Welcome everybody, happy April Fool's Day. Welcome to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. If you're listening to this show, you're no fool. You know where the greatest source of pinball entertainment lies. Here's what we're going to talk about. A lot going on in the pinball world today and it was kind of hard to figure out who's being serious, who's just making a joke. And we're going to talk about the Pinball Brothers. I think they confirmed today that ABBA is their new game, but then everyone was wondering, like, is this just an April Fool's joke? We got Spooky Pinball put up a really funny post. It was a Kaneda's Pinball topper for $19,999 and they were making like 10,000 of them and guaranteeing a trippy win if you buy it. And then they removed the post. I think they felt the heat. You know, whenever you're having fun with Kaneda, you definitely get those curmudgeons that are like, what are you doing? Why are you validating that blowhard in New York City? We're going to talk about Jersey Jack Pinball and the Matrix and what I've been hearing about that game. And now we're hearing from Christopher Franchi that he is not on the game. So we're going to talk about the different pieces of this puzzle and how many of them do we think are going to be working on the game. And we've also got some news about John Wick we're going to talk about. And then I want to do something I haven't done before. I want to see what pinball games are available between the prices of seven and eight thousand dollars like that feels like the right amount of money to spend on a pinball machine i feel like we should only be thinking about a ten thousand dollar machine if it's a triple a theme and it's an amazing game and something just weird has happened in his hobby where people are shelling out like fifteen thousand dollars and twelve thousand dollars H fields for pinball machines that after six months, you're losing $4K-$5K on and I never want to see any of you go through what my friend Derek went through. He lost more than he realizes, he spent $12K on a Godfather LE. He spent $500 on shipping of that game. That's $12.5K. Then, he bought a $1,500 accessory kit. So now, he's in at $14K on this game. He's just sold it this weekend for $7K. $7,000. He lost $7,000 on a Jersey Jack machine in one year. And if you don't think that we all need to wake up a little bit and realize this should never happen to anybody in the history of pinball, think about it for a minute. There's no way you could ever have lost $7,000 on a Twilight Zone or a Medieval Madness or an Attack from Mars. You see what I'm saying? Or a Tron LE. There's just no way in the history of pinball that anybody in a single year could have lost $7,000 on a brand new game. I mean, new in box, Twilight Zone was like $2,500 when it came out. I mean, it's just crazy where things are at. Is the market nose diving or is it just nose diving on games nobody wants? It's hard to know where it's going to go. Like look at Jaws, opened up last week, number one spot on Pinside, the best game of all time. Give it one week later and now Jaws is number 24 on the list of best pinball machines of all time. It's like I said, every good game should enter around the number one spot and then once more people play it and more reviews come in, it's going to settle somewhere normal. And I think Jaws is going to end up around there. It is not a top 10 game of all time. It is not a top five game. I think it's going to hang around that spot for a very long time. All right. So where do we want to start on this April Fool's Day? Let's start with just the pinball brothers. So they put up this announcement that ABBA pinball is going to be announced on April 6th, which is the 50th anniversary of ABBA winning Eurovision. And it was like this weird image that looked like they took a photo of a word document And it had like this weird image that looked like some AI generated faces of the ABBA members of the band. And it looked like there was a pinball LCD screen below it. So everyone's like, I hope that's not the translate. I hope that's not the artwork on this game. If there's one thing you can't get wrong in 2024, it's pinball artwork. Every single pinball machine should be stunning. And there's no excuse. And there are so many artists out there that are just as talented as Zombie Yeti and Christopher Franchi and Brian Allen. There are so many of them out there. All you got to do is go to any comic con or comic book show. And there are so many talented artists out there that are definitely not making like 40, $50,000 for an assignment. And I think this pinball world needs to wake up and actually go attract More artists into the pinball space. So they announced that there's going to be like 20 songs from the band ABBA and they're going to reveal it this Saturday morning. I think the countdown is something like 10 a.m. Pacific time. I'm not sure if the game's going to be at MGC. MGC is also taking place this weekend. Midwest Gaming Classic. And we all know it's ABBA and it's a really weird sort of tease of this game. I'm not sure why they're using like the Stranger Things font and all this like Stranger Things imagery to sell me ABBA, which comes from the 70s and is disco. Like there's nothing about ABBA and Stranger Things that mesh well together that have any similarities to them. So I'm just really confused why this company has been teasing this game. And I think today was the official announcement of the game. Now some people are hoping it not ABBA and they hoping all of this is just like one big troll So then it like if that the case and this is not ABBA then what about that helicopter mechanism I don think this is a troll I don think this is a smoke screen for something else I think it gonna be ABBA and I think if you like me this is not what you want We need more pinball themes for grown men. I'm sorry. The pinball buying demographic, these companies are not hitting the mark with the pinball buying demographic. They're just not. Like what is this? Like we don't want Elton John. We don't want ABBA. We don't really want Looney Tunes. We don't really We don't really want horror movies. We don't really want this stuff. We've got to get back to giving 40 to 60 year old men stuff that they long for. Yes, I would much rather have X-Men 97 than ABBA or Elton John. And I don't care like how great Elton John shoots. I would rather that game be Guns N' Roses or Top Gun. And I'm almost at the point now where I'm just getting like so fed up with these bad choices by these pinball companies because once you release a theme that's really questionable, why would you go through all the effort? And it's such a laborious task to make a pinball machine and put it in a box, make something people want. And look, FOMO is not dead people. It's just dead on stuff that people don't really want. The moment Dutch Pinball announces Back to the Future, they are going to sell out of every single game they have. They're going to sell out of their allotment for years. If somebody announces Top Gun sold out, every single collector's edition instantly sold out. Same thing with Karate Kid. Same thing with Beetlejuice. Same thing with Gremlins. Same thing with E.T. Same thing with Die Hard. Same thing with Total Recall. Same thing with Big Trouble in Little China. We need to wake up. Everybody wake up. Give us themes we want. Now, speaking of themes we want, we all want the Matrix. Now some of you might not want it but most of us do. The Matrix, if done right by Jersey Jack Pinball will be a one day sellout. It won't even be a one day sellout. They will sell a thousand CEs at $15,000 a pop in less than an hour. It will be sold out. The moment that video goes live and everybody sees it, if it's done right, instant sellout. Now look, I reported that this game was going to feature the following team. It was going to have Mark Seiden as the designer. David Thiel was coming back to do the music. Christopher Franchi on artwork and it was also going to have Keith P. Johnson on code. That is what I heard. Now here's the thing. Christopher Franchi today on my Facebook page chimed in. You know Franchi, he can't stay away. The moment you say his name, like you know the hairs on his arm just stand up and he's got to jump in and clarify. So Christopher Franchi said, he said something like, I will bet you $1 million this is wrong or this is 1 million percent wrong, something like that on my Facebook page. Okay, so let's deconstruct this. Does that mean that Christopher Franchi is not working on this game? There's a lot of variables in what I said is going to happen with this game. Does it mean that Jersey Jack doesn't even have the Matrix? Is it going to be the Muppets? Nobody wants that. Does it mean that it's an Eric Meunier game and not a Mark Sidon game? I can't imagine it's that because Mark has to be next. We went from Eric's godfather to Steve Ritchie's Elton John and Mark Sidon's been over there now for over three years. So V's over there designing something he has to be next in line and so is that what's wrong? Is he not the designer? Is David Thiel not working with the company? I have from a really good source that David is working once again with Jersey Jack Pinball. Maybe it's not the Matrix, maybe he's working on Harry Potter, but the good thing about these Kaneda rumors, The good thing about speculating like this is it brings out the truth. Like I love the fact that Franchi had a chime in and now we know something up there is not right. And I don't care if I got that wrong because this is the part that Franchi and all these companies don't realize. If I get that rumor wrong, who are you mad at? You're not mad at Kaneda. You want that to be the team. You might want to switch out Keith P. Johnson for Joe Katz because I actually think Joe Joe Katz is a much better coder than Keith P. Johnson is. I think Keith overloads the games. I think he makes them too complex and I think he's multiball heavy. And if you look at the best JJP games, they're all coded by Joe Katz. But you don't want me to be wrong. You want it to be Matrix. You want them to get all the assets. You want it to be based on the first movie. That's what you want. You want it to be loaded with toys. You want to have that JJP light show just raining down black and green. You want to have David Thiel. I mean David Thiel rejoining JJP is like music to everybody's ears because the music has been terrible since he's been gone. And what we mean by that, I can't stand it when people are like, well Elton John sounds great. Yeah, when they actually play the Elton John music it sounds great, but everything else is terrible. The callouts are terrible and you've got that horrible slot machine sound going on around the Elton John music. So when David does a game, like you gotta go back. These newbies don't get it. You gotta go back and listen to the Hobbit. Go listen to Pirates of the Caribbean. Go play an alien machine. When you play a David Thiel machine, you are gonna get the greatest sound you've had in a pinball machine ever. It's that simple, ever. Nobody does it as good as he does it. And it's such a shame that he wasted years of his life. I mean, he got a paycheck, But he wasted years of his life down at deeproot and there was nothing to show for it. So here's the thing. I have not seen the matrix. I don't have like it in my phone the way I had Guns N' Roses in my phone. I really hope it's next. It is the 25th anniversary of the matrix franchise and the first movie this year. I think Elton John sales have to be done with like there's not going to be a lot more people ordering Elton John. It's just not going to catch on. And I think Jersey Jack's gonna have to get this next game out sometime in July or August, and I really hope it's the Matrix. And I thought it was gonna be like Keanu versus Keanu because we do know, and this is 100% confirmed by the way, that the next Stern game is John Wick. Now look, I'm hearing weird stuff, like someone posted on my page that their distributor had a meeting with Stern and Stern told them the next game is a John Borg game So I heard that the designer for John Wick is a designer we have not heard before or it might be Tim Sexton I did not hear that it is John Borg I been hearing that John Borg game is the next game after John Wick See what I think Stern might have told the distributor is that we going to get to Spike 3 and the first Spike 3 game is going to be John Borg But here the good news It's April 1st people. We are going to see John Wick this month. So within the next four weeks, we are going to get the next Stern Cornerstone game. I know for a fact that Tim Sexton is working on it. Is he coding it? Is he a designer? We shall see. I also know that the music for this game is going to be done by another Anthrax musician. I think it might be the drummer this time, not the guitarist. They worked with the guitarist who did the Black Knight Sword of Rage. Tim Sexton worked with him on that game. That was a Steve Ritchie game. I think his name was like Ian Scott or Scott Ian and one of those. I'm not going to look it up right now. So that is what we know. John Wick next. Tim Sexton involved. Music by Anthrax Musician. And look, I heard this from someone who saw the game. You know, the musician saw the game and is like friends of a friend of mine. And he's like, it's amazing. And I don't know what to tell you people because every Stern game is amazing until we see it. And we're going to get to see it in just a few weeks. All right. So there's that. We got John Wick. We've got a question mark around who's designing it. And we've got a question mark around the matrix. We've got Abba coming out. Where the heck is this Pedretti Gaming Fun House? I mean, if there's anyone who's missing the boat right now, it's Andrea Pedretti. He's waiting way too long to get this fun house out at these prices. I don't care, right? It's like at these prices, you can't launch your game on top of so many games and get successful sales. It's just not going to happen anymore because almost everybody in pinball is either out of room or now where you had money for two games, you only have money for one game. You're not really looking back at fun house. I don't really know a lot of people that are like, Chris, their game I really want in my My collection is a funhouse with Brian Allen on artwork. Like I'm not hearing people say that. And I think this game is going to be a day late and a dollar short. It's actually going to be a day late and $2 too many because I just can't see anybody forking over $11,000 for a funhouse remake. I don't care what you do to Rudy. I don't care what you do to the code. I don't care what you do to the artwork. It's just too much money for a fun house. And where is it? Like where is the game? You know, are we going to see it at MGC? Are there going to be some surprises? I think we might see a lot by this weekend. So this might be a very busy week in pinball. You might see Kaneda hitting the airwaves multiple times this week as people try to get stuff out before we get to MGC. All right, so that's happening over there. Pulp Fictions are trickling out. Not a lot of news there. The latest on the bad mofo edition is we're not going to get them until the fall people. I don't even know what to tell you. I'm so tired. This company and their lack of communication. I just want to say this for the record. Chicago Gaming Company is terrible. They're terrible. As a company, they are terrible. I don't care how good their products are. They treat their customers like they don't care. They don't say anything to anybody. Your lack of communication between the company and the community is absolutely atrocious. It is one of the worst marketing companies I've ever seen. It's like they don't care and they treat us and they punish us like a bunch of suckers. Like you pay for a product and then they go radio silent. They didn't even announce that Ryan White wasn't over there anymore and I don't know why they do it like this. Look, their price is right. The product is great and you're telling me they just can't make a little bit of effort to communicate to us and you know what that says to me it almost doesn't make me want to support them at all because of that like are they arrogant are they smug are they just taking care of business but they're really not taking care of business like it almost took two years for people to get their cactus canyon remakes like they don't take care of business they reveal something and then you wait forever that's not taking care of business i would I'd much rather support a company like Spooky Pinball where they're nice to everybody and they talk to everybody and they engage with the community. They talk to everybody. They always seem to be in a good mood. They mail Kaneda t-shirts and sweatshirts and trans lights. They send my little boy stuffed animals and I'm still just a human being. If you want to get through to Kaneda, I mean maybe go through Killian, children are a gateway to a parent's heart, everybody knows that. You know what I'm saying though, from Spooky I feel like they care. And I just don't get that from everybody else. I just don't get a level of transparency from everybody else. Like we never hear from Damien anymore, like Haggis Pinball built this company on the promise of transparency, and then that guy just disappears and goes radio silent the moment times get tough. Seriously, does anybody know what the latest is with Haggis? Ever since he said he was recapitalizing, that was like two months ago. Have we heard a single thing from anybody over there? We're now into April and where are the fathoms? Did anyone get an answer on how many fathoms are left to be built? Nobody knows. Again, no transparency. Who the heck is going to give money on Centaur? Nobody. Then some of the companies we hear from, we don't even want to hear from. I don't want to hear David Fix and Steven Bowden talk about this Barbecue game you couldn't pay me to listen to those guys talk for an hour about their barbecue game stick a fork in that company they're done let's end this show by looking at what you can get if your budget was between seven and eight thousand dollars it's almost gonna make me a little bit sad saying these games cuz right now a Stern Pro is like sixty five hundred the premiums are a stupid ninety five hundred dollars which is a lot of money A Jersey Jack entry level now is $12,000. Pulp Fiction still a good buy Labyrinth fully loaded is almost You can get a spooky anymore for for a Ghostbusters Pro a Whitewater for A Willy Wonka Essie, a Led Zeppelin Premium for $7,100, a Jurassic Park Premium for $7,900. See that's not terrible. Stern is trying to sell right now. There are distributors. There are distributors right now with Jurassic Park Premiums sitting in a box and they want $9,500 for them. You could get that game for $1,500 less if you just go on pin side. Here's a Pulp Fiction SC. Interesting. It's a prototype display model game. So probably one of the games they brought around to the show for $7,500. An American Pinball Legends of Valhalla. This is new in box. A new in box Legends of Valhalla for $7,500. Nobody's buying that. A Cactus Canyon Special Edition for $7,500. That's not a bad buy, ladies and gentlemen. A $7,500 Cactus Canyon. Foo Fighters Premium, $7,700 and that game is sold. A Mandalorian Premium, $7,900 or best offer. Let's see. A Creature from the Black Lagoon just sold for $7,500. Game of Thrones Pro for $7,999. Is anyone buying a Game of Thrones Pro for eight grand? It says or best offer, but that just feels like an insult. Another Star Wars Premium for $7,900. An Aerosmith Pro for $7,500. See, some of these games, they didn't make a lot of them. It is hard to find Game of Thrones. It's hard to find Aerosmith games. Here's a good one. A Deadpool, which is one of the top five ranked games of all time. This is a good buy. A Deadpool premium, $7,900 people. I mean, just think about that for a minute. That is almost $8,000 less than Elton John collector's edition. Are you going to have $8,000 more fun in an Elton John CE? I don't think so. Another Led Zeppelin premium for $7,200. Another Mando for $75. I'm seeing a little bit of a pattern here. Some of these Stern games like Mando, Led Zeppelin, Star Wars, like there really isn't much demand for those games. Damn, a Venom premium for 7,500. Now just think about that. How many Venom premiums right now are sitting at distros and the distro is not allowed to sell them for below 9,500? That's the map pricing. And you can go on Pinside and get it for $2,000 less. And guess what? It's not sold. It's sitting here, Which means the price is less than $7,500. Look, here's a Guns N' Roses LE. This is crazy. Guns N' Roses LE, like new, only 27 plays, 27 plays, for $7,500 or best offer, and it's still for sale. That's almost $5,000 less than an Elton John Platinum. See, this is what's wrong with modern pricing. It's just not gonna work. A dialed in LE for $7,600. I'm going to stop there people. My point is this. My point is just this. There's a lot of pinball out there. There's so many games for sale. And we've really reached a point now, I know it's April Fool's Day, but I do mean it when I say it. We've all been the fools lately. Over the last two years, there's been a lot of foolish just buying up of everything in pinball and the prices are now at a point where if you just run at everything, we're being foolish. And I think the more and more we're starting to realize, wow, there's so many games for I'm going to go buy a $7,600 dialed in LE because if I do that, right, and I own that game for a year, it's still a great game. There's so much in it. There's so much to explore in that game. So let's say you own a dialed in for a year and you pay $7,600. You put 2000 plays on it. What are you going to sell it for in a year? You're not going to lose more than $1,000 at most. And then you buy a new in box Godfather LE and you lose $7,000 in one year. Because right now some dude just paid $7,000 for Godfather LE. He's the smart guy because now he can play it for a year and the most he's ever going to lose is $500. The point being, if all of us just wait and see, get a game at the right price. And if we all wait and see and don't rush at new in box prices, it's going to force these companies to lower prices. There's nothing else they can do. They're going to have to lower prices, everybody. And the power is in our hands. And I think we're going to see more and more of it. There's no way they're going to sell a thousand John Wick LEs at $13,000. It's not going to happen. There's no way Jersey Jack is going to make 2000 Elton John machines. It's probably more like 1200. This is a good thing. I think a lot more people are starting to speak with their silence. I think a lot more people are holding back and there's a lot of great pinball out there. A lot. You just got to look. And if you turn off the new in box FOMO, you'll enjoy this hobby so much more and spend that leftover money. You know, my friend Derek's like, oh, it's just seven, it's just $7,000. That's a trip you'll never forget. That's first class tickets to New York City. You could have dinner at Masa, one of the greatest restaurants in the world. You could stay at the Carlisle. You could go to the strip club for two nights. You could do all this stuff for much less money than $7,000, stuff you would never forget. Or you could just light it on fire by supporting new and box pinball in modern times. Not worth it, people. Kaneda out. We'll talk to you soon. Smash 축구 The 다치 담보 Sechs Ken Team Tangled PR Dorisnkaya Christensen Chucky Zeng O飛行 오�ough