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Episode 68 - Pinball Drama the Pinball Machine!

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·analyzed·Aug 13, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Deadpool pinball analysis + Spooky's Godzilla drama damages boutique credibility.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss the Deadpool pinball reveal, analyzing art direction, layout, and tier differences (Pro/Premium/LE), then shift to criticism of Spooky Pinball public response to losing the Godzilla license to Stern, characterizing their offer to consult as condescending rather than generous.

Key Claims

  • Deadpool pinball uses comic-style art to avoid Ryan Reynolds licensing issues like Spider-Man faced

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony discuss art direction choice; confirmed by George Gomez interview reference

  • Nolan North is the voice of Deadpool in the pinball machine, having previously voiced the character in video games

    high confidence · Dennis states: 'They got Nolan North to voice Deadpool. I guess he's voiced him in the video game. That's what I've heard.'

  • Premium/LE Deadpool has disco ball modes with lighting effects; Pro has flat plastic Deadpool in hammock instead

    high confidence · Direct observation of revealed specs; Dennis: 'The Premium LE has a disco ball, which is I guess there are two disco ball modes'

  • Deadpool Pro uses stand-ups instead of drop targets on far sides of playfield; Premium/LE have drop targets

    high confidence · Dennis: 'On the far sides of the playfield, the Pro ran with stand-ups instead of drops'

  • George Gomez stated drop target mechanisms add significantly to bill of materials, explaining the Pro/Premium cost-saving decision

    high confidence · Dennis cites interview: 'Gomez, in that interview I mentioned earlier, noted that a drop target mechanism actually adds quite a bit to the bill of materials'

  • Spooky Pinball offered free consultation to Stern on Godzilla pinball after losing the license bid

    high confidence · Dennis: 'they reached out to George Gomez, and George Gomez responded that it was just business' and 'they're willing to for free consult with Stern on the project'

  • Nate Shivers (Spooky) told Gary Stern over a year ago that Stern should pursue Toho Godzilla license

    high confidence · Dennis via Coast to Coast Pinball: 'Nate Shivers noted he had dinner months or maybe even over a year ago with Gary Stern, and they were discussing what great themes should be done. And Nate even told them, you should do Toho Godzilla'

  • Spooky's public offer to help Stern with Godzilla is perceived as condescending, not generous, and damages their boutique credibility

Notable Quotes

  • “They got Nolan North to voice Deadpool. I guess he's voiced him in the video game. That's what I've heard. And for those that don't know Nolan North, you must not know gaming at all. Holy crap, he's only the most successful voice actor in the history of the entire industry.”

    Dennis @ early in Deadpool discussion — Establishes voice casting for Deadpool pinball; emphasizes Nolan North's prominence in gaming voice acting

  • “Shut your mouth and step aside if you don't know what you're talking about. It'd be like complaining if they made a Jaws pinball machine and the shark looked fake. Well, it looks fake in all the movies.”

    Tony @ Deadpool bobblehead discussion — Defends thematic authenticity of Deadpool's campy aesthetic; reframes design criticism as ignorance of IP

  • “To me, that's like an 8 out of 10 burn. That is not respect. That was arrogance coupled with this.”

    Dennis @ Spooky consultation offer discussion — Direct assessment of Spooky's offer to help Stern as backhanded insult rather than goodwill gesture

  • “You lost. Step away. Let it go. It just looks sad or, as you noted, it totally undermines any sort of confidence that I could properly execute that vision.”

    Dennis @ Spooky/Godzilla drama section — Clear stance that Spooky's public response damages Stern's credibility as a designer; pivotal argument about sportsmanship

  • “It's first or nothing. Mommy needs to come over and fix it for them and make sure that they get first. It's that type of thing. That's how it comes off.”

    Tony @ Spooky reputation assessment — Characterizes Spooky's behavior as petulant and condescending; uses analogy to diminish their standing

  • “From a PR side, this looks terrible. You're crying. You're whining. You're the kid who lost the race, and you're not willing to settle for second place.”

    Tony @ Spooky PR damage assessment — Summary judgment of reputational harm from Spooky's public response to license loss

  • “The more you talk about it, the more you complain about it, the more in my mind...it pulls your company down. It brings you from being the king of the boutiques and moves you more towards the jester of the boutiques.”

Entities

Deadpool (Stern Pinball)gameGodzilla (Stern Pinball)gameGeorge GomezpersonTonypersonDennispersonNolan NorthpersonJeremy Packer / Zombie YetipersonNate Shiversperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Spooky Pinball's public offer to consult with Stern on Godzilla interpreted as condescending backhanded insult by hosts; widespread community perception of Spooky games as having good ideas but poor execution ('always broken')

    high · Tony: 'everybody I've sat down and really, really talked to, I always hear the same things about Spooky. They have good ideas. Game quality sucks.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts characterize Spooky's continued public complaints about Godzilla loss as reputation-damaging, moving Spooky from 'king of boutiques' to 'jester of boutiques' in community perception

    high · Tony: 'it pulls your company down. It brings you from being the king of the boutiques and moves you more towards the jester of the boutiques'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Deadpool playfield layout perceived as solid but not innovative; lacks standout mechanical features compared to recent releases (e.g., Iron Maiden bullseye, distinct shot sequences)

    medium · Dennis: 'it doesn't seem like it's really anything crazy or special or new' and 'the thing that jumped out to me was the ball lock the katana ball lock thing...it's not like like Iron Maiden had that the bullseye target thing'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Deadpool uses comic-style 8-bit art for video modes with high-res Deadpool breaking fourth wall in higher resolution; thematic authenticity prioritized over pure visual fidelity

    high · George Gomez interview and reveal materials show intentional blend; Dennis notes 'when Deadpool breaks the fourth wall he will be in high res on the screen'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.266

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, August 12th. This is episode 68. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And before we get to the introductions, I do want to go ahead and take a moment and say that Tony and I wanted to express our condolences to Taylor Reese of This Flippin' Podcast. Taylor's father, Robert, just died to cancer. And as listeners probably recall, Taylor was on our show a few months back and was kind enough to guest host with us. So it's always difficult to hear and discuss tragedies like this when they happen. But we wanted to just say something before we really got ahead and got going with the show. And there's no smooth way to transition from that. So let's go ahead, though, and get to some more upbeat stuff. And hopefully you have an upbeat intro.
1:03
Maybe. Actually, it's not bad. I got my temporary crown put on. It actually hurt worse than the root canal. Oh. But now it's like royalty. Right. You've been crowned. Until I get my permanent crown. It's weird. I don't know if... How many steps? Is this like getting out of alcoholism? Basically. Is this like a 12-step process? Basically, yeah. Because they did the initial exam. Okay. And then they're like, you're going to need a root canal. So I got a root canal. Right, which you said was smooth sailing. Oh, it was awesome. After the root canal, they're like, okay, now we'll put the crown on it. Well, to put the crown on it, we have to put this temporary plastic crown. Don't bite down on it too hard. It'll shatter type thing. Okay. And while they're, because they do, like, pictures and scans and this and that, and they have a porcelain crown formed or created that will match the tooth exactly so your bite pattern and everything is right. Okay. So until that's done and I get it put in, which is next Tuesday, or two Tuesdays from now, they gave me the temporary crown, which is basically a plastic peg that looks kind of roughly tooth-shaped and feels weird that is in placed instead. Okay. So we'll have one more tooth update. Nobody cares about my dentistry, yes. Well, but they have to listen to it because it's too dangerous to skip it. 30 seconds to get 30 seconds. No, they don't know. We could go on for minutes and minutes on this. Other than that, I've been in a weird mystery mood lately. Mystery Mood? Mystery Mood. I have literally been doing all of my...

medium confidence · Tony: 'I think the vocal minority is on their side' and 'the more you talk about it, the more you complain about it, the more in my mind...it pulls your company down'

  • Community perception of Spooky emphasizes good ideas but consistent quality control issues ('always broken')

    medium confidence · Tony: 'everybody I've sat down and really, really talked to, I always hear the same things about Spooky. They have good ideas. Game quality sucks. This isn't good. They're always broken'

    • Tony @ final Spooky criticism — Core claim about escalating reputational damage from continued public grousing about Godzilla loss

  • “When Deadpool breaks the fourth wall he will be in high res on the screen and I guess popping out at you.”

    Dennis @ video design discussion — Details thematic integration of high-res vs. 8-bit art style; confirms George Gomez interview info

    • Gary Stern
    person
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Coast to Coast Pinballmedia
    This Week in Pinballmedia
    Spooky Pinball Podcastmedia
    Jack Dangerperson
    Zachperson
    Taylor Reeseperson
    The 403 Clubevent/venue
    Markperson

    licensing_signal: Deadpool comic-style art direction chosen to avoid licensing entanglement with Ryan Reynolds/movie rights (contrasts with Spider-Man licensing issues)

    high · Dennis and Tony discuss: 'So you agree that we shouldn't be obsessing over Ryan Reynolds...Let's not put Ryan Reynolds down here' + 'It's good not to base it on the movies'

  • $

    market_signal: Steady stream of Stern pinball announcements with leaked playfields months in advance; 'worst kept secret in pinball' that everything Stern does leaks early

    high · Dennis: 'It's one of the worst kept secrets...Because they all are. Because everything Stern does is the worst kept secret in pinball. But it's Deadpool. Whitewood Playfield leaked, what, three months ago?'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) simultaneously working on Deadpool and recent Iron Maiden artwork, indicating high production velocity at Stern art department

    medium · Dennis: 'Very dramatic art packages all done again by Jeremy Packer, aka Zombie Yeti, who just actually had his Iron Maiden artwork come out on their prior game, so he's going gangbusters'

  • $

    market_signal: Drop target mechanisms cited by Gomez as significant bill-of-materials cost driver, explaining Pro/Premium cost differentiation and stand-up substitution

    high · Dennis cites Gomez interview: 'a drop target mechanism actually adds quite a bit to the bill of materials'

  • ?

    announcement: Jack Danger/Deadflip scheduled to stream first pro-level gameplay reveal on August 15th; community waiting on actual play footage to assess rule quality and flow

    high · Dennis: 'Jack Danger with Deadflip will be actually doing the first gameplay reveal of the Pro model on the 15th. But it's not the 15th yet.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Deadpool Pro/Premium/LE tier strategy includes distinct features: Pro uses stand-ups/plastic decorations; Premium/LE have drop targets/disco ball; physical ball lock on sword ramp kept across all tiers

    high · Detailed comparison of revealed specs: 'The Premium LE has a disco ball...On the Pro, there's another plastic there instead. Deadpool in a little hammock'

  • ?

    business_signal: Nate Shivers' previous suggestion to Gary Stern about Toho Godzilla licensing may have contributed to Stern's eventual acquisition, creating awkward position for Spooky

    medium · Dennis: 'Nate even told them, you should do Toho Godzilla. So maybe it's Nate's fault this all happened. It's all Nate's fault.'

    • 2:45
    I've started rereading through the Walt Longmire mysteries on my Kindle. And I've been watching Sherlock, BBC Sherlock. And I've been watching mystery movies and old stuff. Oh, so literally Mystery Mood. I'm literally in a mystery mood. I don't know why. I mean, I'm not doing any of this on audiobook. My audiobook listening is still, I'm still in the middle of the Expanse novels. Right. I just started them.
    3:21
    But that's only on audiobook, and so that's only at work or in the car. I've been listening to podcasts again lately, so that's been eating up some more of that time. but like reading and watching and this and that, it's literally mysteries. I don't know why. It's a mystery why. But for some reason, I've just been addicted to mysteries lately. I love mysteries. They're probably the most common genre of book I've personally read. And part of that was my mom would read a lot, and mystery books were her primary form. So I would get her books when we would go to the used bookstore. She would buy books, and then I would just be able to, if I liked that same genre, I could then just read her books when she was done. and that kept me with more and more books because I don't re-read books. I always needed more and more books. I re-watched movies all the time but books I just was like consume, consume, consume like a job of the book.
    4:15
    Sort of. Well, let's see. We had a we were at the 403 Club last weekend. Yes we were. I did gross. You did okay. You won some games didn't you? Yes. So that's not gross. Gross is two and out with two and outs. I mean, technical. Technical. Yeah, I did all right. It's one of those instances, though, where nothing irks me more than having to sit around for an hour to then just lose. Yeah, tell me about that. No, we don't want to talk about it at all. That was one of those.
    4:55
    The 403 is quite a drive, so normally we carpool. and I'd been planning on driving myself because I had some errands to run and then I finished the errands before we had to leave. So I just came over here and we carpooled. Yeah. And then you were just slaughtering people. Slaughtering is not accurate. I won my first match and it was, I think that one, did that one go to? No. All right. It was two and out, but one of the games was close. And then my next winner's pool match was two and O and no, they really weren't close. I just happened to perform a little better. And then I was sent to loser's bracket in my third game. But I was so far ahead of the rest of the loser's bracket that I had to wait an hour, which is boring.
    5:44
    I've got some people... I had to go around and insert myself into conversations. You had to come insert yourself in because we were having a good conversation. I was in another conversation earlier, but it pittered out. And then your conversation with Mary and Will was going far better. So I was like, I'm just going to insert myself into this conversation. And then it was finally time for me to go up against Mark, who I just saw won some other tournament, I guess down in maybe Oklahoma. He won some Bubba Fett trophy. I think it was in Wichita. Oh, Wichita. Okay, thank you. Well, before he was dominating Wichita, he was busy dominating over me. And those games were... It was two and out. I didn't feel bad. I didn't feel that I played bad, though. It was just he played better. He was the first person to take the tournament. So then as soon as I, because I thought surely we'll be done well before 8, and the reason was I guest hosted on This Week in Pinball podcast, and the time to record was essentially set to soft start based off of when I finished the tournament. So I thought, I'll be back by 8, and instead we end up starting recording after 9. But it was fun. That's with Zach from Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show. It's a YouTube show, and we've had him on as a guest before. So he's sort of the Jeff runs This Week in Pinball, and he set up that podcast, but Zach's his main host. And then they rotate either. Sometimes Jeff is there, and then sometimes they use guest hosts. So they had me be a guest host. And I have a link to that in the show notes if anyone wants to hear it. It went well. I enjoyed it. I listened to it.
    7:19
    Yeah, I've heard some decent response, which is nice. It's very different because you and I see pinball in the same way, and Zach sees it in a very wrong way.
    7:31
    And so, obviously, that creates a greater level of tension. But he's very good-natured, so it works out. He's very wrong, but it works out. I do what I can to steer him on the right path.
    7:45
    The path to redemption. And speaking of podcasts, if you haven't put this one in your list, now that you've been listening to some again, there's one called Gaming on 10 Minutes a Week. It's with another former... Everyone has been a guest on the show, it seems like. Don, who used to host the Pinball podcast and also used to host on the Link Cable podcast, he and Nick Baldrige, which if you don't know... We've never had Nick Baldrige on the show, but we probably should get him at some point. He's an EM expert, kind of like Nick Schell is, who we did have on. Nick Baldrige has a solo podcast called For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. I believe that is exactly the giant long name Anyway, he must have picked this name Because it's long too Gaming on 10 minutes a week It's not a 10 minute long podcast It's about them only basically having 10 minutes a week To play a video game But it is video game oriented They touch a little bit on pinball But I'd say it's less than 10% So it's predominantly for video game connoisseurs So if you are one, check it out It's good I listened to an episode when I restarted my podcast Listening here the other day I'll have a link in the show notes for folks to be able to go navigate over to Libsyn to the right spot so that they can check it out and subscribe if they so desire. But it's entertained me so far. Good. They play a lot more video games than I do on their 10 minutes. I know. That's mostly just because I'm lazy. But speaking of lazy, it's time to move into our pinball segment. And it's time to start with what we always start with, the news. Tony, what is the big news in pinball this last week or so? I think somebody did something. There was some game played. I think a silver ball hit something. It could be something fancy like that. Let's face it. It's one of the worst kept secrets. I'm getting kind of tired of saying worst kept secret. Because they all are. Because everything Stern does is the worst kept secret in pinball. But it's Deadpool.
    9:38
    Big surprise. Whitewood Playfield leaked, what, three months ago? That's when we saw it. but all the real podcasts had it at least another three months out from that. Yeah. Because there were rumors going on about people having that at TPF. We didn't see it at that time, but we saw it a little bit later. Because no one wants to tell us anything. Shame on all of you.
    10:00
    Yeah, so the Merc with the Mouth finally has had his big reveal. We've seen the photos. We've seen the initial teaser trailer, which featured the bobblehead, and then we saw the Sizzler trailer, which I do have a link to in the show notes. I believe I call it the teaser, but it's the more real teaser that actually shows you some of the display and some of the play field. And then Jack Danger with Deadflip will be actually doing the first gameplay reveal of the Pro model on the 15th. But it's not the 15th yet. No. So we're going to have to talk about some of this in terms of what we've seen from the stills. Right. So we know it went with the comic style. Which is good because that way they don't have to deal with the whole problem like they did with Spider-Man. So you agree that we shouldn't be obsessing over Ryan Reynolds and that we don't have Ryan Reynolds? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's perfectly fine to obsess over Ryan Reynolds. You should always be obsessing over Ryan Reynolds. I think that's just the natural state of people. That said, I think it's good not to base it on the movies. Okay, I see what you're saying. Let's not put Ryan Reynolds down here. He's had some issues, but he's still Ryan Reynolds. Well, they got Nolan North to voice Deadpool. I guess he's voiced him in the video game. That's what I've heard. And for those that don't know Nolan North, you must not know gaming at all. Holy crap, he's only the most successful voice actor in the history of the entire industry. Yeah, most likely. Yeah. Now, he always sounds like Nolan North, in my view. He has one voice, Nolan North's voice. But apparently Nolan North's voice is Deadpool's voice. So, the bobblehead toy was confirmed. Yeah, I like it. I do too. I'm going to do it. I like it. Oh, wait, you like it? No, I hate it. No, I can't. I like it. You see, you can't. You can't because it's true. You know why? Because you understand pinball. Some people don't. I saw the hatred. I saw the backlashes. I saw the sheer anger when that first little teaser thingy came out. And people were like, oh, that looks cheap. That looks dumb. And you know what? I thought it was awesome. It just showed how much ignorance there is in the hobby for what Deadpool is. They don't know Deadpool. And I'm not judging them for that. I'm just saying, shut your mouth and step aside if you don't know what you're talking about. It'd be like complaining if they made a Jaws pinball machine and the shark looked fake. Well, it looks fake in all the movies. So, you know what? That's just being true to the form of the art. Well, I want it to actually look like a real Karkarian Karkarius. Tough. putting real great whites in these pinball machines. Now, so besides the bobblehead, there are a lot of figurines. Well, on the Pro, there are the flat plastics. On the Premium LE, they did some more, I guess, 3D molded designs for some of the other characters.
    12:53
    The Premium LE has a disco ball, which is I guess there are two disco ball modes that will activate and there will be a light that will hit that and do the whole star field thing. That's cool. That sounds very, very cool. On the Pro, there's another plastic there instead. Deadpool in a little hammock. Yeah. Sort of things just chilling. The graphics are sort of an 8-bit style. And the video mode is, it's done up like a fighting game. Yeah, it's like an old street fighter or, pardon me, wants to say like the first Mortal Kombat, but it's not because that had all photorealistic stuff. They probably were shooting for that old X-Men fighting game. Oh, yeah. That's what my assumption would have been. I could see that. The big four-player arcade going, kind of? Well, that's the one I always think of. That's the one I think of, too. There was an actual fighting game, like a Versus, like a Marvel v. Capcom, but before that, that had X-Men. Oh, I didn't know that. So that might have been a bit of an inspiration as well. So they have all that.
    13:54
    Differences between the Premium and the Pro models, well, we already touched on the disco ball. Other than that, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot. Obviously, the flat plastics instead of the 3D plastics. There's one lift-activated ramp differential that's devoid on the Pro. And then on the far sides of the playfield, the Pro ran with stand-ups instead of drops.
    14:17
    So otherwise, though, they both have the sword ramp, which has the physical ball lock mechanism in the hilt. They're both two-flipper games. there's really not a whole lot else to say. Very dramatic art packages all done again by Jeremy Packer, aka Zombie Yeti, who just actually had his Iron Maiden artwork come out on their prior game, so he's going gangbusters. Yeah, he's being busy. Oh yeah. So, I guess just overall, what are your initial impressions from either... I mean, we can talk about the art, we can talk about the geometry from what we can see. Obviously, we haven't seen it really played yet. It's too hard to interpret the Sizzler video for gameplay. Right. So I just thought we can keep it broad, but what are your initial reactions, Tony? Positive.
    15:05
    I've not seen anything yet, and again, not having seen it played, like really seriously played, it's hard to tell. Exactly. But my initial looks from what I've seen,
    15:17
    A, I love the art. The art on all three editions, I like it. I will say right now, I think the pros the best. I agree with you. I like the pros aren't the best. Which one's the worst? It's probably the LE. Hmm. Okay, I disagree.
    15:37
    But go ahead and go on. Though I do like some of the other stuff they've done on the LE, but it's probably... The LE and the Premium are almost identical. I mean, they're not identical, but they're very close. For me, it's coming down to the side art on the cabinet. That's what it's actually coming down to. And for me, the premium with the blue, with the shark, I think looks the worst. I just think it looks off. I like this saturated red and orange kind of look. And so the pro wins out for me because it's more about being about Deadpool versus the LE, which has got the dinosaur on it. But I still think the color scheme looks really good there. I just don't like the color scheme on the premium. I think it's too much blue for a game that's otherwise not very blue. That's true. I can see that. That's a valid argument. But if you love sharks, if you love megalodons, then there you go. You can go see the Meg and then you can go order your premium Deadpool. I don't know if I'm going to go see the Meg. I've not heard good things. I was babysitting my niece yesterday because my sister and brother-in-law and some of their friends went to see the Meg. And when they got back, they did not say anything positive about it. Other than they said, yeah, Dennis, wait for that to come to video. How could you go to that movie expecting there to be anything positive? Well, maybe they didn't. They just wanted to embrace the campiness of it. There could be. There was. I just had to stay at their house and record little Nora singing the theme to Laser War. We have to let it play every time we got done with the game. We have to have the music play so she can sing it. That's her thing. So. All right. So that's the art package. What do you think about the decision to go with that 8-bit style? I know you're not normally a big pixel art person when it comes to video games. I don't. I do not like pixel art. Actually, I would say despise pixel art. I don't know if I would go quite that far. Well, lucky for you, I did. I believe pixel art has a time and a place, and very few of those times or places are in the modern day. Yes. Okay.
    17:49
    That said, this works. From what I've seen, I think this works. Especially with the clips you've seen where there's still high-res stuff that comes in and there's still this and that. I think I'm happy with what I've seen so far. Right. Yeah, I heard an interview with George Gomez on Coast to Coast Pinball where he indicated, when Deadpool breaks the fourth wall he will be in high res on the screen and I guess popping out at you. Right, I heard that as well. So they've done a blend. So that's good. I think it's part of playing the theme since it's playing to the theme and it's not like one of those video games where they're like, we did pixel art because we want to be cute and pixel arty. We didn't want to pay an actual artist to do our game. yeah no I'm fine with that I mean I don't have any issues with it at all what do you think yeah I mean it may save them on some development cost and I have to generate so much high res so there's probably a financial reason in part behind it but aesthetically I don't see a problem with it but I don't have a problem with pixel art games either yeah so I think it offers that sort of quiche appeal Kitsch. Kitsch. Kitsch is a thing you eat, I think. I don't know. I don't eat eggs. At least not eggs that are cooked that way. So, yeah, the um, yeah, it's fine. I thought it was fine. That won't blow me away, but how often am I looking at the assets on the screen? I usually have to be looking down at the ball. Maybe if I was some great player and I could watch the screen the whole time I would care. I just don't care. I just don't. It doesn't It's not going to be something I'm going to notice except for when I'm watching somebody play and even then I'm going to be watching the play field more than anything else. What do you think of the play field layout then from what we've seen? From what I've seen, I like it. We'll see how it is. It might be a little, it doesn't seem like it's really anything crazy or special or new. So you don't find it particularly innovative? No, not really. I mean, it seems very, it's like, yeah, that looks, it looks like it could be fun, but it's not like Iron Maiden had that the bullseye target thing and it doesn't have anything it didn't have anything that jumped out at me as soon as I saw it where it was like I mean the thing that jumped out at me was the ball lock the katana ball lock thing it's like that's cool right it's yeah I see where you're coming from on it there's a lot I think when you look at this layout you see Gomez in it yeah is the thing so you've got you know that far side ramp shot. I mean, the sword, wasn't there the Lord of the Rings had a sword round? So, it's not is it a fan layout? No, not exactly. There's a lot of stuff like the Deadpool with his, the mini Deadpool and his targets are further down on the play field, so it's not all the shots are out in the back, but there is a pretty wide open area down below. I do like that you gotta drop the drops to hit the target and bounce the thing. I like that. I am going to be curious to see the differences between the pro and the premium le between the stand-ups and the drops on the sides how that's going to affect play speed wise and how everything feels yeah i i mean my assumption will be that the pro will play more brutal well yeah the standard side effect of stand-ups because they're not killing the ball momentum in this right way so i imagine the ball times will be shorter i normally favor faster paced games so i kind of i personally kind of And I mentioned that before when we were discussing firepower, that I think stand-ups in a lot of times actually work, but they look way cheaper than drops. And Gomez, in that interview I mentioned earlier, noted that a drop target mechanism actually adds quite a bit to the bill of materials. So it was definitely a cost saver for them to make that decision for the pro to put in the stand-ups. Yeah, that makes sense. That seems an obvious change for the pro. It's just like when they've got to throw in a virtual ball lock or the virtual ball save on Star Trek. Yeah The kicker I was really surprised That they kept the physical Ball lock on all of them Yeah That the I mean Other than Those drops on the sides the only I don really care about the lift right I mean I never had a lift ramp mechanism that made me think gosh, I sure wish I paid 1500 more dollars for that. Right. The one thing, the one other difference that stand out is just curious from a visual spectacle standpoint, how awesome that disco ball is in effect on the premiums and LEs for the two disco modes is going to like, is it going to make a big, huge, noticeable difference? Like the laser light show on Star Trek LE. Yeah. I would never pay for the laser light show, but I can't deny it looks pretty awesome. Yeah. It looks pretty awesome. I know the first time I played one in LE after having played yours so much, and that happened, I'm like, what is this? Yeah, I wondered if I could just take a laser pointer and glue it in there somewhere and just like maybe tape down the button and be like, yeah, it's a laser show. It's always on. But just go with it. It's always on. It's always laser time in the world of Star Trek.
    23:06
    Well, until we see the stream, I don't really have anything else to add. I don't until I see the stream. I can't really float anything else because it's all just speculation. The one thing shot-wise that, and it looks to me that it'll work fine. I'm sure they've tested it, but that just seemed kind of neat to me is there's sort of that inner right orbit. That's what feeds that upper left ramp. They don't have a flipper up there or anything. You actually shoot to the right and it loops around and then goes up the ramp on the left. So that could be kind of cool when you – it probably – If you hit it, perfect. If you look at – my guess is it's supposed to be one of those shots that feels really good when you hit it. Right. The thing is I can't tell. Is that actually going to be an issue where the ball is going to rattle around and barely make it up there and just going to frustrate you? Is it a tight shot or is that actually just visually spectacle neat but is an easy shot? I don't know. Which can be fine. easy shots, you need to have easy shots in games yeah but it's just, how does it I think it's all going to be about how it feels it's like when you get the games where it's like, oh hey look there's this really tight shot that I have to shoot through the pop bumpers without breathing on a pop bumper to get it to make the shot I'm terrible at those shots but when it does go in it feels amazing sure, it depends on the layout I think Iron Maiden's pop shot is actually pretty easy Yes, I've made that one a lot Versus Jurassic Park Which I barely ever can make the pop Shot through the orbit I'm sure I've made it once or twice But that's probably it Most of the time they're pretty tight I think Elwynn's right Ramp shot is harder than his left On Iron Maiden, in my view Based off my own success rate But anyway So those are our thoughts on Deadpool Now let's talk about another Comic and by comic I mean not comic at all I mean kaiju and that is Godzilla we talked about Godzilla on the last episode Tony as you probably recall after we went to air with that there was some more Godzilla drama that came out I have a link in the show notes to it was last week's no yeah because now we're recording on Sunday so last week's This Week in Pinball had a write up a transcription of what was discussed on the Spooky Pinball Podcast because they actually addressed this situation. Incidentally, at the end of that Coast to Coast interview, Gomez also spoke a little bit about their view. I'm surprised that Stern said anything at all. Yeah, it's amazing for Stern to say anything. But Nate asked, and so George answered. And so, anyway, I'm not going to walk through the entire transcription because it's very long. Basically, it's that according to the Spooky Podcast aspect, it was they are the mega fans and Stern should have deferred and let them have the license. And also they noted they're willing to for free consult with Stern on the project to help them properly realize Godzilla, that they reached out to George Gomez, and George Gomez responded that it was just business. And for the counterpoint perspective on Coast to Coast Pinball, George Gomez said, we have a lot of people on staff that are really interested in doing Godzilla. We really think that it's something that can work. Nate Shivers noted he had dinner months or maybe even over a year ago with Gary Stern, and they were discussing what great themes should be done. And Nate even told them, you should do Toho Godzilla. So maybe it's Nate's fault this all happened. It's all Nate's fault. Come on, Nate. You should never have admitted it, Nate. So anyway, so their argument was it really is just business. We really think that we can sell these. I think they're right. So, yeah. So I wanted to know your thoughts. I obviously, I weighed in quite a bit on that This Week in Pinball podcast because we spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the drama on this issue. And I don't want to regurgitate what I said there. One thing I do want to say is, because I did not tackle it at that time, the spooky offer to consult with Stern on that.
    27:17
    I've seen online a lot of people indicate that they thought, wow, that's really generous of Spooky. To me, that's like an 8 out of 10 burn. That is. That is not respect. That was arrogance coupled with this. It was the analogy I came up with. I discussed this with you at the 403 Club over there. It'd be like, let's say that I'm Michelangelo, not the Ninja Turtle, but the painter. And you are another high Renaissance painter. I don't know, Raphael, was he alive at the same time? Who cares? Everyone just likes Michelangelo. And I win the bid from the Vatican to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But you, being the bigger Baby Jesus fan, are pissed that you didn't get to have the license to do the painting. And you come out and you tell me, I'm willing to help you paint Baby Jesus on the Sistine Chapel at no cost. So we can just make the best Sistine Chapel ever. That's not a compliment. No, that's condescending as crap. That is, one, you're trying to insert yourself into my work when you lost the chance. Tough. Should have done a better bid. And second, it totally, as you're noting, it totally undermines any sort of confidence that I could properly execute that vision.
    28:39
    It's my big paintbrush. I get to decide. I don't. You lost. Step away. Let it go. It just looks sad or, as you noted, condescending. Yeah. Either way, it doesn't look good. I mean, I'm just saying.
    28:55
    I understand that Spooky is upset. I understand. They claim they're over it now online. They've posted. Of course they are. That's why they won't stop talking about it. Yeah. Uh-huh.
    29:08
    Yeah. Here's the thing. At this point, it looks bad for Spooky. Do you think so? I think so. You don't think they still haven't won the crowd? The crowd's always on their side.
    29:24
    I think the vocal minority is on their side. Because that's with the internet and with where we are in our times. It tends to be the minority that is more vocal and are the ones that are more heard. but for everybody that I've talked to, like, sat down and really talked to. Which you had a big opportunity to do last weekend. Right. Because we were surrounded by pinheads for multiple hours. But of everybody I've sat down and really, really talked to, I always hear the same things about Spooky. They have good ideas. Game quality sucks. This isn't good. They're always broken. It's the same things. Maybe is it just the various scenes I've been into? the people I've talked to, it's possible. But here's what it amounts to. This, from a PR side, looks terrible. You're crying. You're whining. You're the kid who lost the race, and you're not willing to settle for second place. You're not even willing to settle for third. It's first or nothing. Mommy needs to come over and fix it for them and make sure that they get first. It's that type of thing. That's how it comes off. That's how it's coming off to me now. is it's, they're crying. Well, you're not a big enough fan. Let me help you. You can do it, but we'll tell you how to do it because we're so much better than you. They're not.
    30:56
    They might be huge fans, but it doesn't matter. They lost. It's over. Walk away. The more you talk about it, the more you complain about it, the more in my mind, and I think in the mind of a lot of people, it pulls your company down. It brings you from being the king of the boutiques and moves you more towards the jester of the boutiques. Yeah, you still put out all the games in the boutiques. You're the boutique that can be expected to put the stuff out. But as a PR point, it makes you look a little... You're a little less King Richard, a little more Henry VIII. Oh, ouch. Okay. I'm going to leave that. I'm just going to leave that there.
    31:46
    And we'll move on because I think we've given this more than enough time. Agreed. That it ever deserved. So, all I want is good pinball. Now, speaking of pinball and speaking of spooky and speaking of possibly good, Alice Cooper, the Nightmare Castle. There was a stream that they hosted. Were you able to catch it? No, I wasn't either. And they didn't record it. So no one got to watch the recording. Now, since then, the IE pinball stream has shown some footage and I've not gone I've not gone and seen it. I just wondered what were your what were your thoughts on the decision and that Spooky made because there were some mechanical issues and some other technical issues at the start that they asked Jack to not put up a video on demand. So he respected that request. I think we're in agreement that if they asked, it's totally reasonable for Jack to go ahead and say absolutely. I think it was a mistake, but it's cool.
    32:41
    This is, as I was just saying, Spooky's known for having some mechanical issues. These are still prototypes. These are still early. I expect stuff like this to happen in this stage of testing.
    32:54
    And it's the type of thing that happens. it's not nearly as big of a deal as it is when you've got production machines that are breaking down almost instantly. Right. For this, it happens. It's not nearly as big of a deal. I think they would have been better off leaving them up or even making adjustments and editing them and just putting the later sections up. Because from everything I've heard and talking to people who've actually seen it, the latter half of it was good. That was my understanding as well. You shot the very preliminary prototype at Texas Pinball Festival. Yeah. What did you think? I know there's not much you can judge from two balls. Right. There wasn't a whole lot I could judge. It didn't feel bad, but it's not. I didn't shoot it enough to get a real good feel for it. But you know how some games they feel real clunky? Yeah. And the second you shoot them, you're like, ah, this just feels wrong. It feels off. Maybe I just don't know this machine good enough to get the shots down, or maybe it's just bad. I mean I understand I'm not a great player If anything I'm the Baron of Brick over here It happens all the time But it felt good on Alice Cooper We'll see I'm not willing to judge anything It's one of those games that The theme doesn't interest me that much I mean hey I like Alice Cooper's music But I don't The art package that I've seen That they had and the cast. I liked all that stuff. They always win with their art. They do.
    34:27
    How's it really going to shoot? I'll let you know after I actually play one. I agree. Anyway, that was that. There is more footage coming out, so I think we'll be able to have a better sense of things in a few more weeks. We'll see.
    34:41
    Final piece of news that I thought we should touch on. Pinwob Hall of Fame. They announced that they're moving. They announced it in a really clunky way. On Pinside, they said that they were closing. And then when you read the thread, they said because they're moving. I think that's unintentional.
    34:56
    That's a full-on clickbait. Yep. It's a clickbait thing. Well, they apparently mastered marketing because, hey, that's all marketing now is clickbait. Yeah. So they're going to relocate to the edge of the Strip, I believe, technically on the Strip in Vegas. It'll be over by the big famous sign, Welcome to Vegas sign. And they're asking for donations to help with the transition. You know, and the only reason why I wanted to note this, I have a link to their site in the show notes, so people can go to their site if they want to donate. Actually, I had to pull them up on the Secretary of State's office at Nevada, because I was sitting there thinking, I don't know if Pinball Hall of Fame is a non-profit or not. And as a general rule, I don't donate to for-profits. Understandable. So, I mean, I might give a for-profit money as like a payment because I use their stuff. Right. Even if it's structured in this hobby, they might be structured as akin to donations. but uh no they are they're a non-profit i knew they gave a lot they're very good corporate citizen in the sense they give a lot of payments to charities yeah but i wasn't sure how they were organized they are organized as a non-profit however so i guess if you're concerned about tax deductible donations they are eligible so you can go ahead and check them out if you so want to help them do the transition because this is millions of dollars that it costs them that are So they're suspending their corporate charitable work while they take care of this because they need to sell the existing building to basically help pay for the new space. And it's going to be a couple million dollars more. They had enough to get everything started. They had a lot of cash. Right. So I think they're tackling it in a good way. It's just... Yeah, everything sounds good. Yeah, but it has to be built because there's a patch of dirt. Right. So it's going to be a bit... Right. But still, at the same time, I think it's a good thing. I agree. Let's face it. If you're in Vegas, anything on the Strip as opposed to being off the Strip is instantly going to have a lot more flow. Yeah. Because I know a lot of people who go to Vegas a lot. I've got one buddy who goes to Vegas every single year, and he only leaves the Strip once or twice ever. and it's just because he likes to go to a gun range that's off the street. And this is going to be right by the big Harley dealer. Right. Harley-Davidson dealer. All right. So they're going to put a bunch of Harley pinball machines up front. Oh, God. No, you'll drive everyone away.
    37:23
    Sorry. Speaking of Harley, just kidding. We're done with the news. We're going to play 20 questions again, Tony. Yay. I had good feedback on 20 questions last time. With how terrible I did? You won, so how can you consider yourself terrible? People can play along at home and see if they can get the game, though, before you did. That's part of the fun. So we're not changing any of the rules either. So for those who are just new to this, hadn't heard it before, here's the process. Tony gets to ask 20 yes or no questions of me to try and determine a pinball machine. It will be a pinball machine he has played before, that I have known he has played it at least once. after the first 15 questions he may use the internet and do searches to help narrow things down for his purposes for the final five questions does anyone have any questions? none of them can answer me Tony, I think you fully get it because I've done it before that said, I will keep track of what question we are on go ahead and ask your first question I've got my little notebook so I can write down my stuff you take this serious I do. Otherwise, I'll forget what questions I've asked. I'll waste a question asking a question I've already done. That's right. And I clean it all up in editing, so it just sounds rapid-fire. Yeah, it sounds like it's real good, and we're quick and back and forth, and it's like, oh, that's so cool. No, that took like 45 minutes last time. That's the power of cut. Not cut and paste. That's the power of cut. Cut, cut, cut.
    38:49
    Okay, we're going to get started with a simple, is it an EM? Yes. Has it been on location in Kansas City that we played in a tournament? No. Have you owned it? No. Was it a Gottlieb? No. Was it a Bally? Yes. Five questions down. Was it one of the machines that straddled where there were EMs and solid states made? No. Was it sports themed? No. Was it fantasy themed? Like swords and sorcery fantasy mythology, not... I see what you're... Yeah. Good for the extra clarification, because fantasy is such a broad... Right, right, right. As opposed to not science fiction-y. Right, right, right. You're thinking how I normally would define fantasy, which is very, very sub-genre categorized. The answer is no, it's not. Is it sci-fi based? No. Is it card based? Did you say cars in Vroom Vroom or card? Card, as in hit me. Okay, like playing cards. No, it is not. Ten questions down.
    39:59
    Interesting. Does it have a center pop? You mean like a... Like Spanish Eyes or Freedom. Oh, a middle pop style game? No, it does not. Because that would have cut down the number of games a lot. There ain't that many of those. Right. Is it four player? Yes. What was that, 12 or 13? That's question 12, so you're on your 13th. Is it from the 60s? No.
    40:23
    50s? No. 70s? Yes. That's your 15th question. You may start searching. Is it prior to 75? Yes. I should probably start with the years first, now that I think about it. Well, after EM solid state, this and that. Because that would really cut things off a lot. Hmm. It's already called up on my thing. That shows how long it's been. It shows the only thing I use this tablet for anymore.
    40:58
    Man, a ballet game from the 70s. You know, they only put out, what, like 900 a year? It was a busy time. One might say I learned my lesson from the last time solid state question. Yeah. No sports. No. Oh, wow. there are so many pens that don't fall into any of those categories I asked you.
    41:18
    Holy monkey balls. That is a lot of pen ball machines. I'm on, what, 16? You've asked your 16. I asked 16. That's what I thought.
    41:34
    So the best I can hope is to do as well as last time. Correct, because you got it on the 17th question last time, and that is what you are on now. But just think of it in terms of victory or non-victory. Don't think of it in terms of questions. Yeah. Let's see.
    41:51
    Victory or non-victory. Is it Fireball? No. Is it 4 Million BC? Yes. Got it on the 18th question. I'm looking at these. I'm like, oh, my God. I've played all of these. Yes. You've played a lot. It's like, how do you enjoy ballet in the early 70s, Tony? How many have you played? A lot. You've played a lot of it. Because I'm going through them on the plate. I was like, okay. Obviously, it's a Bally. It was, you ultimately asked about it being early 70s, and it was. It was 71, which of course put it well outside of in the period where there was a solid state transition.
    42:29
    You've played it a number of times. I've played it a lot, yeah. It's not really a fantasy theme. It's a historical dinosaur theme. See, that's why I was kind of torn on Fireball. Would Fireball count as a fantasy theme? I probably would have counted it, because I don't know. The theme isn't really about a ball of fire. Right, right. That's why it felt like, well, that's one I've played a lot.
    42:51
    So, yeah, there are so many. That whole four-player question by the time you get to the 70s doesn't help a lot. I should have immediately remembered that it was four-player.
    43:02
    I paused because I couldn't recall if it was two or not. And I should have remembered because I played a three-player game on it, and there were no three players. Right. So, yeah, there was that. It was just one of those. It was like, wow, that's... I know. This ain't no... That was good. This ain't no little, oh, you ran into it at a show, though. No, no. I played that one a lot. You usually play this one several times a year. At least, yeah. We don't have it on... No, I enjoy it. We don't have it on location. Yeah, you had a lot of time, but you didn't ask a lot about the features of the game. No, I... Because... And that was my thing with... I mean, the middle pop questions. The middle pop questions. That was a good one for... Because I thought it would cut stuff down. I was thinking about asking, does it have more than two flippers? Because that would cut down a fair number of machines also. Yeah.
    43:50
    And I thought about just asking about drop banks and stuff. But then I realized that when it comes to drop banks, I'm not going to remember which machines have more. Right, right. No, I wouldn't either. Not on an old game. Yeah. Okay, well, you got it. Right. You did it. Because 4 million BC has that fun little back and forth thing at the top. It got the I don know what you want to call it Well there the whole skill shot ramp Yeah the skill shot ramp thing Plus it got a two and three ball on play field block multi But you didn't ask him multi-ball. No. So he has that. And, of course, zipper flippers. A Ted Zale favorite.
    44:34
    So you didn't go down the designer route, but what point is there in battling? I don't. It's either all Ted Zale or it's in years you'd already eliminated. Right. because he was their only designer of note. And I wouldn't have known designers from that far back pretty much anyway, other than, like you said, it's like Ted Zale, and I can't remember his name now. It starts with a K.
    45:01
    Was he with Bally? No. Are you thinking like Steve Kordak then? That's who I was thinking of. Yeah, he's with Williams. Yeah, those are like the only names of designers from back then that really stick in my head. There, you have three You have three now in your head There's the other K guy with Gottlieb Ed Krinsky, he did almost all of their designs Most prolific designer in history Over 200 designs I've heard you talk about him You and Nick talked about him a bunch On our episode with Nick Yeah, yeah I mean a lot of Well Nick Schell is who Tony referencing And it's one of those interesting situations Because Nick is not a I'm going to put words in his mouth because he always dances around this because he doesn't make all the other EM people mad. Nick's not a Gottlieb guy, though, and most of the EM collectors seem to be. So if you're a Gottlieb guy, you know Ed Krinsky. Nick knows Ed Krinsky because Nick knows everything there is to know about EM machines. But he's more interested in Norm Clark because Nick is a big middle pop guy.
    46:05
    And Norm Clark is who sort of, in his view, perfected the middle pop. but middle pop games Bally only had one, Freedom and only on the prototype and I felt that was too dangerous to go with too high of a chance of you being able to name it because it was your game of the show at TPF in 2016 so I have to be careful I have to stretch this out as far as possible to get my victory and your loss one of these days I'm going to get you oh I'm surprised you haven't yet I guarantee you When worse comes to worse, once you get down to those last five questions and you load up the list, you at least have that ability to go, I know I've played it. Right. So that means I can't just dig up some old wood rail. That was the problem when I was doing this one. As I was scrolling through the list of ballys from 70 to 74, it's like, I've only got like four questions left. I've played at least 12 of these, several of which fall within the stuff that would count, though I have it excluded via question. So it's like, ah.
    47:17
    And the more and more shows you go to, the bigger and bigger pool I get to work with. So I would like you to start going to some more shows. I would like me to start going to some more shows, too.
    47:28
    Well, speaking of shows, we have one more thing to show our audience in the pinball segment. We do. This is your brainchild, so why don't you walk us through what this is. This is so good. I love this.
    47:42
    This is going to be kind of a thought experiment, a brainstorming, a putting together, a home design game. Homebrew. We're going to homebrew. We're going to make a homebrew game. This is awesome. Not like we're not actually going to make it. We're just kind of talking about it. And if anybody has any ideas to add into this machine, please feel free to send us messages on Facebook or whatever. And we'll mention them and talk about them. Because this kind of caught my attention. It was in the middle of the week last week. I was at work. I was listening to some podcasts. I was just going through the day. and this whole idea popped into mind and it was started on one idea and I sent it to Dennis and it grew out of that. So what we're going to thought experiment here, what we're going to roll with, is pinball drama. The pinball machine. Yeah. And yeah, no, this is basically a trolling machine. That's full on what it is. Well, maybe it's what this hobby deserves. At least sometimes. It could be. At least sometimes. It could be. I'm going to start throwing the ideas I've already had out there. Dennis has some ideas also that we've talked about he could throw out there. I have a few, yeah. I'm going to start with the idea that started it all. The idea that made me cackle and made me send a message to Dennis in the middle of the day.
    49:17
    This game will have pre-order multiball. on pre-order multi-ball just like any other multi-ball you lock your three balls the difference is is locking ball three doesn't start multi-ball yeah shooting a special shot doesn't start multi-ball every single switch hit has a five to ten percent chance to start multi-ball maybe multiball will start immediately. Maybe multiball will start your next ball. Maybe multiball won't start at all. But you know what? It's going to feel just like you preordered a pinball machine.
    49:58
    This was such a genius idea. I really would. Oh, tournament players would hate a game like this. Oh, it would be terrible. Everything about this game would be terrible. No, it would remind them of how it was like to try and buy it. So that's the important thing. Well, one of the ideas that I had for it would be you need to have some sort of innovation. Everything's about that's what today's hobby is. It's like we want to see innovation. So here's mine. This game, middle of the play field, 4X concentric disc. Not three rings. No, no. There will be four. Will it work? I don't care. I don't know. Maybe it will burn out. But you want innovation. I'll give you that innovation. And that's what it's going to be. There's going to be four concentric spinnakers first ever. It'll be a world first. World under glass first. I'll have more on that later.
    50:47
    What's another component you have? Knowing the drama we've seen and the oft references to pinball machines being shown and them just being a box of lights. My original idea was just a toy that did nothing. Just your standard toy. It was just going to be a literal box full of LEDs that were lit up, setting somewhere on the play field. But as I got to thinking about it, I'm like, I can do better than that. So instead, what I want to do is replace the back glass. And in place of the back glass, do one of those infinity mirrors with LED ribbon lights all around it. And then it's the two-way mirror on the side you're looking through and the one-way mirror on the other. So instead, it makes it look like it's just a tunnel, just a never-ending box of lights. There's your box of lights. You know, that actually would be visually really cool. It would be really cool. So it's almost too quickly included. I know. I saw one of these, and this is going to be a slight tangent. I saw one of these online where somebody had made a DIY infinity mirror thing like this, and they'd implanted an Android control thing that showed the weather and stuff. But the way he had it set up, and it could all be controlled from his phone, and the lights would chase and do different colors, and it looked awesome. It was a really cool little feature that he had just like hanging in his living room that it showed the weather, the upcoming weather for the day and this and that, the lights going nuts. And it was cool. So it could be a really just awesome looking thing. But also thematically quite relevant. Thematically very relevant. Yeah.
    52:28
    I had, this one is more on the software side, but one of the ones I thought of was we need a hurry up mode. Where's the code? Hurry up mode. So, it's going to be a special hurry-up mode where you have to activate a certain number of switch hits of some sort in order to finish the mode. And finishing the mode finishes the programming of the game. If you do not do Where's the Code Hurry-Up, or you fail to complete it because it's a hurry-up, you have a time limit, and you don't get all the switch hits, you are locked out of every mini-wizard mode and the final wizard mode in the game because they haven't been coded yet. I love it. You haven't been coded yet. Where's the code? Where's your code? When you first floated this, I had the thought that if you successfully completed it, the game would literally change code and everything would be different.
    53:18
    But I actually like your idea better because it's the whole... No, you didn't finish the code. You abandoned it. This is abandonware. Sure. Or it's just like Wheel of Fortune and then got a wizard mode. Or you get into Ghostbusters and you activate the final wizard mode, but there's not really anything to do because it's just not finished. It's not done. I love it Now this one is going to be trollish But I'm like all this other stuff Nothing else is trollish This is trollish It's 2018 This game will have an LCD monitor Because it's bloody 2018 But All the animations and everything In the monitor Are going to be coded to show up as red DMD dots LCDs are cheaper than DMDs anyway Just program DMD dots That's basically what my virtual pen does It's a monitor It's a laptop monitor that's in the back And it just shows dots Now the thing is, in attract mode It's going to be high res, awesome This and that People playing pinball and game designers And movies and this and that The second you hit the start button It's a DMD, it's a red DMD It's not even a color DMD It is just a red DMD. That is it. Maybe, maybe you can do something on the field that will activate it and will switch it to an orange or a green DMD. But it's still going to just be one color. It's always going to be a single-color DMD display. That's so mean. I love it.
    54:51
    We've got to save on those programming costs. Exactly. Animation does not come cheap. Well, I mentioned having something that was kind of reminiscent of that concept you originally had regarding the box of lights being on the playfield. And that is, I want to have a miniature globe somewhere on the playfield under a piece of glass. So obviously it's the figurative symbolization of the world under glass. It will be completely devoid of gameplay. It has to represent all those hopes and dreams of all the people in this hobby that just want obnoxious, stupid crap all over their playfield. and don't really care about gameplay at all. They want their world under glass. And that's what this will symbolize. It will have no value whatsoever, except the people who decided that knick-knacks needed to be in machines. It won't even be sitting on top of a pop bumper. No.
    55:48
    It's just there. I'm thinking upper left corner where you normally have a plastic. Just way up outside the field of play, but still on the play field. Right. Because it's to immerse you. Right. You'll look at that globe and that piece of, you know, it'll be too cheap to be real glass. Right. That piece of plastic that is representing glass, you'll be like, holy crap. Now, the globe, it will be as obnoxiously lit as possible. As in, there will at least be a flasher. And that flasher will just fire off blind. It will blind you by firing off randomly. We're talking at least seven surface-mounted lights on that. One of the brightest flashers. Get a hold of Comet Pinball. whatever their brightest bloody flasher is, that's what we're using. Seven of them. Well, the way they do it is they put a bunch of different lights on the one. Some of my flashers you've seen in Silver Slugger, those are sevens. Oh, yeah. Those are like blinding. They go even brighter, though. They go brighter? There are even brighter lights. You've got to go brighter. I can't go brighter unless I buy more lights. But they have some with even more actual individual surface-mounted lights on them. You can get worse. Really? The problem is anyone who suffers from migraines already can't play my games. Yeah, I know. That's why my wife doesn't play. I know. I do it so I win. Smart idea. It's always worth it. Also, my wife can't handle the sand. Yeah. Or the fun. Yeah. But, you know. Right. So that's my current inclination on that. But anyway, my little miniature world under glasses is the last idea I came up with that really I thought worked with your theme. But I know you have a few more concepts to go ahead and apply into this game. I've got a couple more. Okay.
    57:30
    Every pinball machine needs a bash toy. John Borg would agree with you. Yeah. It's always good to have a bash toy. Now, bash toys, I had a lot of ideas. Some of them were good. Some of them were bad. Some of them were needlessly cruel. But what I ended up going with, the Bash toy just needs to be a miniature lit version of Magic Girl. Oh, like the whole machine? Yes, the machine. It's just a miniature lit machine of Magic Girl that you just wail on. You just wail on the little machine sitting there. It'll be It'll sit there It'll have a base You hit it It bounces around We'll be on a spring? You know what? I hadn't thought of it But at this point, yeah We want our toys on springs now We want our toys on spring A little lit magical girl on a spring You beat the crap out of it Boing It'll play better than the actual one did Well, yeah, of course it will This one will have a shooter lane groove Oh, no And then I've got This one I haven't decided Okay I haven't decided exactly the best way to implement this one yet. But, as you recall, we had big issues last year with ghosted. Yeah, ghosted playfields, yeah. So my thought here was I would like to have some cutouts on the playfield that are covered over with a translucent, you know, more opaque than whatever, so they've got kind of a smoky look. Okay, so maybe like a little bit of maybe smoked mylar look. Yeah, that kind of look that are lit from below. So it just looks like your things have little ghosting issues coming off next to a light or this or that. But I was thinking about if you could set it up right, have a bunch of them in one area so it looks real common, and you would have a shot that after you activate everything, it would pop up a trapdoor in that area. So it would be set up so when it popped up, it looked like literally a chunk of your play field just popped off. And then there's a hole for you to shoot for. Oh, that's clever. I like that. I'm still not sold on the best way to do it. It was just a nice little idea I had.
    59:50
    Now, my last idea. The last one I've had for the pinball drama, the pinball machine, is the two weeks progressive jackpot. Oh, Highway would be so proud. There's a shot. You build up your jackpot. And as I said, it is progressive. It builds every game. Not on every one of your balls. It builds every game. Sure. We've seen that. We've seen it before. Your game, the next guy, it builds and builds and builds and builds. Now, inside the programming for the game, inside the code, it will keep track of when that scores. And that jackpot can only be scored out if it's been at least two weeks since the last time that jackpot scored out. Oh.
    60:45
    What a payoff. Yeah, it's like, how did you get 175 billion points on this game? Well, you know, jackpot.
    60:59
    Two weeks. I love it It had two weeks Life did So there's our ideas For pinball drama The pinball machine If you have any ideas let us know Let us know what you think about this Because I've actually had several other ideas To thought experiment games like this As well Yeah we can have a lot of fun with some Made up themes that would never Functionally deserve to be built Right Or could never be realistically picked up. Well, thought experiments. Right. Thought experiments, yeah. You can always reach out at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. All right, Dennis. All right. We're ready for video games now, Tony. We're ready for video games. And I wanted to start with a little segment that I didn't know the best way to describe it. So I just am calling it weird terming. Yeah. And by this, I mean I thought it would be fun for us to sort of talk about what are some of the terms that we use that we either invented or took from someplace. or took from a video game, but apply them to other games. Basically, they're not real, or they are real, but they're not really supposed to be used for the game you're talking about. Right. And the case in point example, which became mainstream, so now you can use it anywhere, would be Zerg rushing. Right. If you're going to say, oh, he did a Zerg rush, that was from StarCraft. It was a strategy where people who played the Zergs could use their low-level weak units and just overwhelm an enemy with sheer volume. and now anytime you use a whole bunch of weak units in any game and swarm people, it's a Zerg rush. You Zerged them. So here's an example of one that I do.
    62:42
    A term I like to use when I'm playing video games is water babies. This is not from a game specifically. How it developed was I used to play a lot of Battlefield and there were people on the other side. On some of the maps there were a lot of water, like rivers and stuff, And people would hide in the water and like crouch in the water or swim under the water. And then they'd pop up and shoot you. They'd use it for flanking purposes. And when they'd pop out of the water like that, for whatever reason, it made me think of all of the people that were really big into trying to have babies in like swimming pools. Yeah, I remember that. I called them water babies because it just seemed like the respectful thing to call them. And so that would happen. And someone would pop out of the water and shot me. And I said, that freaking water baby just shot me. Now, any time I play any game and I get attacked from the water, they're a water baby. And they have to die. Water babies are scum. Nice. Like pond scum. Hence the water. So what's an example of something you did? Well, one of the things, and a lot of my examples are ones that I've picked up from other people using in stuff. Sure. Like back when I played a lot of World of Warcraft, the very classic, and I think it's probably everywhere at this point. People are still doing it. I haven't played it in forever. It's just the classic ding.
    64:04
    If you level or something huge happens in guild chat or whatever, you just type ding. You don't have to go crazy. Just ding.
    64:13
    Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. Everybody knows. Yeah, that's a good one. This and that. And I still, this is a term that I still use with certain types of games when I'm playing, mainly if something huge happens. Like, ding! Like, yay! So, okay. No, that's a good one. That's a good one. Here's one of mine that's from Final Fantasy XI, the MMO. And this is not the only Final Fantasy XI one I'm going to have on this list. And that will be Two Hour. Now, Tony played Final Fantasy XI, so he remembers all the characters. had a high-powered ability they could use every two actual real-world hours. That was its cooldown.
    64:54
    People called them two hours, because that's how long you had to wait for the cooldown to end, and they were epic abilities. For the most part. Right. They were supposed to be epic abilities. I call any epic ability a two-hour now. I'm getting better, but Ultimates and Overwatch. For a long time, I said my two-hour is ready, which would make no sense to anyone who's never played Final Fantasy XI. But to me, it means I've got the ultimate ability. Let's use it. My two hour. It's time to two hour. Makes sense. Even though in Overwatch it's more like a two minute. Well, it depends. Unless you're AKM. Right. AKM blades take 4.5 minutes. Inside joke for Overwatch League fans.
    65:37
    Or unless you're Jonak who can do it in like 40 seconds. General rule of thumb is even a most average player should be able to build an Ultimate in Overwatch in two minutes. That's the general theory. So, Tony, what's another one of yours?
    65:53
    This one isn't one that I use a lot, but I'm commenting on it because I've started to see it used not just in typing. I have heard people say these out loud. And that is the Twitch emotes. Oh, okay. Because, and for those of you who don't watch Twitch or do this or that. Twitch has a chat that you can join up and you can take part in. Don't. Unless you're on a channel with like five people. Twitch chat's terrible. It's like it's like if YouTube chat didn't, or if YouTube little comments under the videos if they didn have time to actually think about what they were saying So it even worse than that It very hive mind in large channels And it's completely unreadable for the most part anyway. Yeah. It's scrolling by so fast. It is. But in Twitch chat, they have emotes that are, every channel has emotes and there's emotes that everybody has and, you know, there are pictures of people and yada, yada, yada. But the thing is, is when you type in one of these emotes, it's not, I mean, they've got your normal little smiley face, but they've got things like, if you type in Kappa, a person's face appears, or Lol, a person's face appears. And I know you've actually started seeing people not only do these, but say Lol and Omega Lol and PogChamp. I've literally heard people say PogChamp in chat while playing Overwatch. When they'd say something. It's like replaced a period or an exclamation point. They'll be like, That was a great job, PogChamp! What?
    67:26
    Yeah Poggers It's nuts to me But it happens And it's moving into the lexicon I guess It's not something I've used But it's interesting To see the stuff that should be just From context And the tone of your voice Be obvious People are now adding nonsense words To emphasize it Yeah.
    67:56
    Here's another one that's not really related to games, but related to gaming that I use. Blooks. Yep. So name, because it sounds very similar to what the Achievement Unlock sound started with on the Xbox 360. I don't apply it just to Xbox, though. If I get a Steam achievement, I say blook. I blooked. I might just go blook, or I might say the word. I got a blook. I'm going for blooks. Sometimes I'm not playing a game. I'm playing for achievements. I'm playing for blukes right now. It's not about fun. That's another line I use with it. I say, it's not for fun, it's for work. Then I go and get my blukes and I'm angry about it. But that's what I do. So yes, blukes. That's one I like to use. Now, there's one that I haven't used it as much as I used to.
    68:44
    You're getting better. Well, no, no. I'm just not playing the right game type as much anymore. But we actually used to play a lot of Burnout.
    68:55
    And in some of the older Burnouts, when you were playing Crash Mode, you would flip it, and your points would go nuts. Everything would just, cars would start flying through the air, points would just start. So anything that involves anything where, especially in racing games, anytime I'm racing a game and I start bumping up against somebody or something, that's the whole thing. Just flip it. I'm trying to knock out the car. Flip it! Car, flip it! That's the whole thing. If I'm trying to teach somebody how to flip it, I'm trying to flip it. I've done it when I've been playing World of Tanks. The same thing. If I'm doing a kamikaze run where I'm ramming into the guy to kill him, that's my thing. It's like, flip it! Yeah, I do still yell flip it sometimes.
    69:38
    Here's one I do use a lot more, and we can definitely blame the Overwatch League for that. This one. Snowball. Yeah. I say it mostly when I play Overwatch, but I'll say it in anything. and all that is is when you take the momentum from, in the case of Overwatch, it's from taking a point and then going immediately to the next point. And the plan is if you move in right away, the defense won't have a time to set up their positioning properly. You snowball. Especially if you break them. If you break them and take the point real fast, they're still running back from their spawn. Oh, yeah. But I don't say it calmly. I screech it. Snowball! The snowball!
    70:16
    And sometimes I will do it when I'm watching things and I just want someone to dominate someone else. Snowball! Snowball! Nice. For Snowball. Nice. Snowball. So that's Snowball. And another one that started in World of Warcraft for me, and it started, I think, in World of Warcraft for probably everybody because there was a very well-known YouTube video that eventually got a very, very hilarious animation put to it. Dots.
    70:43
    Damage over time effects. Anything you do that does continuing damage referred to as dots. Dots. More dots. We need more dots. Stop dots.
    70:53
    I haven't seen that video in years. I haven't seen it either, but when this first came up, that was the very first thing that popped into mind is dots. And it's still hilarious. Dots. We need more dots. More dots. Stop the dots.
    71:07
    Because when I played, I didn't... Well, sometimes I did. That's what you use, just dots. Put dots on everything. That was your job. put dots on stuff. I think that was more your job than my job, but I still put dots on stuff. Yeah, you gotta put those dots on. But it literally, that was the first place I heard it, and I've used it, I've moved it, anytime I do anything that is an ongoing damage over time effect anymore, it's just dot. Dot it. Yep, got a dot on it. I mean, I even do it when I'm playing alone. It's like, yep, it's like, okay, I'm gonna throw dots on that guy, and then I'm gonna attack this guy. I'm gonna do this on, yeah. Nope, it's dots.
    71:43
    Here's an obscure one, again from as I mentioned I would, from Final Fantasy XI's MMO, and that is Stand on the Left Foot.
    71:51
    This was the rule on some of the dragon fights. Some of the big world raid dragon fights, like Nidhogg or Jormung, I think. But mostly it was always like the instructions in our link shell were, you gotta get on the left foot. How do we avoid all its area of attack? Everyone clump up and stand on the left foot. I say stand on the left foot for any boss now so it's just like we don't know what to do it's like stand on the left foot get your ass over there and stand on the left foot and so it's one of those weird ones that doesn't really tie very well into much of anything but it's just like no if you don't know what to do stand on the left foot it'll be alright trust me it'll be alright and then you wipe because you shouldn't have stood on the left foot anytime I see a big boss in a single player game I don't care. It's like, get on the left foot. How do we beat it? I would start with standing on his left foot, and then I would see what happens. It's like all the references you see, it's like, attack the weak point for massive damage type thing. Yeah.
    72:55
    And that's not something you see nearly as much in games anymore. Though that did pop up in Shadow of War. Which we're about to get into. Yeah. I thought I'd throw out one more that just came to my mind while we were discussing this, and it's one that I think practically everyone I've ever interacted with has done forever. And it just started back with a misspelling of own. Pwn. Oh. Yeah. And so it was, I believe, back in like the old Quake days. I think someone accidentally once meant to type own, but P's right next to the O and they hit P-W-N instead and said pwn. And to me, pwning is owning, but even more egregious. Yeah. So when, again, with Overwatch, Part of this is I miss, because of the font and the colors in some of the maps, when he pins, sometimes to me it looks like it says he pwned.
    73:48
    But it is a pwnage because he usually kills someone whenever he does it. So that's a pwn. I say pwn all the time. If I get destroyed, I go, I just got pwned. If I lose, I got owned. If I got destroyed, I got pwned. Yeah, no, that's true. I do use that one, and I use that one in not just video game related stuff.
    74:09
    That's right. They find my weak spot and pwn me. Speaking of weak spots, let's go into our final video game segment, and that is Shadow of War. You are not done, but very deep. I'm very deep. I've completed three of the four major quest lines, and the fourth one's at like 60-some-odd percent. Okay. So what do you want to talk about? The way this game, as a hack and slash, compares to other hack and slashes, but also specifically how it feels to play over the original Shadow of Mordor, and the way the story carries on, and the changes in how it plays are enjoyable. there's not a lot of huge changes, but they've done such a good job on making me still care about these characters. Some of them. Some of them you don't care about because they're supposed to be. Right, right. Now I'm guessing when you're thinking of improved features we're talking things like Nemesis system is what immediately jumps to my mind. It's better.
    75:21
    I mean, I thought it was good before, but it is even better now. And some of the quest lines out there have, this might be moving into spoiler territory for some people who have not played it.
    75:32
    So anyone still listening who doesn't want the game spoiled, go ahead and not play any more of the podcast. Because this is our last segment. Yeah. So, the Necromancer quest line. You go through and you've killed a bunch of people. And you've killed some of your nemesis.
    75:48
    Nemesi? Actually, I don't know. You've killed a bunch of these guys. Yeah. and they're dead and you're doing good. And in the last fight of the Necromancer questline, a lot of these guys are back. And they've been massively leveled up. Well, some of them have been leveled up. But they're now all legendary instead of just whatever they were before. And that was... It has been a long time since a single-player game has had me swearing at the game, even when my youngest daughter was over there watching me play and stuff. And having me want to crush my controller. And literally twisting the controller in my hand waiting for it to shatter because I was so angered. And that quest did it. That specific fight did it. And it wasn't because I hated it. There was something I hated about it. If you failed it, you didn't start over with having already taken out the four of the five idols or five of the six idols. Yeah, I remember that. You had to start all the way over. The checkpointing in the Necromancer end was not good. No, the checkpointing was bad. But the thing is, is all these people that you have bloody killed before, some of them were pains. I mean, some of them were really hard to kill them when they weren't legendary. Now they're all legendary.
    77:13
    It was fun, but so frustrating. That one, that wasn't the most My most frustrating moment was actually As that nature dragon And all the damage she could You were trying to fly around these ruins Right, that one I had to redo that one three, maybe four times So not too, too bad But I just didn't enjoy I never liked the mechanics on the dragons That's one of the low points for me Right, now that's one thing I agree with you, the mechanics on the dragons aren't nearly as good I have the summon dragon ability I use it when it's like I want to go over there really fast. Sure. And I fly over and I jump off. Right. But even there, more often than not, I go with my dire car as my mount of choice. Right. That's usually what I would go on. So. I didn't mind riding. I didn't really mind riding anything else. I just didn't really care for the dragon. Right. And, but, yeah. But, I mean, that's just a minor low point. Often you didn't have to, so. Right. It was very rare that they forced you to do the dragon right. And the thing is, in fights, I don't think the dragon really helped nearly as much as you would think it would. You know, it's a big dragon. They made a big deal about dragons in The Hobbit. Right. Well, I guess technically they're drakes, not dragons. Well, drakes are just short dragons. They're dwarves. Dwarf dragons. They're dwarf dragons. That's right. Now, I do like, and I'm not done with these because this is part of the last quest line I'm working on, but I like as you go through and you fight ringwraiths, you get ringwraith backstories. Yeah, that's really cool. That is so awesome, and it's been fun. Yeah, and I think all of those, or most of those wraiths, probably the writers had to create those backstories. I don't think Tolkien touched on it with the simulcrum or anything. Yeah, I don't think so. I think, or Simireling, excuse me. Yeah, I don't think he ever really gave a lot. He only had backstory on, as far as I know, a couple of the Ringwraiths. The Witch King, Arnok, obviously, has quite a bit more depth than most people who only read Lord of the Rings would be aware of. And then I think, I don't remember his name, the Easterling, I think is what they call it. The one that is sniffing out Frodo at the very beginning in the Shire. I think that one has a little bit, that's not the Witch King, and that one has a little bit more background also. that's about it. Right. All the rest, I mean, there's nothing. Right, they're ghosts. They're just bad. They're just there to be scary. Right. And here they do backstories. How the rings corrupted them. How the rings corrupted them and how they fell and which was, what was the one I just finished? Hammer, the guy with the giant hammer. The one who's, what, daughter or what? Right. And he just ended up accidentally killing everyone. Right. Raging out. Yeah. Yeah, he's just full-on roid-raged. And that whole cutscene and everything was amazing. And fighting against him was hard. And this game has been doing that so well, and I've been enjoying it so much. I've actually been disappointed. I haven't gotten to play in, like, two days because I've been working on cleaning projects and all these other, like, you know, real-life things that require time and energy. but I've been so for as badly reviewed as this game started as. It had some rough reviews mainly due to the pay to win stuff. Right. It was the loot kind of became the poster child initially of the loot crate stuff until Battlefront 2 went ahead and stole that mantle. Right. And all of that is gone. They've patched all of that out of the game. All of the loot. You can't spend real money to buy anything. They've patched that whole thing out of the game. And it is deeply enjoyable.
    81:10
    I like how free, I don't know how free, I mean it's not like an MMO free letting you kind of spec yourself, but it still gives you the ability to make adjustments. I mean there's certain abilities that you get if you want to get them. You don't have to take them.
    81:28
    RPG like. Right, but the way you can make the adjustments. Like, I've taken the adjustment that lets me use the ghost, use the wraith to block when I'm doing ground executions on people. Yeah. And I've taken the one that lets me do, that lets me, when I drain somebody, instead of exploding their heads, I dominate them. Okay, yeah. and then I've taken the one and I've played with several of these but I've taken the one where I can set booby traps by drawing your bow and you can set booby traps so when orcs come near gates will open up or the ghouls will come out and this and that because it's fun to not be on a mission just to jump like go to like a fortress and just booby trap all those things and just watch stuff die everywhere. It's hilarious.
    82:27
    Yeah, so overall, compared to Shadow of Mordor, how would you compare, broadly speaking? Broadly speaking, I think they did a very, very good job of taking what was a good game,
    82:43
    taking what made that game good, and successfully translating it into what I consider a better game. The only thing I might not be totally sold on Is the weapon and armor upgrade system Okay I say that because I don't think that they add that much But they also let you kind of tweak your play style I've been using the same sword Since I was like level 5 Because it has an insane I'm running at a 48% freeze rate on crit hits and I've been running stuff to increase my crits so I freeze people constantly so I mean some of them are good some of them are bad I kind of like the first system where you just started with the weapon and you just kind of learned about it and it got better right yeah you brought up a good point because I kind of forgot about the issue with the weapons. One of the things, and the armor, and the need to generally do some stuff to unlock them. Right. And some of the stuff is sort of especially like the set legendary stuff. But the problem is if you get that stuff early, you're stuck with it at a fairly lower level. I found the same set stuff later that's at a higher level, but you'd have to redo the unlock again. Some of them are not a playstyle thing I do. Right, and some of them, and with the epics, the legendary gears, the set gears, every time you unlock it, it just creates a new quest to unlock it to a higher level. Right. But some of those quests are really hard. Yeah. Because it's like, oh, you need to dominate a captain of at least level 60. Well, I'm level 30. Right. So that's not going to happen anytime soon. So I've actually, I am wearing two pieces of set gear. They are my lowest level pieces. They are the weakest pieces. The only reason I'm wearing them is because they're not from the, they're from one of the DLC add-on groups, the Outlaws.
    85:05
    I don't know if you've got. I don't have the DLC. It's from the Outlaws, the Outlaw group of orcs. and the thing is with the two piece bonus you have a 25% chance on a hit to cause a status effect and it's of any of the status effects so I combine that with my sword that's running an almost 50% chance to cause freeze I cause status effects everywhere and if I get four pieces of this stuff even if it's lower level I'm going to run it because the four piece set for this is not Not only do you have a 25% chance, all of your minions have a 25% chance per hit to cause a status effect. So it's just huge to extra bonus damage. Right. But again, that's from one of the DLC groups. And I have, because the version I got, I have all the DLCs. Okay. Because I was able to get it all real cheap during the Steam Summer Sale. And I haven't started any of the DLCs Because I'm going to full finish the main game first Because there's DLCs that let you play as one of the human characters One of the other human characters One of the pure human characters How about that? Because the main character you're playing isn't You have bonuses And it flat out says when you play it It's like When you're choosing it to choose it It flat out says is, yeah, if you die, it's over. There's no restart. You're not erased. You don't get to bounce back up from being dead. If you die, it's over. And the other one lets you play as Galadriel's little assassin. Right, right, little elf assassin. Right. Yeah. So I'm kind of looking forward to both of those, too.
    86:53
    And the other big thing is, if you are interested in this game in any way, shape, or form, hold on because it has a Platinum Edition, I guess you want to call it. I don't want to say Game of the Year Edition because it's not a Game of the Year Edition, but it's like that. It's the game with all of the DLC at a lower price point that's supposed to be coming out in the next one to two months. Okay. So unless you get a really good sale, like I did, I mean, because I got the whole thing, I got the gold version for like $28. bucks.
    87:29
    But you can get the whole Platinum Edition everything bundle pretty cheap here real quick. There probably won't be another major sale before then. Because we're past all the big summer sales on all the platforms. I think the next big Steam will have their big fall sale. I think most of those groups have fall sales now. Because it used to be just winter. Then it was summer and winter. Now there's four big sales a year. I don't already have 230 games of which I've only played 45 of on my system. That's why I don't buy a whole lot of stuff anymore. Yeah.
    88:06
    Alright. I think that's all I've got to say about that. Well then, we've made it to the end of another successful show. Highly successful show. And people can reach out to this highly successful podcast by emailing it at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail dot com or going on to many of our social media options, such as Facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast. We're on Twitter and Instagram at Eclectic underscore Gamers. And until two weeks from now, I'm Dennis. Two weeks.
    88:37
    And that was Tony. See ya.