sliding into the end of the week and we're getting prepared for the midwest gaming classic this weekend we'll see what new news and events may be happening then coming up also dpx has released some other little well actually they haven't released it jason knapp investigative reporter has revealed some interesting patent filings let's go We are just mangling our way through this week. And here we are with episode number 114 of the Don's Pinball Podcast. I am, as you recognize, The Don. Hello, your friend and your guardian for the next 30 minutes as we explore what's going on in the nefarious world of pinball, much like a botched pinball launch. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. First off, let me just clarify. The last episode I put out, 1-13, was the April Fool's episode. It came out on April 1st. And I've been wanting to do this thing where I kind of act like an over-the-top, pandering sellout influencer dirtbag and just read terrible copy and with fake enthusiasm so all those ad breaks from the last episode that was all just fake and me playing around okay i'm not sponsored by hello fresh nord vpn or my god blue chew or wherever the heck else i was coming up with that was i've gotten all kinds of crazy feedback about that some people were legitimately upset that i had sold out to nord vpn and they were swearing off ever listening again and i'm And, like, number one, my guy, it's not bad. It's not shameful to generate a little bit of side income from the endeavors that we put out on the airwaves. Number two, it was fake, dude. It was a joke, man. You know, maybe my level of meta humor and social commentary is, you know, a bit nebulous, you know. But it was all good fun. I had fun with it. And they were even like, man, when you were reading that copy, you know, you should really try to, you know, dial down the fake enthusiasm. Like, first off, that wasn't reading. That was all off the top of my head, but I was doing it in the style of a character that was reading bad copy poorly. So it was this whole, like, levels of meta stuff that I was doing. It was my foray into some Tim and Eric. I was having a good time and some good fun with it. Most of the people got the joke, at least by the second or third ad break, but no more of that. I'm not doing ad breaks or anything. That was just a joke. Just me having fun and poking some fun at nerd and online culture and what have yous and whatnot. So thanks for that. Hey, today we got our Christmas present early. Well, we were getting this reveal that was supposed to be coming out of Sweden from the Pinball Brothers, or Soul Pinball Brother. I guess that's all it's left. But they were releasing their highly rumored and quasi-anticipated ABBA pinball machine on Saturday. It was going to be 1800, 6 p.m. Sweden time, which was 11 a.m. Central time here on Saturday. Well, they went ahead and just sent stuff out early, I guess. Sandbanged their home launch. I don't know. Maybe they just wanted to get some pictures out there before people go into MGC. Although, for a Swedish-based European pinball company, is just this little Milwaukee event really that substantial? You know, where they were trying to capture some pre-ordered dollars prior to that? I don't know. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But nevertheless, this morning, well, this afternoon when I woke up, I happened to cross some photos fading through my Facebook feed. I guess they released them to Kineticist. Paris Pinball Enthusiast got them out. That's where I saw them first. I shared them around. But the images of ABBA are out. And there are absolutely some fresh hot takes about this game. Now, first off, let's get it out of the way. Theme nobody had asked for, right? 70s bands are awesome, especially in Europe. But ABBA is something that's quite polarizing. I mean, this is sugary gumdrop-type music with absolutely no edge at all. and doesn't seem to have the objective absurdity of the Bee Gees. Oh, God, a Bee Gees pin would have been amazing, just because Barry Gibb is just so nuts. But we got ABBA, okay, and then, you know, grandmas like it, people like it, people loathe it, and a lot more people are kind of like me, just kind of indifferent one way or another. Definitely not a theme that any of us had asked for, but yet, here it is. So at first, my initial take was like, what is going on with these pinball companies? that are producing the machines that they want to make and not really looking at producing the machines that we want to buy and we want to play, as far as when it comes to theme. But, you know, they're going to do what they're going to do, and it's up to us to see if it moves our wallets or not. Now, as the day has gone on, and I looked over the layout, which I'll get to in a moment, it did kind of loosen up a bit when I found out that the limited numbers they're planning on running this game are, 500 and 300 for total 800 total that makes a little bit more sense to me as far as like you know a business opportunity you know if this was the game that they were going to have to you know rely on for the next year and a half of sales boggle the mind that's not the decision i would have made i wouldn't let that out of the the brainstorming session uh but you know maybe this is just a placeholder for their next larger title that'll be coming out or maybe they're looking at what aliens sold uh maybe what queen has sold and kind of came up with somewhere in the middle i don't know but let's talk about some uh layout and stuff because that's fun to do so looking at this game i was like all right where's the rest of it right you know you've seen the pictures by now there's links up online and everything uh there's really only a couple of main interactive elements that are compelling and interesting from a mechanistic standpoint uh chiefly being the the main toy of the game which is this helicopter with a fuck that you will put two balls up in there and then they release out the sides we saw the video of that already that was released a week ago or or even more. Other than that, I'm seeing a captive ball, and mechanistically, that's about it. There's a spinning disco ball, which, okay, but it doesn't really look like the ball is going to be interacting with that unless it launches off of that ramp. And then what initially I thought was a giant crash symbol is actually a gold record up there over that right ramp that 180's around. And that's kind of it. When I look at games of this ilk, and the thing that comes to mind is Elton John, which just released recently. He's also of this era, though he's still current. But, man, that game seemed much more engineered and thrilling and interesting from a gameplay perspective than what I'm seeing here, which is essentially a helicopter and a fan layout in the back of the box. You know, they have their classic Pinball Brothers-type steel ramp, which is okay. It doesn't really add or detract. It's not terribly compelling. You know, powder coating would have been interesting, put some graphics on it or something. But, you know, it's their shiny metal. But they eschewed that for the left-side ramp, where it's plastic now. So we got a plastic ramp. We got a metal ramp. What's going on? I don't know. A couple of habit trails come off of that. There are some interesting ball paths once I was able to dig through in this layout a bit. There's a drop target underneath the helicopter just to the right of that helicopter shot. There's a scoop right in front of it, which I wonder if that'll subway over to this other vertical up-kicking habit trail to the left wire form. But there is a wire form in the back. It looks like it services the helicopter with a drop target in front of it. That's fun. It seems like a neat shot. Go back there and qualify the lock and then shoot the balls in there. And then what do you get? Two balls locked and then you throw a third in there and then that starts the multiball. We'll have to see gameplay-wise. This is just the briefest of first impressions. But the ramps look like they're okay, but there's really only just two of them. And when you look at something like Elton John, which I put strong comparison competition for this game, it seems to be in that same space, same genre, there's just a whole lot more going on. There's an elevation, there's a verticality to the gameplay, with the spiraling plastic ramp, with the rope lights that follow it up there. They really elevate that. There's three flippers on Elton John. There's a tiny dancer that spins around. There's a crocodile mechanism. There's a couple of different ways to lock balls and things. This just seems to be lacking a lot of that. And in my hazy half vision when I was looking at this I was wondering if this was a HomePin release The game I thought about the most when I first saw this was Spinal Tap from HomePin Because it has kind of that same kind of layout. It's got everything that a pinball machine probably should have, but none of it really looks very compelling. Now, I'm sure this is going to shoot a whole lot better than a HomePin would. And the gameplay and code, I'm sure, are going to be much better than what I've seen from that game streamed. But on the whole, I'm like, how does this game compete with contemporaries that are out there? You know, how do you put this up against the $12,000 Elton John? Well, certainly you wouldn't charge those prices. If this game was put in front of me and it was $5,500 to $6,500, I would say, okay, this is kind of making sense. You know, this is a game I could probably put in a family-friendly location. This could go into a dentist's office to a Starbucks or whatever, you know, or some sort of contemporary establishment and would do pretty well. But when I get to the prices here, we're looking at $10,000, $11,000. So they're charging premium level pinball trim levels for this. They already surpassed Labyrinth. How are you going to go ahead and drop ABBA on us and expect to compete against Labyrinth and Looney Tunes and Jaws? In this comparative diaspora that we live in here, this just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. and then once I see that they're producing 300 and 500 of each different edition, okay, nah, I can kind of get it, I can kind of get it. To me, it seems like, you know, the comment I was going to make before I knew the edition sizes, I was going to say, oh, look, this is the second European company to come out, producing machines in small batches. In this case, it was going to be due to demand, I would guess. Of course, the other one being DPX, which is strongly rumored to be coming out with a 500 edition run of John Papadiuk's Alice in Wonderland, which looks incredibly, exponentially more compelling than this does. And then they come to find out, like, oh, yeah, they're only making $500 of the standard and $300 of that limited edition. All right, so let's break it down a little bit here. What are we getting? You're getting two ramps, a disco ball, a plastic gold record that doesn't seem to do anything. There's not two right ramps. It's actually a 180 horseshoe steel ramp that comes down to feed the wire for them on the right. On the left, you get this cool little plastic ramp that looks like it can swirl around at the top, kind of like Cactus Canyon does when you plunge. And like Cactus Canyon, it also has a hole in the middle. So it looks like depending on the strength of your shot up this plastic ramp, the ball can fall down into a little ball guide that releases back into the orbit or continue on down the wire form or maybe roll backwards down the ramp and get straight down the middle. I don't know. I don't know yet. It looks like there's a set of sweepable drop targets on the right side of the helicopter. The last place that we've seen that in a new pin was in Barry O's Barbecue Challenge. So that's nice. I do like the drop targets better than the stand-up targets. especially even on a game like Jaws it helps me keep track of what I've hit so I appreciate that they've put that in there I definitely don't think they've skimped out too much here but honestly man when I look at it, the more and more I look at it it's almost like they took Queen and pulled some of the upper play field out and a couple of the shots and mechanisms tried to lower the bomb and then just kind of put this out there but then again I'm reminded about Stern's Beatles which was kind of a sea witch wasn't it kind of lay out and re-theme Very simple game, old school gameplay, and commanded a high price. So, you know, I think, you know, there could be a market for this thing. Where's that market at? I don't know. Continue around the play field. There's an orbit. Plenty of stand-up targets. Plenty of things to do back there. There's actually four pop bumpers. There's an A, B, B, and an A back there. And they're kind of spread all over. Two are pretty close on the right side, looks like, after a plunge. That's where the balls will come through. And then there's one hidden behind the helicopter, and then one just to the left of the helicopter under that plastic ramp. the plastic ramp's probably there so you can actually see what's going on so i do appreciate that i don't hate the fact that it's not two steel ramps it's one plastic and one steel that that's fine and disco balls can work in pinball deadpool did it to good effect um as far as you know fit and finish of this you're getting some art blades and looks like some shaker motors i looked at the rubric uh you know the specifying like what's exclusive to each edition this this collectors, what they're calling the Voyager Edition or the ABBA Arrival Edition, and they're like the same. Have you looked at this? The NAP Arcade's got all of this great coverage up here, but you can see like everything that comes with it, you know, the back glass, the art, everything. The only thing that seems to differ between these two games is just the cabinet artwork, and that's a little weird. You know, I was thinking for $1,000, I'm going to get, you know, shaker motors and higher end audio and maybe an amplifier, a shooter rod, some stuff, you know, maybe a topper. But no, it looks like both machines are essentially identical, and it's really only a cosmetic art package that's different for that $1,000. I don't find that too terribly compelling. When I do look up at the audio, they are making a point to have a differentiation about this Razorback Plus electronic system. Whatever that means, hopefully it means that there's an amplifier and some decent speakers, because those do translate well into the pinball environment. Something I would like to see. Something I don't like to see, though, is anything really blocking the airflow out of speakers. As I've been upgrading my machines and, you know, pulling out that foam spongy mesh in front of them on the speaker grills, you know, I'm noticing that, you know, anything you put in front of a speaker is going to cause some impedance. So I've taken to just kind of stripping out anything in front of the speaker that I can to get the highest quality audio as I can. And when you look at what's like not even a back glass but like a back acrylic that Pinball Brothers is using, It's essentially that they've drilled a bunch of holes and made a plastic speaker grill, which would work at a drive-thru movie theater or a drive-in movie theater speaker. But for something like this, you really don't want any impedance from the audio. And I'm thinking if there's eighth to quarter inch or three-sixteenth inch acrylic as a grid between that speaker and you for a music pin, it just seems kind of a weird way to go about it. I know they took some blowback with Queen when it looked like the speaker grills were just cut right over the crotch of Brian May and the drummer. Or maybe it was the guitarist. And then the way that you pull the back acrylic off is you stick your fingers in these holes that are right there. And they were right at crotch level. I mean, it was like, you know, go ahead and get your fingerprints on Queen there to change the thing. So they've kept that the same for here. It's just kind of a weird look. I would love to see everything cut out and some nice lit speakers in there and something that just conveys audio very well with a rudimentary metal grid to keep, you know, on location kids keep their fingers out of the speakers. But otherwise, yeah, I just don't terribly get this design. Maybe their sound engineer has found a way to, you know, merge the sine waves so they convey out of these holes in a way that doesn't offer a lot of impedance. That's a lot of ranting on this, but, you know, that's where it is. I don't think I'm rushing out to a pre-order at ABBA. I think that's the take-home point. Man, this art on the lower trim level version just looks completely bonkers, like some kind of straight out of the late 1980s aerobics craze, man. I half expect Alan Thicke to come out rapping on stage looking at this. The rest of the art is fine. The Voyage art is actually pretty cool. I definitely like that version better. But, again, do I like it $1,000 better? No. Do I like it, you know, the $6,000 more than I would spend getting a Deadpool Pro used right now? No. Also no. So who is this game for? this game's for somebody that just has to have something new, wants to take a gamble on this, take a chance on the ABBA, I don't know. Are there ABBA super fans out there? A lot of the detractors that I've been seeing online this morning have said, well, Don, you know, wait. This is probably going to be really big in Europe. And, you know, that was one of the first things that I thought of, too. Like, maybe I don't completely understand the European market, and maybe there's a big hunger for this. So I've been doing some reaching out over the last few months as this game was heavily rumored to be coming out. And checking with the French contingent of enthusiasts, the UK, and even some Scandi folks, they're all just as bewildered as we are over here. Who was asking for this theme? Who was this for? I don't know. I did feel a lot better about it, and their decisions are starting to make a lot more sense once I see that they only looking at a maximum size of 800 for this Okay okay Their expectations aren their expectations aren completely lofty Like you know they not looking at making 5 of these This isn Guns N Roses This isn't Elton John. It is a fair step past Spinal Tap. And, you know, it looks like it'll be fun to play at shows and things. I think I'm more enthusiastic about this over Queen, which, you know, my last times playing that at Texas Pinball Festival was just completely underwhelming. And, you know, maybe the machines weren't set up right. Maybe the flippers were weak or maybe they were hot, but I just think that layout just didn't really offer anything substantial or compelling to keep playing. And will ABBA hold it? I don't know. I would like to shoot it. I would like to play it, but, you know, for sure I would say Alien is their strongest title. And, you know, if they're going to stick around, I want to see some more from them. Let's move over to the Netherlands because, you know, there's some big news coming out of Dutch Pinball. So, you know, they finished up their big Lebowski run. They're rumored to have Back to the Future next as their, for lack of a better word, cornerstone release. But they've spurred off another production facility across the street, expanding their campus footprint for DPX, right? The Dutch pinball exclusive brand. So this will be a run of 500 games they're making. It's going to be Alice in Wonderland, John Papadiuk's design. Jason Knapp did some sleuthing, as he does, looking at trademark filings and was able to find registered trademarks from somebody in the Netherlands who apparently is associated with Dutch Pinball for Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. And what the heck was the other one? Magic Girl. All right, so it's been no secret that Magic Girl has been in development by a team in the Netherlands trying to get this game from kind of concept to reality. It's totally a cursed project. And for the most part, when it came to Raza and anything from Deep Root, I was kind of like, this stuff, these properties, they're cursed, man. Just let them die, bury them in the dirt, put a wooden stake in the ground, and just leave it alone, right? Leave in the pet cemetery, don't let it come back. But now that I see that Dutch Pinball is involved in it, these are people that do know how to make machines, and they have some passionate coders that went ahead and took on the Veggie Girl project to begin with to try to make this game even playable. So, you know, now I'm thinking, okay, there were definitely some criminal elements involved and some unsavory and unethical practices going on at Deep Root and everybody, you know, in Papaduke's periphery. Okay, we know the stories there. But there were a lot of other people that were artists that did put some time and effort into these projects and then, you know, through no fault of their own, like, just got shelled and aren't ever going to see the light of day. So the fact that these games may come out in a playable form that consumers can actually purchase and then enjoy, I think that's worthwhile. I think that will best serve the people that put their work into these things, especially Zombie Yeti's Art of Magic Girl. It's some of the best ever. I've got the trans light myself of Magic Girl just because it is so awesome looking. So if they do come out in small runs and they do get to end consumers, I think there's at least a little bit of justice for the artists that put in the time and did the work to create their product to get some light of day. At the same time, though, completely valid to say, look, there's people that invested in this heavily early on, completely lost their shirt because they were essentially swindled out of their cash and really had nothing to show for it. Now, a group of people did get together, and they won a lawsuit against John Papadiuk and his assets. And so somehow in this turmoil, maybe as whoever at Dutch Pinball bought the rights or worked with Turner Pinball to get these assets, maybe some of that money can filter back to help backfill some of the people that lost out and help fulfill some of their judgment. That would be some justice there, too. So I think there's some overall silver lining more good than bad in this. I can't wait to see Alice in Wonderland. That looks like some compelling, interesting gameplay based just on the artwork that I've seen, the pedigree of the designer, and that foam core paper form machine that we've seen, that mock-up. So I can't wait to see some more there. I don't know if I'm jumping at the gate to put down under $15,000, but probably $15,000 for this machine. You know, sight unseen just because there's only 500 of them. But I think the number seems right. The theme seems right. It seems like an interesting product, and I'm glad to see it come to market. And if it means that we might get some more Magic Girl in the world in a form that's actually playable and compelling and works, all the better. And then, hey, what kind of justice would that be to finally see Raza make the light of day from somebody? you know and I remarked earlier that you know look it's being made by people that aren't crooks and it was like well you know go back five years ago they didn't quite have that favorable representation and to that yes absolutely valid so that's what we are with DPX here some rumors but probably strong I think we'll see them when will we see them probably over the next several years I don't think we're going to see three games from DPX coming out this year but let's see what goes on and what happens and what have you now New segment, Don's Market Watch. So this will be an area where we can talk about products that are out in the marketplace. Not necessarily Win Schilling. These aren't sponsors of mine, but just things that have come across the news deck here at the worldwide headquarters for Don's Pinball Podcast, Pinball Market Research Desk. First off, this morning I saw a Elvira House of Horrors Premium listed, and it looked a little bit familiar to me because it was my own. It was my project where I had bought a brand new Elvira House of Horrors Premium, and I decided to try to make it over to look as awesome as that Elvira 40th Anniversary Edition, because at the time, Elvira really wasn't being run at all, and the 40th Anniversary Edition was $20,000 plus, and I wasn't definitely going to step in and do that. So I hired an artist, and we came up with graphics that looked really similar to what was featured on the 40th Anniversary Edition. I got them printed up, and we redid the whole cabinet in purple, changed out the trim, I even employed the Pinball Refinery to do the same type of powder coat as the 40th Anniversary Edition, and they came through and did that as well. And so it was just kind of a passion project for mine to try to put as many cool little mods and accoutrements into this game as I could, and then I sold it off to my friend Danny. Well, he's had it for, gosh, it has to be about a year now, and he's looking to move it on, and he's got it listed for $10.08. Now, new in box, Elvira Premiums are still going for $10.05, Although on the market, you can find them as cheap as $8,700 if you want a vanilla cabinet with nothing in it. Otherwise new from the manufacturer, MSRP is around $10,500, which is where he has this priced here. There's probably a little wiggle room in there. But if you want to take a look at a game that not only has all of my custom graphics in it, my first passion homebrew project of wrapping a cabinet, but also comes with pinwoofer speakers, the $400 ones with the lighting package, what else does he have in there? Medicinal mods. These were out of print, out of production, and going for like $600 sometimes on Pinside. Those are there as well, as well as just every other thing you could want. It's got my Crypt Mod in there. It comes with a topper, alternate back glass, all of it. Go check it out. It's on Pinside. I put a link on my Facebook page. Just want to share that just because I think it's interesting. And if I was in the market for Novira House of Horrors, this is the kind of thing I would go for because all the work has already been done. So check it out. What else do we got? um i remember the missing pin is a new company that a friend of a friend has launched here uh essentially it's a uh gear and accessory company for the pinball marketplace and they came up with their first product which is a pinball leg bag um so they gave me one of these units to kind of test out and try and i've been moving some games around the neighborhood and basically what it is is a way for you to take the legs off your pinball machine when you're wrapping it up to move it whether it is a ticket to a show take it to a customer take it to location and if you've got some nice powder coated legs just wrapping them in a shipping blanket can cause them to get scratched and things so this is a fabric bag that has a lane to put each one of the legs in and then the whole thing wraps up clips together, has a shoulder strap and even a spot to put your wrench. I told them I'd mention it because they gave it to me to try out I tried it out, I like it, I dig the thing and they're only about $115 to $135 depending on what kind of custom colors you want to get and TheMissingPin.com is their website. They'll have some at MGC this weekend if you're interested. So go check it out. Buy it if you want. Don't buy it if you don't want. That's fine. I like the product and it working good for me So there you go What else have we got Okay this is pinball podcast stuff I got a brand new t I got designed I got one of one It an extra large It got a Dawn pinball podcast and an alternative logo And I thought you know I bought it just for myself but then I haven't worn it yet. And I was thinking somebody may enjoy this out there. So $30 is the price for a t-shirt. I'll deliver it to you anywhere in the U S and probably Canada too. But what I decided to do, since this is a one of one and I was feeling a little saucy on my live stream, I decided I'd sell this t-shirt and I would throw in a Godzilla shooter rod that I made as well, for free! You can have that. And I'll even throw in a handful of stickers and coasters and things that I got. So, if you want a $30 t-shirt anyway, and you want to get a shooter rod, it would work for Godzilla. Heck, put it on James Bond, I don't care. But if you're interested in that, and you want to help support the show, just email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com and tell me you want it. I'll get it out to you today, man. What else do we got? Oh, yes, this is huge. Okay, I'm glad you listened this long to hear this. We're going to let that marketing music there fade out. We're doing a contest this month, the Don's Pinball Podcast. This is free stuff for you, free awesome stuff for you. And this is in conjunction with Cab Custom, guy on Facebook who makes custom laser cut pinball armor. So I bought myself a set of his Jaws pinball armor because it's awesome. It's got the bite taken out of it, the Jaws logo, the silhouette of the girl swimming. It's all in there. It's really cool. It's out at the powder coders right now. He sent me another one. I have a set of two of them, one for myself and one to give away, courtesy of Cab Custom, just for mentioning him on the podcast. I buy my armor from him. I love it. Instead of just getting lollipop rails, it's laser cut, it's cool, and it's bougie, and I kind of like that, right? So I have another set to give away to somebody. I'm giving it away this month on April 30th. I'm going to do a live stream. I'm going to draw a name from everybody that's been entered, and that's who's going to win it. I'll ship it out to you for free, courtesy of me and Cab Custom. So how do you win? How do you enter? You enter for free. Also, you just have to email me at donspinballpodcast at gmail.com. I decided to make it fun. I thought it would be interesting if you actually own a Jaws Pinball machine if you win this armor so you can put it on there. So I said, okay, just take a picture of yourself and your machine and email it to me. And then all satisfactory entries on April 30th of this month that's coming up in just four weeks, I'll go ahead and we'll randomly draw one on a live stream. And then I'll go ahead and mail it out. And you get free armor. And all you have to do is take a picture of yourself with the Jaws Pinball machine. Now, it doesn't have to be your machine. Go find one at a location. Jaws is everywhere. Go find a friend. Google a picture and Photoshop it, really. I don't care. But just email me to enter. You have until April 29th to get it to me to my inbox. And, yeah, you got a pretty good chance of winning some free pinball armor. It will be powder-coated polar white as well, just like the LE. So that's awesome. It's going to feel great under the fingers, and it's going to look great on every trim level. You know, unless if you have the LE. I think it's still better than the LE Armor just because there's more going on with it. But I wanted to bring that out to you. Very excited I'm able to do that. So thanks, Frank with Cab Custom, for hooking me up with that to give away to you guys. How about that? That's fun. Otherwise, what else is in the news? I think we've gone on just about long enough. There's some rumored titles to talk about. There's this weird little tidbit of information that came out of Stern Pinball. They have this Insider All Access subscription model something or other that they do where basically you give them $40 a year, and then it gives you access to purportedly, you know, background-exclusive podcasts and news and information and also the chance to buy an LE directly at the drop or whatever. But as it turns out, there's no content that they put out at all for this thing. They charge you $40 a year for this thing. It gives you the chance to go and just be able to, like, snipe one of, you know, five to ten LEs that they sell directly, which just directly benefits Stern, really. And in the market, how it is now, if you want an LE, you can pretty much get on a list with any distributor and get yourself one. So there's just about no benefit to this product, but they're still selling it. Well, there's an added little bit, a little twist of the knife in the ribs here. They're also charging a shipping fee for your membership in this all-access, insider-connected, whatever it is. So you pay $40 plus another $20 for shipping. Now, there's nothing being shipped out to you. This is strictly an online membership in a club that offers just about no tangible benefit at all. And that is just completely silly. Why are they doing this? I mean, this is just a way to give free money to Stern without even giving anything back. So the model works exactly like the Spooky Fang Club does, where you can be one of those bloodsuckers, you know. Although that comes with tangible benefits, and you do pay a shipping, or shipping is included with that. But you get a yearly gift basket mailed out to you, souvenir mugs or a laser-cut metal key holder for your wall, or you get something from Spooky for being a member, and then it allows you to purchase early, which back in the Halloween and Rick and Morty days really meant something, because you could get your order in before those games sold out. The market is what the market is, but imagine paying that money every month, and there's just zero benefit or point to doing it. What the heck is going on, Stern? That was crazy. So I want to take a minute and talk about that. Okay, the price is $39.99. Shipping was $20.55. Are you sending out a T-shirt, Stern? Come on. You got T-shirts? You can buy it in bulk? Come on. Hook somebody up with like a welcome packet or something for that. So there was an angry customer that actually called his credit card company and got it reimbursed. I thought this was an April Fool's joke. And he's like, no, no, credit card companies don't do April Fool's jokes, man. This was like, what the heck? So that is craziness. And I don't understand it. What am I missing? Please let me know. at Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. And jump on the Facebook page. We've got over 1,200 followers now. We're having a fun time over there in our community, and it's just good fun. All right, MGC is coming up this weekend. Tomorrow is Friday. That's the kickoff. There's not really much going on. The vendor floor is not open on Friday. There's some after-hours events or something going from 6 p.m. to 10. I'm going to be showing up on Saturday. I'm going to be there all day. I'm going to be probably most of the day there on Sunday. I'll be wandering around the show floor. If you see me, say what up. I'll have a bucket full of stickers or something. I will have some Jaws buttons on me, so if you're on the Patreon and want to join and want a Jaws start button, go ahead and do that. Bump into me. I'll hook you up. I've got some Black Knight Sword of Rage shooter buttons that I made as well that I'll be giving out. I've got one person that's already said he wants to meet up and grab himself a free button. Everything else, these are free to anybody on the Patreon. It's $5 a month. Patreon.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast. I'm putting exclusive episodes and things up there. I started a new series that I'm calling Don's Story Time, or Story Time with Don, where I'm doing an episode where I talk about each machine that I've owned kind of in detail. A deep dive, if you were, but not so much just related to the gameplay, but more like where did I find this machine, where was my headspace at when I bought it, what did I buy it for, how did it hold up, and then where did it go? Is it still in the collection? Did it get sold? What did it get sold for? What did it get traded for? Just to give some background, and also just some more personality and things. People really seem to dig it. The feedback has been great, so I'm going to continue that. I don't know what kind of frequency they'll come out, but probably every couple of weeks there'll be another one until I run out of machines. So I think that will do it for this episode of Don's Pinball Podcast. This was number 114. We're in 2024. We're having a great time in pinball. There's so many great games that are rumored to be coming out soon. What do you think about ABBA? Go ahead and make a post on the Facebook page and let me know what you think. Otherwise, as I see cool stuff in the market, I'll keep talking about it. Anything else? I think that's about it. But email jeff at madpinball.com and go ahead and get on a list for a game that's coming out. Some of these rumored titles. That Metallica Spike 3. A Pokemon. A, what is it? X-Men 97. Whatever's next from Jersey Jack. You want to get a Matrix? Go get on this Matrix list. I'm sure he has one. Whether the machine's real or not, who knows? But you'll be positioned in a good spot where you won't have to pay $40 for an all-access membership to get a chance to snipe and purchase one of those. Anything else? Don's Pinball Podcast back in effect. 114 I'm writing the checks I'm paying some people to make content for me I get a mountain t-shirt delivery straight to you the fans that's why I do this plus it's fun and I like the sound of my own voice in the headstead MGC this weekend come up and say what up even say whirlwind I'll give you a handshake or a dab later