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Episode 190 - 2023 Post-TPF

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 29m·analyzed·Apr 2, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Dennis and Tony rank Texas Pinball Festival 2023 games from both classic and newly revealed titles.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers hosts Dennis and Tony discuss their Texas Pinball Festival 2023 experience, covering both classic games they finally played (Big Lebowski, custom Dukes of Hazzard) and new releases (Foo Fighters, Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Galactic Tank Force, Final Resistance, Scooby, Queen). They also highlight impressive homebrews including MechWarrior 5 Mercenary and analyze various games across multiple tiers, with Fathom Revisited receiving particular praise for its challenging layout and updated rules.

Key Claims

  • Texas Pinball Festival 2023 revealed six new games everyone agrees on: Foo Fighters, Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Galactic Tank Force, Final Resistance, and Scooby

    high confidence · Dennis explicitly lists these as the core new game releases for TPF 2023, with Scooby being the second show for that title

  • Big Lebowski by Dutch Pinball has still not fulfilled all pre-orders despite using a process where new sales fund pre-order fulfillment

    high confidence · Dennis states 'they have still not made all of the pre-orders whole' and describes the slow-moving fulfillment process

  • MechWarrior 5 Mercenary homebrew won first place for custom pinball at TPF

    high confidence · Dennis mentions 'I think it took first place for custom pinball at TPF' regarding the MechWarrior game

  • Turner Pinball acquired assets from Deep Root and debuted a Ninja Eclipse prototype at TPF

    high confidence · Dennis states 'Turner Pinball, which bought some assets from Deep Root, was there with a prototype of Ninja Eclipse'

  • Multimorphic P3 system at TPF was being used to showcase third-party modules including Drained by Nick Baldridge

    high confidence · Dennis describes playing Drained on a P3 system with a custom module sold through 'For Amusement Only games'

Notable Quotes

  • “I would describe it as simple but effective, and the theme immersion was strong for the game.”

    Dennis @ early segment on Big Lebowski — Summary assessment of Big Lebowski's design quality and thematic execution

  • “I thought it was a massive improvement over paragon it had a lot of fun bits to it. It had some real interesting mechanics. The pop bumper that gives you negative score.”

    Tony @ Dukes of Hazzard discussion — Positive comparative assessment; highlights negative scoring mechanic as innovative design choice

  • “Of all the games I played, including all the new games we're going to talk about, this was the only game that really got my pulse up.”

    Dennis @ Fathom Revisited discussion — Strong endorsement of Fathom Revisited as standout experience at the show

  • “It is deeply, deeply involved with a lot of fun stuff going on... This is more than just throwing some stuff together in your garage type thing.”

    Dennis @ MechWarrior 5 Mercenary discussion — Emphasizes the technical complexity and professional-grade quality of the homebrew project

  • “I don't want to play a prototype because my my worry is that it will leave a bad impression in my in my mind and it would bias me towards the final version”

    Dennis @ Ninja Eclipse discussion — Explains evaluative methodology regarding unfinished products

  • “I'm a real big fan of black-and-white art packages in general... this being so black-and-white, and it's just a different drawing style, I actually aesthetically really, really enjoyed it.”

    Dennis @ Drained discussion — Identifies aesthetic preference for monochromatic art design

  • “The three inch flippers feel so weird to me on a game that's that's this feeling like this era like i want it to be two inch flippers”

    Dennis @ Drained/P3 discussion — Critique of P3 system design choice regarding flipper size; anachronistic to EM-style gameplay

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonEclectic Gamers PodcastorganizationTexas Pinball Festival 2023eventBig LebowskigameDutch PinballcompanyJake DanzigpersonDukes of Hazzardgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Dutch Pinball's Big Lebowski fulfillment process remains incomplete despite 9-10 years since reveal; slow pre-order resolution model ongoing

    high · Dennis states 'they have still not made all of the pre-orders whole' and 'I just – honestly, I don't know how many more of these they can sell to where they're doing this process'

  • ?

    community_signal: Fathom Revisited with updated rules received strongest emotional response from evaluator across all TPF 2023 games, indicating significant rule design improvement over original version

    high · Dennis states 'Of all the games I played, including all the new games we're going to talk about, this was the only game that really got my pulse up'

  • ?

    community_signal: Eclectic Gamers Podcast growing community support with 52 Patreon members and increasing content production during convention coverage; hosts managing dual content obligations (pinball, watch industry coverage)

    medium · Dennis notes 52 Patreon members and describes concurrent watch industry coverage responsibilities during TPF week

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Fathom's playfield layout employs inverted inlane/outlane logic (outlanes act as inlanes, inlanes as outlanes) creating acute mental frustration and high difficulty despite player skill

    high · Dennis describes gameplay stress: 'the constant mental frustration of, okay, remember the outlanes are the inlanes and the inlanes are the outlanes'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: P3 modular system's three-inch flipper size creates design-gameplay mismatch with EM-style games, reducing difficulty and challenge that historically defined electromechanical play experience

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.270

0:00
welcome to the collective gamers podcast today's sunday april 2nd this is episode 190 i am tony and i am dennis and this is going to be our texas pinball festival aka tpf 2023 recap. But before we do that, we obviously will start with our introductions. And before doing even that, I will note we did pick up another Patreon member. Yay. And Michael J., intermediate support level. So as of the last check, our count is at 52, and we appreciate all of you. And I hope those of you who, whether you're a Patreon member or not, enjoyed Tony's revival of the Grams, because on our trip. Yeah. We did some grams. You did. I didn't put any grams out. You were in some of the pictures. I was, I guess. But I didn't actually. I chose the completely wrong time-lapse speed on one of the time-lapses I wanted to do. It was fun. I held the phone for like two and a half minutes, and I had like four seconds of video, and I was like, oh, no. So, Tony, for those that haven't seen them, you can go to either our Instagram, or they're also shared on the Facebook page at eclectic underscore. Eclectic. What is our Facebook? Facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast, I think, is how you can get to that.
1:29
And so he wanted to do some time lapses as we drove through some of the major cities. Major in quotations. Yes, yes. Major for us. Major on our route. And so you did that. And then, yes, the one you had set so that it was requiring an awful lot of content before it would actually have a second's worth of video to show. And he's like, my arms are getting tired. because i i was like well how much time do you want and he goes well normally i want the video to be 20 seconds and it's like and but based off this current recording i think that's gonna be 20 minutes of holding the phone up and it's like well we might be there by then yeah it was uh me playing around with the time lapse just that comes naturally on my phone and i didn't do anything smart like you know have uh something designed to hold the phone or planned around it or have you know just gotten like a gopro and set it on time lapse and put it on the dash like i probably should have instead i just played it by ear on the fly and we had ourselves sore arms yes well you did i did well mine i guess were a little sore from the steering wheel but only a little bit the uh so anyway we're obviously we're going to go over the show here as the bulk of our episode you do have a few video game items that you'll also cover uh anything interesting happening since getting back because obviously we we actually got back a week ago right um no i i took it pretty easy uh work uh catch up was deeply involved uh so i was pretty busy all week long and then And yesterday, I woke up yesterday morning. A, I slept way longer than I normally sleep. It was interesting because we'd done a live stream for your watch thing the night before. And then once I went to bed, I slept really good. And when I woke up, we had no internet. Oh. I was like, okay, well, that's fine. I'll just play some Jedi Fallen Order. Oh, yeah. It's by EA. you have to have an internet connection to play a single player game because it's by ea so instead i fired up horizon zero dawn which was the game that i was going to start on after jedi fallen order and i played it for a big chunk of the day uh between working on stuff with the family and taking kids to their stuff and all that so but we our internet was down for like six plus hours was it just a general outage in the general outage in the area that's usually what gets me too i usually have it a couple times a year well uh when we drove back last sunday so a week ago i had that monday off and then i went to a public health conference that i had scheduled for work which is probably just as much if not more fun than tpf it was uh a little bit less fun I had two presentations to do for it because the first day, the Tuesday that I went out there was actually pre-conference but they had asked me and I thought about I kind of thought about skipping that part because I knew I was still going to be really tired because Monday being off I'm off of work but I had to do all the laundry and everything to get ready for the next trip and I was just like, I really wish I had another day so I thought maybe I could cut out of not doing the pre-conference this year but then they asked me to present during part of the pre-conference so I was like okay well never mind at least they started late enough in the day that I could do the drive that morning and not go in Monday night so I did that and then the next day I had a larger presentation they wanted but I mean it was pretty good I did leave one workshop early and I was like I need a nap I'm too tired I can't stay because someone came up to me Afterwards, they said, oh, you left that meeting. You left that one workshop. I'm like, I had a phone call.

“It's definitely going to wreck you. My desperation to keep control, the constant mental frustration of, okay, remember the outlanes are the inlanes and the inlanes are the outlanes.”

Dennis @ Fathom Revisited discussion — Vivid description of Fathom's brutally difficult and disorienting layout

Paragon
game
MechWarrior 5 Mercenarygame
Multimorphiccompany
P3product
Drainedgame
Nick Baldridgeperson
Turner Pinballcompany
Deep Rootcompany
Ninja Eclipsegame
Haggiscompany
Keltsgame
Fathom Revisitedgame
Fathomgame
Stern Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
CGCcompany
American Pinballcompany
Pinball Brotherscompany

medium · Dennis critiques Drained: 'The three inch flippers feel so weird to me... I want it to be two inch flippers' and notes excessive ball control ease contradicts EM aesthetic

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2023 unveiled six new commercial games: Foo Fighters (Stern), Godfather (JJP), Pulp Fiction (CGC), Galactic Tank Force (American Pinball), Final Resistance (Multimorphic), Scooby (second show)

    high · Dennis explicitly lists and confirms these as the consensus new games for TPF 2023, with Scooby being second showing

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Turner Pinball is a new company that acquired assets from Deep Root Pinball, suggesting consolidation or asset recovery in boutique segment

    medium · Dennis mentions 'Turner Pinball, which bought some assets from Deep Root, was there with a prototype of Ninja Eclipse'

  • ?

    announcement: Turner Pinball's Ninja Eclipse shown as early-stage prototype at TPF 2023 with incomplete artwork and non-functional inserts

    high · Dennis describes 'it had art, but, like, you could see where the inserts were supposed to be, but it was just arted over, like solid art over it' and notes he declined to play the incomplete prototype

  • ?

    product_concern: MechWarrior 5 Mercenary homebrew demonstrates significant technical sophistication with Unreal Engine integration, custom acrylic playfield, career mode, and two-player cooperative mechanics; won first place custom pinball award

    high · Dennis extensively describes technical architecture (Unreal Engine, gaming PC, Arduino), playfield construction, career mode with mech lab and economy, and awards recognition

    • 5:33
    Which I did. I got voice messages all the time. But then afterwards, I'm like, I'm not going back in there. Oh, they talked about you after that. I'm like, oh, well, if it was bad, I guess I'll find out when I'm fired. They're like, no. They were just talking about getting through the pandemic and stuff. I was like, okay, well. So anyway, I did that. It was one of those fun work-related business conferences where they brought in. like like q-tier comedians to do all the big stuff or candy strippers okay and i'm not i don't want to belabor it because obviously most of the listening audience doesn't really care about public health presenters but they this conference it's it's the governor's public health conference what's called and they actually have a sizable budget so they do bring in like keynoters that are five figures in cost uh and here's the thing tony and i don't i know some people really like this uh and i don't think this will come as a surprise to you but i don't like motivational speakers like it they really bug me by and large by and large so they had one keynoter who's actually from the area she's a she's a fairly famous principal and she was good like i thought she was you know she was inspirational without being over you know really over the top like she felt authentic because she actually still works as a superintendent she He started as a teacher and principal and then became a superintendent. We got her from Missouri a few years ago. And she does a lot on what we call social determinants of health. The first keynoter that we had, though, some ex-cop guy, I walked out. I was just like – the moment he did the whole three letters in the desk thing, yeah, we've all heard it before. And he didn't tell it like – he didn't make it clear that it was apocryphal. He actually told it like he knew someone where that happened. And I was like, that's like Internet 101. So that was – no, he didn't say anything offensive. It's just like after that, I got up and I'm just like, no, no. I'm not going to sit here and act like that that story isn't used by every C-tier motivational person in the book. Like I have that one memorized because it's like – because it sounds so good in your head when you think about it.
    7:45
    So – and I guess I had used him before, and it was the same presentation. Someone else told me. They said, oh, I didn't like the first guy. I said, oh, yeah, I walked out on him. And they go, it was the same exact thing he did like five years ago when we brought him. It's because most of those things never change. It's like the management one I went to where the guy is telling a story about how he went in, and they had a clean house, and he fired this guy. And like four years later, he was getting gas, and he saw that guy parked next to him getting gas. And that guy came walking over, and he thought he was about to get knocked out. And then the guy hugged him and was like, thank you for firing me. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me and blah, blah, blah.
    8:21
    And then the last one, the last keynoter was a musician. And okay. All right. Yeah, with a guitar. With a guitar. This is Wonderwall. Did it.
    8:34
    So it actually started strong. He went around because this was during the final lunch. They lunch. This guy presents, and then we leave on the last day. And so he goes around to the tables and he's like, name bands that at least 10 million people would know. So people are saying things like ACDC and Garth Brooks, and bands are singers. And so he goes and he starts and he just plays a little bit of a song and gets the audience to yell out what band it was. That part was fun. That was five minutes of it, though. Then he went on, and I think it was supposed to be motivational because he was a music teacher. but he's like playing a lot of his original songs which were all bad and i'm just like and he's talking and he's like messing with i didn't know the name i'm not a guitar player so the was it the camber the thing that they attach to the to the neck that hold the frets in a certain position you know oh yeah i don't want to talk about it when you want to configure it for a particular set of chords well he has to keep adjusting this for certain songs he can't and I mean, he acknowledged it, so full credit to him knowing where his weaknesses lie, but he couldn't talk and do that at the same time. So he's like messing with this, and he would just have to stop talking. He wouldn't stay in front of the – he didn't put on a lavalier. He used a mic like we're using here, so he's constantly going off to the side like this and then coming back over to the mic because he's looking over at his computer constantly.
    10:01
    I almost walked out of this too. And he got five figures. I don't know how much he got. But he was a repeat. I'm like, he must have been that bad before, right? And you chose to bring him back. And I am on the planning committee, but I don't know any of these people. So I don't want you to blame me. That said, when I get my evaluation, these will be noted by me personally. I will make note of every single thing I didn't like. I always do on evaluations. I need to figure out how to get these keynote jobs. I can be motivational.
    10:33
    I didn't get paid for my presentation. I was last minute. They were like two days before the agenda was published. All of a sudden I got asked, hey, can you talk about how the Kansas legislature is structured and how bills become laws? And I'm like, I've never done that presentation. They don't. And so it's like all of these major releases from Rolex and Patek and Tudor are dropping, and I'm trying to do coverage, but I'm totally dead by the end of the day. I packed a microphone, and every – other than the last day, every day I would record videos at night in my hotel room talking about all these new releases because it's the best time for the channel to get views. I just have this mental image of Dennis is teaching a class. He's got one earbud in and watches and wonders on his phone sitting there on the podium as he's walking around doing a class. He's like, da-da-da-da. Ooh. Ah.
    11:54
    Yeah, thankfully, it's not kind of like pinball where they're all in a conference room and they do the reveal.
    12:01
    At least this year. What they really did is on day one, all of it was revealed. Yeah, everything. And then throughout the rest of the day, they do the talks about them. But we already got to see it. Like they don't wait and hold, you know, put Galactic Tank Force under a sheet and then pull the sheet away. It's like when the event opens, all the sheets are pulled. And then you just wait to hear the interviews. And it's all a media thing until yesterday. Yesterday and today are the last two days of the event. And this is the first time they opened it to the public. It's actually a very it's a new show. They only started it up a couple of years ago. So it replaced some other shows, Baselworld and stuff. But I know we've had people write in before. There are a lot of listeners who do not want to hear about wristwatches. So all I'm saying is that I've been very busy since TPF and I want another vacation.
    12:45
    So speaking of that, we don't get one yet. We got we got one last gasp to go over TPF. So let's go into the pinball section. That's all we're really going to talk about other than rumor corner. We we there was a rumor that Tony and I actually talked about while we were at TPF. So we'll end the segment with that. But the way I thought we should do this, Tony, is split it kind of into two chunks. I want us to focus really in on the new stuff that we saw, and those sort of fall into two categories. There's the stuff that we never really got to try before that how new it is is very relative. And then there's the new games where this was like the first show or the near first show. So we'll end with that. We'll end with the latter. And for those that aren't familiar, so the new stuff, the six games everyone sort of agrees on that were new for this show were Foo Fighters from Stern, Godfather from JJP, Pulp Fiction from CGC, Galactic Tank Force from American Pinball, and Final Resistance from Multimorphic. Now, that's five. Scooby is the sixth because this was the second show it was at. Granted, it was announced a few months ago. We're also going to go ahead and include a seventh, though. We'll include Queen from Pinball Brothers. while that has been out for a while this was a big opportunity for a lot of people in my opinion to have first experienced it right it might have been an expo but you know who goes through that so i wanted to include that in this grouping and we're and the way we'll do that is we'll rank them so be thinking about your rank order on those and but before that let's go ahead and start with the other new stuff new to us i'm going to start with an old one a 10 year old old one that we had never gotten to play before, even though it's been at every TPF we have been to, and that is the Big Lebowski by Dutch Pinball. We finally got a chance to play it. We did. It wasn't broken. The line wasn't obscene. We got to get up there. We got to put time on it. Tony, what were your thoughts on the Big Lebowski? I enjoyed it. I mean, it shot pretty well. It had some fun mechanics in it. And we all know that there's been a big hubaloo around the background, and the machines actually coming out and people getting the machines that they ordered. But the actual machines themselves, what we played on it, was fun. I had a really good time with it. We only played one game on it, and, yeah, it was okay. I think had I played this 10 years ago, I would have liked the layout more than I do now. And part of that could be my own evolution of taste. But I think part of it also would be more along the lines of what was – games are just better now than they used to be. It did shoot pretty well. Like I like the rug toy. I didn't get to get to the bowling alley, so I can't really comment on that. I always read that it was very, very easy to do the bowling alley. But yeah, no, the layout was – I would describe it as simple but effective, and the theme immersion was strong for the game. So I could see why people who are fans of the film in particular would be very partial to this game. It would never be a game that I would be inclined to buy at this point. But yeah, no, it was nice. It was nice to finally get to try it.
    15:59
    Yeah, no, I thought it was a competent effort. It's too bad the company has struggled so much to successfully output. And yes, from last I've read, they have still not made all of the pre-orders whole. And I just – honestly, I don't know how many more of these they can sell to where they're doing this process. For those that aren't familiar, they've been doing a process where they sell a certain number of new ones to buyers, and then they make a pre-orderer whole, which it's been working, but it's been working very slowly. Again, this was a game that was revealed, I think, I don't remember. It was like, it was Neuron 10 years ago, I believe. I thought it was around 2012, 2014 maybe. Yeah, maybe, yeah, 2014. So maybe nine years.
    16:41
    But anyway, it was neat. Another game we both got to play, a custom game, Dukes of Hazzard. I've seen this one a number of times, a Jake Danzig's game. This is a re-theme, well, I don't want to call it a re-theme. it uses the it uses the same layout as paragon but the rules are entirely different yeah it is beyond a reef right right to me a rethink would just be oh we put a new art package on the game but no this is all it's got the paragon layout but beyond that it's custom what'd you think of the dukes i thought it was a massive improvement over paragon it had a lot of fun bits to it. It had some real interesting mechanics. The pop bumper that gives you negative score. The B-Slayer. Yeah, the B-Slayer on Paragon is the jail. It gives you negative score, and it's great. But having Paragon with a ball safe is great.
    17:40
    It was appreciated. Yeah, I agree. Actually, I'm not a Paragon fan. And yes, Dukes is a better execution on Paragon. So the cleverness of saying, oh, when you're in jail and you're hitting that beast layer pop bumper, you're going to lose points. I've wanted more games to actually take points away. What games do it other than – I think there was a game where you could gamble it all. I don't remember which one it was where you could bet points and lose them, but that was the only one that kind of comes to mind. Plus, as an added disincentive, the bonus multiplier or the playfield multiplier, that applied to the losses. If you had activated, if you built up a multiplier, that was going to take away on your point. I thought it was a really clever rule.
    18:32
    Art looked good. I watched the Dukes when I was a kid. Oh, yeah. Who didn't? I don't know. People that were younger than us, I guess. Oh, that's valid. I'm just saying. They probably didn't. That's true. But of our age, it was a common thing. So that was the only homebrew I played, but you also played the MechWarrior 5 pinball. I played the MechWarrior 5 Mercenary pinball machine. I did include a link for us to put in the show notes that goes to the thread on Pennside about this game.
    19:08
    It's My Love of Battle Tech is well known. but this gentleman is making a completely custom MechWarrior-based game. What's interesting about it is it is running off of an actual gaming PC because the game is using the Unreal Engine because it's generating on the LCD screen content based upon what's going on on the machine. So it's using an Unreal Engine, gaming PC, and an Arduino to generate all of the imagery that you're seeing and to run the actual game. So stuff that's happening in the game is directly shown on the screen. Your mech taking damage, the enemy mech you're fighting taking damage. There's different modes you can activate.
    20:00
    There's a series of pop bumpers in the back that correspond with hit locations. So when you're in combat, hitting the pop bumpers is how you are hitting your targets. And then the damage you cause is based upon your weapons loadout, what you hit, and the normal damage range that the games have for the weapons. So it's random to the damage range like you would have in MechWarrior 5. And then the game even has a career mode where you can build a career. You can build up money. go into the mech lab, modify your mech, purchase different mechs, change mechs. It is deeply, deeply involved with a lot of fun stuff going on. It's still pretty early, obviously, but it has a lot of interesting mechanics, a lot of fun stuff being worked on.
    20:53
    He's done a lot of work, and it was really, really cool. It even has a two-player mode where you play simultaneously, where one player is playing the pinball machine. The other player is using an Xbox controller to do support work on the LCD screen while one of them is playing pinball. Wow. This is more complicated than I realized it was. Oh, it is super deeply involved. The play field is a custom acrylic play field with a wood backing. with custom art.
    21:31
    This is more than just throwing some stuff together in your garage type thing. This is a deeply involved game with lots of interesting work going on. That's why I included the link to the Pennside thread where he talks about it more. I played multiple games on it and talked to him for quite a while, and it is an impressive effort. And as I recall from reading the thing, I think it took first place for custom pinball at TPF. Well, congratulations then. So you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it quite a lot. Awesome. I do want to go ahead and – we didn't play this, so I wasn't going – I wasn't thinking to mention it originally. But Turner Pinball, which bought some assets from Deep Root, was there with a prototype of Ninja Eclipse. We did go up and see it. There wasn't really a line for it. It had art, but, like, you could see where the inserts were supposed to be, but it was just arted over, like solid art over it.
    22:24
    As I just noted we didn play it I actually it wasn someone with Turner but someone I was talking to asked me if I wanted to play it And I said no And the reason is I don I don want to I don want to play a prototype because my my worry is that it will leave a bad impression in my in my mind and it would bias me towards the final version So as a general – I mean really other than homebrews that have chosen to go out there on occasion – and so I have on occasion played a homebrew that is not complete, kind of like MechWarrior is not complete.
    23:00
    I don't like to – I don't want to play a prototype. I'm worried it will just make me hate it. There is a Total Annihilation Whitewood, which is completely different. Right, right. But again, at the time, when we played Total – yeah, what was Total Annihilation, it was thought to be just a homebrew. We weren't expecting it to be a final thing. So it'd been like, okay, well, the home brewer thinks that this is something they want to show off. Sometimes I'll try. And there are a lot of home brews I don't play. Like I didn't play the MechWarrior. I don't usually focus on the home brews. Right. So that just depends. But when it comes to professional, obviously we don't usually see prototypes show up from a professional manufacturer. You don't want to play the alpha. Exactly. I just, I would rather not.
    23:44
    But anyway, so, but yes, it was there. Yes, I looked at it. You know, I didn't look at it close enough to say, like, do I have – it's a new company. I got all sorts of concerns that move well beyond the anything with a layout, much less the software rule set, which I assume is not really developed yet.
    24:05
    Now, we did see, of course, Multimorphic was there at the show. and they had one of the P3 systems that I think they were swapping in some of, at least at one point in the show, started putting in third-party modules because we did get a chance to play Drained, which was Nick Baldridge's creation that he sells through his For Amusement Only games. I'm not sure if that's the full exact title of his company that he set up to do that, but it's an EM style game. It's got a gobble hole in the middle. It's a whole module. It's not just a software package for the P3. It's a whole module that you get in the back. It's got a whole bunch of stand-up targets, and you go about trying to slay very what looked like friendly vampires to me. They seemed friendly. They seemed really nice, so it was really too bad you were killing them all. Well, I didn't kill any. You killed one. I did. So we both played it. What were your thoughts? It was fun. It definitely felt like an old EM. So I think a lot of the it was fun will count how much you enjoy old EMs. If you don't like that style of game, you probably wouldn't like it as much. But it was very interesting. I liked how they handled a lot of the shots. Again, like I said, feeling old, building up score, then hafting to use the gobble hole to drop your ball out of play to score. Very old school feel. But still, I mean, it was enjoyable for that style of game. Okay. It didn't really work for me. Yeah. I don't mean like the game didn't work. The game functioned fine. One, I couldn't really hear it. This is a common thread you're going to find out throughout the show. Well, that's just a TPF thing. So I know there was an option to control something with one of the other buttons, but I couldn't – like I read it on the screen, but I couldn't figure out like what it was – like I didn't see it do anything, which means one of two things. One – well, three things. One, I just didn't see it doing whatever it was doing, and I missed it. Two, my hand was actually on the wrong button because there are three buttons with the P3, and I thought I checked and looked to the side and made sure I picked the right color, but maybe I didn't.
    26:16
    Or three, I didn't get to wherever that option was. So while I would hit it from time to time because I'm like, I want to see whatever this is supposed to toggle, and so I was just doing it all throughout. the big thing is about it um i think is when i think about and i'm not a huge wood rail fan and i owned one at one point but the three inch flippers feel so weird to me on a game that's this feeling like this era like i want it to be two inch flippers i want it to be a weird lower play field i because that was for me part of the fun with the old ems is trying just to get control of the ball with the p3 it's real easy to control yes it is i hadn't thought about And I think that's what a lot of it is, is that lower section is just – it's very open, of course, because of the design of the system. Right. And so everything is just in the back, and there's a lot up there. Like his module has a lot to do up there. But like when it came to wanting to focus on the gobble hole, my horrid accuracy aside, ball control was easy. Right. And I just – so to me, that was anachronistic to it. And so I think that was probably part of why it wasn't clicking in a way like it wouldn't be something I would be inclined to buy. But I've enjoyed it more than some of the other modules. Like I had more fun on this than I did Cosmic Kart Racing, which granted we had originally played that before the rules were fully flashed out on Cosmic Kart.
    27:41
    The art, though, was a standout for me. I don't know. I really like the art package on it. It's very different. But I – and Tony knows this, and I probably commented on this before. I'm a real big fan of black-and-white art packages in general. Like I really like the Munsters art package that Franchi did for the premiums. And so this being so black-and-white, and it's just a different drawing style, I actually aesthetically really, really enjoyed it.
    28:08
    But we'll be talking about another P3 game here later when we get to what we call the new games, the main new games that were revealed.
    28:17
    Only other ones I wanted to touch on is Haggis had a booth. They had Kelts and Fathom Revisited, which we had both played Fathom, the original, before a number of times. Correct, several times. And so we got a chance to do both of those. I actually got to play them multiple times. And let's start with Kelts. Tony, any thoughts on that? Obviously, Kelts came out quite a while ago, but they had a couple there.
    28:47
    We got to play some Highland games. What did you think? I was very meh on it. I was indifferent to it. It was okay. There was nothing.
    28:58
    It didn't really excite me or interest me in any way. I've definitely shot worse games, and I didn't hate it. But overall, I just didn't care. Yeah. Again, it's not a bad game. but I liked drained more than I liked kelts. Yes. But I don't dislike kelts that much more than drained. For me, the upper area, I don't want to call it an upper play field because it's really not, but the upper area of kelts, I enjoyed that part when I could be up in there. My main issue with kelts is the silver ball mania vibe going on with a horseshoe in the center. And this is harder than silver ball mania. With silver ball mania, I had a game on Silver Ball Mania where I think I spent 10 minutes on one ball just horseshoeing for no other reason than to prove I could. But – which doesn't mean – it doesn't mean a lot because I'm sure all the top-level players like you got became Silver Ball Mania's horseshoes like the easiest, safest feed ever. I mean they got it all set up so it didn't cheat you or anything. It's just – it's a short, lower play field, but it doesn't feel like there's much to do because the horseshoe – you can shoot the right side. It comes out the left. You can shoot the left side. That comes out the right. You've got the big open scoop in the middle. and so it's narrowed but it doesn't have like the that that ferociousness that tna does so right uh so that yeah uh the rules seemed okay and all of that but uh just based off of layout it just it's not my style of game so it'd be again it's it's okay but it's never anything i would buy right uh fathom revisited though okay so we got to play it with the new rules of the new effect All right. It's a beautiful game. It's amazing to look at. I think its visual acuity is well captured in photos. So going up to it, I knew it was going to look really good.
    30:52
    I liked the new rules. Actually, I really liked it. Of all the games I played, including all the new games we're going to talk about, this was the only game that really got my pulse up. Like, because it had been, it's been a few years since I had played Fathom, regular Fathom. And I forgot, I shouldn't have forgot, but I forgot just how brutal that layout was. It is definitely going to wreck you. My desperation to keep control, the constant mental frustration of, okay, remember the outlanes are the inlanes and the inlanes are the outlanes. Except you can still lose the ball out of the outlane in lane because if it's not going fast enough, it's going to go and triple down, bounce off the little wire form. So it actually stressed me more than any other game.
    31:35
    I liked the screens in the lockdown bar. I thought, interesting idea. So now you don't have to deal with it being in the – I think placement-wise, I prefer the highway or the P3 or having the screen more where the ball is in play. But having it on the lockdown bar is still way easier than looking up at the back box. Right. So I thought – and then you don't have to deal with, oh, well, we have to have a thing that keeps – like the highway games, you have to level the little acrylic plate over the – there's a seam where the screen would be. So you have to deal with a seam, and they avoid that with this.
    32:14
    And I did get the multiball. I did a couple modes. I think I played Fathom Revisited three or four times at the show.
    32:23
    It was fun. I actually – I could see owning it. Oh, and the thing is, if you own it and have it in your collection, it's going to look beautiful even when you're not playing it because the art pack is just so good. I don't have enough time on it to know if there's the – like if you were someone highly limited on space, let's say you could only have like maybe two pinball machines. I don't know if it's strong enough to stand on its own. The brutality would keep you coming back, so the idea – it's got the one more game feel aspect to it. But if you're looking for a deep adventure, I'm not sure that even the new rules are going to give you that level of depth. But with a collection like my size, when you're up at a half dozen games or more, things like that – I have games that are shallower than that. I've got Buck Rogers. I've got Sinbad. I have the space to accommodate a couple of brutal games.
    33:15
    Also, I want to say this for this game, and I'm assuming Kelts did the same thing. Whatever they made the play field out of, it felt fine. It looked great. It looked good. The plastic or whatever, I did not notice any weird behavior with the balls. The mechanics on the games felt good. The drops felt good. The flippers felt great. Everything felt amazing on that game. It felt really good. I'm a little disappointed I didn't consider it more when it was first revealed. But I'd never played a Haggis game, and I didn't know what to expect. And that's an understandable thought process. Anyway, it feels weird because it's also an older game that already exists with a known proven layout, but it's impressive. It was impressive. I would recommend – if you get a chance to try it, I would say try it. I am liking what this did, like what we've seen with Cax Canyon Revisited, what we've seen with Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness, all that stuff. taking a well-known solid machine, new builds with modern techniques, modern refinements, so that it looks even better than it looked before. And in this case, rules, just like on Cactus, new rules that help flesh out a game from what it was originally. I do not hate this trend. I rather kind of like this trend because it feels like all you're doing is taking classics and putting more polish on them. And I am okay with that because this game was, like you said, it was incredibly fun, looks amazing. Everything about it was way – it was better than I expected. I went into it with no real good expectations. I kind of figured that, okay, at best, it'll be fathom. But it's not. It is definitely a notch above that. Yeah, of all the ones, and that was the last one of our kind of not main quote-unquote new games that we're going to talk about here. This would be the one that I would buy of all the ones we just talked about. Granted, I haven't played MechWarrior 5, and that's not going to have an option to buy anyway. True. I guess the custom games don't really count, but it is the one I would get.
    35:38
    Okay, so that was fun. Were there any that I didn't mention that you thought I needed to bring up? No, because I think all the other ones, I mean, we played some really nice older games here and there, but it's all more standard stuff. Nothing exceedingly different or weird or special. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and let's hit the main games that everyone, What you all have been asking, what you all have been emailing us or messaging us or Patreon-ing us about, it's a verb. It's fine. Just verb all the words. Yeah, just verb them. Verb them. So I'm trying to think. I don't know what the best way to do this is.
    36:27
    We might see some divergence. So I'm going to have you lead off. Let's go from best to worst. Okay. And we'll just go through our ranked order because I know from us talking, we might be pretty similar on a number of these. Some of them might shuffle a little bit, and that's okay.
    36:44
    And I will say before starting, by and large, if I were to describe this set of seven games is they're good. Like by and large, I left with more positives than negatives. But for me, the way it's going to work is essentially once we get to the top four games are all really, in my opinion, pretty strong. And then as of, for me, number five on down is where the negatives start to really weigh it down. But everyone's mileage may vary. So I'll let you go ahead and start up. What was your – of these games, what was your number one pick? kind of a surprise to me in all honesty not the one i figured going into the show foo fighters okay i'm a fan of of the band foo fighters i was a fan of the art and i thought the game looked okay but actually playing that game was a ton more fun than i had expected i I figured it would be high on my list, but I did not expect it to be like the number one on my list, and it is. It is the game that, of all of these, I think it's the one that I went back to the most. It is the one of all of these that I would most like to have myself. You did play both the premium and the pro version. Which one did you like more of those? Oh, the premium. Okay.
    38:14
    That's not always the case with me. That's true. But in this case, I liked the premium a lot. And like I said, it was very, very enjoyable. Yeah, I mean, that's my number one pick also. Premium Foo Fighters, followed by Pro. Yeah. And the way it played was really good. There's a lot of flow to that game. The things that Jack Danger has done, the change-ups that he's incorporated, like the kicking target that could fire up a ramp or whatnot off on the kind of mid-right side, was a cool thing. I did try and do the shats targets was unsuccessful at that. But on the premium version, I was able to use the overdrive like dead bounce post and get the ball back into play. That was sort of a neat, neatish idea. The rules seemed straightforward. The volumes of court again, as we noted earlier, when I was talking about drained, I couldn't really hear the game musically. I don't care because I just I'm not I'm not into foo fighters but like in terms of being able to figure it out i had to rely on the screen to tell me and i was able to you know get my multi balls and and uh realize what shots i needed to do and make progress and yeah i played it several times and uh i had i had good fun with it uh if i were to pick between the two yeah premium um you i don't know if i do it just for the post at the bottom though that is fun right i do wonder that that's going to make it play a little longish but But some of the other – like the toys and stuff that were going on, you do get that upper play field, which has a couple of shots on it. I wasn't particularly enamored with it, but the flow was really good overall. So while I don't necessarily love the shots per se at the upper play field, the overall package I thought worked better as the premium. And it was – yeah, it was a lot of fun to shoot, and the rules seemed approachable. And yeah, it's my pick of the show. Yeah. It had a – I don't want to say weird. But for a band pen, it had a great, just kind of fun story thing going on to it. It wasn't just the normal, this is a concert type thing. And it had a very, I want to say, pinball-y feel. It felt like it kind of had that kind of different feel that I think really helped for a game that already shot so well to also have not just be to concert or like Elvis, where it's just shoot random Elvis stuff.
    40:48
    So I loved it. Okay. All right. What was your second best pick? Pulp Fiction. Okay. Going in, I expected Pulp Fiction to be my number one pick for a variety of reasons.
    41:03
    But it is number two because Foo Fighters was just so good. We only got to one time on Pulp Fiction, maybe if we'd had more than one. Yeah, we were in line for about 15 minutes, and those lines were bad the entire show when we checked them. When we went in early on Sunday morning, Saturday morning, I don't remember which morning. Probably Sunday. Sunday morning, when we went in early then, we got multiple games on Foo Fighters. Yeah, there was no one behind us. and we walked in the door and there was already massive lines on Pulp Fiction. Yeah, I think a lot of that was probably down to the quantity they had available. But, I mean, Pulp Fiction was fun. It was enjoyable.
    41:48
    It did kind of have a modern, old-school cross feel to it. A lot of the things looked really nice. It shot well. I enjoyed what time I had on it and it feels like a game that I could put a fairly large amount of time on and the only thing I have like everything at TPF I couldn't hear nothing I don't think there was the only game I really was able to have like really, really hear was the bell when we played Fire that one time But TPF overall just seemed even louder than normal this year.
    42:32
    Well, Pulp Fiction was not my second pick. I'll talk about my opinions on the game when I get to my rank on it. But my second pick was Final Resistance, a multi-morphics game. It was a Scott and Nisi game. TNA 2.0, the true 2.0.
    42:48
    It just – this was a game – I could actually hear this one because it's Scott, and he's probably got the music turned to 11. And it sounded a lot like TNA. Fan layout, I mean, again, it's the P3. All the shots are in the back. It is a new module.
    43:05
    He only used two flippers. He didn't use the other upper flippers that are possible on the system. I didn't successfully use it, but he did have a menu option where you could use an item, and it seemed understandable. I just sort of forgot to use my hack when I looked at it at the start of one of my balls. I only played it one time, but I did have a decent length of time on it. Much like TNA, there are a lot of fast returns, like scoop returns. I got the multiball started. The toy is, I think, fairly straightforward. We've seen more fancy engineered toys, in my opinion, like the Cosmic Cart Racing Electromagnetic Ball Lock, for example, and such, on some of the other modules. But it fires it out really fast, and it's cool. It's cool-looking. I remember hearing from Scott mention that he well I want to bring up two things so one item was he was on one of the flipping out streams that I was asked to participate on a YouTube stream and I asked him if he liked this game more than TNA and he said that he felt Final Resistance was better than TNA and having played it that may be true I think that there's a little, I think the shots feel a little better. There's a, there's a TNA is a good game. Obviously, obviously I owned it. I chose to own it. Uh, but there were a few shots on it that I wasn't super enamored with. Like there's a little bit of clunk to some of the aspects of it. It's like, I didn't like the right orbit shot. I always thought it felt weird. And then there wasn't a lot of control in the upper section, uh, which was by design, but it was a little frustrating trying to hit those, uh, those like one, two, three targets. whereas with this because it was more of a fan layout I was able to find the shots a lot easier you also even though the ball firebacks were really I mean there were some returns that I almost lost the ball on Because they all in the back I did have more reaction time Not as much as most designers would give me Like Scott gives me less time. But the sheer fact that there's more distance meant I had more reaction time by default. So that helped me enjoy the game quite a bit. And then the other thing that he had mentioned a couple of times is his decision to really keep the art by and large on the system screen static like a normal play field and made it look like a normal – like with inserts. Like it looks like there are inserts, and he's got little effects that are occasionally doing stuff but keeps it super static. And I thought that made it so much better for me, so much better. And that's – I don't know if I'd say controversial, but like I saw someone else who's a fan of the P3 system say that they didn't like that tactic because what differentiates it as a P3 thing if you're making it like a normal pinball machine? But – and I think that's a fair point because the reason why in a large part this is number two and not number one is I want this to be a traditional pinball machine because it could be. There's no reason the person was right other than like using the item thing, which in theory we could probably solve. There's no reason for this to be a P3. This could be a traditional pinball game, and that's what I want. I don't want it to look like a phone game. I want it to be a traditional pinball game. That's what Scott gave me. But because so much of it is sort of straight out of the TNA handbook, I couldn't put it above Foo Fighters. even though I think this has got a lot of flow. It is a fan layout. It's using a lot of things that I think we knew worked from TNA and were just repackaged, and that's fine. Again, it's my number two game. So I liked it a lot, but it didn't have the same level of uniqueness that Foo Fighters brought, so it's my number two. But I don't really have anything I would point to as a flaw with it. like if you like what i've described then you should like final resistance if you don't if you don't like fast games uh just stay away from this stay away from this all right um what was your third game third game godfather except for that part which is fine we could hear that one time you could hear well the one time you could definitely hear that it was it was hard to hear godfather too yeah but uh no it is it's just it's a beautiful game it shot really well a lot better obviously it's probably the best shooting jjp or if not the best it's top two uh i will say that it is the first jjp game i've truly really enjoyed since dialed in um i probably actually like it more than dialed in okay and we so i mean that would flat out put it as my favorite jjp game but it is a game that i went into it expecting it to be a jjp game and it is in a lot of ways but it felt better than what most of them normally do and it didn't give me the annoyed feeling like when we play Wonka or Toy Story, where it's like, I got to go play this one when it comes up in tournament play.
    48:29
    I actually enjoy some of the stuff. I liked the kind of world building type thing they designed for it. I thought it was enjoyable, and it gave depth to something that I really did not think would work well in this format. I still don't think it's necessarily the best choice, but it looks good. The stained glass motif was beautiful, like I've been saying since I first saw it. It looks great in person. And overall, I just really enjoyed it. Okay. My number three ranked game was Pulp Fiction. So you've touched on a lot about the game already. because we only got a chance to play it once and it was by far our longest wait to play it my issue with it is and my caveat and again these are just first thoughts obviously not reviews we didn't play any of these enough to give good reviews the game really kicked my butt so like i didn't really find my shots very well on it so my opinion on this game could change a lot i still don't have a good read on the layout i given it's hard and i i often like games that are kind of mean to me um it i i think i'm comfortable keeping it at number three but it might change over time as i get more experience with it what i like and respect about the game is that it's kind of gone with like a late 80s throwback look at first but then when you start to play it it's got clear features that are modern i've seen some people complain about the uh the game looking like it's people say, oh, it's a throwback game, and people get upset. And it's like, no, it's got this and this. It's got a subway, and it's got this part and this part, and that's not throwback stuff. And I think that's fair, but when you look at it, it gives you the impression, oh, look, you're looking at a System 11. And then when you play it, it gives you a different experience. So I think the idea – I really wish I could have heard it. See, I couldn't hear the call-outs. um and so but i but i i overall given what i experienced with it and i would i was able to understand what i was trying to do rules wise from it especially because i was watching you know we played in a group of three so i was able to watch the displays and stuff and the instructions as we were going along so overall yeah i i didn't see anything really negative with it uh but because i didn't have a good uh length of ball time on it and couldn't get more tries on it i just sort of by default have to put it below Foo Fighters and Final Resistance, but it still remains the one that intrigues me the most of all of these games, just because it looks so different from anything else that we're currently seeing out of pinball.
    51:14
    Okay, so now we go to rank number four. What was your fourth favorite? My fourth favorite was Final Resistance.
    51:23
    I ranked it farther down than you did, because while I enjoyed it, like you said, It felt like it could have easily been just a regular pinball machine in a regular table, and it felt like, if anything, it was harmed being tied into the P3 architecture. Harmed in what way? Just because you've got the cost and the history requirements for it. Oh, you mean like harmed on sales? Yes, harmed on sales. Not harmed like the game was harmed. Okay, I wondered if there was an aspect to the system that you didn't like the flipper feel or something. No, no, no, no. I mean harmed by what it does to the cost of what. I feel like that game in a standard cab would be cheaper than a P3 with a module by a chunk. He would sell more if it had been made by another company. Yeah. Because it feels like Final Resistance in a standard cab, even if it was at 9, would sell a lot more. Just because the architecture of the multi-morphic architecture, there are people who just flat will not buy into that architecture. Which means there's a lot of people who could really enjoy this game who flat won't ever even play it. I enjoyed it. Like with you, it struck all the right points. I just feel like it wasn't given the chance to be everything it could have been. Okay, I see where you're coming from. My rank four game is Godfather. So now I think we've each covered all of the stuff that each of us have talked about in these four. Godfather looks great. Animations, as usual, are cool. I could understand the rules on this. Even though I think this has fewer multiballs than Guns N' Roses does, it sure seemed relatively easy to get into the multiballs still, which is not a favored feature of mine when it comes to the JGP games.
    53:31
    I enjoyed what I shot on it. This might be the fastest playing JGP that they've made. It's definitely Eric Menier's fastest player, in my opinion. um yeah i don't know yet uh i did get a few games on it but i don't know if i would put it above dialed in but i definitely would put it uh at number two if it's not number one in my list of games it is it is very strong my biggest issue and this is a minor issue because again i think this is a very well presented game uh was because it's got like these 20 you know they're really emphasizing the number of different ball returns even though this is faster than some other jjp games there's a lot because of the diverters and the the mechs like going behind the uh bash toy uh guy that you fight and stuff like this isn't that fast of a game and i tend to i like games with more speed than what this offered so uh well i look at this and they kept the pricing the same as they did for toy story 4 and i think when people look at this game they're going to feel like there's more money on the play field than there was when they look at toy story 4 it's not fast enough for it to be a game that I would want to own, but it is a game I wouldn't mind facing in tournament. So like I would look forward to playing this on location, assuming we get one. But so yeah, overall, I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It's just because of the speed of the game and such. Everything else, as I mentioned, you know, Foo Fighters, flowy, Final Resistance, flowy, Pulp Fiction, brutal. This wasn't all that brutal and it wasn't super fast. Right. It's just not my style of game that I lean towards. But overall, I thought it was a very, very good package by Jersey Jack. So what do you rank as your fifth? This is where, for me, the negatives start to really outweigh the positives. So everything, like my top four games, I'm like, if this meets what you want, definitely try these games out because I think they're good. Now we're going to get to where my opinions are more mixed for a little bit and then start to skew much more negative. Yeah, it is at five. I'm going to go with Queen.
    55:39
    So did I. It shoots fine. I mean, I enjoyed the shots. It probably would have been better if I could have heard the music. Yeah, we couldn't hear it. We couldn't. Now, we talked to people who played it at points when they could hear the music, and they said that music and call-outs and all that stuff were really good. Just I couldn't hear any of it while I was playing.
    56:01
    But overall, it shot fine. it's nothing special. I don't think I would add it to a personal collection, but it definitely didn't have any big negatives compared to what I figured the Penbal Brothers game would be. Yeah, I have it here kind of in the middle of the pack because my stance on it was fairly mixed, acknowledging, like Tony did, that I couldn't really hear it. the ball times, the shots felt better than Alien. They were okay. I didn't like the slings. Sort of a plasticky feel to them. Toy-like. I don't know, again, if that was the show and power or what. I felt like my ball times on the game were decent.
    56:53
    I felt that the left side shot better than the right-hand side. I enjoyed that more. I wasn't enamored with the upper play field aspect at all once I figured out how to get up there. But it seemed straightforward and approachable. The rules were easy to understand, not particularly complex in any way, though.
    57:15
    It just kind of – if I were to do a comparison, it would be kind of back on our other stuff. It kind of had some Big Lebowski-esque aspects, but I think Big Lebowski's layout is better than Queen's. And so because of that, I'm just kind of like, eh. If you're a huge Queen fan, I don't think this game is going to be like a miss for you. But outside of that, I mean, there's just stronger things that we've already talked about. So, yeah, it was okay. I just, yeah, it didn't really do anything for me, but it didn't offend me either. It was just like, oh, okay, well, if I were to see it, would I put money in it on location? Maybe a dollar. But I wouldn't invest a lot of time in it. And not in a location where you couldn't hear nothing. Right, right. But also, if someone was like, hey, let's play Queen, I wouldn't go, oh, my God, no. So, I forfeit. Get meh. Put it as meh. Yeah. All right. Sixth. GTF. Exclamation point. GTF. Galactic Tank Force. American Pinball. Okay. This one had a lot of buzz. It had a lot of buzz. Lead them up to the show. Well, and I've talked to people at the show who genuinely love this game. They loved everything about this game. Um, I had problems dialing in my shots on it. It felt very clunky, but that a hundred percent could be me.
    58:37
    Um, the build quality, like we concerned from the pictures look very terrible in person on some of the toys. They were very obvious 3d prints that didn't look that good in my opinion. I definitely feel like they went all in on the camp and for me it went too far it went from being so bad it's good to so bad it's bad I have had people I couldn't hear the call outs I could hear the stuff that actively made my ears bleed and made me want to walk away from the game there was very loud ear piercing like someone was jamming an ice pick into my ears sound effects when you hit certain things and the pews and this and that actively made me want to walk away from the game I hated it so bad and that was the most annoying thing is I couldn't hear anything except for those and they made me want to just shut it off so uh i'll get i'm more than willing to put some more plays onto it uh when it gets somewhere where i can play it where it will hopefully not cause me to want to be deaf uh and we'll see but it just nothing nothing felt right when i played it and that i don't know how much of that is just that i couldn't get the shots dialed in or felt weird how much of that is an issue with the game itself but those sound effects were way too much and all the stuff that was supposed to be super campy cutesy just was annoying yeah uh gtf was my sixth game also and uh after we had played it uh the last day of the show actually i i ran into steve bowden and i you know i spoke very very briefly with him about the game and he said you know with a game like that with a theme like galactic tank force you gotta he's like you gotta lean into the camp right you just gotta lean into it and i'm like Like, yes, you can't take that game serious. But like you, I wonder if they went too far. Like, if they found the line and actually were able to cross it, which I wasn't even until I saw this necessarily thought that was possible to make a game too campy that had to be campy. But that's not the biggest issue. It's, yeah, the blend of stuff. it's unless people can get a lot of time on it like again you know you being the the sort of very generous individual that you are willing to give it another chance when you first approach it it's a cacophony of different stuff that hits you and none of it seems to tie together at least on first blush and it makes a very unattractive package when you think about that so like Like the art's cool. You see the sci-fi retro thing. You plunge the ball, and you're hit with dubstep, which doesn't fit the era that this looks like. So you're like, okay, well, that doesn't make sense. So we've already got some sort of anachronism going on with that. As you noted, there were some piercing, shrill sounds that were cutting. Like all I could hear was dubstep and these piercing – I don't know if it was like in the – I think it was the pop bumpers and maybe the slings. It was like a pew-pew and all this other – Whatever it was was like so shrill, like pumping out little tweeters out of the speakers that it – I mean it hurt. It hurt. But you couldn't hear the call-outs. You couldn't hear the clips. There was one part where things got a little quiet, like the games beside me were also quiet. And I heard one little part where one of the call-outs was happening, and it's telling me like I could leave, but I could leave my cows and milk or something. I thought, okay, that might be fun. Like that part, the campy DVD 90s wing commander, let's all act – we're throwing a video game, but let's act really bad because it's a video game. That sort of level of camp, that might be working. When you can't hear it – I'm sorry. I'm getting animated. I'm bumping stuff.
    62:41
    When you can't hear it, it's really tough. So again, that's a show setting thing. The rules seemed okay. What I could experience with the rules, I was like, well, they didn't make any sense. Why am I gathering milk? I'm guessing that has to do with the ice cream, whatever. I don't know. But I could figure out, like, these shots advance these things. So I understood the rules. So the rules seemed okay. Maybe good. I don't have enough time to say that they're good. But they seemed okay. Layout did not work for me. What I experienced with that layout was very challenging for me. And I spoke to someone else at the show. I won't name them.
    63:15
    They actually compared the layout to Thunderbirds. And I was like, okay, I've never played Thunderbirds because the one time I was at TPF, it was broken. and I didn't get a chance to play it. So I can't make that comparison. But what I can say is, of all of the games I played, I liked this layout the least.
    63:36
    And that includes the other stuff, like talking back to Celts and things. This one was my least favorite layout currently. And I'm not going to say that the layout is so off of what I want that the rules couldn't make it acceptable. but I don't think that layout would ever be great for me. Right. I think it's my layout. So, so because of that, I was, I was disappointed. Um, I, and I'm, I'm of, of two minds. I would really like to see like they could rebalance the sound, like make it not so piercing and stuff. Those things can be fixed. Right. And so I kind of want to try it again, but I also based off of my experience, like don't want to encounter it. Does that make sense? Like I've just, I'm really torn and the problem this is where like you know as us who commentate on the hobby you know coming in I'm like I think this doesn't leave a great impression and I don't know how many they sell because if you have to invest a lot of time to figure out if you I mean this doesn't have a license to sell off of so if you have to invest a lot of time to like get behind all the choices they made that's not a good thing that's not a good marketing thing that's unfortunate that It takes that much to get it. And so just based off of the first impressions of what we were able to experience, it's a hard no, a hard no for me. But it wasn't my worst game. No. And it wasn't yours either because we have one more. We have our seventh-ranked game. Tony, what's your seventh-ranked game? It's Scooby-Doo. Okay. Where are you? right into a click gamers podcast at gmail.com if you really uh you know want to take issue with our opinions because obviously uh we we were pretty critical of gtf and we're now saying this game's worse because it is in our opinion so what so why tell the listeners why for you tony one somehow this game is even worse on the sound the gtf chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp those are scooby snacks for those that don't know it was just it was so bad and the game i thought toy story was super easy and boring to play and then i played scooby-doo and found out that I had been wrong. Toy Story is far more interesting.
    66:01
    Because Scooby is just... I drained, and it was like, oh, thank God I drained. It's over. We can go somewhere else now.
    66:14
    And no game should ever give me that feeling. Especially a game that is so tied into such a beloved franchise. something that has so brought so many people together over the years. I think it looks great. I think it is a theme that should have worked wonderfully. And in reality, it's just, it's not fun. I had zero fun playing that game. Even discounting how bad the sounds were, I had no fun playing that game. But the sounds were, if anything, even worse than GTF. It just drove me insane. Yeah. I mean, you've touched on all the major things I think I was going to stress. So, all right. First of all, they brought a lot of them, which was good.
    67:06
    You couldn't hear the call-outs, and they've got great voice actors doing the call-outs. They do. That's a show thing. So, unfortunate that we can't really, because I think slash hope, at least, that that would have been a thing to really highlight. The art great but we already knew that because we have eyeballs and we saw the photos So we knew the art was good Yeah it was such a weird hodgepodge of just it's like if I were to take all of its categories, it's not at the bottom of every single – like I think – all right. I'll start with the sound because you really emphasized that. So yes, the sound was a bigger problem. The sound was more annoying than GTF's sound. Yes. now i could hear more like i could hear the music of gtf and i thought it was like i thought it was weird that they went with dubstep but but i could once i'm like okay well it doesn't fit but whatever we're gonna do dubstep and fight tanks i could accept that and it was just like the shrill things that just to me sound like they just need to like scale back the decibels by 20 on those and they'll be okay this just like every sling is a boing and every scooby snack and there are a lot of scooby snacks is up and i'm just like boy i i think i don't you know i'm pretty sure while i was playing i got to the point where i just started just randomly going boing boing boing was i okay you did i thought i was i apologize to those nearby and you did after we walked away too and i was just like no uh and i and there have been again there have been other games that the tinkling glass and alice cooper's nightmare castle kind of set my teeth on edge too though it wasn't as bad in real life as it was like when i watched a video and someone's like doing direct audio output this was real life in a loud show where i can't hear the call outs but i can hear my chomp boing boings so it's just it's already setting my teeth on edge the layout is very forgiving now part of this is spooky's fault these games they had like eight there they should not have left these at stock factory the gameplay was taking way too long i don't know i because i didn't time it obviously because i didn't know how long it would be but i think it seemed like my first ball which was my longest was was probably around five minutes easily for a game i had never played before and i got a little sloppier by design in my play after that because like you i was kind of getting to where i don't feel like i need to one i feel bad because there's a line behind me and i don't want to you know i'm not trying to gc these things and and second one ball was probably enough quite frankly um the layout like is the layout better than gtf's layout it depends what you want so the there are so many horseshoes on this layout you know i made i made i know i made fun of that at one point and the patreon members know that i i have a baby's first four horseshoes that i did you can be a patreon member for as low as one dollar a month if you want to see that um and because i'm like wow there's like two horseshoes down below and there's two horseshoes up top i I think I heard an interview with, I think it was Carl D'Angelo. I think he was on a podcast where he said, actually, there's like a pseudo horseshoe also up top. So it really feels more like there are five. And you feel all of those. They're very safe. They're not particularly fast. Even though the game is wide, I will say Spooky did do a decent job keeping the lower section to feel kind of like a standard body. More so than I thought they would. But once I was up in the upper play field, that was floaty. Super floaty. Maybe it was just the copy we played, but while the bookcase diverter flipper was cool. That was cool. I liked the implementation of that. That was good.
    70:52
    I didn't like being up there, and it was easy to stay up there, pretty easy. And obviously that was completely safe, but the lower play field was pretty safe too. And the flippers didn't feel good. The slings didn't feel good. The flippers didn't feel horrible, but again, this is a show, so low power situations, da-da-da-da-da. um but the rules were straightforward but but boring i thought i thought that just the whole strategy of what you needed to do like because i was on it for so long i'm just like it feels like wood chopping and um that and that some people like that style so again that's this is a stylistic thing but it's just like the the strongest thing i could say for scooby is like as a theme that could also appeal to children not just adults uh maybe it's better to do it like this than say what stern did with teenage mutant ninja turtles and have a really brutal layout so this i think kids could have a good ball time on this but i don't think overall it's a very good pinball experience like and i and i'm rating obviously i'm rating it below gtf yeah gtf left a lot to be desired in my gameplay and sound aside it was really because of the layout but this i mean the sound the sounds were worse the layout was because of the floatiness and stuff i actually i enjoyed shooting gtf more than than scooby and i think your mileage will vary on that depending on what you're looking for but uh it's just i just didn't think it was a strong game aside from theme right theme's great as a part-time you know when i feel like an occasional tournament player i fear this game being a tournament venues. They would have to change the setting. I mean, they'd have to make it brutal in some way.
    72:44
    You were at a tournament a few weeks ago, and I know the... Right. You were at a tournament a few weeks ago, and what was it? Was it Toy Story 4? It was Toy Story 4. Which made the whole night drag on? Yep. Every other game would be done except for Toy Story 4. And Toy Story 4, I think we would both agree, is more brutal than Scooby was. Yes. Yeah. And there were points in time where everybody except for the four players on Toy Story 4 were sitting down for 15, 20 minutes waiting for Toy Story 4 to finish. And so, yeah, it's – I mean, I just didn't like it. That's why it's last on my list. No, it is just nothing. I've talked to multiple people who were like, I didn't even want to punch ball three, or I just punched ball three and walked away. I spoke with some people who, by and large, who try and have a very positive view. Sometimes I – and I don't want to be overly negative, but I always want to be honest because I don't think it's right to act like you enjoyed something when you don't. But I know some people who really try and find the positives in the things, and they really struggled. aside from what we touched on like art package and the voice actor recruitment like they really struggled to say nice things about how this played but again it's um it's done well on sales and so they're just because we don't like it uh if you you know if it's your style of game you know give it i always say give it a shot no matter what we think give it a shot but um i if i never play it again i i will be happy yeah no i'm perfectly fine with never so i was just i mean i i i i was I hoped for more. We had multiple occasions on that one because they brought so many that we could have played it again.
    74:29
    And we didn't. Here's the thing. I would rather play Halloween. That's so rough. I think Scooby's layout is better. I do. I think my biggest frustration with Halloween is I think it's a bad layout. And I don't think, well, I don't like Scooby's layout. It's not, like, design-wise, I think it's a better layout. But the thing is, Halloween sounds don't annoy me. Yeah. And this with the chomps and everything else. And I thought the... Anyway, it's a close thing, but that's my stance.
    75:02
    Yeah, definitely not. They were definitely, of the big new games, they were the loser by far. All right, that concludes our TPF 2023 coverage. And before we hop over to the video game segment... And before we hop over to Rumor Corner... He's pointing at me. Just to let people know, because I got a ton of questions while we were at TPF. My little collapsible stool that I use to survive in the enormous lines is like the number one collapsible stool on Amazon. If you just search collapsible stool, it's right there, and it's great. It's just a little tiny plastic disc that expands and makes a decently comfortable chair that's way better than standing when you're in line for an hour. Yes, your Claymore. My Claymore. Somebody wondered if I had a Claymore on my chest because I was walking around with it slung over my neck by its strap.
    75:59
    All right. Well, with that important PSA out of the way, let's go ahead and hop into Rumor Corner. rumor corner rumor corner okay on today's rumor corner we have received a rumor that stern is actually going to do three games this year. Now, we haven't heard that there'll be a bunch of Decepticons and that there are going to be three Cornerstones. The rumor is that they do have a boutique planned this year. Now, I mentioned earlier that Tony and I talked about this while we were at TPF because I know Tony's speculation was, we didn't hear what game, and Tony's speculation was, well, not Back to the Future because we're getting closer to the next major anniversary of it, but that's not this year. Yeah, because that would be two years from now. So, yeah, that was my understanding. So given that, I don't – do you have any – again, this would be speculation. The rumor is just that there will be a boutique. I really have no idea. Some of the boutiques seem so out of left field to me that I don't know. And so, yeah, I don't – I won't venture a guess either. People can write in at CollectedGamersPodcast.gmail.com if they think they know what the boutique is. But anyway, so not much of a rumor, but did it rumor-tane you?
    77:34
    Sure. Okay, well, I don't care. Video games, what's going on? There is video game stuff. I don't have a whole lot because I knew pinball would be huge this week. Lots of that, lots all that. So we'll go to the big things. E3 is canceled. It's gone. Ubisoft and Tencent both announced that they were not going to be at E3, and almost immediately afterwards E3 canceled because by that point in time, Ubisoft was the last major publisher who hadn't already pulled out.
    78:13
    So I think it's dead. Yeah, I was going to ask you because I think that's the only thing to say is, so was this the last gasp of E3? Will they just like formally just be like, we're not a thing now? I don't see how they can come back from this. They've been without having a physical show since before COVID. the digital shows have not gone over well. And in these years between, all of the major publishers are now doing their own digital. They all have their own digital presentations that most of them do multiple times a year. And they seem to be preferring that format because that was Sony's plan. Even during E3, they weren't going to be at E3, but they were going to do a digital drop during the week of E3. EA was doing the same thing. Nintendo does their Nintendo Directs like seven times a year now So I just think that what E3 was has been supplanted at this point And I don't think they're going to be able to claw it back to being what it was Can they take the E3 existence and what it is and create something else that's not like an industry show? can they turn it into like a fan show uh maybe it is now owned and being run by the same groups that do the paxes which are very hugely popular but i just don't see it i i think e3 is done yeah i i think you're right i i was curious to see this year just because with the penny arcade thing the pax crew being the organizers i kind of wanted to see like all the changes they were because it sounded like they were playing some pretty significant reforms to the system.
    80:08
    It requires you to have vendors. We haven't had a real E3 in so long now. Well, I missed it originally. It's like, okay, well, I don't care anymore. I don't even know if the last couple E3s we had, like 18 and 19, they weren't at the same level as the early 2000 and early 2010 E3s. You're right. It's just – it was because of the – let's be honest. For me, it was just because it made it an easy podcast episode to just focus in on a whole bunch of video game announcements. And it's something that, well, like we just got to enjoy talking about and doing that with TPF. Yeah. And what I had mentioned in my introduction, Watches and Wonders does this. But these are physical devices where getting hands-on makes sense in a show. But with video games, you can let the media have a demo kit and they download it. They don't have to be at an event. You don't have to structure it that way. So times have changed. You mean I can't download a Vacheron? You can download a picture.
    81:12
    The other big topic is the U.K. regulators have softened their stance on the Microsoft Activision buyout, which I think is going to, they were the ones that were looking to be the biggest,
    81:24
    they had the biggest issues and were the ones that were looking like they were going to be roughest. But they have backed off and they no longer think that it will be a major lessening of competition after taking feedback and talking to other members of the industry. Oh, okay. So it sounds like now that they've talked to somebody whose name doesn't start with Sony, they realized that nobody else is worried about this except for Sony.
    81:52
    Also, concerns have been brought up in the U.S. Congress about Sony engaging in blatant anti-competitive conduct with their major control of the high-end gaming market and especially their complete control of the gaming market in Japan. And it was brought up during a Senate Finance Committee or Trade Finance Committee hearing, and questions were asked in relation to it and an upcoming Pacific trade partnership thing that's being negotiated.
    82:28
    And rather quickly after that, Japan approved the merger. Yeah. Yeah, the market penetration on, yeah, what's the competitive landscape for Microsoft in Japan? It's never been good. No, Sony has like 98%. Yeah. So it is.
    82:50
    It's no big deal for them. So that leaves the big ones out there is the EU and the U.S. market. Right. I guess technically I don't think China has made a decision on it yet, but I don't think it's going to affect anything. I think if EU and the US say it's okay I don't know that China matters for it but I don't know enough, that's the big thing the EU's final decision is slated for the end of May the US last I heard was talking about early summer making the decision so we'll have to see where that goes but I think at this point I think we're rolling in towards this being what we originally thought it would be which is a done deal especially with the UK backing off because they were the ones who were riding the competitive problem the hardest there are unconfirmed reports I'm going to go with unconfirmed reports they're like from third party or I was there when somebody said it, but no direct stuff, that a conversation was had with a member of Sony staff where they brought up the fact that they'd offered Call of Duty for 10 years with an even better deal than they have on Call of Duty now. And the reply was, oh, I don't care about Call of Duty. I just don't want the merger to happen. so which is what we've all thought all along i don't think it's surprising yeah because the call of duty is the argument they're using i think the biggest thing is at this point i wonder if it wasn't that sony wanted that purchase and didn't get in in time can sony afford to buy i don't think they could i don't think they're in the financial state to do it but i don't think they want the play field coming closer to love that's the thing that i've never got is everybody's talking about this kills competition but even after the merger microsoft's still going to be in third place it's not like it's it's not like they're going to first place and they're like double the size they're not even going to be right on second place on paper i i my you know and i i don't know my my theory has been that sony's concern is with the activision library being available day one on game pass that gamers over time will realize that it's cheaper to actually play games on microsoft right and so given that that they'll lose market share maybe not on the you know ps5 but when it comes to the ps6 and the xbox one two or whatever they're gonna they'll do something dumb like that don't you worry the xbox one again one again the xbox one 360 i i don't know whether so uh one three yeah i mean i'm sure the only thing you to think anyone could name something worse than nintendo when they like did wii u uh but here's microsoft hold my beer um uh so so that being said i i just think that it's game pass that's sony's problem because microsoft has realized, like they're getting, especially for people that can't easily afford to buy a lot of games, Game Pass is such an attractive option. And to be able to say day one on release, you don't have to pay any extra money. You're getting stuff that Activision deals in, and Call of Duty is the big regular one that a lot of people, that's their big major purchase that they don't wait for a sale on every year. That is like, well, why would you own a Sony? All you need to really do is convince your friends to also just do Game pass get microsoft's uh console and so i don't think it's about them owning activision i think it's about the fact that if they own it then game pass is gonna pull you know it's gonna have it all it's gonna have everything even it's third party even it's all on sony still why spend sixty dollars you're already subscribed to game pass here you go enjoy call of duty oh plus all this other cool stuff i was subscribed to game pass on pc for a long time and played a lot of games because of it.
    87:07
    That's what I think it is. I think Sony, they're not stupid. I think they see that and they're like, we just don't have anything that is as that. With Microsoft controlling so much first party, it becomes a problem. Whereas otherwise they might have felt like, well, we have other, our parity comes in some other areas. We have a bigger install base that wants to, you want to continue with the same architecture. I did. And it was a tough, it was harder for me when Xbox One came out and they made all these decisions that were bad compared to what they had on the 360 and sony made some big inroads and sony already was bigger than there was a huge u.s market for xbox and a lot of them defected because microsoft bungled it so badly and now it's sort of like well microsoft's trying to make amends by controlling a lot of kind of i want to have stuff and even a lot of it shared if you don't have to pay extra for it why would you right well Well, and I think something that Sony needs to concentrate on is going to be their first-party games. They're going to have to make something, especially in that kind of first-person shooter, call-of-duty zone. They're going to have to make something big. Yep. The kill zone has to come back. Yeah, they're going to have to do something big. But remember, they own Bungie now. Do they own them, or was it just a deal? I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I thought they bought Bungie. As I recall. There's something arranged with Bungie. Like, I didn't know if they were a second-party developer or if they actually outright owned them. But that's a good one to bring up. Bungie obviously has a lot of FPS experience. They made Microsoft's kind of have-to-have game, Halo, on the first Xbox.
    88:54
    Yeah, last July, Sony officially purchased Bungie. Okay. There you go. They have lots of experience in that. I mean, I mean, I mean, it's a, they're, it's a good studio that knows its stuff. Yeah. I mean, if they want, that's the studio to use to build. If you want to build a first person shooter system, that's just on your system. Well, maybe they'll do it now. We'll have to see, but that's all I kept in because I knew we'd be running pinball heavy. Okay. Well, uh, that's it for the show. So if individuals want to reach out to us, as I know it a couple of times, you can email us at collective gamers, podcast at gmail.com. You can visit us at Facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast, and you can support us on Patreon at Patreon.com slash Eclectic underscore Gamers. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as Eclectic underscore Gamers. And we will be back in a couple of weeks with probably not nearly as a pinball-heavy focused episode because we won't be recapping any shows. Yeah. So until next time, my name is Dennis. I've been Tony. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.