Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside Podcast. I'm your host Retro Ralph and today is the day. It's Harry Potter launch day baby and we are very excited. We I act like there's other people here. It's just me, but we collective we in the pinball community are really excited. And if you're watching this right now, then you probably know, or maybe you don't know yet, and if you do, you should go back and watch it, that I got a chance with my buddy Mason Conrad to film the featurette for the Harry Potter game that Jersey Jack just released. So it's really exciting. This podcast, if you're listening, you may want to hop over to YouTube because I'm going to share a bunch of exclusive stuff that I didn't share as part of that video. So it's gonna be kind of fun and I'm gonna give you my opinion on the game because obviously I got a chance to play it. So I'm on kind of cloud nine because to be involved in a project like this is pretty freaking amazing. And yeah, I'm very grateful to have been a part of it. It was stressful, don't get me wrong, but it was definitely worth it because I got to really get a glimpse of behind the curtain. I mean, I've had some glimpses behind the curtain, but this was a true what the heck happens prior to a game launch. Ernest Rooney, Just hats off to them for being able to create this game and bring it to the market for us. Anyways, we're going to kill the music, but before we get started, if you are looking for a Harry Potter, whether it be an arcade, a wizard, or a CE, you need to go check out my boy, Zach, over at Flip N Out Pinball. Are you looking for a new pinball machine, a used pinball machine, or to trade in your You're all ready to play pinball? If you're looking for a new pinball machine, look no further than Flip N Out Pinball. They can handle all your pinball needs, they ship anywhere in the United States, and they will give you the best experience in the business. Check out the link to Flip N Out Pinball in the video description for more information. Now back to the video. Okay, anyways, if you're looking for that Harry Potter game and you want to trade in some games, Zach will hook you up. He'll give you some trading credit and you can get that new game. If it's what you're into. But anyways, what we're gonna talk about today is we're gonna dive deep into Harry Potter and then my experience working at Jersey Jack for this featurette. Now keep in mind, if you haven't watched the featurette, if you haven't watched it yet, I will have a link in the description of this YouTube video where you can go directly go watch that. You should definitely go check it out. It has a bunch of interviews with Eric Minier, Joe Katz, Dan the Mechanical Engineer, Jesper, David Thiel, Tom Capera, and Jack Winari. It's awesome. The whole team involved in the project. And you'll get some great insights about it. But we're going to show you some unique things today. Because I thought, how cool would it be to talk a little bit about this whole experience, what it was like to film this, because it was very cool. It was one of those things I never would have thought that I would be involved in. And it was a little bit of a challenge for me, right? Because those of you that don't know, I do have a video production background. The only thing or the closest thing to doing video production work for me is YouTube. Right? So that's where I get to express that creative out or have that creative outlet to express myself through video and music and my love for pinball and all that stuff. So when I had this opportunity or when this opportunity came up, I was like, oh man, this is going to be cool. But I did know that if I go do this, right, I'm gonna have to sign an NDA, I'm gonna have to shut up about the game for, geez, for months, because we filmed this back in April. So keep in mind, we filmed it at the end of April. So I've had to go the whole month of May knowing what the game looks like, what the game... I played the game and I had to shut up about it. Do you know how hard that is for me? I don't do that. So I had to exercise that a little bit, that muscle. But I also work in technology where NDAs are very serious things. I took my NDA very seriously. I didn't tell anybody anything. There are some people that are probably going to find out that I did this for the very first time and had no clue. Had no clue that I was involved in this project. So it was really, really awesome. And yeah, we're finally here. It was torture for me though. I don't even know how. If I was a game designer like Eric Minyer, I don't know how I could sit there and the anticipation would absolutely destroy me. I would never be able to do it. I'd go absolutely nuts. I'd be in a padded room. I wouldn't be able to do it. So hats off, Eric, for you having... you must be a patient man because I don't know how you could do it. Or any game designer out there, I don't know how you do it because you're probably so excited about the thing you've created, you want to show people so bad. Thank you so much for watching, and please welcome back as ever to a brand new review of speech andifter, Brad Rose, Houston happenstance, proverbial mean to excel, the best but $1k service, future I did produce, so that video is all of my, you know, there's nothing scripted about it, but when I say produced, it's that I had to figure out what I wanted to ask each person to be able to effectively get the answers I needed to be able to put an effective video together and then give it to Mason and go, alright Mason, this is what we got. And so I had a blast. I had an absolute blast working on this. The game is beautiful, both the CE and the Wizard. We didn't get to see the arcade version. I'll talk about that in a little bit, but I have all the info on the arcade version if you're interested. So anyways, I'm going to dive right into this. We're going to go right into it, and I'm going to kind of give you guys some commentary along the way. So what we're watching right now, I gotta throw the disclaimer out there that anything in this video could have some pre-released assets and some of this could be subject to change. So that's my disclaimer right there. So what we're gonna do though, before I even dive in, what we're gonna do- oh man, that always happens to me. What we're gonna do is, I'm gonna walk you through some of the shots. I don't have all of them and I gotta throw a disclaimer out there. It's my second disclaimer. Is that like I'm not like Joel at Flip N Out where I can play a game once and like remember everything or analyze the whole layout. It takes me a long time and keep in mind my main objective going out there was not to do a deep dive of the game play, right? And all the rules and things like that. That wasn't the point of this feature at video. So I did get to play it but it was, you know, playing it for certain shots we needed and then, you know, You know, so I, we were really busy. I mean, we got there at 7am and we didn't leave sometimes till 6 or 7 o'clock at night. So, and that was working the whole time. And then keep in mind, we're in an active factory filming this thing. So what you see, it looks like a set, but we're, that set is inside Jersey Jack's factory. And I will show you pictures of that in a little bit. So we, you could be in the middle of recording something and all of a sudden you hear like, And you have to seriously go, okay, guys, cut, cut, we can't take this. All right, everyone quiet. Because you're in the middle of a factory, they're building games. So it was a challenge and a half, and about three o'clock is when the factory starts to get real quiet, and you can kind of film consistently without taking many breaks. But yeah, that was definitely a challenge. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through some of the things that you might not have seen as much of in the featurette. So we're going to jump over to that real quick. This is again the disclaimer some of the things in here may be assets that uh do not make it into the final final game but most of this should be uh final final stuff so there isn't anything that's too um you know that we should that anybody should have too much of an issue with okay so the first shot i want to show you guys is this is the left shot which is the quidditch the little quidditch play field which which is kind of like raised above so basically you take you shoot that left ramp and then you'll see you're up in that Jerry, now I'm going to give you a close up of it, but there's a little mini flipper up there and there's like a little orbit that you can just keep going around and around and around. It's super fun. It's really fast. The game in general itself is very fast. And once you get it down, it has a lot of flow to it. So this is what that shot looks like. I'm going to play it all the way in its entirety so you can see it one more time. So this is the full motion. And then there's a ramp on the right that drops you back down and it feeds it kind of feeds over to your right flipper. So if you let it drop down and the game is leveled, it should fall back down to your right flip flipper. This is a very, very fun shot. The Quidditch playfield is like its own little mini mechanism in itself. Really cool. And once you get a groove, like once you figure out the timing of it, you can just keep on like hitting it and hitting it. And it's a lot of fun to do. This was probably, even though you wouldn't think it would be, this is probably one of my most fun shots. This is the left ramp shot, which lets you start playing Quidditch. Okay, so we'll go to the next shot. The next shot is the staircase shot. So keep in mind, these staircase shots, the staircase rotates. So I can't remember the number of combinations in the featurette we tell you how many unique ball paths are created from this. So keep in mind, depending on where that staircase is, is what the ball is going to do. So I'm just showing you one of the shots for the staircase. So I'm going to start it over here and you'll see the full sequence right now. You can see it feeds over to the right flipper. So that's just one of the cycles of the staircase. But it can go, like I said, it can be in a whole bunch of different configurations based At the end of the video you'll get the complete list of all the pinball games on the set. So that's the pinball game, but in the meantime let's get to the next thing. So the next thing is the wand ball lock. So if you look over to the right, there is a way to activate the lock, and again, it's been a month. I don't remember exactly how you activate that lock, but when you do you can lock the balls up on the wands which have the cauldron. So I'm going to play this whole sequence and then I'll start it again and talk about it. So here we'll stop this sequence. Here we go. Now I'm taking this shot from the right flipper. So hold on, I'm going to rewind it again one more time. Here we go. So I'm going to start it over again. Watch the right flipper. Boom. And you'll look on the top right and you'll see it just fed one ball to the wands there on the top. Now if I went and I shot to the right, that right shot, and it fed, and I shot again, and you'll see it's feeding the balls up on top of the wands. And this is where the balls stay locked and then it feeds them into the cauldron. You'll see I even threw in the animation for the Golden Trio multiball. So you'll see that because that's what this is. This is Golden Trio multiball. Also, if you look over to the right, you can see the Ford Angula, I think that's what it's called, in the Whomping Willow tree, which is cool. We'll get to that in a little bit. Is it Weeping Willow or Whomping Willow? And I just watched all the movies just to refresh myself and now I already forgot. But yeah, so you'll see it's going to release the balls into the cauldron one by one. I actually took two angles of this. This is the animation that plays for Golden Trio Multiball. Really cool. So there's a couple, um, there's a, I'm going to pause it real quick before you see these balls go into the cauldron. There is a couple of those, those video sequences, I think depending on which movie you're in, uh, they'll look older obviously. So if you're in, I think if you do Golden Trio Multiball in like the first two movies, they actually look younger than they do, obviously, if you're in the later movies. So there's a couple of animations for that one. So now you see the balls going into the cauldron. And now I'm in Golden Trio Multiball. So kind of fun, you can see the sorting hat on the right hand side. That's just a static thing, but it's very well done. You'll notice if you really... one thing that you will notice when you You see this game in person. This is the wizard edition. This isn't the CE. It is very, very detailed. Like, and keep in mind the playfields are the same between these two. The only thing you're gonna see different in the CE versus this wizard is, um, on the wizard, the art blades on the interior are different. So on the CE, the art blades match the animation that NimaLima put together. So they designed the inside. Is it Mina Lima or Mina? I always forget. Anyways, I think I got it right. So very cool. But anyway, so that's that's Golden Trio Multiball. Very, very fun. Pretty approachable. Easy to pretty easy to do. This is the stair. This is the staircase shot entering from the back. So watch where the ball enters here. I'm just gonna start it over again. And just wait a second. Now watch this. See how it fed it from the back and then it dumped it out on the bottom right. And that's just because that's where the staircase was aligned at that time. If you look, I just got it back up there again. Like you can see that there's a lot of flow to this game and it can be very, very fast. See, like, look how quick it returned to that left flipper. Now I'm in the back where the pop bumper is. So, I mean, it's, I'll replay that sequence one more time so you can see, because I hit a couple of combos there. The Valley Company Subsidiary of Walter Kidde Co Inc Mirco Playfields Tim Tim Kitzrow Scott Danesi Nick in that respect because I feel like if you played a lot of Jersey Jack games although although avatars kind of a fast game you could argue too but this game really flows and it fast it so that kind of a departure from some of like the stop nature of some of the other Jersey Jack games or the the floatiness there no floaty in here this this thing is fast which makes it super fun in my opinion that right flipper you can sort of hit that orbit shot and kind of rip it around too which is really fun there we go boom it back It's pretty, pretty fun, man. Hopefully I'm remembering it correctly. If I make a couple mistakes, I'm sorry. It's been a really long time since I played it, so I'm trying to go off memory. So this next shot is the left ramp shot to the Quidditch playfield, but I'm doing a close-up on this one so you can kind of see it a little bit more closely. So here, I'm going to rewind this really quick so you can see it. But here we'll press play, and then you'll see...pay attention to my right flipper. And this is that little playfield up there. So fun, man. I think I only got it like twice on this particular video file. But yeah, and then it dumps it back off in that right ramp and back to your flipper. I'll play that one more time because that's honestly one of my most... that's like one of my favorite... Oh, shoot. There we go. Hold on. This is one of my favorite shots by far. So here, we'll play it one more time. Boom. There's a cool spinner there. It's a pretty awesome shot and you'll have a blast with it. Those that are going to Southern Fried Gaming Expo, I believe it's going to be there, so you'll be able to play it and you'll see exactly what I mean. Okay, this was... I think I just wanted to show a closer up of the wand ball lock for you. There's some cool like LED fiber optics in the top of it. You can see those. We talk about that a little bit in the featurette too. I'm not sure why I've showed this sequence. I think just to show the balls going into the cauldron a little bit faster. Or a little bit closer, sorry. But yeah, super cool. Those wands are all like one-to-one replicas from the, uh... From the movie, the movie props. Okay, this shot is probably, it's gonna seem at first glance like this isn't that exciting, but it really is. And I think it's because of the way they choreographed this whole thing. So the choreography of this is really cool. So basically what you're looking at right here is the Death Eater. The Death Eater has a drop target underneath it. You hit that drop target and then now that drop target is down. Then you feed the ball into the Death Eater, the drop target locks and you're like, what's going on? You think your ball is locked, you're not really sure what's going on. And then you'll see what happens is that it's really distracting the first time it happens but in a good way. All of a sudden your flippers start flipping out and you're like looking at them like, what's going on? The Ball is Firing Back at You Super Fast So in this sequence, you're going to see me hitting this drop target down. This one I edited a little bit because I was trying to get different angles so you could see different angles. This is a slightly different clip than the one that's in the featurette though. So here I knocked it down. Now I'm going to hit... Now I'm loaded it in, right? So now the ball is loaded into the Death Eater. The Death Eater also has these cool LED eyes that glow different colors too. Now the flippers are freaking out. So here I'm going to just pay attention to the whole sequence. Sorry, I'm getting excited. I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay, so, lock the ball. Flippers are flipping out. And then, boom! It's so fast, dude! It fires it so fast. You have to really be ready for it. This next thing is the Protego mech. So this is actually a way to save your ball. When you have this lit, it'll basically... If you're in that, I guess that wouldn't be the out lane, it's in that in lane or the inner lane. This would drain otherwise, but when you have this lit, it pops up and saves the ball. It's kind of a cool little mechanism and a cool throwback to the movie itself. So Protego protects you. This is interesting because this is the Whomping Willow. I really like the Whomping Willow. So on this pop bumper is the Whomping Willow tree and the Ford Angula, I think that's what it's called, inside the, and obviously everyone knows that iconic scene where they drive to Hogwarts and they get stuck in the tree. This is really cool. So the tree has some, I don't know what material they made this tree out of, but you'll watch when the pop bumper is going off, you can see it's kind of like, it looks like there's motion in the tree. It definitely doesn't look like a static tree. I will give you one little Easter egg. I hope I don't get in trouble for this. But if you look, you'll see a Quidditch player here on the left. So look at the Ford car and then move your eyes over to the left and you'll see this Quidditch player with the number 11. Well, this was an Easter egg that Eric wanted to put into the game because this is the 11th Jersey Jack game. Well, there is no number 11 Quidditch player, so I believe this got pulled from the game. So when you get your game, this Quidditch player will look exactly like this, but there will be no number 11 on the back. We gift thisoplank.com K Mann is famускatta... … A Let me just see if I can go back. So if you look at the staircase, there's pictures on the staircase. And if you remember the pictures in the movie on the staircase, they change, right? There's things, there's motion to those pictures. And I always get this term wrong. I can't remember if it's called venticular. I always forget what that's called. But it's that stuff that they have a lot at Disney where you're looking at a picture maybe at like the Haunted Mansion and the picture changes. This is how detailed these guys are at Jersey Jack. And I was like, dude, what the heck? That's nuts. But the pictures change. So they they put little mini venticulars. Sorry if I get that name wrong, correct me in the comments. So like when they change the pictures freaking change. I just think that's so cool. And you'll notice a lot of detail throughout this game that you might not notice in the fast-moving trailer. Another thing too is all the light covers are the books. So if you look for at a light you can see right here if you look at the light Syce dy cuid to do wherever you're going. – Our The artwork is stunning. And if you're a fan of the book, the books, then I think you'd be like, oh my gosh, I gotta have this as a collector's item if you're really, really into the Harry Potter universe. So I do think it was interesting because they went down a very like super fan route with the artwork. But I think if you are a super fan, you're going to very much appreciate it. And then if you're if you're if you're not really like into that artwork, the wizard's beautiful. The wizard's awesome. The powder coating on the wizard's got like this I'm not sure if you guys are aware of this, but this is a really cool game. It's a game that's almost rainbow, but it's not rainbow like, I don't want to say rainbow because everyone's going to be turned off by that. But it's just got this, I don't know, like different light shows it, different coloring in it. It's really, really beautiful. So you can't really go wrong with The Wizard. So if you're not into the artwork on the CE, I don't think you'd be disappointed by The Wizard by any stretch of the imagination. The name of the game. But it's still really pretty. Alright, and by the way, that was all, um, I think it was Jesper. I mean, Jesper hand drew all that. So it's not, I've heard people say things that are crazy, like, oh, it's copy and paste Photoshop. Like, that's actually kind of offensive to him. Because number one, if you haven't seen it in person, you can't appreciate it like that. It is very nice. It is very beautiful. The art blades are beautiful. Jesper did an awesome job. The John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Digital I'm not even the designer, but I'm someone that is very empathetic. I try to put myself in people's shoes. And I just can't imagine working on a project for almost two years and someone being like, oh yeah, that's Photoshop, copy and paste. I'd be like, what? I would be pissed. Like I'd be mad. That's just, it's just not right. Anyways, you can't make, you can't make people, you know, you can't, they're going to say I'm not gonna say whatever they're gonna say, but hopefully what happens is the majority of the pinball community, which has a very reasonable outlook on things, can deduce information, take in information, deduce it down to something, and have an intelligent comment versus this sucks or whatever, because that doesn't help anybody. Of course, artwork is subjective and some people aren't gonna like things, but I do think, like, let's be respectful with our feedback. and David David Van Es, and the other names of the people who are in this space. And they're all very passionate people that are in this pinball space making these games for us. So anyways, that's my take. And people can rip me for it, and I don't care. I'm unapologetic for that. I very much appreciate the entertainment that these people provide for us. Whether you like the game or not, whether you like the theme or not, You cannot refute that there is a ton of hard work and effort that goes into making these games. Okay, rant over, let's go! Alright, so we're gonna go back to the next clip really quick, which I think is the Whomping Willow one more time. So you guys are gonna have to watch that one more time. This shot is so beautiful, like I love the way it feeds the balls into the cauldron and then lets them out into the playfield. It's very, very cool. So we'll, uh... We'll go to the next clip. So this, this is, oh, this is the Death Eater battle again. So let's just show it one more time. Locks the ball, flippers flip out, and then bam, shoots it right at you. Bam! That's one of the harder ones. Like I said, there's various speed settings on it. This is Protego, we already looked at Protego. So that's a way to save your ball. When that's lit, it will pop up, which is great. All right, you can hear me and Mason and I talking to each other. Here's the Whomping Willow again. Like I said, if you didn't catch it, the number 11 on the Quidditch player will not be there. That was a little Easter egg that had to get pulled out because of licensing concerns. Okay, so here's the editions of the game. You're gonna have the arcade edition. This is the right side of the artwork. Now keep in mind, this artwork is gonna look exactly like the wizard. There's no difference on the artwork. The decals are not radcals on this though. They're regular vinyl decals. And the armor is not powder coated. It's just a, well, actually I shouldn't say that. It's a black, I think it's just a black generic powder coating. There's nothing like special about it. It does not have a shaker motor. It does not have art blades. It does not have the microphone headphone jack thing and the Bluetooth in the front. And I think, I think that's, oh, and it doesn't have a shaker. I don't know if I said that. It doesn't have a shaker and it doesn't have Invisiglass. So I think that's all the things. This is the left side of the cabinet. On the arcade and wizard, you got heroes and villains. That's what you're going to have on both sides. So this is the villain side. It really cool because even the heroes and villains is on the back glass too So you notice that red color reddish color and the green So you got your heroes on the right and your villains on the left Very very cool I when people see this in person I think they going really like The Wizard a lot I I know it generic in the sense that not generic sorry wrong word but it is um it more traditional right This is what you expect from pinball art but it is very beautiful and if you a big fan of the movies I think this does the does the franchise justice Okay, so there you go. There's the arcade edition. This is, and that's $10,000. The wizard edition, I believe is $12,000, right? I believe. I should have known that prior to this, I'm pretty sure. Correct me if I'm wrong. So here, you're gonna get your powder-coated armor, which like I said, you can almost see it a little bit in this picture. It's kinda got like, I really want not, I really don't want to say rainbow because it's not rainbow. It's like got all these different color patterns that come out as the light shines on it in different in different ways. It's very pretty. You do not get a topper on the arcade. You do get the the acrylic topper on the wizard. I actually really like this topper, believe it or not. I think this was a really nice topper. And, you know, I don't it's almost like it reminds me of the Evil Dead topper. Like the Evil Dead generic topper that comes with it is actually really nice. This one is too. It's very nice layered plastics and it looks really pretty. So I like it and it's like a Quidditch game or match going on up there. This does have the radcals, so you're gonna get the radcals, you're gonna get the shaker, you're gonna get the headphone jack, all that stuff, which is interesting because I don't think it's... Oh, it's there, yeah. You're gonna get the headphone jack, you're gonna get all the stuff. It's essentially gonna be the same. You're gonna have all the stuff you would have in a normal LE version of a Jersey Jack game, except that it's just called The Wizard. Okay, so that's the left side. The right side, like I said, it's gonna look exactly the same as the cabinet you just saw, except the radcals are there and the powder-coated armor's there and the topper. The collector's edition, you're gonna get all the stuff I talked about except you're gonna get the Hogwarts Castle topper on the top. Now, I think when I was there, unfortunately, we don't have a ton of footage of the topper. It does do things. I gotta admit, if there was something that we could have focused on more, I guess it could have been the topper in the featurette video. I hope, I haven't seen, actually right now I'm recording this the day before the launch, so I have not seen the official trailer. So I don't know, in the official trailer they may highlight that a little bit more. Here you see right side, left side. In the, if you watch the featurette, this artwork tells a story of the Harry Potter movies through the artwork of the cabinet. So I won't spoil that. If you want to go watch the featurette, we talk about that a bit more. I do like this topper. It does feel, it looks nice, but I don't know all the things that it does because when we were there, I was not focused on the topper. I was really focused on we have a video to produce. We got to get these interviews done and it took a long time, right? As you can imagine, we interviewed a lot of people and that was the core, that was the majority of the video. So we had to really figure out how to manage time. And I only did it, Mason and I were only out there for two days. So we did have half of a third day, thankfully, because we had a couple little things that we hadn't done. But yeah, so this is the collector's edition. And then I have some pictures. So this was some pictures of the whole experience. And I'll tell you, man, this was just awesome. I can't tell you how much fun we had. That's Mason, for those of you who don't know. He does a lot of editing for the channel. I will say I took the brunt of like anything in this video that you see the feature at lighting, camera, camera setup, audio monitoring, audio, that's all me. So I focused on that and I had Mason focus on a little bit more of the camera work aspects and then any of the editing. And he had to piece a lot of stuff together. So Mason had, we both had very heavy lifts on this project and I feel like we split up the workload pretty well. And we just had so much fun with this. Like we just really, this was like a dream project for us to be able to do something like this. And this set was really interesting. So just before I go on to the next picture, this is the set that they used. So in the trailer you probably saw, so at this time if you're watching this, you probably already saw the big trailer, the reveal trailer. In that trailer, this set wasn't here, wasn't in Chicago or in Illinois, it was in North Carolina for that film project. They shipped it back to JJP and I had no idea we were going to have this set. I was nervous because I'm like, where are we going to film this video in a factory? So we dressed up the set, I had some backlighting in, we actually had to diffuse the lights. Lighting was a little bit of a challenge here because you don't see this in the photo but on the right hand side of this set are these gigantic windows that just pour light in from the side. Outside of covering them, which you'd have to get up on, I don't know, probably a forklift Frank I lapel mic'd everybody, but I had... we did some post-processing on the audio that I think really you probably will not tell or will not hear any of the factory noise, which is kind of crazy because we were able to maintain the audio quality of the interviewer, the people we were interviewing, but drown out some of that noise, which was tough. We have a lot of cutting room floor footage that didn't make it in because it was too noisy. We couldn't completely eliminate it. I was so stoked to have the set. We did have to defuse these windows because if you look really close at these windows, you can see that you're in a factory. You can see the factory lights. Actually, Tom, the COO or Chief Operating Officer over at JJP was able to, with his phone, all these lights in the factory are controlled with... He has like an iPhone app, I think. It could be Android, I'm not sure, but whatever. It's a phone app, and he was able to shut off, you know, obviously it's an active factory, so you can't shut off the factory workers light, but we were able to shut off enough of it to kind of remove a little bit of that harshness and get back that vibe of we're in a castle, you know what I mean? And so my only regret is I wish we would have put candles, but I just, you know, there was a lot of money I had to spend on gear for this project that I didn't necessarily have. So I was, you know, this, this cost me quite a bit of money to do this project. So it was, so it was interesting, but to me, I didn't care because this was an awesome experience and I love that I can say I did this, you know what I mean? So, so pretty cool. And I think Mason feels the same way. It was a very cool experience. I know now if I do one of these again, I have a list of things I would do differently to make it even better, although I think the finished product was really good and I hope you guys enjoy it. So, alright, there's one picture of Mason and I. We'll keep moving along here. This was, I think, after we interviewed Jack. Jack is such a nice man, like such a nice guy. I really enjoyed my time with Jack. He was so nice to us and he really took the time out of his day John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Laser Los, Bowen Kerins, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., orbit ramps, Automated Amusements, Python Anghelo, Joe Kaminkow, Tim Tim Kitzrow, Scott Danesi. Jason's shoulder, there's a bunch of pallets, there's those lights were like the bane of my existence because during certain parts of the day they were just glaring in so much light on the right side or actually the left side of the person sitting in the chair so that was a little tough we had two cameras I had an A camera and a B camera for those of you who don't know the A camera is like your primary camera, your B camera is like your secondary I had really nice preview displays on there so I could see exactly how the shot was being framed at all times we were all wearing this was my last minute idea I wanted to have wireless monitoring so I could always hear the audio no matter where I was and I wasn't tailored to the camera because a lot of times when you're doing audio your headphones are plugged directly into a camera or into some some recorder that's less than ideal because you can't walk around and I wanted us to be able to move around freely so uh so yeah and if you notice I have my little I don't know what these little things are called I got a couple of these little blue if you look at the the light stand on the right of my shoulder there's that little just like a gypsy thing I don't know what those things are called but I I'm not sure what they're called, but I put them on a couple of the... I was trying to get into the spirit of Harry Potter, so I had a couple of little Easter eggs here and there. I know Eric got a kick out of that. So Eric was so fun to work with, and boy, man, this is... In this picture, I'm looking at Mason, and I'm basically... We've worked together for a long time, so it's easy for us to kind of like understand what we're saying without saying something. And I was looking at him, and my eyes were like, Eric just frickin' destroyed that section of the video. Killed it. Killed it. Because I was asking them tee-up questions. I'm not asking them, I'm not telling them what to say. I want it to be a natural reaction. I want to get their passion and their feeling about the game out. I don't want to tell them what to say. With Eric, it was like so effortless because the guy has so much passion about what he's doing. And man, I'd ask him a question, he would nail it. He would just nail it and he'd sometimes take it in a direction I didn't expect. And a lot of that direction I didn't expect ended up in, ended up coming out to some really awesome footage that you see in the featurette. So Eric was just absolutely knocked it out of the park and he's so natural on camera so it was pretty awesome working with Eric. So that's, that's that picture. Then I think the next one, let's see, so this is just a far shot. By the way, Ken Cromwell took all these pictures so thank you Ken for doing that. I was kind of like, man, I wish we could capture this experience. So the fact that he did that for us is great. For those of you who don't know, Ken is no longer with Jersey Jack. He just joined Flip N Out Pinball. There's no, you know, obviously I would want Ken to tell his own story. Ken didn't leave in the middle of this roll, in the middle of the launch. He did believe that they were going to do it or get it launched in May. Obviously that didn't happen. And so he had all intent and he had he had full intent to be there for the launch. Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. But but there's no like weird reason why he left. He just, you know, like anything else, right? You have expiration dates when you work for companies. I think he wanted to move on, you know. So so congratulations to Ken. You know, I think Jersey Jack obviously lost a really passionate, awesome guy. I got a chance to know Ken over the years. But I will say that I'm really, you know, I'm stoked for Flip N Out Pinball because Zach and the crew over there are going to really have a great employee that's going to be part of their team now. So, yeah, definitely a loss for Jersey Jack, but I'm sure they'll find someone to fill some pretty big shoes with Ken. But Ken's a really, really freaking nice guy. And it's really everyone over at Jersey Jack. They're all awesome. So, all right. So that's that picture. We'll go to the next one here. The next one, this is Joe Katz. He was very fun to be around too. Software engineer, right? He writes the code. I felt bad for him because his section was earlier. I think we did Joe first and the friggin' factory was so loud and there were so many takes that he did that were great that we couldn't use because there was too much noise and I felt so bad for him. There's really no way to avoid it. Like even if I had a boom mic, it wouldn't have mattered. It would have got picked up on the microphone. It's very loud in there. So but the thing is you have these windows of opportunity. It's like so during the day it was very challenging to film, I'm not gonna lie, because we had we had takes we had to redo that were really good. And that's hard, especially when you know you said it exactly how you wanted to say it. So I, Joe was a really good sport, but I could tell like, man, this is, it was tough for him because we had to keep being like, nope, you got to stop. Nope, you got to stop. So, so Joe was a great sport and a great guy. And he, he did a lot of explaining to me on the game. And so, so I'm grateful for that. And you can see me holding my clipboard over there. That was for me to stay organized. I had, I had printed out all of my notes. I'm not the most organized person usually. And so if I had to pat my back myself on the back for anything is I really kept and Mason can attest to the fact that I am usually not like this but I'm also usually the guy on camera I really enjoyed being behind the camera like I got such joy at doing the producing stuff it made me like there was a part of me that was like man I wish this was my full-time job like I wish I could do this as my job I enjoyed it so much like I was I was on Cloud9. I remember calling Kim that night and I was like, Kim, this is like a dream to work on this kind of stuff. It was just so cool. I mean, it wouldn't even have to be pinball. I mean, well, it's more fun because it is pinball. It's just something that I'm passionate about. But I just loved the idea of like being able to provide some direction, you know, because sometimes people will say something with a lot of passion and then that take wasn't good, right, because of the noise level. And you're like, hey, could you do that again? Exactly how you did it. chief the passion hi and they don't say it the same way so now you gotta go all right so now you're like playing hype man for the person because you want to get you don't want it to be an inauthentic reaction you want it to be their authentic reaction but unfortunately because of something they have been you got to redo that take so it was it was actually kind of I didn get frustrated with it though I actually really enjoyed it I really really enjoyed this process I know I said that a bunch of times but this was just this was just so fun for me to do Anyway, okay. So that's Joe Katz, killing it over there. This is Dan. I don't want to mess up Dan's last name. So Dan's a mechanical engineer, and I think it's Lejcek, I think is how you say it. I hope I don't mess it up. Dan, really nice guy, super passionate about mechanical engineering, and he worked pretty extensively with Eric on engineering the staircase. You know, I think it was mostly Dan from an engineering standpoint, but I know Eric and Dan worked hand in hand in that. And so that was definitely like a big feat to get that device to work the way it does. And I can't remember how many unique ball paths, but we do talk about the unique ball paths in the featurette and the amount of ball paths it provides for you. This is a close-up shot. Look at me. I'm like so happy right here. I am so happy. I was having such a good time. This was um... I think I broke the game at this point. I was like, Eric, I'm sorry. It was actually uh... I didn't really break it, but there was something that wasn't working on this prototype game, and it was my bad. I like... I did something. I can't remember what it was, but Eric fixed it for me, and he's like, oh yeah, this won't be in the production game, I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with the game, but no, Eric was so cool to work with. We actually ended up going out this night. We went to Interium, Eric, myself, and Mason, and we were so exhausted though, but we definitely had a fun, we had a good dinner. I can't remember what beer he had me have. He had me grab some IPA that he liked. It was really good too. It's probably a local beer to Chicago area, but I can't remember what it was. Those banners that you see, the banners of the different houses, those were actually kind of interesting because it was really hard to get those to hang correctly. Because this thing, this structure is big, man. This is a big, big structure. So it was pretty interesting working with it, and I had to do some pretty creative things to light the back of it. Just because it was kind of an awkward place. Here's Ken, the Cromwell. Congratulations on the new gig, man. He was so awesome. Um, he's really the reason why we got chosen to do this in the first place. He believed in me that, and Mason, that we could do this. And, uh, and I appreciate that he gave us that opportunity because, uh, I had such a blast. I mean, he knows I was like, I'm going to talk more about it on a, on the round table on the JBS show, because I probably was everyone's biggest pain in the ass during this thing. Cause I couldn't talk about it. It was so frustrating. I'm being the Chamber of Secrets was really freaking hard for that long and I can't even imagine imagine being the game designer you gotta wait for years sometimes it's a brutal I don't know how these guys do it but anyways Ken was awesome here was some pre setup stuff out that the ladders out because I was trying to get these banners figured out we were going to use all three and then we didn't so I actually ended up scaling that back and we only did we did the one I think we did two actually this was um and Dude, moving these games around was brutal. So if you ever see certain things, if you see certain things like that seem a little off, maybe it's because we move these games around like a million times. So every time I moved them, you'd have to re-level them. And, and, you know, because it's just sometimes people weren't around or I didn't have a card available. So I was like moving them with Mason. So it was, it wasn't easy to keep moving them around, to be honest. And Jersey Jack games are pretty heavy. If you've never moved one around, they're not light. So, uh, It's like moving a tank when you move a Jersey Jack game. So you have to, my back was definitely bothering me after that week, because sometimes I'd be like, there's no cart, I'm moving it. I'm getting down on my back and moving it. Here I'm gonna show you, these are just some of the, these are the four multiball animations that would play on the backglass. That's actually the backglass artwork. So this is Explore Hogwarts multiball. I think this one is the Quidditch World Cup multiball, I believe is what it is. Yep, Quidditch World Cup, multiball. So these are the animations I played. They did a spectacular job on these animations. This is the Death Eater multiball. All this stuff is awesome. Like some of the UI, I'm not showing you the UI here, but the UI stuff is awesome. You'll see a lot more of the UI in the featurette. This is Golden Trio multiball. They're just, all of them are really good. So that's actually, that's actually the majority of the stuff I wanted to show. I just thought it'd be cool, like I have all this extra footage, there's a lot more that I have, But unfortunately, like, I just don't have all the time to put it together right now. But I will put together more of this footage over time. For those of you that are interested, I'll probably be getting the game, so I will definitely be streaming it and talking more about it. I wish I could remember all the shots. I just don't. It was over a month ago. And like I said, as much as I was geeking out wanting to play it, I really didn't play it as much as I would have wanted to, obviously, because I had a job to do. So I had a job to do so I couldn't play as much but there were a couple nights where there was one night it was the last night I think we stayed definitely a lot later like we were one of the last couple still in the factory and I was just playing on the CE model for a while and so it was super fun but this is a fun game man I think it's this this feels like a departure from the typical Jersey Jack game it's not a floaty game at all it is very fast playing not brutal though like not I'm not brutal to the point where it's like a drain monster or anything like that. There's a slight learning curve like any pinball machine. Once you get the sweet spot, you'll start hitting these shots. It'll feel really, really good. And there's a flow to it that I think is lacking in some of the other Jersey Jack games. So I think Eric did a great job with the design. I have no idea there are people out there that are, you know, I gotta think that, you know, I gotta think like, like, uh, Mark Seiden and, and Steve Ritchie and, and, and, and, and Excuse me, and Eric Minier. I'm sure they talk and discuss the games they're working on, and I'm sure they do ask opinions of everybody else on the team. And I gotta think that there's probably influence taken from all of them. I'm sure that Eric might influence Steve, and Steve might influence Mark. And so there's, you know, that's the cool thing about having a tight-knit community and a smaller, you know, organization where they're... I did see, oh I know I can tell you a story. So I saw Steve one night. Steve was leaving, I was leaving and he was really curious about what we were doing. He's like, hey guys what's going on? So he came over and with Steve he's got a hearing, a little bit of a hearing issue so you have to kind of yell at Steve Ritchie. Like, not yell at him but you do have to talk louder for him to hear you. And I was like, I was like dude I know a million people ask you this. I know they do. But give me like a Shao, Shao Kahn and he's like, he's like fatality and then he's like uh, you weak pathetic fool. And he did, he did, he did, but he loved doing it. He wasn't like embarrassed that I asked him. He's like, oh, you want, you want me to, you want me to, you want me to give you some Mortal Kombat? And he did. It was awesome. It's so weird because when he does his voices, it's almost like it's coming out of a different guy. He can do so many, he's such a talented guy and he can do all these crazy voices, but he's like, you weak, pathetic fool. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is awesome. And then I met, was it Jack? Uh, shoot, I always remember Jack, I always forget Jack's last name, is it Hagar? He, he was, uh, Mr. Big in NARC, I think, and he did a lot of like early midway video game stuff. Very, very nice man, I've never actually met him, I've bumped into him, but never had a chance to really talk to him, so he was a really fun person to talk to really quick. I'm gonna go ahead and do this real quick and I gotta admit sometimes I can get distracted. I really tried to stay on on task for this because this was a big project. I took this very seriously. Like I take these things really seriously. To me it was a big responsibility. It was like, hey, I'm being asked to do this. I wouldn't say yes to it if I wasn't fully committed and I realize sometimes I go really extra on things. But I know that about myself. I don't do anything with low effort. I put the most effort I possibly can into everything and I don't know everything and I learned something new every time. I learned a ton working on this project. There are things that I would... there's already gear that I've purchased. Now I have no... I don't know. Is another company going to come to me and ask me to do this? No idea. Do I hope they do? Yes, because I loved it. If I have time, I would love to do this for some other organization or Jersey Jack again because it was a pleasure working with them. I will say that I think the license holder is a little bit, they're very particular about the Harry Potter universe, so they're very much, there's things that did not make the final edit that I hope one day I'll be able to show you guys. I don't know, I'm gonna have to talk to, I don't know, I'm gonna have to talk to Jersey Jack and see what my, if I have any contractual obligations why I can't show some of it. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with the intro and the original cut, but the intro and the original cut I like the best. I still like the intro and the cut that you see, the feature that you see, but I hope I can show you guys the original intro. Because the original intro I think hit a little bit more on the emotional side, and it really, I feel like we created a hook again, but it was harder to create a hook when some of the things we took out were not there. I'm not there. But Mason did a great job pulling, you know, trying to extract emotion out of things. And Mason's just great in general, really creative. And I know he really enjoyed this experience too, because this was one of the biggest projects, if not the biggest project he's ever worked on. So it was definitely challenging. I definitely would have to buy a lot more gear, which I already kind of did, even though I bought it not knowing if I'll do this again, but I will practice on some of the new gear I've purchased in my own videos, and hopefully one day I get this opportunity again. So I know there's way more that you guys want to hear, there's way more that you want to talk about. That's all I got for right now, but I appreciate you guys watching. Please go check out the featurette. The link will be in the description of this video. I think you'll really enjoy it. It gives you a glimpse into a lot of the artwork, the sound. You get to talk, you get, you get to hear from David Thiel on what he did. And he created 90 unique musical pieces for this game. And they did get the, um, Hedwig's theme is in it. When you press start, you hear Hedwig's theme, but the rest of the music is probably, um, I'd say it's like inspired by John Williams, but David Thiel's very talented guy. And so there's things that we talk about in the featurette about how Eric views Dr. Gr привy google.com It adds up to some number. Sorry. My math isn't great. But yeah, so you, there's a bunch of mini modes within each movie and then you can select the movie when you start the modes. When I played it, they hadn't had that piece, I don't think enabled yet. So for me, I wasn't able to select the movie, but you will be able to select the movie so you can figure out like what experience you want to have. So I kind of like that because you can select which one you want if you're like and then I think movies seven and eight are final wizard modes I believe and those should all be coded into the game so I can't remember exactly like all the details on that but but obviously as the game comes out we'll get more and more info on that and then I'm sure they'll they'll kind of do a deeper dive on the code over time but I really did like the code I felt like you were kind of playing of you were kind of playing as an observer of the I think Eric does go into that a little bit more in the featurette, so definitely check that out. And there's a whole gameplay section in the featurette where we sort of break down and talk about the code a little bit more. There's just the talent and the passion of the people. I also have to give props to Debbie. Debbie's the producer out at Jersey Jack. She was awesome to work with, and I know I was a pain in the ass to her so many times, I'm sure it probably drove her crazy. She's too nice to tell me, but I know she's probably like, dude, simmer down. But I can't help it. But hey, if you hire me, just know if someone does for anything, I'm not going to go halfway. I'm going all the way and I'm going to push my limits. That's just how I am with everything. I mean, look at my look at me in the pinball hobby. I went from like zero to a thousand. That's just how I go. If I'm into something, I go full in. I go all in. And I hope that you see that and I hope that's the reason why you watch this podcast because I don't, I don't F around. I go in and I do that because it's something I'm passionate about. And if you guys can feel that on your end, then I'm, then I'm doing something right because you're, you're get, you're feeling it. You're feeling it too. So anyways, I appreciate every single one of you for watching, supporting, bringing me along on this journey. I don't know if the podcast was not as successful as it's been if I would have gotten this opportunity. So thank you very much for everyone out there supporting the podcast. And that's it, guys. Go watch the featurette. Enjoy this Harry Potter launch day. Put your comments below. And I will see you on the next one. Wait, what? No. And I will see you on... Oh, I was doing the next one. That's my other thing. No, my outro for this is... Hold on, I forgot my own outro. Oh, we will see you on... The flip side. Thanks guys. Appreciate you. Go get some- Go! Go to Southern Fried Gaming Expo and play yourself some Harry Potter. Alright, see you guys.