Hello. Hi. Welcome back to the Punk Rock Pinball Podcast, episode 35. This is a special, very special episode. Yeah. Does it get a number? I think it gets a number. They all get a number. Oh, I think the one time we did it, we didn't do a number, but whatever. It doesn't matter. We had like a bonus one that was like a shorty. Yeah. But this one will have a number. This one is going to be all about Pokemon. I'm Stephanie. And I'm Mike. And this is the Punk Rock Pinball Podcast. On this show, we talk about our journey through pinball as people that are crazy obsessed with pinball. Everything we do is pinball, pinball, pinball, and we want to get you obsessed with pinball. But this episode, we're not going to do a ton of intro updates. I did want to acknowledge one thing before we get deep into this. We had a review from a kind listener on the Apple platform, Cam Hughes, I think. Hey, Cam. Hi, Cam. I hope you're still listening. He gave us a solid review, but he said he was feeling alienated a little bit when we go into this. Cam could be a girl. So much. Yes. So I guess they. Cam could be a girl. I apologize. But we do talk a lot about the Punk Rock Pinball Association and a lot of our local stuff. We have a huge passion for that. We'll still talk about that, but we'll do it at the end. Yeah. But on this episode, we're not going to go into any of that. This is all Pokemon. Bonus. So it is right now 7.12 p.m. on Wednesday the 11th. We just got home. From an epic day. Iconic day. An iconic adventure. We left the house at 6.30 a.m. this morning. Took our dog. Took Marshall up to the Doggy Depot. In Downers Grove, Illinois. and then we went from there up to the beautiful village of Elk Grove where Stern Pinball's headquartered. And we were invited, which was amazing, for a media day to see a preview of the new Pokemon game. I don't have my hat on. Do you need to go get your hat? Yeah. Do I have to start over or do you want to just go get your hat? I'll get my hat. You keep going. Okay. So, yeah, we went up to Elk Grove, got to preview the new Pokemon pinball machine. We played the Pro, the Premium, and the LE. And it's a really fun game. And I'll wait until Steph gets back before we get deeper into the game. But they did cover at the beginning of the little presentation just how big Pokemon is. And I think a lot of people in kind of the pinball community don't quite grasp just how big of a property Pokemon is. So they had a graphic on the screen. You've got the numbers? Give me one moment. So it is bigger than Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, and Mario combined. Combined. Combined. Mario is in that, huh? Yeah. I missed that. Mario is in it. And $288 billion. Wow. So, Eric, we were chatting in the Discord. I said $233 billion. $288 billion. and those properties that we listed that they're bigger as pokemon's bigger than these combined those are some of the biggest ips in the world ever they are the biggest ips those are that is the collection those are like the next five yeah and pokemon's bigger than the next five combined yeah that's how big pokemon is it's like an international phenomenon yeah and so are those other things too they are so a pretty crazy um they also said that pokemon fun fact is the number one collectible of all time of all time yeah and if you go back to our our episode where we were speculating on a pokemon pinball machine you might recall that i went through the card grading data and show that PSA grades like one million Pokemon cards a month. Crazy. Per month. So this stuff is huge. I can't believe you don't have any of your cards to show. I should have brought up a card to show. Do I need to run down and get a card? We're Pokemon crazy. Do I need to run down and get a card? No, but every episode maybe you can show a card. Every episode between now and the day that we get our Pokemon LE pinball machine, i'll show a pokemon card okay okay yeah i've got a bunch yeah you do and i've been buying more okay well that's great so um yeah they so also for people who are saying i'm just going to wait till the anniversary uh version of pokemon comes out well guess what this is it this year 2026 is the 30th anniversary of Pokemon, so a really big deal. And the Pokemon folks are really getting behind the pinball machine. They hinted at some really cool things that are going to be happening with this machine and the support from the licensor, as they said. They're going to be taking it to the New York Toy Fair this weekend. I don't know if that's like an industry show. I think the first consumer show is Texas Pinball Festival that they're taking it to. That one fellow made such a great Texas Pinball Festival song. Oh, God, it's so good. Y'all can come and flip it. The Texas Pinball Festival. Bam, bam, bam. Yeah. So before we kind of talk about our experience on the machine, I also just want to let everyone know that today is Wednesday. Yesterday was Tuesday. and they had all of the distributors there as well as the licensor. So the Pokemon people were there, and it's the first time that they had seen the machines in real life. They'd seen little bits and pieces and rendering drawings of it, but they'd never seen the physical machine. And what George Gomez said was they were blown away, and they were playing the game, and their comment was, we feel like we're real pinballers because it's a friendly enough game that you feel like a pinballer, even if you're a noob. Yeah, it's a friendly game. Before we get into the layout, maybe we should talk about, you want to start with the artwork? Yeah. Let's start with the artwork. We did meet a lot of people. Maybe we'll bring that up later in the episode and give some shout-outs. Yeah. But with the artwork, George Gomez did mention, because love the artwork or hate the artwork, the Pokemon company did all of the art. So if you want to criticize and say, oh, Stern did this, Stern did that, they didn't. No, they didn't do the artwork. It was all done by the Pokemon people. And I think even the animations. A lot of those came from the show. A lot of them are from the show. I think most of them are from the Pokemon cartoon. The only thing that Stern did, my understanding, are the toys in the machine, which, of course, had to go back to Japan to get approved and go through that whole rigmarole. But as far as the artwork and getting down to the most minute of details, such as the thickness of the lines around the characters, that was all determined and handled by Pokemon in collaboration with folks from Stern who understand pinball to make sure that things were placed in the right area. But as far as how these characters were brought to life and the color schematics used, that sort of thing was all dictated by the licensor. Yeah, I think the licensor designed it all. I think Jeremy, is it Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti)? I believe so. Zombie Yeti, they call him. Talented artist. I think he probably gave, it sounds like he gave the Pokemon Company some guidance on where certain elements need to be on a pinball play field. Because I can imagine that the artists at the Pokemon Company have not done a real pinball play field ever before. so he probably gave him guidance about like these inserts are here and they indicate this these paths in the game are going to do x y and z serve x y and z functions so he gave them guidance a lot of back and forth with them uh george said that jeremy probably worked just as hard on this art package even though he didn't design it he worked as hard as as he would have on when he did the full design on it looks amazing yeah i know there had been like a leaked picture online and if you're watching this then you've seen the trailer i'll tell you it just as i've said with every pinball machine ever from a trailer to seeing it in person it's just night and day different like the the videos and pictures really it's very challenging for those to do it justice when you're standing in front of it. Because when I saw the leaked image yesterday, I was like, I'm not sure about this art. I was texting with a friend, Jeff, like, I don't hate it, but I don't love the play field art. I don't love it. But then when you're up standing right in front of the game playing it. And like experiencing everything. And experiencing it all, yes. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. Like the art is, it's classic Pokemon. so like it looks like a pokemon pinball machine and which makes sense because the pokemon company did the art same people that created the characters did the artwork yeah and also the audio yeah you have the pikachu the the lady that did the original pikachu she did it and the call outs are people from the cartoon so it's all it's all in there they have the full theme song it's really cool it's like um i'm we're both we've both been fans of the pokemon game like on game boy or whatever systems your switch it feels like just the world brought to life in such a cool way yeah yeah it's it's it's neat and the artwork to me the the premium and the pro look very similar. Like the back glass are different. I know the side art is different. And I did a poor job of like, this was a long day. I did a poor job of retaining how those two look. But kind of the color palettes and look and feel of the Pro and the Premium look very, very similar. But the LE, to me, the art package on the LE and the interior art blades and the back glass art are like phenomenal. And the expression lighting. And the expression lighting, so much so that I have, minutes after seeing the three, I emailed Troy at Tilt Amusements, Troy at TiltAmusements.com, because he knew I wanted one. And I said, Troy, I need an Ellie. We did play it first. We played it first, Albert, if you're watching. We played it first. We played all the models. All three of them, yeah. And I didn't get a reply right away. I'm sure Troy's busy today. He probably just went up there yesterday, and he's seeing the game. He's probably got a lot of people emailing. He's doing an expansion. And he's expanding his warehouse and his showcase areas. It's going to be awesome. But I so much want the LE that I sent Troy a Facebook message on the way home. and I said, hey, Troy, I sent you an email, and I'm just letting you know here, I need an LE. We don't buy LEs. No, now we do. Are we crossing some barrier that we can't come back from, buying an LE? Probably. Where it's like, that's what we do now? We buy pros. We're pro people, but not on this one. Not on this one. This one, we're LE people. So part of the difference for me between the two, and again, I'm sure everyone's watching the official Stern trailer. We took some, like, okay footage that I'll try to put into this. Yeah, you can just sprinkle it in as we start talking about the gameplay. But it is really cool. There's, to me, I think it's a really interesting part of the gameplay. There's a magnet underneath the Meowth in that area. I don't know what they call that area yet. but it kind of swirls the ball around and creates some randomness, which I think is really cool. And playing the Pro and playing the LE slash premium version of it, it just felt more finished to me. I agree. The Pro is still super fun. The Pro is super fun. I would say, and we'll get into the details of this. We're just excited, and we've been traveling for 12 hours. but um if this theme is a theme that's like you think it's okay and you'll want it if it's a cool game to play i think the pro is like definitely the value play there and the pro is missing way less than say a jaws pro yeah it still loaded with toys You have all of the sculpts in the Pro They do different things that we'll get into. But you're not missing a ton. I would say you won't regret buying a Pro. And I think the more recent stories, so many of them, I think the Pro is like Fall of the Empire, we have a Pro. John Wick, we've got a pro. Led Zeppelin, we've got a pro. Some would say, you're stupid having a pro Led Zeppelin. We enjoy it. That's neither here nor there. But we mostly have pros. The only premiums we have are the Jaws 50th and the Walking Dead. But if a pro Walking Dead existed of the remaster, we would have a pro. Yeah. So it's really just Jaws. Well, because it's the greatest game ever made. Because it's the best game ever made. but you want to get into some gameplay and some of those features go for it well wait one thing that they said a couple times that i want that i thought was really fun because it's very much aligned to the games yes of outside of pinball of pokemon that what you're trying to do on this pinball machine is discover Pokemon, catch the Pokemon, train them, and battle. Yes. All the things you want to be able to do. Discover, catch, train, and battle. You can do that. And they did emphasize very strongly before, and people have already gone off on it on some other people's pages I've seen, And before you go apeshit about it's a fan layout and it's simple, that was totally the intent. And George stressed that in the little briefing that this game has to be approachable and there has to be something that's really clear and easy to where you do this and something happens. so if you go up the middle and hit all these stand ups and the mouth comes down and you hit them like a couple times and you hit it up the middle again you get a multiball and it's very approachable and that was 100% the intent because they're anticipating and I think they're right that you're going to have masses of people playing this machine that don't play pinball that have not played pinball so the game is meant to be approachable. I would equate it to and these are some, if you look on the pin side top 100, these are some of the best pinball machines ever made. I would say it really harkens back to Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, and Cactus Canyon. Yeah, totally. It shares similar kind of feel and flow. There's no crazy hard shots on the game. There's no shot where like that shot's hard as shit. Or just like the ball does cool things, but it doesn't have like crazy ball paths that are like blowing your mind. How is that happening? It's like a straightforward, solid pinball machine. Yeah, it feels like you're playing an early to mid-90s Bally Williams pinball machine in terms of the layout. And those are some of the best layouts and most fun games to play of all time. I mean, Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness are still ranked super high. And there's a reason, because that kind of straightforward layout, where there's something up the middle that is like you know what to do, that's fun for everybody. But what's cool about the Pokemon game is they, we've been, Mike and I have been talking a ton about, well, how many Pokemon are they going to put in this thing? It turns out to start 182. Yes. To start. At the launch. That you can catch and train and battle. I don't know if you can train all 182. Well, you can catch them. But you catch the Pokemon, and then they show up in your Insider Connected. Dreams come true. So if you're scanned, and what's the guy's name that did the code? Tanyo? Tanyo. Tanyo has been grinding, and he showed us his Pokemon collection on his Insider Connected. He's got a ton of them. So the day the game launches, you can catch 182 Pokemon, and that's going to take some time because I played, we didn't get a ton of time on the game. I played about four. and I had it queued up to catch a couple, but I did not catch them. I think you caught one in four games. So to catch 182, and I said that to George as we were leaving the room, I'm like, man, 182, I was kind of anticipating maybe you could catch 30 or 50, and I'm like, wow, George, that's impressive, 182, and he said, for now. for now you can catch 182 mind blown which means there are more there will be more than 182 that you can catch yeah and they and you'll have the little icon for each dude in your insider connected app i mean it's like blending everything we love about pokemon into one thing yeah we love the pokemon go all right yeah collect them all on your phone look at it share show and like you You know, rub it in your friend's faces that you caught the squirtle. And then Jack hinted at the fact that we do have the capabilities of maybe making things appear at certain times or in certain places. Oh, my God. so it's quite possible that like certain locations or certain areas are at certain times pokemon might appear certain certain pokemon might appear for a period of time and you're going to probably have to go somewhere where the game is and play it and catch it i am just like so excited about what this means for pinball enthusiasts and those people who don't even know they're pinball enthusiasts yet yeah because you think about like we listen to the electric bat podcast pretty regularly with kale and rachel out there in arizona and they talked about how much of an impact the contracts for john wick made for people playing john wick and if you think about that like on location there's a there's so the way it worked is on the John Wick game, well, it's the John Wick story. And when there were contracts to go catch certain guys and earn certain achievements, it would get broadcast out on the Insider Connect. You'd get a notification. And you would have a certain amount of time, and there were a certain amount of people who could get the contract, I think. Yes. So if you weren't lucky enough to have one in your home, people were going out to locations. I mean, you and I drove an hour and a half to Galesburg. We did. And this is for John Wick. We don't even care about John Wick. Like, what is, how big of an IP is John Wick? What are we going to do? Like, so John Wick, which we love it. It's right there. Great game. One of my favorites. But let's be honest here, in terms of mass appeal popularity, probably one of the lower selling Stern pinball machines over the last few years. It's because it didn't have a gun. Because it didn't have a gun. They'd given him a gun, the whole thing's... There's a gun that shot balls or something, there's guns on the game, sold like hotcakes. No, it's just John Wick. It's not an inspiring theme, but the fact that there are contracts on a John Wick pinball machine drove people to the electric bat arcade. In the months when they had contracts, John Wick usually appeared in their top five, like Rachel gives the earnings report. And in the early months when they do two or three Wick contracts, Wick earnings went through the roof at the electric bat. This is John Wick. Yeah. It's John Wick, the game that nobody really cares about, even though it's an excellent game. But now we're talking about Pokemon. Oh, my God. Can't wait. Yeah. So, yeah, think about that. Think about that. But we can go into, to get a little bit more into the, how the game kind of plays now? Yeah, let me just say one other thing that I made a note of. George mentioned that as they were developing this out, because it's kind of like a George Gomez, Jack Danger collab. Yes, I guess we didn't talk about that. Sorry. Sorry, Kevin. We're bouncing all around. All over the place. We're bouncing all around. But George said that Jack concepted the layout and the toys for it and pulled together the structure of how it was going to play. And then George came in and refined the architecture, making it feel and shoot super great. so he like kind of like smoothed out the edges and did his george gomez you know sprinkled his you know the george sauce the george sauce on it put the george sprinkles on it yes that's yes and has george gomez made a game that doesn't shoot great i can't think of one george gomez games just shoot great yeah they flow yeah they flow okay and i'm guessing the The whole area up the middle with the Meowth coming down, that's got to be Jack Danger. Yes. That's got to be Jack's idea. It's kind of a throwback to Junkyard. A little bit is way cooler than Junkyard. But there are some real signature George Gomez shots here. And this one, starting at the left orbit. There's another thing to the left of the left orbit, but like a little area the ball goes, and it goes down a subway and comes up. But the left orbit there, it would always catch me off guard because it looks like an orbit and you're expecting it to come around the orbit. But the left orbit is essentially like the jetpack back ramp shot in Bond, but it's obscured by sculpts and things and some pop bumpers back there. So it's not immediately apparent that that is a ramp. No. So you hit the left orbit and it goes all the way around. It goes up a ramp in the back right side of the game and comes back over to the right flipper. Very much like the jetpack, the spinner jetpack lock on Bond, which is one of my favorite shots in pinball, period. Like, this shot is way easier to hit than the Bond one. The Bond one, I thought, is not super hard, but it's not super easy. So it's like an easier to hit version of that. But it's just a great feeling shot. and every time I hit it, I was like, oh, yeah, it's a ramp. It's coming to the right flipper. Here we go. It kind of gives you a little moment of surprise, and it feels really good. And, you know, we talk a lot about when, before we really got into pinball and how we just felt good when you hit a ramp. Like this is that feeling, you know, amplified. Yeah, like when you hit that shot, especially like newer players, and it goes around back there and it like pops up around and comes to your right flipper, you're going to be like, ooh. And that shot is, I guess we can talk about the play field overall, if I can remember. The left shot is the Bulbasaur, like the grass shot. Then there's a left ramp. And the left ramp is the water, the squirtle. And then you have the middle, the Meowth. Then you have the right ramp, which is the electric shot, which is Pikachu. and then the right orbit is the eevee now on the left ramp it goes up and like spins around and comes back to the left flipper and depending on certain things you've done in the game there's a diverter right but on the premium and le there's a diverter where it either just feeds the flipper down directly like a regular ramp or it goes into this if the dirt verter is down it goes into this kind of bowl thing similar to the fall because people are like oh is that the fall of the empire bowl it's different it's not it doesn't spin around nearly as long it's smaller but that like i didn't get to play enough to know that does something because there's a there's an opto in there yeah and that's registering the ball going around so there's a lot of cool stuff they can do with that. Didn't play enough to fully grasp exactly what that does. So the left ramp, there's a couple different things that that shot can do. So we talked about the left orbit that turns into the ramp. You've got the left ramp that on the premium does two things. Or the premium, the LE, sorry. Pro, there's no diverter. It just feeds the flipper. You don't have the bowl. I'm not going to have the visuals to put in this. Well, yes, I filmed some okay i think we've got them okay they might not be top quality but we've got them okay we've got them i don't know if i filmed the ball going around but i just don't want to go too deep in it because it like yeah but up the middle there's a bunch of stand-ups you hit that the mouth comes down you smack him and then that clears there's a shot right up the middle behind him you hit that You get a multiball. Right ramp, pretty traditional ramp. Right orbit, pretty traditional orbit. To the right of that, like kind of lower on the play field, is a scoop. Now the scoop if you in a battle So let say you are in a battle and you got A water guy You've got a water Pokemon. And let's say you're currently... And I think the Pokemon you have is on the bottom left of the screen. So let's say you're traveling around with a water Pokemon. And you're about to enter a battle with Pikachu or Raichu. Who are... They're electric guys. They're strong against you. So in the battle, the game will indicate in some way that you're at a disadvantage here. And you can then hit the right scoop and pick a different Pokemon that matches up better with the guy you're fighting. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Pretty awesome. Uh-huh. Or if you're like a grass Pokemon, you're fighting a fire Pokemon, not a good deal. You're going to want to get the water Pokemon to fight the fire Pokemon. Okay. But if you're fighting electric Pokemon, you want to get that Bulbasaur. I think that's how the matchups go. Okay. The grass beats the electric. The electric beats the water. The fire beats the grass. The water beats the fire. So there you go. I'm pretty sure. If you're like a bigger PokeNerd than me, like, correct me in the comments. But that's the gist of the play field. There is like this other little kind of hideaway shot on the far left. that, well, we didn't talk about one of the coolest mechs, the left ramp, sitting on top of the left ramp is a Pokeball, and that is on the Pro, the Premium, and the LE. But on the Premium and the LE, the Pokeball will lock the ball and kick it over into that left area. And that's how you catch a Pokemon. So if you've got a Pokemon ready to catch, that left ramp's lit. you hit it the ball stops right at the bottom the pokeball sucks it up and then it goes like like just like it does when you catch them in the game and then like spits it out and it comes out the scoop that's cool super cool you know what else it like the excitement around the um like the whole day that it just there was just cool energy and george gomez had said that this is one of like i don't know if he hasn't he didn't say it's the only game but he said everyone there is so excited about it that they have these they've had this game in like a testing lab like probably several of them i have no idea we didn't get to see the testing lab but um he said that stern employees are on it like all the time like that those games are getting played all the time yeah like sometimes he has to tell people like will you please stop catching pokemon and like i need you to do some other work like you have to work you work here oh my gosh i'm so excited yeah and and he said it's always a good sign when when the testing games are really busy yeah he said that doesn't always happen i could imagine not like this one like the things you can do and the code is like very exciting and it's like not even close to done so obviously we're excited enough that we're we are going to get an le yep um i know there's there's going to be people that are going to poo-poo the whole simple fan layout thing but i think that's exactly what this title needs to be. Yeah, what George did say, too, for the people who don't know a lot about pinball or Pokemon, if you don't know a lot about Pokemon or if you don't know a lot about pinball, you will learn through this game, which is kind of cool. So for the pinballers who don't know anything about Pokemon, you're going to learn. For the folks that listen to us, like Barry, who want to learn a little bit more about how to play pinball, Pokemon's going to teach you. Yeah, and it's a nice friendly game with makeable shots. So, Barry, this is a great game for you to go play on location because you'll be able to, if you play it enough, you'll catch a groove. You can hit shots and start feeling good about your play. And they've also specifically made audio call-outs to tell you what to do. So that's cool. If you're in a location and you can hear it, sometimes that's a little iffy, but it tells you hit the right ramp or, you know. Yeah. I couldn't hear all of it, but it tells you what you're supposed to do next. Yeah. It's so funny because, like, I've been playing this shit out of The Walking Dead, which is, like, not approachable. It will drain you in 10,000 ways. And I would say even, like, Fall of the Empire is kind of approachable. The shots are tight. And like John Wick, those games are tight, hard shooters. And this one was just refreshing to play a game where it's like, okay, I don't have to sweat every shot on the game. And you could have a quick ball. Yeah, I could. Because there's some chaos. You go up the middle and you don't know how it's coming out of there. So it's not like a gimme. But I think good players are going to blow it up, like Tom Graff. Yeah, Tom Graff did a billion. We watched Tom Graff shoot a billion, and he had another extra ball to go, and he just felt bad and plunged it off. The people around had to encourage him because he had two extra balls. And he had 980 million, and he was going to plunge off the extra balls. I think I said it, and I think a fellow to the left of me was like, get the billion. Do it. Like, get the billion, Tom. So he got the billion and then he drained his next ball on purpose. Yeah. So congratulations, Tom Graff. You've already shot a billion on Pokemon. It was pretty awesome. He's a good player. He's a great player. He's a really, really great player. Yeah. I know this has been about a half hour. Yeah. Do you want to do... You can keep going. Okay. Do you want to talk more about the game? Do you want to talk about some of the people we met? I think we've pretty well thoroughly covered the game. We're giving it a thumbs up. I think it's a great game. I think it's a great game. Like, I know there's going to be, because for some reason these days anything Stern does is going to get shit from a certain part of the community. Because I remember before the reveal, somebody commented on Stern's post, like, Remember, Beetlejuice exists. It better be this and that. And it's like, well, Beetlejuice exists, but can you buy it? Like, can you get one? Beetlejuice is not a competitor of this. It's sold. Yeah. So if you've got one on the way, congratulations. I can't buy a Beetlejuice unless I want to pay, you know, 16K for somebody's spot in line and wait 10 months. So it doesn't really matter that Beetlejuice exists. But then at the same time, everybody's saying Stern needs to get away from the flat plastic and do the sculpts. They did. This game has three, like, beautiful. Big. Big, highly detailed. On all three models. Sculpts on every model. They're so great. The Pro, the Premium, the LE all have the sculpts. So we forgot to mention the Pikachu is kind of in the back right, similar to where Kong is on the Kong game. On the Ellie and the Pro, his head moves around and he kind of wiggles around. On the Pro, he's static. The Meowth doesn't change at all. The Pokeball does the wiggles and is lit up. On the Premium and Ellie, it's just lit up. On the Pro, he doesn't move and it does not lock the ball. No. But the Pokeball, so for those, like, the Pokeball locks the ball. Yeah. If you get a premium or an LE, the Pokeball locks the ball. Yeah. So we don't have to have a controversy of the Pokeball locking the ball. But everyone's been hammering, like, Stern needs to do sculpts. There's three incredibly made sculpts on this game. Two of the three interact with the ball. Yeah, this one is a banger. It's a banger of a game. And the LE comes with the custom shooter knob, which is a Master Ball. What's a Master Ball? It's like the best Pokeball. You can catch them easier with a Master Ball. So you can have a Great Ball, an Ultra Ball, a Master Ball, a regular ball. On the video games, you have a Net Ball. There's a bunch of different, a Dusk Ball, a Repeat Ball, a Timer Ball. This is the Master Ball. It's the best one. Okay. Hard to get them in the games. I don't think I ever have. So the Master Ball, if you had one in the game, and you throw it out, it's harder for them to escape. Because if you play the games, you throw a regular ball, and they pop out, and you've got to keep throwing balls at them. The Master Ball is the best ball. Yeah. Yeah, best Pokeball. And the LE comes with that shooter. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. the le does not have the uh oh and the speaker lights on the le are like pokeballs yeah those are pokeballs the back glass is not mirrored kind of my only disappointment with le is and i forgot to ask why it wasn't mirrored but i know it wasn't uh and the artwork the side art is not foil like foiled but again if you want to bitch about the art you can take your complaints to the pokemon company because stern really didn't have any say in the artwork or what the materials were in the art that was all pokemon's call yeah and i bet like i wonder if like you on your pokemon cards that you'll be showing people in future episodes there are some they have like foil and it's very uh they have a very specific look and maybe they just weren't able to replicate something like that i don't know i'm just speculating so i i would assume that stern probably showed them the foiled version of the art and the folks in japan probably said nope not doing that and stern probably probably said okay we won't do that like oh oh we lost the light we let's keep rolling we'll keep rolling it's it's gotten dramatic so let's just talk a little bit about like if there were a lot more people at this one than when we did follow the empire yes um so we saw some folks that we had seen before like um erica's pinball journey she was there she got dressed up like a big pikachu with like one of those big inflatable outfits it It was real cute. The Wild Dog Arcade Boys. Yeah. We saw them. They have some really great content. If you're looking, you know. Their Flipper Rubbers video is great. It's a one-hour, maybe two-hour video on Flipper Rubbers. Yeah. Crucial information. Mike watched it. Yeah, I watched it all. He was a fan. We saw our friend David from Lumberjack Johnny's up in Wisconsin. Lots of Wisconsinites. Tom Graff was there, everyone's streaming hero from Fox City Pinball. And he's on the Triple Drain podcast. And the Triple Drain podcast. And then we had our friends from the Pinball Junk Drawer, also Wisconsinites. They made the trip down. So that was cool. We also got to meet a punk rock pinballer, Andrew Golden. Yeah. So he's the one, if you're in the Facebook group, he did the really cool Foo Fighter tutorial. Yeah. So that was very cool to meet him. Yeah. You gave him a shirt? Yeah. Okay. He got a shirt. Good. So that was cool. We met Mel and Bonnie from Nashville. Mel's, they are both ladies in the competitive scene in Nashville. And this was their first invite to Stern. And they were just a delight to meet. And their energy was pretty awesome. Mel plays pinball as her handle, I believe, on Instagram. We also, speaking of the ladies. Oh, my God, so dramatic. You keep talking. Okay. It's going to be dark right here on the video. If you're listening on audio, it doesn't matter. Steph's going to talk to you. So we also are friends and state qualifying ladies for Illinois from Hot Nudge. So got to hang out and see them, which was very cool. They're just badass pinball ladies. But, I mean, it's funny. I'm going to say it. I mean, I just rattled off. They were like three, four, five, six, seven, including me, seven ladies. It was a sausage fest there. We need more lady content creators. That would be. Whoa. Super cool. Oh, my God. We're so tired. Mike's Mike's Mike's dropping lights. So I just wanted to give those folks a shout out. And we also saw our new friend, well, our online friend that we'd never met in real life, Ralph, of Retro Ralph. So that was cool. He was there with his partner in crime for creating content, Mason, who we've worked with some of the overlays for our YouTube stuff. He does our thumbnails. Yeah, he does our thumbnails. He did that for us. Mason made the – I'm out of breath. I had to just reset up the lights. If you're listening to just the audio, both the lights went out. Yeah. Whew. You did it. But Mason made the overlay for our streaming, and he did the template for our YouTube thumbnails. Yeah. And it was nice to meet Ralph, I'll say. Yeah, it was. Because Ralph, I talked to him a little bit in between playing balls. We played with him. We played a game with him. And I talked to a lot of people throughout the day and I was try to be nerdy and talk about different rules and shots in the game It's like some of the people just wanted to get away from me. But Rafa's all in on talking about unique differences between the Pro and the Premium and the LE and the different shots and some of the different modes and the code. because I feel like a couple people I try to talk about that stuff and they're just like, oh, okay, nerd. But Ralph, like he engaged. He met you at your nerdiness? Ralph met me at my nerd level. I love that. And I got to say, he clearly has a deep passion for the game of pinball. So I respect that about Ralph. Like he's all in on this stuff. Yeah. as much of or more so of a nerdy level than me. Because I feel like some of the people are like, yeah, dude, I don't want to talk about this versus the pro versus the premium. They're all pinball people, but I feel like some of them when I went there with the conversation just kind of like their eyes glazed over. They weren't ready. And Ralph's eyes like perked up. Like he got a little ding. Yeah, bing. Oh, that's nice. So I probably could talk to Ralph for like two hours about all the details of the Pokemon pinball, and he'd be all in it. Ralph, I know you've got a lot of buddies that you talk pinball with, but if you need another one, Mike is here for you. Yep. I love that. I love it. Yeah, so we saw, and there were a bunch more content creators that we didn't really meet or talk to. Yeah, there were some others there. It was a busy day, and everybody's trying to talk to Jack Danger, and they're trying to talk to George Gomez and they're, you know, trying to talk to, what's the CEO's name, Seth? Mm-hmm. Trying to talk to Seth. We didn't talk to him. I didn't. No. But they're all trying to get the info they need to make their stuff. Yeah, Mike and I realized, and I don't know who the fellow was that we were chatting with at the end from Minneapolis. Yeah. His name tag was obscure. Yeah, I know. He was very nice, but somebody was running by to go get some content back in the production area, and it was me, you, MXV, this fellow, and John Borg. So we were just standing there, and that person went running by, and I just said, we're not really content creators. No. We like to play pinball, and we like to talk about it, So we've decided we're really more podcasters than content creators. Yeah, because we, as content creators. We suck. We suck. We did not take a lot of pictures. No, because here's the thing. We needed Shelly. Shelly might have to come with us next time. We'll get Shelly a nice camera and teach her how to use the gimbal. And Shelly, you can get all the B-roll. Yeah. Because here's the thing. we're about to sit down to do this and i'm trying to remember in my head i think i got all the shots right in terms of like that's the bulbasaur that's the it's the bulbasaur the squirtle the pikachu the eevee but i was saying do we have a picture of the playfield so that i can look at it to make sure i'm right on these shots because i'm just doing this all from memory and turns out No. No, we don't have a picture of the play field. Sorry, guys. We did video a little bit of us playing the game. The quality of it, to be determined. We'll see. You'll see probably, if you've gotten this far, you've seen it. That's what we got. Well, last time also I took a lot of the Stern video that they gave us, and I merged it in. Yeah. But I'm not going to have time to do that tomorrow. I have to drive to Milwaukee. Yeah, we won't have those assets. We've got to get this done tonight. Because I don't think they sent those assets. No, not yet. They send them, like, in the morning, but I won't have time to dick around. Because here's the thing. We left the house at 6.30 a.m., got back about 7. Tomorrow you have to leave again at, like, 6 a.m. to go to Milwaukee, which is farther. So you're a trooper for pinball. Well, I mean, you only get one chance to go to the media day for the Pokemon pinball machine. Yeah. You know? Had we not gone, I probably would have just been getting a pro. And then I would have seen that LE, and it probably would have been too late. And then, man, the LE is so cool looking. The LE is so cool looking. You'll know what they all look like by the time you've watched this, because we can't put this out until Stern puts out their thing. So I don't think we have to go too deep on the looks difference between the three, but the LE is, like, stunning in person. So I just want to do a little shout-out to some of our Stern friends that we saw. Yeah. today because they're like, it's just nice to see them all. Yeah. And this is the second media day that we've done. And we've seen these people at a ton of tournaments too. Yeah. Most of them at least. But Zach Sharp, who's their marketing director, shout out to Zach for sending the invite and having us. That was just really nice to be included. And congratulations on being the Illinois State Champ. that's pretty awesome um george gomez such a nice guy so great to chat with him and um and i also he was very touched because i shared with him a lot of the feedback that has come from our facebook group of people who've never bought pinball machines saying i'm doing it like i'm pokemon is my machine like he i'm like you probably know this from your research but like this is what I'm hearing. And he was just very touched by that. So very cool. Um, I think he's excited. Um, Jack danger. I mean, he is just as tall as can be. And we didn't get a chance to chat a ton of pinball, but we did chat at the end there for a bit. Yeah. He had some Pokemon cards. Yeah, he did from like Japan. Yeah. Japanese ones. Yeah. Um, so that's cool. Um, Tanya, who we hadn't met before. Nope. What a nice guy. Super nice guy. He's going to come down with MXV and maybe play our next tournament or a tournament. Nice. We're going to set him up upstairs. Dave Heggie, always a delight. Always a delight. So it was great to see him. Kyle Kyle Spiteri, I just kind of like high-fived and hugged him. Yeah. But I didn't get a chance to chat with him too much. Michael Grant, if anybody in this that's listening is a TD, you should know Michael Grant. He heads up the Stern Army. He's kind of like all of the marketing efforts to support tournament directors with prizes and just all kinds of different support. He's a really super nice guy. Go on Stern's website. I know there's a way to get in touch with him, but Michael Grant is someone you should know. And he is just so nice. Yeah, if you've got a location and you're running tournaments, if you don't already get kind of the swag that he sends out for Stern Army tournaments, you should get in on that program. Michael Grant, man of the people, champion of the people. He really is. Great guy. Joe from the marketing department. Gave us a shirt. Yes. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Joe. Because he's wearing a shirt and stuff, said, I like that shirt. And he's like, I think I have another one in the back of size. It was really cool. Yeah. Yeah. so you'll have to feature that soon we played raymond um on the fall of the empire yeah i had a shameful performance it's all right we were doing that the topper mode yeah yeah well we put in three players so that's why i invited him in and like i wanted to see what he could do he beat the mode i mean he's a very good player and i had i had a shameful performance you did pretty well i got like 111 you got 111 million and there's like eight things you have to do i think you got to like six of them okay i was trying like one of them it's because raymond was watching he was standing right there he wasn't standing there when you were playing he's like one of the best pinball players in the world and i was like super tired and i was I was like, Raymond, I can't hit anything. I can't hit any shots. He was rooting for you, though. He was. He's like, you're running out of time. The spinner's out of time. And I was able to hit the spinner. He's like, okay, that's good. That's good. But I couldn't hit the shots. We got to play that somewhere. Yeah. We got to play that somewhere. Then also we saw Cheryl for a hot second. And Cheryl, I realized I forgot to give you your T-shirt. Oh, geez. So, yeah, I owe you a T-shirt. And then last but most certainly not least, our stern best friend. Oh, yeah. Mike Vinikour. Our BFF. Yeah, he's like our, I don't know what the right word is. He's kind of like our little pinball guardian angel. Mm-hmm. Yeah, wonderful person. Wonderful person. This is why I get, like, so irritated when, like yesterday, like a crappy grainy image of the playfield leaks. Mm-hmm. And then these jackasses online, I saw someone say, it sucks. It sucks. you've seen one grainy image of a top-down view of the play field and you can determine that it sucks well some people have skills you're the smartest person that ever lived you are the most perceptive human being in the history of the world you can tell it sucks from a grainy top-down image like get the hell out of here because like we're these people are like mike is a great friend and a lot of them are great people at Stern. They are great people, and they work their asses off to make the best game possible. And some dumbass is going to see a grainy top-down picture and say, this game sucks, this is a piece of crap, what a flop. Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here. It makes you mad. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I can't imagine what it must be like to work at Stern into to like god it would make me mental yeah it would make me absolutely mental because like i really like the humans that make stern what it is like i like every one of those humans and um it just like it it's like someone is like saying something mean about your friend yeah that's what it feels like with like no cause like you've seen one shitty picture of the game you say it sucks It's like, you don't know shit. It's just so rude. It's like, you don't know a damn thing. And, like, this game does not suck. If Attack from Mars doesn't suck, and if Medieval Madness doesn't suck, and if, like, Stranger Things doesn't suck, like, this game doesn't suck, it's as good or better than all of those. You know what? Maybe that person just sucks. Yeah, maybe that guy sucks, probably. Probably. He's probably very unhappy and maybe has a lot of trauma in his life. It's possible. But that stuff just irritates me. If you don't like a game, if you go play a game 20 or 30 times and then you don't like it, because we've bashed on Shrek, right? We don't like Shrek. No, we don't like Shrek. But I've played Shrek like 40 times. I just don't like it. But you've played it enough times to know that you don't like it. You didn't see a picture of Shrek and say, I wouldn't even flip that on pre-play. No, but I will tell you, one game that I've only played once, and I have no interest in ever playing it again, is the JJP Guns and Roses. Well. And so maybe I'm that person on that one. Well, you at least played the game. It wasn't from a picture. No, I played the game, but it just, that limp dick. Don't love it. I don't like the plunge on it. The plunge isn't fun on that. But even that game, if I'm like in Milwaukee playing a rock show and they just have a Guns N' Roses and no other pinball. Well, I'm playing it. And I sound checked at 2 p.m. and now I've got to wait until 8 o'clock to play. I'm going to probably put $10 into that thing. Yes. I mean, I'd probably do that with a Shrek, too. I would do that with a Shrek. I'd do that with a Shrek. I mean, because any pinball is better than no pinball. Yeah. I agree. But yeah, those people who are just shit on Stern, they can suck it. Yeah. because I do feel like they're really nice people I mean they're like really nice people and you had the whole thing recently about the spike 3 cabinet and about how it's like cheaper and this and that like that cabinet is the sturdiest thing ever that is the sturdiest pinball cabinet ever made you heard it here yeah I mean I've about tore my rotator cuff and need, like, Jack Danger's shoulder surgery trying to nudge the walking dead. Don't do that. Like, because there is no... Maybe that's what he did. He was doing a death save. Oh. But it's... The way the leg bolts go in it and the construction is so solid that there's no wiggle. There's no wiggle on these. So it's like nudging is different and, like, you can hurt yourself. Oh, we did see John Borg, too. Yeah, we talked to John Borg. Yeah. Yeah. it's always good to see John Borg what a nice guy oh and there was a new code for the Walking Dead remaster today we'll talk about that at a different time but I think we've covered it we're rambling Kevin we've rambled here a little bit at the end but it's fine well we're on limited sleep and we got to wrap this up we gotta wrap it up so we gotta go edit it we had a little lights out session but you know we pushed through it was like we hit the button on John Wick and had two times scoring in the middle with the lights out or we destroyed the Death Star and the lights went out and the flippers died that's so true alright my pinball nerd you guys have a good night if you made it this far thank you so much yeah thanks for listening doodaloo bye