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The Pinball Show: Scooby Doo Pinball w/Bug & Spooky Luke

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 37m·analyzed·Dec 8, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Spooky Pinball launches Scooby-Doo Where Are You with star voice cast, 5-player gameplay, and $7.7k–$9.7k pricing.

Summary

Spooky Pinball reveals Scooby-Doo Where Are You pinball on launch day with Bug and Spooky Luke as guests. The game features the original 1969 series IP, an all-star voice cast (Frank Welker, Matthew Lillard, Greg Griffin, Kate Micucci), 4,000+ recorded callouts, five-player gameplay, wide-body layout with standard-width core mechanics, injection-molded sculpts, and aggressive pricing ($7,769–$9,769) well below competitor premium models. Production limited to 1,969 units starting December 9th.

Key Claims

  • Scooby-Doo pinball license was previously held by another party but lapsed; Spooky discovered it available after initial failed efforts

    medium confidence · Bug mentions 'a rumor that somebody had attained that license in the past and either it lapsed' and references being involved in original plans that were abandoned before later relicensing.

  • Voice actors were re-recorded to dub over original series footage, creating matching speech for iconic clips

    high confidence · Bug explicitly states: 'we had to voice over the original series with the actors that we hired for the game' to match clips with new actor performances (e.g., Matthew Lillard dubbing Shaggy's original footage).

  • The game contains over 4,000 recorded callouts across five voice actors

    high confidence · Spooky Luke states: 'we checked the total number of recorded call outs and it was over 4,000 that's insane it was the stupidest long script that we'll probably ever write for a pinball machine.'

  • Game development began approximately three months before Halloween Ultraman launch on a cold winter night

    high confidence · Bug recalls: 'What was that, about three months before we launched Halloween Ultraman we started it?' and 'I'll never forget the night that we started it. It was a very cold winter night.'

  • Scooby-Doo is a five-player game with each gang member playable as a character with unique perks/mechanics

    high confidence · Luke explains: 'It's so random, we know. If you and like four of your friends want to play, you each get to pick a member of the gang...each of them are good at specific things...Fred is good at making traps, Velma better at finding clues.'

  • Wide-body design uses a standard-width fast-shooting core with wide-body features on sides (bravery meter, mechs)

    high confidence · Luke describes: 'I wanted to take just our typical standard body layout set it in the center of the wide body make a fast shooting standard width game for the most part but then have that extra room on the sides.'

  • All 16 custom sculpts are injection-molded after $600k+ tooling investment

Notable Quotes

  • “we're going to pack this thing, and we're going to find ways to get the costs where they need to be...I can see where the bill of materials goes wrong...we tried to focus on the things that are best bang for your buck.”

    Spooky Luke @ mid-interview — Explains cost discipline behind aggressive under-$10k pricing despite wide-body and premium IP/voice talent.

  • “This game is what we wanted it to look like. The characters are what we wanted them to be. Every single actor in the game is exactly who we specifically wanted for the game...It is one of the most true-to-designer-image games probably out there.”

    Bug @ mid-interview — Highlights creative control from Warner Bros. licensor, suggesting permissive partnership approach unusual for major IP holders.

  • “You don't want to mess with nostalgia. That's a strong emotion. And it's hard to create that coherent nostalgia in a product such as pinball...there's so many check boxes that you can swing and miss on.”

    Bug @ early-mid interview — Articulates design pressure and risk around beloved IP; demonstrates community awareness of execution sensitivity.

  • “there's no one masking. There's no guy under the Charlie mask or anything like that. He's a robot. That's incredible. And that's pretty unique to me.”

    Spooky Luke @ late-mid interview — Shows detailed lore knowledge of obscure villain (Charlie the Robot) and reveals Snow Ghost inspiration for game's winter development narrative.

  • “the stupidest long script that we'll probably ever write for a pinball machine it was crazy the length of the script.”

    Spooky Luke @ mid-interview — Humorous acknowledgment of unprecedented callout volume (4,000+); indicates scope escalation in voice production.

  • “I grew up in a generation of memes, and it just feels appropriate to kind of tease like that...It's really cool when people go back and post like, oh, they were wearing a Scooby-Doo shirt like a year ago.”

    Bug @ mid-interview — Explains intentional pre-launch viral marketing via Scooby-Doo merch/apparel worn at public shows; validates community speculation.

Entities

Spooky PinballcompanyBugpersonSpooky LukepersonScooby-Doo Where Are YougameFrank WelkerpersonMatthew LillardpersonGreg GriffinpersonKate MicuccipersonZach Minney

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Spooky Luke reveals technical design details (wide-body with standard-width core, 16 injection-molded sculpts, $600k+ tooling investment) on launch day to build credibility and address playability concerns.

    high · Luke addresses preemptive doubt: 'this is, and this is a big, I think, concern for a lot of people because a lot of people are like, oh, floaty wide body...but from the start something that I want to do that was like really unique is like i wanted to take just our typical standard body layout.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Spooky positioning Scooby-Doo as value/quality alternative to premium-priced competitor wide-bodies; cost discipline via BOM optimization and selective feature investment (voice talent > extraneous toys).

    high · Luke explains: 'we set out...we're going to pack this thing, and we're going to find ways to get the costs where they need to be...focus on the things that are best bang for your buck.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Spooky committed to capturing nostalgia and designer intent across all dimensions (voice, sculpts, theme, mechanics); creative control from licensor enabled 'true-to-designer-image' execution.

    high · Bug states: 'This game is what we wanted it to look like...It is one of the most true-to-designer-image games probably out there.'

  • ?

    leak_detection: Pre-launch marketing via intentional Scooby-Doo merch drops (shirts, blankets, plush dogs) worn at shows for 1–2 years prior; community successfully connected dots and speculated on upcoming title.

    high · Bug confirms: 'I've seen dogs at shows that look like Scooby. I've seen blankets with Scooby-Doo...It's really cool when people go back and post like, oh, they were wearing a Scooby-Doo shirt like a year ago.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.291

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:11
The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. Hey, what's going on, everybody? It's me, Zach Minney from the Pinball Show and Straight Down the Middle. I have a very special episode for you guys today. I'm totally pumped. That's because I have some of my friends with me, not just any friends, friends that make pinball. How about that? Not just any pinball. They made one of the biggest, most dynamic, nostalgic themes in any pinball ever. It just came out, y'all. It just came out. It's spooky pinball. It's Scooby-Doo, where are you? It's our friends, Spooky Bug and Spooky Luke. What's going on, fellas? We're doing good, we're doing good. It's been a good day. It has been a good day. Now, we are recording the day of... I don't know if this isn't sales launch day. This is, I'm going to show the world what this game looks like day. Is that fair? Yeah, it's the full reveal of the game day. and how do you guys have energy to talk to me thank you by the way of even coming on here and entertaining the audience thank you we've been riding an adrenaline high for about let's see time like 12 hours straight now you're getting pincinatti yep right what are you putting in the water pincinatti oh my it was that show was quite the experience that'd be a fun story for this episode even as like the show the the story of how we went about that teaser trailer and everything that went down in Pincenetti and working all that out because that was a crazy experience. We'll probably never have something quite like that again. Absolutely not. You guys were kind enough to let me in kind of on the behind the scenes on how you had to pull that all together. We are going to talk about that as well as everything else when it comes to Spooky's Scooby-Doo. Where are you? Is that the official title of the game? Scooby-Doo? Where are you? So, yeah, it is Scooby-Doo. Where are you? A lot of people are going to call it Scooby-Doo Pinball. The game is based on that original series. series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? So, yeah, that's what we're rolling with for that. You mean to tell me you got the original, the very first, the most nostalgic pieces of many people's childhoods and adulthoods, instead of the newer stuff, huh? So, that was obviously one of the first conversations we had. It's like, okay, we know we're going to try and do Scooby-Doo here, but what version of Scooby-Doo are we going to do? Is it going to be the live action, the original, the modern series, the disco episodes from the 70s what are we going to try and do here and it honestly it wasn't much of a conversation we pretty much unanimously agreed original series is the most nostalgic everybody's favorite somehow like from 1969 to when I was a little kid to when Luke was a little kid to when everybody was a little kid I think everybody's favorites growing up was the original series so it wasn't too much of a discussion to go with that absolutely I can't believe you guys were able to get this is a huge license. You were able to get it. What was it like? Talk about that timeline. Like, when did you set out to get this? Was this something that came to you? Did you, did you go out to Hanna-Barbera and try to get, I'm assuming Hanna-Barbera holds the license rights to this. How did that all come about? Well, it is Warner Brothers. I don't know when, but Warner Brothers did purchase Hanna-Barbera, I believe. And at the time we were still working closely with David Venice and he had contacts through Warner brothers, obviously. I mean, we've worked with Warner brothers before on the Jetsons. Um, Warner brothers also purchased adult swim while we were in the middle of our build of Rick and Morty. So the foot was in the door already. It wasn't too complicated of a process to go there. And then it was just looking at IPs and you know, we know what one stood out to us. Yeah. I mean, the thing that's confusing to me is that it was still available, but yeah right why is there not a scooby-doo pinball by now like i just we should be on the scooby-doo remake part three by now like the fact that no one touched it yet we were like well obviously that and and the third iteration would sell as well exactly it would sell as well there's a rumor that somebody had attained that license in the past and either it lapsed uh that's what I've heard on the street, you know, I hang around the mean streets. You know, I mean, we were involved in that, and I honestly don't even know what ended up happening with that.

high confidence · Bug states: 'we literally spent six figures on injection molding tooling' and 'There's 16 custom molded sculpts everything looks custom molded.'

  • Frank Welker was intimidating but turned out to be 'goofy' and improvisational during recording sessions

    high confidence · Luke recalls: 'frank welker was like the most intimidating to approach...he was the goofiest most fun guy...he breaks off into scooby's voice randomly for fun and just starts talking about things.'

  • “1969 really just was the sweet spot. Halloween Ultraman was 1750. We didn't want to vastly overreach that, but we also knew we could definitely do more.”

    Bug @ late-interview — Reveals production philosophy: 1,969-unit limit balances demand elasticity post-Ultraman while using original show year as dual-meaning constraint.

  • “every single person here has heard frank welker in something whether they know it or not”

    Zach Minney (citing Carrie Hardy comment) @ mid-interview — Underscores Frank Welker's ubiquity in animation voice work; validates choice of most-recognized talent in industry.

    • person
    Warner Bros.company
    Hanna-Barberacompany
    Halloween Ultramangame
    David Veniceperson
    Matt from Back Alleyperson
    Rick and Mortygame
    Casey Kasemperson
    The Pinball Showmedia
    Dennis Creaselperson
    Carrie Hardyperson
    Pinsidemedia
    ?

    licensing_signal: Warner Bros. licensing provided creative freedom unusual for major IP holders; licensor actively praised game concept and encouraged design direction.

    high · Bug states: 'we were very, very fortunate that they kind of let us run with a lot of what we wanted to do...he was always like, oh, my God, this is awesome, guys.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Spooky Luke (technical/mechanical designer) bringing innovation to wide-body playfield layout by balancing standard-width shooting core with wide-body feature space; first major wide-body for the manufacturer.

    high · Luke describes design philosophy: 'I wanted to take just our typical standard body layout set it in the center of the wide body make a fast shooting standard width game...but then have that extra room on the sides.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Matt from Back Alley credited as sculptor; indicates potential freelance/outsourced sculpting partnership for Spooky on premium custom-molded components.

    medium · Zach mentions 'Matt from Back Alley who did all the sculpts' in context of Scrappy-Doo discussion; implies external talent relationship.

  • $

    market_signal: Aggressive under-$10k pricing for premium Scooby-Doo (Collector's Edition $9,769) positioned as market relief relative to competitor $13k+ premium models; cost discipline narrative.

    high · Zach cites 'competitors out there...creating pinball machines where their top model is $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 more than your top model' and praises sub-$10k CE pricing.

  • ?

    announcement: Official launch reveal of Scooby-Doo Where Are You pinball on December 9 with 1,969-unit production limit and three-tier pricing ($7,769–$9,769).

    high · Zach Minney confirms 'December 9th, 10 a.m. Central Time. These will be going on sale' with explicit pricing and unit limits announced.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Three-tier model (Standard/Bloodsuckers/Collector's Edition) with shared core gameplay but cosmetic/topper differentiation; premium includes anime-style topper; cabinet butter option available.

    high · Zach confirms 'three trim levels...standard, the Bloodsuckers edition, and the Collectors edition' with pricing $7,769/$8,769/$9,769 and mentions $1,400 butter cabinet option.

  • ?

    business_signal: Production limit of 1,969 units (original series year) deliberate dual-meaning: honoring IP heritage while signaling scarcity/FOMO; balanced upward from Halloween Ultraman's 1,750 units.

    high · Bug explains: '1969 really just was the sweet spot. Halloween Ultraman was 1750. We didn't want to vastly overreach that, but we also knew we could definitely do more. So we thought 1969 really just was the sweet spot.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Voice actor re-dubbing strategy used to legally preserve original series footage while using new talent; creative workaround for licensing complexity.

    high · Bug explains: 'we had to voice over the original series with the actors that we hired for the game...original Shaggy's Casey Kasem, we hire Matthew Lillard to do Shaggy.'

    • 4:52
    There were some original plans to work with it, and we kind of moved away from it and totally forgot. And then we came back, and we were like, we need to lock up some licenses and get things rolling, and just came back up, and nobody had it. So we're like, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Especially when I hear you guys have damn near all of the assets that you want from this IP. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of the concerns. Like, people thought they were going to be short on, you know, clips or anything like that. Like, these are what is already in the game is, like, some lengthy pieces. I mean, there's some really cool mode buildups. There's original show stuff there, man. Oh, really? So we have original clips from the series that everyone loves. A ton of them. Wow. Like a ton. Wow. And we'll get into the call-outs as we talk about the specifics of this game. But what about the – we got the visuals. What about the call-outs from the show? Do you get to use any of those, or is it just the custom call-outs from these voice actors? So licensing is really weird and complicated. Absolutely. And what we actually went and did was we had to voice over the original series with the actors that we hired for the game. So with those clips, you will have matching speech to those clips from the Shaggy. So original Shaggy's Casey Kasem, we hire Matthew Lillard to do Shaggy. So when clips are playing, it'll be Matthew Lillard voicing Shaggy's clips from the original series so that all of that matches together. Wow. It actually sounds better that way. It sounds incredible. It makes the whole game very cohesive, and we still get to use that iconic footage, the things that everybody wants to see from the original series, while still using the actors that we hired. It makes it all very cohesive. Very cohesive. Very nice, yes. Jumping ahead, we know that we get the famed and the iconic Frank Welker, who is one of the best animation voiceover actors of eternity of all time. He has played hundreds upon hundreds of different characters, most notably that of Fred from Scooby-Doo, as well as Scooby-Doo in a lot of iterations. We get my favorite, Matthew Lillard. Gosh, I love that man. He's playing Shaggy. He played it on the live films as well as a lot of the animated series. We get Greg Griffin, who plays Daphne, did so on a lot of the animation stuff nowadays, and Kate Micucci as well with Velma. I like Kate because she's a comedian and I just like her work I didn't actually even know that Kate voiced Velma for some of the most recent work on Scooby-Doo so you got all of them and like you said cohesively each of them legit plays those roles but now we get this gang together and we dub over some of the original stuff that we're used to as well as some custom call-outs in the game this is going to be one hell of a time if we're talking about Warner Brothers or Hannah Barbera, whatever we want to talk about, Warner Brothers, what were their goals for this project? Were they entertained by the idea of a pinball gaming product? This is something they're familiar with as they've done video games for decades, but what were their goals for this project? Did they have any restrictions where they're like, absolutely no, or were they excited about it, or were they just like, okay, you guys want to license our product? Cool, here's the guidelines. Yeah, so it's always a fun experience working with licensors on pinball because there is hands down no other industry that uses assets like pinball does. It is the most unique industry in the entire world probably when it comes to licensing IPs and using them for anything. Because you're asking and using so much different things. And we were very, very fortunate that they kind of let us run with a lot of what we wanted to do on this game. We had an absolutely wonderful rep who he walked us through. He's the best. He walked us through everything, and he's very good at explaining, here's what you can do, here's what you can't do. We would explain how we were planning on using things. Everything we turned in, he was always like, oh, my God, this is awesome, guys. This is so cool. You could tell the excitement that he had for it as well as he would pass it off to his coworkers and the rest of the giant chain that is Warner Brothers approvals. But he was absolutely terrific to work with, and this whole project was just a very pleasant experience for us, which it's very intimidating going into a company the size of Warner Brothers to work with because you don't know what you're going to get. And at the end of the day, they are so massive, they are going to get what they want to get. So we had a wonderful experience, and I can't thank our representative enough that we worked with for it.
    9:50
    And yeah, when you can just do what you want to do on a game, it shows. This game is what we wanted it to look like. The characters are what we wanted them to be. Every single actor in the game is exactly who we specifically wanted for the game. It is the best lineup we could have gotten, in our opinion. And just everything about the direction of the game is exactly what we wanted. It is one of the most true-to-designer-image games probably out there. Wow. Y'all are pumping me up.
    10:26
    Calm down here. Got to calm down. I'm sweating in front of the audience. Okay. Can you tell us, Bug and Luke, what's the premise of this game? Am I playing through the original series, or did you create a new world of adventures? the storyline, player perspective. Talk about the arc of this game. What am I doing? It's pretty straightforward as far as a Scooby-Doo game goes. You start the game. You're going to select which member of the gang you feel like playing as. Oh, neat. And then you're going and you're solving mysteries. So we handpicked a whole bunch of the favorite episodes from that original series, Captain Cutler, Minor 49er, Space Coop, my personal favorite, Charlie the Robot. and what you're doing is you're playing around and you're solving those mysteries you're finding clues you're collecting scooby snacks you're you're loading up the mystery machine mech for multi balls and you're doing all of the things in a scooby-doo game that you will want to do i like that what about um you said i get to pick one of the five characters that i want to be yeah yep every game so it's also a five-player game so if you and four what is that a five-player game.
    11:38
    It's so random, we know. If you and like four of your friends want to play, you each get to pick a member of the gang. It comes with different perks and meanings, picking which character you do pick, because obviously each of them are good at specific things. So yeah, and then it's a five-player game, because there's five members of the gang. We don't want anybody to be left out. Like it's a five-player game, because we can make it five players if we want to. There's nothing holding you back. You can just do that. That's incredible. So they have different perks. Is the player going to learn these perks as they play this game? Or maybe could you give us a little hint, maybe a little nugget on one or two of the characters? So, yeah, for example, if you select Fred, Fred is obviously very good at making traps, coming up with plans. So you will have perks that come along with those aspects of the game. and we're doing our very best to make sure every single character plays like their character. We want Scooby to be more scared, like when you're playing as Scooby and things like that. Velma should be better at finding clues because she's janky. It's all about clues.
    12:47
    Oh, that's really cool. Okay, we won't give away too much there. You've got to play it, guys. All right. Now, let's consider how iconic, how nostalgic, how beloved Scooby is. I don't want to make you all nervous, but Scooby-Doo and the gang are cross-generations. They go across generations. Did you feel a sense of responsibility, maybe pride, anxiety, bringing this cartoon behemoth to the world of pinball? Can you talk a little bit about the mixed feelings you probably had during this project? This needs to be the game that we knock out of the park. We all loved it. We were all watching it when we were kids. We're like, we need to get together on this, pour everything in it, and just absolutely knock it out of the park. And I think that people are going to feel like we did that. The pressure was 100% there. I mean, we knew what we were working with, and it's like, you can't let everybody down. It's so popular and beloved. You don't want to mess up something that everybody has so much passion for that they grew up with. You don't want to mess with nostalgia. That's a strong emotion. And it's hard to create. That coherent nostalgia in a product such as pinball. There's so many, and you guys have heard probably even talk about it before, so many check boxes that you can swing and miss on. And they're so huge, each of these different categorizations. And whenever you guys launch this sizzle reel, the photos, the details of this, everybody, in my opinion, was left with their mouth wide open because the art is just phenomenal. the sculpts, the toys, the mechs, the layout. This thing is jam-packed, loaded. And then on top of that, you sprinkle in all of the audio, video assets. You gave us a topper for the CE model. It all looks like it checks out. When I look at this game and when thousands of other people look at this game, guys, they're thinking, ooh, what does that do? Oh, wow, I've not seen that before. Look at all these wire forms. Look at the colors. This is Scooby-Doo. They just created a physical representation of Scooby-Doo that I get to interact with and play on location or at home for years to come. I think a lot of people are going to be very thankful that you've brought their childhood into physical form here. Any interesting, any funny stories working with either IP holders or the team? Anything that went on that you weren't expecting or anything like that during this project? uh so frank welker was like the most intimidating to approach because he is without a doubt like the the biggest voice acting name we've ever worked with probably ever could work with he's a voice god yep yeah literally like the every single person carrie hardy said a great thing in one of his videos he's like every single person here has heard frank welker in something whether they know it or not and that's probably statistically accurate yes and he's still got it yeah he he's also yeah he's just this insane professional and i was very intimidated going into that recording session with him like uh this is this is a big one like don't mess this up don't be an idiot he was the goofiest most fun guy oh really i think i'll probably ever get to work with he just he breaks off into scooby's voice randomly for fun and just starts talking about things he would break away from his lines and start improv-ing and making jokes at me because i was i was like sick at the time and i needed soup or something and he would start like jokes about that in scooby's voice he's like oh look i'm gonna get drunk and things like that or just change up his lines and start going back and forth between fred and scooby because he does both and it was just the most surreal weird experience like oh my god i'm sitting here like listening and talking to the real scooby-doo you're talking like the scooby-doo and inspector gadget he's an inspector you guys are too young i grew up on inspector gadget that cartoon oh i loved it the the ak ak and mars attacks he's he's the martian and mars attacks i didn't know that okay he's he's the lion lord and the lion king like exactly like you don't even know where all you've heard Frank Welker, you've heard him in just the most random of places. But it was just a crazy experience. And that goes for each of them, though. As soon as each character turned it on, it was like, wow, wow, that's Shaggy. I am listening to the Shaggy do call outs that we wrote. Yeah. And Matthew Lillard did the live representation. So he probably went into like a physical demeanor and facial demeanor while doing said voices, too. Yeah, he did. He definitely did. He can't just like sit there and go, okay, shoot the left ground for this. He has to get into it. He's like, like, and then he gets to that line. Like he has to like physically lead into it. It was so cool. Was it, was there any call outs that when you were directing them to do some of the speech stuff, guys, anything where they were like, what the hell am I saying? Like, what does that even mean? It's like a pinball term or something where they're like, what do you want me to say? yeah there was uh each of them kind of questioned lion man they're like what of course you have to throw that in there yeah but but we got each of the characters saying lion man a couple of them did stop and they're like wait what you're like it's fine go with it i still remember my rick and morty machine saying lion man or whatever yeah and matthew lillard i i snuck a couple lines from scream in there because i'm an absolutely massive scream fan son of a bitch did you really he picked up on it right away he was like oh this is from screen okay i get it but are is so there's some nuggets in there huh oh that tons yes we we checked the total number of recorded call outs and it was over 4 000 that's insane it was the stupidest long script that we'll probably ever write for a pinball machine it was crazy the length of the script. At the end of each session, each voice actor was just thoroughly angry at you, but you were like, you got what we needed. Hopefully we don't do scream now because Lillard's going to be pissed at us.
    19:11
    That's awesome. Speaking of nuggets, you guys have been hinting at this, whether you mean to or not, but over the last couple of years, I've seen dogs at shows that look like Scooby. I've seen blankets with Scooby-Doo. hell, Bug, I've seen you wearing a Scooby-Doo shirt during reveals. Is this something that you guys have done just to have fun with one another? Is it a wink-wink, or is it something like, hey, once you guys see our new game, if you connect the dots like Scooby and his gang here, we've been leaving some little clues here and there. I mean, we grew up in a generation of memes, and it just feels appropriate to kind of tease like that a little bit and whatnot. But no, it is also super cool when people go back and post like, oh, they were wearing a Scooby-Doo shirt like a year ago. So they like knew this long and blah, blah, blah. It's really cool to do that and to see people find hints like, they had a Scooby-Doo blanket in Texas in 2018. Like how long have they been sitting on this or things like that? Now the big question is, have we hinted at any other topics? I was going to say, what shirts do I wear? Expansions.
    20:26
    Yeah. Everybody's going to come up to you now every time you're wearing a shirt they don't like. No. Don't do that one. Yeah, that's right. All right, I've got to ask you guys before we get into the meat and potatoes of this game. If you had to pick a favorite character from the gang, you had to pick a favorite character and a favorite villain, each of you, who would you pick? I am pretty particular to Shaggy. I don't know. It's really hard to pick a favorite. Do you identify with Shaggy? A little bit. I got the chin fuzz. Yes, you do. And I got the long neck, kind of scrawny. You're skinny. I don't eat a lot. You don't eat that much wheat? No.
    21:08
    You drive a mystery machine van? I mean, okay. I don't think I had a favorite one going in, but after doing this game and everything like that, I think that Fred was definitely my favorite through Frank. I mean, Frank was awesome. And, yeah. I think he's – is Fred kind of the leader? He feels like the leader of the group. Fred's definitely the leader. And he's – I think he's low-key also the funniest in the group. He's become the funniest in the group. Like, if you watch some of the newer seasons and whatnot, because just because the game Scooby-Doo, where are you, we still researched, like, a lot more than that. and uh in the newer shows fred is really funny i can relate to that i do a podcast and i'm the low-hanging funny fruit that is scooby-doo and shaggy but it's my co-host dennis creasel is very fred like a snarky fred so yeah i can i can understand that what about your favorite villains mine's always been charlie the robot it's like an ultra man thing like what is charlie the robot I'm surprised that's your favorite. So there's just something about the sound design of his character that when I was a kid, he was scary, but not so scary I couldn't watch or anything. Because Scooby-Doo is obviously very kid-friendly. But I always just found the way he walked and the way he sounded, the beep, beep, beep, beep. Everything about him was very memorable and kind of creepy. And also, he's the only villain in the show. There's no unmasking. He was just out there and actually a scary-ass robot. He's just legit. You didn't know that. Yeah. No, like, there's no one, like, he's just a robot. There's no one masking. There's no guy under the Charlie mask or anything like that. He's a robot. That's incredible. And that's pretty unique to me. So Charlie the Robot's always been my favorite villain. Oh, I like that. What about you, Luke? I think Snow Ghost. Snow Ghost has always been a fun one for me, man. That's just, I mean, I'm kind of a, I'm a little Christmas guy. I'll start to finish anyway. so I know. It's like the holidays, you know, snow outside, fireplace, like you can't go wrong. Snow Ghost episode is just so beautiful.
    23:18
    That's right. That's kind of about how we started, honestly. This game just started in a winter. Yeah, we literally just God, what was that, about three months before we launched Halloween Ultraman we started it? Yeah, I was going to say, how long have you guys been working on this thing? Quite a while. I'll never forget the night that we started it. It was a very cold winter night, and we just, Luke and I went into the office. We laid down this big slab of play field because we decided it was wide body. I don't know how we came to that conclusion other than we were just like, we plan on putting as much in it as possible, so let's just do wide body. Okay, so conceptually that started day one. Yeah. Okay.
    24:00
    But, so this is actually something interesting about it. So this is, and this is a big, I think, concern for a lot of people because a lot of people are like, oh, floaty wide body, everything like that, you know? No nobody ever said that Luke I promise So from the start something that I want to do that was like really unique is like i wanted to take just our typical standard body layout set it in the center of the wide body make a fast shooting standard width game for the most part but then have that extra room on the sides for things like the bravery meter and the mechs and everything and if you look at the pictures of the game you'll see a lot of this stuff does run over the sides but at the core of it is a standard body fast shooting. Almost, I guess the base is almost a fan style layout. I guess I used to be kind of an insult, but it's kind of a compliment these days. I don't know. It just depends on the fad. Yeah. But that you, you sneaky little devil, I'm looking at the overhead right now and you are right. Yeah. It's more like a standard, isn't it? But you've got the room for the wide body features. You're shooting standard shots, but you have the space to expand them out into wide body territory, which makes for a very fast-playing wide body. I really like that. So, day one, it started as a wide body. Yeah, and I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised how it plays. I really do. The only thing that I'm a little crusty about at this point in the interview, gentlemen, is that I asked for your favorite characters, and not a damn one of you said Scrappy-Doo. Shame on you. Are you a Scrappy fan? Let me at him. Yes. You know what? I'm that guy. I'll take Jar Jar Binks. I'll take Scrappy-Doo. Yeah, there's five of us. I don't mind him. We're up to five now. It is you two, Matt from Back Alley who did all the sculpts, and one random guy on Pinside. I knew Reiser. He was a smart guy. Very good. So needless to say, I can't even believe I'm asking this question, is Scrappy-Doo in the game at all? No. No, he's not. I can hear people cheering from outside. Yeah. The game's Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Scrappy-Doo didn't show up in that show, so no, he's not in the game. And I don't know if that's going to disappoint or what.
    26:18
    Because there's some people who wanted just a bash toy. Oh, no. That's just wrong. Some people just actually really wanted him in the game.
    26:29
    Well, I'm going to Pinside right now. I'm boycotting this product. No scrappy-do, no deposit. It's okay. I'm wearing my cargo shorts, so I'm set. All right. We've got three trim levels of this game. You guys are offering the standard, the Bloodsuckers edition, and the Collectors edition. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Now, listeners, you guys have to mark your calendar. December 9th, 10 a.m. Central Time. These will be going on sale. You're limiting this game to 1969 units total. That's so damn clever. That's just my debit card pin number. That's right.
    27:11
    No, it's the year that the show came out, and it somehow also checked exactly where we would want to have our numbers at. Halloween Ultraman was 1750. We didn't want to vastly overreach that, but we also knew we could definitely do more. So we thought 1969 really just was the sweet spot. Seems like quite a few people agree. So I think we found it there. My dad keeps saying, no, 5,000 units.
    27:42
    You're like, yeah, if you're going to put in the hours hammering it all together, Charlie. Well, he's not going to put it together. He doesn't have to build it. That's right. Pricing is a really interesting area of pinball right now. We have seen a big, big growth in pinball over the last five, ten years, so much so that the price continues to go up on a lot of products significantly.
    28:05
    Significantly. Pricing on your product, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Pinball, is a relief to a lot of people. You guys had said, look, gang, we are going to come out with this game. The top-of-the-line model, the CE, is going to be under $10,000. You have competitors out there that are creating pinball machines where their top model is $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $6,000 more than your top model. Your collector's edition, the top model of this game, is coming in at $97.69. Your mid-level game, Bloodsuckers Edition, $87.69. And the standard edition, $77.69. And regardless of the model, you're getting the complete game in each one of them. All of these are subject to shipping costs and taxes as well. But that is pretty substantial. How did you keep costs down but essentially having a wide body, a bigger game, more stuff in it, bigger license? How in the hell did you do that? I guess it's like a two-part thing, right? So, like, when we set out, we set out, we're like, we're going to pack this thing, and we're going to find ways to get the costs where they need to be. We're going to be as efficient as possible. And I mean, through, obviously, I've seen, what, 10, 11 pinwall machines now and everything like that. Like, I can see, I see where the bill of materials goes wrong. I see the pain points, everything like that. So, like, we tried to focus on the things that are, like, best bang for your buck things. The biggest features we could put in the game while also keeping the cost low and everything like that. And that was an ongoing thing. I mean, it just, you had to focus on it all the way through, start to finish. and I think obviously now you can see that and I think people were pretty happy with what they saw when they saw it but also just wanting to really invest in the quality of the game this time. Like, I mean, you can see from the voice talent to the sculpts. I mean, this was, so I guess that's a big point. Like, these are going to be all injection molded sculpts. These are going to be all, this is the first time we went, we literally spent six figures on injection molding tooling we did everything we could right we really there's no plastics there's 16 custom molded sculpts everything looks custom molded there's wire forms everywhere there's mechanisms there's servos there's diverters there's spinners there's magnets we're going to get into all of it but yeah you guys have loaded this thing down and you could have then said hey look y'all the game is loaded so i don't need a license you're like no no it needs one of the greatest licenses ever come to pinball. Well, at least we can have sound-alike voice actors. Well, no. No, we're actually going to have the people that played those characters. Okay, at least video assets. You don't even put an LCD in this, right? No. Actually, we've done that as well. And you know what? We put five players in it. So how about that?
    31:01
    Exactly five. That's insane. For those who are wanting the butter cabinet, you also have an option, basically the option of a butter cabinet for any of the editions. This is coming in at a $1,400 option. What I wanted to do, can you guys explain to people? I've had to answer this question many times today. It's a good question. What in the hell is a butter cabinet? I guess it's basically the same thing as a playfield. It's done. We direct print on it. We clear coat it. This is just as high quality as the playfield in your game. I guess the same automotive clear coat wax your car. You know what I mean? So instead of getting just a printed decal put on the side of a cabinet, it is directly printed onto wood. And then it is clear-coated over the top of that. And in person, it's simply stunning. That's why all of my spooky games have it.
    31:56
    But it is pricey. It is very custom. And I'm going to tell you listeners here, if you ding this thing up, it's not the easiest to fix it. So keep that in mind. But if you want the prettiest version of this and the prettiest way to make this just pop, oh, boy, Buttercab's where it's at. So for you listeners, that's what the Buttercabinet option is. You can have that on your standard bloodsuckers or collectors. And you guys do those in batches, separate batches, right? Yeah, on ongoing order that we never stop ordering. I beg, plead the supplier. I mean, it's just anything I can do. Well, it's probably a lot of work, too. So much. So much. A lot of extra work to the game, but man, it looks good. We're the only company in the entire market that offers it, too, so it's not like it's going anywhere. We want to make sure that we always have that option for people out there. That's fantastic. You guys have always been a family-run operation. You've always been very open to the community. That's why the enthusiasts and fellow gamers love you guys so much. Can we talk about production planning, timeline? line you can't show me these pictures and and not tell me when i want this game in my collection when can i play this game so we're going to be looking at it honestly we're just trying to do everything pretty much the same as we we've been doing in recent years um we'll probably i usually always try to hold the first 30 we're working on a batch of 30 i'll probably hold those for kind of a little extra period so maybe like six weeks or something like that i think we're looking at probably shipping out that first batch of 30 maybe like end of january right around there mid to late january that's gonna come i like i just like to spend some time just going through them making sure there's anything i can catch before they go out so it's a wild wild feeling sending your game out there for the first time like the first time you slap that inspection sticker down and you know it's getting boxed up and sent out it's like well can we just hold on do it for another month and like make sure it's it's a crazy feeling but but we know people don't want to wait forever either so when you guys were able to ramp up when you were creating halloween ultra man it's it seemed like there was just a little bit of weight and then boy you guys were off to the races how far in production are you on previous products you're making are you going to run this concurrently with the additional products you're making i was actually while i was walking around today making a big list demanding a bunch of things like the big mean guy that i am i uh no we'll be wrapping up so i want everything completely tna halloween ultra man wise which are scattered mix of kind of everything out there right now just like odds and ends and everything but uh all those are going to be completely cleaned off by the time we go on christmas break which we do a christmas break every year we just we pay all the employees be off for the week of christmas and new years and just let them go home spend the holidays with family you know reset that just have a good time to themselves to relax and everything like that. So we're going to, we're going to clean all that stuff off the line and we're going to organize the whole shop top to bottom and we're going to come back and yeah, we'll be slamming on Scooby-Doo. We all know that that, I think that was cute. The whole, we let the employees off spooky loop. We know that you are binging your ass on that Hallmark Christmas movie channel with Kleenexes in hand, watching the deers out your window. I have seen, dude, My mom loves the Hallmark, so I have probably seen a thousand hours of Hallmark movies. I mean, so many. No shame in that. No shame in that at all. My favorite holiday movie is Chevy Chase and the Christmas Vacation. You're going to find an audience there with me. I love it. I know it by heart. I'm trying to convince everyone. I want everyone to want a Christmas pinball, man. That's the one.
    35:51
    I'm trying. I'm with you. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm trying. All right. So you guys are going to, just like your other releases, slowly get out the first bundle, slowly increase, and then you'll be hitting the ground running, feeling good with everything. Do you anticipate the entire allotment of 1969 units to be completed, like your other previous products, in 18 months? Yep. Again, it's the same exact thing. we're gonna say 18 months max from launch but we're also gonna try to air that as close we're gonna try to get closer to 12 if we can where will it land probably somewhere around 15 16 17 like it usually does and i think another point to make too because i know like beginning of halloween ultraman a lot of people were like there's no way they're building these things in 18 months zero chance anything like that and then when we started we were just getting out you know maybe 10, 15 games a week. And people were like, Spooky's going to be working on this until 2027. I remember, yeah. Because it's easy to just say, oh, pinball production is like this many games a week. They're doing 30 games a week and that's the way it is all the time. It's not like that. It starts at 10 and then it goes up to 20 and then 30 and then 40. You know what I mean? It's an ongoing ramp up throughout the build. And as everyone gets better and is able to do their job more efficiently, it comes together. cruising at some insane numbers for us during that Halloween production where we, at one point we're hitting 40 a week consistently for a while there. Yeah. While there. And, um, it can't immediately start at 40 a week. I, I try to, but it can't immediately start at that. But it was probably best that you don't start at that either. Exactly. Yes. And, and we know now what we are capable of and 1750 in that time allotment is, yeah, It's doable. We've done it. And 1969 isn't too much more. So it's going to be really comfortable. All right, guys. December 9th at 10 a.m. Central. How do these individuals listening, how do they purchase one of these games? You can buy directly through our website. If you are buying on the day of announcement, you do have to be a Fang Club member. So make sure you sign up for your Spooky Fang Club beforehand. Otherwise, you can purchase through one of our many authorized dealers. Oh, yeah. I'm going to list those out for you guys right now, including for the United States Pinball Star Amusements, Nitro Pinball, Kingpin Games, Rob Anthony, Classic Game Rooms, for the Canadian market, Nitro Pinball, for the European market, RS Pinball, and in the UK, Pinball Heaven. And, blue bug, guess what? What, Zach? I'm a dealer! Flipping out pinball! I'm announcing it here hopefully you guys are okay with that flipping out pinball is now an authorized dealer of all things spooky pinball and I couldn't be more happy the time has come I've earned my keep we'll see if I've earned my keep order directly through spookypinball.com through their shop make sure you're a fan club member or you can order through an authorized dealer Bugshead himself if you're going direct on the website you've got to be a fan club member to order in this first run of December 9th at 10 a.m. Central. Same goes with dealership. If you go through a dealer, you're still going to have to get that fan club membership and give verification to your dealer if you're ordering through them. Show them verification that you have, in fact, signed up. I think you guys give a two-week head start to the fan club members to order, right? Yep. Awesome. All right, I'm going to dig into this game. All right, the standard edition, the Bloodsuckers edition, the collector's edition. Is this like the first time? I don't remember a time that you guys had different art packages on different models of the game. The collector's edition has this thematic artwork of the whole gang and the villains, whereas the Bloodstalkers and the Standard has this very iconic, it's the mystery machine.
    39:55
    When's the last time you've done this? The last time we had different art, it was only the back glass, and the first 50 Rob Zombie customers got the LE Edition back glass because it was our way of, like, thanking. And it was also the first 50 customers there were all AMH customers, and it was our way of thanking them was, like, you get a special back glass and you get the first shot at the next game. But this is our first time doing a different cabinet art package ever. We've never done a different cabinet before. And we had some in-shop beef. Some in-shop beef. Ooh, tell me about it. I want to hear the story. Various members of the team were like, well, I think the Mystery Machine cabinet's better. And various members of us who are correct think that the custom art package is way better.
    40:45
    It was DJ, wasn't it? The correct members of the team. It was it. Okay. So, yeah, we get the Mystery. Look, the Mystery Machine looks so good on that game. It looks like it belongs. It's so iconic. but you can really see the work of those artists in that CE. I've got to go with you guys. That CE, that beats everything to me, and I don't know how it beats Mystery Machine, but it really does. Well, and the Mystery Machine's in a lot of places in this game. You're not missing out on your Mystery Machine. That is true. The Bloodsuckers Edition has metallic powder coat, and the Collectors Edition has this vibrant green metallic powder coat. Even the ramps are green. It's got different colored wire forms on the collector's edition. And don't worry, the Bloodsuckers edition has some metallic powder coating on those wire forms as well. I can't think of a time that all these different colored wire forms, like if you told me that verbally, I'd say, oh, that's not going to look good. But then it absolutely is perfect for this collector's edition game. One of the interesting things about Scooby-Doo as a whole is it's actually a really dark show, but everything that's important is really colorful and pops out. Having kind of that darker background behind the wireforms sometimes, like if you hide some mysterious rocks and sculpts like that, but then on top of it you have really colorful wireforms, they're going to pop twice as much. And then each of the wireforms, we're like, well, we have five of them. There's five members of the gang. It makes perfect sense to just do one color for each member of the gang. oh so that's what it is so it was like brown the the brownish is scooby probably fred's got the ass i mean blue he's got the blue um shaggy's probably green because of his shirt um velma i'm gonna go with velma is the fuchsia ish one is it fuchsia or orange we've spoken simple color terms but orange and then and then daphne is probably like the purple yep something super important to note actually though is on the bloodsucker edition the wire forms will be and a lot of people have got one are familiar with this it's like a black sparkle type powder coat yeah so on the bloodsucker all those wire forms will be that black sparkle the same as like the armor is on the outside that's a super sharp look too super sharp what about the standards uh like a matte black gloss black that's exactly gonna be that flat black color very nice all these models are beautiful. Now, the collector's edition has those sculpts we were talking about. The 16 custom molded sculpts as well as the topper. Spooky Pinball is so kind. They're like, look, we'll just include the topper with the model. You don't have to buy it as an accessory. It's just, boom, there it is. This isn't just a regular topper. This is a beautiful RGB controlled interactive type of topper, isn't it? Matt Frank actually did the art for that. That's killer. There's some original stuff sneaking around there, but yeah, a lot of it is custom. That is a selling point. Very, very cool. Let's go through who's working on this game. We know the whole team is working on it, but just the limited amount that I can spew out here are the following. Design by U2, Spooky, Lukey, and The Bug, Corwin. So U2 are the masterminds behind the design here. Yeah, it was a conversation we had to have because we were trying to get away from putting names on cards on Halloween and Ultraman. it was this thing that we just nobody wants to sit in a room and go like oh well I did this and I did this and da da da but so we just kind of wanted to make it more of a labeled team effort on that and then on this one we were like you know what that didn't really catch on yeah you tried to be nice we're going to put the names down on who did what and we're just going to all be cool about it and everybody was of course everybody knows what they did everybody's totally cool with it so but yeah Luke and I started designing this game and laying out on that wide body. I think it was just two Christmases ago now or so. Yeah, because it was two Christmases ago we started it and then last Christmas is when we had Whitewood wired up ready for code. Yep, because we had the Halloween launch and whatnot mixed in with that. But yeah, it's been crazy. R.I.P. Chorus. R.I.P. Sorry, Chorus Barloch. I like that. You know what? It shows maturity. You guys stand up. You're proud of what you've accomplished and you're proud of your skills you're growing very quickly you guys are not just designers but you guys are leading this company in so many respects in so many ways all right rules rules by luke peters how long has is luke uh a newcomer yeah he's uh he's approaching his first full year with the company now i would say okay he's a longtime company friend um at most of the streams if you go back and look at our reveal streams he's he's hidden in the background somewhere they're playing at points and he's always been around he's always been a super cool guy um i used to hang out with him and do tournaments with him and whatnot cool quite a while ago and he always talks to me about like the rules of games and rules of games and whatnot and he he lives in platteville 20 minutes from our shop so he's right there we needed the extra hands on the line for quality control and clearing games and also with just overall game development because luke and i the spooky luke and I here have pretty weird eclectic tastes sometimes, and sometimes we need somebody to reel that back in to a reasonable level. Oh, that's good. Good balance. Yeah. Yeah, good balance. And we hired on Luke Peters, and he's been absolutely terrific. We took on the role for rules of the game. He helps me with the quality control on the line, and he oversees the project with us, and he does a fantastic job. He's been absolutely great to include in. And I really hope that people pick up his absolutely stellar job he did on the rules of this game. Oh, sweet, sweet. Yeah, because whenever people, whenever you go to design or rules or something major like that, they see new names and they're like, oh, wait, wait a minute. Now, did I, was it Luke that I met at last year's Cincinnati? No, so that was Spooky DJ, who's behind the code. Yes, I knew that. I was talking to him about him. This is behind the scenes. It wasn't public or anything. but he was talking about working with code. So he's going to be doing some of the coding, the majority of coding here on Scooby-Doo. Not some of it. He's doing all of it. Oh, sweet. Yes. Now, how long has DJ been with you guys? He moved to Benton, Wisconsin to be our programmer from Pennsylvania just a handful of months before Halloween launched, I want to say. About two years. About two years now, yeah. Nice. Very cool. So Luke, we've got DJ, the big crew here. And it sounds like when it comes to rules, is it safe to say that it's not just Luke imparting these rules? Everybody's got ideas. It's just how Luke can implement them, how DJ can kind of code them. It's a pretty big group effort, right? And that's part of the reason we did the chorus bar thing in the last one is just because it says game design or rules or software, everybody's chipping in. It is very much designed in a group and putting labels on it, on everybody specifically. It gets a little weird because everybody does do so much. Yeah. We we we hear that from the other industry folks as well. They're like, it's not really just one person. There's not one person can do all of this stuff. The complexity of these. This is the most complex toy in existence. Now, it's not just one person. but I like the turnout of this group thus far including not just one fantastic artist but you like nah let double down and go for two You got Matt Frank and Jeff Zornow and both of them have done spectacular work for you guys in the past How in the hell do you get them to work together? What does that even look like? Pretty easy. They know each other from – we've met both of those artists through G-Fest, from Godzilla conventions. They're both comic book artists who have worked on Godzilla comic books and Ultraman comic books. So they know each other, they get along fine, and it's very easy to work with both of them. Something I wanted to point out, it says animations, and the name is Brad Duke. He's on the animations list because he did all the artwork for the animations, but you're going to be seeing quite a bit of artwork in this game also from Brad Duke, who is a new hire from us. We actually picked him up from Deep Root, of all places. Interesting. I think people should keep a very close eye out for more things with Brad Duke's name on it because the guy is crazy talented. Okay. I mean, this is his dream team of art. Well, you can see it, you know. But the other two, we've seen the work of the other two. They're tried and true. So Brad Duke here is an up-and-coming little dark horse there. I like it. What about a little Bill Rude action? What do we got on Bill Rude? Yeah, Bill Rude's a longtime company friend, actually. We met him in, we were at Ace Yogi in California. It was the first time I met him. And he introduced himself and he's a super great guy.
    49:59
    He works in Hollywood and whatnot. And we knew he was an insanely talented animator. And I'd always wanted to work with him. And we had time to work with him on this game. And just an absolute professional. Everything he turns in, I'm like, gosh, I don't, I don't, I'm not giving you feedback because it all turns out so good. The first time you do it. They're not worthy. Just an incredible professional. And his animations, he's drawn some designs for us before on, like, shirts, and he's done a couple animations for some company logo stuff before, too. So people that you've seen Bill Rude's artwork related to us before. But this is the first time he will have animations in a game. So now Matt Frank and Zornau, was one of them on Captain? Was one of them on Backlash? Was one of them on Playfield? Are they just sharing each other's hands? How does that work?
    50:49
    Do we make them guess? Just try and figure out who did what? No, you can't because it's all labeled. It's there. Yeah. He hasn't seen the labels, though. Who do you think did what? Okay. So, all right. I'm going to pull it up right now. We'll play a little guessing game here. So, I'm going to say character illustrations were done by one artist while everything else was done by the other. Am I onto something there? No. Okay. Then I wouldn't know because the characterizations on the cabinet, the back glass, and the lower third of that play field, all those characters look the same. Then our artist did a good job.
    51:29
    If it's legit mix, that's damn impressive. Yeah. Okay. So Matt Frank, he did the play field, the back glass, and the topper. And Jeff Zornow did all the cabinet sides and front and the headsides. Wow. There's no way. That's impressive. Like that legit kind of shocks me. Wow. Yeah.
    51:50
    We actually had a lot of strategy when we went with that too. Like, I mean, some people would just be like, oh, you just threw two artists on it for the heck of it. But it seems like whenever you're doing, like when you start with a lot of artists, they start with the cabinet and they get to the back glass and then they do the play field last. And by the time they get to the play field, they've been using all blank canvases. And the play field has all these parameters and complications, everything like that. And they would just get wore out. Get a little crispy. So we're like, you know what? We're going to throw our best two guys in this and just give them separate pieces. That way Matt Frank could take his time, do the play field all the way through to the highest detail and the highest quality while Jeff worked on the cabinet.
    52:32
    That's insane, too, because that play field art reminds me of Zornow's. Didn't he do the art on Alice Cooper? Yep. Yeah, he did all the artwork on Alice Cooper. The composition screams Zorna. Okay. The composition is damn near. I think it's perfect on the play field, by the way. Sweet.
    52:52
    Engineering by Dwayne Faust. Sculpts by my buddy, Matt, in the back alley, Creations Company. Damn, they're good. We have music by, oh, y'all's favorite, Matt Count D. Montgomery. The absolute dream to work with composer. Hell yeah. He is so underrated and crazy talented. I really, Hey, something really cool about him in this game, the theme song in the reveal trailer, you hear the vocals. That is actually Matt singing. It's the very first time in any of our games, you'll have heard his voice. Oh, legit. Wow. Yeah. I didn't even. Wow. Okay. And his, uh, his interpretation of the cover, I think is crazy. Good. Like he, I thought it was just used from one of the, yeah, I thought it was just a license holders, uh, music. Wow. Yeah, no, his impersonation was like spot on and he asked me what we were doing he's like do you want me to sing it and like i'm i've listened to a lot of his records outside of his work with rob zombie and i was like i bet you could actually do way better with that than you realize and yeah he went for it and yeah i was thrilled with the result like absolutely thrilled i think he nailed it we got count d he's like uh he's like crooner now isn't he he's uh he's he's always an absolute blast to work with. Just such a cool dude and so creative and talented. He just knows how to strike the emotions of nostalgia while still getting an updated flair to it. It's really crazy good. You guys are blessed. There's more songs in this game from him than any of our games previously. That's cool to know too. There's a lot of crap in this game. Is there a lot of different songs? Do modes have different songs? Am I just going to hear Scooby Scooby Doo? Every single mode has a different song.
    54:42
    And then some. A whole bunch of extras. And then he even just did like a ton of little, what's he call them? I can't remember the name, but like just little six second cues. Oh, yeah, yeah. Little stingers and stuff. Yeah, little stagers. Yeah, I like that. Little sound effects and stuff in this game. Okay, now I get to the gritty here. Okay, I'm going to list out for these listeners all of the stuff in this game. Listener, are you ready? there's i'm gonna miss stuff i'm gonna miss stuff but listen to this game this game is under ten thousand dollars for the highest model you can get this thing for not even eight thousand dollars for the lowest model and it includes four flippers it's a wide body design it has a large upper play field it has a flipper diverter which we gotta talk about two apron physical ball lock slash diverters it has a subway five ball physical ball lock in the mystery machine van 16 custom molded sculpts. There's spinners in this? Is there one or two? There's two spinners in this game. It's got the Captain Cutler Diver Bash toy with react, I'm calling reactive arms, with two, what I'm phrasing, reactomagnets. Yeah, the thing is freaking beautiful. You can bash it in his arms move, and then the magnets under the upper play field will throw around that ball. This thing is so pretty, guys. It looks glow-in-the-dark. There's over 200 RGB LEDs. This is officially licensed stuff, full assets from the series. Over 4,000 speech call-outs, custom speech from the actual character voice over actors. Not four players, but five players. And to put the cherry on the sundae, for the first time in company history, Spooky Pinball's very own board set operating system. You guys have your own proprietary board set? It's ours. Wow. Okay. so it's got to be humbling sitting back and hearing that list of features on one pinball machine there's a i say there might be even more it's hard to keep up with you're making us feel really good about the game right now i'm feeling really good about the you got the colored plastic protectors on the on the collector's edition the fluorescent stuff i love that well that's just the thing with designing games like this and whatnot is you by the time you get to the finish line and it's time to put it out. You're looking at it like, I hope anyone likes it. I forgot the drop target in the middle of the flippers. Yes, the ball save drop target trap door. We're going through it. How does that work?
    57:05
    Immaculately. It pops up to save the ball then? Without giving away too much of the rules, there's some dog tag targets on the play field that when you collect them, it puts up that drop target as kind of a ball save feature. So now what's really cool about it is, let's say the ball's like falling down the play field and it hits that target it's going to bounce off of it over to your flipper but if you were just like cradling the ball and you dropped it like you just let go and you just let it roll it's going to roll right through that drop target and drain so it provides some crazy unique ball save gameplay of bouncing it off that target and some very weird saves that would never ever happen in any other situation and um when we put it in we were like okay maybe this will work this is probably really dumb and then we were like just stupefied by how good it worked and how fun this is ridiculous how great this is and we figured it out yeah just for no reason works so amazingly like we're so shocked now is that is that transparent as well yeah it's light up every drop target in the game is uh is uh yep full color oh my god i forgot about that okay so we got to talk about the drop targets over there there's seven drop targets in this game if not there's probably more, but you, there's, I've never seen this in pinball. There's a, everybody loves drop targets. Thank you for sparing us with all those damn standup targets. You gave us a bank of drop targets, but behind it, guess what? Another bank of triple drop targets. It's like, I'm going to make you work to get to this fuck. Yeah. It's, it's like playing breakout over in the corner. It's really, what was the idea and the, and the thought behind that? What happened was we had the one set of drop targets, and we weren't quite sure where to move to next. I went to the bathroom to pee, and when I came back, Luke was standing there with a second set of drop targets looking at me like, Look at that.
    59:02
    He was like, are you serious? And he was like, yeah, look at it. He's like, you put one between the flippers, damn it. I don't want to hear it.
    59:13
    I put two bags up. What? Are those Scooby Snacks over there, then, that you're... Yeah, so there's Scooby Snack box inserts in front of it, and then there's Scooby Snack decals on the targets. Yeah, shooting those spawns some Scooby Snacks on the play field for you to collect. That gets more deep into the rules as to what collecting Scooby Snacks does. And, of course, it allows you to do that VUK for the physical ball lock to the left on top of the apron. Yep, exactly. The other thing that's really cool, too, is as you collect Scooby Snacks, you're going to fill up your Scooby-Doo bravery meter. Once you have that all the way full, you're going to get the Scooby-Doo Mac that pops out of the barrel because he's courageous. He's courageous now. You've given him all the bravery he needs so he can peep out of the barrel that he's hiding in, which I think is the cutest toy in the game. Obviously, the bravery meter is going to offer an overall scoring multiplier for the game. Yeah, the bravery meter gets pretty complex. It's as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. All right, so what corresponds to raising that said meter includes correctly lit shots? Yes, Scooby Snacks. Scooby Snacks? Yep, Scooby Snacks, shots in the mode, overall progress of the game, collecting members of the gang, a multitude of things put progress towards your bravery meter. And that is yet another physical mechanism. It could have been just a static toy there, guys. three-dimensional it would have looked good he's got a he's got a pop up actually to physically show you the product that's so you fill it up he popped that's that's really cool what's going on with the shooter lane i've got to ask because there's a lot of space to the right of that shooter lane is that what we're talking about with making it feel more like a standard body but having the extra room to to do interactive lighting systems and such yeah so that's on the right side is the physical bravery meter lights. So as it's building up on the right side, and you see those flasher caps there, that's the bravery meter building up to that Scooby in the barrel. Once it hits that Scooby in the barrel, he pops up because he's courageous now. And then the shooter lane itself, it auto launches right into a 180 ramp. Yeah, that's really cool too. For a really quick feed. Yeah, and you're right in the play. The launch button itself is also the Scooby-Doo dog tag. Oh, I like that. And I see how clever you guys are with that drop target in the middle of the flippers. You said it corresponds to a lot of the dog tags, but look right what's above it. Artwise, the dog tag. Man, Frankenzor now, you guys. What about this five ball? Does it physically lock balls in that mystery machine? You'll be able to actually load all five members of the gang, right? I mean, basically it's a hidden UK under there. It's going to hold all five balls. And then you'll see on the front of the Mystery Machine, there's actually color RGB headlights. So you'll know if you load Shaggy into the van in the flash green. You know what I mean? Oh, that's smart. The whole game is kind of based around that color scheme. Each character has their own color and everything. That's perfect, actually, because there's RGB everywhere here. So you can tell the player all types of stuff just using color. And if people stumble upon the colors, you also have icons on each of these inserts. very smart artistic placement and lighting here on this game. So physical ball lock, and then it kind of injects out of the back down the orbit lane, if you will, into play whenever it's time for that multi-ball. Yeah, there's a coil under there that kind of ejects it in a circle. The whole mech is actually a circle.
    62:46
    It launches the balls around in a circle, and it actually allows us to feed the ball back to the flippers pretty quick. So, like, if you shoot underneath, you're going to hit that spinner, you're going to hit the VUK, but since that trough up there is essentially already holding balls, it's going to be able to instantly eject you one back out and get you right back into gameplay. So there's a hidden trough up there. I mean, the whole thing is kind of like one big contained giant circular custom trough. We, we really, it's, it's crazy. We'll have to post like a picture of it out of the game or something. It's this really huge piece of metal. It's almost hard to tell. It's also powder coated. It's, you can hardly see parts of it and it's, it's also powder coated. I see the beautiful greens coming out from under there. Yep. That's really cool. Okay, let's go all the way left now. Oh, no, let's stay down at the bottom of the play field. You guys put a slingshot, an extra little slingshot, because you're like, I want to be an ass and really make this ball fly around and make them be on their toes. This game, what kind of tone is this game? It doesn't look like a super easy shooter. Or is it super friendly? What would you categorize it as? It's pretty darn friendly. There's a lot of ball save features in the game. I mean, the drop target in the center, the row outlanes, The double outlet on the left side is also a save as well. But, I mean, as far as the layout goes, it's as weird of a fan layout as we could possibly do. It's very easy shooting, very fast. It's really not a punishing layout. Okay. All right. There's that left outline. You've got to convince me of that one because the ball goes over there and it looks in just the shape of those outlines. What you can't quite see over there, though, is there's actually a ball guide there so that what can happen that's kind of cool is the ball can fall right between those two rows of drop targets. And there's a ball guide back there that kind of dumps it right back into the in lane. Oh, that's kick ass. Okay. Now, listeners of the podcast, hopefully you're following along with pictures. I see it now. Smart, very smart stuff. The farthest left shot after the drop targets is a 180.
    64:44
    It's not really a 180 ramp. It kind of goes up into a wire form coming back down. That's the shaggy kind of? Yeah, it's just a super nice. It's got a spinner on there, but it's just a super nice flow ramp. It's just satisfying to hit. It's satisfying to watch it return. I mean, it's a really nice shot. It looked really, really smooth. And then we have, I'm going to stay on the bottom of this play field. Oh, I'm going to get to that upper big old play field there. There's a whole other game up there. There's a couple of horseshoes on this bottom level. I'm a fan of the quick, quick, whippy, smooth horseshoe. Which one of you guys was big on that? That would be me, actually. Luke was really pushing for that one. Okay, like the horseshoe. If you notice, I guess everything down there, there's only a few shots in the game that don't immediately return to a flipper. Okay. So I guess one is the VUK way over to the left that's going to go up to your apron lock. The other one is on your upper play field, you're going to have one shot that goes to the apron lock. Other than that, you're pretty much getting the ball straight back to the flippers on every single thing you shoot, which is what really keeps the speed up and doesn't make it a floaty wide body, right? Yep. But, yeah, both of those loops are interchangeable loops, but they're both opposite, too. So one of them is cross flipper, one is same side flipper. Oh, probably one of the smoothest shots of the game is right up the gut there, right up the center that gets you up to the upper play field, right? This is a personal thing for me. I agree with you a little bit.
    66:20
    Because after the Halloween center ramp, it was, I don't know, what would you say, like 70-30? Some people were like, ah, that thing's clunky, you know, everything like that. So going and putting a center ramp in the game again, I was like, this thing has to be smooth. I don't want to hear it. It's got to be smooth. Perfect. and I feel that this thing is certified perfect. That center ramp flies right up to the upper, and it is nice. How does it get it to that? Is it like an inverted ramp there? Nope. It's just a standard. It goes up and turns left just like any standard ramp. There's no 180 stuff. There's no flap, no nothing. That is just straight. Okay, and it feeds to the left portion of that upper play field. Yep, and if you don't flip your left flipper, it goes straight down that blue hab trail and right back to the end lane, which means it is absolutely just a beast. You can sit there and spam that center ramp for a millennium if you really wanted to. It is so fast and so smooth. But then you've also got the bookcase flipper up there to catch it and throw it to that other part of the game. I've got to give you guys a lot of credit here. I'm nerding out. I'm fanboying a little bit. But how smart is that flipper? It looks like a bookcase. And then you flip it up. So it's a manual diverter, but put your ball into play. So you have a lot of decisions on the fly that you need to make. Do I need to be up on the top play field right now, or do I need to get points and feed it back to my lower play field? Very easily accessible to that upper play field. And a lot of complaints you get when people talk about upper play fields is, I don't know how to get up there. It takes forever to get. No, it's very easily accessible. There's a ton of stuff to do here. I thought Alice Cooper had a lot of upper play field shots. This one takes it here. So what are we doing up top here, even if we're staying up top with that flipper diverter? What are we doing? This one's going to go down as our best upper play field. Oh, I love it. That was kind of a personal thing, I guess, for Bug going into it. He's like, I'm going to make our best upper play field. And you guys have made some great upper play fields.
    68:30
    I'm still pissed at him. he's like all right so like for x y and z production reason the upper play field can only be what was it like 10 by 12 like oh i had to stay at the size of a little book what was left on the sheet like the way it was getting cnc'd out yeah it was originally supposed to stay like under 12 inches by 12 inches to be able to to yield on the sheet correctly okay but he's like all right so you're working with this much space i want you to go home tonight and draw what you want to see on there. And I went home and I sat at my kitchen table for probably till one in the morning, drawing up different ideas and different things. And I was like, okay, I checked with him. I'm like, it has to be that parameter. He's like, yeah, it has to be that size. Okay. Went back home, kept drawing, coming up with all these different ideas. I was pretty proud of a few came in. We showed it and he, he looked at them. He's like, yeah, these are pretty good. What if we had just extended it and made it massive? And then you threw your pencil in there. You're like, Oh, screw you. And I was like, fine!
    69:31
    Gotta be teammate 12. And so now there's one of the biggest wide-body upper play fields with so many shots that are all so good. Looks smooth, too. You've got a center post up there because, you know what, why not? We've got room up here. And then where am I going to the right over here? Have we got a Black Knight loop thing going? Yeah, so the Black Knight shot, it loops right back to, yeah, cross flipper. So you shoot back up into there. It'll throw it back over to your bookcase flipper. Okay. And then I've got the airfield and the gold city mine. The, uh, the gold city mine goes right down to the apron lock. Actually it goes, it's the orange habit trail goes down to the apron lock. And then the abandoned airfield goes to the, the purple habit trail. And that goes down to the flipper. So if you shoot that one, you can, in theory, you shoot that one. It's going to throw it straight back down to your flipper. you can in theory shoot it right back up the center and do it again. And I see the thumbprint inserts as well so those are additional features that you're going to have to get throughout this code whether it's through modes, etc. What is going on? Is this one big upper playfield? Because I see part of a playfield all the way to the right with two tracks that you're talking about with the gold city mine and abandoned airfield. Is that just continuation of that? Yeah. Yep, those loops go all the way around there. So when you shoot that gold mine entrance, it loops up and around and comes out down there. So yeah, that whole thing is all one play field. Yeah, there's the minor 49er chasing Scooby in the cart on the wire forms. So the balls flow right underneath each of those characters as he's chasing Scooby down there. And I've got to say, probably one of the most iconic villains in this whole series, and you guys showcase him right here and you give him all types of interaction as Captain Cutler. You got him main shot of the upper play field. Maybe one of the main shots, hey, I want to do that type of toy mechanism in this game. It's not just a loop. It's a bash toy. You bash him and explain what happens when you bash him. So this is so many features under one little area. He lights up. His hands pop back and forth. you can bash his head back and forth, and there's a loop behind him that you can shoot from either direction. And when you hit the targets or him, the magnet, there's two magnets up there that will throw the ball around on that upper play field. It's so crazy interactive. How did you squeeze two magnets under that play field? We actually had a little bit of a fight about this. I was going to say, those big old cores, I don't know how you did it. With his limited space that I gave him, And he, of course, drew like 800 things into one. Yeah. So that's my problem is I draw like this size play field on to four tiered cake again. Yeah.
    72:26
    He's like, I need all this in here. And I'm like, dude, I'm not a magician. I can only do so much in one spot. Like, do you understand what you're asking for? But I mean, we we got her done. You're like, have we ever seen a lower play field in an upper play field? Exactly So you bashing this guy He moving his hands around He got magnets throwing the balls around I didn know he lights up He also lights up Glowing Yeah it looks really good It's very haunted glowing seaweed. It'll be kind of a similar material to like the Halloween jack-o'-lantern. You know how when that flasher lit up inside? It's actually poured out of the same material, but just obviously a different color. So that'll give you an idea of kind of how it lights up. But there's RGB lights under them. Okay, what are the footprints? Those are actually from, if you notice in his episode in the show, he'll leave the glowing footprints all over the place. So those are inserts there that actually do light up. Oh, they glow. All right, and then we've got a sculpt of a villain hanging over the wall there of the haunted house, the castle, the house. Okay. Scooby-Doo's Nightmare Castle, yeah. That's right.
    73:34
    We've got, and those are full-size flippers up on top, is that correct? Yeah, and something really interesting about that bookcase. flipper is uh it's it's more than just like oh it diverts over so something i did want to talk about on that that bookcase flipper actually is the action that you can get from it where the part that actually diverts the ball over you can keep using that in gameplay to bat at the ball like i've made shots off of just slinging it into the ball and when you cradle the ball if when you let go it's not going to just roll down the flipper it's actually going to catapult it across the playfield and create just tons more action and movement up there to keep that playfield nice and interesting and fast and fun it's like a two-way flipper then like it really is yeah you can use the the back side of it also as a flipper wow i'm so glad it's so unique it's fun there's so many things to play in this game uh there's many additional sculpts in this many colors i i can't thank you enough for using those fluorescent plastic protectors it's just such a nice touch. It seems silly to a lot of people, but it just makes visually games pop and for a lower bond, it just makes sense there. Are there any other magnets in the game? Yes. So on the left orbit, both of the left orbits, so your left outer orbit and your left inner orbit, there's a magnet back there that will catch the ball and drop it into a hidden subway that goes over to the VUK by the mystery machine to kind of simulate getting captured. Secret passage? Yep. Yeah, so you can shoot that orbit, and it might just catch your ball and drop it to somewhere. You're like, where'd it go? And then you've been kidnapped.
    75:12
    Now, a lot of people see this, and one of the criticisms could be, man, it blocks so much of the play field, this upper play field. What would you say to that as you guys were considering that and designing this game? I think I know the answer because of the way that you designed the shots that are, quote-unquote, under it. But what would you say is the criticism of it's blocking so much of the playfield? I would say, so something you'll notice about the game, too, that's really neat is not only did we go all the way down, but we built stuff on top of the apron, which is unique. But we blew that upper playfield right through the backboard. So if you notice, there's no backboard there. Yes. That goes to the back of the cabinet. More room. So where people are feeling like it's normally, oh, it's covering it or whatever, it's pushed so far back that it's a pretty normal, I guess, amount of the playfield that you can actually view. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Without regular ramps and stuff. Parts that would have been covered anyway by a backboard being up front and blocking it. So we've moved the backboard pretty much out of the game so that we would have all this more space. and we just utilized that extra space, covered it with the upper play field so that we weren't really losing any real estate with it. What's crazy is where Captain Cutler is, where his head is, right behind his head directly touching it is where the backboard normally is. Oh. So you're talking four or five inches farther back into the game than what you'd normally see. We don't just need more width in this game. There's a length that we need to fill this game out. Is there anything that you didn't put in this game that you would have liked? I don't even know if there's room for anything else. Oh, there's one, but we can't talk about it yet.
    77:03
    Oh, I like that tease. We found out something at the last minute that we weren't able to integrate. Oh, God. Yeah, it would be cool if we could figure out how to do something with it. There will be more on that later when we figure a couple things out. Damn it, you guys are good at this. we're scrambling we're trying it we legit did not find out how cool it looked until the last minute and i don't know if we're going to be able to get it in the game but i think it's something that people will be able to add themselves i would say it might just be something we kind of leak out there like just so you know this is pretty damn cool that's what we call a happy accident i like that there's a magnet under there and there's a subway in this game is that the primary use of that subway is a magnet fed subway like how's that used in the code it'll grab it and drop it in there so like it would be similar to a good example would be daphne gets kidnapped a lot right and also in the charlie the robot episode they literally stopped charlie with a big magnet so the the hurry up to that mode may be related to a big magnet yep that's called theme integration very nicely done and then the last mix i kind of want to cover here is all the way by the player and that is the physical ball lock on the apron. What is going on down here? Because it's beautiful and it looks like a lot of work.
    78:22
    Oh, man, it's got to be. I realize you could just throw in a plastic apron there and call it a day, but you didn't even Flintstones this thing. You were like, no, we're going to hold the balls there. Then we're going to eject them at the same time and they're going to bounce off one another. Maybe they'll hit the center post that's between the flippers. Wow, okay. So what is this madness down here? So pretty. So something funny, too, you'll notice is you, so in the video, you saw them release both at the same time where they hit, right? Yeah. So they do that exactly. If you time it, they hit in the center, land on both flippers. If you release one at a time, they actually go far enough over to the opposite side flipper that you can catch it and trap up. Are there periods in the game where you would only release one? Yeah, absolutely. and then something we did obviously is you'll see a big flasher right in front of both that is going to indicate with flashes when the balls are coming out and you can see them so it's like you can see them I know it's me I get the hint you're like no we're not even going to frost that lens we're going to make it right it's like flash flash make the shaker motor rumble too Damn it. What else do you need? Coming at you. Like, hey, idiot, the ball's about to come out. Okay. Loud and clear on that one. I love it. We got molding down there, too. Poor back alley creations. How long did he work on this? I'm pretty sure Matt said this is the most in a game he's ever done. It's not even close. This is the record setter.
    80:02
    He probably wanted to claw my eyes out by the end of it. We love each other. We took things out. Yeah. We took things out. There was more skulls. We got in the way probably. Yeah. Well, there's any game. It's like there's a point or two much, right? So I think this is perfect. I was going to say you guys reached that half a bomb ago, but okay.
    80:23
    Can you tell us a little bit about this new board set? Why do we have a new operating system? Why do you have your own? Because Spooky has gone through some. Is this where we're planting our feet going forward? What does this mean for older games? Can we talk about that? So a lot of people are worried. So I knew a lot of people would be worried, but, like, what does it mean for older games? We still stock. Like, we have P-Rock in stock. We have Pinotaur in stock. It's not really going to change that we have any of that stuff because we're still using it. I mean, TNA still uses P-Rock, you know. But, no, having our own is something. I think a lot of people have been asking for that for a really long time. But it's also one of the biggest hurdles as a small company is getting your own board set. I mean, there's still some that don't. Most pinball companies probably still don't. But this way, we can control our own quality. We can make our own revisions, everything like that. It's just we'll finally be able to add and control all the features at our own discretion. Well, I think that's probably the ultimate goal you guys had. It's just great that you're already ready to be capable of jumping into that moving forward. So that's phenomenal as well. Yeah, and that stuff takes years. Like this is something that we've been working on for a long time. You know, it's not something you just whip up overnight. Another thing that's really cool, that is another, well, another reason that I didn't share the under play field picture, the secret under play field. And this board is actually smaller too. It's cleaner. It's more compact. But it's a really clean system. But we're going to have our own RGB light boards, like you see most companies do for the first time, with the Ethernet cables in between them. Oh, nice. So you'll have group light boards now, and you'll see the bottom side wiring is really clean. It looks clean. It's very cleaned up compared to our other titles. Well, and that'll help with ease of repairs or ease of upgrade, anything you need like that, too. 100%. Streamlining. All right, what's your favorite shot? What's your favorite pinball moment in this game so far? It may change. But what just gets you in the plums? What do you just, oh, I love freaking hitting that shot. Or, oh, damn, I love when the ball stops there and it gives me a freaking light show or what's on the LCD. What is it for you thus far? Man, hitting Cutler and him, the magnets throwing that ball around, I don't know if I could live without it being in this game. It is so fun. It's such a satisfying bash toy, and it reacts so perfectly. I really, really, really love that one. Yes. I'm actually seeing it now. We're playing on it. What was it Dylan hit? He hit one Cutler hand. The magnet grabbed it, threw it into the other Cutler hand target. That magnet grabbed it and turned around and threw it up the loop. Yeah. That goes right down. It gets out of hand. It's so great. So there's some randomization up there too with that magnet. Oh, absolutely. Yes. Those magnets make shots for you. They do crazy stuff. Because you can never plan for it, but sometimes hitting him, he will literally throw that ball off the play field like, nah.
    83:28
    That's cool. I'm just looking at this. I've not shot this before, listener, but the ultimate shotgasm for me, I don't think this could ever happen, but if it did, to hear the synchronicity of all the wire forms, all five balls, all at the same time going down their own wire form. Oh, God. That's where it's at. Is that even possible? I think it might be. I was just trying to think in my head if it would be possible. Like during a multi-ball? There's a handful of those we can hold the ball and wait, I think. Oh, like in the Vux and stuff? And just do-do-do-do-ah!
    84:02
    That's freaking, I don't know, just the sound of a wire form. But you have like five of them. That's just, you're going to hear all kinds of skating and sk-sk-sk. Zach's going to have his whole family sitting there like, all right, everybody hold the ball. Yes. Real quick, just let go on three. Most people are really sweet to their family and stuff, but I keep it real. my family sucks at pinball so i'd be probably i would be better off to to do that myself plus i'm one of those play alone kind of guys like kid i don't want to wait for you i don't want to wait for player five like it's a that's an awesome feature but nah no thanks this is going to be a player one kind of game in my game room can we talk really quickly about the rules thus far where we at on the rules when this game starts to ship most most games whether it's spooky pinball or other manufacturers there is there's some growing and gaining throughout uh updates and whatnot for code where are we going to be at when this game starts shipping so on this one when the game gets into some customers hands you're going to have the seven monster cases all completely in and playable you'll have the captain cutler multi-ball the scooby snack multi-ball the mystery machine multiball and bravery meter inclusion as well uh following that we're going to be focusing on the character specific modes which we haven't gotten the chance to talk about yet so those modes are the modes specific to each character so like finding velma's glasses making a super shaggy sandwich coming up with the perfect plan for fred etc etc so that that's the tentative so those are additional modes on top of the seven main monster modes? Yes. Each character in the gang will have their own mode that you have to complete. All of those tie together to the different wizard modes of the game. There's three wizard modes planned for the game. There's the Gangs All Here, which is of course related to your progress amongst the gang members.
    85:57
    There's We Would Have Gotten Away With It, which is when you've completed all your villains. And there's the Scooby-Doo Where Are You super you're a god wizard mode yes and that's what completing both the modes in or completing both of the other wizard modes i can't say 100 yet but it's going to be a lot of things to get to that one but it is going to be a very big grand wizard mode so how many multi balls are like you said three are going to be ready at the launch three at launch with the potential for there being more based on other things that get added okay and then you don't have to say too much but give me a little nugget here when it comes to these wizard modes how clever are we going to get are we just going to and maybe tell the coders if it's the plan that we get it we get to divert this do we have to have just a collect points here's my freaking ball like maybe a staging mode or maybe a one ball one ball only wizard mode or you know is there you got some things up your up your sleeve there i don't like when wizard modes are just a multi-ball frenzy of points grabbing. I think wizard mode should be another mode, and it should be pretty damn challenging. So you can definitely expect that in the wizard modes. I mean, there's obviously going to be a level of celebration when you get them, because you've earned it. But it's not going to just be handed out to you, like here's points and here's seven balls and blah blah blah. Expect a level of difficulty when you get to those modes. Okay. Do you anticipate people getting to these wizard modes regularly? It should be quite possible because this will be the first time I think the first time in our game's history that there's going to be difficulty settings in the code. So your odds are much higher if you play on easy difficulty as compared to Zoinks difficulty. What changes that though? Is it just the give me's or the spotting things or is it like you get 10 balls instead of 3? Number of shots mostly to complete modes. but I can't get into too much detail about how the differences are. But, yeah, it will have multiple difficulties, and it's not implemented yet. It won't be there at launch, but I would like to see, like we did in Halloween, where you can actually select the wizard mode in the menu to play. Because there's people out there who just aren't going to get to it, and that's okay. It's really hard to get to wizard modes. That's the whole point. I still want everybody to experience it, because wizard modes have some of the most defining moments in pinball. They are the mode-ment. Yeah, they are. What about is there any stacking in this game? I'm assuming you can stack some multi-ball with a mode. Are we stacking any of the different types of modes? Do you anticipate that even if it's not coded yet? Or do you think you're going to have to go through this journey of separate individual monster modes, separate individual character modes, et cetera? Right. There is stacking currently. There's going to be more. But currently, yes, you can stack your multi-balls with your modes and things like that. Pretty standard, normal, stackable things. But there's a lot of ideas we have for the game that we want to see get integrated to make stacking a bit more complicated. Because, I mean, at the end of the day, Scooby-Doo, it's a kid's theme. It's for your family. You want your family to sit down and have fun and progress through the game. But if you're a hardcore pinball guy, we also want this to be a deep rule set to make it very replayable and be as challenging as you can make it for yourself. And ultimately, you can always set it up really easy, set it up really hard in the menu settings. and the physical features on the post and whatnot. Last code thing I'm going to ask you, and then I'll move away from this. People want to hear this. At launch of this code, will it be at or further along than your last game released at launch? Short answer, well, the easy one is it's definitely further along. There's no question about that.
    89:46
    But I do want to talk because I know people are going to be looking for that. We hear everything. We read everything. We know what you're looking for. We know what you want. And I think people can see that. They can see that we literally hired three of the best programmers you could ever even ask for in the last year here for a four total now. But honestly, we sat down a year ago, like I said, when we were getting ready to code, and we're like, what do we need to do to gain ground, get closer to a head, and make this game fun out of the gate? Because that's what people want, right? Like they want to get the game out of the gate and they want to have fun and they want to have a stable code. So like the main priority is how do we make it so every aspect of the game is doing something right away. It's fun and people can play it without any crashes or anything like that. So I think that's a priority going in. And I think we're going to deliver on that right away. It's still going to need updates. I'm not going to, we're not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes and be like, oh, we have this game totally coded. No, it's still going to need updates. We're still going to do updates for a year, just like we always have. But we gained a lot of ground on this one. Okay. And I think, especially over the next few years too, like with us being able to have the resources to go out and hire all these literal greats now and everything like that, we're going to be able to get those guys these games 18 months in advance so they have the time so we can continue to push that code timeline farther and farther ahead. Is this something that happens instantly? No. But are we going to continue to push that timeline up and get better as we go? Absolutely. And that's something that's been one of our main priorities since the launch of Halloween is how can we make sure everything we work on is further ahead by the time it gets out there? Because it's one of the major things we were lacking on as a company and spending a whole year focusing on nothing but getting ahead and making sure that everything when it gets out there can be as completed as possible. It's unfortunate that not everybody can see it because we can see it because we're dealing with it. And I just want to share it with everyone. like guys look how much better these things are getting like we see the problems like luke said we're in there reading the comments we we acknowledge all of it and we are doing everything we can every day to get better about that in the future because we don't want to have those issues and we know they are issues and it's been number one priority since halloween we're very proud of the progress that we've made and it's it's getting better it's only getting better i wish i could show everybody that is getting better but it's literally we cannot show them what that is here's these games that we can't do that i mean we're not hiring these programmers and having them working on nothing these are programmers that we're hired that we have whitewoods in their hands they're coding everybody hired has a task yeah many of them they are moving we're doing everything we can we really are if there was if there was five more programmers we could hire we'd hire five, four of them. We want things to be good. We want people to be happy with our product, and we want to do the right thing. I think that's music to a lot of enthusiasts' ears. I think people are going to be very, very satisfied hearing you guys discuss that at length. I appreciate you guys being transparent, open, and honest with everybody about that.
    92:58
    You know where you've come from. You know where you're going. I know you guys personally, so I get to kind of I know where you guys are going I know the huge leaps and hurdles and progress you guys are making behind the scenes and you can't say everything right now but that's why I own your games that's why I'm a big fan as an enthusiast that's why thousands upon thousands of people are and no bullshit that's why I've been really wanting to become a representative as a dealer for Spooky Pinball for especially the last couple of years here because I know what's going on at the company. I love the direction that you guys are taking. Changes are scary sometimes, but I know you all's level of passion and commitment to not only pinball in general, but the employees that work with you and the creators that work with you. It is a never-ending well that you guys have and the town of Benton and everything else. So truly, from the bottom of my heart as a friend, man, it's insane what you guys are doing. and this is only the beginning. Like if people know, this is just it. This is just the start of building what you've got going. So with that, I think that's about it. Is there anything I did not cover that you guys are tired of my ass by now, and I know the listeners are tired of hearing from me. Everybody, go out, play this game, watch videos on this game. When this game gets in people's hands, order your own. Go to spookypinball.com. You can order direct there or through an authorized dealer. Do that. Follow them. And don't forget the catalog of games that they've had in the past. I know I haven't. Rick and Morty, you can pry it from my cold, dead hands because my ass will never get rid of that game. Period. Dot. Oh, I love that damn game so much. Love that game. All right, you guys. Thank you again. Thank you again to all of the enthusiasts listening. And will you guys come hang out with me again in the future? Maybe I can get up there and play some Scooby Doo. What do you think? Me and Luke have been ready to take you out for a night on the town in Benton for a while. A Benton bender? We'll show you all the wonderful sights. You know what? As a small town, it's probably not much different than the cornfields that I came from. So I can get down to some taverns. You've got some taverns up there. Oh, yeah. We'll play some Scooby-Doo. We'll get some gameplay video. And we'll do everything we can to get more and more videos out from Spooky Pinball. I know that these two are very creative with videos, but if I can get my hands on some of these things, you guys are going to have some great stuff to watch. All right, you two. Love you guys. Luke, Bug, have a good one. And if they need to reach out to Spooky Pinball, how can they do so? You said Morgan's got an email at squirrel at spookypinball.com. You can also call us. It's 815-541-0054. Keep bringing greatness to pinball. We love you guys for it. Thank you very much for having us on, sir. That'll conclude the interview with Spooky Pinball and my buddies over there, Bug and Luke. Thank you guys so much for joining. And until the next wacky mystery episode, I'm Zach Benny with The Pinball Show and Straight Down the Middle. I'm going to buy one of these I'm going to get the collector's edition I'm going to get the butter I'm going to put butter all over that thing Even if I don't care It still looks pretty I'm going to get it Did y'all see the topper? It's got a topper too with the RGB Get out of here I don't even need the powder coat It's already got a powder coat Five players I only need one Can we play again? Please If I say yes Will you stop asking? Let's play The gang's all here Frankie, look He's creeping in He's kooky Mysterious and spooky Oh, you guys