thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast i am your host josh roop scott's running a little bit behind he may or may not catch up but we are on a time schedule because we've got a new pinball machine releasing if you want the new predator pinball machine hit up flipping out pinball with zach and nicole many i just traded in my foo fighters for uh king kong and it was amazing the process was smooth they sent me a big shipping container i pulled the new game out put the old game in and shipped it back to him so the trade process is easy if you want to trade in the game towards predator if you're loving what you see hit up zach and nicole many at flipping out pinball with me right now i have daniel from pinball brothers and let's talk about this new exciting game that just come out daniel okay first off why why predator why are you guys doing predator Hello, thanks for having me Yeah, why Predator? How can you not make Predator, I would say Because it's a dream for most people in our development team Or all people, I would say So it was a real no-brainer to do it Since we have done Alien before And this was the sort of natural game for us to make, I would say Nice, nice. And so was it kind of born out of the fact too that you guys made Alien, so it's just a nice coupling and pairing as well? It is. I mean, from many perspectives. First of all, we had obviously a contract with 20th Century Fox that was acquired by Disney back in the day. And so from a licensing perspective, it was quite straightforward because Disney liked what we had done with Alien. And it was pretty straightforward to start talking about doing another game. And Predator was kind of the obvious choice, I would say. So that was an easy one. And then, of course, we are Alien fans too, and we want a Predator machine next to our Alien machine as well. So personally, it was an easy choice for that matter as well. And I think many people out there owning an Alien today really would like to have a Predator one next to it. So it's very fitting in many ways. Totally agree. And they've intertwined over the years, and so it makes sense to make a Predator. when you have an alien. I guess the real question, a lot of people know that they've seen the footage and stuff like that. I've just seen the flyer. I don't see any of the actors or whatnot on the artwork or on the cabin or anything like that. Are the actors at all involved in the project or what was the decision to not include that? The actors are very much included in the game and in the project. So I can explain all of that. The whole idea for the game, the context of the game, if you like, is that you are stepping into the shoes of being, you are playing the game as Dutch, obviously, because Dutch is the main guy taking on the Predator. And we really, from the start, wanted to make the game about the Predator, the main character in the movie. And for Pinball machine, we felt that it's an obvious thing that you should fight the predator straight on. But obviously, the crew, the soldiers, the characters, the other characters in the movies is equally important, of course. So you play as Dutch, but you go around the playfield and you collect the crew members, you bring them to special missions, you fight the predator together, and there are movie clips and there are all the actors in there. The only restriction we have is, and I guess that is one of the big questions and the elephant in the room perhaps, is that we are restricted to some degree when it comes to Arnold. And that actually fits the narrative that you are playing him so that is to me personally and to us it doesn't um make the game uh bad in a way but i i guess some people would love to see some close-up uh scenes with uh with arnold but uh he is he is in the clips but he we are not allowed to use him uh close up any close-up clips. So that is the only restriction. Apart from that, all the quotes, all the actors, all the great scenes from the movie are all in there, I would say. So like Carl Carl Weathers is in there and the movie clips. So is there any original audio that was done for the game or is this all movie clip assets that have been placed into the game? the quotes are from the movie yeah so but then obviously we have voice actors doing other call outs for for becoming a pinball machine you need to have a lot of other other call outs to help the player what to aim for and so on so there is a deep speaker voice in the game and that is a voice actor named James Burnett who did those call-outs for the game. But we are actually, I should add, that the current situation is not 100% set in stone because we are still waiting for approval to add more assets into the game. These things with licensing is really they are quite complicated and I guess a lot of people have already talked about the other manufacturers when you when you talk about big movies like predator and other movies you have a lot of different stakeholders involved of course so there are ongoing discussions all the time so we hope we still hope to add more clips with Arnold into the game we are also having discussions to add custom speech from maybe from some of the actors made for the game. So all of that could still happen. But I don't want to... I can't promise that will happen. But we are really happy with the game as it is and where we are. And I don't think that anything we will add from this point will make the game a lot different. But of course those will be those will be nice touches to the game. Definitely. Yeah. So who designed this game? Is this a team effort there at Pinball Brothers? Did you have a different designer from Out come in? Tell me about that. Yeah, it's internal. We have a core team of three people who has been designing the game. So me and Andrea, I don't know if everybody knows this, But we are, Pinball Brothers also have a subsidiary in Italy called Euro Pinball Corp, which is co-owned with Diretti Gaming, who some people know from before. So, and we are working together on all projects, you could say. So we have, for this project, we had a core team of three people with me, our mechanical engineer, Peter Peter Dahlman from Sweden also. So and then Andrea from Italy was part of that team. So we came up with the initial design for the game. Cool. And have you guys done have you done the previous games? Is it ABBA and Queen that was also done by you guys as well? Yeah, partly. We have all been in the development team before, but we had different roles, you could say. I mean, Queen, for instance, was an original design by Barry Oursler. Back in the day. Correct, yes. And then that design was refined by other people after that. So it's been a collaboration, you can say. But from ABBA, me and Peter have been pretty much involved. We are also doing the code for the game. Nice, nice. Where did you guys, what did you draw inspiration for to do this play field? because when I look, well, go ahead and answer that and I'll tell you what I see. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm curious to know what you think. I mean, we obviously love a lot of different games but we wanted this to be different from the other games we've made before. but we also wanted it to be somewhat resembling Alien to some degree as a wide-body game also. So we really wanted to have flow and have the upper flipper come into play a lot in the game because I think that is the only drawback we all had with Alien. We love Alien as a game and as a design but to me personally it's really hard to get the upper flipper into play so we wanted that one to really be able to, you should be able to feed it and to loop in different ways for the upper flipper and of course when it comes to that part of the game I guess there are a lot of games who has a lot of flow of course but some of the Steve Ritchie games are of course an inspiration and um i think um even if uh it's big loops we are talking about here i think uh Keith Elwin obviously introduced a lot of looping from um for the upper part of the playfield in different ways so we have a lot of inspiration i guess but um so i don't know if that was the answer to your question. It did answer my question. I actually, I was going to lead towards a little bit of Steve Ritchie in there with the getaway because of the upper loop the way it spins around I see a little bit of Attack from Mars with that Predator in the top middle Does that partition come down to hit the Predator or is it just pretty much that stays up the whole time? The Predator, the main toy is actually, it has two motors in it, so it moves, it comes up. It's not hidden under the playfield, as you've already seen, but it's sort of in a passive position, if you like. And when you are attacked by a predator, you will not miss that because it's a massive light show and sounds besides that he's actually rising up in the game. And then he also moves left and right and follows the ball and so on. So he has quite a lot of movements. We didn't want to sort of hide him when he's not active because first of all we think he's a really beautiful sculpt. It is, yes it is. And I think that hiding the main toy would mean that for a lot of the time most people wouldn't see it. So we decided to have him sort of a bit half hidden behind the wire form, the helix ramp going around in front of him. So that was an early decision. Yeah. Cool. I didn't know if it was, because you know in Attack from Mars, there's the bank right before the spaceship. I didn't know if that bank came down at all and the Predator became a bash toy, if it's solely a mechanical that you don't hit, essentially. Ah, okay, okay. Yeah, sorry. I missed that question. It is. You don't hit him. It's not a bash toy in the sense that you actually hit his body. But what you do is that he is guarded by these three drop targets in front of him. And those drop targets are coming up as soon as they are knocked down, unless you have qualified for a predator attack. At that time, the drop targets will stay down, and then you hit him, and then he would come up and attack the player. And then you hit him by shooting, because behind the drop targets there are leaf switches. So you actually, it feels when you play that you are shooting him, really. But, of course, technically you are hitting the leaf switches right in front of him. So that is the solution. Awesome. I guess the other question I had too, you've talked about this a couple of times, you've decided to go wide body on this game what made you decide to go wide body versus a standard uh i think there are a couple of reasons for that one of them is is again connected to alien we really think that as i mentioned we are alien fans uh also and we would like to have the game this is kind of a sister game to alien really so we we thought that many people would probably want to have these games next to each other and it's really nice if they fit basically. But of course we also wanted to pack this game with a lot of stuff and you have some more space if you have a wide body game. So I think that was mainly the two reasons for going wide body. we are making it a little bit hard on ourselves to do that because we are we have been making standard body games mainly now for a while we have been making assembling Abbas and Funhouse in the factory and both are standard games so it's a little bit difficult to switch between standard body and wide body but we thought that we really didn't have a choice we can't we need to make Predator a wild body game Just to fit as much as possible in there Make it as good as possible So it was an easy decision From the very start Nice So you guys are also producing the Funhaus games And would you say ABBA as well All at the same time you're doing this Yeah, that's right We are European Ball Corp Has the agreement for making remakes and Funhaus was the first remake that's been produced, basically. So, yeah, we have been making Funhaus for more than a year, I think, now. Yeah, I think it was unveiled for Expo last year. It was at least at Expo for sure last year. So, I mean, we're, what, eight, nine months away from when that happened. So you guys are obviously producing it before then. so I guess another question too a couple questions that we've had here is we've seen some questions about build quality I don't know what you guys have done to improve your build quality to reassure someone that is buying a Predator that they will be happy and taking care of when it comes to buying this product yeah I understand the question Of course, making Pimble machines is really a challenge and there's so many parts and there are so many things that needs to be tested and so on. So we have been working really hard for years now to take steps and to improve the quality step by step, basically. And for this project, we have made, I would say, quite big steps because we have stepped into the partnership with Fast Pinball. And I was almost about to say that we have stepped into a new partnership, which is true when it comes to the Pinball Brothers games. But obviously, Fast Pinball, Aaron and the guys, has been providing their platform for Funhaus for over a year. So we have been knowing each other for quite a while now. And so we obviously, as a company, we have a big there's there are a lot of benefits to only have one platform to maintain and to work with also for purchasing, for supporting customers, for spare parts, for basically everything. It makes life a lot easier. Plus, and this is very important, I think, not that we intend to go away and stop making pinball machines anytime soon, but I think as a customer, if I put myself into that position, when I buy an expensive pinball machine, I want to make sure that I will get spare parts for this game for a long time. And I think that moving to sort of a standard platform that are used for many other pinball machines is a really good way to make life easier for customers also to find spare parts for a long time. So I think it's a win-win situation, really. So we are really, really happy with that choice. On top of that, we are also changing some of the mechs in the game to more standard parts, you can say. We already had a lot of standard parts in our previous games, But we have taken another step and that is also in the same sort of direction as with the fast electronics when it comes to mechanical parts. It makes it easier for our business and it makes it better for the end customer that they can find the spare parts easily and don't have to worry about if we are around or not. so I think these are really good steps that have been made now definitely looking at this mechanical list that you sent over, I'm assuming BW means Bally Williams, so you've got Bally Williams style flipper mechs, you've got Bally Williams style pop bumpers, so you are going more of mechanics that people already know and mechs that people come to love yeah I think over the years we have been trying to be to innovate everybody wants to innovate and to make new things but really when it comes to standard parts like flippers, slingshots bumpers and so on there's no real point trying to innovate to be honest it's more about using things that really works. Then you can focus on making more special things in the games unique. That is kind of the strategy, I think. Speaking of unique, I like this bottom third. You've got this turret here on Predators. You've got Old Painless on the left side, but on the right side, it comes out of like a turret, I want to say. How does that work? So the ball comes up, the wireform down below, kind of like a Steve Ritchie on Star Wars, where the wireform comes down kind of by the outlane and then drops into that left side. How do you load that? And what is the purpose of all that? Because it looks very exciting and interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually quite a, it's even a longer sequence than you describe now, because at the very top of the playfield, you have a lock magnet at the very top. You can't see it, I think, because there are things hiding it. But both orbits, both the left and right orbit leads to the lock magnet. And when that one is active, it actually catches the ball and drops it into a subway. And that subway goes all the way down to that book at the right side which is the start of the of the wire form that goes around behind the flippers and when it comes up from that book you have a lock post there you have an army net and the balls are actually locked there for jungle blast multiple so when you when you have qualified the jungle blast multiple the balls are fed one by one into the old painless and then fired into play That is not the only use of the minigun mech and this sort of device. It's actually used for some hurry ups and super jackpots and other things. But locking balls is one of the purposes for that. and feeding the minigun. Yeah. And then I assume the minigun just kind of feeds up behind the hut there on the left, behind the camp? Exactly, exactly. When the minigun is firing the balls up that ramp, it flashes with, yeah, it's basically firing. And the whole camp is kind of on fire. and the ball comes flying out from that camp area and comes back to the left in lane to the flipper, feeds the flipper for shots, basically. Cool. Yeah. Okay, you got to tell me about in the bottom middle, on the apron, the interactive sacrifice. Everyone, if you don't remember this part in the movie, right when Arnold has bested the Predator, he presses the buttons on this and it makes him explode and Arnold gets away just in time, right? How have you incorporated this in this game? Because this looks very, very interesting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can promise you and all the listeners, viewers, that we will not blow up the game, at least. So it's harmless, but it's quite nice and it's a nice, really nice feature in the game. We really wanted to incorporate that device because we, as I said, we are great fans of the movie and that part of the movie is kind of iconic so there's actually some art there showing his arm and then that device is the Yutja display Yutja device is obviously incorporated there as part of his arm. We use it in the game for different things, but of course it's mainly looking nice. But there are actually situations where we use it for countdowns and stuff like that. But you have to learn that language to know what it says. So it's complicated. That's awesome. It's a really cool way to incorporate the movie into the game. So the interactive ball lock, the chopper, is this just a magnet? How does this work up here? Which one is that? It's the helicopter. Correct, yes, the helicopter. Yeah. The helicopter sits above the wire form there and so the balls are it's a two ball lock with a lock post below it. So the chopper is where you actually start the special missions in the game and you also lock the balls for the getter to chopper multiball. So the rotor spins of the helicopter and it's an important part of the game in that sense that you start a lot of things there at the chopper. Cool. what is something that you've put in this game that you're super excited about that you want to share with the listeners right now I think that there are many things but two things comes to mind immediately when you ask that one of them is that is the fights with the predator because we are really we want those moments to be really cool pinball moments There's a lot of light show and sounds and movement and shaker and everything going off when that happens. And that doesn't mean that you fight the predator all the time because that would be pretty boring. But those moments should really be exciting. So that's one part of it. The other thing is a completely different thing, I think. And that is that we have worked really hard to achieve the feeling of that you really step into the movie when you start the game and play the game. What I mean by that is that to me or to us, the movie is a lot of contrast in the movie. There are a lot of time in the movie where things are pretty slow and pretty silent or quiet and eerie. And you have that weird feeling of some kind of excitement, but it's still quite calm. And then suddenly things happen and hell breaks loose and things become action. And I think that is the best way of describing it. So the idea is to reflect that in the pinball machine, in the game, that you have moments of calm and then you have moments of super action in the game. So getting that balance is pretty important to have a fun game, I think, and we think we have succeeded with that. Well, good. I know you guys are based over in Europe and whatnot. is Europe your main target audience or are you trying to drive these into America more possible? You mean for this particular game? This particular game and also with all your games. I know that ABBA is more of a European thing, like it's not huge here like it is there, but are you specifically targeting certain markets or is it just kind of you're trying to get everything to land where it lands essentially? Yeah, I think that we really love to work with iconic brands and themes that speaks to us. I think it's really hard for us to work with something that we don't really love. and then as you say it more like happened that way that ABBA proved to be or we knew it was before of course more of a European thing and Australian thing than the US thing so and for Predator and Alien I think US or North America is the strongest market even if if Predatory is quite strong, also in Europe and Australia, I would say. But yeah, it shifts a bit between the themes. But yeah, it will be really exciting to see what people think about this game. Definitely. I think you're going to get quite the response today. We're recording the day before, but this is obviously releasing the day of. And I know a lot of people have been excited for Predator Pinball Machine. I know that it always gets brought up because there was one before that wasn't really done the right way before. One exists in Chicago, and everyone's always like, I've got to go play it. And they realize it's not as great as it should be. And I hope you guys have done justice to this game. Because I think there's a lot of people out there that are just clamoring for Predator Pinball Machine. We made the mistake of last episode or the episode before saying Predator is kind of a bygone license. And the fans have come out in the droves telling us, oh, no, it's alive and well, and it's doing very, very well. And I stand corrected. I will eat the crow on it. And I think you guys have hit the iron while it's hot because people are still in love with Predator. Pricing. Can you tell how many different editions are you doing? What's the pricing on those editions? all those details yeah the we uh we have um we thought we should make it simple to everybody so we just um we decided to make one version of the game this is this is predator pinball basically but then we couldn't resist but to create um an add-on package or the trophy package that we call it. So you can actually, your only sort of decision is if you want that package or not. The game is great as it is. There are no differences playing the game or it's just some add-ons that are really nice in the trophy package if you want that. That package comes with, the game cost, the MSRP for the game is 10,995 US dollars. And the trophy package is $1495. $1495. And in that package you get Shaky Motor and Invisiglass. And then you get the green jungle trim. And you also get controllable RGB lighting on the back of the backbox. That adds to the light show for modes and things like that. in the game so yeah i was gonna say so let me did i hear that correct so you get one edition which is the 10995 but if you want to upgrade to the trophy edition and have those add-ons it's another 1495 dollars exactly yes correct and apart from those four things that that i listed there or mentioned. You also get a quite beautiful wooden ammo box with I think it's called in the flyer I don't remember exactly, but a jungle service kit in there. It's basically a box, a goodie box you could say, with some stuff in it And you also get a limited and exclusive predator poster You can see some of those variants They nice Yeah, those are awesome. They are very 80s, I would say. So that is a great nostalgia. Yeah, so that is the pricing and availability. And we have quite limited production capacities. We are looking at making somewhere around 800 games. So even if the game isn't sort of isn't called limited in that way, it's still going to be quite limited number of games made if I put it that way. so you said 800 that's what you're you're capping this off at yeah yeah okay okay um so i mean obviously if you want to get on this you better get in on it because if there's only 800 i mean that's that's quite the uh the number to to pause it at um so i guess the other question too one one question that's lingering on everyone's mind is with alien there was an alien just an alien package and years later you guys did a Ripley's edition are you hoping to have an Arnold edition in the future because like you said earlier you're still trying to get some stuff signed off you're still trying to get some clips put into the movie or into the game would I guess an Arnold or a full cast edition be something that is a pipe dream in the future there's no there are no plans on having another edition of the game as of now so So what I refer to is mainly to keep improving the content in the game edition that we are launching now. So that is the situation. I think, as I said before, the production capacity is quite limited and it will also be produced under a limited amount of time, I would say. So I don't mean three months or something like that, but it's maybe a year ahead, something like that. So, yeah. So, sorry, when are you going to start producing these? We are actually in production with the game right now. So we are building cabinets and preparing, not only preparing, we are building cabinets. We are in production. but we have some some parts that are have a long lead time especially the molded parts the camp there are two two really really really great a lot of good stuff in the game but really two really great sculpts in the game made by a lady called malin iva son who is a great 3d artist. She made the camp mold on the left side where you have the jeep and the barrels and where the ball comes flying out when it's fired from the minigun. Beautifully painted also. And then also the main toy, the main character, the predator character in the game. She also did that and it's also beautifully detailed and painted in a great way. But those those parts in particular has a really long lead time so we hope we um i should say that we uh the first games will ship mid-august is is because we have to wait those final parts but in the meantime we're building games and preparing games for for shipping out awesome and when do you think we'll see them in the US? Hopefully very soon after that. I expect that some will be air freighted, so it shouldn't be long after that that they start appearing. That is the goal. Awesome. Do you have a show that you're hoping to get to? I assume you'll be at Expo. You guys have been consistently at Expo for the last couple of years. is that going to be probably the first show we see it out or are you going to try to get to one before that? It's a really good question. I am currently, I'm not sure if we can manage something before that, but I really hope so. We are, as I mentioned before, we are partnering up with Aaron and the guys at Fast Pinball. They are attending some shows also, so that they have a better view of the schedule of all the shows in the US, I guess, than me for the moment. Because I'm fully focused on the launch now and things are a little bit crazy for the moment. But the Expo in October is obviously definitely one location where you should be able to play the game. And hopefully before that in many places. but I'm not sure about the show that's all nice well and quick shout out you said Aaron multiple times, Aaron Davis with Fast Pinball great dude everything I've ever worked with him on like just so professional and so great to work with I'm glad to see he's working with you guys on this, so did you just start using him for Predator or has he been on previous projects as well I mean he started working with us through European Ball Corp for Funhaus so that is and I believe that before the Funhaus remake he was obviously involved in the Funhaus 2.0 kit and so but I got to know him some time ago And we are really, really, really excited to work with them. And I'm really grateful that we took this decision to do it for this product. So it's coming out great, I think. I hope so, because like I said, Aaron's a great dude. And obviously, every project they've been on, it's helped elevate that product. And I think that it's a great marriage for pinball, right, with anyone that they can use. Is there anything about this game That we haven't talked about yet That you definitely want to point out Or you just I know you're getting ready for Predator Eve So you're getting ready for bed To wake up for Predator Day Is there anything that you You want to Is there any final thoughts I guess on the game I think we have covered Quite a lot And as I said you really want people to feel that they are sort of stepping into the movie when they hit the start button and play this game. And one thing we haven't touched that much upon is the music in the game, I think. And that is we have the original score from Alan Silvestri, the really iconic main theme. wouldn't have been possible without that, I guess. But we also have a great, great, great sound guy for this project, Olof Olof Gustafsson. He has been elaborating, using that main theme and made a lot of other music that really blends into that. It feels like that music was part of the movie, to be honest. so that is one aspect of the game that I really love also so I'm not sure if people know Olof from before but he's been around for a really long time for those people who were around in the early 90s and had an Amiga, Commodore Amiga computer he was one of the founders of the Digital Illusion company Dice, who later became Electronic Arts, I think. And they kicked off their career with making pinball dreams, pinball fantasies and pinball illusions on the Amiga as computer games. And it's actually Olof who designed those games and made music for those games. So he's always been wanting to make music for real pinball machines. And now he's doing that and he's doing it great, I think. He's also been working on other big titles gaming-wise, and one of them is Battlefield. He worked for that for a long time. And we have been really lucky because we have a lot of weapons in this game and there is a lot of sounds that he's very good at making, except for great music. So it's been a pleasure with that part as well, I think. Awesome. It sounds like you got quite the team together. This product's looking great. I hope people are excited about this. They're ready to get their hands on it. I appreciate you coming on, Daniel. If you want anyone to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of you or Pinball Brothers? The best way of getting a hold of us is to... You can always go into pinballbrothers.com and sign up for the newsletter. Then you will always stay on top of what we are doing. You can also follow us on Facebook. You can always email me on daniel.pimplebrothers.com, of course. Nice. Awesome. If you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com, at Loser Kid Pinball on all the socials. If you enjoyed the content, like, subscribe, comment, all that stuff below. And if you really want to go the extra mile, you can hit us up on our Patreon, Loser Kid Pinball, and you can subscribe to us monthly. Also, Silver Ball Swag, slash Loser Kid. We appreciate you guys hanging in with us, and we hope to see you on the next episode.