Are you even ready, everybody, for another episode of Don's Pinball Podcast? We're up to number 42. Welcome. I got a lot of requests to do this tonight. There's a lot of speculation about the Harry Potter machine that we're going to get into. That's basically what this episode is, and I'm going to bring it to the fans because that's what they demand from me. Otherwise, I got some mod news I want to get to. What's up, everybody? How's your Monday going? Did you listen to everybody else? You still got some time left in your commute. Well, grab that lukewarm coffee because we are going to hit it right up. Piss out, piss out. Man, how is your Monday going? Any major news items or anything that came in? What's that, child wizard? You're a hairy wizard. So out of seemingly nowhere today, the Mr. Great Joe Kamikow, The guy from the Kapow production company that the dude, like, Mr. I'm-Gonna-Get-Franchises-I'm-Gonna-Get-Licenses, went ahead and just randomly posted on his Facebook page a little message about Jersey Jack Pinball, New Jersey's finest, Chicago's newest machine building company, has secured the license to the unobtainium Harry Potter. Like, what the heck, man? Jersey Jack is right in the middle of getting out their Godfather game. It's in production. The CEs haven't even started leaving the factory yet. And then here he goes, totally blowing their next thing. What in the heck is going on with this? I'm going to read the quote here for you guys. Everybody's been commenting about this. And you know what? I'm everybody too. So here we go. This is what popped up on Mr. Joe Kamigas' Facebook page today. Hey, pinball fans, here's the scoop. Jersey Jack has secured the license for Harry Potter for pinball. No waiting. No speculation. They locked it in. It's like, what, homie? Are you for real? Are you totally blowing their whole Harry Potter deal here? So, obviously, the response was immediate, and it was mixed. It was basically one of three different camps of thought on this. First off, this is just some guy trolling. This is somebody that, like, you know, spoofed his account, created a Facebook account, totally happens. Post this thing just to rile people up. You know, this wasn't like a normal like hacker or somebody that would like, you know, infiltrate your Facebook page or spoof it to do something. Because this would have to be someone who's like such a pinball nerd that they would know that this would actually, you know, get people to react. So that's one thing like it was just completely fake. The other thing is it's his real page, but somebody got on there and posted something, you know, I don't know. You know, this is someone, someone nefarious there. Maybe he left his phone somewhere and, you know, instead of showing, you know, taking a picture of their butt and putting it on his account, like friends do, uh, they posted this, you know, troll to Jersey Jack. Uh, you know, the other thing is maybe it's legit and it's real. Uh, maybe this guy was working on the license and lost out sour grapes and posted this. So I went ahead and I'm going to look at it that way first. Okay. So if this was a total fake account, um, which the post lasted for about seven to nine hours today and then was deleted, um, it was shared and then disappear. That's how I noticed, but I had got the receipt. So I did post it on my Facebook page. If you want to see the post for yourself, it's still there living, uh, La Vida Loca. Um, but if this was, you know, a spoof account, once it was found, the whole account would have been deleted and it wasn't, you know, his page was still there. Just his post was missing. Uh, so then the other thing, you know, if somebody had gotten onto his legit account, posted this nefariously, he would have deleted it and then posted a follow-up. Hey guys, by the way, if anybody saw that, you know, that wasn't really me. Someone got into my account, you know, the dog stepped on my phone, whatever, something like that. Neither of those really happened. So I think now we're getting to the point that this thing looks to be legit, especially because the Mr. Joe Kamikow later in the day did start showing up in the Pinside thread, which was all abuzz with every kind of just perspective you could imagine, right? You know, and he was in there, you know, posting like, well, you know, I'm just, I'm speculating like all you guys do, And if that was the case, I kind of think the response would have been more immediate. I mean, for this to come 12 hours later, it's kind of like, I was just joking, guys. I can only imagine what is going on behind the scenes at Jersey Jack today. So apparently this was a real post from the dude, okay? Now, this is the first brush with Harry Potter. The Jersey Jack has had Mr. Jersey Jack Winari in the last few months or so. Posted a selfie of himself on his social medias. and in the background he had a picture you know he's in front of a mural i don't know if it was like the warner brothers lot um you know but there was a a mural of uh wizard of oz willy wonka and then there was also a ron weasley peeking out there like there was a harry potter thing there too so was he like tongue-in-cheek teasing or does he know that the speculation runs wild and he was just trolling i mean either one is equally true um but for them to then drop this i mean this is looking like it's probably more true than it's not so take that for what it is i mean nothing is substantiated until we get the you know fist pumping video with the guy and his daughter um in the reveal video from jersey jack themselves but let's talk about this license for a little bit um now supposedly everybody knows this but you know jk rowling very controlling about her property you know um and who gets to license it uh reportedly she doesn't want to have her characters associated with anything dingy like bars and pinball gets associated with bars and adult entertainment and such and whatnot. But I'd heard somebody mention that there's a Harry Potter slot machine, like in casinos, and that would blow that theory right out of the water. But I went and looked, and I can't find one, not an official one. I mean, if you Google, you can find, you know, Harry Potter-themed slot machines, but they either you know online gambling games or like custom things someone made themselves but not like something in wide release not like a Munsters slot machine or Elvira slot machine or Pirates of the Caribbean or even Wizard of Oz you know or other licenses that we seen at pinball So I haven't found one, you know, like a Harry Potter theme franchise slot machine. Maybe there's Fantastic Beasts. I didn't Google that. But, you know, I think, you know, if anybody can nail down this license, it's, you know, the people that, you know, run in these circles. So Jersey Jack obviously has a relationship with Warner Brothers. You know, there was the thought, you know, would you go after, if you were making a Harry Potter pinball machine, would you go after the books and the literature? Similar to how, you know, this Venom rumor is rumored to be the comic book Venom and not movie Venom. So then you don't have to deal with Sony licensing and everything. You can go strictly with Marvel, who Stern has a good relationship with. So, yeah, we'll get into all that. But, you know, this is a huge franchise and, you know, everybody's got a price. Everything's motivated by money. You would need to have a successful run of this machine to probably compensate for the higher price that you'd have to go into in terms of licensing. But I could see it happen. I don't think it's as unobtainium as other people are thinking. If Universal Studios can go ahead and get the rights to build three-dimensional walkthrough interactive rides and such of her properties, then I think it's open for pinball. especially you know if she's looking to garner some favor or you know if she's kind of come around to like what pinball really is you know it's in the home market it's in league play it's in bars yes but it's also in arcades and it's family friendly and and fits you know I mean heck Toy Story just came out so come on so whatever I'm gonna I'm gonna leave that where it is and we'll see where that goes but let's speculate here a bit on what kind of Harry Potter machine you would make now for sure you'd have to go for the movies that's you know in literature Sure, the books are always generally better than the films just because they have to be adapted and truncated. But the juggernaut powerhouse of licensing with Harry Potter is overwhelmingly featuring the characters from the movies. Now, there are seven films of this. There's a ton of content. And so there's no way you could include all seven books of movies in a pinball machine without taking one little piece from each thing, like one cake topper from each movie. You know, Goblet of Fire, A Chamber of Secrets, an Azkaban, a Half-Blood Prince Feather, you know, Rise of the Order of the Phoenix and whatnot, Sorcerer's Stone and all that, and just, like, sprinkle it through the play field. So I don't think that would quite work. When I was thinking about this, I initially thought, you know what, what if you just did the first three Harry Potter films? Those are the ones that by far most people have seen, even people that are not even really fans of Harry Potter but have casually come across it. They've seen the first movie, probably bits of the second one with Moaning Myrtle. everybody knows that and then you know Prisoner of Azkaban the later half you know doesn't really make it a much of an appearance even in the theme park rides and shows and movies and such it's like you know 60 percent uh Sorcerer's Stone the first one and then you know maybe 20 percent split between the the second and third movie maybe there's a sprinkling of something after that but hitherto now we haven't really seen that so I would say to focus initially I was thinking focus on the first three um movies and that should give you everything you need give you Privet Drive give you the, you know, Harry's room underneath the stairs, Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Nocturne Alley, Diagon Alley, and a couple of cauldrons and we're done. You know, and then you could really fill it in with the modes, right? So the first three movies had the kids, they were getting older in each movie, but you know, didn't really incorporate the teen ones. You could draw from that if you wanted to, or maybe that's a way that you can save money on licensing. So an interesting thought occurred to me. As these children aged, their celebrity status increased as well as the movies went on. And so then they would have gone back and renegotiated contracts and had more and more control over their likenesses. But when they started, like remember, when the first Harry Potter movie came out, every young adult novel series was trying to become a franchise, right? You had the C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian, and then Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe. You had the Golden Compass. Gosh, there were so many other ones. Hunger Games came out of that. That was probably the second most successful one. But there was like that Percy Jackson and the Olympians that no one saw. That's kind of like the American Pinball theme level. That's my Legends of Valhalla. But you know, so these kids initially, you know, the Sorcerer's Stone could have been a one and done if it wasn't popular. So I think, you know, these kids being as young as they were, you know, not really having made a name for themselves. I think the ownership of the license from that first film is probably not as strong as it then got by the end, you know, try to get Daniel Radcliffe now, I mean, you'd be paying out the nose. So that's why I would think that the first two to three films, which would be Sorcerer's Stone, Philosopher's Stone in the UK, Chamber of Secrets, Moaning Myrtle, and The Basilisk, and then also Prisoner of Azkaban, you know that's you know serious blacks and that and all that um that would encompass plenty of characters to make like three different pinball machines so uh initially i thought you know limited to that the license would probably be cheaper because you could probably take advantage of the fact that the children were more naive then you know that's a horrible thought to think of but when it comes to actually putting into production a license of this sort that's probably the kind of angle you'd have to go over and then you know as the shower went on that i was thinking this in because this is where I do most of my thinking. I got to thinking about Pirates of the Caribbean that Jersey Jack made. It's like a game that takes place within the universe of Pirates of the Caribbean without really being any one specific place in time or story. You've got all the awesome mechanisms in there You got the English ship You got the Black Pearl the rocking ship up there the pop bumpers with the barrels on them you got a plastic whirlpool you got the Calypso gobble scoop and you got Davy Jones locker in the back to lock balls There's all these little things that were borrowed from the films without being one specific area. You're not in that treasure cave at the end. You're not in Port Royal for the whole game. It's just kind of encompassing everything. so the way that you would probably do this or at least my approach would be to create a game that takes place within this mythical realm without really being any one place in particular and that's the only way you can incorporate this because what do you have to have i mean if you're going to make a harry potter machine you have to do this or not at all you've got to have hogwarts you've got to have privet drive where harry starts you know you've got to have diagon alley um hogsmeade probably needs to be included. And so then maybe you get some pop bumpers with cauldrons on them, and there's like your Nocturne Alley area that leads into Diagon Alley. Maybe there's an upper play field like Wizard of Oz. That's like the Hogwarts upper play field area. And then you have to have London. Hogwarts Express has to be in there. You could probably have like a Hogsmeade area. You have to have a Forbidden Forest too. So maybe that's a second upper play field. But, you know, like make these sections of the machine. It would have to have upper playfields probably too, just like Wizard of Oz kind of, I'm thinking of Wizard of Oz layout, but with these, these mechanisms and these themes, you know, maybe the pop bumper forest is the forbidden woods or whatever, but you have to have a nocturnality area with cauldrons, you know, so you theme it like that. And then the way that you tie in each of the stories is through modes, you know, like if we look at Foo Fighters, the modes are, you know, all the different cities that you go to. And so the each mode takes place in the same play field but you know one of the modes you know you're hitting you know shots uh the other one you're hitting the spinner mostly and then the shots the one you're hitting targets you know or look at godzilla right godzilla's got fully fleshed out code now when you're battling monsters i mean ebora you're hitting the spinners that's really what you're looking at spin the spinners and then hit the pop bumper you know but with gaigan you're hitting the ramps and that's really all you're focusing on so each mode which could borrow from major plot points major scenes from each movie playing out on the screen and maybe you can incorporate a screen into the playfield too um just so you know you have that you know visual uh stimuli um but then the modes kind of incorporate different areas and maybe with the lighting the jersey jacket is fantastically known for you can highlight different areas of the playfield so that you know the you know battling the troll or something occurs in the hogwarts upper playfield and so the lights are kind of focused up there um you know when you have to go collect everything that Harry needs for school. Maybe you're down in the Diagon Alley area trying to hit all the targets to get his cauldron and Hedgewig his owl and his wand shop. And then maybe you shoot the nine and three quarters spinner on the train platform to board the train to Hogwarts and that ends that mode. And so each little region of the play field could be a section in a mode from the movie. So that's kind of where I came down as. Either they just kind of pick and choose little bits of things from all the movies and throw it all together and find a way to make it work. Or they went with the first three movies because the licensing is probably cheaper with those and then kind of direct it that way. Or they go with the Pirates of the Caribbean approach where you just kind of make this pinball machine inspired by themes within the lore. And then each area is brought to life through modes, and that's how it lives. So that's how I could see it going forward and how that would work. So what would it be? I talked about that. When would it come? Like he didn't release this information like six weeks from announcement. I mean, they're not going to wrap up the Godfather CEs and then all of a sudden just boom, here's Harry Potter fist pumping video. Get ready, guys. So this is probably early. It's probably two years out. Who's going to make it? I don't know. Eric or the Shao Kahn guy that works at JJP? You know, one of the two. You know, Eric, it seems like he's really just finished up Godfather and it's out. Maybe Godfather had been done for a while. and while he's doing the promotion now, he's heavily at work on the next game and he could be doing this. I think any of the designers that they have now, except for, you know, Lord Luller Snape, you know, Severus Lawler, Severus Pat. I'll come up with a Harry Potter name for him. You know, either one of those guys could probably throw this together. But I wouldn't imagine seeing it before, like, 2025 when Epic Universe opens. And maybe you could have it coincide with the new Harry Potter expansion area that's going to happen at the new Universal Park. It's opening in 2025. That would seem to be a great marketing tie-in. That is a release date that would make sense. It fits the time period. There would be some synergistic promotion there. So I could see that working. So I'm going to go ahead and call it because I have no information. I have no idea if this is even real. I don't know if Joe Camacow just had a couple of margaritas and went wild because that's what he does. But let's just go on record now saying that Harry Potter, theme inspired from the films, probably leaning heavily from the first three films if it even incorporates things from the other ones and if it does it's probably through code and modes uh target date of 2025 to coincide with the grand opening of universal's epic universe in orlando florida boom there we go this i just cracked this whole thing wide the crap open aren't you glad you're listening to me aren't you glad there's another voice within the pinball podcast space so when you you know eclipse and run out of everything else to listen to and uh you know orbel albert hasn't put it up his uh you know coffee choked episode from Nova Scotia. You got me in your ear and I'm just your constant friend here several times a week um, with a Patreon for five bucks. As an aside, I've been putting up some content on the Patreon. Don't you want to peek behind the curtain? Only five bits of gander. Go ahead and take a look. Uh, Don's Pinnable Podcast on Patreon. Google me. All right. What else have we got So mod news I all about the mods You know I like playing around I like decorating my dollhouse What can I say So my boy Hans out in Los Angeles is sending me out a mod to try out I so excited He's created a new mod for Rush, the pinball machine, themed after the Canadian band Rush. So, what this mod is, is it's about eight different albums that are all printed and then placed on wood, on an acrylic background, and then get bolted to the back of the playfield. and it incorporates lights in there and kind of lights up all the different albums and things. It looks decorative. It looks sweet. I'm curious to try it out. And wouldn't you know, in exchange for a shout-out, he's sending me a review copy. Now, he's sending me a review copy to borrow. I'm not getting a free one. I'm going to check it out. I'm going to review it. I'm going to give you my honest opinion, and then I'm going to send it back to him. So, you know, I'm not just getting stuff for free and shill, shill, shill. Though, you know, I do have a price if you guys want to get at me. So I'm excited for that, to review it. it's already listed up on Pinside, selling for $80. I don't have any other promotional tie-ins or anything, but I'm excited to go try that out. And man, dang it, if I like the dang thing, I'm just going to set in the money and keep it. I don't think that'll mean anything that he would get upset about. In other news, I've got this fire-blasting light-up Godzilla toy that I'm putting into my Godzilla. So a close associate of the Stumbler Pinball guys, oh God, what's his name i got it written down here jazz boosh on uh pin side has created the atomic godzilla so for the godzilla really for the the pros premiums and le's uh there's that godzilla either flat plastic or in the upper trim levels he's a three-dimensional sculpt and he just sits back there chilling a static model a static sculpt uh behind the bridge and so what this mad lad has done is designed and a new sculpt with leds incorporated into his uh his back uh razor uh what does godzilla got run on his back. It's almost like Stegosaurus scale things. But anyway, they all light up blue and different cool colors, like in that Stumbler Lolly vibe. And then it's also his mouth lights up with fire and things. So it looks super cool. The sculpt is way more detailed. It exactly matches Zombie Yeti's artwork on the Playfield version of Godzilla, like the kind of Ripley Corduroy look. It's also bigger, you know, I'd say like 15 to 20% taller than the actual sculpt that comes from Stern. So I saw this first about six months ago, I think on Pinside. And it was one of those things where like, all right, I'm gonna throw my name in on the list. I don't know if I'll ever get to get one. It looks like I'm late to the party, whatever. Well, I just got contacted and he was doing another run of them. And my number came up and he's like, do you want it? And I'm like, I guess. So I gave him my $225 because that's how much this thing costs. Oh, I spent so much money on mods, my goodness. Anyway, this thing has showed up to my house. Now I'm still out in Ohio, but that Godzilla box is sitting there. So when I get home, I'm going to throw this bad boy in and then I'll go ahead and give it a review. Now there's videos up. He's been shipping these out. People have been getting them. People have put them in there. Gonzo's Pinball Flipperama has got a video up talking about the must-have mods for Godzilla. So he's got some video of it. So if you want a really cool looking light-up Godzilla that matches Zombie Yeti's artwork, this boy's got it. and it's got that kind of like Stumbler Lolly light-up LED kind of theme there. So the lights look great. It's not just a blinky-blinky. I mean, it's like this cool dynamic effect up and down his back and in his mouth. So, you know, doesn't look like it has anything to do by adding gameplay or functionality, but dang if it doesn't look nice. So I'm going to throw that in my Godzilla, and I'll give a review on that. Maybe I'll do a little live stream when I get that in and the Rush mod, and I'll just, you know, show it off. So I don't know what else I have. My boy Hans, he's got a company called The Games People that he's selling mods on. I collaborated with him on my other Rush mod that I was getting out there for a while for the drumsticks. Now it's available through him as a package with the drumsticks as well. So that's fantastic. So thanks, Hans. That's great. You get a – oh, man. Hang on. Yeah, this is like Low Energy Monday, man. I've been going hard all weekend. But that's the news from Lake Wilbegon for what I have from my perspective on it. You know, I sat and listened to everybody else. I listened to Kaneda's perspective on it. I listened to the Pinball Show's Patreon special about it. And, you know, here's mine. But I think I'm on to something about the timing of this. You know, if Kamikau is really upset about losing the license, it must have just happened. And if the license just got got, then they're going to be at the preliminary stages of now. maybe they have a white wood, but now they're really going to start putting the assets in there and start working on the supply chain, the sculpts, and how to implement this stuff. The kind of things you would wait on until you knew the license was secured. So then that gives us like 18 months to two years and wouldn't you know it, right about when that ends, there'll be a new Fantastic Beasts Wizarding World of Harry Potter opening at a brand new theme park in Florida. It's perfect. It's synergistic madness. I mean, this is marketing, right? Oh God, I did it again. Hang on. Oh, man, I was skateboarding today, and the chest pain still hasn't gone away, but that's fine. I'm going to keep it up. If y'all are following the Instagram, check it out, Don's Pinball Podcast. I post content up there. Check out the Patreon, $5 a month. I've got exclusive content on there. Some of it is quite hilarious. Also, follow me on the Facebook page, Don's Pinball Podcast on Facebook. We discuss everything on there. And then I've got a Discord and Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. And let's just keep it going. All right, guys. Have yourselves a good Monday. I'll probably be back later in the week. Love everybody. Harry Potter. You're a hairy wizard. You're a hairy wizard. Buy Hagrid's beard! Snape Lawler.