence what people purchase. And I think you and I take that very seriously in terms of how we talk about game. A certain degree of responsibility because we're here to help people, right? Like I want to hype the shit out of games that I think are just amazing and people should either play or have. And then also help people avoid games that are going to disappoint them, even though we have our particular tastes. Right, exactly. So it is what it is. And so let's talk about Wonka a little bit. This is the game. Obviously, we went out and did the reveal. it was huge it was good times got to hang out with pat lawler and the crew out there um it didn't click with me when we streamed it and like a lot of jersey jack games you need to put time on it and i say i really love the game it's it's amazing it's really well done pat lawler can design a play field that shoots like butter uh the rules are really cool it i will say i don't think it does a great job communicating to the player what you need to do right away um it takes some time to figure it out it's not as apparent as something like guns and roses where i have to collect my band members start a song and then you know cash out this huge value in this song right um that's the structure of the game is much more uh easily understood in guns and roses uh wanka once you play it you start to figure out what's in there and then i went to and i'm going to put this on youtube um skip natty played actually the game that i now own the week before i got it and did rules explanation and then so once you play the game a little bit and you kind of understand the things that are in there and then once somebody kind of talks you through the rules it's like all right now it starts to make sense here's where the points are here's how to kind of put it all together and see the the more interesting stuff deeper in the game but what's cool it just kind of lays a bunch of stuff on the table that you can go out and do in whatever order you want which i think is great for a home game it reminds me of uh more like pirates in that way where you can you know there's all these different ways you can approach it but in the end there's big goals you want to go for at the end so who did the uh rules on that uh i think joe katz was the lead okay okay so yeah he's he's done a lot of great stuff with them and and i love his his uh his video game sensibilities coming into pinball because he's a big video game player too so um that's uh that's my my first impressions on waga i still in the honeymoon phase obviously i only had it for like two weeks almost Yeah I think it was two weeks today But I loving it When I come out to play it the game I playing right now
    49:53
    Go Wonka. Chrome Candy is asking when Goran's topper bit is coming up. It's coming at the end. You've got to stick around to the end.
    50:00
    We know what the people want. We've got to keep you hanging out for the good stuff. Yeah, exactly. All right.
    50:07
    That's Wonka. Here's a little topper talk for everybody at home. and it's because I modded the topper on my Addams Family with a new mod from Evan Bookminder, friend of the show.
    50:21
    He did Addams Family's topper mod, and you can get it either in blue or in purple. I went in purple because I wanted to go all out and really perp it up. And it adds some, like, cool lighting effects to make the dome glow. I don't think the adjective is perp it up. Perp it up. I don't think it means what you think it means. That's what you do. And some high-intensity flashers for the Bag-Back Stopper, so when you start the multi-ball, it goes crazy.
    50:47
    And now with my new topper streaming rig that I set up the other day, I'll stream Adam's family with the topper cam one of these days so you guys can check it out. It's pretty cool. I don't think he's got a website set up right now, but you can check out Evan on Facebook. That's how I connected with him to get the mod if you're interested. It's cool. Highly recommended if you want to bling out your Adams a little bit.
    51:08
    And the other thing I did was, so you can see big buck hunter behind me. I turned it on one day and it wasn't working. So that was sad. So I had to do some troubleshooting on it. It's got a standard VGA connection on it. So I brought a monitor down, hooked it up, wasn't getting any signal. It's got a standard Dell PC in it. So I pulled it out, reseated all the RAM and the hard drive connections because when I got it, I upgraded some of that stuff.
    51:33
    Plugged it back in and it booted up, which was good. But I was getting some file system errors, so I had to reinstall the software from scratch. but thankfully big buck is up and running i can shoot virtual deer again in the pandemic it's all good so yeah but let me ask you this um how do you feel about big buck hunter after owning it for a while is it is it is it lost kind of its kind of um appeal or is it just a novelty that's passed or is it like something that's good to have in someone's game room yeah i don't like i don't play my stand-up video games a lot out here but i like having that one as a gun game i think it's got more longevity than something like the Area 51 that I had. Yeah. Because you can just, like, all right, I'll try to blast through and beat my scores from last time versus just, like, credit feeding it to try to get to the end of the game. Okay. So I like it from that perspective. I also submitted it for, there's this thing called Nintendo on Twitch, where this streamer called Goaty puts together a marathon, and he wants to see weird games. So I submitted Big Buck Hunter as a game that I could play on stream for that. So hopefully we do some Big Buck Hunter for the masses on there. It'd be really cool. Still a fun game. Really have fun with it. But, yeah, I don't play it all the time, but every time I play it, it's fun.
    52:47
    It's more fun with somebody as a player to do a little competitive action, too. Yeah. Chrome Candy says BBHHD with the online features is a lot of fun. Some of us on. Pinslighter competing with each other in a weekly tournament. That sounds cool. Yeah, that sounds cool. I think there's another, like, they may have ongoing fees for that, though, too. It's more nonsense.
    53:08
    Which I don't know that I'd pay for. Well, it's not designed for the home. You know what I mean? Like, you're using it to the point where it doesn't make sense. Right. So that's my game room updates. Nick has some game room updates, too. All right. Well, first of all, I'm really pumped because I got my Pirates of the Caribbean fixed. It was an up-post-kicker problem. And not that that was the most complicated thing. It's just that I can't raise my play fields up to work on it. So I can't really even see what's going on. That play field is really heavy. So Eric Mignier was in my lunchtime. Oh, I should mention, too, that info. So I'm doing Fridays at noon on our channel. I've made it a thing. Because I've been doing kind of a lunchtime pinball streaming here and there. And I've officially dedicated myself to doing it on Fridays, at least during the pandemic. I think even when we go back to work, we're going to be able to work some days from home. And I'm going to request Fridays. and try to keep that going because I like doing a solo stream then. Anyways, Eric, who's the designer of Pirates, Jersey Jack, was in the stream and I was talking to him about it. And he's like, I'll help you out with this. So after the stream, he walked me through. It was really simple. Martha and I were able to tackle it. And I've not played that game since the summer when I did the battle with Eric because I just can't bring myself to play a game that has an issue with it Because they sort of like if I have a great game, like it invalidates that score because it's not working. Right. It's like there's an asterisk in my mind and I'm like a purist. So I love pirates. You guys know that. I'm sorry when I'm obnoxious every time I say how awesome that game is. I really hope they rerun that game because so many people, I think, know how awesome it is. It's one of those things that, you know, Kevin, how sometimes things are released and they come out and they're not valued as much as they should. like a movie comes out or or whatever and it might be ahead of its time in some ways it's so different or so progressive that not everybody realizes how amazing it is until years later i feel like that's how pirates is yeah and i really hope they release it again um because i think it will do anyways really happy to have that back up and running so um that's that's one update and i told kevin and i think i have to talk on my stream i my basement's full i have the challenge of getting games in the basement, walking downstairs. I always said when I moved into a house I didn't want a basement, but I moved in with Martha, I don't know, what, six years ago now? It is what it is. So my pinball acquisition has kind of come to a halt because I don't want to sell games. It's just really complicated. So my dream is to build like, you know, Kevin's kind of an inspiration here. He built a garage, shed, game room, and that's exactly what I want to do. So I'm saving my pennies, right? So hopefully in three to five years I can build one, which means I'm not going to be buying a lot of pinball machines. I could get new pinball machines. I just have to sell one. So if an amazing game came out, something would go on the chopping block and I would get it. But I don't want to be in that position because I like all my games. I just want to acquire more of them. Martha's a collector as well. So that's my goal, man, to build a shed garage where I can just get games in easily without the hassle. I can increase my collection, get more classics and stuff, and get back into that acquisition phase of pinball. So that excites me right now. I really want to make that happen. Don't know how soon it will happen. But when it does, I'll document kind of the building of it and the plans and stuff that will be kind of a feature on our YouTube. And I also did – Kevin did an awesome game room video back in the fall. And it was an update to videos that we did four years ago. So in January 2017, I did a game room video because I know people are really interested to see our collections, and it always does really well on our channel. And, look, I don't have the best game room video out there collection. You know, there's some truly amazing collection and spaces out there, but I'm happy to kind of share where I'm at and what I did. And it's kind of like a nice moment in time capture for me in my history of collecting games. So I did an update to my January 2017 video. You can see it on YouTube. I kind of do the same walkthrough. You can see some changes. It's like 14 minutes, so it's not long. And it would be fun to do that four years from now again. And hopefully I've got that exterior data and stuff like that, and it just grows over time. So check that out. Check that out if you want to see an update. Check out Cabin's too. Cabin's was really well done too. And then last but not least, I've been playing a lot of VR. a lot of VR hype so in the I've got another podcast a VR gaming podcast and I have a discord for that and Gorin has been the Pied Piper in getting other people in pinball to come over to that discord and to get headsets I think a lot of people got Oculus Quest 2 which is only $299 and you don't need a PC and it's a very very good VR system like entry VR system so we've got like in this discord there's a lot of people who our content creators in pinball happen to be in there and if you want to invite just message me at uh buffalopinball at gmail.com or vrgamingpodcast at gmail.com and i'll send you a discord link to get in there but we've been having a lot of fun playing of all things like vr mini golf and vr poker i've been streaming you can see some streams of that we've been doing mini golf tournaments every two weeks we'll do one next week you would not want in on that you can join us there are these casual free tournaments um you can go see videos of that on my channel twitch.tv br underscore gaming underscore podcast really simple to find right uh so so check that out yeah do you think you'd uh we can ever convince you to get a oculus quest for 299 and you can join us i don't know i don't know what's what was i i'm really curious it's a serious question what's the hesitation because here's the thing to know about kevin kevin like you you like buy like every video game system like you are yep total gamer like you comes out you buy you had a psvr and you bought it like the day you had vr before i did yep so what's the hesitation there now that i've had it i either don't find myself playing it much or when i do i get sick or i get a headache and i just don't feel like it's something i want to do so um i know you've said the more you play the the more you get over that but i i've played it a significant amount and it It still happens to me.
    59:37
    Here's my pitch and what I would say. That's a legit good reason. So you're playing VR technology from 2016, and that's like when all the headsets first came out that were kind of commercial VR that sort of was good, right, was playable. And, like, what I really respect about the PlayStation is that they came out with VR and they had a headset from the get-go, or Xbox didn't. They let me down there. um things have come technology is developing really rapidly things have come a long way to like the quest 2 i think the quest 2 is a way easier experience you can play anywhere you don't need to have cords and cables attached the controllers are way better and there's plenty of games that shouldn't give you motion sickness because you don't need to kind of do that movement and that's what's giving you that motion sickness so uh potential motion sickness so i think you'd have a i think it'd be a better experience here's here's what i would say to you ready here we go Here it is. This is to Kevin and everybody else on the fence. Order a Quest 2 from Amazon.
    60:37
    Okay? Grab a couple games. I can make some recommendations on games that you'll be blown away. Like Super Hot's a fantastic game if you're just getting into VR. Space Pirate Train was fantastic. Walkabout Mini Golf. Things like that. Don't like it? Get sick or whatever? You've got 30 days to send it back. You can't get your money back. You can't lose. Even Oculus games that you buy, you can play them for two hours and then return them from that two-hour window don't get your money back no questions asked so if you don't like a game or it's garbage or it makes you sick you turn it back there's nothing to lose nothing to lose proposition there you go the only thing as somebody pointed out with the oculus quest you that there's a catch you got to be on facebook okay to have your facebook account linked to but yeah i mean most people most people are on facebook so you can live with that my the other reason is i have a a playstation 5 that i'm playing all the time we play call of duty every night so my gaming time is pretty pretty full right now uh i also have the we got the series x for christmas so uh i've got enough to keep me busy so i'm not lacking for stuff to do but maybe maybe someday down the line i'll get the buggy again but i'm not feeling very compelled to jump on and get another headset right now i've i've either this is admirable or embarrassing i've put in 600 600 hours into hunt showdown since August. That's a PC non-VR game. But I like switching it up and putting on the VR headset because there's no game that I can play multiplayer. And especially during the pandemic and connecting with people is important. There's nothing that gives you the experience of being able to use motion controls and see other people in the game and have more of a presence with them. But there you go. I did my pitch. Thank you. Kevin always humored me. He knows it's coming. I just want to play games with my friend in VR because I think you'll like it. Martha, believe it or not, is getting an Oculus Quest on Tuesday. We're going to go pick it up on Best Buy. Can you stream that, please? Yeah, I've been streaming. She'll play Mini Golf of Us, and she'll play poker. Those have been the huge hits, believe it or not, in VR. I want the room cam of Martha running into the walls and stuff. Yeah, I probably won't have the room cam of that necessarily. That's what it's all about.
    62:45
    I remember her playing that cat game at my house on the PSVR and crawling around on the floor and stuff. It was pretty good.
    62:52
    Yeah. There you go. All right. So that's my game room updates. I actually had a couple things. Look at you. You fixed something, too. I'm very proud of you, Nick. Martha helped me. Good job, Martha. Yeah. I know she's watching. She's like she doesn't watch, but she's lurking. Because any time... Martha threw up in VR. What? When I first had it, like three years ago, she was doing... Here's some good Martha story. I think I told her before because she'll love that. um she she was doing um google earth vr is really cool by the way if you have no one if you haven't done that because like you know how like google earth you can go anywhere and see like they've mapped out all of this stuff um you can even like fly over like your neighborhood it's it's awesome so some people get motion sick in vr and you can overcome it over time but the trick is as soon as you start feeling a little queasy you need to immediately get out right like you need to Immediately get out and you'll be fine.
    63:45
    Martha's like, oh, I don't feel too great. I was like, get out, get out. But she didn't. She was having such a good time in there. She spent another five or ten minutes and then puked. So there you go. Learn from Martha. There's your sales pitch for VR, kids.
    63:56
    All right. We have, I don't remember the last time we did a review. It may have been Jurassic Park or Mustang may have been the last one we did, but it's been a while. So let's play the review intro here, and then we'll get into our review of Judge Dredd from Bally. Let's go. Showtime!
    64:35
    Showtime! It is Judge Dredd from Bally, released in 1993, designed by John Trudeau. Total Jerk, art by Kevin O'Connor, software by Jeff Johnson, sound by Paul Heisch and Vince Pontarelli, and I didn't realize this until I looked it up, Call Us by Tim Kitzero.
    64:56
    Wait, I got him. Where's my sound effects? Here we go. Kaboom! There you go. There's Tim Kitzero. Pricing on this game.
    65:07
    Nick and I talked about bang for the buck games. feature on this segment. So we picked Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, or Fishtails for our channel subscribers to pick. And Judge Dredd won out by one vote when I checked this morning, so that was the winner.
    65:26
    So when I bought this game back in 2013, I paid $1,600 for it. Nowadays, according to Pennside Pricing, is $2,680 to $3,120.
    65:40
    That's how much I bought it for in 2011. uh my third game ever 1100 1200 very 1200 okay yeah so that's the other thing nick and i have both owned this game so we can speak very very uh from first-hand experience on this game which is cool um i actually owned this game twice i had sold it and then another one came up for a very good deal but like a year later and i got it for 1500 so it was an even nicer one that i got for less so uh but i ended up trading that towards my adams family which i still have uh today so So this is Judge Dredd. Let's get into the cabinet art. I just want to address one thing. RLM in chat says, newsflash, there are no bang for your buck games anymore. The pandemic is taking prices to crazy land. Well, I disagree. I disagree about it. Can we talk about that for a sec? Go ahead. Off the rails.
    66:37
    Hijacking the interview. I still say it's a bang for the buck. First of all, what I paid in 2011, I mean, you've got to factor in inflation, and there's just more demand for pinball machines. So all games have gone up, right? And these games, like I bought it in 2011. I had it for a few months, and I sold it, I think, for $1,500. So if you buy it today and you pay the right price, you're still going to get your money back.
    67:00
    I would still say this is a pretty good bang for your buck game. So we can move on. I wanted to keep that short. Yeah. I mean, the relative value of everything. thing has gone up but they hold their value too right so and time passes there's time value of money inflation all that stuff so uh everything factored in you still get a lot of game for 2021 pricing on these games even at like three thousand dollars for a dread there's a max and uh gameplay in there uh that you're going to get a lot out of even though it may not be on the same level as a as a brand new cerner jjp game uh all right so let's get back into the picture so the categories we're going to cover are art sound toys display and lighting gameplay rules and last ability like we always do so let's kick it off with art um like i said art by uh kevin o'connor i think the art is very well done so if you think of 90s and you think judge dread you might be thinking the steven uh sylvester stallone movie but it's not based on that it's based on the comics which is always go with the comic version don't go with the movie version and they did it right the art is really well done it's what's funny is i see like alternative art packages for this game and i'm like why because the art is really good i mean it's cool but i would not replace the art on this unless uh as you can see in this picture that i have up the cabinet does tend to fade so if the cabinet fades and you want to upgrade because that's supposed to be red or orangey letters on the front of the game and the red and orange fades out as a lot of these 90s Bally Williams games did. But the style and the execution of the art is very well done. We can look at it on the play field here, too. Again, very cool, awesome comic art throughout this game. I think it's great.
    68:45
    I do, too. Really good art. I mean, you can't help but think of maybe Demoman because it also falls in the kind of price range when it came out and also Sylvester Stallone and Demoman was based on that movie. Demoman does not have great art. It's very basic. It's like Terminator 2-esque, the way they approach this art. But the art on this is fantastic. And I believe when this game was released, the flyer or the game came up like a comic book, too. Yeah, the promo flyer of it is a fold-out comic book spread, which is cool. Yeah, I don't love the side art of the cabinet. It's a little plain as Judge Dredd on his motorcycle. But the playfield art and the back glass slash trans light, really good. Yeah, I think I have an up-close here of the trans light. Well, it's not a very high-quality one, but there it is. Yeah, someone said, Hot Shower Boy said, the newer Judge Dredd movie is good and much more loyal to the original comic. Yeah, that's, by the way, if you've not seen the new Judge Dredd movie, which new is now 2012, one of my favorite movies of all time, super well done.
    69:47
    All right. I apologize for showing the topper already and getting everybody excited, but we'll get to that later. Bye, everybody. I think you know who I'm talking about.
    69:55
    So, sound. We have a sound by Paul Heitsch, Vince Ponarelli. It's by Tim Kittsrow. I think the sound is very well done on this game. It's got kind of a metal, hard rock kind of vibe to it, which you would want in a game like this. I can still hear the... All the little sound effects are very well done. Really good. Call-outs are really good.
    70:22
    I think of the five years for Flashlands and all that stuff in the game. Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the game with the granny, with the shotgun, I don't know. There's just so many cool, fun. It's even though it's like a serious ish theme, it's still fun and funny.
    70:41
    I don't know. Music sound is great to me. What do you think? I think it's fantastic, especially when you look in the time period that was made. Right. You got to judge it within within that. Really well done. Really good music. Like Kevin said, I can hear it in my head. It's just really like wailing 90s. Like, you know, like we always kind of imitate the music when we're playing. We love it. Good humor. There's multiple, like, announcers in the game. Like multiple, like, voices. What is Tim Kitzrell doing? Do you know? I don't know. I didn't realize he was in there. I didn't either. There's a female voiceover artist in here, too, and she didn't get the call. Yeah. I forgot. She plays, I forget what the character's called. She's got a funny name that I can't remember. Yeah, the character's also in the newer Judge Dredd movie. I never read the comics. I don't know too much about Judge Dredd lore, but, yeah, she's in it. Yeah, so great, great sound. Toys, everybody's favorite category in the YouTube comments is to talk about the toys. So let's talk about toys in Judge Dredd. It's got some cool ones. You want some toys, this is a game with toys. It's got the crane on the far left there. You can see it in the back that feeds balls from the Dead World, which is the big spinning planet. We should note that there are two versions of the Dead World. A lot of times people will talk about the Dead World mod on this game, which takes the standard version, which only it doesn't hold the balls. It just it will stage one for the final one that you lock. But the original design was that you would feed the balls up the left ramp. they would divert onto this dead world planet and they would spin around and hover. So really cool. I, I, I put it on my game right before I, the timing was bad, man. I put the mod on right before I sold it. So I never really got to enjoy it that much, but it's a cool mod. There's an up close version. This has the mod version. So the mod version has holes to hold the balls. The, um, the final version has kind of slots there where the ball will fall out. So the interesting thing is like, it was, this was the, the mod version of what was supposed to be originally in the game. And it got cut, I think, for reliability issues.
    72:49
    But you don't have to do it. Once you install the mod, you don't have to change the software at all because it's baked into the software to work that way. Yeah, I think you need the 1.0 software. So if you have later software, it's not in there. Okay, I didn't have to change it. It just worked. I just installed the mod. And I don't think it was too hard to put the mod in.
    73:10
    But it's very, very common to see this, especially with collectors. They'll put this in. um but i think you know there's potential issues for hang-ups on location that they they did away with that for so uh but in a home collection definitely i would recommend adding the dead world mod it's cool cool as heck um it does slow the game down a little bit uh because when you don't have the mod in it does virtual locks for one and two yep and then it will take ball three and divert it over and then feed it to the crane um but uh other you know when you have it in and it feeds ball one it goes on to the dead world that locks it and then you go back into play um so very cool awesome toys i think that is basically the extent of the toys you've got other features in it like the sniper tower which is an up kicker on the right side uh that feeds i don't remember does that feed one ramp or two i can't remember i can't remember either it's been a while i think just one yeah okay yeah there's there's a lot of wire forms on this yeah it feeds that one upper waveform that feeds to the left I believe and the other I'm trying to remember how everything feeds but yeah so but the dead world is your main toy very cool up there with some of the better toys in pinball I would say especially with the mod you need the mod I would say the toy is sort of unremarkable without the mod though I was surprised to hear you say it got a lot of toys or if you love toys or it one of the better toys because it sort of okay without the mod It nothing special but when you put the mod in that when it shines yeah i guess that what i thinking of that combined with the cream that takes them off there it it pretty cool combo of of interactivity with a physical ball lock that that's the kind of it's the kind of like wow moments you look for in a pinball toy right like it's doing highly recommend the mod highly recommend the mod i think there's there's some um futzing around getting like the optos to align i think that's the hard part with it like and it can go out of alignment but you got in a home environment then it's great i wouldn't put the mod in and put it out on location i think you're just gonna you're asking for trouble yeah i agree um display and lighting why don't you kick it off for display and lighting uh i i can ease i i i'm better at talking about display i think the dmd is really good i think um there's good humor in this game in terms of what the dmd does lighting i don't remember too much about it so i think it's going to be on par with um you know a bally williams game from what 1993 right it is exactly what you would expect from that era um but the dmd is is well done i think yeah the dmd and especially this is one of the ones when i think about a color dmd i think you know this game just really shines when you put the color in there because it brings that comic hand-drawn style of the dots and really brings it to life. I remember when we streamed it at John's house, he had the color DMD in there, and it just looked amazing compared to the orange grossness that I was so used to.
    76:11
    Actually, you know what I would say, Kevin, about the lighting, now that I think about this and remember? I mean, this is going back, you know, 10 years ago when I owned it. Yeah, it's a really dark game, actually. And the lighting, this is a game where you're going to want to put good LEDs in it. It's too dark. You might want to add spotlights to it. I think this might be a no-brainer for needing a Penn Stadium kit. It's just way too dark with stock lighting, especially incandescents. And I don't even think LEDs alone because there's just areas where they probably should have had lights and they don't. So it's a really dark game. I'd say the lighting is poor on this because of that. You're going to have to mod it and make it better. Yeah, I agree. I remember when I owned it, it was pre-Penn Stadium time, and I had gotten a light strip to go under the back box to light up the back half of the game because that's where it gets really dark because there's so many mechs that are all stacked up that even if there are lights in the back, and there are a few, it can only light up so much of that.
    77:13
    Anything you can do, spotlights, Penn Stadiums, LED strips, trough lighting, stuff like that to really make it pop. That's where you're going to spend a lot of time. So you're going to get this game. If you get it stock, you should definitely invest some time into doing some mods on it. Those are the ones you want to focus on. Start with lighting first, then do the dead world. The other lighting moment I remember is it's got the blue and red flashers on the ramps when you get in. Oh, yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's a cool mode. I know we haven't gotten to rules yet, but there's a lot of modes in this game, and I like the modes. The modes are cool. um it shows out the dmd shows out the humor but that mode before you forget um you gotta like it shows like a car kind of moving a car chase moving back and forth and you're shooting missiles at it and you shoot a missile like if you can time the ramp when the car is like on like the the right side it will shoot a missile and hit the car that's what you're trying to do so that's like a for 1993 that is an inventive mode i think the game was it's kind of well thought out in terms of like the integration um the humor i i really like it i really like how they did that yeah and so it does have some cool uh light show moments in it even if you don't necessarily have the best lights in it those those pop even with regular uh incandescent flashers so very cool um so that leads us into gameplay why don't you take us into gameplay nick so the the shots this is a wide body game and the shots are pretty good like the the shot layout is good in there there's some it's a There's some flow, for sure. It's a flowy game. My biggest problem with this game is this is the era where, you know, Bally Williams doing wide bodies, it seemed like that's what they were releasing for a couple years. And I always thought that this game didn't need to be a wide body.
    79:00
    The wide body made it feel more clunky, even though it's like a flow type of game. It's not as smooth as it kind of should be. I think that there's no justification on that game where it needed to be a wide body. If this was a standard body game, I think it would have been much better. I think it would have been a faster game. And while I like the gameplay, I think it's good. That's certainly not necessarily a weak point. It would have been so much better if it was a standard body game. yeah so i don't you wouldn't be able to cram as much in as you did with uh a wide body uh the amount of space the wide body gives you like you've got that huge planet in there you've got a bunch of shots from there's like the upper flipper if you've played willie wonka it's got a similar uh layout for the upper flipper that feeds a few shots up at the top um and there's all these wire forms going all over the place so i think there would have been some sacrifice moving this down to a standard body game but uh bally williams was so like hot on super pins at this point that maybe it was wonka's us walker's a standard body game it's got a lot going on but it doesn't it doesn't have like that massive planet in it you know well yeah i mean the planet didn't my thing is the planet takes up a lot of real estate that dominates the wide body game but you can do the planet without making it that big yeah you could you could scale that down i agree i think i think i think you get i think you would get better gameplay and like maybe at the cost of smaller planet but you'd still have that in there yeah and you'd have to do maybe like three drop targets in the middle instead of five maybe because you don't want to sacrifice the the shots because the shots like feel good and they're like it's i don't wouldn't want it to turn into a houdini where you know you're sacrificing yeah it feels like it should be a wide body with how tight those shots are right yeah yeah yeah you got a point for sure i really wish it's like you like in an ideal like hypothetical world you can see what this game looked like as a standard body versus wide body and i've put money on it being better but i don't i don't know for sure yeah because there's a lot of there's a lot of open real estate here in the middle that is just like okay why do we need all that but then there's a lot in the back and around the side so uh curious it would be interesting to see how they play somebody make it in virtual pinball real quick and we'll check we'll check it out uh rules so the rules are i think the one like downside of this game what you mentioned it's got a bunch of cool modes and i agree it's uh so if you look at let me see if i've got a um so if you look at the links in the chain that go across the the play field all those are different modes and if you've never played this game before you can select which mode you have lit by um so on the side of the cabinet right here you can see it's got standard flipper buttons and also the the bigger like diamond shape buttons um you can uh the right button the diamond shape button on the side will let you select which mode you want and i i typically started with blackout it was like a two ball multi-ball yeah and so you can get right into a two ball multi-ball and you want to hit the upper flipper ramp shot from that to cash out points on there but it's a good way to kind of get a feel for the game start get some some points on the board um the modes are good in variety from a game of this era but once you get through to the like wizard mode it's like the wizard mode is a little lacking i think um it's just kind of it kind of is what it is and uh it's not particularly difficult to get to either so i think that holds it back because you can kind of plow through the modes pretty quick and then get to the ultimate challenge and then all right i've seen it i've done it um that's kind of all there is even with all this cool these cool uh physical elements on the game this i think this would be a great candidate for an update in rules that's i agree a hundred percent with what kevin said even when i was you know a year year and a half into pinball right so i've made a lot of progress i've had i played a ton more machines i've gotten better as a player um this game only lasted my collection of like a couple games for maybe three to six months at the most i mean it just it didn't last i was able to get to the end and you know fell flat i think for at the time for For 1993, there's some inventive rules and there's a lot of modes, but it doesn't have the last ability factor because after you spend enough time with it, you're going to get to the end and it's going to be a little stale. I think this is a game that, you know, maybe it will come back to my collection as I'm kind of acquiring games again. I have a really large collection. It'd be cool to have in there and fun, but it just doesn't hold up, especially now, you know, in 2021, where aims and rules and expectations on last ability are just much higher than when you released the game in 1993 on location just to make money. Agreed. I mean, looking at it from a mechanical standpoint, it would be like a $15,000 Stern Super LE in 2021 terms. But from a rules perspective, that's really where it falls behind. And that's what the games of today really differentiate themselves with is that next level of rule, especially for a home player. This is still a perfectly fine location game, and I love playing it. You know, if we go out and there's one in an arcade, I'll gladly play it at any time because I have fun with it. But, yeah, if given unlimited space, absolutely, it'd be one I have. It's a great-looking game, great-playing game. But, you know, we all have constraints in space and money, and something's got to go. And so that was a game when I was looking through and I was going, I guess I'm kind of done with this game. I forgot you even owned one, Kevin, to be honest. Yeah, twice. Oh, wow. Jesus Christ. That's how forgettable that is. Yeah, it typically doesn't last long in collections because of that. That's not to say it's a bad game, but you just, you know, we frame this from collectors and in the home and all that. What we didn't talk about in the rules is Super Game. You want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so that is a cool feature that adds another level of playability to it. So in the arcade, you could put extra credits in the machine and play Super Game, which presents with you a different set of rules where you start off in this crazy multiball. And I'm trying to remember, I think you have to hit all the drop targets. I can't remember the specifics of the mode, but it's like a multiball frenzy mode, basically, where you start off with all these jackpots and crazy multiballs, and then once you get down to one ball, I think you start back into regular play, right? Yeah, it's cool, right? It's like I would call it a novelty, but it's nice and it's fun to have in there, and maybe newer players will like that, or if you have people over, it's kind of instant satisfaction of multiball, and just another nice little touch and layer. Again, for 1993, there's a lot of respect in terms of what they packed into this game. yeah this would still be a game that i would definitely uh recommend to a new player this kind of gets us into the last ability of the of the game that's our last category um still i would still if you're just getting into pinball you want a lot of game you don't necessarily want to buy a six to fifteen thousand dollar new pinball machine grab a grab a judge dread you're going to have a great time with it it's going to teach you a lot about you know how to play modes and wizard modes and things like that. You're going to have fun shooting it.
    86:28
    It's going to look great in your game room. The sound and music and callouts are really good. But when you're looking to buy a new game, it's probably going to be one that you end up moving on.
    86:39
    So, Nick, why don't we get into our scores for the game? Let me see if I can pull up our website. It's been so long. I'm glad we're doing a review again. I like to get this out there. And, again, Kevin and I wanted to review this game. we wanted to review kind of games that first-time buyers of pinball machines might be looking at based on the availability and pricing. So hopefully this has been helpful there. All right, Kevin, you got the – where are we? Pinball Adventures. Yeah, I had a Pony Factory up there for some reason. We were looking at it. All right, so if you go to buffalopinball.com slash podcast, you can see our ratings of past games and also our score key, which is from 0 to 2 is Burn It. 3-5 is an expensive nightlight. 6-8 is a solid game. 9-10 is get your wallets out. Do you want to start, or should I start?
    87:29
    I'll go. Well, who usually goes first? I say it, and then we have this weird order where we try to mix it up. Yeah, I can go first, because I feel like you always go first, and then you say I go a little bit higher than you. I've got a number in my hat. I've got a number in my hat, so I'm locked in. I was thinking 8, like solid game 8, but after we got started talking about the rules, I think that's going to knock it down to a seven because it does so much so well that for the rules to be as kind of easy to plow through as they are. I think that holds it back in it. It's really the only thing that I'm holding it back. So it's definitely in the solid game range. It gets everything right. Even though the modes are fun, there's just not enough there to keep it interesting in your home for a long time. So I'm going to give it a seven. I'm 100% with you on that, Kevin. And at the end of the day, last ability is probably the most important category when we're talking about doing reviews of pinball machines because, again, we're talking from the perspective of potentially buying and recommending somebody spend money on a pinball machine. And, look, you don't want to buy a pinball machine that you're going to get bored with in a few months. You can. That's fine. It depends on what you're looking for and how easy it is to move things around. but you just got to recognize where a judge dread might play in your collection. New player. This might be higher and a great recommendation for a new player, especially the pricing, but I'm going to go with seven. It does a lot of things, right? A lot of respect for this game. I'm happy. I own them happy. I spent time with it, but it didn't last long. And I'm, you know, I, I doubt I'll ever have one again, you know, or what the circumstances are, but a good amount of respect because it does a lot of things. Right. Agreed. Especially, you know, when we owned it, there hadn't been this new wave of we're awash in amazing games these days so a lot of folks were looking back to the Bally Williams era for the great games of the time especially if you didn't want to spend 10k on a medieval madness which is what they were going for at the time so you have to take it in the context of where we were at that time and when we bought the game but I still think it's a good game for new players still a lot of fun but yeah you're gonna find And your time with Judge Dredd is short, I would guess. Yep. All right. So we'll wrap it up. But if you're here for Topper Talk, don't go anywhere. It's coming up. It's going to wrap up the show. We're going to end it on Topper Talk, and that's going to be the show. So this is, I think, the way we're going to do Topper Talk. So we're going to close it out, and then Goran's going to have the last word. As he usually does in all casts. That's super, super accurate, Kevin. Super appropriate. With the at symbol all over the place. All right. Don't forget, you can follow us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Check out our YouTube channel for past shows. Subscribe to the podcast. So I've had a few folks say, hey, did your podcast disappear? It hasn't disappeared. We had to switch hosts a couple months ago. And any time you switch podcast hosts, inevitably you're going to lose some folks who are either directly subscribed to your RSS feed or, like I know, like I had trouble updating it on a few platforms. So check it out. We're on anchor.fm now. If you want to subscribe to us there, or you can find us on iTunes and Spotify and a few other places, but they're all at buffalopinball.com slash podcast. Email us at talkpinball at gmail.com if you've got feedback, questions, comments on past shows, anything you want to tell us about right there.
    91:10
    Follow and subscribe to us on Twitch. If you want to support the show, you can do it over there, $5 a month to subscribe, or you can use your Amazon Prime account to subscribe at no extra charge. You can send us some cash money on PayPal. Nick's got a buffalopinballgmail.com set up on PayPal if you want to support us that way. Or you can review us on your podcast platform of choice. Tell a friend, share the podcast, tell them you enjoy what we do, and that's us. Yeah, so I want to also just a couple of things to everybody. Number one, thanks to all of our subscribers who continue to support us and the new ones that came on board. I was looking at our subscriber numbers the other day, and they're nice. I'll call them healthy.
    91:55
    Again, there's so much content out there. It's a hell of a time to be alive, the amount of content and things competing for your attention. And I'm humbled, flattered that people come in our chat and spend time with us and then throw bits our way and, you know, pay their $5 a month plus whatever to support. So thank you. Thank you. This is this is we're coming up, Kevin, our sixth year of doing this podcast. We started in February. Oh, fifth year. We started in February 2016. We started our stream in January. I'm sorry. February 2016 is when we started podcasting. January 2015 is when we started streaming. So we're hitting anniversaries. And I personally continue to love to do this. This is something I look forward to. I love helping people. I love promoting pinball. So thank you guys for all your support. Also, we were nominated with the Twippy Award this year, which is nominations come from people submitting nominations. What did we get, Kevin, for a podcast? uh podcast stream a podcast and website for some reason don't understand how the fuck the website is and not like youtube or something but hey hey listen guys we didn't uh kevin and i have we talk about you know things like twippy and whatever new uh um awards thing there is in pinball and we don't get bent out of shape about this i think kevin and i approach is we do this because one, we simply enjoy it. I connect with my friend Kevin and we talk pinball and we decide to turn some cameras on us and share that with the rest of the world.
    93:35
    I think we do a show that we're proud of and we think help people. We never really talk about this and we don't ask, we don't solicit, we don't buy Facebook ads or anything and get you guys still submitted and us for these categories. Thank you. I appreciate that. Without even trying to drive votes um we're on there so i'm glad to to get that feedback um definitely appreciate that yeah shows you guys value what we do and you know that we come to mind when when things like that come up it means a lot and uh really appreciate you guys uh doing that for us so without further ado i think it's time to get into topper talk what do you think nick i think so i think i think we're going to win all the awards next year because of the segment here we're banking on it all right you got to get us some awards buddy all right until next time have a great month we'll see on Twitch and take it easy. Bye.
    94:29
    It's Topper Talk with Goran right now. Let's all have some fun. This is about plastic on top of your pin. Go and buy one now. There's a topper here and a topper there. Here a topper, there a topper. Everywhere a topper. It's critical to the gameplay experience. You must buy one now. It's your monthly fill of toppers right now Topper Talk with Goran Hello and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Goran The part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about 3-5 minutes to talk about everything happening In the very active and profitable topper community Now today we'll be talking about two different toppers But both available for the Willy Wonka Pinball Machine from Jersey Jack Pinball The first topper that we'll be talking about is the topper that was available for purchase for anyone with a Willy Wonka pinball machine. And that is the Wonkatania topper that I have right here. It's a very nice topper. It's not interactive with the game, but it features Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in front of his boat, the Wonkatania, with Oompa Loompa's rowing the boat. And then the chocolate waterfall in the background. It's an iconic scene from the movie. and although it's not interactive, it is very nice to look at when you're not playing or the game is on. You have these nice LEDs that cycle down giving a waterfall type effect. It's not a, you know, the type of effect that you would see on whitewater, but it is a very nice effect. I do wish it was interactive, but that's okay. It's very well built. It's a very thick piece of multi-plastic. I'll put in some photos. There's a nice metal backing as well. It's just a very well and nice, well-constructed topper. You know, it was not included with the game, but that's okay. And it was, I believe, 300 bucks, but they've also had it on sale for 250, I believe, around Father's Day time. You really can't beat that. If you're looking for something nice to go on top of your pin, I highly recommend this topper for the Willy Wonka pinball machine. Now we're going to head over to the computer and talk about the Willy Wonka Collector's Edition topper that was included with the Collector's Edition version of the game. All right, so we're now at the computer to discuss the Willy Wonka Collector's Edition topper. Now, I do not own a Collector's Edition Wonka machine, but Buffalo Pinball viewer NS Pinball kindly sent in videos and photos of his machine. We're going to watch some of that now. So we can see the topper here. All right looking. We have, you know, candy in the background, then an Oompa Loompa, and then a big Wonka plastic. Similar to the LE topper, there's some dimension to it. You've got some RGB lighting that is interactive with the game to an extent. It's not that interactive, but it'll cycle through different colors during different parts of the game. You do have this unfortunate casting of light on the side of the wall. I believe that also occurs on the ceiling as well. Let's look at more of a close-up here. So, you know, here's the subject matter. It's all right to look at. I like the LE topper better, in my opinion. The plastic looks very thin, a lot cheaper. You look at it from the side, you get that casting on the wall, still the light, and it's held together using pinball posts. And this sort of feels like one of the early toppers that would come out of Stern and not so much JJP, in my opinion. Not a bad topper. It's included for free, although, you know, you're paying more for the collector's edition. But that's just my opinion. I do have a theory as to what I think happened with this topper.
    98:16
    Speculation alert. Speculation alert. Not on good authority. What I think happened, and let me go over to an early mock-up of the collector's edition version of the game, you can see the topper that I purchased on top of the collector's edition game. And if you all recall, there were some licensing hold-ups with the collector's edition version of the game. I think it might have had to do with Gene Wilder's imagery and getting approvals from the estate. I think that approval was taking so long, they decided to axe the topper. quickly put in another topper that they could build themselves that didn't, you know, include Gene Wilder's imagery. And then once it did get approved, they ended up selling the stock that they had of the other topper. Just a theory, no confirmation behind it. But, hey, overall, I like both of these toppers. I do think the CE topper is probably not as good as the other CE toppers. The Pirates one sets the bar high. but hey can't beat a free topper all right well that concludes this episode of topper talk with gordon tune in next month for another episode and as always get out there play some pinball and buy a topper