podcast is go welcome to the eclectic gamers podcast today is sunday june 23rd this is the old episode triple deuce you just had to drop that didn't you yup how you doing Dennis I'm Tony by the way I am Dennis so it's been a couple weeks we got a lot of good feedback on the last episode I had a lot of fun with the last episode A lot of people seem to enjoy it. I was a little surprised. I wasn't – not totally surprised. I think people enjoy knowing and having emails answered on air. But the discussion that some of those emails triggered got a lot of feedback, a lot of discussion. I've heard other podcasts even touch on some of the topics that we tried to tackle ourselves. And we do have more listener emails in both the pinball and video game sections this week. However, what's been going on with you lately? I had a really busy week this week for the simple fact that I utilized the holiday on Wednesday, took two days off afterwards, so Thursday and Friday, and I knocked off a bucket list trip. and I drove nine, almost ten hours to Dayton, Ohio and spent an entire day at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force and then I drove nine or ten hours home. So the next day I could gather my family up and go to a convention here in Kansas City. So two bucket list trips. I will say a bucket list trip. One bucket list trip. But it was a lot of fun. was not terribly, terribly expensive. I could take that trip multiple times and not be able to afford a stern topper. We'll get to that. And, yeah, it was a really good time. I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, that's like the closest of my bucket list trips. All of the rest of the ones on my list are much longer in length. I don't think any of the other ones can be done in under a week to do them justice, and thus they'll all be also much more expensive. But it was a good time. How about you? What have you been up to? Not a whole lot. I went ahead and did just yesterday, in fact, finished that video game. I've mentioned a couple episodes of me playing Gungrave Gore, so that's done. And so I've started an old game that you are familiar with, Firewatch. Such a good game. So beautiful. I just started that last night. So that is what I have been playing. So let us go ahead and move on into the pinball segment. Okay, let's go ahead and get through some of the news items right quick. Funhaus, the remakes, we've talked a little bit about that. Those are starting to ship and show up at places. So people are starting to receive those Funhaus games. That's being done by Pedretti, but Pedretti is also utilized by Pinball Brothers. So that is my segue into saying Pinball Brothers has indicated they are now actually producing ABBA, the band. That machine is finally in production. And also finally in production is something we've known about for quite a while now, especially this got some discussion on various venues once the topper was getting produced again. But Black Knight Sword of Rage, the pro edition, Stern is making more of those. We've known that's been in the works, and they are in the process of building those at this point in time. I remain skeptical that they're actually going to sell very many of those, but clearly there was enough demand for them to go ahead and revive it. And it is one of the coolest toppers, if not the coolest topper, that Stern has ever done. Very unfortunate that they went ahead and upped the price significantly from what that topper launched at. That was probably seen as one of the best bang-for-buck toppers when it originally came out. continuing on my really quick summary of what's been going on with the industry spooky i do have a link to a nap arcade article in the show notes so people can go and read about this and some other spooky news but the item i wanted to point out is they are in the process of moving to another facility i believe they indicate that they're still going to use the current facility like they're still going to be machinery in the current facility but they're going to another facility isn't this like did they just build that facility it felt like that isn't this seems like the third new facility that they've done i was going to ask if you knew like it feels like this is the third new shifted facility because they they've been in benton forever so they're like had their first place and then i thought they had another place constructed and then i thought they had a second well a third place a second move done just a few years a couple years ago i i feel the same way so this seems like the fourth place the third shift that they've done so anyway i guess it's a good sign maybe i mean i don't know it feels like if they'd had the place built specific for them maybe there's not room to just do an expansion maybe there's i don't know it seems weird i one of the things i've seen and again this is not based off of the article that i read, I saw someone commentate about Spooky in the hope that they would set up something a little more traditional in terms of assembly line. One of their, and again, this is a third party person, so I don't know how true it is, but one of their complaints was that Spooky has not really done a line in the traditional way and that their method that they have been using in their facilities here to this new getting, I guess, ready to be built has been inefficient and that the hope is they will do something a little more along the lines of what other pinball manufacturers do so that they could further up their production output. I note it like that because it's always seemed to me that Spooky, at least once they get their groove going on the games that they're building, they seem to, for their size, produce a fairly high amount per week in my view. But if they're doing that in an inefficient process, it would be interesting to see how much it would change if they adopted some more traditional line assembly tactics. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. I just thought I'd throw that out. Jersey Jack Pinball. I actually talked a little bit about the Elton John CEs because they had an announcement on the – we talked about it on the pinball show. But I have learned since then that actually they are or have built all 1,000 Elton John CEs. So they're done. Well, no, they're going back and doing platinum editions. There's demand for the platinum edition. So the CE is the $15,000 version with a 1,000 unit count. Right. So when they made the announcement, when I was talking with Zach, my co-host on the pinball show, it was a – from the write-up, we weren't entirely sure if they were just announcing that they were drawing the line and they were finishing the last that they were going to build. and it might actually be under the 1,000. But I have since heard that it's, in fact, no, they actually built all 1,000. Now that doesn't mean all 1,000 have been sold to consumers or even to the distributor network, but they did go ahead and commit to building all 1,000. So, because sometimes there'll be an announcement of, we're gonna have a limit of 5,000 of something. And then they don't actually ever make all 5,000 of it, but they did actually build them all. So, now that was a little interesting. and finally before getting to some pinball related user emails i thought we need to spend a little bit of time stern did a reveal what maybe almost what almost two weeks ago of accessories for jaws but i wanted to talk a little bit about the topper because tony you put a video up on instagram and you discussed this topper and you had thoughts. And I thought maybe you'd like to share some of those thoughts, maybe a summary of those thoughts on the podcast, because it is a $1,000 topper, cheaper than some of their more recent toppers, but not inexpensive by most any measure for a topper. And this topper, it's very inspired by the film. It's got the sign, the Amity sign with the girl in the water that gets vandalized in the show and the mayor complains because someone draws a shark fin on it and the girls face saying shark and the sign transitions between the non-vandalized version and the vandalized version hit the the most of those ventricular transformations aren't that great and this one's one of the ones that's really not great it does from the video I've not seen one in person. Maybe it's better in person. From the video, it looked bad. I think it's – and they do – the vandalized version looks like the vandalized version in the movie. It does. So it does look stupid in the same way that it – because I went back and looked at the scene. That said, that transition approach, because it's not just like a screen. It does this – Yeah. It's based upon like the direction you're looking at it. because of that and the effect with the striations of like the vertical striations you see it makes it look like extra awful yeah it's and i don't think it's going to look better in person i think it's going to look i think the i think the camera captured that just fine yeah it just looks absolutely horrible and but i will say it doesn't look as horrible as the fact that it is a $1,000 light show of a billboard. People love their light shows. I do not understand. Why do you hate light? I don't hate light. It feels like toppers are just getting out of control in cost, and people are buying them, and people love them. But I'm wondering at what point do we end up where toppers are half the cost of a machine and people are still buying them? It feels like we're going there. The Mando topper is what, $2,000? Sure. Yeah. But it had a hologram. And it did have a hologram. And this is only half the price. And it's got a silly lenticular and some lights. Well, guess what? You can get that pretty much anywhere for way less than $1,000. It is one of those things that is just, It feels like toppers are just running out of control. Do you think maybe they're using the toppers to have a high margin of return to help keep themselves from further raising the machine prices? Like they're using them to – like they're gouging on toppers in order to – I don't know that enough people are buying toppers to make that work. I don't know either, but if they are a major profit center and a Stern Pro has not got a high built-in margin, then maybe the thought is by overcharging on accessories, they can hold the line on the real products. It could be. I think it's probably more along the lines of toppers are one of those things that if they just stopped making them, I don't think it would hurt them. So they can play the game of seeing just how much people will pay for it. I mean, if I was going to guess, just who knows, random ballpark, just a wild hair, pull it out of my patootie, guess. I would say if the markup on toppers is anything less than 800%, I'd be amazed. a thousand dollars for 40 leds and some pictures and some stuff that looks like a billboard diorama i mean i can walk into a model shop and buy everything needed to do it for like maybe 50 bucks okay but maybe i'm wrong i don't know stern if you want to tell us the truth of it you can email us eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com and we'll be happy to read your email on air yep speaking of emails tony we've had a few we actually have one in the video game section that we will get to in the video game section hence why i said it's in the video game section but i'm going to start with chris g now i'm actually going to note the subject of the email because that's really the relevant part because the subject of the email said why are all the listeners portrayed as southern the body of the email said thank you for addressing the rumor corner rumors on this quarter's unofficial rumor corner i'm excited to hear about the rumors regarding tony's only fans going online in the next rumor corner. Well, thank you, Chris, for emailing in. Regarding the subject, which is the one I was going to answer, the reason why the listeners are often, but not always, as you just heard, and not portray you as Southern, the reason is it is one of the few accents that I can do. Tony, could you please address the OnlyFans? We're still in the research phase. I'm trying to decide if people just want pictures of my big, gross, hairy feet or if they want pictures of me eating food. And that's kind of where we're sitting right now. Is it more of a foot thing or is it a feeder thing? We'll find out. Okay, yes. Write in, again, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com to let us know so that the market research can conclude on that process. Speaking of process, we had another email to process. This one is from Scott G. who wrote in, Aloha, gentlemen. I'm curious on what you think the new Stern spike system will change slash upgrade as well as what you'd like to see included on the new operating system. Thank you. Well, thank you, Scott, for writing in from southern Hawaii. I'm saying that from the Aloha. I don't know that he's actually in Hawaii. All right. So spike three, George Gomez has noted for listeners that aren't familiar because we haven't really discussed it, is in the works. And the rumors are swirling about when is Spike 3 going to come out. And the thought has been probably sometime this year, but I don't know what it's based on. And so anyway, what do I think will be changed and upgraded? I think that it's mostly just going to be iterative. I think it's still going to be a node board system. In fact, I expect that it's going to be backwards compatible. I think the changes will be there will be more RAM. I think the processor will be faster. I think that it will offer more solid state storage on the card or whatever they like to put in with it so that they can do more with clips and such and be able just to power more things really on the display I think is the main element The big shift from Spike 1 which wasn around very long to Spike 2 was upgrades were needed to accommodate the LCD Maybe they go with a bigger LCD But those sort of changes are what I think is basically just a faster system that will maybe, I don't know if there's a limit on the number of node boards. I mean, there's probably a practical limit, but I don't know if there's any meaningful limit like on the number of coils or anything that can power. I don't think that's the obstacle. I think it's really just displaying, driving animation and video clips and accommodating that in a better, more efficient way. That's what I think. And I don't have anything that I want to see on the new operating system specifically. Like there's not. I think the operating system has been fine. It still looks very much like the SAM operating system. I guess maybe it could be a little more intuitive rather than looking like the when you go into the settings. It just looks very like a lot of the stuff is looks like the dot matrix. It depends. Like when you go in and do insider connected, it doesn't. But I don't really have an operating system change. So I don't know. What do you think Spike 3 is going to do? I'm just assuming that it would be iterative improvements in board capacity and what it can handle and its speed. But, I mean, the only thing that I can think of, I think they've already instituted wireless connections for updates, haven't they? Yep. Yeah, that's the only thing that I can think of as a quality of life thing that anybody would want. That already happened. Yeah, no, I'm not expecting a lot out of it, quite frankly. I don't think to expect a lot out of it is something that would be seen as just a general user. user. Yeah, I can't. I mean, maybe it has more. But again, I figure they could solve this with node boards already, but maybe it'll have more output. So if they want to have multiple LCD displays on the play field, that it's easier to wire them. But again, I don't care about any of that. I don't have the background to really know about that. I figure they just figure it's been long enough that it's getting harder to get the old chips and stuff, and there's It's just good chips that they can get at reasonable price points that are going to give them more performance power. It'll just be a more powerful system, which will – I mean, honestly, you want the one thing I wish it would do? I wish it would boot way faster. I turn on a Sam game. It's ready to go in under five seconds. Stern, Spike 2, it's 30, 30-plus. Minutes. I mean, I don't – It takes an hour to boot. It feels like I'm turning on a Windows 7 computer. I'm like, I don't want it to feel like that. So that's what I wish. It's like you're firing up vacuum tubes. They've got to warm up. You hear that whine in the background. I don't know if they're ever going to be able with the modern tech and the way they do it to get it to boot as fast as the old solid-state systems. Yeah, I don't think it's possible. But anything that would be quicker. If they could get it under 10 seconds, that would be nice. That's the one thing I would like to see. All right. Next email from Rodden O. He wrote in as follows. Formal and cultural greed. Let me do all of that again because I made it awful. But I'm going to leave all this part in so you can hear me try it again because I'm doing the accent perfectly. Formal and cultural greetings from foreign lands afar. Two thumbs up. Good day, Tony and Dennis. I have to say that the last episode, 221, regarding pinball media was in all probability your best episode to date. Your fearless and explicit understanding of the people, the hobby, and the microcosm it manifests in was absolutely on point. Both of you correctly identified and defined the type of people in this hobby with such clarity and understanding. I enjoyed it so much I listened a second time this week on your off week. I look forward to more episodes with such natural and considered comment. Best regards, Rodden. P.S. If you guys come to Expo, I will bring some more gummy snakes. Well, thank you, Rodan, for the gummy snakes. And I hope I got your accent exactly as it is. I will say I'm less interested in the gummy snakes and I'm more interested in the rum you shared with us last time because nothing's ever made my teeth numb before except for that. Yes. Well, my teeth felt hairy. It was patented dental rum. It was something special. It was something special. I still have those photos because I've looked so happy. Because I'm always so happy after a few drinks. You're happy drunk. I'm a fun drunk. You are a fun drunk. I'm not drunk. You are. I'm a big boat. You are a fun, mildly inebriated. There we go. I didn't have to lean on you to walk back to the hotel. The final email. So anyway, that was all. Gordon just really enjoyed the last one. Yeah, thank you. We had a lot of fun. I've said it multiple times. That episode was a lot of fun to do. and our last email in the pinball section I saved this one because this one required some thought for us Tony and so Richard where do you think Richard is from Germany I apologize to all the Germans Guten Tag Tony he didn't even write Guten Tag he wrote Tony and Dennis I work a stressful job and listening to your podcast during my commute always gives me something to look forward to. I appreciate your honest discussions about the pinball hobby. Thank you for providing this welcome distraction from the grind at work. As a pinball enthusiast without a lot of disposable income, I am thankful for the way you address the reality of the high cost of entry into the hobby. Many of us can barely afford a single stern pro machine, let alone the latest JJP or an LE. And depending on where you live, there's not always a ton of options to play pinball on location. With that being said, I have a question for you that might help some of us who struggled with budget. How would you rank the following Stern Pro models from best to worst based on the admittedly arbitrary criteria of bang for your buck and fun factor? Okay, thank you, Richard. Richard lists the following 15 games. I'm going to read them really quickly so that the listeners all kind of know what we're going to go through. And then we'll just go through down his list in order, I think. Because Tony and I have gone through and we have ranked these. But the games he provided is 1, Jaws, 2, Venom, 3, Foo Fighters, 4, 007. I'm assuming the George Gomez version, not the – I would assume. But just FYI, that's what I – Is there a pro version of the 50th anniversary? You know what? I just now realized how stupid it was for me to even mention that because these were all pros. I did the ranking last night, so I was thinking more clear-headed then. 5, Rush, 6, Godzilla, 7, Mandalorian, 8, Avengers, 9, Stranger Things, 10, Jurassic Park, 11, Deadpool, 12, Iron Maiden, 13 Star Wars, 14 Led Zeppelin, 15 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Okay. So let's start at the beginning. Jaws. I went ahead and I put this at fifth out of these 15. I did too. I've played it in the premium, as have you. Yep. Fun game. I don't think you're giving up very much. You are losing the upper play field, but you are, by everyone I've seen, admits it's fun, but you're not up there very much. Right. So I think that's why it's so high in my ranking is I don't think you're giving up too much of criticality with the Jaws. I would be perfectly happy with a Jaws pro. And you said you ranked it the same. I ranked it the exact same. All right. Next, number two was Venom. I put this 14th out of 15 in my list. I did, too, because, quite frankly, after having played the two, there is so much difference that I feel like you lose a lot. Yeah, I do encourage everyone, if you can get the opportunity to go ahead and try both. It's not that Venom Pro is unfun, but so much of the concept doesn't really make a lot of sense in the pro version without the ability for the game's layout to do game state changes. Yeah, you still get the quick ball releases, but quite frankly, other than chasing the different colored shots because you changed your character kind of thing going on, it just doesn't feel... Venom Premium is so much cooler, and it's not even a popular game. So here's what you do. You wait for Venom Premiums to be sold used for the price of the pros, and then you buy a premium. That's the answer, but that's why it's so lowly rated. His third game he provided was Foo Fighters. I went ahead and put this at number three on my list. I actually put it at number one, so we finally deviated. Slightly, yeah. We're not deviating much throughout the entirety of this list. Well, because there's right answers pretty much on this. And the big difference, the reason I put it up there is just because in both of its iterations, I consider Foo Fighters such a fun game. I don't think you lose enough. I think it's still, of all these games, it's probably the funnest to play pro. Okay. Okay. I do – obviously, it wasn't my number one of just go ahead and get it as a pro, but I did put it at my third because, yeah, it's – the biggest thing that you're probably going to miss, quite frankly, I don't think the upper play field is anything to write home about. So it's the ball kick save thing in the left out lane that's not on the pro. So it's an interesting gimmick. It greatly can extend gameplay time. But it's so weird that that's the only reason I didn't. Honestly, I had a perfectly good time on the pro. But that's why it's not my number one. That's why it ended up at three for me. But, yeah, that's a very good one to consider if you're looking at just pros. The fourth game was the Gomez 007. I said 13th. I said 12th. And I mean, you still have the car with the eject, and that's like it. Here's the thing, quite bluntly. I wouldn't get 007 no matter what. Yeah. I don't think it's. I don't think. And you're a Bond. You are a James Bond, dude. I mean, I watched a lot of Bond growing up. I mean, I've seen them all multiple times. I'm not a hardcore fan or like it's not a dream franchise for me or anything, but there's a lot about James Bond that's just – I mean it was one of those nostalgia touchstones for me because, I mean, we watched it on like Turner Classic Movies or whatever all the time growing up. I don't – anyway, here's the thing. You don't have a PPK stashed in your underwear drawer. But so much about the game, the code is greatly improved, and I've not played the latest version of the code. But the bottom line is I wouldn't consider this game, period. I just don't think this is a good stern to get. So anyway, that's why. I mean, you ranked it a little bit higher than me. Not much. And I'll be honest. I'm going to go even farther. I don't think anything between 10 and 15 is worth spending your money on. Yeah, I think that's probably a fair point. So bear that in mind. But anyway, it's not so much for me that you give up. I do think, like, with the rocket change and everything, there's a lot visually that's different. I can't tell you whether the gameplay is different enough. I just don't have enough time on it. I just wouldn't consider this game, period. All right, Rush is the fifth game that we were provided. I put this at 10th. I put it at 15. Really? I just don't like the game. Okay, so that's why. I can't bring myself. Yeah. Either version of it. I mean, it's – I'm not going to go – I don't want to say it's a bad game. I know there's a lot of people who really like the game, and there's things about the game I can understand why they like. It's just none of it has gelled for me. And I think sometimes that just happens with people, that there are games that nothing gels and nothing feels right, and it's just not enjoyable to them. And for me, Rush is that game. Right. Rush has been – I can't – I've never been able to click with it. Every time I play it, I just – I don't enjoy it. I just – I can't – something about the layout in particular just – it doesn't work for me. I just find it frustrating. I don't like the double scoop feed in and all of that, and that's on the Pro and the Premium both. The main reason I put this at 10th for a Pro is I think the Pro does a pretty poor job of communicating, like what shots you're supposed to do that are much better communicated on the premium uh in terms of like the use of the time machine and whatnot so for that reason alone i'm gonna say i think the pro is a little more uh opaque in terms of trying to convey what you want to do but layout wise i i can't support this game like at all it's like i i take it over a a bond I think it's a better layout than Bond but part of that is the code is better on Rush than Bond so I think that's kind of carrying it actually as I think about it I'm like I don't know the right half of Bond might be better than Rush's right half anyway this game does not work for me but there is a distinct communication difference in what the lighting conveys and stuff that I think the pro kind of didn't do a very good job on so it's pretty low rated his sixth game was Godzilla I put this at sixth for me. I put it at seven just because I feel like the additions for the premium are so important, and it makes it feel so much more complete. I feel like that. I mean, of these 15 games, if there was no limitations, a Godzilla premium would be my first choice. But you didn't ask us about premiums. Right. But as a pro, it's going to be lower down just because I would always want to keep a spot for the premium. Right. Godzilla is one of those games, and why I put it at sixth was it's – you can definitely – I mean, it's still a pretty unique layout. I know some people who actually do prefer the pro. It is a harder game. It plays harder. So if that's what you want, you may want to consider this over that. My problem with it is giving up the building, being able to change heights, and giving up the Mechagodzilla rotation of its stand-ups means you lose all of the game state changes that exist on the premium. And the game state changes are, I think, one of the big aspects that makes the game fun. Plus, I personally hate the Mechagodzilla shot on the Pro. I think it's incredibly frustrating and not satisfying at all, whereas that is a very fun shot with a very interesting set of challenges where that part actually gets a lot harder when the shield is up and the targets have rotated. So I just feel like the mechanical marvel of the premium version of Godzilla is so much better than what you get on the pro. Maybe you're a Godzilla fan or you just want the really hard version that plays faster. okay but i i i just again i rated it pretty high but right like we we had a godzilla uh pro on location and every time i play it i'm reminded why i like the premium better yeah i just yeah uh seventh game in his list was mandalorian i put this at 12th i put it at 11 the problem i have with mandalorian or middlorian if you want to say i have more time on the premium um i just there not if you don have the moving upper play field it doesn feel like the game does very much it feels like you definitely lost a solid 30 of the game the problem that i have is i seen so many mechanical issues with the moving upper play field that the pro might be the safer choice but again like we've kind of discussed with these bottom five this isn't a game i would get i just don't think it's fun not enough fun i actually like uh this is a game i will drop quarters and when i sit on location But I don't usually play more than twice because I just – it's there, but it just doesn't work for me. His eighth game was Avengers. I put it at eighth in the 15. I put it at nine. Okay. Again, I have more time on the Pro than the Premium. I think this is Elwynn's weakest game, and that's why it's eighth. Yeah. Not so much. Like I from what I've experienced, I don't feel like the subway and all that is all that important. So if you love Avengers, I think getting the pro rather than the premium is probably perfectly safe here. It's just there are other games in this list that I would consider well before. I would consider every Elwynn game over this one. Yeah. Including Jaws, which isn't even at 1.0 yet. Yeah, it's definitely it is. It is just a game that every time I've played it, I've walked away. who just meh yeah i i there's nothing about it i love yeah it's not like now i know some people who are hard like they think it's his best game right and and and and i know there are there there are games on this list that i actively walk away from going god i hate this game avengers is not that yeah i'm fine playing it is just but i don't love it it doesn't do anything for me um the ninth game of was right there with with it for me stranger things which i put at ninth And I put it ace. Again, you get the UV kit for the pro, you'll get the whole experience pretty much. I don't think the mechanical differences, like if you love the game, and some people do, and the code has greatly improved from where it started. I know some people who swear by this game. So this is just like Avengers, I think. If you enjoy Stranger Things, pro or premium, I think either is going to meet your need. But you might – I don't know if you'll want it without the UV. Right. And that's where I stand is I prefer – I would prefer it with the UV. And, of course, I would prefer the premium on it. To me, every time I play it, I'm just like, I'd rather have Attack from Mars. Well, yes. And that's what – I know the feeds are different, but the shot fan is the same basically. Tenth game, Jurassic Park. This is my number one. I put it as number four. Okay. I have, I'm trying to think, maybe I've, I think I maybe only played the premium ones. I don't care about the dinosaur throwing the ball. That's just silly randomness. Some people love the premium Raptor kit, Raptor pit area. I think the Raptor pit spot is just fine. For me, this is kind of like, basically it's the same thing that's how it happened with Godzilla. Except in the case of Jurassic Park, I think the pro still has all the most important gameplay elements in a way that it's super fun to play. I have seriously considered buying a Jurassic Park Pro before Godzilla came out. It was the game I was planning to get. And so of all of these 15, this would be the one I would tell you to get as a pro would be Jurassic Park. I think it's the best. I think it's fine as a pro. I can't get over the fact that I've never really enjoyed it as much as I do the older Jurassic Park. Ah, okay. Well, it is a very different layout. Oh, yeah, it's very different. But, I mean, I play it. It's fine. and I've put a lot of time and quarters into it, and it's perfectly fine, and I think you're right. Getting the pro version of it, you don't lose anything important. I'm never going to love it because it just doesn't hit as hard for me. His 11th game was Deadpool. I put the set fourth. I did third because I feel like you really don't lose anything going with the pro. Disco Loops is about it. Yeah, the drops or stand-ups. I don't care. I don't think that matters. The game is still just insanely large amounts of fun. I mean, the disco shot, it's fun. It's immersive. But Deadpool Pro still gives you the sword ramp, which is the most obvious visual thing. So I think the Pro is a perfectly good game to go ahead and get. Oh, definitely. I own a premium, but I've played a lot of the Pro. So, yeah, I think that one's – it's a good one why we have it so high up. His 12th game was Iron Maiden. I put this at second. I did too. I know there's a difference with the back shot with the premium versus the pro. I've never cared. I actually – Iron Maiden, this is weird for me because it's a game that I have no interest in owning. It's number two on my list simply because I really think you give up nothing of import going with the pro. So much so that outside of Jurassic Park, I would say, Ellen often does a pretty good job making sure his pros are fun. And again, if you like Iron Maiden, I wouldn't blink twice. I wouldn't even debate it. I'd just get the cheaper one. Yeah. No, I think you'd be absolutely fine in that case. And that's why I have it at two. And it's just because I feel like Foo is more fun and its theme plays to me more. Okay. yeah i can say that uh star wars was his 13th game i put this at seventh i did six star wars i want to like it but i just the plunge is bad on all versions and so it's just it pisses me off for that reason you give up the hyperloop which is a nice visual gimmick but it's a gimmick oh very much like you're not doing anything to the hyperloop so if you enjoy the gameplay of Star Wars, the pro is going to give you, all you lose is the Hyperloop, which is where most of the Bill of Materials difference is, and you lose that the Death Star cracks open like a little cheap egg. If you can even destroy the Death Star. So, in that regard, I would really struggle. There are other Ritchie games that are a better choice than this, but not in this list. This is the best of the Ritchies in this list. So, that's why I did it. His 14th game was Led Zeppelin. I put this dead last at 15th. I put it at 13th and let's just be honest. Don't buy it. Anything 10 and higher in this list, don't buy. It's just not worth it. The thing that I would... You give up... Led Zeppelin Pro is so Spartan. Honestly, I feel like you could tell that Steve Ritchie didn't want to work there anymore when you look at it. The shots, it has some tight frustrating shots the upper ramp shot that's supposed to be there is this completely unsatisfying dead-end brick where you're like why is this flipper even still in the game and you don't have the little magic mystery tour raisey up thing from tron i don't know what the the little whatever the toy was it made no sense that he stuck in it it's not even on the pro now i know people who disable it on the premium because it causes some it can cause some issues the thing is like led zeppelin would be 15th for me as a premium as well this is not a game to buy do not buy this game no do not buy this game it's not it's not worth it like at all i just don't buy it uh 15th uh and final game on his list was turtles tmnt i did it 10 i did 11 um i've heard a lot of mechanical issues with the diverter on the premium so the pro may be the safer choice just inherently but again i don't like this game nope not a bit really hard none of the shots feel good to me uh the the theme the voice acting and stuff is great like the theme attempts are are so cool i don't know why they put it in such a hard package uh it's i i just don't think it's fun i mean i i mean you and i are targeted squarely at the nostalgia that this game is and it's just packaged in a non-fun game i mean the the only redeeming thing for me about turtles other than like i like the like the animation voice work and all that like the asset stuff the art that's all good yeah but like play wise the only thing i really like about turtles is you can kind of get an experience of where dwight sullivan the the coder and rules designer for it was starting to experiment with carryover ideas like leveling the turtles that better manifested i feel later on with like venom now i did rate venom pro worse but venom premium i could see considering actually owning yeah i would never own turtles no so no no the the the counter on venom pro is just that the premium is so much superior you look at the pro and you're like why did you even make a pro right it is so different so anyway that's the list uh i hope that helped Richard, but you have to figure out what style of game you want and then based off of that, I mean, I think the general, the safe rule is anything Tony and I put in the top five should be a solid pro for you to get. I think would be fair. So that would be, we both agreed Jaws was in the top five. We both agreed Foo Fighters was in the top five. We both agreed Deadpool was in the top five. We both agreed Iron Maiden was in the top five. And I think I maybe missed one, Jurassic Park. I think those would all be solid choices. I do think that you shouldn't close your eyes to the possibilities of other older games, but since this was specifically about Stern Pros, that's a solid list. And these aren't all in production still. Like Led Zeppelin hasn't been in production for years now. So he clearly went back a little bit. Turtles isn't in production anymore. So he's gone back a little ways. But, yeah, definitely I want to echo really quick what Tony said as well. I would say look at the DMD era. Like Stern had their struggle era. They had their struggle best era of CSI in 24. But as of 2012 with like ACDC, like things are really like Iron Man, brutal, fast, fun gameplay. ACDC, solid game. Metallica, solid game. And I mean, I'm going to say it. Some people may disagree with me, but World Poker Tour is a fun game. that is it's a very different approach that steve ritchie did to that game and i do enjoy it quite a bit as well there are a few of the older ones that i think are are worth exploring i mean if you want to if you can find them because i only made about a thousand of them i used to own a sharky shootout so that was a good game it's a if you like eight ball deluxe but you want a multiball and sort of a modern rule set with it where you can play eight ball and nine ball sharkies isn't a bad one to consider uh so that that would be one i would also toss out from the weird stern era also uh the what's the they had a they had another kind of gambling theme one that Jon Norris did with them i'm blanking on the name right now some people really enjoy it quite a bit um that was from that real early era but a whole bunch of the dmd stuff from like that 2012 to 2016 era great game of thrones that's a really good richie game to consider you could consider star Trek, 2013 Star Trek. And I would say the Game of Thrones is much superior as a pro. Okay, video games, Tony. Let's jump into that. All righty. So nothing horribly interesting, but we're going to go through a few things, and then we'll finish up with the letter or the email. But Valve is being sued for claims in the UK due to claims that they're rigging the the PC game market and deliberately shutting out competition through steam. So something that valve has been accused of in the past, uh, they're specifically targeting them because they, uh, valve imposes price parity clauses, um, to prevent developers from selling games for cheaper prices on other platforms. And that they, uh, the one that I found was interesting was that they prohibit customers from buying DLC on other platforms and using it on steam. so that it's not a free market. Okay. So, and that their commission of up to 30% can lead to inflated prices. So the big interesting thing to me is that the law firm supporting the lawsuit or bringing the lawsuit is the same law firm that brought Sony's lawsuit against the Microsoft merger. But expectations to see nothing out of that one for years. Oh, okay. With the way the courts on that kind of thing run in the UK. Another, bringing Sony back into it, another thing they've done recently that I find interesting is they've directly brought tie-ins with Discord to PlayStation. So you can actually initiate Discord calls directly from your PS5. Oh, I saw that. Yeah, it used to be you had to have like the app and do some fun stuff. Now you can do it directly from your PS5. Yeah, I saw an announcement on Discord about that. Yeah, so I mean, I think that's a great thing because most people use Discord for that kind of stuff anymore. So integrating it directly in the console is a good idea. What might be not as happy for Sony is the fact that for the month of May, the most downloaded game on PS5 was Sea of Thieves. Well, I mean, it is new to them. It is. It is. I don't know that Sea of Thieves is, I mean, I doubt it'll continue to be the most downloaded game, but they definitely had a good run. And I think it's good for Microsoft's plan of stretching themselves amongst everything. It's nice to see Rare have something have success. It is. They've had a bad couple. Well, they got stuck being the Kinect company to develop Kinect games, which obviously didn't pan out. Right. And it wasn't the kind of stuff that was their bread and butter back in the day. So there is a horror game coming out based off of the movies A Quiet Place. So it is a horror game that is when things make noise, monsters show up. So you have to play through and be quiet. It reminds me of, speaking of Kinect, when Alien Isolation came out, there was an option that if you had a Kinect and you could have it turned on during the game, and if you made noise in the living room or whatever, the alien would hear you. Why would you ever do that? Yeah, I thought this is like real life is going to get you killed by this alien so many times. Your pizza gets delivered. Ding dong. Yeah. I never finished that game. I was playing on my hardest difficulty. That alien could find you no matter what anyway So it could be interesting I really enjoyed that movie no matter how insane it is as a premise And the fact that they're putting out a new one. Yeah. The day one. The day one. I saw the first two. Yeah. Yeah, I did, too. It's just why it's the premise is weird to me. But yeah. OK, we'll see. It may work. It could work. But I can see where it could work really well as a game. Like in the trailer, the trailer is neat because your character is like sneaking around, is like slowly turning on like power. And when the power turns on, there's like a loud thunk as something engages and a monster like appears and just destroys the thing. And then you're like sneaking around and slowly opening it. The character slowly opens the door and takes a step out and steps on broken glass. And then you just see the monster and the screen goes out as it jumps at you. jump scare game yes gotta go slow uh todd howard has said that they're not planning on putting out a rushing out a new fallout game despite the popularity due to the show he thinks that they're doing good as is and he thinks it's okay for people to wait for what they want which translates in my mind to he's feeling the backlash from making the elder scroll six announcement six years ago because people were were were had the the the the old pitchforks out and he didn't have anything so they just made an announcement and we've heard nothing about it since yeah i mean i i do agree they shouldn't all of a sudden just rush over the tv show they should rush because starfield didn't do well okay whatever and the new dlc didn't do well and they've got another DLC target. Because I said I was playing Firewatch. The reason I'm playing Firewatch is I put back in my Starfield disc yesterday, but it had a 20 gigabyte update to download. So I was like, well, I'll play Firewatch for now while this happens. The Mario movie has been, it will be released in 2026, like April of 2026, the next Mario movie with the old Chris Pratt. And then they also had a very short notice Nintendo Direct. And by short notice, I mean they announced the Direct 24 hours before the Direct happened. But they had a lot at it. They had a lot of it. I mean, like normally with these kind of announcement things, I'm not even coming near doing everything in it. I'm just hitting the high points. Metroid 4 is coming out. Metroid Prime 4 is coming out in 2025. That's a game that was originally announced in, like, 2017. It was like a Switch. It was announced shortly after Switch launch as coming and being a big game, and then it just kind of vanished. And it's one of those things that turned out that in 2019, they looked at it, decided that they didn't like where it was going. They shut the entire project down and started over. So that's why it's been so long with a new developer. Like they didn't just shut it down and say, we need to redo stuff. They canned the developer and sent it to a new developer to start over. So we'll see how that ends up, but that's supposed to come out next year. I'm wondering if it's going to be a quasi-Switch 2 launch title, because they're talking about spring of next year, and that's the latest rumored date for the new Switch. But we'll see. We'll see what happens with that, because I don't know. Nintendo's made no official announcements on that. Mario and Luigi Brothership, because there needs to be a new Mario game. It's got the worst title of any Mario game ever. It's so bad. It's just absolutely terrible. It's just them bonding. Pick me up for the airport, brah. It sounds like the absolute worst kind of fanfic. That's what it sounds like. It's me, Mario. Relationship status. It's complicated. Yeah, it's... Oh, it's... I hate the name. The gameplay looks fine. It's a cel-shaded platformer, so it's about what you would expect from Mario. But the cel-shading makes it interesting. We'll see how it plays out. But gosh, the name's so bad. There's a bunch of remakes coming. Donkey Kong Country. Dragon's Quest 1, 2, and 3, the HD 2D remakes are coming. And the big one is the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting collection. Legal once more. Yeah, because the Marvel vs. Capcom games have been huge since the day they came out. They're massively popular. So I'm sure people will be very happy to see those back again. They're also putting out the worst game ever created. They're putting out a new Mario Party. With 20 players. It's got 20 player online players. It's mean. I say terrible things about it. My wife loves the Mario Party games. My kids enjoy the Mario Party games. I think they're the worst games ever. They remind me of the Bugs Bunny extravaganza pinball machine that I'll never forgive. It just randomly changes your scores with other people's scores at the end of the game. It's just, it doesn't matter. Oh, it's so terrible. The only reason I can figure out that it has 20-player online play is, A, it has to be online because nobody who enjoys this game has 20 friends in real life. And nobody would still have 20 friends after playing this game, 20-player, for an extended period of time. Because that game ends friendships. and probably the biggest of the actual announcements is the legend of zelda echoes of wisdom where you play as zelda yes which is cool yeah people have been calling link zelda forever yeah and now they'll be right for once i still think it should be called the legend of link but uh it looks interesting it it looks like it's more of the kind of overhead like old school Legend of Zelda play style. It's not the direct overhead, but it's like the 3D style, but it's that kind of gameplay as opposed to the Wind... or not the Wind Waker, but as opposed to the newer games have been. New game mechanic looks cool because instead of having Zelda run around with a sword and shield or run around in her chic persona from some of the previous games, she has like a magic wand that copies stuff and then you can make infinite copies of it, so it gives it a lot of puzzle-solving connotations and things you can do with it. It looks really interesting, and I bet you since it's a Zelda game, it's going to be enormous, because they always are. PlayStation's not coming to Gamescom this year. They haven't been to Gamescom in years. But that was almost immediately countered by Microsoft saying they're going to have their biggest booth ever at Gamescom this year. We'll see. We'll see what they bring. Maybe they'll have something interesting. And the last thing I had in here was that the Embracer Group put out an announcement how they're planning on using AI to empower its staff. And it says that it would put the company at a competitive disadvantage not to use AI. Okay. Apparently, that's the new way forward. and they want to use humanizing AI. I will say they probably need to apply that to their HR because they have just laid off like 8,000 people and terminated a bunch of companies. But apparently they can use AI to make up for all those people they fired. So I think this is actually something we're going to be seeing. Everybody's using AI. and it makes more sense than when everybody was trying to do blockchain games. But at the same time, it's going to cause some interesting issues in the entire industry over the next couple of years. So now we're down to – I'm not going to do funny voices. Why not? Because – okay, maybe I will. Maybe I will. Do I have a voice that's not a southern voice? I don't know that you have at your disposal. let's see what can i do other than apparently not open my drink very sad but that's how life is sometimes life finds a way and sometimes life doesn't so zach sent us an email hey guys i'm so sorry hey guys last episode you talked about the yakuza series coming to amazon as someone who's played through all of the games and is currently wrapping up the newest game i am super stoked to see amazon put the story in a live action form the core story of yakuza is a very hardcore serious teeth cut and crime drama that is completely outlined with some of the most silly and over-the-top anime tropes you can think of while most of the characters are these deadly wrecking machines who could easily kill a human with a snap of their fingers they also have these weird silly sides that tend to come out just when they bump into each other. I honestly cannot wait to see a bunch of buff dudes covering tattoos, rip off their suit jackets and punch each other into infinity. Can't wait to hear what you guys think. Stay rad. Zach. Yes. Well, thank you, Zach. I plan on staying rad. I might even watch that. I'm not going to watch them. I'm not, I haven't seen the movie rad in years, but yeah. Um, okay. So Yakuza, uh, yeah, the, so you've played the games. I've played one game and I've watched things about most of the rest of them. summon one of the Yakuza legends from one of the earlier games who just comes in and basically does as Zach has described. So I'm very curious if Amazon does it right and does it like Fallout, then it will be over the top with all those tropes in live action format and it will be awesome. It needs to be. They need to keep that intact. If they've shogun it and make it super serious i i don't think we don't need another like go watch infernal affairs or whatever if you want like hard-hitting crime drama japan centric sort of storylines but this it needs to embrace the video gamingness of it i'm not because of the zaniness of the fights and stuff i don't know exactly how they're planning to do it but the goofiness of the right it's gonna come out of the writing team if the writing team can give it that goofy you know the goofy undertones that are just all throughout it um you know where i'm curious is one of the things that i've always heard about and seen with the yakuza is a lot of the weirdness comes out in all these side quests so are they gonna have side like are they gonna put the side quests in in a show i don't know but i i do i agree with you they have to embrace the goofiness because i feel like that is part of what makes the Yakuza game so good and makes them what they are. If they just go straight drama, honestly, they could go straight drama and create a very good, solid drama that would probably do very well, but I don't think it would be as enjoyable or as much fun as if they actually embrace the goofiness. I mean I want to see the character pick up a bench and just wail on some dudes with a bench I mean that's got to be part of it because I mean it's the Yakuza games they do things in those games that aren't physically possible at times and when they're hurt they just need to go to a restaurant and eat to get better they better eat and get all better that will always remind me of that one short i saw that was talking about skyrim where they're fighting where it's like this boss guy and he's fighting and so the guy jumps up and he grabs an entire wheel of cheese and just forces it down his mouth and he starts fighting again he jumps back and eats another wheel cheese and the guy's probably like I give up. You've eaten 30 pounds of cheese in like the last 15... No, I don't even want to fight anymore. I feel gross watching you. Oh, God. That is how I play Fallout. I don't want to use the Stimpaks unless I have to. So every can of whatever is going to be consumed. Stimpaks are only used during combat. Yes. Yes, for Deathclaws. We save those for Deathclaws. otherwise it's every bit of what's that drink out of the toilet yeah i got plenty of rat away but thank you zach uh i i do agree with you and with dennis that this it needs to have the goof to be fun okay well i think we've covered everything we've done everything yeah all right well if you want to reach out to us as we've noted a couple times in the episode you can email us eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com also available at facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast you can support us on the patreon you don't have to but if you want to we appreciate it patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers yep we're available on uh twitch and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and and oh yeah our episodes are now on youtube so oh that's right we these were added i think i have the youtube link uh just a general link to youtube already in our show notes for people so anyway if you go there these will auto they're supposed to auto post it just pulls right from the rss feed so it's just the audio it's not the video of us recording it or else you would see the thing where where i was making dennis yeah that was because i was trying to take sexy pictures of my feet while he was trying to talk all serious it was not appropriate so yeah we don't we don't film this so it'll just it'll just have like the episode logo is what gets displayed. But it is an option now. We had a request on Pinside for people that don't want to use a podcatcher and are having trouble playing through the traditional MP3 locations like SoundCloud. So anyway, it's just another way to play it if you want to. But until next time, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See you.