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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News December 2020 recap PINcast

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 3m·analyzed·Jan 5, 2021
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TL;DR

December 2020 pinball recap: Led Zeppelin, Alien remake, Stern EULA restrictions, and code updates.

Summary

Jonathan Euston (Pinball Magazine) and Martin Eyre (Pinball News) recap December 2020 pinball industry news, including Stern's Led Zeppelin reveal by Steve Ritchie, the 30-year Stern book finally shipping, new restrictive EULA terms limiting streaming and modifications, and Pinball Brothers announcing a remake of the Alien machine to be manufactured in Italy. The hosts discuss concerns about rule complexity in modern Stern games versus accessibility, licensing issues affecting streaming, and manufacturing reliability questions around the Alien remake's Italian contract manufacturer.

Key Claims

  • Led Zeppelin designed by Steve Ritchie with Tim Sexton on code, featuring an electric magic device with optical spinner, posts, and magnet for ball manipulation

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin discussing Led Zeppelin reveal details and mechanical features

  • Stern added a new EULA to December 2020 code updates restricting streaming, modification, and potentially disabling internet-connected games in future

    high confidence · Extended discussion of EULA enforcement and potential future internet connectivity restrictions

  • Pinball Brothers plan to manufacture 100 Alien games per month in Italy by April via Pedretti contract manufacturer

    medium confidence · Martin discussing Alien remake manufacturing plans, with Jonathan expressing concerns about Pedretti's track record

  • Alien remake removes in-playfield screen and replaces modular design elements with traditional Williams-style construction

    high confidence · Martin detailing design changes to backbox display size and removal of modular flipper/bumper components

  • Stern code updates standardized features like DJ mixer, graphic equalizer, backbox brightness modes across multiple games

    high confidence · Detailed description of retrofit features added to Iron Man, Avengers, TMNT, Stranger Things, Star Wars

  • Paperflop's '30 Years of Stern' Kickstarter book faced years of delays and now shipping manually through USPS due to fulfillment issues

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin discussing book production delays since 2016 and current manual fulfillment

  • Licensed music on Led Zeppelin and other games makes streaming difficult due to copyright blocking by Twitch/YouTube/Facebook

    high confidence · Discussion of streaming takedowns and music licensing complications

  • Pedretti is known for quality issues with plastic replacement parts despite manufacturing for Planetary Pinball

    medium confidence · Jonathan expressing concerns based on research into Pedretti's reputation for pinball part quality

Notable Quotes

  • “This doesn't have a number of the things which Guns N' Roses has. It doesn't have the band buy-in. It doesn't have the equivalent of Slash working on the game.”

    Martin Eyre @ ~15:00 — Direct comparison of Led Zeppelin to competing JJP rock band IP, highlighting licensing depth concerns

  • “Take away the artwork, and basically it could have been any rock band. There's nothing that screams Led Zeppelin in terms of the design.”

    Jonathan Euston @ ~22:00 — Critical assessment of Led Zeppelin's thematic integration into gameplay mechanics

  • “I think largely so basically they're now focusing on tournament players which is only a very small portion of the people actually playing pinball”

    Martin Eyre @ ~58:00 — Statement of design philosophy shift concern—prioritization of competitive depth over casual accessibility

  • “I'd rather have a fun game that's less deep, but I enjoy playing it, and instead of a game that has a zillion options to go for”

    Jonathan Euston @ ~55:00 — Summary of host position on rule complexity vs. fun factor debate

  • “Well, I'm not sure what the proper word is to say, but basically the owner of the company had some tactics that were not very desirable”

    Martin Eyre @ ~68:00 — Oblique reference to Andrew Heighway's controversial management of Highway Pinball

  • “I'm hearing various stories about the quality of replacement pinball parts produced by Pedretti, which are not that good, especially their plastic parts”

    Jonathan Euston @ ~75:00 — Quality concerns about Alien remake's manufacturing partner

  • “It looks more like a traditional Barry Williams game. If you couldn't see the playfield you would think that's what it was.”

    Martin Eyre @ ~71:00 — Description of Alien remake's shift toward classic aesthetic vs. Highway Pinball's modular design

  • “They're not going to be interested in dealing with every request for a pinball stream, are they?”

Entities

Jonathan EustonpersonMartin EyrepersonSteve RitchiepersonTim SextonpersonJack GuarnieripersonGary FlowerpersonLed ZeppelingameAliengameStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball Brothers announcing ambitious 100 games/month Italian manufacturing after Dutch Pinball struggled with same pace domestically

    medium · Jonathan: 'after everything that we've been through the past couple of years with startup companies announcing... And here we have the pinball brothers announcing... by april pedretti should be able to build 100 games a month'

  • ?

    business_signal: Paperflop amateurism in book publishing evidenced by fulfillment failures, shipping structure, and multiple redesign iterations

    high · Martin: 'It speaks volumes about the amateurism that the paper flock apparently have when it comes to producing books... It's their first book project but apparently as an editor and a publisher of they're running into every trap'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern EULA attempting to restrict streaming, modifications, and future hardware lockdown; hosts note enforceability issues

    high · Extended EULA discussion noting impracticality of permission requests and lack of on-screen acceptance mechanism

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Detailed rule documentation for TMNT and Avengers PDFs available but perceived as overly complex; hosts struggled to understand

    high · Jonathan: 'It lost me. It was so complicated, I couldn't understand it... You could spend days studying it and learning it'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Stern increasingly prioritizing complex rule sets for tournament players over casual accessibility; hosts advocate for KISS principle in game design

    high · Extended discussion of rule complexity criticism; Jonathan states 'they're now focusing on tournament players which is only a very small portion of the people actually playing pinball'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.371

0:00
Led Zeppelin revealed Alien remake announced Dennis Nordman joins American Pinball Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston. I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine. I wish you a happy new year, and yes, I bought a new microphone. And I'm here joined with... I'm Martin Eyre from Pinball News. I'm the editor there. and we're all enjoying your new year, new microphone. Congratulations on that. Hopefully we'll have a little less of the rubbing and scratching sounds coming from that. And I have to say, it does sound pretty damn good. So do you want to tell us which microphone you bought? No, it's a pinball podcast. We don't discuss microphones in here. Oh, okay. Fair point. Okay. But starting with our New Year's resolution, Loyal listeners will know that we have tried to get Gary Flower on the phone Tried and tried And join our podcast frequently So far, no luck This time, this year, we're going to do it different So, I actually already have Gary Flower on the phone Gary, are you there? Hello to you too So, please hang on Okay Martin and I will do the podcast We'll bring you in Later on, okay? No problem Thanks Good So, later on We'll have Gary Flower Finally On the show And we'll also have Yes We'll also have A Small interview Well, small You know how these things go With us Small interview with Jack Guarnieri Of Jersey Jack Pinball Who is exactly 10 years in business as Jersey Jack Pinball. So time for a small celebration. Absolutely, yeah. We interview him. We will interview him anyway and ask him for his thoughts on the past 10 years and how things have changed over the past decade. There's been a lot, a lot happened in the pinball industry and a lot happened at Jersey Jack Pinball. So anyway, we'll look at that a bit later. But in the meantime, let's start with our headlines. And the first one we came to was the reveal of the brand new Led Zeppelin game from Stern Pinball. Yeah, it was designed by Steve Ritchie.
2:30
It got three flippers. Yeah, and album artwork as the artwork for at least two of the models. And I think the Limited Edition has more custom artwork Which is based on the logo of the band No, the logo of the label of the band Yes, that's right Yes, it's the Icarus character They appear on the Limited Edition The artwork is done by Steven Jensen Who may not be a familiar name But he did work on the X-Men games for Stern Along with Kevin O'Connor So it's not his first pinball commission But as you said It's pretty much based on Well the Pro is based on the Led Zeppelin III Album artwork And That reminds everybody of Bugs Bunny's That's right It's the white one Which generally hasn't been a good colour for pinball I think over the years, that's fair to say People tend to prefer darker or Richer colours But that's the colour scheme That was used on Led Zeppelin III and the as you say the LE is the Icarus character and then there's the premium model that has the crushing Hindenburg artwork I would say yes the Zeppelin I suppose well I'm not sure it is a Zeppelin is it but yeah you're right the airship anyway on it it's a sort of black and white rendition of that which is very stylized not sure it's up there with the central stark black and whiteness of the design, but certainly very iconic.

  • Jersey Jack Pinball celebrates 10 years in business at this time

    high confidence · Jonathan mentioning JJP milestone and upcoming interview with Jack Guarnieri

  • Modern Stern games feature overly complicated rule sets prioritizing tournament players over casual players

    high confidence · Extended discussion comparing rule complexity philosophy and accessibility concerns

    • Martin Eyre @ ~42:00 — Commentary on impracticality of enforcing Stern's EULA streaming restrictions

  • “It does sound pretty damn good. So do you want to tell us which microphone you bought? No, it's a pinball podcast. We don't discuss microphones in here.”

    Martin / Jonathan @ ~00:30 — Light-hearted opening establishing podcast tone and priorities

  • “Well, and speaking of misuse, obviously the next thing that the same end-user license agreement also mentioned is that you're not allowed to modify your game.”

    Jonathan Euston @ ~44:00 — Introduction of modification restriction aspect of Stern's new EULA

    • Pinball Brothers
    company
    Highway Pinballcompany
    Andrew Heighwayperson
    Pedretticompany
    Paperflopcompany
    Guns N' Rosesgame
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Iron Mangame
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
    Avengers Infinity Questgame
    Stranger Thingsgame
    Star Warsgame
    Planetary Pinballcompany
    Dutch Pinballcompany
    Zen Studioscompany
    Pinball Magazineorganization
  • ?

    licensing_signal: Licensed music on games like Led Zeppelin creating streaming complications due to copyright blocking by platforms

    high · Martin: 'streams taken down because they contain licensed music and that is then blocked by Twitch and YouTube and Facebook simply because of the music'

  • ?

    community_signal: Highway Pinball ownership dispute resolved with Pinball Brothers taking control of Alien project and removing modular/innovative design elements

    high · Martin: 'the owner of the company had some tactics that were not very desirable... Pinball Brothers, who are actually an investor in highway pinball, basically fired the owner'

  • $

    market_signal: Paperflop book shipping costs exceed book price, indicating distribution economics problems

    high · Martin: 'buyers are paying more for shipping than they pay for the book. People are paying an exorbitant amount for shipping'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Led Zeppelin lacks theme-specific mechanical features; electric magic device has no connection to band; artwork drives differentiation vs. generic rock theme

    high · Jonathan: 'Take away the artwork, and basically it could have been any rock band. There's nothing that screams Led Zeppelin in terms of the design'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern standardizing and retrofitting features (DJ mixer, graphic EQ, brightness modes) across older games via code updates

    high · Martin detailing feature standardization across Iron Man, Avengers, TMNT, Stranger Things, Star Wars

  • ?

    product_concern: Pedretti's manufacturing reputation for poor plastic parts quality despite producing Williams parts for Planetary Pinball

    medium · Jonathan: 'I'm hearing various stories about the quality of replacement pinball parts produced by Pedretti, which are not that good, especially their plastic parts'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern future internet connectivity planned for games to enable EULA enforcement and remote disabling capabilities

    medium · Jonathan: 'when these games become internet accessible... they have the right to disable the game and basically brick it'

    • 4:20
    And... Yeah, we've got Tim Sexton on code again, working with Steve Ritchie, the same team basically as Black Knight, at least Tim and Steve teaming up. Yeah, absolutely. And, well, what's your opinion on the game? that we've seen so far. I suppose the main exciting device on the premium in LE is the electric magic, which sort of rises up like Iron Man and has a sort of mechanism that contains an optical spinner, some posts and a magnet beneath where I can grab the ball, turn it into a captive ball, fling the ball and also grab it and drop down onto the playfield to lock the ball. So that's the key device on that game, kind of like, I suppose you'd have to say, the knight on Black Knight is the main device on that. Right. Well, it's interesting that you mention Iron Man. I was never that impressed with Iron Man as a game, and that turned out to be a huge favourite for a lot of people.
    5:29
    I wasn't that impressed with Led Zeppelin either, but the part he has to do I might be too young to appreciate that Zeppelin yeah from the 10 songs in the game I think I knew two and the third one that I heard and the others I had to look up and I never heard these songs before obviously classic rock is far more aired on radio in America than it is Over here in the Netherlands I can't speak for the rest of Europe Well, I'll just say My go-to station When I'm sitting here working on my computer Is a classic rock station So I get to hear a lot of Led Zeppelin And I do know all those songs However, I have to say None of them particularly excite me As being part of a pinball game They're great tracks As standalone music And for listening to But do they excite me and sort of suggest pinball modes And sort of use in a pinball game? Not particularly No, and obviously it's Well, I'm not sure whether it's fair to make the comparison But obviously three months ago Jersey Jack came out with Guns N' Roses Which is also a rock band pin If you compare these two rock band pins As much as I like Steve Ritchie And Tim Saxon But I'm afraid that Guns N' Roses is going to beat them On every level I think you're right This doesn't have A number of the things Which Guns N' Roses has It doesn't have the band buy-in It doesn't have the equivalent of Slash Working on the game It doesn't have the videos From the stage show It doesn't have the same kind of lighting effects Although, to their credit, Stern have put some nice lighting down the side of the game. Yeah, which I tend to think, and obviously it will never be confirmed by Stern, but it sort of looks like a rush job that was done after Guns N' Roses was revealed. Add that to the game, so it looks more... And I know that they, in videos of gameplay streaming, Mentioned that they have been working on that Since 2019 or something like that But That's not the The impression that you get Yeah I mean it is something To give them the credit It's something which Stern did before anyway With the Star Trek game They did have light LEDs down the side of the cabinet In exactly that way So it's, although they were just single colour, I think, red at that point. But when you compare it to the effects that you get with Guns N' Roses, it falls a long way short, shall we say. But, you know, what's interesting, though, is it looks like that lighting add-on is going to be available for the Pro version as well. So you'll be able to add those same kind of effects, which would be nice. Not quite sure how it's going to work But it'll be a kit that's available I believe But yeah I was a bit disappointed As well I thought That electric magic device isn't On the pro And that kind of makes it devoid of Any major toy It's got ramps You know you're familiar with Ramps It makes it a rather empty looking game It is and even the The side lane, the upper flipper shot really, which is the main upper flipper shot, is just a stand-up target on the Pro, rather than being a 180-degree ramp, which seems a little bit of a needless cost reduction on that, because I can't imagine that's that expensive. And I was surprised that the Premium and the LEs didn't have drop targets everywhere. You know, they've still only got the three drop targets Which are sweepable from the upper flipper, I'm sure And maybe from the right one too But you think, well, maybe in the premium and LE They'd have all the stand-ups would be made into drops But they're not So anyway, we don't know what the cost of the game is We don't know what the cost of the license was In order to get what has to be considered, I think Along with, like, the Beatles, a kind of Holy Grail license, isn't it? So it's one that people have said, no, if you're going to have a rock band or a music-themed pin, then Led Zeppelin would be amazing, but it'll never happen. Well, it did happen. Stern pulled it off, and Steve Ritchie designed it, and here it is. So if it's your Holy Grail pin, then you've got no excuse. Right. But, well, take away the artwork, and basically it could have been any rock band. There's nothing that screams Led Zeppelin in terms of the design. No, I think it's just the add-ons, isn't it? It's the Zeppelin airship... The Icarus figure... The Icarus, the Leaper, you know, and yeah, you're right, I mean, the Electric Maggot Magic thing, not Electric Maggot, Electric Magic device doesn't really have any direct tie-in with Led Zeppelin, as far as I can... Or any band whatsoever. Yeah, true. Yeah. So, I mean, I suppose it's not possible, but I mean, for example, KISS has the drum kit on a rising platform. It sort of would have made sense if there would have been a drum kit on top of it, but it's very difficult in a pinball machine. But you know what I mean. then it would have made some sort of sense if that was something that applied to Led Zeppelin.
    11:38
    Yeah, it's... Oh, well, never mind. We have the Led Zeppelin game now, and I'm sure a lot of people will be very happy with it,
    11:49
    and I'm sure they're... A lot of them. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I'm sure they're trying to put as much into the software as well as they can to really add more value to the game, because, as you said, it looks at it on the barren side on the playfield. Right. And, again, what I've seen of gameplay, yes, it seems all too far-fetched with the software and the rules, what they're trying to achieve. So, on the one hand, the multiball should be easy, but on the other hand, they're trying to put so much stuff in, and I'm like, it's too far-fetched for me, for my taste.
    12:26
    I haven't really seen any much about it. The only thing I didn't like that I did see was when it started talking about multipliers and multipliers going up in 0.1 of a multiplier, and I thought, oh, this is getting a bit mathematical. It should be either like a 1x, 2x, 3x or 4x. So if you go to 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, you think, oh, goodness. I think there's a golden rule which also applies to pinball, which basically is the KISS principle, keep it simple, stupid. Yes Well you mentioned Iron Man before and how popular that is And that's actually a very simple rule set But Difficult to achieve and difficult to get The sort of ultimate wizard mode When you get there And there are two options as to how you get to it Which make it even more complicated But it's a huge reward And it's achievable and you understand what you have to do To get there Yeah but I still get the impression that it's on one end you have coders trying to impress each other with, oh, we build on this what we had on the previous game, and we now improve it to this and to this and to this. And what have you, oh, we took that from your game as well. And then they also look at what is the competition doing, and they try to implement elements from that as well. and you get these complicated rule sets that are no longer simple. Yeah, well, we'll get to that a bit in a minute when we start talking about code updates.
    14:01
    But, yeah, take the point entirely. So, anyway, other stern news, moving on from the Ledgepton game. Right.
    14:10
    I'm trying to think what's the first thing we should really do for, go for. Well, let's go with the longest one, brewing. Oh, yes. I always enjoy that one. Yeah, that's the Keeping the Ball Alive 30 Years of Stern Pinball book. It's finally shipping. Yes, the Kickstarter that was launched by Paperflock almost four years ago, I think. It was meant to deliver in May three years ago. More than four years ago. And delay after delay, redoing sections of it, adding new pictures, relaying it out after people didn't like the way it looked originally.
    14:50
    People still don't like how it looks now. Well, okay. Well, the thing is, it is shipping. There was a delay even for the shipping once it was printed because, according to Paperflop, buyers weren't sending back their questionnaires regarding whether they want to buy T-shirts and posters and prints and that kind of stuff. It basically comes down to people are paying more for shipping than they pay for the book. People are paying an exorbitant amount for shipping, I think, which is another thing which just piled on the bad news onto that project. Yeah, and it speaks volumes about the amateurism that the paper flock apparently have when it comes to producing books. there's basically no they're trying to it's their first book project but apparently as an editor and a publisher of they're running into every trap that they can run into they didn't do any homework whatsoever and oh well they lost their fulfillment company who are meant to be sending this all out. So they're actually putting them all in USPS boxes and taking them down to the post office and sending them all out. And there's over 400 of these. So they're all doing it all manually and it's going to take a long time. But the thing is, when the book came out, the quality of the actual book, regardless of the content, is not bad. It seems to be pretty solid and well put together. Yeah, pretty heavy, good quality paper. The layout of the pages, well, that's a matter of personal taste, I suppose. It's a coffee table book, it's not a novel, it's not an encyclopedia, and it only goes up as far as Aerosmith.
    16:48
    Which is the 30 years, so that's okay. But, yeah, I've seen a couple of pages and the layout of those pages, very cluttered, a lot of redundant photos that you really didn't need there four times the same object or the same toy or whatever once would have been enough and then use another element of the game or what have you so yeah well it does look as if at least we'll be able to stop talking about this book fairly soon once everybody's got all the books, the posters, the T-shirts, prints and stuff that they ordered all those years ago. Right. So there's some relatively good news there. Yes. Okay. Then what else do we have? Well, my little thing, the Stern Pro Circuit. There's been some trading cards launched. If trading cards are your thing,
    17:48
    Stern say you can get your hands on this special edition Pro Circuit, Stern Pro Circuit trading card set. Which they describe as... What are on these cards? Well, they're just players, basically, from around the world. And a few special guests who appeared in Stern Games, or been involved in Stern Games. So the usual, I guess, Ed Robertson and people like that would probably be on these cards.
    18:15
    And Stern is saying these items are not for resale. Yeah, of course, if you want to make them collectible, huh? That's rule number one. Yeah, I mean If you buy them, you're not allowed to sell them on Yeah He's going to stuff you Well, exactly, I think we tried this before, didn't we With the Beatles I think the Platinum Edition was not allowed to be Or was it Batman? I can't remember which game it was Batman 66 Well, you're not allowed to sell it on again once you've bought it Well, we all know How enforceable that is But we'll look at things which are potentially Unenforceable very shortly and they're asking fans to limit their purchases to personal use only I don't think that's going to be a problem to be honest I can't see there being a black market in Stern Pro Circuit trading cards but if you've got to have everything that's Stern and Collectible and trading cards yeah don't forget John Buscaglia obviously came from Topps so he knows all about trading cards good point yes well made Okay, so we were talking about things which are potentially unenforceable And Stern recently added a little, I don't know, an extra step To downloading new software or new code for their games So let's start at the beginning of that Right before Christmas, Stern came out with a code update package Which included quite a number of games, actually Primus, Pabst and Crusher Which is actually the same game with different artwork But still Iron Man, Avengers Infinity Quest Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles And Stranger Things All got code updates right before Christmas But part of that code update Was this new end user agreement Yes The end user license agreement EULA Which they added in It attempts to enforce a number of new restrictions on what you can and cannot do with your Stern pinball game.
    20:24
    Things such as you are not allowed to stream footage of the game on either live or recorded without permission from Stern themselves.
    20:37
    Well, let's just stop right there because that's not going to happen, is it? Well, I don't think there's anybody even Who would be dealing with that at Stern? If you want to stream your game Where do you send an email Hi, I want to stream my game on this and this date?
    20:55
    Yeah, well, presumably If it would be a licensed theme And all the themes are licensed themes Then it would have to be referred back to the licensor Which isn't going to happen They're not going to be interested in dealing with every request For a pinball stream, are they? Right This probably has to do with the MCA violations that CERN doesn't want to be held accountable for, if that would be a possibility at some point. And they're probably covering their own behinds, so to speak. Yes, I think that's true. They know that people are going to stream the games, but they need to be able to say that, well, we've taken all reasonable steps to ensure that those assets are not misused or used without permission. Well, and speaking of misuse, obviously the next thing that the same end-user license agreement also mentioned is that you're not allowed to modify your game. Yes, that's right. You're not allowed to make any changes to the hardware or software.
    22:00
    And that can include a simpler thing as adding a mod onto your game. Yeah, or a third-party topper. Yeah, but also could obviously also go into things like modifying the software Changing the assets within the game Yeah, like images on the screen Or music being played Or voice calls Yeah, that's right And the threat by Stern is that when these games become internet accessible or have connectivity added to connect to some kind of stern server, they have the right to disable the game and basically brick it, to coin a phrase, turn it into a large brick, which doesn't do anything. Now, obviously, they don't have internet access at the moment, so that's not enforceable either and would only be something which would be added further down the line. and also at the moment if you buy a brand new Stern game and power it up and it's got this version of software on now it doesn't come up with a message on the screen that says do you agree to these terms and conditions for your end user license agreement now press the right flipper button to accept and the left flipper button to decline and it won't boot unless you accept so they don't do that so you at no point accept these terms You can't just say by buying the game you agree to it, because you buy the game from the distributor, you don't buy it from Stern. And then let's say someone presses the right flipper button and accepts. Who is to say who pressed that button? Yeah, yeah, it could be the distributor. Maybe they check your game over before you get it. You know, they power it up, say yes, and then make sure everything works and then deliver it to you. Right, okay, so we can have a lengthy discussion about this. We're not going to do that. Apparently the end user license agreement currently has been pulled, although that could also be to have a lawyer look at it and see if anything needs rephrasing or what have you. But, okay, apparently at CERN they are looking into these type of things, so be aware.
    24:19
    Yeah, absolutely. I don't think anybody's going to be sent to prison Because you're streaming a pinball game But, you know Makes it also less fun It does It adds a level of complexity and annoyance Which you don't want to have to deal with But we've had all that recently anyway With streaming of pinball games Games like Led Zeppelin And probably Guns N' Roses You know, having the streams taken down Because they contain licensed music and that is then blocked by the likes of Twitch and YouTube and Facebook simply because of the music. So they have to do something.
    24:59
    People aren't able to stream these games very well anyway at the moment. So what do they do? Do they do something like try and add an extra setting, streaming mode, into the software which disables the songs? It would be smarter, but then you wouldn't have... it's very easy to replace certain music with placeholder music, so to speak. Yeah, I mean, they could have instrumental versions of the music. But it's still the same song. It's still publishing. The publisher would still be upset with that. So it's not just the master owner. It's also the, you have two parties involved when it comes to music streaming. True, but it's a problem. and it's a problem that even Stern have with their games when they wanted to show the Led Zeppelin game they weren't able to stream it in the same way they would have done in the past because that stream would be taken down right but anyway we mentioned earlier about multiple code updates yeah which here come the details no no no I'm actually not going to go into all the details of each one but There's kind of an overriding picture here Which is that Stern are trying to standardise The operating system I suppose on these games By putting in the same features That they put into newer games And retrofitting them to older games Like the DJ mixer Like the way the start button lights Or where it flashes And also where you've got the graphic equaliser A 10-band graphic equalizer available in the sound mix And also where the new system software Allows you to have two system settings for the backbox brightness One for a track mode and one for gameplay mode So you could dim the backbox when the game is actually playing And then brighten it up when it's in a track mode And it ramps nicely from one to the other And that's something they've been adding in to all these games And also the DJ Mixer thing is part of the game mode menu, which allows you to do head-to-head games and group two against one and two against two, and all that kind of stuff.
    27:25
    That's something which you get to in the track mode by holding in both swipper buttons, and that brings up a menu and you can choose how you want to play the game. That's another thing which is being added back in. So it's a nice feature They did say they were going to try and put this into older games And that's indeed what they've been doing So they've been doing that And also some other games like Stranger Things Have had a final showdown challenge game added Which allows you just to play a different type of game And also that was added to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well It was a half-shell challenge which allows you to play each of the four turtles in turn in a timed mode and trying to get them back to their lair before the timer runs out. And if you do, you can move on to the next turtle, do a different set of shots, and then there's a high score table for that as well. What was actually interesting with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is I noticed in the readme file exactly what has changed, and this is true for the Avengers as well, is there is a very detailed rule sheet available that tells you exactly how the rules work. And I haven't seen this before. You know, if you go to the link, and you'll find it if you look on the readme file on CERN's website for Avengers Infinity Quest, Anti-Ninja Ninja Turtles, in the readme of the code, at the top there's a link to the CERN website, which will then take you to a PDF, which lists all the rules, well, not all the rules, but certainly a very detailed description of the rules. And it lost me. It was so complicated, I couldn't understand it. And that kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier about how complicated rules are in some of these games. There's so much in there that you would have to... Well, you could spend days studying it and learning it, but obviously it would help to have the game in front of you or to be familiar with it, which we're not, I have to say. We haven't played these games at all, I don't think. Avengers or Turtles, have we? So yeah We're not that familiar with the game to start with But it would certainly clear up Any questions you have about how functions work In that game So I'd recommend Loading the readme file For the software For Avengers and Turtles And potentially other games in the future And seeing What the rules are Because they're quite extensive Right Now, and so, earlier I made this comment about keep it simple stupid.
    30:04
    So I'm not saying that I'm against deep pinball rules, but the problem is it appears that the priority seems to be to write deep pinball rules and not so much make it a fun game. I'd rather have a fun game that's less deep, but I enjoy playing it, and instead of a game that has, I don't know, a zillion options to go for, and five or six wizard modes before you get to the ultimate wizard mode, which I'm never going to get to anyway. So I'd rather have them focus on the game being fun, which doesn mean giving me a multi within three shots or less than a minute of play because that doesn equal fun is fun to play multiple yes but I still need to have the feeling that I achieved something and not because I flipped a ball around for 30 seconds I should be entitled to get a multiple.
    31:04
    Yeah, I understand entirely. I've actually turned around completely on this. I used to be so in favour of complex rules and I love The Simpsons because of the complexity of the rules there, but I realise that that is about as complex as I wanted the rules to ever get and they've gone way beyond that now and they've lost me I think largely so basically they're now focusing on tournament players which is only a very small portion of the people actually playing pinball and I think it would be more important to focus on the people who just play pinball for fun yeah we said it before there is the possibility of doing both and making an ostensibly fairly simple game, but with underlying complexity, which only the top players will ever get to learn. But it's a difficult balancing act. You don't want to spend 90% of your time putting in complex rules that 5% of the players are ever going to see. It's not a good use of effort.
    32:10
    Right. Oh, well. I think that wraps it up for Stern. I think it does, yeah. Okay, so our second headline then was about the remake of the Alien game being announced. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, a little bit only.
    32:29
    Obviously, Alien was a game manufactured, or at least attempted to manufacture, by Highway Pinball, who has been... I'm not sure what the proper word is to say, but basically the owner of the company had some tactics that were not very desirable, I'd say. He was a very good salesman, but not so good a manufacturer of pinball machines, resulting in that only a very few Alien games were manufactured before, I suppose, the Pinball Brothers, who are actually an investor in highway pinball, basically fired the owner of the company and took everything away and now have finally announced the relaunch of a new to be manufactured Alien Pimmel Machine, which is I'd say for 95% the same layout as the other game, but a few improvements.
    33:43
    And the plan is to manufacture that game in Italy by a contract manufacturer called Pedretti. That's probably the short version. Yeah. Even that's too long, but still.
    33:59
    No, I think you covered it pretty well. I could probably add that the in-playfield screen that was quite a major part of the original design is no longer there. Yeah. And it's been replaced by some sentry gun ammunition indicators.
    34:22
    So the big back box screen has been reduced down to a smaller sort of stern pinball size. display on the back box to make more room for the alien artwork and various things that made that sort of a highway pinball look at the back box design and the modular buttons on the side, on the flipper buttons and the modular pop bumpers and slingshots and clippers, that's all gone and become a lot more traditional, shall we say, in that regard. It looks more like a traditional Barry Williams game If you couldn't see The playfield you would think that's what it was The lighted side panels are gone And everything like that It's now just regular decals On the side Right So obviously I'm happy For the Pivot Brothers that they managed to Announce The remake of this game However I do have a few concerns The main one being The Italian contract manufacturer which is being announced as a manufacturer of jukeboxes and pinball parts and so on.
    35:41
    I did a little research. I could only find one CD player type of jukebox and I wasn't very impressed with the looks of that. doesn't seem to have a lot of moving parts. So I'm not sure how that contributes to being able to build pinball machines. And on top of that, I'm hearing various stories about the quality of replacement pinball parts produced by Prodressi, which are not that good, especially their plastic parts, apparently are not that good. the steel parts are okay, but what good is a flipper if it's only going to last for a week? Yeah, true, that's surprising, because they are a licensed manufacturer for planetary pinball supply, I think, to make to remake Barry Williams parts, so they're not good quality, that's a concern. so um and what's also rather concerning um after everything that we've been through the past couple of years with startup companies announcing that oh we're going to build this many games and we're going to build this many games um and here we have the pinball brothers announcing that i think by april pedretti should be able to build 100 games a month if i look at dutch pinball um they've been building games themselves now for over a year. They're having a difficult time. They're adding employees as we speak. They're having job interviews and what have you. And they're trying to get to 10 games a week.
    37:30
    100 games a week is really a difficult task. 100 games a week or 100 games a month? Both. Oh, right. Let's go with 100 a month. 100 games a month is still quite an enormous task. Yes, about four a day. All the logistics to line up, and you need to have the manufacturing facility.
    37:57
    Yes. I have no idea how big Pedretti is, but I would be very sorry to see that Pinball Brothers get plagued, I would say, by aligning themselves with the contract manufacturer that can't live up to the predictions that they made. Yes. Say what you like about Dutch Pinball's association with ARA, they actually did put out the games at the intended rate for the time they were making them. Right.
    38:35
    Contract manufacturing doesn't come with a rate of 100 games a month. No, exactly. I don't think they would have given the space they had to build them in and they're a big company they were aiming for 12 games a week and they had difficulty getting to them
    38:52
    yeah so contract manufacturing games is always problematic and you know keeping control living up to targets and you know we even saw it with when Dutch people try to to restart manufacturing with Zytec that didn't work out in the end there was a lot of time and effort spent invested in trying to get that up and running and it didn't work out we obviously wish them the best for the record Pimple Brothers are not taking any pre-order money so that's great you will be able to buy the standard Alien remake for the price of $7,777 in local currency and $9,999 for a limited version, although exactly what's in the limited version hasn't been decided. I was going to say hasn't been revealed, but I don't think they've even decided what they're going to put in it yet. They're going to see how they get on with the standard version and then see what they can add to it. It would be nice if you could get a big screen in there somewhere because it's got some fantastic graphics in there and I think Brian Domney has been doing some work on the code as well to include or incorporate the new features, the sentry gun display and the magnet as well, which has been added, and the hypersleep ball lock as well, which is now a physical ball lock on the game rather than being a virtual one. So I think that's been added into the software as well. So it's looking good as a game. I think it's what people would want the game to be. and I think there is a big demand for it, but as you say, there has got to be doubts over the manufacturing capability and the timelines which have been offered up so far. Right, okay. Now, so before we move on, Gary, you're still there? Yes. Hello? Hello. Okay, yeah. We're not ready to get to you, but hanging there, we'll get to you shortly. All right. Thanks. Yeah, well done. The last thing we'll do is forget about Gary. We'll bring him in shortly. Okay, so our third headline And this is the start of our little section on American Pinball And the main news is that it was announced, well, today in fact The 4th of January Although it actually leaked already yesterday Yeah, well, kind of, but okay Is that Dennis Nordman has joined American Pinball as their new senior game designer Dennis of course well known a very prolific designer worked for many companies across pinball and also slot machines over the years and not just slot machines he's also done his pitch and bat game hasn't he yes and he did Tower of Power which is a redemption game
    42:01
    so he has been around the block yeah he has And also when it comes to pinball manufacturers, I think Dutch Pinball is the only manufacturer that he hasn't worked for. I think, well, yeah, I guess so. And Hackers Pinball. And Home Pin. And Home Pin, yeah, okay. Yeah, but certainly all the US-based ones, and Highway Pinball as well, I've been involved with, and Silver... Silver Castle. Castle, yes. He was consulting on that as well, on the Time Shop game. I had a hand in that as well. Ah, well, if you want to remove it, it'll get in the way of the ball.
    42:47
    So, yes, his role there is to be the senior game designer, but he's also training three young designers that American Pinball have taken on. We don't know who they are yet. Yes, I get it. Well, what is known is that they are known designers. And I think we have to look into the homebrew environment, so to speak, where these designers might be coming from. Yeah, it certainly makes sense.
    43:22
    George Kugler, their lead programmer, was a homebrew pinball designer. and he was hired by American Pinball back in the day already. He's still there, something which can't be said for Joe Bolzer, their pinball designer for the previous three games, Houdini, Oktoberfest and Hot Wheels. Apparently Joe is, well, word on the street is that he was that Joe. American Pinball is saying that Joe is now a Contract designer Instead of an employee Yes, they say he's Free to offer His designs to American Pinball As well as other companies Which basically means that He's not working for American Pinball And he's a Freelance Game designer, I suppose Right Which, well I know Joe's departure from American Pinball Has been sort of on the cards Or been mooted for some time So not a huge surprise But he's done some good work there Enjoyed his designs And I'm sure we'll be hearing more from him in the future But for now Dennis is the senior game designer there He moves the company He doesn't have a new design ready to go yet He's got a lot of ideas he said But nothing actual No finished game That he can bring with him And surprisingly As we all know Dennis has designed three games For Deep Root which still have to come out And he's also working on a game For Chicago Gaming Yes he is And as part of his agreement With American Pinball he will be allowed To see that Licensed game for Chicago Gaming Through to completion When David Ficks Spoke to Dennis And Chicago Gaming's Doug Duva They came to agreement that Dennis could go to work At American Pinball as long as he finished his work On the Chicago Gaming game So that is happening Which as I mentioned Leads to the potential Of Dennis having Not just one but potentially three games out in the market at the same time. If Deep Root bring one of his titles out at the same time as Chicago Gaming bring out his title, and American Pinball bring out his title, you know, it could have three games back against each other, which would be interesting to see which one is the best. Right. But, no, good news for Dennis, good news for American Pinball, and I suppose good news for Pinball in general, because obviously American Pinball hired Dave Fix as their Chief Operations Manager But this Indicates that because there was some Concern whether American Pinball would Stay in Pinball Depending on the success of Hot Wheels And apparently this indicates That American Pinball has chosen To stay in Pinball Yes they are part of the Amtron group And Amtron have been sort of, how shall I say, pushing, promoting their involvement in American Pinball, advertising the fact that American Pinball is part of the AIMTRON group. And I think that might be something which is a kind of a confidence builder to show that they've got the backing of a much larger parent company and aren't going anywhere soon. And they do have, I know, talking to David, their Director of Operations and Marketing He said that they do have big ambitions to increase the number of games that they're going to produce From, well, kind of like one a year or one slightly more than every year To at least two, if not three, titles a year So in order to do that, they're going to need to bring on these young designers as well as Dennis, Dennis can't produce that many Barry else they probably could but Dennis is will be responsible for training these younger designers and get them up to tutor them in the development of their own games so yeah it looks like good news from Rankin Pinball they've got the investment and they've got the talent there now to push things on At quite a pace Right, so I'm very happy for Dennis And if you're wondering Dennis Nordman, what other games Did he do Allow me to simply Direct you to Pinball Magazine number 2 Which has a cover story On Dennis Nordman Discussing his Entire career in Pinball, I think up to The point where He started working on Lexi Lightspeed, which is also like five years ago or something. But Pinball Magazine No. 2 is readily available in the Pinball Magazine webshop, so if you're interested in that and you haven't ordered that magazine yet, make sure you get it now. Quite right, too. Okay. Now, we were talking about American Pinball and upcoming titles.
    49:02
    They also... Well, they're also looking at licenses, and I think you have a little bit of news on what's been said about their plans for licensed themes. Right, okay. So to give credit where credit is due, Dave Fix and Dennis Norman, by the way, were both a special guest on the super awesome pinball show, I think it was episode 22, where the news of Dennis Hyer was being reviewed. But in that same interview, Dave Fix also indicated that Roger Sharp is their consultant when it comes to licensing. and obviously if you know Roger and you know Roger's history working as a licensee consultant for Williams or the licensing department for Williams Pinball back in the day, when they had the opportunity to do the Batman game but they could not get the likeness of a certain actor, I think it was Jack Nicholson, basically Roger said like, okay, then we're not going to take it, let the other guys have it, which is how Data East ended up with the Batman license at that point. Because the philosophy of Roger was, you only want a license when you have all the assets to work with. And that's exactly what Dave Fix is also saying in the Super Awesome Pinball show.
    50:33
    Unless they get all the assets for a certain license, whether it being a movie, they want the actors, they want the music, they want everything that has to do with it. Else, they're not going to pursue such license because it's simply not worth it. Because you end up with a game where people will say like, hey, like Alien, there's not the main actors. Yes, they go on a wave as well. Yes, exactly. So American Pimble does not want to get into that situation. So working with Roger And obviously Roger knows his way around With movie companies and so on I would not be surprised to see If he would actually be able to pull it off Well, let's hope so I think there's a cross on that I thought it's a much tougher challenge these days Once upon a time having a pinball Or featuring yourself in a pinball Was a real badge of honour And something to give you bragging rights But these days There are so many different outlets for movies or bands or whatever that they are generally, and they and their management companies and their agents are able to pull or call the shots a lot more than they used to be able to. But, yeah, if anyone can do it, Roger can. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And there's also, it depends,
    51:52
    custom quotes from actors might be difficult, but getting the voices from the movie, that could already be one thing, you know, and still have assets, and then all you need is a narrator character or whatever in a pinball machine to do the voice calls that are more pinball related, like Extra Ball and Jackpot, because not every movie is going to have those quotes in them. No, but as you say, you can get somebody from the movie or the band or whoever, someone maybe not the star but still a major character to do that for you. Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and things like that to get. I think J.J. Jack Sparrow of the Caribbean comes to mind where they had one of the leading characters of course what's his name Johnny Depp himself. Yeah that's him but one of the other actors which actually I thought was a good fit. Yeah, certainly more piratey that way I think, rather than... Yes.
    53:01
    Exactly. You ought to have auditioned for that. I'm sure you'd have got it. Anyway, so that was a nice evening. To continue giving credit where credit is due, the Super Awesome Pinball Show had quite a few scoops in their interview with Dave Figgs and Dennis Nordman.
    53:24
    One of the other details mentioned is that American Pimple is very likely to work with David Thiel for one of their upcoming games as a sound engineer, which is good news. And apparently David Thiel himself indicated on Facebook that he's working on music and sounds for four different games. at the moment. Yeah, I can't recall if it's four different games or four different manufacturers. Well, either way, it would be four different games then. Yes, but I think he also,
    54:02
    I think maybe it was Tim, or maybe it was somebody else, my memory is not that clear, but said that two of those manufacturers nobody knows about yet.
    54:11
    So, we've known for a while that there are a couple of pinball manufacturing companies sort of under the radar at the moment who are working on games and don't wish to announce themselves just yet, but it's nice to have that confirmation that they are there.
    54:33
    Quite possibly one of those could be Alien. It could have been. David Thiel already did the music, so...
    54:40
    He wouldn't be working on it, I don't think, unless he's added more assets to the game. So, there's at least a couple of games at Deep Root that he produced music for. Oh yes.
    54:50
    Yeah. Possibly one at American Pinball in the future, and then who knows what else. So, stay tuned for details on that. Now, when I was putting together the list of things I wanted to mention about American Pinball, one of them was the fact they were having a year-end super sale with a 20% of all the store merchandise if you entered a code end 2020. But just before we started recording this, I went to have a check, and it looks like that code is no longer valid. Now, 2020 has ended, thankfully, and we're into 2021. So I won't talk any more about that because you've missed it. Wait for the Halloween sales or the... Yeah, or in 11 months' time, put it, try code end 2021, see if that works. Right. meanwhile there was also interesting news again from the Super Awesome Pinball show there's a well if you recall playing Oktoberfest you might recall how difficult it was to make actually the barrel shot with the upper right flipper yes and apparently I think it was Josh Kugler who came up with a fix for that it's actually a hardware fix which requires replacement of a few parts underneath the playfield. But that hardware fix is available for Oktoberfest owners. So if you own an Oktoberfest game and you have difficulty making that barrel shot, contact Dave Brennan at American Pinball and he will help you out with sending you some new parts to make sure that you can enjoy your game a lot more. This is a free upgrade, as you point out. There's no charge for that. Yes, I was discussing this with David earlier in the week and said he really needs to get this information out more publicly available. It's maybe not the best thing in the world to admit that there's an aftermarket fix required for your games, or there might be, at least. But the fact that you're offering it for free and it is available and people simply have to ask for it seems like something they should be promoting as looking after their customers well. So maybe you'll see that advertised a little more widely. But anyway, you heard about it now. If you've got one of those games, then get in touch with American Pinball and get your kit anyway. I'd advise getting it, even if you don't have a problem with it at the moment, because you never know when that problem might crop up, and then you'll be all set with the parts ready to fix it. Right, okay. And last but not least, there was a Hot Wheels code update, Date of December 12th Yeah, another huge one 2012-10 Which is the date Of the Code release Which just adds some controls For balancing the sound On that game, so you can get a better mix Between the speech, the music and the sound effects A couple of new display animations And a couple of minor bug fixes But that's about it But it's worth having and you can tune the sound to your own personal taste.
    58:08
    Right. Okay. So, sorry, Gary, are you still there? Yeah? Yeah. Hello? Hello. Okay, good. Good. Listen, we're getting into our interview with Jack and we'll get back to you right after that, okay? Okay. Thank you. Sure. Moving on, I'd say Jersey Jack Pimble. Yes. Well, as we mentioned earlier, It's Jersey Jack Pinball And indeed, no, all of us are celebrating Ten years Since the announcement That Jersey Jack Pinball Was going to be formed And produce their first game, The Wizard of Oz That announcement was made On the 1st of January 2011 On the Spooky Pinball Podcast Which is still going strong So congratulations to them as well But at the time Jack had been working behind the scenes for a little while in order to put this deal together and make sure that he could pull it off.
    59:07
    But even so, it was a well-kept secret, I think. And when the news first came out, there was a bit of a shock because people generally at that time, and remember this was 10 years ago, a very different landscape in the pinball market and pinball industry. People really didn't think that a new pinball company would have either the ability all the market for their games.
    59:31
    And Jack has proved that not only was there a strong demand for high-quality, full-featured games, but also that he could expand the player base and the buyers and the market for pinball generally. Well, and not only that, I think the diversity of games and the creativity in games also benefited from Jack entering the market as well as other companies after Jack. Yeah, no question.
    60:07
    I mean, prior to that, Stern didn't have their Pro Premium and LE model. That was one of the things that they did. but it also forced their designers to come up with better games, I would say. Yeah, put more innovative features in them and be more creative and give better value for money, which is something which Jack and the team at Jersey Jack Timberwood have shown. People would pay more in order to get a higher quality feature-packed game. Yeah, so thanks to Jack, we're now paying more for our games. But we're getting a lot more For our money I think At least in some cases we are So anyway Why don't we give Jack a call Yeah okay Jack first of all happy new year Second of all congratulations on your 10 year anniversary of Jersey Jack Pinball Yes indeed Thank you, thank you very much Happy new year, I hope everybody has a healthy one And looking forward to all the good things Coming in 2021 Yeah, it's looking to be a very positive year at least So let's put 2020 behind us And I suppose really we should look back to how it all started We know how you announced on the Spooky Pinball podcast On the 1st of January, was it 2011 I think When you announced that you were going to be forming Jersey Jack Pinball And the Wizard of Oz game but when did you actually definitely decide yourself that you were going to you know take this big leap and set up your own pinball design manufacturing company and then actually do something about that thought?
    61:58
    It was probably around October at Pinball Expo in 2010. that was probably the time that solidified it for me and then I began working on some different things and talking to a lot of people about it which is kind of funny in a way because I don't know if people actually believe me looking back at it if somebody tells you something like that today it would be all over the place in a split second, but it was pretty much still a secret when I announced it on January 1st, 2011. Well, but you were also basically the first one to sort of, I wouldn't say stick it up to Stern, but Stern at that point had a monopoly of 10 years, and they were actually in very bad shape at that point in time. well remember I was a distributor for Stern at IAPA in 2010 Gary and I had a meeting where I told him what I was going to do so he knew in November of 2010 that I was starting a pinball company and it wasn't a surprise to him or maybe it was when I announced it in January of 11 Was there any sort of one event Which the straw that broke the camel's back That made you think No I can't just carry on being a distributor I need to have control of the games that are made And the quality and exactly what it is I'm selling To my customers Or what my customers are asking me for I'm not able to deliver Was there any game, any one event That made you say right I've got to do this There was no event. It was an ongoing thought because there was no choice. A lot of customers wanted features and different technologies put into the game. It wasn't happening. It probably wasn't going to happen. And, you know, we were really trying to tread water and sell games. And I went, you know, I said it many times, I went from selling about 1,500 games a year, something around there, maybe a little bit more, to less than 40, 50 games a year. And remember, it was a bad economy. There was a recession.
    64:42
    It wasn't a spite move to start a pinball company. I look back, it was kind of naive of me thinking that I could just make great games and design games and everybody would be along the sidelines rallying us on.
    65:03
    There wouldn't be a lot of obstacles and potholes and things like that. And I got a quick, you know, being in the industry more than 30 years at the time, I got a pretty quick education in that. And I said, okay, well, let's overcome the obstacles. Let's try to do something great and just make really good pinball machines that people want to play and they want to own forever and they want to buy and introduce new people to pinball. So I realized that we need to build the base of pinball to women, in my mind, especially women and younger people, which is, again, I've said many times why I chose The Wizard of Oz as our first theme. right not many may many people may realize it but if we're looking at the innovation in pinball actually we have you to thank for it that basically everybody stepped up their game well you know I'm very humbled to hear things like that I hear them often more often actually well Well, look, I guess in any industry, if you have one company making one thing, you have what you have. And when you have competition, I think I said on my podcast, though, shortly thereafter, I hoped that there would be 50 companies making pinball machines. The more, the better. You get more attention. There's more creativity. It builds a bigger employee base. It builds a bigger customer base. I'm not afraid. We've never been afraid of competition. I think competition makes us better, and I hope it makes other people better too.
    66:59
    Okay, so you've started your company. Who's the first person you hire? The first person I hire was a person that was going to design our first game. Well, that's That's I guess that's going to be Joe, I suppose I was going to say Joe and Dennis Because they both had a hand in it Right, so Joe You know, I needed a designer And I needed A really great programmer I knew that, and I needed a really Great artist And I needed really great sound people and I needed great everything. You know, it's a word that was used over and over. Keith Johnson to me was and is the best programmer. I'm not taking anything away from a lot of other people, but in my mind you know, always stand out was Lord of the Rings and Simpsons Pinball Party. Very deep fun games.
    68:11
    I think our team has continued in the vein of what Keith originally did with games like that. When you look at every one of the games we've done so far, Keith was the rock that the company was built on, too. So all the people that joined in the beginning, especially, they were told things like, well, you know, if you go to work for Jack, you're never going to work for me again so it was like a one way it was like a one way trip somewhere into a cavern that maybe there was no turning back on and people took a leap of faith and I was very humbled by that then and still to think about it now it's really kind of amazing to look back and see what the team has done in 10 years Right. Now, in 10 years, obviously, we've seen six games come to fruition from Jersey Jack Pinball. But, of course, you can't have any peaks without having any lows, so to speak. Were there points where you were like, what did I get myself into or this isn't going to work or what are we going to do next? I know you always try to stay positive, but I think it's no secret that especially the first couple of years, the path that Josie Jack went through wasn't smooth, so to speak.
    69:58
    Right. Well, I think every entrepreneur, if I put myself in that category for a moment, and I do that with a little bit of poetic license, let's say, I think every entrepreneur first has to, quote unquote, sell themselves on the idea. And they need to believe in what's happening and the people that they're adding to teams. And everybody needs to believe in each other to be successful. So in the beginning, we were not just building a game, obviously. We were feeling our way around everything. We were building a company. We were building a factory. We were building a vendor base. There were certain vendors that just didn't want to deal with us. There were certain vendors that I had to convince to deal with us.
    70:53
    So it wasn't easy. Every day there was a stage where I said to myself, what did I get myself into? And at the same time, I was more energized by a lot of the roadblocks and potholes that we had to encounter. It was a challenge. I mean, we made thousands of decisions. We really did.
    71:17
    And when you think about it, I said it before, imagination is kind of limitless. technological engineering and finance and things like that have a finite end or limit.
    71:35
    But imagination, with Wizard of Oz especially, you had an amazing group of people. I mean, we sold a thousand games.
    71:45
    We took money from people. We really crowdfunded the company upside down. It was so fast. It was amazing.
    71:56
    And the people believed in us. They bought a game that they never saw from a company that never built a game that had no factory. And it wasn't a Ponzi scheme. We were spending our time and our money. I didn't take the salary or anything like that. Spending our time and money developing a game and everybody being optimistic. in the beginning I said well how long is it going to take us to make this game and you know people I think they told me what I wanted to hear maybe not what was real or maybe nobody knew because every time there was another idea to add to the game I said yes let's put that in the game right so What also helps, I suppose, is, well, you basically said you crowdfunded the company. A lot of people wanted you to succeed. Basically, they wanted another pinball company putting out a high-quality product.
    73:07
    Yes, yes. And that's why, that's one of the reasons we succeeded. I mean, there were days that things went badly, and there were days that things went very well, and there were days half and half.
    73:25
    Like any kind of company and venture that goes on, not everything is going to be perfect. And there are people that say pinball is hard. I know there's at least one person that said pinball is easy.
    73:40
    You know, pinball is pinball. It's what you make it. And you need to have a team. You need to have people working together as a team with a vision to do the same thing. And that's what you need in a lot of companies, families, relationships. People need to work at the same purpose, not across purposes. So that's how you succeed. You tug on the rope and you keep pulling. Well, you said just now that when you first started, people were buying into a company with no manufacturing experience or facilities. And indeed, when you first started and announced on the podcast that you would be producing The Wizard of Oz, you said that you thought you'd be getting allowed USA to do the manufacturing for you. Now, obviously, there were certain legal issues further down the line. But at what point did you think that you had to bring manufacturing in-house and do it all yourself rather than send it out or do a contract manufacturing operation? And how did that change the sort of nature of the business that you were running? Well, in the beginning, some people made verbal commitments to me about cooperation. and as the company started they got scared to hell and they ran away and they didn't want to be part of it because they thought it would fail because of whatever fears they have as people and you can't lose you can't fail if you don't quit and i wasn't going to quit and the people around me. I had a lot of strong support. My wife, my son, my daughter especially.
    75:33
    And customers who became friends over the years. You have to remember at that point in time, pinballsales.com was quite established with many thousands of customers. We didn't have to sell five or six or seven thousand or something to get going. There were people that believed in us unconditionally, and they still do today. And there are people that believed in us and were hoping for the best, but they still had their doubts. I mean, years later, you know, there would be people I would meet, and they would say, Jack, thank goodness that you delivered on the Wizard of Oz game because all that money that I gave you, if I didn't get a game, my wife wouldn't let me go to the store and buy a gallon of milk again. So thank you. I appreciate you coming through and doing what you said you were going to do. And I'll just touch on this while I'm thinking of it. It was really important to me to realize that with a thousand people ordering something, the game had to really be something special. It had to check a lot of boxes for me and for the team. Because if we produced, let's say, the first 50 or 100 games and they really weren't good, while the other 800 or 900 people are going to say, you know what, I don't want that game. Give me my money back. So there's a lot of moving parts to it, and you have to really be on top of everything, leading something like this to get it off the ground and make it be successful and make people feel happy and satisfied with the purchase. Sure, but what was really interesting is, When you started off, it's quite a romantic idea to be able to set up a design company, come up with these wonderful ideas, all these designers, get the software team together. But becoming a manufacturing business is somewhat different. Is that what you wanted the company to be from the very start?
    77:43
    You know, look, it wasn't that I didn't know a lot of the things. I stood in other factories in the industry with owners of companies picking screws off the floor at 8 o'clock at night, throwing them back into bins. So in a lot of ways, it's a nickel and dime kind of business to watch expenses and watch costs and have budgets and have design timelines and things like that.
    78:14
    I knew we were going to design a game and I knew we were going to build a game. So I, you know, I rented a big empty building in Lakewood, New Jersey, where we were going to make a factory. So I knew we had to store parts. I knew we had to do service. I knew we had to do part sales, all of those things. The thing that I thought would be easier wasn't easy. let's say vendors that make certain things that were not doing much business in the pinball arena didn't want to go back into that again because they had lost a lot of money with other manufacturers in the past so they weren't you know welcoming to me they they met me the first time some of them said things like oh you're the idiot that's going to lose millions of dollars so you're the jerk that's going to go out of business. Nice to meet you. You know, so, hey, that's a heck of a way to begin a business relationship. That's nice.
    79:14
    You better be clear up front. Well, but, you know, you really don't want to insult your customer, right? Couple, couple rules. The customer, customer is always right. And you never win an argument with the customer, right? So, but listen, they had a, some people believed sooner. Some people believed later So that was fine It was okay And I suppose on that track Some people like to think that Pinball is just Pinball industry is just one big Friendly happy family But we all know there are plenty of Dirty tricks played by Other companies to try and Well certainly at the start to try and derail your company In the early years Now that you're 10 years old and a very well-established manufacturer and design house. Has all that subsided and, no, you're not getting any of those kind of tricks played on you or moves made by the companies that would have happened in the early days?
    80:19
    I think in every industry there's some, I don't know if it would be some kind of, it's competition, you know, really what it comes down to. I mean, if you have an employee that's really a superstar, would somebody else want to hire that employee? I guess so, maybe. You know, it's still a free country. People can come and go and do what they please. If they don't have a contract to work for a company for a period of time or project. I don't feel a lot of that. You know, and maybe if that happens, I kind of overlook that because you just get used to it. It's kind of like a drop of water on your shoulder all the time. You just, yeah, it's kind of there, but you don't pay attention to it. You stay positive. You focus on what you're doing and you make the best thing that you can make. Sure. Well, I was thinking back to the times when you couldn't buy products from certain companies because they were making products for other companies, and that other company wouldn't let them make them for you, as an example.
    81:32
    Right. Yeah, that happened. I mean, things that were well-known in the industry and things that were documented or came out. It's pinball, like probably many other industries, it's very small. Everybody talks to everybody. To think that contractors, vendors, vendors have parts for one company on one shelf and they have parts for another company on another shelf and people talk. So it's an interesting dynamic about what people know and how they talk about competing companies that they're doing business with. And, you know, it's just not a pinball thing. It's a human nature thing. People like to talk, a lot of people. So sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not good. But a lot of times, for the most part, you don't have control over it. You know, you could try to enforce things with nondisclosure agreements and pick better people that care about what they're doing and care about who they're doing it for. That's where it comes down. So make really the greatest product you can make and stay focused on that.
    82:59
    Right. Now you started basically as an entrepreneur, hiring a designer and a sound guy and an art guy and so on. Right now it's a company that is, I suppose, I didn't count it, but I suppose, employing close to 100 people, if I'm not mistaken.
    83:25
    How do you look back on that 10-year journey to what Jersey Jack has become? by now? You know, even though we're celebrating a 10-year anniversary, I haven't really had time to sit in a rocking chair with lemonade and look back in the rearview mirror.
    83:46
    The rearview mirror is very small and the windshield is very big, and we're going forward, and I'm still in the middle of a million different things that I do every day for the company. So I haven't really, I know it sounds silly and we're talking about the anniversary. I haven't really looked back on it. I'm probably not at that stage to think about it.
    84:12
    Sometimes I'm reminded of certain things, which went extremely well when we were doing RGB LEDs. I knew we wanted to do RGB LEDs and then they were placed underneath the play field. and how are we going to get the light up to the top of the game? And kind of like everybody looked at each other and we didn't know how we were going to do that. And I had a dream one night how we were going to do it. We were going to make these light rods and they were going to look like the old number 47 light bulbs and we were going to have to make them frosted so the light could stay within them instead of just pass right through a plastic rod. And I kind of had a dream. I must have been thinking about playing with light bright as a kid when I was five or six years old. And I went to the group and I told them, okay, this is how we're going to do this. And a bunch of people just looked at me like, what the hell is this guy talking about? You know, so there were a bunch of those funny kind of things like that that happened. Maybe they were just lucky or it was just kind of an interesting way to do something differently. But luck is something that you have to have, I think, in any endeavor. You could have unlimited, you know, on and on and on. But, again, if you don't have the right people, a little bit of luck, encouragement from the people that want the product, you know, it won't work. It won't work. Not in pinball anyway. Not for us.
    86:00
    And you were saying there just how busy your day is. And Jonathan was saying you've got around 100 employees at the company now. With the design and manufacturing operation now all up at Elk Grove Village, we are, all by necessity these days, a very connected world. We're able to talk to people around the world and see them. What's your day-to-day role at the company?
    86:31
    Do you even have a day-to-day role, or is every day different for you? um every day is different but look you know i'm in new jersey and i'm not walking into a factory every day so that's changed the factory is in chicago and that's okay um you know today i was already on the phone with a customer in germany uh about a uh a question that he had wanted to talk to me directly about an issue he had with the game that he didn't understand so i cleared that up. I talked to one of our distributors in Germany. A few hours ago, I talked to our distributor in Australia. I'm talking to you guys. I have a conference later. I have a call about one license company I'm working on at about noon, and I have another one at four o'clock. So I'm involved in some design calls. I'm involved heavily in licensing and talking to a lot of our distributors around the world about what they need and their issues.
    87:40
    So the day goes. I guess when we go back to having some shows, hopefully, later this year, I'm looking forward to seeing you guys again in person and so many thousands of other people around the world. So that's something that I love to do. and it's just amazing how much there is to be involved with. Yeah, it would be great to be back with shows. I mean, your travelling has obviously been cut hugely and you're not appearing at shows or visiting distributors or locations or customers' homes. So what still gets you excited about the pinball business after 10 years of running your own company?
    88:33
    You know, it's really just the reaction of people playing our games is kind of the most exciting because I get a lot of the feedback directly and indirectly of people opening boxes, you know, right now with Guns N' Roses. and people are still unboxing some of our other games. They've moved. They have different challenges and things like that. I had somebody over the holiday weekend just got around to opening up their brand new dialed-in game that was in a box since they bought it. They didn't get to do it. So they were sending me pictures. They downloaded the app and they were connecting the phone and they were calling me about how you do that and how cool that is and everything. So it's really ongoing all the time. But I think like a chef comes out of the kitchen and says to some of the people, in normal times anyway, who are eating, says, how do you like everything? Is everything okay? You know, do you like, you know, everything? And you like to get the reaction, and that's really the cool part. And look, you know, to see games played on location is really cool, you know, and hopefully we get back to more of that again, and to have our customers just love our games, love what we're doing. Oh, yeah. That's really a big satisfaction. for all of us, really. Do you still see room for growth in the pinball industry?
    90:30
    I do see room for growth. I'm reminded, Jonathan, of the time a father and son came to the factory and I gave them a tour. I spent about an hour with them and showed them all kinds of things that we do and how we do it. And at the end of the tour, when we stood on the final test line with all the games in a row, the dad looked at the son and said, who would have imagined that pinball would grow this way and they would be making such really cool games? And I looked at both of them and I said, me.
    91:13
    Me. I didn't do this because I thought it would fail or shrink and not be relevant. I did this because I believe that we could help to be a small part to make it grow and make it more relevant and make it bigger and make it more acceptable and grow the audience and all of those things. So, you know, I can't think there's not one cell in my being that could think it's going to go negative, that it's going to go lower, that there's going to be less. My belief is that there will be more and it'll be better.
    91:52
    And I've said our best games are ahead of us. And I believe that. and adding more technology and more innovation and more creativity and more imagination and all those things, they feed on themselves and they get other people excited that never, ever played a pinball machine before. So the future is very bright. I believe that. As the owner of the company, obviously, you know what will be coming out next. you pay close attention, I suppose, to the design process, especially with a game like for example Guns N Roses You know like oh my God you can wait to announce that game and to show it off I suppose you still get wild How difficult is it to keep such an upcoming game quiet while you very excited about it
    92:53
    Well, for me personally, it's not difficult. I don't talk about it. you know, it's JJP number seven, JJP number eight, JJP number nine, JJP number 10. So I don't talk about it. There are people that know what our next game is and our next game and our next game for sure because they're working on them or because they're vendors that are working on parts for them or things like that.
    93:22
    Sometimes I guess in different companies, It's maybe maybe it's good that people know what's coming. And, you know, I have an attitude where, you know, it's it's better to show it when you have it kind of thing, especially at this point in our history. I'd rather not, you know, be talking about on next game, on next game, on next game, especially when you have a lot of people looking to get what you're selling right now.
    93:57
    So for me personally, it's real easy. You know, with these games, some of them I worked on licenses several years ago. You know, Guns N' Roses was several years. There was a picture of me at Seattle Pinball Museum with the Davy East Guns N' Roses game in 2017 of December. Certainly, I was working on Guns N' Roses in 2017 in December. And when I posed with the game, I posed with several other games. So when Charlie took the picture, he had no clue what he was taking a picture of me. He was just taking a picture of me with a whole bunch of different games.
    94:36
    Perhaps you should ask him what his other games were. Well, you know, doing a quote-unquote theme over again is a challenge. We've done it twice. It doesn't mean we'll do it again or we won't do it again. If the right opportunity presents itself, we may do it again.
    95:00
    Those kind of things, they're just, if you can make something, and I don't want to overuse the word, But if you can make something really great, go and do it. Go make it happen.
    95:16
    Right. Okay. I was about to ask you, for anybody else who's starting up or thinking of starting up a pinball business like you did 10 years ago, and several people have done that in the interim, I was going to ask what advice you would give them or what one key piece of advice you'd give them. But I think you may have just already told me.
    95:38
    Well, again, part of starting anything is being committed to it in your whole being all the time. And a lot of people would say to me, and they still say to me, you know, you never sleep. You're always up. I call you or I text you and you respond, you reply.
    96:03
    You have to be committed to whatever you're doing unconditionally. and you have to have like-minded people. You don't want them to all think the same as you and you don't want them to be yes people, but you want them to be focused on the product and success of whatever you're doing.
    96:23
    Pinball, when I started in the beginning, I was told that there wasn't enough of a market for pinball and that not only would I be out of business, but other pinball companies would be out of business because there wouldn't be enough of a market to support the pinball companies. I knew if we built, if we achieved what I hoped we could achieve, we would expand the market exponentially.
    96:56
    And I'm glad in some ways I was right. I wasn't right about everything, and I didn't expect to be right about everything. but I knew that we could build the market bigger.
    97:08
    It's hard to watch. You know, I said it's hard, but it's hard to watch TV almost and not see a commercial over this holiday weekend. I saw a bunch of pinball machines and car commercials and sunglass commercials and all kinds of other things. There were pinball machines on Saturday Night Live and a skit. Yeah, I saw that. You know, it's been back. It's gotten more attention. You hear more about it. Ten years ago, maybe it was on life support or close to it. I don't know. I have a lot of respect for all the people that kept everything going all the years, as I did. I mean, I started a company that was dedicated to selling games to the home for the first time, the first company that was only selling commercial arcade pinball machines to the home. And people thought I was crazy doing that. How are you going to do that year-round? You can do that the holidays, but you'll be out of business. You know, how are you going to do that? And I knew, I believe there was a market for it. And it was nice that I was right about that. so you try other people that want to do this I would just say be committed to what you want to do and go do whatever it is that you want to do because if you don't do it you may have a regret that you didn't try it even if you fail it's probably better to try and fail than not try at all Well, there we are. Thanks very much indeed to Jack for taking time out on one of his busy first day back at work, I think, after the New Year and holiday season break, and bringing us up to date with his thoughts on 10 years in the industry, in the people manufacturing industry. Of course, he's been in the people industry basically all his life. Right. So, yeah, anyway, interesting points from him there. Absolutely. The Jersey Jack Pinball has been doing a Christmas campaign as well. Yeah, very interesting one. Yeah, tell us about it. Well, I assume we're talking about the same campaign on their social media, Facebook and such, where not only you get the usual suspects from the company wishing you a very Merry Christmas, but also people in the factory that we usually never see, people working on the line or being in charge of applying decals or something like that. And all those people were part of that campaign as well. Yeah, very good. Yeah, I mean, it indicates how many people are required to put together a game. And as Jack said, or as you said, I think, to him in that call, 100 people or so employed at the company Yeah, that was a rough guess If it's only 50 then I was way off He didn't deny it So it's probably about right And now they're all working together To produce the games So yeah, let's hear from everyone One thing One more bit of Jersey Jackpinball Not news, but lack of news really Is we mentioned about new code Well, I suppose this is a plea To get some new code for Pirates of the Caribbean, which hasn't reached version 1.0 yet, although rumour has it there is a version 1.0 that's out there and has been in test for a long time, but hasn't yet been released. Now, I don't know whether they're waiting to add more features to it, you know, like internet connectivity. Yeah, we'd hope so. Hopefully it hasn't just been pushed to the back while they get on with newer games.
    101:08
    So probably a little bit of love there needed for Pirates of the Caribbean, and for those owners who are waiting for their version 1.0. Hopefully it won't be too much longer.
    101:18
    Right, okay. I have two companies to choose from. Which do you want to address? Alpenvick or Deeproot Pinball?
    101:30
    Let's go with Deeproot because, you know, it's a fairly major landmark for them this month. We are looking back to the month of December 2020 and that was the month in which they finally put their retro-atomic zombie adventureland game up for sale on their website. They'd been teasing it, they'd been showing it at shows and presentations, but never a full final production version that was available to purchase, and that changed at the start of the month when, on their website, you could now buy, well, you can't now, but you could then, buy two versions of the game. There was the arcade version, arcade edition as they called it, which was priced at $5,899, and there was the extra version, which is a limited run of maximum of 300 machines, which cost $9,499. So the starting price of the arcade edition at basically $5,900 is right there with Stern Pro Machines, I suppose. And the extras are up there with the limited editions at $9,500.
    102:49
    Now, when you're buying these or putting your order in for them, you could get some additional options as well, which is interesting because a lot of companies have shied away from offering factory fit options to their games simply because it makes the stock control so much harder. If somebody buys a game and they want a particular colour of neon rubbers on it, for instance, then that has to be that particular model that's on the production line that they get. You can't say, well, you bought an arcade version so you can have any of these arcade versions. It's got to be the one that's got your colour and neon rubbers on, and that makes stock control a lot harder, and you can't just swap it out with another one. But anyway, neon rubbers are one of the things you could do on the arcade. You could get different metalwork finishes, the same kind of metalwork that's on the extra edition. You could get additional playfield toys, extra playfield lighting.
    103:47
    You could get anti-reflective glass and a topper as well. You could get lots of things, but you can't anymore. No, no. While you were talking, I actually checked on the website and it actually says no longer for sale. That's right, yes. It was available until the 30th of December. And sure enough, I checked that the other day as well and it had, I think it was available until about the 31st at the beginning of the year. That changed to no longer available. There's still a couple of things which are only available on the extra edition. That's the moving Ned toy Which kind of shakes when you hit it That's the sort of big alien Bash toy at the back of the game And the whole Stacking back box Floating back box design Which is different from the arcade version The arcade version has a More traditional sort of Bally Williams back box But the extra has these Floating boxes With the display And then the wraparound Backbox So they're only available on the extra And you can't upgrade the arcade To that Now Interestingly Despite having said that they wouldn't Take pre-orders They are taking pre-orders Although When Robert Mooler spoke to us In our bonus podcast In December he didn't see it as pre-orders more sort of indications of a commitment to purchase rather than a pay. But he did use the option to pay either a 10 or 20% non-refundable deposit 10% for the arcade machine, 20% for the extra machine or pay in full straight away. So that's before you get the machine before the machine even goes to production. So, to me, that's a pre-order, call it what you will.
    105:52
    But those, as you mentioned, that whole offer is now closed. We don't know how many machines were ordered. There's some indications it would be around about 300 number, but we don't know. Robert did say that he wasn't expecting huge numbers for the first game, which is kind of odd because it's their kind of flagship model isn't it really yeah but I think people also realise that Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland isn't a great assuring game so that might hold people a little bit back yeah and also I suppose there might be the suspicion that though it was only available to order until the 30th of December, that may not be your only opportunity to buy the game because they may well make it available again, of course. It would make sense to do that if they think they're unfulfilled or people weren't ready to place their orders at that time. And also, we don't know how many games distributors have bought. So there are some distributors for Deep Reap Pinball. I don't know who they are at the moment. Well, I know who one of them is, but distributors were originally required to commit to buying a certain number of games I don't know whether that is something which was held to or whether that was something they tried and found it didn't really work I suppose that's always negotiable Yeah, but you might be able to buy a game from a distributor anyway, even if it's not available directly from Deep Root and that might be a preferred way of going anyway because that way you might get some security for your deposit because you're not paying it directly to Deepfreet, you're paying it to your distributor and that's who is responsible for it and if you trust their longevity then it might be a preferable way to go and also if there's any issues with the game, who's going to deal with any service issues, who's going to deal with it it's going to be your distributor rather than Deepfreet themselves so yeah if you are interested in finding out more about Deepwood Pinball then do check our exclusive interview with Robert Mueller of last month which is right if you are on the podcast page it's one of the previous podcasts yeah I think it went down very well I had only good feedback on that saying we asked all the right questions and answered questions that people really wanted or asked questions that people wanted answers to and got the information they wanted. So, yeah, definitely worthwhile. Right. Okay. Moving on to Multimorphic. Yeah, go on then.
    108:52
    Well, this is actually quite news for me as well. I'm going to make you handle this one. There's actually been two new games come out for Multimorphic's P3 Pinball platform in December There's a vertical scroller game Called Shoot and Scoot Which Was developed by Rory Sanuda And Greg Goldie With module driver support From Thomas Law It works, and this is the interesting part I thought, it works with any Playfield module you have installed There are four playfield modules Which I am Not going to try and remember all of them except there's Lexi Nightspeed, there's Cannon Lagoon, there's Heist, and another one.
    109:44
    And one more. Yes, exactly. Which I can't remember at the moment, but I'm sure I will. So basically, I suppose that, well, basically the playfields, the upper playfields have some way of redirecting the ball back to the player through ramps or other ways. Yes, absolutely. But I suppose this game is mostly played on the lower two-thirds of the play field. Well, see, that's what I originally thought, and then I watched some of the gameplay, and in fact it's not, and that surprised me. But I'll come to exactly how that works in a minute.
    110:20
    But the key thing is that you can download this game for $169 from the Monty Moore website. What? Webshop. Well, it's a whole new game. You make the shots and you steer your character left and right Collect awards, avoid obstacles and try and complete each level And it gets harder as you get and faster as you carry on But it's all about making the right shots And so it's a good trainer for being able to shoot accurately and reliably So that was the first game that was released The second game which hasn't actually been released yet but has been previewed is from Nicholas Bainbridge, who made the recent release of Ranger in the Ruins. He's come up with a Quest for Glory P3 game, which is based on the Sierra 8-bit video adventure game series.
    111:14
    It uses the same kind of ability as you get in the video game to be able to save a game at any point and then pick it up later by using the player profile, which is part of the P3 infrastructure. You log it in, and then it gives you the option to pick up the game that you saved a while ago, and it restores everything back into the same state, and then off you go. So it's a nice, novel feature. If you're playing like me, and you drain three balls in under 30 seconds, then you can pick up where you left off. Yeah, you can just pick it up just before the last ball drains. you can restart the game at that point. Yeah, that would be nice. But no, if you're having a killer game and you need to go out or go elsewhere, shall we say, then yeah, you can basically pause the game, freeze it, save it off and come back to it later.
    112:11
    Now, this looks like it works with the Lexi Lightspeed Playfield module, but it's possible it might work with others as well. And the reason this is possible is that Multimorphic has released a new software development kit, SDK, which is version 0.6.
    112:33
    And this adds the Twitch Connect support we saw in Cosmic Kart Racing, where Twitch viewers can interact with the game and sort of activate power-ups or throw weapons at other players. on the playfield, at least, if not in person.
    112:53
    I prefer to do it in person. Yes, well, that's an option as well. I don't think they've quite added that yet, but maybe not too long. This also allows playfield module agnostic detection of shots, which means on an upper playfield module, without actually knowing what the layout or the features of that upper playfield module are. Now that's the feature they're using on the scoot and shoot game Which means it doesn't really matter what shot Or what loops or targets or whatever it is on the upper playfield It allows that to work seamlessly with your homebrew game That's designed for the P3 And I don't know how it works But apparently it does because it's being used And that will allow it to work with future playfield modules which haven't been designed yet, which obviously the game doesn't know anything about at this point, without having to have an update to it. So, yeah, SDK version 0.6 for the P3. You need to register on the MultiWallfic site to be able to access it and download it, but it's free to do so. Does that require an end-user license? Well, I'm sure it does, yes. I'd be shocked if it doesn't.
    114:11
    Right, okay. So, well, rounding up Multimorphic, there is a little bit of other news as well. The voting for the fourth annual Twippy Awards has now officially started, and you can vote the entire month of January. Now, good news and bad news.
    114:35
    The good news is you can still vote for Pinball Magazine as your favorite pinball publication, although other websites, well, basically for that category, only one article is required to qualify, apparently.
    114:50
    And Pinball News has also been added to the mix for, I forgot for which article that was. You wrote an article last year, and it's nominated. Oh, okay. That's news to me. Okay So The bad news is There's also a category for Best Pinball Podcast And we have not been nominated in that Oh, okay Well, guess we better stop then Okay, bye Oh, no, sorry, sorry Just kidding It's okay So They don't get rid of us that easily So that's one award show But guess what? the pinball network is also coming up with their own pinball industry awards and the difference is that where the Twippies are voted for by the general public so to speak or pinball enthusiasts who are aware of the Twippie website and what have you for the pinball industry awards judges are invited and they have to their invitation is based on whether they are considered to be qualified to become a judge on this Pinball Industry Awards panel. And once you did that, if you qualified and you registered yourself as being interested in judging, you get an invitation to fill out an online questionnaire, and basically that's it. You fill in what you think are the best games of the year and best light show and, well, all the standard categories. Right. You know. So, the big question, have you signed up and have you voted? Yes. Yes to both? Yes. Yeah, I figured, okay, I've never been a judge on anything, so sure, why not, you know. And there's, well, it's going to be interesting to see. I think the Pinball Industry Awards on the Pinball Network are beating the Twippies, because I think the Twippies will be handed out in March. No time. Originally, they were supposed to be part of the Texas Pinball Festival, which is sadly cancelled. Yeah. But the Pinball Industry Awards are actually already handed out, I think, early February. Oh, right. Okay. I do know that voting on that closes on the 20th of January, I believe. Oh, it could even be sooner then. I don't have the exact dates in front of me, but... Only that I got the reminder email saying that I haven't voted yet. Oh. Well, at least you qualified to... Yeah, you could. Yes, I was invited to apply. Put it that way. I was invited to apply for my podcast work, not so much as being editor of Pinball Magazine, which I think would be a bigger qualification. Oh, but you haven't put out a Pimble magazine in the past year, so does that mean that you... No, the magazine still exists. Oh, yeah, of course it still exists, and still sells, and still available. Absolutely, yeah. But it's not based on... If you never put out another Pimble magazine, would that mean you'd be qualified to vote forever? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think it does. Okay, right.
    118:43
    Okay, well, we'll look out for those, then. I guess not next month's podcast, but the month after. Maybe, yeah. We may have the results of the Pinball Industry Awards. Oh, my God. I'm so curious how we did.
    118:59
    Are we in it? I have no idea. No. It's for games, isn't it? I didn't think it was for everything. Oh, well. Well, you voted. I haven't looked at the nominations yet. But I've been too busy writing. I already forgot what I voted for, But I do predict Guns N' Roses being the overall winner In the most categories Yeah, I think that's probably a given But we'll see I'm going to go into it with an open mind Don't try and sway my vote Well, that's it So, other news Well, we already mentioned Chicago Gaming That Dennis Nordman is working on a licensed game For Chicago Gaming Company Working with Chris Franchi On that we believe I think that was mentioned also On the super awesome pinball show Yes indeed Okay And I think we mentioned about Spooky Pinball You've heard some news there On the Canada Pinball Podcast Yeah Ben Heck was a guest On the Canada Pinball Podcast And I find it Rather interesting that he mentioned That Spooky is already considering building onto their new building. So I think they moved last year to a larger facility, and that's, well, apparently not big enough. I think it was kind of over the Christmas period or the end of last year, start of this year. And, of course, they had all the COVID-related stuff which stopped them completing their move. But, yeah, it's surprising that they're already thinking of expanding. I guess there aren't that many large buildings in Benton that can contain them. Benton isn't that large, so that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, well maybe it's about to get a little bit larger. Right, okay, so then there's a couple of companies where, well sorry but no news, just briefly, Hagga's Pinball, no news, the entire month of December. Home pin Actually I did talk to Mike Kalinowski, the owner It's only off the record news So I can't share it Well thanks for that Yeah well he's still busy And he's working on some stuff But it can't be made public No, we wouldn't want to do that No good would come of it And also I guess There's no news from Circus Maximus about their Kingpin remake or indeed the Python Spinball Circus, which they are also working on, but Kingpin, I think. We haven't had any news from them in a long, long time. Yeah, I suppose that's partly due to COVID and so on. Well, maybe, but they're not up against the clock or got any deadline they're trying to reach, but it would be nice for them to actually see some progress. I've certainly been looking to try and find any, and it's really not to be found, sadly. Right. Okay, well, I guess that rounds it up for our December 2015. Yeah, I think we covered everything. I don't think there's anything we've forgotten, so that's good. It was, as you've seen and heard, it was a very busy month in the pinball world, which is surprising because normally December is fairly quiet.
    122:27
    People head towards the holiday season and the New Year break, but no, there's been a lot to talk about, and we hope you've enjoyed our round-up of all the events. Right, okay. Well, then, let's wrap it up. We hope you're back at the end of, or the beginning of February, where we look back at the month of January, where we discuss the pinball industry news of this month. Yep, so until then, thank you for listening, and we'll see you then. Okay, bye. Bye-bye. Guys, are you there?
    123:06
    Can you hear me? Anybody there? Hello? Hey there. Hello? Say something. Okay. Well, at least I tried.
    123:27
    Maybe another day. Hopefully soon. Take care.