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Pinball Industry News: August 2018 Re-cap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 50m·analyzed·Sep 2, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

August 2018: Deadpool ships fast, Munsters leaked, Pirates finally in production, Spooky limits TNA.

Summary

August 2018 industry recap covering Stern's Deadpool announcement and rapid shipment, leaked artwork for The Munsters, Pirates of the Caribbean entering production, Total Nuclear Annihilation production cap at 550 units, and discussion of designer transitions from first to second games. Key themes include operator vs. collector market demands, game complexity vs. casual accessibility, and manufacturing agility.

Key Claims

  • Stern announced Deadpool and shipped it within a week of announcement

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston and Martin Mayer discussing Stern's production speed, August 2018

  • The Munsters artwork has been leaked online as Stern's next release after Deadpool, expected for Pinball Expo (October/November 2018)

    high confidence · Martin Mayer discussing leaked Munsters cabinet artwork renderings, mentions both Pro and Limited Edition designs

  • Christopher Franchi created the colorized artwork for The Munsters (Pro) version

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston identifying Franchi's hand in the Munsters artwork based on his style

  • Beatles game is being pushed back to January 2019 release instead of Pinball Expo

    high confidence · Martin Mayer discussing Stern's release schedule shift

  • Spooky Pinball is capping Total Nuclear Annihilation production at 550 units to move forward with Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston referencing Charlie's announcement on Spooky Pinball podcast

  • Pirates of the Caribbean game is now in production and shipping

    high confidence · Martin Mayer noting Pirates entered production after announcement nearly a year prior at previous Expo

  • Greg Freres (not Christopher Franchi) will do artwork for Elvira 3

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston citing Dennis Nordman reconfirmation of Greg Freres as Elvira 3 artist

  • Scott Denise is working on a new prototype/whitewood game for Spooky after Total Nuclear Annihilation

    medium confidence · Martin Mayer speculating on black cabinet image Scott posted to social media

  • Eddie Munster (Butch Patrick) is scheduled to appear at Texas Pinball Festival in March 2019 to promote The Munsters game

    medium confidence · Martin Mayer noting Butch Patrick's appearance on his diary before removing it, connecting to Munsters promotion

Notable Quotes

  • “But I have to give Stern credit for announcing a game and being able to ship it within a week and have it on location. And again, that's their strong point at this moment.”

    Jonathan Houston @ ~12:30 — Highlights Stern's manufacturing and logistical advantage over other manufacturers

  • “The artwork on the LCDs is a complete style slash with what's happening on the playfield... and then if you look at the premium and the LE versions, they have 3D-molded characters on the play, which are, again, a complete style slash with what else is happening on the playfield.”

    Jonathan Houston @ ~10:15 — Describes artistic cohesion concerns with Deadpool's mixed visual styles (8-bit LCD, high-res images, 3D characters)

  • “They need to move on with Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. So they are planning to stop the production of Total Nuclear Annihilation at 550 units for now, then move on with Alice Cooper.”

    Jonathan Houston @ ~22:00 — Shows Spooky's production strategy shift toward sequential game releases rather than perpetual manufacturing

  • “You have no clue what to shoot for. There's nothing that's obvious like, oh, I gotta shoot this three times and then that will happen... if that's lacking, you can program it as deep as a New York phone book, but that won't save it.”

    Martin Mayer @ ~36:00 — Critiques Pirates' complexity and lack of accessibility for casual/location players

  • “The operator market... You need somebody who doesn't know anything about the game or knows a limited amount about the game but knows the theme to be able to walk up to it... They should have some idea of what to shoot for.”

    Jonathan Houston @ ~37:30 — Articulates the operator market's demand for intuitive, theme-driven accessibility

  • “When you walk up to a game that with such deep rules, you haven't got a clue. It's hugely intimidating to look at a blank playfield... it's not a huge amount of fun until you've spent a lot of time and invested a lot of time and money into the game.”

    Jonathan Houston @ ~42:00 — Explains how overly complex rule sets alienate casual players despite appeal to collectors

Entities

Jonathan HoustonpersonMartin MayerpersonStern PinballcompanyDeadpoolgameThe MunstersgameGeorge GomezpersonChristopher FranchipersonBeatlesgame

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Stern's ability to announce Deadpool and ship within one week, demonstrating manufacturing agility and production readiness

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'I have to give Stern credit for announcing a game and being able to ship it within a week and have it on location.'

  • ?

    leak_detection: Leaked cabinet artwork renderings for The Munsters (Pro and Limited Edition versions) emerged online, showing color schemes and Franchi artwork before official announcement

    high · Martin Mayer: 'there has been a reveal, shall we say, of some artwork or renderings... of Stern's future game... images of a pro cabinet and a limited edition cabinet'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Core tension between operator market demand for intuitive, theme-driven accessibility vs. collector market appreciation for complex rule depth, exemplified in Pirates discussion

    high · Martin Mayer on Pirates: 'You have no clue what to shoot for... You need something that's fun right at the start of the game' vs collector appreciation for 22-character combinations

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Spooky Pinball capping Total Nuclear Annihilation production at 550 units to enable sequential focus on Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle, showing boutique manufacturer production constraints

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'they need to move on with Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. So they are planning to stop the production of Total Nuclear Annihilation at 550 units'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern shifting Beatles release from Pinball Expo (Oct/Nov 2018) to January 2019, allowing focus on The Munsters at Expo

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.511

0:00
Deadpool announced and shipping Pinball Magazine No. 5 printed and also shipping And Deep Root hires Paul Farris Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston from Pinball Magazine and with me is I'm Martin Mayer here in London And we're here to bring you the Pimble Magazine and Pimble News free audio podcast updating you on the latest Pimble industry updates from last month, which would be August 2018 And a very exciting month it was too Normally, as we say, August and July are pretty quiet months when it comes to Pimble with everybody away on holiday or on vacation somewhere enjoying the sun But in fact, it's actually been quite an active month Yeah, so be prepared that this might be a long podcast Because there is actually a lot of news to report Although, obviously, we never quite know how long we're going to talk for when we start these things It's always a surprise to us when we finish them and look at the clock and go Oh my goodness, it's been an hour and a half But anyway, let's see how it goes Right, before we start with the news Let me announce immediately, we also have a special guest and we did an interview with Mike Kalinowski of HomePin when we were at the UK Pin Test, which was a week ago. Yeah, Mike was doing a seminar there and then he brought along Thunderbird's machine, which people were playing and enjoying and having a good time. And as part of the seminar, well, straight after the seminar, when Mike had answered a number of questions, we grabbed him, took him off to a room and sat him down and had a pretty good and in-depth interview with him, which we'll come over to later in this podcast. Right.
1:58
But before we get to that, let's start with Deadpool. Okay, yep. So, Stern's Deadpool, which in the last podcast we said was going to be announced in August, any day now, and it truly was, in fact. and a pretty impressive looking game, I think everybody agrees. The artwork on it is absolutely tropic, gorgeous.
2:27
Personally, I love the artwork. The only concern I have with it is that there's so much artwork. I'm not sure you can actually see the game underneath all that, but as I say, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. So we haven't actually, I certainly haven't got my hands on one yet. Jonathan, you haven't either, I guess. No, I haven't. But it seems like we both will later this week, as the game is supposed to be at the Vancouver Flipout. Yeah, let's have a little diversion to look at that. Tommy Floyd from Nitro invited both of us over to the Vancouver Flipout Expo, which is taking place this coming weekend in Vancouver, naturally enough. and yeah it's going to be by all accounts everything we've read about it so far it's going to be an amazing show there's some very good special guests not us obviously but some people who know what they're talking about will be there and there'll be some excellent games and it's you know it's my first time going to this show I think it's yours too as well yeah and it's interesting to report I will actually be DJing at the VIP party of the Vancouver Flipout on Friday evening. Excellent. And I will be reporting live for Pinball News throughout the three days of the show, from Friday through to Sunday. And also, I had a word with Tommy, and I'm going to be recording all the seminars that are taking place there and making them available on Pinball News as well as quickly as I possibly can. And we might be starting a new kind of thing that we just discussed, but we might be doing something fun that would be available online later on. Yeah, we had a few ideas about things we could do at the show, and yeah, let's see what comes out of that. It's going to be a very interesting weekend, and obviously anybody who can come to Vancouver this weekend for the show definitely should be there.

  • Deadpool (Premium) and Limited Edition include physical extras (cassette tape in Premium, vinyl record in LE), mirroring Scott Danesi design philosophy

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston discussing Stern's attention to Spooky design trends in Deadpool packaging

  • “Stern is paying close attention to what Scott Danesi has been doing... Stern immediately came with a Keith Elwin reference in Deadpool.”

    Jonathan Houston @ ~31:00 — Shows competitive dynamics between manufacturers copying successful design trends

  • “It will be interesting, though, because if you see how long he has been working on Total Nuclear Annihilation, it would be difficult I can imagine it would be difficult for him to crank out a game in a couple of months when the first one took you a couple of years”

    Martin Mayer @ ~29:00 — Discusses designer transition challenges from extended first-game development to accelerated second-game schedules

    • Jack Danger
    person
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Piratesgame
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
    Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castlegame
    Scott Deniseperson
    Iron Maidengame
    Keith Elwinperson
    Pinball News (Vancouver Flipout 2018)event
    Pinball Expoevent
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Greg Freresperson
    Dennis Nordmanperson
    Butch Patrickperson
    Pinball Magazineproduct

    high · Martin Mayer: 'Beatles is now being pushed back into 2019... It's expected to be the January release for Stern'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Christopher Franchi creating Munsters artwork for Stern while separately meeting with Elvira's manager for non-Stern artwork project (Greg Freres confirmed as Elvira 3 artist)

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'Christopher Franchi actually had a meeting with Elvira's manager... he's working for them, not necessarily for Stern Pinball in terms of Elvira artwork'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Stern incorporating design elements inspired by Spooky/Scott Denise's approach, including physical extras (cassette, vinyl) and character reference callbacks to TNA

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'Stern is paying close attention to what Scott Danese has been doing... Stern immediately came with a Keith Elwin reference in Deadpool'

  • ?

    event_signal: Vancouver Flipout Expo (Sept 2018) serving as critical reveal/playtest venue for Deadpool with hosts attending from Europe, plus Jonathan Houston DJing VIP party and recording seminars

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'I will be DJing at the VIP party of the Vancouver Flipout on Friday evening... recording all the seminars'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Discussion of designer challenges transitioning from extended first-game development (Scott Denise TNA ~2 years, Keith Elwin Archer/IM ~7 years) to accelerated second-game timelines

    high · Martin Mayer: 'it would be difficult for him to crank out a game in a couple of months when the first one took you a couple of years... same kind of situation with Keith and Archer'

  • ?

    product_concern: Deadpool's mixed visual art styles (8-bit LCD, high-res images, 3D-molded characters, Zombie Yeti cabinet art) criticized as lacking cohesive aesthetic despite individual quality

    medium · Jonathan Houston: 'the artwork on the LCDs is a complete style slash with what's happening on the playfield... a complete style slash with what else is happening'

  • ?

    product_concern: Pirates criticized for overwhelming complexity with 22 character combinations and non-obvious shot progression, alienating casual/location players despite collector appeal

    high · Martin Mayer: 'There's nothing that's obvious... if that's lacking, you can program it as deep as a New York phone book, but that won't save it'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Scott Denise posted black cabinet image on social media, community speculating it's his next Spooky game prototype/whitewood, timing suggests early development stage

    medium · Martin Mayer: 'Scott did share an image on his social media where there was a black cabinet game... everybody's sort of speculating that that is the new game'

    • 4:39
    We're flying all the way over from Europe for it. You know, you're going via Chicago, I'm going via LA, so we're taking, you know, 11, 12 hour, or in your case, even longer, I think, it's almost like 24 hours. 20 hour flight. 20 hours, okay. I have a transfer in Chicago and I'll be actually getting out of the airport and possibly visiting one or another pinball manufacturer. since I won't be going to Pinball Expo, so this will be my chance to visit some people and discuss a few things and such. Absolutely. I will be at Expo, so I'm deferring that until next month. But once we get to Vancouver, we'll get to Vancouver on Wednesday night late, and Thursday we'll be at the show having a look around. Friday, it all kicks off, and we'll be there across the whole weekend, so if you're any chance of getting up there, please come along and say hello, and enjoy the entire event. Right, so while we're discussing the event, we'll get to Pinball Magazine number 5 in a bit, but if you're coming to the event, Pinball Magazine number 5 will be available at the Nitro Pinball stand, so just make sure that you take a look at that, and we'll get back to Pinball Magic number 5 later on in the show, but now... Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was interesting, that.
    6:14
    Back to Deadpool. Yes, Deadpool, yes. So, what were your impressions of Deadpool then, Jonathan? I found it...
    6:25
    Well, I watched the Jack Danger Deathlip stream, which I found actually quite interesting. I'm completely unfamiliar with the Deadpool comics or the movies, never seen the movies or anything, I found the game surprisingly funny, especially it being a Stern game, and humor is not really their forte, so to speak.
    6:50
    So in that department, they really surprised me. I thought it looked like a fun game to flip. When I read the press release, I was like, oh God, here we go again with Sabretooth and Wolverine, and I have no clue who these characters are, so I have no idea what to do with them.
    7:11
    But from what I could see, gameplay was actually quite fun, and I look forward to playing the game. I did hear a very interesting comment from someone else, who, well, I'm just sort of paraphrasing on what they told me, and they said that the game, while the art look on the game looks very, very good, but it's not a cohesive package in the sense that Zombie Yeti is doing the cabinet artwork and the playfield artwork and the plastics, that's all great, and then you have this tiny Deadpool character sitting on top of a drop target bank, which is a complete style clash with the other artwork. The artwork on the LCDs is a complete style clash with what's happening on the playfield, and because of all the 8-bit video rendering. And then certain images on the LCD are high-res, which is a style clash with what's happening on the LCD in itself.
    8:15
    And then if you look at the premium and the LE versions, they have 3D-molded characters on the play, which are, again, a complete style clash with what else is happening on the play field. So I never looked at it like that, so I guess it wasn't a problem for me, but some other people actually did have a problem with that. Yeah, I can kind of see what it's saying, but also I think, given the nature of, and I only know Deadpool from the movie, the original movie, I haven't seen the second movie. The original movie is very much about sort of breaking genres and the fourth wall and that kind of stuff, and basically not doing things you wouldn't expect. So I don't necessarily have a problem with the basic LCD being an 8-bit version, but with then suddenly it comes to real life with a 3D rendered real Deadpool talking to you through the screen. That's fine because that sort of fits in with the unexpected nature of exactly what Deadpool would do. But I wouldn't know that because I had never read a book or
    9:29
    Obviously that that's always going to be a Difficulty you have to overcome from the very start and that's something obviously we can talk about it later with with some of the Future games are coming up as to whether or not they're things which which people around the world would be familiar with
    9:49
    Sorry I have a 20-hour flight ahead of me, because that gives me the chance, hopefully, to watch the Deadpool movies on the plane.
    10:00
    Yeah, I think it's true. Well, basically all these licensed titles, you know, Avengers and ones that aren't banned, necessarily, all the ones that are based on movies, it gives you a chance to catch up on them, and then the games themselves make a lot more sense, you know. And if you weren't a fan of, weren't even aware, weren't even born maybe when Batman 66 came out, it would give you a chance to find out about that whole culture and get involved in it. Yeah, sorry. It fits you.
    10:36
    No, I had no desire whatsoever to start watching all Batman episodes. I tried watching some of the Avengers games on a plane and seriously after 20 minutes I just shut them up like not my cup of tea not every game or not every title and every theme is going to appeal to everybody that's fine even more so when you get to music pins of course you know bands some people have absolute hatred of certain bands that have been used as the basis for music pins but, you know, it's still a good game, if you can make that leap, you know, get over the... Well, actually... ...objects of it. I am going off on that in the sense that Iron Maiden is really not my type of music, but the game is actually very, very good, and during gameplay I don't find the music that distracting, so... No, but it's, you know, you have to sort of, you know, Spit out Eddie, spit out Mummy, and all these. If none of that actually... I've got a word I think I can handle, so that's okay.
    11:48
    Okay, but you ask yourself why you're spelling these things out, and if they're things which mean nothing to you, then it's a hurdle to overcome. But anyway. Yes. But I have to give Stern credit for announcing a game and being able to ship it within a week and have it on location. And again, that's their strong point at this moment. I think we talked about that earlier on in previous episodes. We have, indeed, yeah. That really makes Stern stand out from everybody else. They can, while the game was no secret, once they reveal, then they're, bam, into production, shipping games, possibly the same day, and they're out there for people to play. Yeah, absolute kudos to them for that, and there being no real leak as far as social media goes on anything about the Deadpool game, other than the fact that it existed, and it was a George Gomez design. Well, there was a whiteboard image that we discussed a few months ago, Yeah, but as far as what the final game would look like, and the actual look of the game is so heavily dependent, I think, on the artwork that has been done for it, it defines the game, really, almost more than the playfield layout does.
    13:19
    None of that was revealed. However, on that point... Yeah, speaking of leaks... Yeah, race. There has been a... I don't want to call it a leak, because that would suggest that it wasn't authorised, but there has been a reveal, shall we say, of some artwork or renderings, maybe, of Stern's future game. I won't say it's necessarily the next game. I think it is the next game, but you never quite know.
    13:53
    Things can happen and production schedules can change. So, we're basically talking about monsters then, and the fact that there was, or had been, a couple of images released, leaked, online, shall we say, in the past couple of weeks. Do you want to talk about those, Jonathan? Sure.
    14:15
    Let me just pull them up right here. I think there's images of a pro cabinet and a limited edition cabinet. Yes.
    14:28
    And, um... Now, Bury My Masters was... I can't talk with any authority about this whatsoever because it's not a theme or a title or a show, which was big over here in Europe. It was very much an American program. I'd probably say even... Probably the Adams family was slightly more popular over here or known over here. than the Munsters. I guess there have been movies for the Munsters. I'm not entirely sure about that fact, even. But Munsters was not a big TV event in Europe, or I don't think anywhere much outside the US. I don't think Anna's Family was either, but Anna's Family, when the pinball machine came out, obviously the Anna's Family had a very successful movie in theaters, which the game was based on. I think if any pinball company would have done at that time, the Addams Family, based on the TV shows, it would have been a huge flop, at least in Europe. So I'm very curious to see how this will happen or what will happen with Monsters. But if we look at the images of the leaked artwork, the limited edition appears to have almost black and white images on the cabinet with a red trim or a gold trim and some red in the cabinet and gold as well. So they are kind of colorized black and white, aren't they? There is color put into them, almost like they colorize old movies. Right. So, well, that's more like the Pro version that has green and purple and blue in it, but the limited edition game has black and white images with a gold monster's logo and gold trim for the side rails and the lock bar and the coin door. Yeah, I think that's much more for the purists, isn't it? Going for the contrast with the color, where there is color. It's in the trim, but the purists remember it from being a black and white series, so it should be black and white in the artwork. Right. And then for the premium model, that's the other image that has leaked, that has actually colorized images, which are done, all the artwork apparently is done by Christopher Frenchy.
    17:04
    Looks like, from what I can see, looks like a standout Christopher Frenchy job. He always does very realistic art of the character that he's portraying. Very authentic, I would say, although this is colorized, but still very authentic. So, yeah, kudos to Chris. Yeah, I'm guessing given the provenance of that title, that there wasn't a lot of original artwork that could have been used of a good enough resolution or quality. So I'm sure it all had to be hand-drawn by Chris, and he's done an excellent job judging by what I've seen so far. Right. So we know that game is coming, and it's expected to be, like we said, Stern's next model, hopefully ready for Pinball Expo.
    18:03
    Yeah, absolutely. and I don't know where I heard about that. Actually, it might be that the game could not be ready for Pinball Expo, but who knows, you might see, like they did with Batman, that they would just show the games, but you can't play them. Yeah. It could be an option, but I don't know. Originally, going back almost a year, well, back to last Expo, before the excitement with Expo took place, there was talk about Stern launching two titles at this year's Pinball Expo, which were widely expected to be Beatles and Munsters. Right. It looks like Beatles is now being pushed back into 2019. Yes, January. It's expected to be the January release for Stern. Stern usually have a January release, and that would actually make sense in the sense that January is usually the EAG show in London, and it would be very interesting to debut a Beatles game at the London show. That's true. It also doesn't give much time between months that's coming out, if it's going to be released in October or late October into November, and then January for the next game, especially with the shutdowns across Christmas and New Year in the manufacturing. So that's interesting that they're not bringing them out together. They're not actually that far apart. But also on the subject of Chris Franchi's work,
    19:40
    Chris also put a little sort of teaser image out in the past couple of weeks of some artwork he's been doing of Elvira. Now, a lot of people immediately thought, oh, yes, we know Stern is doing an Elvira pinball. So interesting that Chris is working on that, but not a great surprise. but that's not the case is it Jonathan? As far as I know it's not Dennis Nordman reconfirmed that Greg Ferris will be doing the artwork for the Elvira 3 pinball machine I do remember from I think the Texas Pinball Festival that had Elvira as a special guest that Christopher French actually had a meeting with Elvira's manager because her manager was interested in him doing artwork of Elvira. So, it looks like they have been talking and gotten to some terms and I think Chris is working for them, not necessarily for Stern Pinball in terms of Elvira artwork. He's working for Stern, but not on the Elvira game. That's Currently, my belief. Let's put it like that. Okay, interesting information there. But heading back to where we were just now, I talked about Monsters, and that's going to be an October release, or Pinball Expo time, October into November. I'm just wondering how that really ties up with the Texas show in March next year. Right. because Eddie Munster, Butch Patrick, is scheduled to appear at the Texas Pinball Festival, I think. Yes. Well, certainly it was put on, I think, Eddie Munster put on his diary of appearances some time ago and then quickly took that off. But I think he's due to be there at Texas to help promote the Munster's pinball.
    21:50
    But that is in March, so that's a good, you know, almost five months after the game is first launched. Well, that's still... But if it's not Stern's current title, Stern have brought out, say, Beatles in January, are people going to want to go back and start pushing an older game? I don't know. Are Stern going to want to be... Well, they still probably want to sell them as many as they can. I do wonder whether this is to do with there being some kind of demarcation between a Kapow title, because don't forget Joe Kamikawa's Kapow pinball. Actually, I think both Munsters and Beatles are Kapow titles. Okay, so Kapow would effectively still be promoting both those two. for effectively moving on.
    22:45
    We don't know what... They might have another game scheduled for release around about March, April. Elvira still has to come out. Steve is working on what we hear is supposed to be Black Knight 3000 or another Black Knight variation.
    23:03
    But getting back to monsters, what's also interesting is that in... What's the guy's name? Eddie Munster, or the character. Yes. He will also be appearing at the Southwest Florida Comic Con, which is November 17 and 18, which is actually the weekend right after the IAFA show.
    23:27
    And it could be that if Stern is deciding to come out with the game like either around Expo or a few weeks later, November, that the game might actually be at the Southwest Florida Comic-Con. Yeah, that would make sense. Imagine they have it at IAAPA, as it would be their current title. Right. And also the Florida show, the Florida Pinball show as well. Yes, I'm not sure that's the same weekend, but I think it is. It generally ties in with IAAPA, either the weekend after or very close to that. Yeah. So it would make sense if the game would be out and Eddie Munster is appearing in Fort Myers, Florida, that it would make sense that the game would also be there. Actually, it would be pretty cool for Stern to have the game at a Comic-Con with Eddie Munster present. Stern certainly support Comic-Cons,
    24:31
    certainly the main Comic-Con events, so yeah, it would make sense to support some of these more regional ones as well. Or at least their local distributors to have a big push for the title there as well, as it will be their current title and ahead of the Beatles coming out. Okay. So I guess that's all the news about Stern Pinball. Let's move on to Pinball Magazine number five. No, no, no. Let's come back to that a bit later. So moving on to Spooky, I understand that they're making total nuclear annihilation now. Scott Denise's game, and they're planning to limit that to some kind of number. Is that right? Well, it's not necessarily a limit, but they are very close to having 500 orders for that game, which a big chunk of them have already been delivered.
    25:27
    And what Charlie mentioned on this Spooky Pinball podcast is that they need to move on with Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. So they are planning to stop the production of Total Nuclear Annihilation at 550 units for now, then move on with Alice Cooper. So if they haven't sold all of these games, then they might have some in stock to operate shows and so on.
    25:54
    But once Alice Cooper is done, that they might actually revisit total nuclear annihilation if there is enough demand for it. Right. Okay, that's a very good situation to be in, where they can be reactive to orders in that way. Obviously, it's a way that Stern's been very proactive in never sort of finishing a run of any game, as long as there are orders for them, they'll keep making them. So it obviously makes sense for Spooky to do the same thing as far as they're able to, given the size of their operation. Right. Well, this is the first time that Spooky actually is in a position to do that because all the other games that they have been working on have been limited to a fixed number. So they can't take them back into production unless they haven't met that number yet. Yeah, true. Because they don't really do limited editions so much. and a sort of, not a pro or standard version, and a limited edition version. All the games have been effectively limited edition up until now, which means they've been restricted on how many they can make based on how many they were going to make when they first announced it. Yeah.
    27:11
    Okay. Speaking of, I'm not sure whether they already sold out of Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle, which was limited to 500 units, but it appears that Scott would still be the best-selling game for Spooky if they sell 550.
    27:35
    So kudos to Scott. And speaking of Scott, he did share an image on his social media where there was a black cabinet game to be loaded into the back of a pickup truck or whatever it was, a car,
    27:55
    which rumor, well, everybody's sort of speculating that that is the new game that he's supposed to be working on. Yeah, he's kind of teasing everybody with that, whether it was or whether it wasn't, we don't know. But we do know that he is producing another game for Spooky, certainly for manufacturing by Spooky, and sales. So, yeah, it needs to be around about this time that he's coming up with the prototype, or certainly a whitewood, for people to start working on and ordering parts. Right. It will be interesting, though, because if you see how long he has been working on Total Nuclear Annihilation, it would be difficult I can imagine it would be difficult for him to crank out a game in a couple of months when the first one took you a couple of years yeah true but same kind of situation with Keith and Archer slash Iron Maiden isn't it? Now Iron Maiden the basic design for Iron Maiden was Archer which was he and Randy had worked on for a long time eventually comes out and now he's a regular designer at Stern and he's got, I guess, a year to come out with game number two, having spent five, six, seven, eight years working on game number one. So it's not dissimilar. So what I'm curious about, because obviously I've been interviewing quite a few designers over the last couple of years, both for Pimble Magazine but also just at Pimble shows and so on.
    29:42
    I understand that for most designers, if they have been working on a certain design for a very long time, that usually sort of blocks their mind in the sense that once they are done with that game and they have to design a different game,
    30:01
    the only game they still can design is the game they already designed. it's very difficult to make a switch especially if it's one of your first games to transition and do something completely different or maybe not different but at least something fresh that might be similar but is still different you know so it will be interesting to see for both Keith and for Scott how their second game will turn out given the fact that they probably have to crank it out in less time than what they were able to do on their first design. Absolutely. Although you can also imagine that when they were developing their initial designs, there were a number of ideas they came up with that they thought were really nice to include that in this game.
    30:50
    But eventually, for reasons that either due to cost or due to the fact it didn't really fit with the theme or their existing layout didn't accommodate it, it was kind of bumped out of the existing design, out of game one, and it's something which I think, well, maybe we'll revisit that in game two, and so that can be an idea which they can base their second or subsequent games around. I'm sure they're brimming with ideas that not everything's going to fit into the first game, you just can't do it, can you? Yeah. No, and some ideas you try, and then you test it out on the whiteboard, and it turns out, oh, this is no fun at all. That's also possible. Yeah, or in fact it's mechanically too difficult to achieve in the time available. We've seen that with other manufacturers recently, haven't we? Yes. Now, since we're on the subject of Scott Danese, there is one thing I still want to mention in terms of Stern's Deadpool.
    31:51
    Obviously, Stern has been paying very close attention to what Scott Danese has been doing as the extras that come with the limited edition of Deadpool, well, it includes a vinyl record, and the premium includes a cassette tape. This cassette tape is a page out of Scott D'Anici's playbook. In the game, Scott D'Anici has a reference. If you read the game, if you finish the 9th reactor, there is a reference to Bo and Karen, and Stern immediately came with a Keith Elwin reference in Deadpool. So Stern is paying close attention to what Scott is doing.
    32:39
    Yeah, I think it kind of ties in very much with the retro stuff. I was going back to Guardians of the Galaxy as well. You know, all the cassette tape stuff that they included. Yeah, but that was in the movie. It was, yeah. But it's the in thing, isn't it, at the moment, if you know what I mean.
    32:57
    But, anyway, moving on then to... Pinball Magazine number five. No, no, no, no, no. We'll play this one for that later.
    33:07
    So, yeah, Jersey Jack Pinball. Yes, they've certainly been working on Pirates and, well, announced Pirates almost a year ago at Expo last year. But the game is now in production and shipping. Yes.
    33:25
    I see, I see. Well, yeah, finally. It's been a bit of a torturous journey, I'm sure, and I'm sure it's not over either, because the software will develop probably forever, given the potential depth of that game with the number of characters, which could be probably also the problem with the game, if I'm just purely honest and ventilating my personal opinion, which I'm not sure whether is the objective of this podcast but I think personally I think great, 22 characters to choose from, never ever play the same game you can go whatever way nobody cares people want to walk up to a game, want to have fun this is a game you need to get into, but when you start playing it, is it fun? You have no clue what to shoot for. There's nothing that's obvious like, oh, I gotta shoot this three times and then that will happen. That's not there, and I think that's one of the basics that a pinball machine needs, and if that's lacking, you can program it as deep as a New York phone book, but that won't save it. You need something that's fun right at the start of the game. Well, let's have a little discussion or a little look at that and see who the market for this game is. Would you say, or I would say, that there are two markets. There's the operator market and there's the home collector market, and those two probably have very different demands on them. What you'd be describing is the operator market. Yes. You need somebody who doesn't know anything about the game or knows a limited amount about the game but knows the theme to be able to walk up to it based on what they've seen from the movies, their knowledge of the whole theme. They should have some idea of what to shoot for.
    35:30
    And it should be fairly simple and obvious for them and not have... These are actually movies that I've seen, so I sort of am familiar with the themes. Right, okay, so good. On the other hand, you've got the home collector market who would appreciate having that many different combinations. the fact they won't if they play it every day obviously every game is going to be different anyway, that's the nature of pinball, but if you start off with different rules different combinations of things every single time that's something that's going to give the game longevity now I do agree that the complexity and depth of these rules has, for Jersey Jack has been something which has been a mixed blessing it's given them a huge amount of range and options within the games, but also it has been something that's put off a lot of people and it's confused them. And they really want to see something which is a bit more obvious as to what to go for, exactly as you were describing.
    36:34
    I'm a guy who loves, thought he loved, depth of games. My favourite game was The Simpsons, because I loved the fact that it had all these different approaches to it, all the different rules and getting to the super-duper mega-extreme wizard mode was like the Holy Grail and it's something you probably never get to. I know I never will. I haven't got there even. I've only learned about four of the six things that you need to do to do it. But, having said that, over the years I've actually realised that I don't really want rules that are that deep because unless you own the game you're never going to learn them. And when you walk up to a game that with such deep rules, you haven't got a clue. It's hugely intimidating to look at a blank playfield. As you say, you know, normally with a stone game, you start a mode, or you pick a mode, and various lights will be lit on the playfield to indicate what shots you need to make. If that doesn't happen, and you're just there with a blank playfield with nothing lit very much, it's not a huge amount of fun until you've spent a lot of time and invested a lot of time and money into the game to work out what you're meant to do. And even then it might not be fun. Exactly. So my fear is, and God knows I hope I'm wrong, but my fear is that with Pirates, everybody wanted to outdo everybody. So look what we did with the playfield. Oh, we got this. Oh, we got that. We got the tilting playfield. We got the three spinning discs. Oh, now we take out the three spinning discs, but that's not that bad. Well, actually it is, but let's not go there.
    38:18
    So you have a playfield design which is, I wouldn't say intimidating because it doesn't look that intimidating. It looks very impressive, but you have no clue what to shoot for.
    38:34
    Yeah, that is a problem. But I would say, without wishing to get into personalities too much, There's hope. I hope so.
    38:47
    And the hope comes in the form of The Hobbit, because I think The Hobbit was a game which... Now we're going to be into it. I think The Hobbit is a game which had the same challenges when it first came out. It had all these different characters, all these different modes on the back glass, or on the display. 13 one different modes, yes. Exactly, all that. And you look at that and you think, how am I ever going to play all that many? But in truth, it didn't matter initially whether you played them or not, because the rules weren't developed in that way. But subsequently, JJP and Keith, and in particular Ted, did go back and they looked at this and they revised various parts of it and they changed many things according to player feedback and owner feedback. and they've been very, very responsive, far more than I think any other company has been. So full credit to them for doing that and I think everybody who has been on the journey from when the game first came out to where it is now would appreciate exactly what a huge change in the whole rule set there has been and it's become a lot more accessible, a lot more sensible in a way, a lot more logical in how you play the game. I'm sure the initial concept of the game was absolutely true to the theme, true to the books and the movies, and nailed down 100%, but it didn't make it that playable. And that has improved markedly over the past few months. Well, probably a year to a month. And I think great credit to J.J.P. for realising that they needed to make that sea change to exactly how the game played and give players the option. It's not completely different to how it was, but it is a lot more playable, and that's what I'm hoping will come along with Pirates of the Caribbean as well. It'll become a lot more accessible than it was initially. Right. Well, I hope it happens fast, because obviously they need to be selling games, and if the current perception is like, well, it's a very deep game, but it's not that much fun, then you're not going to sell that many. I think Pirates benefits over Hobbit because the Hobbit, to be honest, the playfield wasn't that great to start with, whereas I think Pirates has a very good playfield to start with. Yes. It just needs the rules to really bring that playfield to life and to explore it and to utilize it in a way that really makes it fun to play, as you said. Right. So, well, obviously one thing that Pirates has over Hobbit is that it has Johnny Depp on the playfield, which probably helps to sell the game to home use owners.
    41:53
    I just hope that for those operators who are putting a Pirates on location, that the game will be fun for the average Joe. that's walking up to the game and just trying, oh, cool, pirates, let's play it. And it would be a pity if they would be walking away from the game, like, I have no clue what I'm doing here.
    42:15
    Although I have to say there's a certain element of that with the Stern pirates as well when it first came out. I get that to 90% of the Stern games. But, yeah, no, seriously, I do. Because if you not familiar with the characters in a certain license then you basically screwed Yes no I thinking games like Aerosmith
    42:39
    Yeah, that's the same thing. And probably Guardians of the Galaxy as well. You know, you pick your character. You don't know who the character is, or might not know what the song is, but the light's on the playfield, and they're flashing, and they're telling you what to do, and there is the big toy there, which you can just keep shooting away at, and eventually you're going to get multiple if you keep going for it. So those are the accessible games. Right. Not necessarily just every month. Well, they're fun to the average player on location. They're not maybe, you know, the game you're going to spend half an hour or an hour playing and going through every single mode, and that's not their type of games. They are the quick, they're the operational on-location games, and they will earn a lot of money. The thing is, I'm sort of missing, like, a simple challenge for people. Like, oh, then you look at the play field and you immediately understand, like, oh, great. Oh, I got to do this, I got to do that. And then, you know, or like, take a look, for example, Creature from the Black Lagoon. I remember walking past that game and I was like, I just want to shoot every ramp on that game. And how do I do that? And how do I make that one drop down, you know? So that gives you a goal immediately without even... I'm not familiar with the movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, but I played my share of games on that game because the playfield looked challenging.
    44:08
    Although, bizarrely, shooting the ramps on that game will earn you virtually nothing. Yeah, okay, but that's the point, and that's stuff that tournament players might be interested in. But if you're just an average Joe in an arcade or a bar or whatever, you see that game, you just want to make that shot. If it doesn't give you any points, you don't care. I finally made that shot. True, yeah. I guess if you shoot the right ramp enough times, it will start a feature. If you shoot the left ramp over and over, it will just increase the value of the center shot, and if you don't ever shoot the center shot, you never get it. Right, so that makes you wonder, how do I get that? And then you find out, and, oh, right, I've got to do that. So, anyway, we're completely digressing. Oh, that's what we do. That's fine. But there's more news regarding Jersey Jack Pinball and their future games Indeed there is There was a nice article or an interview With a certain guitarist From a popular beat combo Known as Guns N' Roses And that was Slash Who's well known for his love of all kinds of things pinball related, as well as various other interests, but he had an interview, I think it was with the Times, is that correct? Yeah, the Times of London,
    45:34
    in which he discussed, well, let's discuss, let's slip a little bit about his interest in pinball, and something he's been doing recently, Jonathan. I think basically he said he was working on a pinball game. And that left it sort of in the middle, like, well, is he changing the rubbers on a pinball game that he has at home? Or is he working on a new design? But it appears that he is actually working on a new design. And please note that when Data East did Guns N' Roses, Flash was actually involved in the design of the game. He was indeed. working with John Borg on that, and I think everybody admits to that, or agrees, that that's a very successful and a very playable game. If anything is wrong with that game, it's probably the technology of the time didn't allow... I was afraid you were going to say the music. No, I'm a Guns N' Roses fan, so I'll put my hand up for that. But I would say the technology of the time didn't allow there to be a really good quality recording of the music in the game, and also for there to be a huge amount of music in there either. You know, there's a good amount, but these days, with memory being cheap and plentiful and fast, and high-quality audio being the default on games, you can imagine that a new Guns N' Roses game would sound and look, with a huge great LCD display in the back box that J.J.P. put in all their games,
    47:20
    a Guns N' Roses game showing either videos or live performances with a quality sound system as long as the play field itself is up to scratch, the design of it, then it would literally blow people away, I think. Yeah, so it's interesting that, okay, so this sort of leak, I tried to get anybody at Jersey Jack to comment on it, but nobody picked up their phones. But as Jack will be in Vancouver, I'm pretty sure that we'll talk to him about this, and we'll see what he has to say. Yeah, it's not like Jersey Jack have a lack of upcoming titles, though, is it? No, because obviously there have been plenty of rumors about Toy Story and Willy Wonka coming up, regardless of in which order. But I think from what I currently expect is that Guns N' Roses is a title that's going to be after those two games. At the moment Cern's I'm sorry Jersey Jack's Production schedule Seems to be About one game Every 18 months Right So it would be nice To think that If there was a Guns and Roses game Coming out That we wouldn't Have to wait At least another Three years Or something For that title To appear Well Just like Scutton Easy Needs a lot of time To design Total nuclear annihilation Maybe Slash Needs some time As well Well If Slash is the game designer on that, or is he working with somebody else? I expect him to be working with somebody else, but it would be... It would surprise me if Slash would not be involved in the game design. Well, who is designing games at Jersey Jack at the moment? Then Pat Lawler, obviously. Eric Meunier, although... Eric Meunier? Yeah. Well, he did Pirates, and we'll have to see whether... So they have two other titles, of which one is supposedly be done by Pat Lawler. So who is working on either?
    49:35
    Well, let's say Pat Lawler is supposedly working on Toy Story. Then who is working on Willy Wonka? Well, indeed. Or let's assume that, let's speculate that Pat Lawler is doing both. Or has an overview, oversees both projects, shall we say. They both seem like projects that would be well suited to him.
    50:00
    Whereas Guns N' Roses, maybe not so much. Well, it seems to me that Aaron Meunier is still pretty busy with finishing up the details in Pirates.
    50:13
    Yeah, true, but if Guns N' Roses doesn't come out for three years... Then there is plenty of time for him to get into that, yes. Yeah. and maybe it would be a surprise designer that we have no clue about that it's working for Jersey Jack who knows absolutely yeah or maybe Splash is so across everything that he doesn't need to work with anybody he can do everything he can come up with a game design and pass it over to production as multi-talented as he is maybe you're right well well let's see so that's that seems to be what's happening at Jersey Jack at the moment Pinball Magazine number 5 American Pinball is far more interesting because we've had absolutely no news whatsoever from how can that be far more interesting if there is no news it's still more interesting I completely disagree with that that's alright, you're allowed to disagree in the meantime no news about American Pinball on their second title, they're still manufacturing Houdini's as far as we're aware Game number two rumoured to be Oktoberfest Oktoberfest, indeed, yeah The one which Joe's been Working or been pushing for, try to say For a while Looks like that's going to be the second game Not out in October, one would guess Not this October Well, it would surprise me.
    51:53
    But then again, you never know. And maybe they just want to, I don't know whether they want to show something and then start shipping it six months later, or whether Stern is now sort of dictating the market, like now you show it and you have it ready to ship.
    52:06
    Yeah, I don't think American Pinball have a big seminar taking place at Pinball Expo, do they? Yeah, I think they do, actually. and they also have a seminar in Vancouver so they will probably bother Joe at the VIP party as well seeing what Vince is willing to spill ok well stay tuned to see what we managed to dig out from that event and we've got some ideas of what we're going to do for that event up in Vancouver we're going to have a ball that's what we're going to do Yeah, yeah. We were actually thinking about doing this pinball podcast up there as well, doing it as a live version, but I think we need to get this out a bit earlier, and then we can look at doing something a bit different. Right.
    52:58
    Okay. Then moving on. Yeah, moving on. Yeah. To pinball magazine number five. Yeah, exactly. Being printed and shipping. Exactly. It is, apparently. Yes.
    53:08
    Is it shipping? I shipped copies. So, I'll give you the full update. The magazine is printed and is in stock.
    53:25
    I've also been looking at shipping or making the magazine available through Amazon.com for U.S. customers. believe me when I tell you that there is a lot of administration work involved in setting up an account and making sure that the products are listed and then you have to ship inventory and it has to meet certain criteria and if you don't then they're they're going to charge extra for this and they're going to charge extra for that and then you look at all the fees that they are applying and you're wondering like, why am I even doing this? Because I don't see how it's going to be cheaper for anybody other than that they will be shipping quicker than I am. Because usually I ship Pinball Magazine orders in monthly batches and they will be shipping out within two, three days. Plus you get the visibility, I guess, on the Amazon website. right so okay so that's one thing so i'm giving it a try but um so the first thing i run into is that um i would need to prepare every magazine as postal ready so to speak or ready for shipping meaning that it already has to be uh packed in uh wrapping materials on a cardboard box so they don't want to do anything unless you pay them for it you know and so it's very basically have it on the shelf, take it off the shelf, give it to the courier, and out the door it is. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So that basically means that I have to prepack everything, put it in boxes, ship it to them so that they can put it on the shelf and then ship it out whenever somebody orders. So the most silly problem I ran into is that if people are familiar with the way I package Pimple magazines, when they ship out, they actually go into a, what's it called, a plastic wrap. Then there is a... I've got a bubble wrap. No, that's the next. Oh, okay. That's the second one. The bubble wrap stack, I think it's called. And then there is the cardboard box that folds around the magazine. The outer. Yes, exactly. And the manufacturer of the bubble wrap sacks that I like to use actually didn't have them in stock. And they will be manufacturing them at the end of this week. And because I already called like two weeks ago and they told me it won't be in stock until like September 5th or 6th. but I still had some in stock and I figured okay then let's start shipping those with the bubble wrap sacks that I currently have now the bad news or the good news is I got so many orders already that I don't have enough bubble wrap sacks to fulfill all those orders and then someone on Pinsight, I've got RetroPack something I mentioned it in a newsletter that I sent out, asked me whether I would be doing a little extra for those who order the magazine first and I figured well I have thought about that but completely forgot because I have been swamped with other things I needed to do and this Amazon thing is taking up a lot of time as well since I have to be waiting for those bubble wrap sacks, I decided, okay, yes, let's do a little something extra.
    57:13
    So, the delay that's caused by the packing material not being available actually allows me to put in a little extra for everybody who was already ordering the magazine and still ship that out. So, I started shipping those who already got the magazine, which is a handful of people in the Netherlands, they will be getting the X-Rise. Well, I'll be shipping that later once they come in. But for the rest, I figured it made sense to include it in the same package and not ship something twice because I'd be losing money on that.
    57:48
    So all that will be in the Amazon package as well as the one that's shipped directly from you. Yes, exactly. So basically, once I get back from Vancouver, which is like a week from now, basically means I will start prepping all the magazines, all the orders that have come in, including the extras, which will be actually manufactured during the time that I'm away to Vancouver. And when I come back, they will drop those off. So timing-wise, that adds up perfectly. Yeah, that's good news. But you will have some for sale over in Vancouver as well, though, won't you? Yes, but they won't have the extras. They won't have the extras yet. No. Okay. Yeah.
    58:36
    And as far as the magazine goes, okay, I had a little contest on Facebook and Pinball Magazine guessed the amount of pages, the number of pages included in this issue.
    58:49
    And I have to tell you, it was very, very tempting to enter that quiz, seeing as I actually had a copy of your draft magazine here as part of the review process that we're doing. I managed to avoid it. Right. The interesting thing was, I'll explain this to the listeners. We had the UK Pin Fest last weekend where I actually brought a black and white preview of the magazine because the printed copies hadn't come in yet. So I went to a local copy shop,
    59:23
    did a full black and white print on a photocopier, took that in, but I took the page numbers of each page. I removed the page numbers so you couldn't see, like, because several people came up to me and they were like, hey, can I take a look? Yeah, sure, sure. And the first thing they do is go to the back and see if they could find any page numbers.
    59:47
    What's interesting to notice that, well, I took the page numbers away from the single pages. I didn't take them away from the content listing. So if anybody wanted to be a guest, if they would have looked at the content listing, they could have seen.
    60:04
    But eventually we got a winner who guessed the correct amount of pages, which is a stunning 360. Yes. which is actually also the maximum number of pages that my printer can include.
    60:25
    I guess from the binding, it can't get any thicker than that, I guess. Exactly. And interestingly, I even had to leave out one of the articles that was supposed to go in there because there was simply no more room for it. That will become available for free online. It's an interview with pinball designer John Osborne, who worked at Godleaf, alongside with Wayne Nyans. He talks about working with Wayne, but also very interestingly about Godleaf's transition from electromechanical games to some state games. Yeah. And that will become probably available in like a week or two. I'll have to see. The interview is edited, but I still have to do the layout and all that kind of stuff. But with Amazon taking up all that time, I haven't gotten into that. and, oh well, we'll get to it. Yeah, good. Okay. And I have to say, at the UK ThinkFest, I brought that copy, and the response of people was really amazing. Everybody was like, wow. Someone said, this isn't a book, this is a Bible, which I guess is a compliment. Yeah, not too preachy, one hopes, but yes. Yeah, it's certainly something which there's no way anybody's ever going to be able to read in any depth at a show like that. You show it to them and they're just... What can they do other than just look at it and admire the thoroughness of everything that's in it? They can't sit down and read it because they'll be there for days. I know Gary Flower tried to, but he didn't get through it. Oh well, I've got that copy now, so I'm going to spend some time reading it and reviewing it and look out for a review on People News pretty shortly. So, thanks for the update on Pinball Magazine number 5, which is available on the Pinball Magazine website now, and will be available at shows, available at Vancouver.
    62:25
    Is it Tommy's selling it at Vancouver? Yes, Tommy will be selling it. Steve Young of the Pinball Resource will also be selling it. Rob Anthony, I guess, at Pinball Expo will be selling it as well.
    62:38
    The Terra Technica Museum in the Czech Republic will also be selling it. They're also featured in the magazine, so that sort of makes sense. And I also got a request from Little Shop of Games in Florida. Oh, yeah. They are selling it as well.
    63:00
    Plenty of places to get it, and Amazon, of course, but that will take a couple of weeks before they have inventory. Or the Pacific Pinball Museum. selling it still?
    63:12
    We haven't discussed it yet. I expect they might be interested since the games in there are... Right.
    63:23
    What's interesting, by the way, and since we're on the subject of the magazine and Wayne Nines, I did talk to Wayne Nines earlier this week.
    63:33
    He gave me a couple of comments on the magazine because he had a preview as well Actually, today, his copies shipped out that I'm sending to him by courier.
    63:47
    But it's interesting to note that the Pacific Pinball Museum have picked up Wayne's Spirit of 76 pinball machine, which he had in his garage, which was actually the 10,000th game that came off the production line at the time at Godley. the complete story is in Pinball Magazine number 5 where Wayne predicted that the game would sell 10,000 units and nobody believed him so George Weinberg, president of the company at the time said if that game sells 10,000 units that 10,000 game is yours and that actually happened so that game is now being picked up by the Pacific Pinball Museum I was talking to Wayne and I mentioned to him, I thought it was a pity that they didn't give him another game in return.
    64:44
    But I might mention that to them, and who knows? You know, he loves his Queen of Hearts, so if they have a spare Queen of Hearts, ship that to Wayne, you know. I mean, what else is he supposed to be doing? You know, so... True. And just as a sort of put-out to that, and a blatant plug for people to use, Let me mention that one of your collaborators in People Magazine and copy editors and contributors, Gordon Hasse, is doing an article about Wayne Sutton's birthday for People News, and that should be available fairly soon. It's actually something new we're doing. It's kind of like a PowerPoint presentation, but an online version of it. So we're coming up with a new idea, exactly the best way to tell the story of that. I'm sure I let you mention Pinball Magazine number 5 as Gordon Hesse wrote a great part of the cover story as well and but carrying on the Pinball News article so you're allowed to rapidly plug yourself and every time I want to talk we gotta talk about it later on well we have talked about it so there you go all's fair yeah it was just a little side article which was brought to my attention by I forget exactly who it was who mentioned it but yeah there was a story from Italy about oh that's me yes that's funny guy of course it was yes now I remember yes it's an interesting there was they've been having some new legislation coming up basically they've had some new laws which have been fairly wide ranging I should say and one of the things which they have covered is gambling over there and changing the laws exactly what's allowed as far as gambling goes when it comes to things like slot machines and what the limits might be how many outlets might be available and how many places you can play slot machines and the Deputy Prime Minister said that their intention is to try and cut down on the number of slot machines out there and he recommended that people who are operating slot machines should get rid of them and should replace them with pinball machines. Right.
    67:23
    Now, for those who have a long memory or interest in the history of pinball, will certainly remember that pinball was seen as one of the evils of gambling way back in the 30s, 40s, 50s. Actually, it was back then. Yes, and was banned, obviously, in various cities around the US as being something which would corrupt children and on which people were losing huge amounts of money, losing their monthly salary in just a couple of hours and gambling on pinball machines. So it was curious to see that pinball is now seen as this sort of healthy, family-friendly alternative to slot machines and being advocated by the Italian government as being the way forward and something which we use to replace slot machines.
    68:24
    Whether that actually comes to pass, whether there's a big sudden rush for pinball machines within Italy to replace all those machines that have been taken off location, or indeed whether any of those laws ever get onto the statute book and are turned into actual legislation and laws. We don't know because it's still a fairly early stage. It's also Italy, so... It is. They could, and it's quite likely there'll be a complete change of government before any of that happens. But it's nice to see that happening and pinball being highlighted as being in a positive way and being something which operators should be operating, as opposed to the more dubious and more profitable, let's be fair, slot machines which have taken over many of the locations that pinball used to have. So, fingers crossed that that actually turns into something positive. What could be interesting is that Stern's importer in Italy is Technoplay, who actually used to make pinball machines themselves years and years and years ago. If this law would be taken into effect and there all of a sudden appears to be a huge demand for pinball machines, who knows what Technoplay might decide to do. They haven't built pinball machines in ages, but never say never. No, and of course TechnoPlay is not the only company that used to make pinball machines that's still out there in Italy. The Zaccaria, for instance, still exists as a manufacturer or as a company anyway. Well, that's TechnoPlay. It's run by the sons of the Zaccaria brothers who actually formed the Zaccaria pinball brand. But the brand is still out there. And interestingly, since we were mentioning the UK pinfest, there was this X-Force game, a Technoplay game, which was actually a it's a very interesting game, I have to say. I've never seen one before. And I recommend everybody look up X-Force on IPTV.
    70:48
    It's a very unusual game, or at least it has some unusual mechanics. It has stand-up targets that drop down in the playthrough, but completely different than you've ever seen before, at least for me. A little bit like the Dragon game, but slightly different, yes. They were linked together as well, which was a bit odd. But what's also interesting is that there is a kick-out in the left out lane that kicks the ball out, but there is diverter that pops up from the playfield. Either the ball goes straight up the ramp, or it takes a curve and it goes back onto the playfield onto the right. That's right. But look up... I thought that was very innovative, so... take a look at that game, it's very interesting. It was also suitably temperamental, shall we say, in exactly how it worked and whether it would work, and the little diverter mechanism on the left-hand side, sometimes it would work, sometimes it would operate fast enough, sometimes it wouldn't, and every now and again, every now and again the game would lock up completely and require a deep hour to bring it back again. Okay, and it's all software. Well, software, hardware, it's technology, basically, and it's of a certain age, and it becomes more temperamental and unreliable with age. Just like the Italian government.
    72:19
    Exactly. So it brings us full circle. So that's Italian pinball mentioned. Since you blatantly plugged your pinball news website,
    72:32
    I would like to actually point out an article that I read on there about gambling, ping games, and manufacturer perspectives that you put up there like two weeks ago, which actually I found a very, very interesting read. That was an article that was done by Nicholas Baldrige, Stephen Doolifell, and Dennis Creasel. So if you're interested in the historic gambling relation between pinball and gambling, all that sort of stuff, do check out that article on pinballnews.com. Oh, thank you very much. Yes, Dennis has been very kind. as a noted and very successful podcaster, and he's written a number of articles for Pinball News and those other outlets. And this is one in which he teamed up with Nicholas and Stephen and they did this. Yeah. It was really, really interesting, and in fact, Jen's done another one since then. Yeah, I'm about to pop one. I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, so we try and get a nice range of different voices and different authors within Pinball News, so it's not all done in the same style. And, yeah, you get some really interesting ones. That one you mentioned about gambling, pin games, and the manufacture of perspectives was picked up going back to our good friend Gordon Hasse. Also mentioned something about that as well, made a comment which was something which hadn't been examined. Sorry, I'm jumping ahead really to the more recent article about middle pop that Dennis wrote. But it's interesting the feedback you get on these things. And it's nice for us to be able to publish something that's more of a long-form article as well, like it doesn't all need to be short stuff, it doesn't all need to be long, but it must have a variation in the length of the article. You know, somebody's take up to 20 minutes to read or whatever. So, yeah, so thanks to Dennis and Stephen and Nicholas for all their skillful contributions there. And thank you for pointing that out. I didn't know you were going to do that. Right. Yeah, it's not that hard. You just try it sometimes.
    74:57
    But speaking of the Middlepop article, I think it's interesting to mention that I had intended to publish the Middlepop article in Pinball Magazine No. 5. Obviously, there was no more room for it.
    75:16
    So I was thinking of postponing that to a future article. I still have to read the article that Dennis put up. But Middlepop games actually is a subject that I find very interesting. So I'll be looking forward to reading that article later tonight. Excellent. Okay. Well, again, thanks for doing that one. Okay. So moving on then to... I'd say the UK Pin Fest, because we have an interview with Michael in the house called Home Pin, and we already mentioned the UK Pin Fest for having the X4 game and several others. Yeah, indeed. But before we get to Mike's interview, which is really interesting because we were able to listen to his seminar,
    76:05
    which I should mention is also available online. If you want to watch that, that's on YouTube. Links are through the Pinball News article for that. I had a famous plug. Yeah, yeah. I get it. Well, I would try and work out what the YouTube link was, but I'll give you a YouTube slash KZVW3927 or whatever it is. It's not that, by the way.
    76:29
    And you wouldn't remember it. So if you go to Pinball News, the links are all there. You can watch all three seminars that they had all in order. But we also had our own reporter there, didn't we? Yes. Who was able to bring us the live happenings from the floor. Right. So, usually Gary Fowler interrupts in the most impossible moments during our podcast, calling us. And this time we actually figured, okay, since Gary's at the show, let's switch to Gary and have him report live from the show at the UK Pinkfest. So, over to Gary.
    77:13
    Yes, Gary. Gary, can you come in? Yes. Hello? Gary, you're live. I can't hear you, Gary. Speak up. Gary, can you hear us?
    77:26
    Oh. I guess that didn't really work out as well as we... I don't think he's aware that he's live right now, so... Okay, well, we'll sort out the technical gremlins and we'll come back to it. We'll try that after we air the interview with Mike Kalinowski of HomePin. But before we go there, any comments on the UK Pin Fest? Yeah, it was good to have a national UK show back We had a couple of years without one Andrew Highway ran the show most recently for, I don't know, probably about six or seven years Into the ground? No, I think it was generally successful He certainly used it as a promotional tool for Highway Pinball I think it was well received by people who were there it was always expensive, and there were various things that went on at that show which were either successful or not successful from your point of view. There was the Saturday night banquet, which a guest speaker was thrown over.
    78:29
    We had a lot of very prominent guests at that show, designers, pinball manufacturers, company owners, that kind of thing, which we wouldn't have had otherwise in the UK. We'd have had to, I don't know, go to maybe somewhere like the Dutch Pinball Open, but more on that later.
    78:46
    So we had that, but again, those meals were expensive and not necessarily very good quality. So, you know, swings and roundabouts again, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, but it was good to have a national show where you can have the focus of the tournaments, the league finals, and where everybody could come together. But that was then missing for the past couple of years Due to various reasons You know, Andrew was tied up in other ways But now all that's out the way And Phil Murphy's come back And said, you know, we need this show He's a show organiser for other events And he wanted to hold this show So he did it And UK Pinfest Back at the same hotel where UK Pinball Party was for a number of years. And, yeah, over 100 pinball machines there. We had the UK Pinball Open, the UK Pinball Classic was there, the League Finals were there. There wasn't a Saturday night banquet, but there were Friday night, Saturday night VIP sessions where people could get to play machines in more space and with fewer people around and play some of the tournament machines which would otherwise have been available. Lots of pinball streaming from the show as well. You're absolutely right, yeah.
    80:12
    Neil was there doing the domino pinball stuff. Tim was there doing the pinball live stuff. All that's available on their respective websites and on YouTube, I believe, and probably on Twitch and every streaming outlet that you frequent. You will find details of those.
    80:31
    Yeah, the tournament finals or the final rounds were available from pinball live. Neil on Domino did the seminars. So they are there. And again, link through to them for ease of use. And, yeah, there were also some smaller tournaments or competitions held in the VIP sessions as well. So it was nice to be back in Daventry. I think everybody loves having a show in a hotel. You know, the fact that you can If you buy something Or you're just feeling a bit exhausted Or whatever You just get back to your room Have a little lie down And make a cup of tea Or whatever Come back Or head off to the bar And wander back to the floor Any time you want And that's something which I think has been picked up From American shows Where they've been held in hotels And the Dutch Pinball Open as well Is another one Which for a couple of years Was held in a very nice hotel That was a long time ago, but okay. Yeah, I was there. I remember it. And it's something which I would certainly advocate as being a very positive move, if it's at all possible, or at least not necessarily in the same building, but within a couple of minutes walk. And talking of which, this weekend in Toronto, I think it's about a ten-minute walk from the venue to the hotel. Ten minutes? well if you're walking slowly probably five for you and me but it's close enough that I dare say there'll be getting a chance to see a little bit of Vancouver as we're going to I'm very curious I've never been there it's lovely to see I've been there several times and I can recommend a number of places to go but we'll talk about that later and anyway so that was the UK Pin Fest thanks to Phil for organising that and And that was one of the seminars there. There were three seminars there. There was Team Pinball, who we'll talk about in a minute.
    82:39
    There was Dennis van der Pass and Gerard from Pinnovating. I guess that's really Dennis' company. Right. Gerard is hosting the Dutch Pinball Museum. but he worked with Dennis on realizing his dream of building a Matrix pinball machine and Dennis just showed off his Kill Bill pinball machine and also his very first attempt at reprogramming a game, Demolition Man on steroids, all three games were actually at the show floor. Yes, I don't think that's been done before, has it? I haven't seen those three machines together. And, yeah, it was fascinating to see the Demolition Man. If you haven't played the On steroids version, it's very, very different to the original. It had a very different mindset to it. And I think it's probably not the way you do an operator game, but it's certainly the way you do a home model of that particular machine. and a lot of thought's gone into exactly how that should be reprogrammed. So, yeah, Dennis is a very talented guy and hopefully we'll see a lot more from him in the future. But he was in the second seminar. And the third one on Sunday afternoon was from Mike Kalinowski. Is that right? Is that how you pronounce it? Kalinowski? Kalinowski from Holpin.
    84:21
    Originally Australia-based, but the factory is actually located in China. It was Mike's first time over in the UK Europe actually I think And of course there was a Thunderbirds game On the show floor You want to discuss the game too? Yeah I got to play it at the North West Pinball Show When Nitro Pinball had it there on their stand And that was an earlier version which had a different centre ramp to it, which was a lot more temperamental than the one which was on display on the production model that we were seeing. I think it was still officially a prototype that was at the UK Pinfest but I think the ramp is very similar to the production version and there was a lot more accepting of fast shots up the middle of the game Very bright, very colourful game. Some interesting shots and features on it as well. It's interesting to hear Mike talk about Why there's an orange DMD on the game As opposed to a colour LCD Or a colour DMD And the various steps they took Mike's seminar was actually very instructive In many ways I think In describing all the things which can And often do go wrong when you start up a new pinball company, even though he's an established manufacturer and engineer,
    86:02
    to see how you think that just going to China is the thing that solves all your problems, you get lots of cheap labour and no problem with manufacturing, everything's right there. But no, there are lots of things which do happen which anybody who's tried manufacturing in China will be aware of, but the rest of us had absolutely no idea. The fact that they set up their entire factory in one particular province and then the change of mind or change of heart, and they decide at the governmental level that, no, they don't want all this manufacturing and all the pollution that comes from it in this region, so they boot everybody out or they make it sufficiently difficult for companies that they can't carry on building or manufacturing anything that produces a lot of pollution. They want to make all the industry there IT-based. So they just make it so difficult that you can't carry on there and you end up moving off to another region where, of course, everybody is moving there. So all the rents go up and you don't get the cheap property. You don't get the cheap labour either because they have minimum wages and some of their employment laws are way more advantageous for employees than they are in many other, what we might think of as more industrialised countries.
    87:33
    But despite all that, Mike's just moved to the new company premises in the new area and they're going to be set up to start building a games. and he showed a lot of stuff behind the scenes. He was very upfront with personal tragedies that have occurred in his life as well as all the lessons he's learnt over the years of trying to build products. Mike is not, I think it's fair to say, Mike's not a salesman. He's an engineer, he's a businessman, and he's a talented guy who knows how to get things done. He's not somebody who's going to schmooze you and tell you that everything's going to be wonderful and make promises that he's not able to keep. He is very down-to-earth and an honest guy, and I'd never met him before, and after meeting him, I came away with quite a respect for the guy. you know, he's somebody who's a pragmatist, he gets stuff done, even if he ends up, you know, sort of breaking balls a bit in order to get it to happen.
    88:47
    Was that your impression of Mike? Oh, yeah. I usually talk to Mike about every two months or so, we Skype.
    88:57
    I think he's just a, I wouldn't call it a typical Australian guy, but he's just, he's a no-nonsense type of guy. just feeds his mind still in a respectful way, or at least he can explain why he's saying something. Some people tend to be offended by the way that he does it. I just think he's a straightforward guy and the type who doesn't like to bullshit around things. Yeah, that's what I mean by saying he's not a salesman. He's not going to tell you what you want to hear, necessarily. He's going to tell you how it is. right so um for me it was the first time playing the game i was um geometry wise or shop wise i could see i would i would like to have seen certain things a little different um in the sense that i figured like okay so why did you do it like this but there's a story behind everything, and at some point he just said, he was like, okay, we had to go, we had to move on, okay, it's going to be this, and then let's move on, else the thing never gets done. So, okay, that's understandable.
    90:16
    I had heard some people reporting that it wasn't that interesting. Actually, I found it rather interesting to play. so it's very tempting to just simply shoot for the left up and down ramp that you have to knock down because that's easily the biggest or the easiest shot on the whole game but then you're just killing all the fun for yourself because then you're just making the same shot over and over again but there's more shots in the game to make and I think for a first game I think you can be proud yeah okay so shall we listen to our interview with Mike yes just remind you that Mike had done his seminar he'd answered a certain number of questions I'd recommend you watch or listen to the seminar first before if you possibly can because there's a certain number of things which we've taken for granted we didn't ask him to repeat things he'd already said, but we did ask him to develop on a number of points in our interview, which I think went on for quite a long time. And so let's go over now to our interview with Mike at the UK Pin Fest, where he's talking about Thunderbirds and the development of the game and the way that the company, Home Pin, was formed. Mike Kalinowski from HomePin, welcome Thank you And thank you for being on our monthly free podcast Actually, this is the second time we have an interview with a special guest I feel privileged and honored Yeah You've been, for the past five years, you've been on and off working on the development of the Thunderbirds game for your home pin brand. The machine is finally available and being manufactured. Congratulations on that. Thank you. How's the response been so far? Quite good. You've said it yourself this weekend here in Daventry, the majority of people who play it have positive things to say. It's been well received. We've had a couple of minor issues, which is to be expected. That's pinball. But I think overall the majority of people that played it have felt positive about the game.
    92:50
    And yeah, I'm very happy with the response. Okay. So when you first started down this journey in order to produce your own pinball, you decided to do that.
    93:02
    You picked Thunderbird as a theme, but what was the overriding criteria that your first game needed to have? Well, being a new entrant to the market, obviously we didn't think that it made sense to come in with an unlicensed theme straight up. So we looked around for various things that would fit the bill. And the first and most important probably was that it needed to be family friendly. We did not want to make Walking Dead, for example, or even BSD for that matter, because we needed it to appeal to everybody. You know, something like a Playboy, for example, obviously offends a lot of people or the wife wouldn't have it in the house and so on. So we wanted something that was neutral and family friendly and Thunderbirds fits that bill perfectly. Thunderbirds is a licence which is known worldwide. Sure. in certain key markets. Those are the markets you're looking to address. No, look, originally, when we first decided to make pinball machines, JJP had just started on the scene and had announced Wizard of Oz not long before we came on the scene. And it was pretty obvious there was going to be a bit of a head-to-head battle with Stone and JJP was looming. I didn't want to get involved in that. And that most certainly influenced our decision on choosing Thunderbirds because we knew that Thunderbirds was not terribly well known in America but it is very well known outside America and in fact Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain of course and the majority of Europe Thunderbirds is exceptionally well known it's just not very well known in America so that actually suited our plan perfectly because it was a machine that would not target America and therefore we wouldn't be drawn into the battle between Stone and JJP and that was fine by me, we could stay right out of it but it is surprising how much interest we have had from America with that said good for you aside from the theme for the first game what were your ideas or plans to achieve with this first game? well, our game, we certainly were not attempting at any stage to make the next Medieval Madness that was never our goal or intention and I've been shown various comments where people are trying to compare it to various different machines and saying that it hasn't got the same gameplay as other machines. Well, that's fine. We know that because it was never our intention. We wanted a fairly simple machine that was colourful, lively, friendly, with good sound, that two half-drunk guys in a pub could go up and bash the ball around, have a bit of fun and walk away thinking that that was a great thing and they'll do it again. That was our intention. And similarly, in a home environment, something the kids could play, something that was not 10 deep in rules, that you had to be Einstein to work out exactly what you needed to do. It needed to be a very simple game. That's why, basically, there's six missions, and that fits with the Thunderbirds. The Thunderbirds went on missions, and you have to achieve those six missions to beat the game, if you like. And that was our main objective, and we did not want a machine that was too complicated. And by doing all of that, we also hope to keep the price as low as possible. yeah I was going to ask about that because obviously you're up against a number of other manufacturers producing games at varying price points where did you see your game fitting in in the market as far as price goes well I'm not terribly involved in the price as such because I run the factory and the engineering side of things and that's why I've basically handed in the entire sales and marketing across to Highway Games Australia who have a very very long history and record of selling both pinball machines, they used to be the Williams agents for Australia and various arcade games around the world, they've got some fantastic contacts and they are a very good choice for us because they handle global sales absolutely and that takes the pressure off me, I can concentrate on the factory and on new machines and just making sure things work properly at a machine level rather than needing to bother about the difficulties of marketing and sales and all that sort of thing. But our machine certainly, from what I have seen, is priced very attractively in the market, in most markets, and I'm pretty confident that our retailers will be happy to accept the same margins that they're accepting on other pinball machines, which will keep our machine very competitively priced when you put it up against any other manufacturer. did you have a bill of materials in mind when you started making it or did it no we had a drawing on a whiteboard and we basically built the machine to suit what we wanted and the actual cost of building it came later because we wanted it to be a certain thing and realistically because we're making in China our costs on adding an additional mechanism and so on are probably a lot lower than many other people even though I strongly suspect that they're using a lot of Chinese made parts as well we don't deny that like some do and we could easily incorporate an additional mech or so without breaking the bank right, ok you mentioned you had a drawing on a whiteboard there has been some speculation about who designed the game can you tell more about the designer of the game or to design the game? We didn't have any one person design the game. It was a collaborative effort between several people, including myself. I had people submit things to me and parts of things, not entirely, not the entire play field, bits and pieces. We took some good parts of this and deleted some bad parts of that and basically fuzzed it all together to what we believe became a workable machine. There's a couple of little errors and a couple of little areas we believe we could improve, but it is what it is. And there certainly was not a single person you can attribute the design to. Okay. I do mention that in the service manual. I give credit in the beginning of the service manual to those who have helped home get along the way to get to this point. And there's various names mentioned there that people have made more of than really actually is the case. Some people have simply given me a tip, just one little tip and so I've credited them for giving me that little tip others have given me reams and reams of drawings and I've also credited them, there's no particular strength against any person in those credits So working with a licence obviously is a bit of a swings and roundabout situation it brings obviously the recognition and a bunch of assets to be used but also you have to deal with the licences and get approval on pretty much everything and other companies who had differing experiences working with different licences. How's it been for you? Is it ITC? ITV. And they've been exceptionally good to us, particularly earlier on when we'd only barely started putting things together and started to get some drawings approved and then my wife passed away. and they were exceptionally compassionate and helpful at that time and understood completely what I was going through and the dramas that I was having and they were most helpful to extend the licence dates and all sorts of things where perhaps under other circumstances they may not have been so easy to get on with but they certainly helped me to no end. I was speaking on the phone with them only a couple of days ago and they're overjoyed that we finally made it over the line and we have finished product now. but like any licence you're working within their boundaries not yours and you submit to them the ideas you have and you find that very quickly they have differing ideas because after all it's their licence, it's their product and it's their property to protect and again some people have mentioned to me we should have done this or we shouldn't have done that or we should have added this or deleted that and yet we had lots of ideas and the original drawings and so on differ so much from the finished product it's not funny.
    101:28
    And I'm sure other manufacturers have exactly the same problems that we do. It's just swings and roundabouts and in the end we had had so many hold-ups and delays with pretty much everything along the way, with CE testing, with the licensing, with electronic design, with just every little single part because as you know we made every single part in the machine. so we had so many delays and things along the way that we finally got a working drawings that ITV were satisfied with and we weren't going to change them from that we just kept them and ran with it and they're not necessarily 100% to our liking but I think overall if you look at the entire package that it's pleasing enough and it's colourful and it's fun and it's vibrant and it's achieved what we set out to do initially I was going to do one quick follow up on that because obviously when you first started out, the game was Thunderbirds Ago, based on the new series, and now it's Thunderbirds. Is that more based back on the classic series? Yes, well, I'm glad you brought that up because we initially started the machine, and our licence does state Thunderbirds Pinball, and it specifically states that it's classic Thunderbirds is what ITV refer it to as, not the new series. And we already basically called our machine Tag, Thunderbirds Are Go because that's the tagline for Thunderbirds and that name has stuck so the acronym for Thunderbirds is still tag and however yes the new series is Thunderbirds Are Go which is of course a completely different thing it's an animated cartoon type product rather than the original marionettes so that's how that came about but our original license and current extension of that license is for classic Thunderbirds That was always the intention of what the game was going to be about. Yes, it is. Right. That was always our license. So in terms of research for your design, can you walk us through what you did? I can imagine that you probably bought a DVD box or whatever, something like that to watch the old shows. Well, I grew up with Thunderbirds as a kid. After school, I would get home and eagerly wait for Thunderbirds to come on the TV. And to be honest, there was little else in those days. You know, Thunderbirds was the most exciting thing on TV. there was very little else for kids that was available. There was Mr Squeedle, which was a little bit kiddyish for a boy of 14 years of age. And so Thunderbirds was really it. And it was a good action show. It was wholesome. It didn't cause any problem for anyone. There were good guys rescuing people. And so it was immediately recognisable to me. Right, OK. I think Gary's at the door. Oh, sorry. I was going to say, is he there? Hang on.
    104:14
    Hey Gary, come on in. Gary? G'day. Oh, he left already. Too bad. Oh, okay. Never mind. So, Gary's gone. I'll bump into Gary every week.
    104:32
    We do too. And talking of Gary's, in your presentation you showed Gary Stern having paid a visit to your manufacturing shop. He did, and I welcomed him to come and have a look and show him what we were doing at that time. There wasn't very much pinball activity at that time, but we had done some preliminary things, which I showed him, and he happily showed me the video of his new premises, and we had a good chin-wag about things, yes. Okay. So he actually, as I understood it, went quite out of his way to actually visit you. Well, yes. I mean, he was attending one of the regular shows in Guangzhou, and he rented a car and was driven to our factory, which is probably a two, two and a half hour drive each way. And he did phone me several times on the way complaining, saying, are we there yet, are we there yet? And, yeah, I don't think he initially, when he set out, he quite realised that it was a couple of hours away, but he did manage to come there and stay for a couple of hours, yes. OK. And it was great because he met Karen probably six months before, three months before she passed away, so that was great. I'm pleased you came. Right. Gary hasn't been the only guest, so to speak, who visited your factory, because I understood that there's a European reseller from Austria that visited you. Tommy from Nitro Pinball has visited you. Indeed. Possibly a couple of others. Yeah, we've had many interesting visitors. I used to put them up on one of the forums, but I'm unsure how well that was received by some people. But some people have a vested interest in trying to pull me down. I don't know what it is, whether it's tall poppy syndrome or they're jealous or something, I'm unsure. But there's a handful of people out there that seem to have a B and they're honoured about me successfully building a pinball machine, I guess. I can't really explain why that is. Has that kind of scared you? Has it made you feel negative about sharing information? Absolutely, absolutely. If I put up information and then someone tears you down and all I've done is show some pictures of what we're doing, that's rather disappointing to see somebody trying to stir trouble or create problems or twist what you say. It doesn't matter what you say, they'll find some way to twist it in a negative way. So I've basically just stopped buying into that nonsense.
    107:03
    Do you think it will have any negative impact on sales? I don't think so either. way and it disappoints me that I'm not able to put that sort of information up. I do keep updating the HomePin.factory Facebook page because basically, even though I can't access that from China because Facebook's blocked in China and I can get on there sometimes through a VPN but that's never guaranteed. But I have people that look after that website for me and they put up pictures for me and at least we can control that and if people get out of hand we can look after that, which you can't do on forums. And I guess that's why Stern as one example do the same thing really. They look after their Facebook page and if people get out of hand they just get zapped off and that's it. I'm happy to share information with people. That's never been a problem with me. It just disappoints me that there's a small handful of people that seem to have a bit of nerve on it about something and I don't know what it is. Maybe they need medical help I think.
    108:02
    Who knows? This is as far as I can tell on your first European female show? It's my first time in the UK, yes. Yeah.
    108:15
    How's it been so far? Great. Yeah, surprising. It's just like driving around Australia. It was a long trip though, 10 hours from Hong Kong and then we got into Heathrow at about 5 in the morning and jumped in a renter car and drove straight up to Daventry about two hours after getting lost a little bit. and so we were pretty zonked by the time we got here and it took us a day or so to recover to be honest right well yeah obviously if you're coming from Hong Kong the jet lag is huge yes it is I have it's corner to me on the way home alright so actually are you going back to Hong Kong because in two weeks there's the Vancouver show as well where you'll be attending yes I'm going there as well yes Tommy's invited me again this year and I will be going there but I'm going back to the factory first and have to make sure that everything's moved to the second factory well and that there's no big problems there and things are still chubbing along and then I'll head off to Vancouver. I'm only in Vancouver for three or four days. Right, okay. The bigger problem is then after Vancouver I've got to go to FinFest in Australia so it's a pretty busy time at this end of the year but I'm going to do what I can to make sure I don't have that problem next year. Right, well, obviously since you're sort of the face of the company it's not that weird that you have to make appearances.
    109:37
    Yeah, some people expect that. Like yourself. Are you now at the stage where the manufacturing can just go ahead without you having to be there? Pretty much. I'm very, very lucky that Amanda is there to keep tabs on things and she really cracks the whip more than I ever would.
    109:55
    And being Taiwanese, she obviously knows how to keep the workers under control. Her background is interesting as well. Her first job out of school was working at a claw machine factory in Taiwan. And so she has experience in the industry as well.
    110:13
    Pinball is a feature manufacturing in China. It's hardly known in China. Yeah, not at all. if Bingo were to break into China how would you think that would happen?
    110:30
    Well that's our goal our next machine is directly targeting the Chinese market but we believe that it's broad appeal, it's an unlicensed title by the way, that it's broad appeal will also be sought in the West as well and we believe that there's many bars and other arcades and things where the Chinese will be happy to put the machine because they'll know what it is. At the moment,
    111:00
    showing a Chinese person a pinball machine is a waste of time. They don't know what a pinball machine is. And the few people we have actually got to play our Thunderbirds machine on site and so on are quite intrigued and quite happy to play it. But they have no clue what Thunderbirds is. and similarly they have no clue what the Walking Dead is or ACDC or Pirates of the Caribbean. They have no idea because those things aren't seen in China. It's simply not available. So firstly they don't know what a pinball machine is and then they don't know what the theme is. They're just not attracted to it no matter what and that includes Thunderbirds. Right. So our goal is to put a theme out there that the Chinese do know and are attracted to first and then find out that it's pinball second. and does that mean that the game has to be more simplistic because so you're not overwhelming people it will certainly be simplistic but simplistic in the way that Thunderbirds is simplistic I don't think Thunderbirds is such a simple game myself some people do but the ones that do are very keen competitive competition pinball players and that is not our target market for Thunderbirds and it's certainly not our target market for the second machine either and so we believe that a game with enough rules but a simple enough rule set that can easily be understood will be able to target that market and the market in China is vastly different to the Western market.
    112:29
    Yes, there's 2 billion people but to say I'm going to sell to 2 billion people is a little bit tricky because if you're trying to sell 2 billion people a can of Pepsi that's easy to do but to sell them a pinball machine is a whole different story because they don't have a house like we know a house in the west they don't have a standalone house where they can put six pinball machines, it doesn't happen that way the majority of them live in apartments and they simply are never going to own a pinball machine regardless so our target market is not the private buyer, it's arcades and it's bars and operators I guess as an extension of that Do you need the operators in China to get into the bars or is it the other way around? We can do both. We put our sample machines into several different bars very easily and they're very keen to try anything that's new.
    113:19
    And we would, generally the people that own the arcades, run a small operation outside as well as operators. So our goal is through Highway, of course, to tackle that market and Highway Games have lots of contacts in that area as operators and owners of those arcades, and they're quite large and they're quite well cashed up as well. If you find that this is a success within China and you are getting good sales there, can you see a future title being entirely targeted at the Chinese market and not for the West? Possibly. Yeah, possibly. I wouldn't discount that at all. This title is, the one we're working on currently, is along the lines of Kung Fu, which is a Chinese thing but it's well known in the West. So it's not Kung Fu but it's along those lines where it's definitely aimed at Chinese but it is also known in the West. So I think that even though we're deliberately targeting this at China and Chinese customers, the rest of the world would have some interest in it as well. So it's a bilingual game? Yes, it will be. It will be Chinese and English. Okay. As a Kung Fu game would also work as a bilingual game. Thunderbirds is probably the last pinball that has a dot matrix display. For future titles, do you intend to continue with the dot matrix display or are you switching to LCD as well? The problem switching to LCD is not... I'd like to switch to LCD, don't get me wrong, because it would be a quarter of the cost. LCD is very, very cheap, especially from where I am in Shenzhen. An LCD screen is $20. and I can tell you now that the DMD costs us many times that.
    115:06
    So I'd love to switch to DMD, sorry to LCD, but it's the support for the LCD that's the problem and I think if you have a critical look at the other machines that are out there with LCD, there's a lot lacking. You mean the quality of content? Exactly, exactly. That involves a whole new level of skill, of costs, of time, of approvals with licensors. You need a whole new level of things. I mean, we had enough problems with the DMD scenes on Thunderbirds, getting them approved. We had to submit them frame by frame.
    115:46
    And, you know, people have said to me, but if you had an LCD you could just have clips from Thunderbirds series.
    115:55
    Yeah, maybe, but that's not the whole story. We're a small company, 20 people. We don't have that infrastructure. As you saw in my little talk, we have actually spent some time and effort on cover, both LCD and on RGB, with mixed results. We like some of the things, but we didn't have the money or the resources to implement that on Thunderbirds and it would have stretched things out yet again even further.
    116:28
    And, you know, as you're well aware, we were already behind the eight ball with that so we needed to get it to market. So we had to drop a lot of things.
    116:36
    Okay. Got anything? Obviously we recommend our listeners to check out the YouTube video of the seminar that you did here at the UK Pinball Party. You mentioned it a couple of times and it's actually quite an interesting talk and gives you more insight behind the process of how you got to where you are right now. Well I've been just trying to know you've kind of intimated and almost stated that people don't really understand exactly what goes into making a pinball machine what do you think are the biggest obstacles or biggest issues that you have to deal with that the general public or the players or the buyers don't get to see or don't understand is involved in it? Probably the biggest problem for me being based in China is that it's exceptionally complex and costly to import anything into China. It's not impossible, but it's complex and it's costly. And you need to have several dedicated staff if you're going to bring anything into China. And as I said, we're a small company, under 20 people. We simply don't have the resources to have two or three people set aside just for importing stuff. And so, effectively, we've got to make everything ourselves. And in Thunderbirds, every single part in that machine is made by us. or by our contractors. And we buy one only part in that machine that's an original pinball part, one part only.
    118:18
    And that's the... I'll tell you what that is. It's the red beacon, the cap, the red cap on the beacon at the back. The flaccidone. The flaccidone, that's the only part we buy in. And simply, we would have actually made that as well because we have the facilities to make the dye and injection mould that ourselves. But we just ran out of time again. and it was easier to place an order with pinball life for 100 of those than it was to spend another few weeks making that ourselves. But that is the only pinball part we buy in. Everything else is made by us, right down to winding the coils to stamping every metal part to the screws. We make everything. So, yes, that is stunningly complex. There's so many parts that I never even realised, to be honest, and I've been in pinball all my life, basically. and there's so many parts that when you get down to it and you dissect a pop bumper assembly, we make every single part of the pop bumper assembly right down to the contacts in the switch, and we make the insulator in the switch and then assemble the switch and make the spoon, and it's quite an onerous task when you look at it in that way. There's just so many parts. It's phenomenal. So in a way you've almost created a one-stop shop for pinball parts. Well, it is, but they're all our parts. That's the difference. They're all metric for a start. So that'll annoy some people. But the simple fact is when we first started the project in China, I looked into having them made in the same format as standard pinball parts. It would have cost us probably 40% to 50% more for every single part. It's possible in China for sure. But the entire world is metric, and China is certainly metric. and getting things made in anything other than metric is pretty silly when you've got to make thousands of parts because the costs would blow out. Right, so you haven't had other manufacturers come in to you saying we'd like to make parts for us? I've had several people ask me that question and I've made it clear to them right away from the beginning that happy to help you, but you need to understand our parts are metric.
    120:26
    Is that normally turnable? Usually, yes. That's okay. Okay. Right now we're flat out making enough parts for our own use, so we're not too bothered right now. You briefly mentioned the second factory, which you also addressed in your talk, that you're sort of being forced to move with your paint and woodwork to a second facility. Does that mean that the original facility will have more space for manufacturing? Indeed, and having been forced to move to a second place is actually a little bit of a blessing really because it's freed up a lot of space where we are. We also, it wasn't just the woodwork and the painting that was a problem. The inspectors that come round practically weekly these days were also concerned about our storeroom, which is crammed up one end and it's a bit tight. So, in fact, we can move our woodworking facility away to the new factory and move the store into where the woodworking facility is. So that will free up quite a bit of space down the end for factory space. At the moment, our biggest problem is finished machines. We just don't have anywhere to put finished machines.
    121:42
    So we've rented a small lock-up out the back of the factory that was available and that can fit about 20 finished machines. Realistically, that's all we've got space for. Unless we ship that 20 machines out straight away, we've got to stop the line because we physically don't have anywhere to put any finished machines. so we've got to keep that flow happening Right, so how many gallons do you fit into a container or a shipment? Well sadly we miscalculated badly on the packing and so on and realistically we can only get about 14 machines in a 20 foot container with a lot of spare space because our packaging is just the wrong size so that's just where we're stuck at the moment So you could reduce that if you redesigned the packaging? We could, but I'm reluctant to bring the packaging down on the sides. It's going to damage head boxes and things like that. But for the next machine, we'll certainly be addressing that. I'm not going to be changing the Thunderbirds. That's how it is. And that's just unfortunate. We've got to live with that. But it is definitely a problem. We figured on getting a lot more than that in a container, but we simply can't because of our packaging.
    122:48
    And at what rate are you currently manufacturing games? because we did a run our first fully completed run of I think 45 machines we did that in about two weeks so that's six days a week so that's 12 days, 12 work days because obviously contrary to like what's happening at for example a Stern or a Jersey Jack where they have an assembly line where everything is passing several stations and add it on immediately. Sure.
    123:25
    The way I understood it is that you guys will be working several days on several parts and making all the certain parts and then at some point assembly will start, but it's not all going on. Well, we have an assembly area upstairs where the mechanisms are assembled and we assemble the printed circuit boards and then they go down to the start of the assembly line. We've only got six or seven stations for the playfield and after that the playfield is fully assembled in those seven stations. So a lot more gets done at each station than it does at CERN or Jersey Jack. And at the end of that seventh station, the wiring harness goes on and then the playfield's completed, ready to go into a cabinet.
    124:05
    We do have a production line along those ways, but our biggest problem, as I said before, is at the end of it, once that machine's finished and tested and goes into a box, we physically have nowhere to put it. And that is a big problem to us at the moment, which will get better as we move more and more stuff across to the second factory. So you will hold stock yourself rather than shipping everything you make to Highway? Oh, no, we can't hold any stock, to be honest, because, like I said, we've only got space for 20 machines. When we get to 20, they've got to go or we've got to stop the line because if we made any more, they'd be sitting on the footpath. We just have no physical place to put them. So they will ship out. Highway's got a facility in Guangzhou as well, and they've had that office there for many, many years. And so that's a helpful situation for us as well because we can ship them out to them and then they can deal with them as they need to. So that will be useful in developing sales through China as well? Absolutely, yes. That won't be such a problem because sales through China can easily be shipped out on a daily basis to two machines here, three machines there. That's an easy thing to do. A freight inside China is exceptionally good and exceptionally cheap. and that's why the equivalent of eBay in China has gone through the roof because you can get any package, any small package delivered to you for $1 and that's the normal price in China. So online shopping has gone through the roof for that exact reason and the same with shipping. Shipping a pinball anywhere in China is peanuts compared to other countries.
    125:40
    Okay. The whole process of starting up and developing a pinball machine has been a huge learning experience, I sort of sense in the talk that you just gave and other things that we talked about in other conversations. Are there any things that you would do differently when you're working towards your second game? sure we're already established now when I say established we've already done the hard yards, we've now got our mechanisms in place, the majority of them we only need a couple of mechanisms for the new machine but all of the parts, the rubbers, the spaces all of the bits and pieces and flipper mechanisms and majority of boards and things are already done, the design's done it's tested and tried and proven with our prototyping which was a little more extensive than maybe some others do. We made seven prototypes. We made about four prototypes initially, early ones, and then we made seven finished prototypes before we finally made the finished games. And probably that's a lot more than others would have done, but we needed to do that because having made every single part, you know, there were just so many variables and so many opportunities for things to be wrong that we really needed to go through a much more stringent testing process than perhaps others need to do. Right. Speaking of testing processes, you've given us a look under the playfield. One of the things that I noticed is that every mechanism under the playfield has a self-taught mode. Yes, our philosophy right from the start has been, where possible, to build the mechanisms so they're autonomous. And on Thunderbirds, things like the Thunderbird 2 ramp, the Tracy Island ball eject, and the mole and things like that, are basically self You can just pull the whole mechanism out put it on the bench apply 12 volts and use the test switch to run it So you can operate each of those mechanisms by themselves and fault-find them or repair them, whatever you want. That's been our objective from the start because that makes servicing so much easier.
    127:58
    So when you were designing your system for your pinball, your electronic system, obviously you've got a huge amount of background in developing electronics, so you wouldn't have any issues and there was no reason I guess for you to use a sort of standard off the shelf pinball controller rather than develop your own we didn't want to I don't like certain operating ways from my experience in the industry turned me off a lot of ways of working amusement machines in general and so I wanted an embedded controller that was an absolute must and there were others doing embedded controllers Ben Heck had developed a pretty solid system for Spooky initially which I believe they've now gone away from for some reason not only to themselves but we looked at what he had developed we looked at many other systems we looked at WPC systems we looked at Zachariah we looked at lots of different embedded systems and we took a few of the ideas from each of those including from Ben's ideas and we put all of that together basically into our own system that we put together and hopefully that will prove to be a solid and reliable system that hasn't given us any trouble to date we've got optically isolated solenoid drivers so if a coil burns out and takes out the driver it doesn't go any further than that it can't damage the board and yeah we've incorporated a lot of changes and things everything's socketed on the board, it's very easy for a technician to fix should they need to. And if you were to go over to something like a LCD display, is your system capable of driving that directly now? It is. It is, right, you wouldn't need to. No, we've as I showed in that talk we have already experimented with RGB and with LCD and we can drive them now. It's just the biggest problem with that is the content and that's what we're basically avoiding right now.
    130:12
    We don't want to get tied up in spending all of our development money on that. Our machines currently, as we've discussed, sell for a considerably lower price than some others on the market. And should we suddenly start going LCD and incorporating additional requirements and extra people and staff and companies and more time for... It's going to increase the price, and that's not our game.
    130:39
    I don't believe that an LCD is a big part of pinball. For me, playing a pinball myself, I don't even see the DMD, so it's not relevant to me playing a pinball. To me, a pinball machine is a mechanical game. It's the ball flying around, doing things. I would rather spend our money and development money on more mechanical things rather than an LCD, because an LCD is a video game. If you want to look at a video game, go and buy a video game. Don't buy a pinball machine. But doesn't LCD necessarily mean spending a lot of money developing content for it? Or could it just be a glorified DMZ that just happens to be a higher resolution form? Well, it could be, but then it's a waste of time doing it, isn't it? When you have money on the screen, you'll reset that. Well, I do. Absolutely, yes. But, you know, you've got interface boards, you've got more to go wrong.
    131:29
    Yeah, it's just... I would like, personally, to keep our point of difference. Others can run off and have their LCDs, that's great, good on them. Good luck to them.
    131:39
    As for, well, Thunderbirds is now available, and hopefully you'll be making a lot of those. What's your estimated timeframe for the second game? We hope to have a finished, well, when I say finished, a very finished prototype about middle of next year. We've got things in motion now. We've got a white wood that's not quite finalised but it's certainly made and in the works and that will ramp up a little bit. We've had to put that aside a little bit in the last couple of months because we've been gearing up to get Thunderbirds out the door and we've had to put a few other things aside as well to get Thunderbirds out the door because people were getting a bit nervous, if you like, or restless that we hadn't actually released it and there seemed to be delay after delay and most of the delays and so on are easily explained but people don't understand those delays. They don't see the reasoning behind them and they don't need to or want to, to be honest. They're not really interested in the... They'll just say, you've taken too long, and that's all they see. So we didn't want to delay it any further. We wanted to get it out.
    132:57
    Right. Does that mean that until the moment that you can actually start with the second game, that you will be building Thunderbirds, or will you be building Thunderbirds for a couple of weeks, months? I don't know. Oh, they will continue to build Thunderbirds while people want to buy them. There's no problem with that. and I was speaking with the licence owners just yesterday and they're more than happy with us and happy to give us any extensions to the licence we would ask for and there's no problem at all there. We'll keep making them as long as people are happy to buy them. It might be a year, two years, three years, who knows?
    133:36
    Okay. And that can run in conjunction with other machines that we make and we're looking at other machines, not only pinball machines. We make licence hankering video game tables and we make replacement PC boards as you know and we're working on other mechanical arcade machines as well not just pinball machines. We don't want to get tied into only making pinball machines. So basically there's enough work to keep the factory going. Very much so, yeah. Like I said, we don't want to get tied into only making pinball machines. That would be a big mistake.
    134:11
    Okay. Right. I guess I have no further questions for now Your honour So thank you for your time You're welcome and for everybody out there listening if you have a chance to play Thunderbirds just walk up to the game and see for yourself what it's about and hopefully you'll enjoy it Well that's the best way, I mean there's a lot of gossip and hearsay, but the reality is go and have a play of the game yourself.
    134:45
    You know, there's basically six missions, as I said earlier. They're clearly written on the front of the machine. You can see what the missions are.
    134:54
    There's some that are very simple. There's some that are very complicated. That's basically the nature of the range of things we want to do and incorporate so that there were at least some things for more experienced players to achieve rather than just it be a too simple machine. yet if you've got a novice comes up you want them to be able to achieve something as well so it's got a little bit of a mix of that so it allows for a more seasoned player to achieve a more difficult goal and is the software complete, finished? Absolutely, there's a few little tweaks that we've got for things but it won't be changed drastically from what it is Okay, great, well thank you very much indeed You're welcome Okay. So, so far, this is where the interview with Mike ended. But before the interview started, we actually already started recording, and Mike was discussing the CE testing of his game, and we allowed us to include that section as well. So here's a little bit more Mike Kalinowski of HomePin discussing CE testing of Thunderbirds. So we took two new machines across the nest today.
    136:00
    And she said, we delivered the two pinball machines already. The lady was helpful, but the guys who work in there are fuckers.
    136:07
    He said, my machine's boring in front of me. Anyway, one thing, might need to be careful. They said, DC power over 70 volts is CE test standard problem. I told them pinball machines have been running in overseas countries for more than 30 years, and I'm pretty sure our design and power is OK. They said they will see what they can do after they start testing next week. This is after they've been on our original two machines. You need to supply two machines for CE testing. And the original ones, they just kept coming back to us saying, no, no, the EL panels, of course, is the problem, blah, blah, blah. And we said, turn them off. And they said, well, no, you've got to supply us machines. In the end, they said, you've got to supply us machines that don't have them fitted. Yeah. You can't have them fitted and then just turn the switch off. They won't pass it. Right. So we had to build two more test machines and take them over there after nearly three months. Right. And I'm pretty sure the machine will pass. It was that that was the holdup. this is something that people don't see out there they don't see all of the hold ups along the way and stupid things that you can't even guess are going to be a problem but you're not doing any of that sort of stuff that Stern does about trying to restrict which countries or which areas you can operate a machine in a sense of not at all, our machines have got a sticker inside in fact you can change their voltage from 115 to 230 in minutes it's not the effect of a switch you've got to change some connections across, but it's pretty easy. You can change them, do anything you want. Yeah, and sort of... It's not my business where they get sold to. That's up to the customer. If he wants to sell it to someone in Botswana, well, that's his business, not mine. Is it all mostly DC inside then? Oh, yes, yes. Do you use AC within the game? Well, no, no, we don't. It's all DC running the game, yes. Right, so the cord is running on DC. The main transformer's got two primary windings of 115 volts, and they either go in parallel or in series. So the machine is either 115 or it's 230. And that is using a toroidal transformer. Is that just because they're better quality? They are way better and they run cooler and they are more expensive than a conventional transformer. But in China, that's not necessarily the case. That big transformer is wound for us because you can't buy things like that off the shelf. It's got a 12-volt winding, an 18-volt winding and the 50-volt winding on it. and they are remarkably cheap for what they are. We order them in batches of 50, and so we get a pretty good deal on it. In fact, the guy actually delivers them to us personally in his own car. And has the price of things like that gone up a lot recently with our copper prices going up? Surprisingly, the price of all that sort of stuff has not risen. It's mainly the labour that's gone up. It's gone up through the roof. There's been three wage rises in Shenzhen in the last 18 months. mandatory wage rises the wages there are now astronomical comparatively speaking people ask me all the time why are you in China? Is it the cheap wages? Is it the cheap rent or whatever? And it's neither of those I can rent a factory cheaper in Australia than I can in China, much cheaper and labour proportionally speaking is not cheaper than Australia what is the difference? It's not cheaper, what is the difference? It's that mechanical parts, metal stampings electronic parts, all that sort of stuff I can get easily and instantly in China most of it's just unavailable in Australia and I'm guessing most other countries too and the lead times I guess are much much better. Most of the places that you deal with in Australia that you might want to go and buy some of those things from, get them made overseas anyway, so you're just dealing with a middle man then and wasting time and money so we can at least go directly to the source and get them made directly for us and the price is sensible What's your experience about quality control? Do you have to keep a real eye on exactly what's coming into the factory to make sure it's still as good as it was when the first time you bought it or once you've got a relationship with it? We're in that situation now where basically we found suppliers for all the separate bits and pieces up to two years ago and we had an initial batches run and as I mentioned in the chat,
    140:19
    we bought enough stuff to make 100 machines. What I didn't say there is that the reason for 100 machines was we simply didn't have the space to put the parts for more than 100 machines. And it's just stunning how much space it takes, parts for 100 machines. It's unbelievable. I never expected it would take so much space. And we kept where we could. We kept the parts count to build 100 machines, 110. We allowed 10%. and things like the rubbers is an example which I didn't mention in the talk either. We had all the rubber moulds made for our own rubbers and we're very pleased with them. They're extremely high quality. We only order 1,000 of each rubber, which basically when you realise that we use eight of one size in a machine, we've only got really enough rubbers for 100, 150 machines. So we just a couple of weeks back went to order another batch of rubbers and the place has disappeared along with our moulds. Gone. so we're back to square one where we've got to spend several thousand dollars again having new moulds made that takes time it costs money we've got to start from scratch and hopefully we won't run out of rubbers before we've managed to get the new batch done you know it's make the moulds test them make sure they're suitable adjust the moulds if necessary and that's just that's a constant and ongoing problem so something like that really makes sense or would it even be practical for you to give them the moulds make the rubbers take the moulds back where we can we keep the moulds ourselves but sometimes it's impractical such as the large injection moulds for things like the pop-upper bodies and stuff they're huge, they weigh hundreds of kilos some of them and they're just amazingly big and they take up space and the places like to keep them so that they've basically got you trapped and you've got to go back to them to remake the parts of course with all the smaller stuff we do and absolutely with the new rubber moulds they're not that big, we certainly will be asking for them but we're going through that process now fortunately some of the rubbers of course like the three half inch one we only use one per machine so we had a thousand we've got plenty of those so the new place we found is going to make smaller moulds that only have one or two sizes in each mould so that changes the landscape a little bit for us right and we're back yeah thank you yes that was hopefully you found that instructive it certainly gave me a few eye-openers and a much greater insight into all the shenanigans that go on in producing a pinball game and also in working in China. Right, exactly. So thanks to Mike Kalinowski of Homeping. We do note that the Thunderbirds game that he is currently manufacturing is shipping. Some people are apparently still waiting for their game, but it should be coming soon. And while they're not cranking out 100 games a week yet, but they are building the games, and it's good to see that they are making progress in the factory as well. Yeah, and also they've appointed Highway Games as a global distributor, which means that they can get on with building the games, and Highway who have a good presence both in Australia and also in China can get on with the actual business of selling the game, which is something which... It's no point making games if you can't sell them, is it? Right, exactly. So best of luck to both Homepin and Highway Games in getting that to the market. And then let's move on to the other manufacturer that was present at the UK Pin Fest, the Team Pinball. Yeah, well, you and I have both been down to the Team Pinball factory in Cardiff. We were there for the launch of their first game, the Mafia. Right. And they had the Mafia machine at UK Pin Fest for people to play. and I think people were actually impressed with the way the game played. Was that your impression? That's what I hear. I have to be honest and I only played one game at the show.
    144:46
    Sadly, the sound of the game was, even if you put the headphones on, was not very loud. It was overpowered by all the noise from all the games around it. I played one game, but what I understood is that they significantly updated the game code on the game and included some new features and all that kind of stuff. I didn't get to explore that in depth, and I couldn't hear anything, but the response from people who played it was actually very good, so I'm glad to see that they're making progress on that. Yes, I did play it. I also played a game on it, and it was certainly very different to the way the game played when it was out in Cardiff.
    145:31
    Something which you highlighted, I think, earlier was it required you to make each shot individually once to light a feature, and then you had to do each shot again individually to light the next feature, rather than shoot the same shot three times, and then shoot another shot three times, and all deserve to get to a bigger feature, and that's something which they have added.
    145:57
    So I think you can probably take a bit of credit for suggesting that to them. So they do listen. Yeah, absolutely.
    146:05
    I think everybody could see that there was very much a market there for a simple, single-level game, which would be easy to operate, and something which is actually quite understandable and something which maybe the designers, as you said, were able to react to feedback and make changes to without it being a complete change of direction for the entire mindset of the game. but as always there's something we both know and everybody who's looked at it has gone, it's an expensive game for what it is just because of the sheer numbers that they're building and there's no getting away from the fact that it is pricey and people have said if that was a £3,000 UK pound game it would be a runaway hit however at twice that price, it's going to struggle. Right. Is that true or not? I don't know. It'll certainly sell to a certain number of people, but they already limited themselves to 100 machines anyway in production, so maybe they're not looking for a runaway title. But it could be... I don't know. It doesn't make any sense for them to make gains and lose money on it, but... Well, that's a good way to stop making games.
    147:42
    Yes, other companies have done that. It hasn't worked out too well for them. Right. But the game itself and the concept behind it and the gameplay, I think people were very appreciative of. Right. So one thing that essentially brought up the cost of the Mafia, which is the game we're talking about, One thing that I think could be interesting is, what if you would have, let's say,
    148:15
    if Home Pin in China would become the go-to manufacturer for all these sort of homebrew type of games that would like to go into production, but start with a small quantity. I think that could actually be a very interesting market for that, in the sense that, okay, people design a game hopefully takes it into production and then at least the production costs should be less than when you're building it locally and you still have people knowing what they are doing with pinball and so on potentially but one of the things that Mike there was talking about was the fact of how difficult what it was to import products into China. If you need the parts,
    149:11
    then it makes things so much easier if you make them all locally, or either yourself, or with a local manufacturer. If you're going into manufacturing, basically you need a drawing for everything that needs to be made.
    149:28
    So at some point, there need to be drawings, and then you have them locally made in China. put the game together in China and that's where you hopefully save the money. Oh, sure. I can see what you're saying. But if you imagine, say, we produce the Mafia in China, the game is made with Daddy Williams parts.
    149:51
    Well, you can't import those parts into China. They're not readily available in China because all the parts made in China are metric. Right. So you'd have to redesign the game Either in a metric form Or using parts which HomePin already make Or you then have to HomePin is making Flipper Max and Targets And all that kind of stuff But again, they're all metric So you'd have to redesign the game Rework the geometry Respec it Not saying it's not possible In fact, it's probably a lot easier than Trying to do it all domestically But it's not a simple case of, oh well, you know... It's not a copy-paste, it's not a Williams Valley game, build it in China, dead easy, you know, it's a bit more complicated. It'll become easier over years, of course, because Homepin will build up their repertoire of parts and drawings and manufacturing capabilities over there, so that kind of stuff. You know, at the moment the only manufacturing they do over there are the parts for Thunderbird, you know, as far as pinball goes. so after they've made two, three, four models, they'll have a lot more range of mechanisms and parts that people can choose from if they want to go that route. Yes, I agree. Right, so, okay. Let's hope something like that will happen. Dan, so what else have we got?
    151:21
    Well, your local manufacturing company or design company, I guess, Dutch Pinball they are still not actually in a position to produce any games either with ARA or Zytec but there has been a little bit of news there so do you want to break up the date on what's happening? Well, Dutch Pinball announced earlier this summer that after the summer holiday they had a meeting scheduled for August 29th with their former contract manufacturer, ARA, or A-R-A, whatever you want to call them.
    152:08
    That meeting took place, and a day later, Dutch Pimble sent out a newsletter that the lawyers had met and talked, and that they are looking to set up a new meeting within two to three weeks, which means that there is at least reason to continue talking. So that's a good thing. And basically each party is now, the lawyers of each party are talking to their respective parties to see whether they come up with some sort of deal or what they would like to get out of it. Or I don't know. but at least everybody is talking to the parties involved. And, well, that's about the news. So as far as you're aware, there's no actual movement in manufacturing any games at the moment? No, sadly, no. I wish there was. Not with RR or with Zytec? No, actually, I did hear from Zytec, and they were wondering, like, did you hear anything from Dutch Bimble? I was like, that's not a good sign.
    153:20
    No, I think that's probably not a good sign, no. But I guess Dutch Bimble have been focusing on this court case.
    153:30
    We know that they supplied, like, over 140 pages of material for the court case, which after Ara decided, like, okay, let's talk to these guys. So they have obviously been working on the court case in order to make sure that they, if they go to court, that they have the best representation possible for them and that they covered everything that they need to cover in order to make the best impression on a judge, I would say. Sure. 140 pages is a lot of documentation and it requires a lot of pouring over by lawyers and the more time lawyers spend doing anything, the more money it's going to cost. Right. So I'm sure they would much rather come to an amicable settlement. Well, I'd say both sides would rather do that, but maybe ARA don't. Ara always seems to have had an ulterior motive in trying to run Dutch pinball into the ground one way or the other. So the only thing that I fear right now is, okay, based on the information that I know,
    154:59
    which is mostly coming from Dutch pinball, I have to admit, but the way I understood it, Ara has now twice tried to derail Dutch Bingle.
    155:12
    My only fear is, okay, so they don't want to go to court, but what makes people think that they won't try it a third time?
    155:22
    Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Not a partner you can work with, for the sounds of it. Right, so I'm really curious what they are talking about, and, oh well, I don't know any details. I haven't talked to Barry or Jaap recently, so I can't... I really don't know what they have been discussing so far.
    155:44
    There will be more news in the next couple of weeks, going on that. Yes, it's definitely a subject that will be part of the next podcast, I think, although I really hope it would be nice to report some good news from them. Absolutely, yeah. For once. Okay, talking of things Dutch before we move on to our last manufacturer I think it's probably worth mentioning about the Dutch Pinball Open coming up in November because from speaking to various people in the UK they weren't really aware that it was happening so I've been educated to that fact because originally there wasn't going to be a Dutch pinball open this year. Yeah. That was the plan. Anyway, after last year's huge show at the Avignon with the 400-plus machines in that amazing spaceship-shaped building, the feeling was, as I understood at the time, that there's no way they're going to be able to replicate that kind of thing so they have a year off, really, and try and come back bigger. Well, at least somewhere near the size of that for the following year. But that changed, and now there is a DPO. Is it a DPO Expo? It will be a DPO Expo, yes. Okay, so give us the details. Okay. Actually, I will be involved in the Expo part of the event.
    157:17
    Obviously, since the Dutch pinball open, there will be a big main tournament. There will be a women's tournament. There will be a kids' tournament. I think there might be either a country or a team tournament, something like that. So plenty of tournaments. They have a website. Go there and find all the info.
    157:35
    There is an expo part with seminars that I will be hosting. We will be doing our So You Think You Know Pinball quiz.
    157:49
    And there will be two special guests flown in from the U.S. talking about either their pinball design career or their career in making artwork for pinball machines. So there's one artist coming over and there is one pinball designer coming over. But since they plan to reveal those names, I think later this week one and then next week the other, I'm not going to spoil that over here, but if you're in the Netherlands, I think those are two very interesting names so even if you're not in the Netherlands if you're in the UK or Germany or Belgium or France or Italy whatever, you might want to come over because I think the seminar part of the expo will be very interesting as well Absolutely, so that takes place 10th and 11th November I think, is that right? Right, and they are going back to the venue in Drunen where they already had several earlier Dutch Pinball Open events. So those who have visited those are familiar with the location, except for the fact that apparently the entire venue has been updated or reconstructed. Re-served. Yes, exactly. But they have a nice, they should still have a very nice theatre room with really like cinema-type seats with a stage and all that kind of stuff, which is ideal for seminars. And I think the plan is also to play the finals on the stage if the stage is at least sturdy enough, because apparently if you would bounce on the floor, the pinball machines could tilt. So, oh well. Yeah, well, it wouldn't be the only tournament that has that problem. But yes, I've certainly been there for the, well, I guess probably the last three, well, probably every time they had a DPO at that venue, I think I've been there. And, yeah, obviously reports on pinballnews.com slash shows slash DPO 2014, DPO 2015, DPO 2016. What's the DPO? Yeah, I think you're plugging your website. Yeah. If you want to see what the venue looks like and... Looks like? And the theatre. Well, it's going to be the same size, isn't it? It's going to have probably the same layout, the machines, and the theatre is going to be about the same. And anyway, so you can see what the place in Druden looks like. And it's certainly something that seemed absolutely ideal to hold a pinball show up until the point where you went to the A.Voulon last year, where that was even more ideal. Right.
    160:53
    But only if you've got 400 machines, though. Right. And the place in Brunan, the former automobile museum there, is a lovely place and very good for accommodation in the area as well. Right. So I'm pretty sure we'll mention it next month as well, because then we can discuss the special guests that will be on the show. Yep.
    161:21
    Okay, so it should be a fun show. So if you have no other plans the weekend of November 10th and 11th, then I recommend the Dutch Pinball Open Expo.
    161:34
    Okay. So our last manufacturer that we haven't mentioned yet is Chicago Gaming. Actually, there are two manufacturers we haven't mentioned yet. Oh, are there? But let's go with Chicago Gaming first.
    161:49
    Obviously, Monster Bash will be their next remake. That was sort of confirmed last month. It was. And apparently, Chicago Gaming put out an announcement that they were looking for testers to come over to the factory and basically play the game for a couple of hours to see whether it behaves like it should.
    162:22
    Testers are also allowed to play with the settings that can be adjusted inside the coin door. So they are making progress in the development, and if you're looking for testers, I'd say you're pretty far along. So that's a good thing.
    162:43
    Yeah, it is interesting that they're getting people to come along and do that kind of testing, which is kind of operating system level testing, which you think would be common to all the machines,
    162:55
    rather than it being something that's specific for lots of ash and such. So why are they looking for testers for doing Coindor menus and that kind of stuff, that should be part of the base of the system. The way I understood it was more that somebody asked whether they would be allowed to change settings that you can adjust in the Coindor menu, like set it to more goals or less goals, or turn extra ball off, or that kind of stuff. It's not so much to test that menu, but it's more like... So they want people to basically treat the game like they would treat it when they would own it, and see if there are any bugs that they still need to look after. Which I think is a good thing.
    163:50
    Oh, absolutely, yes. No one wants to encounter all those things after the game goes into production, because that's a pain to fix. to know how difficult it is to up, well, not difficult necessarily, but how people tend not to update their software necessarily, particularly operators, when it wants the games on location. If there are any critical bugs in there, they need to iron them out very early on. Right. So, our last manufacturer then. Yes, that would be Deep Root Pinball, who announced that they hired Paul Ferris as an artist for at least one or more of their upcoming games. Absolutely, yes. Although I don't think we can call them a manufacturer yet. They haven't actually manufactured anything. But they are certainly showing every sign of being a major force in pinball manufacturing with having hired basically anybody who's anybody who wasn't already tied up with a contract with another manufacturer. Deep Root seem to be out there hoovering up all the talent they can find to make their games the best they can be, I guess. Right. And then it all comes down to whether...
    165:07
    I mean, designing a game is one thing and then it comes down to manufacturing. So I'm really rooting for Deep Root that they actually can put that together as well because we've seen with other companies that the manufacturing part is a beast on its own. Yeah, it would be interesting to see whether they decide to tackle that whole issue themselves and try and set up their own manufacturing facility or do the same kind of thing that Multimorphic did and get contract manufacturers in the area, also in Texas, of course, to actually build the assemblies and assemble the games for them under their auspices and with their control on quality to make sure that everything is constructed as it should be. But, yes, you say, actually setting up a manufacturing facility for yourself is, particularly when you're talking about the number of different models and the, I'm guessing, the quantity of machines that they're looking to produce, that's quite an undertaking. and although we've seen a lot of big names join Deep Root in the design and artists and sound areas, we haven't heard a lot of news about any sort of factory or production line expertise being brought on board. Not to say that it hasn't happened, but it hasn't made the headlines yet. Well, the difference is they are in Texas and I guess, well, I wouldn't say that all the leaks are coming from Chicago because that's not the case, but if certain leaks occur due to the geographical position of certain people, being in Texas may be an advantage for not having stuff leaked. Oh I agree but there have been quite a few announcements of people who have been joining Deep Root on social media and Deep Root themselves I think have been promoting the fact that they've hired this talent but I haven't heard anything much outside the names that you already know we're not hearing people who are production line experts or know about manufacturing and the whole processes that go into that. But not that we necessarily would. Maybe the people who would be involved in that are not people that we'd be that familiar with anyway. That could very well be the case. And it could also be that Deepwood will be starting announcing those people, if they would be, anytime soon. I don't know. Yeah, we need to be soon. They're going to produce or have games ready for sale in March next year following the Texas show. Right. Yep, let's see what happens next. Best of luck to Deep Root and to everyone involved with them. Right, okay. So, now, before we close off, let's head back to Gary at the UK Pinball, sorry, the UK Pinfest. We almost forgot, but, so, we'll leave the closing up to Gary.
    168:35
    So, I'm going to say goodbye for now. Thank you for listening to this podcast. and I look forward to either seeing you in Vancouver at the Vancouver Flipout, which is the upcoming weekend, or else at other shows. Yes, absolutely. And same here. I'll be at Vancouver Flipout and Pinball Expo and Dutch Pinball Expo and a number of other shows over the coming month. But as you say, we'll leave the closing words to Gary, who's reporting live from the UK Pinfest show. Over to you, Gary. Okay, yes.
    169:16
    Sorry, Gary, I can't hear you. Oh, no. Gary? Gary, are you there? Are you still reading Pinball Magazine number five?
    169:29
    I'm still reading number three. Gary, come in. No, no, okay. Yeah, we hear lots of noise, but we don't hear you. Can you speak louder?
    169:43
    Well, we give them a good chance. Okay. Oh, well. So that's it for this time. If you haven't ordered Pinball Magazine No. 5 yet, then please go to www.pinball-magazine.com and order it there, or get your copy at the Vancouver Flipout this weekend. Thank you for now, and until next month. Bye-bye.