Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, November 16th. This is Vault 101. I mean, Episode 101. 101, The Fox. Your voice, the Kansas City Chiefs. I'm Skid Roadie. I'm not. I'm not really Skid. Yeah. Is Skid still there? I have no idea. Maybe. The only thing I listen to. I think he is. I only, I don't, I usually listen to regular radio in another vehicle. Yeah. Like going to pick up a pinball machine or something. Yeah, the only time I listen to regular radio is if somebody else has the radio on in a vehicle I'm in because I don't listen to the radio myself. Yeah. Okay, well, we're back. We made it past episode 100. I know everyone was really worried. I had a lot of outreach. I was like, are you leaving us? Not yet. I had no one ask. That would be like 103. Yeah. Yeah. You got to get a little ways. And then we can go and form Gaming on 20. Yeah. When we hit hot 103 jams level, that's when we'll bail. We'll put our pop culture podcast together at that point. It's been two weeks. Exactly two weeks. Because we recorded on a Friday, excuse me, a Saturday two weeks ago. Yes, we did. So what's been going on? In the last two weeks, we did the Kansas City Game On. Yep. It got renamed. I have it. I have that in our pinball section to talk about. We'll talk about it there. I played a bunch more of The Outer World. I'm still not done with it, even though it's only a 20-hour story. Yeah, it's brief. It's brief. See, that's the joy, quote-unquote joy, of not having a lot of play time, is that you can make a 20-hour game last for weeks and weeks and weeks. My daughters both this time ran in a 5K last weekend. They did. They ran fast. They ran fast. My older one finished in 32 minutes and my younger one in 48. And her legs are smaller, so it took her more strides. Yeah. She ran three steps for my older daughters. One step. Other than that, it's just been fighting the croup. The whole family's just been passing around the sickness. We've just been down with the sickness. Yeah. There you go. We had to put some singing in it. IGP that tune. Yeah. IBK that tune. Here's the problem. Trying to say it that way makes me feel like I'm going to summon a great old one. Mm-hmm. It might happen. Yeah, I got ill a little bit after the Kansas City Pinball Championship. I had a conference at work this last week, so I did not stream on my usual Wednesday. You didn't take the whole rig with you to Wichita to find a bar and set it up. And it wouldn't have been hard to find one in Wichita, but the rig is in a pile on my floor. I just unloaded everything Saturday night. Except I accidentally left the player cam. In my trunk because I was unloading in Wichita. I was like, why do I have a camera in this truck? Oh, yeah. I folded that tripod up real small, so I forgot about it. Forgot about it. Yep. I just missed it because it was so dark when I got home. I didn't see it. Right. So I was like, okay, well, I guess it will just live in the trunk forever. You now have a trunk cam. A trunk cam, yeah. But it's okay. So that's all right. My Walking Dead pinball machine I bought arrived on yesterday. On yesterday. Yesterday morning. So that's about what? I was going to say on Friday. A week after they originally talked about it? I mean, the shipping quote, when they just typed it up the day I called the shipper, put in, yeah, the prior Friday as its predicted delivery date. Before they'd even picked up the game from the seller is the issue. So once they got the game from the seller, which they picked up, not Monday, but the prior Monday, the estimate was revised to being this last Friday. That said, they called me on Wednesday and would have been able to deliver it on Thursday. But my work conference ended Thursday afternoon. And I was already, because I had changes in my schedule, I was going to not come home from the conference. I went to my office, which is 60 miles away, and printed checks and everything so I didn't have to do it on Friday. So I told them I couldn't be home until about 4 p.m. And that was like, okay, well, we're going to deliver it Friday then because that's not enough of a window. So they came real early. They dropped it off before 9. Oh, wow. And they told me it would probably be between 8.30, 9 to noon would be the time period. So here's the thing. Whenever somebody tells me, oh, we'll be there between 8 and noon, they're always there about 3.30. Yeah, so got that. And my dad had, for my birthday, done with BG Resto, had sent in my Buck Rogers back glass. It arrived to him on Friday. So he brought it over. Mounting the System 1 back glasses is kind of a pain because the holding system is a weird little series of like a half dozen screw-in plastic tabs. It doesn't just slide in. So it's a two-person job to take a glass out. Once the glass is in, you don't need to remove it to access anything, though. Right. Anyway, so we got that in. And it looks really nice. I don't know what they do for an overlay or something. They seal it. But they were able to preserve all the mirroring. My mirrored ink was good. So they preserved all the mirroring. So I don't have the gray. It's still got the original mirroring. It was mostly the blues were flaking out. But I think all the other paint other than the mirroring gets removed, and then they put in a new imagery. So it looks really nice, I think. So that got done, and I got Super Orbit in the lineup, which Super Orbit is super wide in the backbox head. So it had to go in dolly style, which I almost immediately just went upstairs and listed it for sale. Seriously? Because that means it's like wide body, and I don't want to deal with it. And Jax to open would have fit, but I still had it strapped down, so I went ahead and put it in. But now what happens when you're ready to sell it off? Well, I'll have to remember that I can't just cough and carry it into the garage. I'm just going to have to put the head down. Head's hinged, so it's not a big deal, really. Right. But still, it's kind of a big deal because it made me mad because I already put on two of the legs. And I was getting ready to tilt it forward and then carry it and slide it in. And it's like, it's not going to fit. And I measured it. Nope. It's like an inch too wide. No way would it fit. Time to cut out your doors and put in front of yours. If only the doors were a little wider. But, you know, life just finds a way. So anyway, and I did sell right after the day after that Sunday. No, Monday. The Monday. I wasn't feeling very good Monday because it was Veterans Day. I sold Sharkies that day. So I've sold everything now. It's all gone. That you had for sale. Yes. Everything I had for sale. Jurassic Park went really quick. Then I sold Silver Slugger, which I think has been doing pretty well. That was a new buyer, someone who hadn't had pinball before. And the guy who came and got Sharky's also said he'd never had a game before. I didn't hear anything, so I'm guessing it worked when he got it. I heard from the Silver Slugger guy that it worked when he got it. And then a flipper got weak on him, so I tried to help him troubleshoot it. And then he found where the wire had come off of a switch. So he told me he resoldered it, and that was good. Because he played it all night, and it was working fine. So it's like, okay, well, the way you described it, it was clearly electrical. So if you've got a weak electrical on a flipper, it usually has something to do with the end-of-stroke switch. I mean, like the only other thing that would usually come up would be if your flipper button wasn't making a good electrical connection, which would be very strange to just suddenly do that, which it's often like you need to file it, corrosion sort of thing. But anyway, it wasn't corrosion. I'd rebuilt those flippers. So it's like all the parts are new. So it shouldn't be an issue. I mean, I didn't rebuild it right before I sold it. You know, it's only been a home use game. Right. So anyway, since I'm kind of blathering about pinball, let's go ahead and move formally into the pinball segment. You brought up one of your big activities from last weekend was what you called KC Game On, which used to be their annual tournament they called KC Game Con. but they merged it with Next Tech and did a whole themed, because it was a technology expo, plus bring your own computer, bring your own console, plus eSports, plus the Dancing Anime Girls, plus pinball tournaments, multiple. We agreed to commentate the Kansas City Pinball Championship, which was the all-day tournament that happened on Saturday. And you only missed a teeny portion of the first round. So you thought you were going to be like hours late, but you drove your children to run until their lungs gave out. I told them that if they took too long to run, I wouldn't love any of them anymore. So they had to run as fast as they possibly could. Yeah. That's the motivating power of daddy's love. Yes. So that was smart because, in fact, you were only a little later than me because as I told you when you showed up, I was in the process of configuring the rigs in the morning we had tested them the Friday night everything was working great and that was fine it was just I decided to start that day for the qualifying rounds I would start the games on the end that way the nest of wires wasn't going to be an issue because we'd just be moving closer and closer with more and more slack as we went through qualifying they didn't get to be an issue until finals Right, when we had to go back to the end again. And it's like, oh, no, these are tangled now. Oh, the price of not having wireless Carl D'Python Anghelo technology. Or cable ties that we just connected together. Or cable ties that we just, that's true. And I had plenty. I could have at least brought zip ties. I have buckets of zip ties that we could have done. Anyway. I thought about that while we were undoing that. And I had a whole bunch of cables. I brought like a dozen Velcro ones too that I used to keep the spools together. Anyway, look, there are a lot of things we could have done better. The moral is we didn't. So we just had to make do. So that said, when I was in the process of setting it up, I need a – both of our camcorders require micro HDMI to HDMI adapters so that we can run regular HDMI cable. As opposed to mini HDMI to HDMI. Yes. So, you have a very nice micro HDMI adapter that's flexible. I was cheap and bought a very solid one, which I'm sure is great when you're setting your camcorder right next to an HDMI source. Anyway, there was too much tension on the cable and the adapter broke. It actually bent the metal piece part out. So, I had to rush to an electronics store. I got back one minute till start time with the last flexible micro HDMI one that they had. And that worked. So I got it all going. Everything else I had set up already. So I knew I'd be good to go. And, you know, there was actually going to be a little bit of a grace period anyway, because they were still doing the photo and printing off the score sheets. But still, I cut it really close. And so other than that, the stream, I thought, went pretty well. It wasn't as long as last time. This time was only nine and a half hours. So that was good. That's like an hour shorter than last time. We only had to restart it really one time where we had a dropped frame issue after about seven hours in is when that happened. But the tournament itself, I think, was a pretty big success. There were over 70 players. I believe the tournament was structured ultimately to be a 72-player tournament. And so congratulations. The A Division winner was Travis Murray out of Oklahoma. So obviously he took first. An area player, Sean Stewart, who just moved back to Kansas City from, I think, Nevada recently, he took second. Then Brent Locke took third. And Steve Hill, who we've played with for years, took fourth. And the interesting thing about it, and I have a link in the show notes to our stream of the tournament. If you want to jump to the very, very end, though, Iron Maiden, the third. These were banks of three games. Yep. These four players were all tied going into that third game of Iron Maiden. So Iron Maiden decides all of it. Obviously, I've spoiled for you the results, but it's still really interesting to watch, especially Travis's first ball on Iron Maiden. This is the second year of this pinball tournament and us streaming this pinball tournament. And this is the second time that the finals have been this exciting. So what do you think is making the finals this exciting? us. See, the dots were there. I mean, that's obvious. You just had to draw the line between them. It's the streaming gods reaching down to make sure that the finals are worthy of Mordor. Yes. And we should thank Sam Swain for helping commentate Iron Maiden. He'd been on the stream to talk about the Mid-America Pinball Tour, which is the 2020 Push to F10. They're going to have 10 competitive high-value, is the idea, tournaments all in this Midwest area. Right. Because we have a lot of really good players in the Midwest. But outside of Chicago in particular, all the major – well, really, all the major tournaments are mostly coastal at this point. Pretty much. So it's like, okay – I don't mean right on the ocean, but Pittsburgh, obviously Seattle, Oregon has a lot of – I get it. But we special too. And so that's this. We're not just flyover states. Well, we are flyover states, but now there's a reason for a stopover. And that's try and win some money. And this was. Win some tournaments. And this tournament was, I mean, it had a significant prize pool to it. Yes, there was. You know, Annie Drain, Pinball, put $1,000 into the pot on top of what all the fees generated. Yeah, it was a sizable, sizable prize pool. So, I mean, it was interesting. it went well. I think we didn't get to stream as many I feel like we streamed more games last time. We did. And that wasn't our fault because these finalists were choosing the same banks. Right. There was a bank that was Taxi, Jurassic Park and Spin Out. Spin Out and three groups chose that bank. No, that wasn't Jurassic Park, that was World Cup Soccer. Oh, World Cup Soccer, you're right. Jurassic Park was beside the bank. And we did stream Jurassic Park at one point. So, yeah, I had someone ask me afterwards, like, well, I didn't see the stream. Why didn't I see the stream with Super Orbit in the bank? It's like, well, we didn't get that far over. Well, we got through three banks, and then it was time to do whatever the finalists chose. So that bank with Iron Maiden, that was the first time we streamed that one. Yeah. It was because people – and there were rules about when they could pick stuff. But when we went to the taxi bank, it was nice because we had novice finalists choose it, and then there were also A Division finalists. So we got to – I think we actually streamed a lot more games of the actual players this time than we did last year because there was a lot of downtime last go. Whereas this instance, in qualifying, you had three groups of players on each bank. So there was usually a lot. And we also targeted the older games, the EMs and the solid states, because the assumption is there would be a decent amount of turnover so we could bounce between them. You really liked that Team 1, that not very highly produced Gottlieb. Yeah, what was it, Gottlieb 77, I believe? Yeah, I don't think they made 1,000 of those. No, I thought it was like 700 or 650. So that really stood out to Tony. I can't remember having ever played that game as I think about it. But if you go and watch the footage we have, you can see him gush all over it. I gushed. Gushed. It's a gusher. So. 650. Yeah. No, it looked interesting. There are some interesting. Maybe I'm a little harsh on symmetrical games. No, I think I've been pretty fair. Maybe you're a little harsh. There's some decent, well, like I've mentioned multiple times, I like the layout to Cleopatra. I think with the rules, it works pretty well. A Jax to open, I didn't know anything about that game until I got it. But, okay, it's, well, all right. Jax to open is a weird one, though, because it's like, okay, it's symmetrical, except your real focus is the drop target bank, and there are different targets on the two sides. So what you need to shoot for is not symmetrical about that game. So that one's a bit of a cheat. Cheetah! But speaking – and Cheetah was there. We didn't get to stream it, unfortunately. We didn't get to stream Cheetah. That is too bad. It is. That's a really nice-looking Cheetah, too. Yeah. That's Mark's. Yes, it is. Mark M., area player. He's got a lot of wide bodies. That's kind of his thing. Like, I think every game he owns is a wide body, except he has a Stern Electronics Dracula. People say Dracula, they always think Bob Stoker's Dracula, but he actually has the first one At least I think it's the first one, I don't know if there's an EM Dracula I don't know Probably not No, no, we don't IPDB will not, you can't just search for Dracula Are you kidding me? Dracula Dead and Loving It, what the heck? Oh, that's Leslie Nielsen I like that movie Master 79 Stern Yep Yep that's the one he has I've played it before it was at Texas I only put Like one game on it maybe two So I can't really comment on the layout Speaking of Commenting on layouts though Raza Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland That's what everyone has now sat Like almost 20 minutes to hear us talk about I know because that is the only real big pinball news that has happened since we did episode 100. The Houston Arcade Expo, I believe, is going on right now still. There are two prototypes. You have seen the images. I have a link in the show notes for people if they would like to see the First Look article that This Week in Pinball has published. It has three interviews with people who work for Deep Root about this game. there are images of the game at the article and Facebook is now becoming littered with a variety of cell phone shot footage of these prototypes in action I don't know if you've seen any of the videos they started to come out last night I watched a few this morning by a few I mean I think I've seen four videos at this point none of which I can really recommend per se cell phone shot video footage they're not all like shaky cam Blair Witch Nightmares but But it's just, you know, it's not controlled. So I don't know whether I want to recommend any of them or not. But I will use that to provide some of my thoughts. And that's what we're going to talk about is our thoughts. Noting however per Robert Mueller in the interview that he did in that First Look article we have the link to that the cabinet is prototype the play field is not the final type of play field nor, as in, they used a Merkle play field. It's not made of the material that they're talking about the hammer test with. Also, the game does not have finalized art. It's not the finalized design either. And, unsurprisingly, the code is not finished. So basically, the actual game might be kind of sort of similar to this, but if it's completely different, that's okay and don't worry about it. I mean, if you would like my speculation, and if you're listening to this or sitting across the table from me like you are, Tony, I'm assuming you want to know my take. I thought that was why we were here. Well, I don't know why we're here anymore. Well, we do have a pinball tournament later today, so there's that. But my take is I don't think that design changes very much. I don't think it's fine. It's clearly using a lot of 3D printed parts right now, so there's going to be questions about the quality on the prototype versus what the finalized version will be. I've also heard reference in that first, I should say read reference in that first look article from Jeff, who has toured the Deep Root facility before, that the cabinet that Deep Root ultimately is going to use is, at least per Jeff, more aesthetically pleasing than the prototype cabinet looks. The prototype cabinet looks like any other cabinet. Well, the first thing I think that people will really see is the display approach is very, very different. It is weird. It is very wide and very narrow, reminiscent to me of the remake expanded DMD displays. That's a close comparison, though this isn't a DMD. It's a screen, an LCD screen. Now, I guess the paneling around that is not – that's prototype versus what the actual original thing is. Because to me, it sounded like when Robert Mueller was explaining it in that interview, he refers to this version they're using as the Cylon version, which I like. That it wasn't good. I think that they should keep the metal around it, and when you put in enough money, it should say, by your command. And have the red go back and forth. Yeah, come on. In attract mode, that would look cool. See, that would be awesome on a Battlestar Galactica pinball machine. Which maybe they're doing. Which would be awesome. It would be. I actually kind of like the minimalism of that just shiny metal with the thin little speaker grills. I like that. I've seen a lot of people not liking the speaker grills. I actually think the whole minimalism look to it, I like. No, I actually like the backbox on the prototype. Yeah. The display, I agree. My first reaction was, this is really weird. I'm good with it, though, because it's unique. Yes, and that's fine, and I'm fine with it for that. My only question is, since it's obviously not using a standard LCD, how much it increases the bill of materials? Yeah, I don't know. I did see someone on Pennside, I believe, post a link to what he believed were the dimensions of that and showed where you could buy them. So you can get screens like that, not custom. Okay. And the rate on those seem to run like $80 to $150. That's not bad. And that's for an individual to buy one. Right. So my guess is it probably costs more than buying some readily available laptop dimension screen. But when you look at something that weird, it does feel different. I mean, when I look at a stirred, I do look and I see, this looks like you stuck a laptop screen in the back of the backbox. And when I look at a JJP, it looks to me like you stuck a TV in the back of the backbox. Right. And see, that's one thing I was thinking after I got over that this looks really weird, is the fact that this actually feels more like the DMD displays you got used to playing than what the new screens have turned into. Yeah. I think the main thing that I've seen in terms of – well, besides obviously people have their own aesthetic preferences is if they were to get a license, I don't know how well it would work for them to be able to just stick in movie clips. But that raises an entire debate of should you be just sticking in movie clips. And obviously getting the rights to do that has become really shaky with people. I think you could still do it to a degree. They used to do those digitized clips into dots for things like games like Iron Man and Avatar did that on that kind of wonky dimensional display. So I'm sure there's a way to do it. But if they're really leaning into that they're going to do custom animation, that doesn't preclude them from doing a licensed theme. I mean, that's the whole thing with Jurassic Park from Stern is it's all custom animation, not clips from a movie. I mean their screen size would have allowed them to do clips like Guardians but a lot of people criticize that Guardians just feels like a bunch of senseless clips stuck together so it just depends clips stuck together in Jersey Jack's Hobbit loved clips stuck together in Wonka not so loved it just depends on the integration and everything else the integration and possibly also just how well the game is perceived overall I have decided I like the screen. It's going to let them stand out because no one else looks like this. So that's not... Backbox, again, the art's not done. I'm going to guess that that Translight is going to have something more going on than just the name on it eventually. Probably the same with the sides of the cabinet. Which just say the name because that's pretty dull. With the exact same gradient picture running thing. Sure, sure, yeah. And I think that's the logo. They're probably going to stick with the font and all of that. I didn't mind the art on the play field. Again, I know that's not finalized yet either. I thought it looked fine. But again, let's not spend a lot of time on the art because they clearly said it's not final. Okay, so the design isn't quote-unquote final, but they're play testing it for obvious reasons. So we're going to guess the design's going to be close. From what you've been able to tell from the photography, what is your sense of this design. The John Pock Paduke layout that we are presented with. Honestly, I don't... No, lie to me. Oh, yeah. Be honest. Okay, we're going to lie. I think it's going to be the greatest game of all time. Wow. Strong take from Tony. But in all reality, I think it'll be a passable game. But I'm not sure. Until I see it actually moving, it's got that little Ferris wheel real fish trap thing in the back like on a couple of different games how that moves is going to be important I know he talked about a couple items in the interview it's going to depend upon how it works if it works it could be cool but it's J-pop when I look at this I definitely see J-pop it's like he gutted himself and buried the play in the field in his soul. So it's got a lot of kind of what I'd call John Papadiuk tropes going on with it. So, I mean, some of the things, and some stuff that I haven't seen from him before. So kind of back center, they've gone and run with a swinging target. Which is old school. Yes, very old school. A lot of people nowadays seem to, people don't talk about swinging targets much. what little talk I've seen. A lot of people aren't big fans of them. I actually think that's a kind of neat idea to bring back. I prefer a very target. I would have as well, but a very target takes a lot more real estate. Yeah. And I think the purpose of that target is it sounded like it might be what being hit spells zombie down the middle of the play field. So, okay. And given there's stuff on the left and right, you know, it takes a little bit of aim. So there's that. then there is a you mentioned a little ferris wheel which kind of reminded me of the maverick ball lock oh i was giving him i was hoping it wouldn't be that bad well and that's where in the videos i saw i didn't get a good feel of like how often is that fed the problem with the maverick ball lock isn't that it doesn't work well it's a slow right fishtails the same way right slow ball lock, which I don't like. It breaks flow. Yes. Too much. Though, this game, I don't think is going to be very flowy. No. From what I can tell, it's not. I don't think so. Now, on the far left, and it was really hard to tell from the photos, but I was able to tell from the video, there is another, it's not a real, not in an old school sense, roto target. It's like they took three of those swinging target round stand-ups, and they're on a spoke and they're spinning much like a Ferris wheel would. But in the historic Roto target sense, the different Roto's or the different targets on the Roto, I should say, were worth different things. And you've played a few Roto. Right. Todd's back with Big Daddy. He has several. He has several. Gottlieb controlled the patent on the Roto target. So usually I saw it from Gottlieb. My read on this is it's simpler than that, that it looked like it's just a, occasionally this target will be available, but it's moving. in an arc, essentially, the part you can see above the play field, and that it's maybe three targets, and I assume they all score the same value. But that's different, so I'm going to give it credit for that. So those are the parts that were the most interesting to me. Is that the little thing that looks like the lamp from Totem? No, it's even further to the left. It's actually like where you would normally see the drop targets on Total Nuclear Annihilation. It's way left. None of the photos are doing a really good job showing you. It's in the lower part of the play field, and it's – at least I thought it was on the left. We're both looking at the photos right now. See, the problem is I've only seen it in video. It could be anywhere. Yeah, or maybe I saw it still on one of the – like on Deadflip's Discord or something. Anyway, yeah, so it's off to the side. It was really subtle, but I thought it was an interesting touch. I will say that in terms of bill of material, it looks like there's a lot of stuff here. It does look like there's a lot of stuff there. And a couple of those ramps I'm questioning. Okay. And that's one of the things that I do want to talk about. I'm going to touch on a couple other things first. I don't have a good feel on the atomic shop shot, which is kind of middle left. Right. And that seems to have a drop target in front of it. And then I guess that goes into a scoop. That's what it looks like. So that could probably be okay with the drop controlling when you're going to be able to access it. But just to the left of that is the double dare cycle shot, which is like a lift ramp that then jumps up into a target. It kind of looks cool. Some of the commentary that I read online didn't sound like that shot was going very well, like it wasn't hitting. more that some issues with the lift. So that may be just prototype issues. In fact, I believe when I checked from his, because I didn't recognize his pin side handle, I believe it was Travis Murray, who just won the KC Pinball Championship, has played this, has gone and played this. And he provided a very detailed write-up of his first impression thoughts, which I don't have linked because he was going to play it again. Those thoughts might change. I want to bind him to what he said, but it was so detailed that it was worthwhile. He, and we saw his skill on Ironman, so we know he's a player. He's a player. All right. The ramps. That right ramp. He hit that ramp, I believe he said, 12 times from a trap. Made it around zero. Woo. I saw other video of people hitting that ramp from a trapped state. No one made it around. There have been reports from others at the show who are saying they are able to make the right ramp. If you don't make it up all the way on the right ramp, much like on some other J-pop designs, the ball doesn't, if it goes far enough, it drops back up top into the play field. It doesn't feed back like a Borg or a Ritchie design would. It has a spot where there's a hole that it will access. That ramp, though, when you look at that imagery of it in these photos, where it's kind of in the, it's sort of just to the right of the center. it goes around to the left, curves up right, goes up even more, and then feeds around to the left and drops in front of the left sling, which was bugging some people. But we've seen a number of games drop in front of the sling. Dialed in has a shot that does that. That doesn't concern me. The only thing that caught me was when I initially, because when I first saw this picture, I was positive that that ball came out that direction and didn't go up that way because of the twist and the angle and everything. No, that's how it's supposed to feed. And if it doesn't get up that part that's going up to the right before it bends around for its final return, then it plops off. It just sort of plops out up there. There's a hole. There's a spot for it to feed. So, I mean, my first take, that ramp sucks. That's a terrible ramp. I mean, there's no argument. I can't. It just does not look. I bet you feel really good if you get it to go all the way around. But if you can't make it from a trap, that's a problem because most people expect ramp shots to be accessible from a standstill position. That's kind of, I mean, I've heard some people compare it to the difficulty of making the right ramp on Medieval Madness, which I don't think is a great ramp either. No. But whether or not, this looks worse than that. Now, they're at a show. It's a prototype. There could be a power issue. So let's keep in mind that the flippers in a normal environment might not. That was an issue with a lot of the JJP games that you had to remember is those flippers are mush at shows because they don't have the power up enough. That's fine, but you have to remember they don't have the power up enough so they're a mush at a show. But once you've got 500 or 600 games in it, they're going to start getting weaker as is. And that's a good point. Are you going to have to adjust the power? How does the flippers do when they get hot? Are they designed to keep themselves from getting hot? Because there are different approaches to coil design for flippers to try and prohibit that. But the left ramp, the reports haven't been nearly so concerning about making the left ramp. But it's so far at the show sounding like right ramp is, and there are people who are saying they've made the right ramp. But I haven't heard anyone who said they made the right ramp from a trap. They made it from an on-the-fly when they had momentum. So they carried a lot more. Right, but if that's how it's designed, I don't think people are going to like that ramp. I think the idea that you have to have momentum to make any shot isn't something that people in pinball are really looking for. No. They want to, whether they're shooting on the fly or from a trap-controlled state, be able to make any – what looks to be an accessible shot. And that's clearly designed to be accessible from the lower flippers because this is a two-flipper game. Yeah, and it's right in the middle of everything. So there's that was an issue. That's a bit of a concern. That's probably my main design concern right now is that RAM. Yeah, that was one of the first things that jumped out at me. Orbits. Here the orbits are accessible. The orbits are fairly early on the flippers. They look early to me on the design because you've got more stuff to the left and right, so that means they can't be on the tips. That might be – that's just a different style. So if you like that, I mean, I always thought that way with TNA's orbit shots. They're not as late on the flipper as I instinctively would have thought they would be, like if Steve Ritchie had done them. It's a different designer with a different approach. So that's fine. My overall thought on this is this does not look like a layout that I would like very much. But I could see that others might. And it definitely looks packed. It does look packed. It looks like it's got that whole flavor that we prefer. Well, Thunderglass. But I'm not overly interested in it. Well, Thunderglass. So. The thing, literally the thing I like most about it is the kind of retro sci-fi shtick thing. Oh, I like the sounds. I like the announcer. The sounds are good. All that's good. And everything I've heard about the display animations is that they're solid already. Yeah. So it sounds like I see potential with this. And we have to bear in mind, as anyone who, and I guess I don't talk about him very much, but as I've talked about on the show before, J-Pop is not one of my preferred designers. I don't like a lot of his design decisions. Agreed. And I know a lot of other people love it. So this may very much appeal to people that love that Circus Voltaire style layout with some of this ramp usage that's in a way reminiscent to me of Totan. Tales of the Arabian Nights had a lot of those ramps with early drop-offs that he didn't make it around. Though those ramps were makeable, so I don't know. And again, it is still a prototype, so there are certain things that they'll be able to see the player feedback on and tweak. what do you think the biggest speculation has been in the discussions on social media on Pinside about this game what's your guess because I know you haven't read the Pinside thread because it is a perilous place I would assume that it has to be about the perceived rehabilitation of J-Pop that has come up but it's not the most speculation I've seen The most speculation is actually the price. Because Robert hasn't indicated yet what this game is supposed to sell for. Everyone's looking at it, and they're remembering his prior statements, statements he gave on this show, statements he's done in the interviews with This Week in Pinball in particular, I believe, where there's been this Ferrari quality at Fiat pricing was something he mentioned earlier. So here's where I think this is – people fill in the voids, and the question is what do they identify as a void or what will be a void with all this? So you've got an acknowledgment that the art is preliminary. This is prototype, all of that, and by and large, pretty well accepted. I've seen a few people start commenting on the art even though it's clearly not the final art. But the vacuum that was left, the void that is there to be filled is the pricing void. And because of those past statements, a lot of people are thinking this is going to be under our stern pro with all of this stuff. How can anybody honestly believe that? Because of the statements. Because of the statements. Seriously? Because it's like, well, even in the end. Ignoring statements, ignoring anything else. Bear in mind, even in the latest interview with Twip, on the first look, he noted that this is a low-end item. What's being shown here, it's not got a lot of the deep-root innovations in this prototype yet. that this is what they kind of view as a low end. So, okay, go ahead. Make your remark. Ignoring the whole statements and thoughts and knowing that this is literally just a put-together loner cab and the non-correct play field styles and everything else, can you honestly picture this game being priced under a Stern Pro? No. I think if this is supposed to be competitive with Stern, that he might try and get it priced under their premium. Yes But I don see this being priced under a pro just because of I mean it got a lot in it Yeah I would have a hard time seeing this machine that low What about, it's like, what, if anything, about the development of this game could they save on? The license cost is the one thing that really stands out. But I can't imagine. Because of that, they're not going to sell as many of them. I agree. But just in terms of the price listing, it's like I can't fathom that that display is costing, I mean, especially given the volume of Stern, that that display is going to cost less than Stern's screen. They're clearly putting in more toys on top of the play field than we see on Stern Pros. I think there's more coils and mech control in place here. Have we had bobblehead gate? Because I know we had the big bobblehead gate on Deadpool. This game has a bobblehead in it. No, no. I haven't heard any bobblehead gate, actually. Because that was one of the huge, oh, cheapen out, just put a bobblehead on it thing that we heard on Deadpool. Yeah. He's got a bobblehead. Yeah. But, I mean, well, I'm like, does it really? I mean, we've got Ned's head. Is that the one? No, no. The spaceship above the atomic shop. It's literally a bobblehead. It's on a ship. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, it doesn't look like it's a bash toy. so that might be the difference oh we didn't talk about the wannabe lamp thing to the left you did I don't like I actually like the layout of Tales of the Arabian Nights a lot I don't care much for the lamp and Travis did weigh in on this that that shot on this one for him negates like all flow that you might have in the game because it usually just kind of hits it and then just sort of dribbles back to, not that it's dangerous, it's safe, but it just dribbles. It kills anything that was happening. It doesn't spin very well. Again, prototype. Right. But most of the time it hits it awkwardly. It gets a little bit of movement and then your ball is dead and it's coming back and you have to make another shot. So that was a lot of the critiquing was there's just not a lot of stuff that's letting this flow very well. and there's a lot of slow returns. I think the word floaty was used by someone. Slow returns. But safe. Slow but safe returns. Yes. No flow. And a ramp shot that you have to have momentum from flow coming in to successfully hit because you can't trap up and make the shot. Though I hear when you don't make it all the way up that ramp because that's the roller coaster ramp that does have a cool animation with your rollercoaster fails. Yay. You're just not a rollercoaster enthusiast that our audience expects. Well, yeah, no. That's the thing. I like rollercoasters. But not when they fail. But not when they fail. Yeah. But, no, I just don't understand. This falls into not just with this game, but with so many things in pinball. I don't understand and don't like the fanboyish worship of certain companies and certain designers. I have designers who are my favorite designers, but if they put out crap, I'm going to acknowledge they put out crap. Right. But there's some people who cannot accept that a favorite designer or a favorite company could do something wrong. and that is my largest current annoyance in pinball probably. Right. Well, overall I would say most people that I've seen comment seem fairly skeptical of Deep Root. There are those that are obviously really wanting something new from J-Pop and they will take whatever they can get. So there is that. Yes. And it's been a long time since I've had a design from J-Pop so that hunger is understandably large. It hasn't been that long. Eh. Pretty long. Magical Girl was last year. No, a game. Magical Girl was last year. I said a pinball machine. See, because this goes back to the rehabilitation of J-pop thing. Yeah. But the settlement. Let's go with that. So is Magical Girl actually. It's just Magic Girl. Magical Girls are from anime. Is Magic Girl honestly the one and only true pinball table? because you can't play the thing i think that pinball table's okay to say no matter what but it may be the one and only pinball lamp that isn't just a lamp on the play field but it itself is a lamp it is a lamp yes so yeah uh but i'm people are pretty i mean there are some that are being really really harsh with this and there are others are like well it's just a prototype and they're happy to have seen something. There are some that seem pleased that it's this well developed. Here are the positives to me about this. This looks a lot better in terms of what they've got going on with it than a number of other startup stuff that we've seen. Compared to Cosmic Carnival, compared to Keltz, this looks more like a serious contender of a full fledged pinball machine. Not going the, okay, we're going to do something that's like the 80s. Correct. And while I think the look of Celts looks really interesting, the look of Cosmic Caramel not so interesting to me. Mafia with its EM style would be another one we could cite. You could even go and say TNA as a homebrew perspective. One might look at it and go, even though people really loved how that game played and that's what strength was. You could still have looked at it and said, okay, well, but it's single level, so it must have been easier to design. There was less going on. There was nothing custom. You didn't have – which, I mean, if I were to do my own home game, I would probably do a single level. One, I really like single levels. And two, it solves a lot of problems. No vacuum-formed ramps. No, you know, not having to deal with – it's not like the geometry of those with ramps became harder. Right. Unless you decided to make, like, five corkscrews going up. Going up. Then you might have to – That levels out and then goes up again so you can lose some momentum. You do know that the Hyperloop on the Premium and LE versions of Star Wars has magnets to help it, right? Y'all do know that, right? I mean, it doesn't just go fast by magic. It's got cheats that are helping it. So anyway, given that, I mean, for its first reveal, I think, okay, I'm intrigued. But not about this specific game. It makes me think Deep Roots got some interesting... They're willing to put in some BOM on this stuff. And I'm curious about that. But again, this would not have... And people have shown these. I've seen the screenshots of the Zidware version drawing of Raza. This isn't all that different from it. So this would not have been, in my world, this would not have been the game I would have led with. I would have wanted to show what Nordman was working on. Something different that you had no clue what it looked like. Is this a situation, since they're coming up already on a year delay, they felt the need to put something out? Since this is a prototype machine in a non-standard prototype cabinet with a non-standard prototype play field with prototypes, placeholder art. A lot of this feels like we've got the basic design, but we're not ready to reveal our hands but we are starting to lose the kind of momentum and drive and word of mouth that they had going for the longest time so they threw something out there. Well, we knew they were going to throw something out there for months though. Right. But at the same time, did you believe that they would throw out something in a non-standard cap that didn't have the normal play field this is basically a white wood with paint on it it's a painted white wood well I mean it is a prototype I am surprised that it wasn't in the finalized cab design that does surprise me the play field not as much I suppose because if you're still working on the finalizing the design you might want to depending on what they're doing with their play field it may just be easier to call Mirco and say print us up a couple of these regular wood playfields their finalized playfields are wood yes they did say that so yeah I mean I don't know in terms of it being Raza that doesn't surprise I mean my thoughts aside it doesn't surprise me because J-Pop was the first designer they hired he's had the most time to work on it plus he'd already been designing it back with Zidware basically so there were tweaks there have been adjustments but none of the other designers have had nearly as much time as poppet duke had because he was with deep root for months before they announced that norris nordman and osler were there right so that i mean he's had more time to bake his idea is is the thought so that's why i think they're running with raza um plus of the designers i mean it's like okay well based off of the last working games. We've seen stuff from Nordman. I mean, Nordman's Elvira is out now from Stern. So we have recent Nordman's. Not that Papaduke was the... I mean, the last full-fledged Papaduke working game we had was Star Wars Episode I, really. I mean, Norris was a little bit after that. He did have the High Roller Casino with Stern. So we saw something. So it's been a while since we've seen anything from him. Him and Osler are the two that we haven't seen anything from really in a while. So that may have factored in. Plus, another thing to bear in mind is the decision to deal with the people who tried to buy games from Zidware and the thought that if you're going to give them a game in exchange, they would want a Papaduke game. So it makes sense also to try and push the Razzas ahead for that reason. So that's kind of where I think. I almost think that buyout or whatever we want to call it thing, those terms, the settlement terms, that that's all the station. That's what it is. Yes. That's what it is. Yes. But that would explain a lot of why, okay, we need to do Raza first because that's what's going to make them the happiest is to be able to pick that. I mean, we have to remember, though, originally the talk was all like there were going to be five games out in a year. Right. So you're going to have a lot to pick from. It's basically going to be every single designer. It'll be like Papaduke, Norris, Nordman, Osler, and Robert because he's got that fire and brimstone. Right. And now, if I remember from reading the article, the goal is to have Raza at launch and maybe a second or third. Right. Because launch could still be June. Right. Because in the article, he states, I'm going to read it, direct quote, Deep Root Pinball will launch in the Deep Root Auditorium at the San Antonio headquarters on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, at 855 a.m. And then they're planning to have titles beginning being delivered at best the beginning of April. Right. At worst, the end of June. Right. So I'm guessing after that reveal, they're going to have games on the floor at TPF. I would assume so. I'm seeing as the 25th is two days before TPF. Right. So. So, yeah. I haven't had my invite to go to the Deep Root Auditorium and cover the reveal. I haven't either. And here's the thing. What? If any of us was going to get one, it wouldn't be me. It wouldn't be. I can see you getting one. Probably wouldn't be me. No, probably not. I definitely couldn't see me getting one. I'm too much of a negative Nancy. No. People love winning over the skeptical. That's true. They do. Winning over shills is easy because you don't have to win anything. I've got plenty of time that if I got everything, I'd probably be able to take the single extra day off. Oh, yeah. Or the two extra days off, actually, that that would require. I might be able to. I have to be careful. The Kansas legislative session's break is very close on that period. It's weird. But I think they are off that prior week. Yeah, because I was already planning on having the Thursday, Friday, Monday. Thursday, Friday, Monday is what I've got on my calendar. So I could add Wednesday, and if I didn't have to drive, fly out Tuesday night. Yeah. And if I had to drive, well, then I'd have to take Tuesday off also. Good point. And then by then, it's almost a whole week. Yeah. Well, that's fine. I've got 60-some-odd hours of vacation set aside. Yeah, I've already got it. I'm up to 70 at this point. Yeah, I'd be all right. Anyway, not that we're fishing. Speaking of fishing It's time for you to fish For what's in my brain Because we're going to play 20 questions Yes we are Haven't we been on pinball long enough We have been on pinball long enough But we're still actually under an hour So we're doing 20 questions So for those that do not know Tony will ask a series of yes or no questions To me I have a flipper pinball machine That I know he has played before in mind And after the 15th question If he still hasn't guessed it, he may use internet resources to try and figure out the answer. He's got until the 20th question to get it right. Otherwise, he fails. Tony. I have failed. Only once. I am a failure. Only once. Ask your first question when you are ready. Is it from 1990 or newer? No. Is it from 1980 or newer? Yes. 85 or newer? No. Is it a Gottlieb? No Blah oh no Blah Blah Blah Well we already know it can't be one of the Dracula titles Blah That is true Is it from 1982 or newer No That's question 5 So we're looking at an 80 Or an 81 Hmm See I got screwed on the class of 81 one time screwed, I wouldn't say because you didn't fail that. Well, is it an 81? 1981, not class of 81. Right, no, it is not. Okay, so it's an 80. So, this is where I was running into the problem because I always run the late 70s and the early 80s together. And I have a hard time differentiating. Well, at least then it's narrowed down something. Yes, I know. It's narrowed down somewhere. It's just the issue is on my end because I'm not the encyclopedia. Well, maybe you shouldn't have asked a bunch of date questions then, but that's what you chose to do. Yes, because date questions are far better than the old method of asking questions because it definitely narrows it down quicker. The solid state EM, alphanumeric Numeric DMD, LCD You could have got There are other options, there are designers There's starting with the manufacturers There is, and I've considered starting with the manufacturers The big thing with starting with the manufacturers Is by starting with the dates It narrows the manufacturers down a lot quicker I know, I understand I'm just saying that there are options. I'm just saying there are options. There are lots and lots and lots of options. Now you've narrowed them down to a relatively few amount of options. So just pick the game. Oh, well that's so easy. No. Let's see. Well, we'll stick with manufacturers then. Is it a Bally? No. Is it a Williams? Yes. and all the people at home are screaming at me because I'm a moron does it have more than two flippers? No. Is it firepower? Yes. Got it on question ten. I could not. For some reason I thought firepower. I was thinking firepower was a 79. Wow. That's why. I always get that little run right there. I always get everything all together. As close as February of 1980 was when it was built. Yay! See, that was pretty good That one wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been Yeah, that one went great That went great Now we can go into video games Which is also great Video games are great Video games are great Well, I had a weird one That I thought we could bleed off with Just real quick I had a message from Lucas Pupkey Last night Actually, it went into our EGP Facebook page He said seems that 2K's Facebook page got hacked. He didn't say it exactly like this, but this is how I imagined him. This is a little odd. 2K's Facebook page is not looking right. So I went and I looked. It bad. It's not just their Facebook page. All of their social media was hacked. Wow. All of it. Even individual games, Twitters and stuff were hacked. Okay, because I saw just on Facebook you know inward usage i saw uh uh crude erectile references i i saw epstein talk yep uh so i was like okay uh and at the time i saw those posts were an hour or more older yes so it's like he's adding the facebook page the twitter accounts for nba nba 2k Ronnie2k and the official Borderlands account in addition to others were all hacked at one point 2k had to put out their apology and notification to make sure people knew that things were compromised on one of the protected accounts that hadn't been compromised the Sid Meier Civilization Twitter because they didn't have access to the primary 2K accounts still. And the Sid Meier's one had remembered to build city walls. Yes, Sid Meier's has built the fences. Good on you, Sid. Good on you. What a great game. Okay, so anyway, I don't know if it's back under control at this point or not. I didn't check this morning. I'm assuming most of it has probably been recovered at this point, you would hope. Yes. So the moral is probably maybe not use the same password for all the accounts. Yeah. That's what I'm going to guess. It's going to be something that simplistic, but who knows. Or don't let down, or don't let down, don't let one person have all of the passwords. Yeah. Especially not when it's somebody who probably carries the passwords in an unencrypted doc file on their personal laptop. or, you know, phone or a post-it note. Yeah, maybe it was a post-it note in his wallet. Hey, that comes in handy. Who's going to think? You have to steal the wallet. It's double crime. Steal the wallet and hack. 2K's account looks to be back. Okay. Hey, what about Blizzard? What's going on with them? Blizzard, they're the greatest company of all time. They had BlizzCon and we talked about it last time. And we did. And everyone forgave them because BlizzCon. Because BlizzCon, everyone forgave them. Nothing bad happened. They did report their best earning third quarter. They had record profits. Wow You know what They could have even more record profits fourth quarter if they let go of even more people like they did after Activision had a record year I know To drive it up I wonder what caused that Oh, yeah. You don't have any staff costs. It's a lot of energy. So in addition to having record profits, which I'm sure they're going to push up wonderfully, BlizzCon had controversy coming out of it. No. Besides the apology. They had an apology. And they had Diablo, and they had Overwatch, and they had... They also had competitions. Sure. And they went great. Go Team USA. Merca. Merca won World Cup. Totally dream teamed it with an entirely professional caliber, as in they're all pro players on the American team. It was pretty heavy. If they're going to keep doing the World Cup, just as an aside, maybe they should make that where no one above contenders should do it i'm just speculating i think that would probably be a good idea because or drop doing the world cup entirely because it felt amateur hour it did na production is a stereotype na for those i don't know means north american and so it's a running joke in overwatch win because they have all these like contenders divisions in the pacific and in europe and like the most low rent looking ones always the one out America. So it's just like, NA stream, NA hosts, NA equipment, NA production. So, anyway, this was total NA production. It was total NA production. But we did win. So, yay, America. That's good. Yay, America. Now, the prize pool, because the first thing we're going to talk about is prize pool issues. Okay. Money game. The prize pool for Overwatch was unannounced. They didn't release it. Oh. That's true. I never did hear So we haven't... We don't know? They actively did not release what the prize pool for the World Cup was. Was there a prize pool? We don't know. Huh. But the prize pool for StarCraft II was $700,000. Okay. The prize pool for the Hearthstone Grandmasters was $500,000. Hmm. That's fine. Yeah. Cool. Whatever. Makes sense. StarCraft's still one of the most popular competitive games on the planet. Sure. People like to play Hearthstone when they're not getting banned for talking about Hong Kong. Right. Here's where the problem came in. Apparently, and this was news to me, there is a competitive scene for World of Warcraft. Really? Really. There are two different competitive tournaments for World of Warcraft. One is based around Mythic Raids, and the other is a PvP thing. Okay. but Blizzard made an announcement in March that they were going to be selling new toys in the Blizzard shop and in the in-game shop to help support the prize pool for those tournaments and that those tournaments would have a minimum that the minimum prize pool for those tournaments would be $500,000 okay I'm going to read you the direct post For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion's Pride and Horde's Might fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year's finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship and the Mythic Dungeon International with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000, $250,000 per event. Your support will help take WOW Esports prize pool to the next level. Okay. How does that read to you? it reads like they were guaranteeing a quarter million dollars for each of those two tournaments. And that's what they were selling the items to help generate the funding for. Right. Well, the way a lot of people took it was that the guarantee was that there was going to be a half million dollars to split between those two prize pools and then everything else. Well, it said guaranteed minimum prize pool. So, yeah, it was a guaranteed minimum prize pool. Whether or not they put in more money above that, if they made more on the items, I could maybe see a debate about. That's where the problem is because the way they laid it out and the way they were talking about it up until the week before BlizzCon, when they made the announcement that the prize pool was $660,000. Okay. And when people asked about it, they ignored the questions until the players asked about it. And they were told in a closed player meeting that, yeah, no, it's just the prize pool from the money earned from the toys. so they pulled the money that they had set so Blizzard didn't put any money into the prize pool right if you read it that fits with what was written they just said that they were backing that it would get up to a half a million dollars total and it did with the sales so that's what they did which is fine which is ok the problem being that a lot of people including almost all of the people on the teams, read it as that would just be added on top of the $500,000. So that led to the problem going into the tournament, is that people were going in expecting a tournament with an extremely... Like a million plus dollars. They were expecting a million plus dollars. And it turned out that it wasn't. It was still $660,000. That's $330,000 per tournament. Each of those two tournaments. Yeah. So it's still a decent price point. So QQ more, as we used to say in Warcraft. And there was a lot. There was a lot of QQ. And there were calls for Blizzard to go ahead and put in their half million and this and that. Surprise, surprise, none of that happened. The other issues that came in with the Blizzard play is that they had the players fly in on Sunday. for is it still world of warcraft or is this all of them well world of warcraft for sure because it's where that's the group i was reading from because the original intention with world of warcraft is that like in the uh overwatch world cup where the preliminaries are all streamed leading up the world of warcraft preliminaries were all supposed to be streamed in that week leading up to having the finals at BlizzCon, except for they decided not to do that at the last minute. And instead of streaming any of that content, they decided to make all of the teams play off stream on Thursday, leading into the thing. And the practice facilities that they told them would be available, they didn't make available until Wednesday. So teams were scrambling to find facilities to practice at, which puts facilities facilities read internet cafes most of at points where there were people there they were taking you know 30 an hour long or 30 and 60 minute drives on ubers to get to an internet cafe so their team could practice with some of their competitors sitting literally right beside them at the internet cafe practicing as well because there was nothing else they could do for it. So there is a lot of sadness in the competitive parts of World of Warcraft. I mean, I definitely understand that about the streaming and the practice. I agree that that's a good thing to complain about. I'm siding with Blizzard about the price pool, though. That phrasing with the minimum guarantee, That was Matt. That's pretty typical language. That's why I wanted to read the whole thing in its total because the phrasing is what's important. The excess sale, I mean, I thought you were going to initially tell me like they raised $660,000 and then still just kept the minimums at $500,000. Yeah. $500,000. That would have been real bad. $500,000. It's like, no, no. They put everything they sold into it. They just didn't have to backfill anything because they met the minimum with the sales, which I am pretty sure was entirely the planned strategy from the get-go. It wasn't like a shift. And I've seen other things like that. Basically, they're insuring against that. It's going to be a half a million, but they were trying to raise what they could through the sales. So they didn't have to. Right, right. It's a – we see that sort of stuff on things all the time. Most people don't cry about it. But having this whole streaming period and not having the condensed single-day offline play and all that, that's significant challenges that weren't to be there. Right, and because for competitive esports teams, other than the Overwatch League and high-level play for Dota and League of Legends and some high-level StarCraft players, most professional esports people survive off of their Twitch and their deals sponsorships and streaming and the fact that what was supposed to have been a bunch of streaming brand recognition out there major name recognition big help for your sponsors didn't happen when it was expected to happen, I can understand the opinion. He's super upset at that. Yeah, that's a problem. Because, I mean, that's a directly ripping money out of their wallets because they expected it and their sponsors expected it because they're like, yeah. Because they were told they were going to do it. Right. So, yeah, that's a big problem. So, that's an issue. Speaking of ripping money out of people's pockets, tell me about Google Stadia. Stadia! It's finally almost here. Does anyone care? One of our guest hosts cares very much. Okay. He ordered, as I recall, the big fancy one. Okay. All right. Tell me about their launch game lineup, Tony, and how unique it is. It is an amazingly, terribly, okay, it's got one unique game, which that makes it unique. It's unique because there's only one game. Yay. They're launching on the 19th, so a couple days from now, three days from now. with their single, unique, Stadia-exclusive, Guilt. How about a nice game of Guilt? Isn't that the game from Witcher, the card game? No, that's Gwent. My joke is ruined now. Okay, you're all right. I guess Guilt's something I totally don't know. Guilt is a puzzle game where you play as a little girl who's hiding from monsters running around. Oh, I was so close because that's like what that card game is. Yes, it's totally you play a little girl running and hiding from monsters. Well, with my deck. Valid. Perfectly valid. That is their only Stadia exclusive. The other 11 games that are in their launch lineup, because it's a 12-game lineup, you might have heard of them, mainly because most of them have come out over the course of the last decade. I mean, a 12-game launch lineup isn't a bad quantity for a launch lineup. Right We're looking at Assassin's Creed Odyssey Okay that's like the newest Assassin's Creed Yeah but still it's almost two years old Yeah okay Destiny 2 the collection Couple years old Well full collection at least Just Dance 2020 which you know that's going to be the number one seller That even came out on Wii Yeah I know Kind I have no idea Mortal Kombat 11 People like it It's only been out for, like, wasn't Mortal Kombat 11 a launch title for Xbox? I don't know. Maybe it was 10. I don't remember. Red Dead Redemption 2. That's a couple years old. But it just hit PCs last month. That's true. That's true. I still need to finish it. Rise of the Tomb Raider. That's old. Samurai Showdown. Somewhat familiar with it. Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Okay. Thumper. Because you gotta have a beat game You gotta have a rhythm game Yeah and Just Dance wasn't rhythm-y enough Right and Tomb Raider So they leaned real heavily Into Lara Croft So Stadia's launch titles is basically One unit game And a whole bunch of Lara Croft I like that What is this What 25% of this Is Tomb Raider It is I mean Three of the twelve are Tomb Raider games Okay Now there are Fourteen titles expected by the end of the year And They don't get much They don't get any newer Attack on Titan 2 Final Battle Which is a couple years old Borderlands 3 Pretty new That's new That's out like That's like three months old Yeah Darksiders Genesis Don't know it Yeah Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 That's like 3 or 4 years old at this point Because Xenoverse is like 6 years old Farming Simulator 19 I think the 19 tells you The year That came out earlier this year Final Fantasy 15 That's old Football Manager 2020 Okay Ghost Recon Breakpoint Is that the new one that everyone hates, or is that the last one that people kind of liked? I thought Breakpoint was the new one. Okay. I'm pretty sure Breakpoint's the new one. Because it's the one with the... Yeah, because the other one was Wildlands. Right. I've heard good things about Wildlands. Breakpoint has not been doing well. Yeah, no. It's got like a 40% on it for PC gaming. Yeah. Okay, so a bad game. Yeah. All right. Well it's totally understandable When you see who they have for the Art capture Stuff Okay Grid I don't know what grid is Metro Exodus I need to play more of that I kept telling myself to finish Red Dead It is it was early this year It was like February It's a newer game NBA 2K20 Rage 2 Okay I never was excited for I was really disappointed with Rage I hear Rage 2 is a better game Yeah Trials Rising And Wolfenstein Youngblood Which is 3 months old There's some newer titles It's not all ancient The problem is I don't understand why anybody would want Any of these games on Stadia I don't know especially if you live somewhere where the curse of Stadia is going to be hitting you because of the throttling done, especially if you live on one of the coasts or in major cities, on high bandwidth. Well, that's the challenge for anything streaming, and what makes me concerned about the next generation of console discussion, I'm not throttled here, I don't have a bandwidth cap, but if I did, it would be a deep struggle, because it's already at the point with just the updates to these games that it's not atypical for me. When the Junkenstein event came out for Overwatch, I had a 20 gig download. Yeah, that's totally sense. That's huge. I had two 20 gig downloads because I had to download it on my desktop and my laptop that my daughter plays Overwatch on. So I did that 20 gig download twice. And if she had it on Switch, it could have been a third download. She doesn't want to do it on Switch. She doesn't want it on Switch. Okay. Plus, I mean, just out of curiosity, I went through and was looking at my actual download. I typically, just in the background on Steam, download between one and seven gigs a week. Just from updates. Yeah, I think my, and it's mostly my Wi-Fi here at the house. I usually have over 20 gig a month just on my phone. Videos, downloading podcasts. I do this easily. Because that's when I do a lot of my surfing is in the living room on the phone now instead of at my computer. So it's like I've seen plans where it's like you get a terabyte? Yeah, no. Or 500 gig a month? Forget my family. Yeah. Me. You, yes. I would burn through a terabyte halfway through the month at best. Because it is not uncommon for me to be watching something that I'm streaming, either from YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, whatever, and playing games, and downloading something on my laptop or on my PS4. and I would hit that instantly. And then put in like when I get into a run where I'm playing a mobile game hardcore where I'm constantly on the mobile game. I mean, like when I was doing Gems of War continuously, that luckily I can play on Steam. But like when I was playing the Star Wars game, I couldn't play that on Steam. I could only play it on my phone and I played it continuously. And with a lot of phone games, if you don't emulate on your desktop or your laptop, you have to play it on either a tablet or a phone, which means it's problematic, both in battery life and in data usage. Yep. So, I don't know. We'll see how it does. It's so hard to launch a video game platform at this point. I don't really understand why Google decided to do it. I think it's like a lot of the things Google does. Because let's be honest here. I have Google's phone service, Google Fi. I, full Android, all my stuff is Android. Yeah, mine is too. Google likes to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. That's true. I mean, Google Plus was a case in point. Google Plus? Their old RSS feed, their old RSS feed reader. It was great. It had tons of usage, but it didn't make enough money, so they just dumped it. And it was what I used. And I was scrambling to find a new. Luckily, they put everything out so you could download your thing, a file that had all your stuff in it. So when you found another feed reader, you could just import it and not have to rebuild your entire thing, which is what I did. But Google is known for starting something and going, it's not making as much money as we thought it should, so we'll just trash it. And for people, especially since if Stadia dies, you're stuck with a controller. And if you splurged for the big ticket, a Chromecast Ultra, all the games are gone. Everything's gone. So you've got a controller and a Chromecast. Hmm. Yeah, well, it's not on my list. No, me neither. What is on my list is, say, we've reached the end of the episode. we have this has been episode 101 if you want to reach out to us about anything we have talked about or things that we didn't talk about you can always email the show eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com we're available at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast we're available on instagram twitch and twitter as eclectic underscore gamers and we'll be back in a couple weeks until then yep I'm Dennis I'm Tony goodbye peace