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Episode 57 - Games Games Games

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 27m·analyzed·Mar 11, 2018
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TL;DR

CGC skips TPF reveal; Pinball Expo organizers split into rival conventions; restoration drama ensues.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss pinball news ahead of Texas Pinball Festival, including Chicago Gaming Company decision to skip their third game reveal, the split of Pinball Expo organizers creating competing shows (Pinballpalooza vs. the unnamed former Expo), and a restoration project on a Data East Laser War machine. They also cover video game acquisitions and tabletop gaming topics.

Key Claims

  • Chicago Gaming Company will not be revealing their third remake title at Texas Pinball Festival, citing unfinished technological implementations

    high confidence · Dennis explicitly states CGC announced they will not reveal their third game at TPF and are working on 'new technological incorporated items'

  • Pinball Expo organizers Rob and Mike have split, with Rob launching Pinballpalooza in September (one month before traditional October Expo dates)

    high confidence · Dennis provides detailed account of the split announcement, Mike's response confirming Expo will continue under a different name due to legal disputes over branding

  • Neither Rob nor Mike can use the 'Pinball Expo' name currently pending legal resolution over who owns the trademark

    high confidence · Dennis states: 'There are contracts that are already in place for that. However, it will not be called Pinball Expo. They are not in agreement over who owns the rights'

  • Spooky Pinball was publicly named by Rob as supporting Pinballpalooza, but Charlie from Spooky publicly denied committing to skipping traditional Expo

    high confidence · Dennis: 'Spooky was explicitly called out as being an entity that would be at his show and not at Expo... Charlie... had to come out publicly and say, I did not say that I would not be at Pinball Expo'

  • Stern Pinball does not typically use Texas Pinball Festival as a platform for game reveals, instead announcing independently

    high confidence · Dennis: 'I can't think of a time where Stern has ever used TPF to announce as a platform for the reveal of a new game'

  • The Laser War restoration involved significant missing components, cut wires, and was sourced as a parts machine rather than a project machine

    high confidence · Dennis: 'it was clearly... not so much a project machine as it was a parts machine... Almost all the plastics were missing... wires were cut underneath the play field'

Notable Quotes

  • “There's a big thing coming up. You have to wait until after the big convention. Don't drop all this stuff the week before.”

    Tony @ early segment — Expresses frustration at pinball announcements happening before major shows, citing analytics showing poor audience reception for pre-event news coverage

  • “This is the most tastiest, newest, hottest news that I was aware of before we went to air here.”

    Dennis @ Pinballpalooza discussion — Emphasizes the recency and significance of the Expo split drama as breaking news

  • “I don't see spooky as an intimidation factor.”

    Dennis @ Spooky/CGC competition discussion — Dismisses theory that Spooky's Alice Cooper reveal intimidated CGC into canceling their announcement

  • “If they're still having some big issue, I mean, they've been dealing with the various other issues with Attack from Mars, the coloration issue and this and that. I'm sure if there's something that's not 100% to go, they are going to want to wait and hold off until they get everything 100%.”

    Dennis @ CGC reveal cancellation discussion — Explains quality-control reasoning behind CGC's decision to delay reveal, referencing prior Attack from Mars issues

  • “I had to come out publicly and say, I did not say that I would not be at Pinball Expo.”

    Charlie (Spooky Pinball, quoted by Dennis) @ Spooky response discussion — Spooky's clarification that they were misrepresented in Pinballpalooza announcement

  • “Pinball Expo has a reputation, at least in recent years, of being fairly unpleasant for vendors in particular to attend. And most of the blame that I have always seen online has been thrown on Mike for that.”

    Dennis @ Expo history/context — Provides background on why the split occurred and Mike's reputation in the community

  • “in an ideal world, in a strategic ideal world, I mean in an anti-drama ideal world, Pinball Palooza would be put at the same time at just a rival facility”

    Dennis — Speculates on optimal competitive arrangement between the two shows

Entities

Chicago Gaming CompanycompanyDennispersonTonypersonSpooky PinballcompanyCharliepersonRobpersonMikepersonJersey Jack Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Vendor relations tension at Pinball Expo linked to Mike's management style and abrasiveness

    medium · Dennis: 'Pinball Expo has a reputation, at least in recent years, of being fairly unpleasant for vendors in particular to attend... most of the blame... has been thrown on Mike... Mike has to deal with the harder part of the show'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Expo split between co-organizers Rob and Mike creating competing shows and industry uncertainty

    high · Detailed account of Rob launching Pinballpalooza while Mike continues Expo; legal dispute over trademark; vendors and attendees forced to choose between events

  • ?

    event_signal: Spooky Pinball's Alice Cooper reveal at Texas Pinball Festival becoming primary draw after CGC cancellation

    medium · Dennis and Tony discuss how Alice Cooper becomes more prominent reveal at TPF due to CGC's absence; discussion of whether it could intimidate other manufacturers

  • ?

    industry_signal: Fewer game reveals expected at Texas Pinball Festival 2024 than previous years due to multiple manufacturer absences

    medium · Dennis catalogs minimal confirmed reveals: only Spooky (Alice Cooper), Multimorphic (P3), and unknown smaller manufacturer games; questions about Stern, Jersey Jack, American Pinball, and others

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Potential Stern Pinball announcement about Iron Maiden game being speculated but not confirmed

    low · Dennis: 'Everyone's thinking it's time for Iron Maiden to be revealed... I don't disagree with that or whatever game they're going to put out next'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.443

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, March 11th. This is episode 57. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And it's just the both of us this time, Tony. Just the two of us. No interviews. You and I. No content. Oh, wait. No, there is content. There's almost too much content. We have a massive video game segment planned. We ended up needing to cover pinball news because, despite my belief that there wasn't going to be anything before Texas Pinball Festival, I, of course, had to be proven wrong. Yeah, come on, people. There's a big thing coming up. You have to wait until after the big convention. Don't drop all this stuff the week before. We know because last year, and we talked about this in our analytics back at the end of January, our worst performing episode was the pre-Texas Pinball Festival episode for 2017. So we know you guys don't want to just hear about garbage. So you should have just let it go. But nope, there had to be drama. There had to be strife. It's pinball, so why would I think otherwise? And speaking of both drama and strife, we've also got the tabletop segment back this time, going all the way back to something you spoke about early in the show's history. And I know it was probably over a year ago it was discussed. It might have been discussed again more recently because it has always sort of lived with us. But finally, it looks like closure is on the horizon. Yeah, there's closure. That saga is over, not in the good way. It's a sad, sad thing. But we'll be hitting that and more on this episode of EGP. wall. Yeah, I'd get a new intro, but I only spend $5 a year on intro music, so we got to wait.
1:59
So, speaking of intros, Tony, what's been going on since the last episode? I picked up a couple new games for Switch. I picked up Bayonetta 2, which came with Bayonetta, and I did not have one of the bad codes where it didn't work. So, I've been playing that some, because Bayonetta is just an insane game. I've beaten the original on Xbox. Bayonetta 2 is what I've been playing now on my Switch. I also picked up Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle because I enjoyed that game when Eric let me try it on his Switch. So I have games to play on the drive to the Texas and when we're down in Texas. So I have stuff to keep me entertained. I've also been, I finally finished my audible listen-through of the Dresden Files, and now I'm trying to catch up on the podcast that I listen to still, because I've been listening to audiobooks nonstop for like three months.
@ Pinballpalooza strategy discussion

  • “it was the worst project I have ever had to work on.”

    Dennis @ Laser War restoration discussion — Expresses frustration about the difficulty and scope of the Laser War restoration project

    • Stern Pinball
    company
    American Pinballcompany
    Multimorphiccompany
    Dutch Pinballcompany
    Deep Root Pinballcompany
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Pinballpaloozaevent
    Pinball Expoevent
    Laser Wargame
    Attack from Marsgame
    Alice Coopergame
    This Week in Pinballmedia
    Big Daddyperson
    Cassandra Petersonperson
    Nordmanperson
  • $

    market_signal: Pinball show strategy shift away from Texas Pinball Festival as primary announcement venue

    medium · Dennis notes Stern doesn't use TPF for reveals and CGC cancellation; speculation about industry moving toward independent announcements rather than show-based reveals

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Pinball Expo organizational structure with Rob as primary organizer and Mike handling operational/vendor relations

    medium · Dennis: 'Mike has to deal with the harder part of the show... the work that he has to do for the show is the more frustrating work'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Chicago Gaming Company cancelling Texas Pinball Festival reveal citing incomplete technological implementations

    high · Dennis: 'they will not be revealing their third remake title at TPF... they still have not formally announced what game that is... the announcement that it would not be present accompanied that it wasn't ready yet, and they were working on some new technological incorporated items'

  • ?

    product_concern: Chicago Gaming Company's Attack from Mars remake experiencing coloration issues requiring extended development

    medium · Dennis: 'they've been dealing with the various other issues with Attack from Mars, the coloration issue and this and that... if there's something that's not 100%... they are going to want to wait'

    • 3:04
    Yep. We're getting there. I'm getting there. How about you? What have you been up to? Oh, not a lot. But, well, pretty much everything that I have been up to, I'm going to be covering in the other various segments. Because I have gotten, I've made some progress on video games, which sometimes it seems like I don't tend to make a lot until I take vacation time. And, of course, Texas is coming up, and most of that vacation time is going to be spent down in the Lone Star State. So I won't be making much video game progress there. Went to the 403 Club last weekend for its monthly tournament. Did terrible. So I'm back to true form with that. and otherwise I don't have anything to say until we get to the relevant segments. So let's go ahead and start getting into those segments. And that means we open with pinball as we always do and we're going to open with the news and there are a couple of news items and the first one I want to bring up involves the Texas Pinball Festival and that is Chicago Gaming Company, commonly just called CGC. They have announced that they will not be revealing their third remake title at TPF And that is a change for two reasons. One, they revealed Attack from Mars remake at last year's TPF, and they had said they were revealing their third game at this year's TPF. They still have not formally announced what game that is. Most people seem to suspect Monster Bash, but a lot of people are now second-guessing themselves because the announcement that it would not be present accompanied that it wasn't ready yet, and they were working on some new technological incorporated items of some sort. There was not much in the way of clues in the statement. But I thought, obviously, this is pretty big news, especially for people that choose to go to Texas because it's seen as, oh, Expo South or the new Expo or something, something, something, Expo something, something, and that the big thing about Texas now isn't that it's got the best tournament and it's not that it's got the largest array of games to play. It's that it's where all the industry news happens now, especially game reveals. And this was a big one to be taken off the table.
    5:15
    Yeah, that's kind of, I mean, I can see if the game's not done or they don't think it's ready. But if it's something more along the lines of we don't think this is going to work out the best for us just due to the competition, we're not going to have a high enough standing. It's a curious situation. Now, that has come up in some of the public discussions. What is your take on that? Do you think that Texas, given that it already has the Alice Cooper reveal happening from Spooky Pinball, that CGC would say, we don't really want to go and present against it? Do you put stock in that theory?
    5:55
    No, not really. I think it's more like along the lines of something that as long as the game's not yet at 100%, that they probably don't want. to put it out there.
    6:07
    If they're still having some big issue, I mean, they've been dealing with the various other issues with Attack from Mars, the coloration issue and this and that. I'm sure if there's something that's not 100% to go, they are going to want to wait and hold off until they get everything 100%. That way they don't risk a botched reveal.
    6:30
    Yeah, I agree with you. I think this is probably for the reasons they've stated. I don't see it as a, oh, we're afraid. Especially, I mean, no, I don't mean it to sound negative, but Spooky doesn't put out a lot of games. It's not, I don't want to say that they're not competition, but even if they were ultra-sensitive to manufacturers also releasing and revealing games, given Alice Cooper has a set run count, I don't think this would be the game that would intimidate them because there's only a certain number of us. No, I don't disagree with you. I don't think that game would be the one that would be concerning.
    7:12
    And Spooky has a huge fan base, but they haven't really done very well for games lately. I mean, Rob Zombie was a fizzle.
    7:24
    Their other two games, Jetsons and Dominoes, aren't actually spooky games. America's Most Haunted is not like the greatest thing in the world. It's not blowing down walls. So it's not like they're up against rock stars that are getting ready to just shut the whole place down. It's not like if you went to an open mic night and the guy before you was Jerry Seinfeld and then you had to follow him up type thing. True. Though, I think the positive buzz still regarding Total Nuclear Annihilation has been what most of the spooky discussions have been, aside from what people think Alice Cooper is going to be like.
    8:05
    Well, true, and Total Nuclear Annihilation is amazing, but it's also, I don't consider it a spooky game. I mean, they're putting it out, but they didn't have anything. That game was designed before spooky got involved. That's true. I don't think they list it as a quote-unquote true spooky title either. Just a really smart play, a smart business maneuver. Especially, it doesn't follow the rule of having a run count, which, again, non-spooky games have not had, per se, run counts. The Jetsons does. I believe they've made 100, or agreed to make 100, and that can go up to 300. Domino's just went until they were ready to cut off the orders and Total Nuclear Annihilation is operating under the same rubric. But, yeah, so no, I don't see spooky as an intimidation factor. The thing, though, is I don't, now that this isn't going to be revealed, is TPF going to have much in the way of reveals? There is, and the reason I say that is we know Jersey Jack is not revealing a new game at Texas. They still don't have Pirates of the Caribbean out yet. So while it's going to be there for people to play, It's not like there's going to be a new new game that hasn't come out yet from them to talk about. So they're not doing anything at this year's TPF. It's not clear yet whether or not Stern is doing anything at this year's TPF. They have not said that they are. I can't think of a time where Stern has ever used TPF to announce as a platform for the reveal of a new game.
    9:37
    I can't either. I mean, the most recent games are there. They're often at the Marco booth. But, yeah, I can't think of one. And everyone's thinking it's time for Iron Maiden to be revealed. I don't disagree with that or whatever game they're going to put out next. But the bottom line is they tend to announce outside of shows. And sometimes people have suspected, oh, well, they didn't announce at Expo because Guardians was announced a couple weeks after that. And it was because they were afraid of Pirates from Jersey Jack. And others were like, it just wasn't ready yet. and they just announce whenever they're ready, and that tends not to sync with shows. So we don't need to really go into that. We don't know if CERN's going to be revealing a new game there. We know Spooky is. I'm imagining that American Pinball will not be. I've not heard a single lick of a rumor that they're getting ready to announce a second game. They've hardly released any of the Houdini pin. I believe it's still under 100 units. So that doesn't make sense that they do anything. The only other reveals I am aware of is that Cosmic Kart Racing for the P3 platform for Multimorphic, that's going to be revealed finally. So there's that. And then another company, I can't, I don't remember the, well, I'm not even sure how they're organized. I'm going to call them a company. They were working on the Pinball Circus vertical pinball that Python Angelo designed. They were doing like a remake of that for years and years and years.
    11:13
    They apparently, from all the photos I've seen, look to be getting ready to reveal a remake of Kingpin, which was a Capcom game. And that's going to be at TPF also. But I don't know how excited people are. Kingpin prototypes are very difficult to encounter. They only show up at a few shows. I've never played one. and so it's got that sort of mystique to it much like Pinball Circus does but this group has never put out any production Pinball Circuses and their first one they made was years ago so I don't know if there's any faith that this group can actually build machines.
    11:54
    I don't know. We'll just have to see what happens because it's completely possible that there are announcements that will come even if it's not a reveal that there will be announcements that come that are secret. I mean, we got the Elvira announcement last year, and that came out of left field. I mean, at least I hadn't heard anything about it. Maybe somebody else had, but for me, that was an unexpected announcement. I agree with you. And, in fact, the rumor mill is that that was a mistake, that Nordman wasn't supposed to have said anything about Elvira 3. That was really just supposed to be a fun seminar reunion involving Cassandra and Nordman and the artist talking about what it was like putting together a I Run the Party Monsters and Scared Stiff. And then when the question came up, Nordman answered it, but that Stern technically didn't want anyone to know about that yet.
    12:49
    That sounds like a Stern thing. Well, it would fit because they don't normally like anything that they're producing announced until they're actually ready to ship it. Officially, yeah. They are the kings of the leagues. I mean, we'll know about the next three games that are coming out two years in advance in terms of, like, I don't know what you're talking about.
    13:10
    That's how they work their PR when it comes to games, is they don't officially say anything until just before release. Yep. And then in terms of the other companies, Highway was planning to reveal one of the Barry Osler games, at least one of them, as a concept at TPF, they have announced, this was several weeks ago, and we probably should have covered it then, but we didn't, that they will not be revealing game number three at Texas. They're going to instead focus on continuing to make alien games and get those shipped out, which most people think is a smart move. Then there's Dutch Pinball, which is in no position to announce anything, because they tried to do that last year, and you remember what sort of response that got.
    13:56
    Maybe they'll announce Bride of Penn bought 4.0. I don't know if they could make it any more of an abomination than what they last showed, but it was tragic. But by their own admission, with their new contract manufacturer they're working with out of China, they don't even expect at the best to have the big Lebowskis ready to be shipped out from Dutch until May at the earliest. So that's still, I mean, I don't even know if they're going to be at the show or not. They've always made TPF, so they might. I don't know. People are pretty critical of them at this point spending money to go to shows without anything to sell.
    14:35
    And Deep Root, it's not yet the five days of Deep Root, and I can't imagine they're going to indicate anything until they do that PR week.
    14:42
    Well, they said in that interview it was said that they would be there as fans but not as DPF. Yeah, so they've already confirmed that. They're not doing a formal presence at the show. So anyway, yeah, it's just sort of interesting. I admit I'm a little disappointed because I thought that the Attack from Mars remake, being there and available and ready to play, it was a really cool thing that I hadn't expected, and it added, I think, a level of excitement. Granted, I really, really like Attack from Mars, and there's not really another remake that I would be more excited to see, so it's not as critical to me. I'm not going to TTF just for the new games. It's mostly because it's a massive pinball show, and I see so much stuff that I don't normally get to see. But, yeah, I can understand why people are upset.
    15:36
    Well, I mean, I can't. Oh no, there's not going to be enough reveals It's not worth my time to go and spend an entire weekend With my friends playing pinball And having a good time Because there's not going to be enough stuff revealed I mean, the very first time we went to TPF I wasn't expecting any reveals I just went to have a good time That's kind of how I look at it now I mean, it's not like it's In the day and age we have now Most reveals, I'm surprised when they happen At big events anymore because almost everybody's going to doing just solo announcement things or they'll have a big reveal, but it's their own special thing. It's not at a show anymore. Sure, but for me, the reason why I sympathize is, while it's not the reason I go to TPF, I can understand if someone booked flight, got hotel rooms, and thought they were going to an industry event to see a lot of reveals, and all of a sudden one of the major ones just decided on a whim that they weren't going to be there anymore. you can't cancel your flight without penalty and all that. It's not as easy to back out when you find out less than two weeks out,
    16:44
    if that's all you cared about. Yeah, I just, I don't know. I have a hard time seeing, I don't know. I just don't think that way. I can't think, well, I'm not going to go do this thing now because there's only going to be one announcement. Nobody else is going to be there announcing secret things that I'm probably not going to get to play anyway. I don't. Well, it's been a minority of the response. I don't know, I guess that comes off kind of snooty for me. Well, I think it's just like, I don't think that's the main purpose of going. I don't think that's the main point of the show. I think that entirely depends on, it's up to the attendee in terms of what the purpose of going is. So if that was their purpose of going and they don't want to go anymore, I get it. I would not, that's not my, I'm not interested in doing it that way. I don't think, that's not why I want to go to a pinball show. but I can understand if that was why you wanted to go that this would piss you off yeah I guess I can see that I just it's one of those it's just a mentality thing that I can't envision it in myself so that makes it a hard time understanding it from someone else's point of view I guess you just gotta think like they do those who are in it for the super secret sauce they're the secret sauce people There are few. It's not been the majority response that I've seen online, but it's been a point that some people have raised.
    18:09
    But let's move to the next pinball news topic, and that is Pinballpalooza, not Pinapalooza, which Tony and I have talked about many times. This is an area event that Big Daddy puts on for some of us who know him and live around the area, and it's always a lot of fun. This might be a lot of fun. I don't know, but I can tell you for sure that it's a lot of drama.
    18:34
    And this is the most tastiest, newest, hottest news that I was aware of before we went to air here. And that is late, well, now last week, technically, because it's Sunday.
    18:47
    One of the organizers, there are two people, two gentlemen who put on Pinball Expo, and they've worked together for years on it, decades.
    18:56
    And they have had a split. And so one of the organizers has said he is going to put on a separate pinball show. It's currently being called Pinballpalooza. It's going to happen roughly a month before when Expo would, so September rather than October. And that he just felt he needed to take the show in a different direction based off of the feedback he'd been receiving. Since that announcement, I believe this man's name is Rob, and the other guy is Mike. And Mike has said that Pinball Expo will still be happening at the same dates and location as prior announced. There are contracts that are already in place for that. However, it will not be called Pinball Expo. They are not in agreement over who owns the rights to call it Expo. So no one's calling anything Expo right now while the lawyers work through that. But obviously this has created not just a rift between Rob and Mike, but a rift in the pinball community because a lot of people can only justify, afford, or just schedule attending one Chicago area event. So do you attend the new one, quote-unquote new one, that's at a different time and location, or do you go to the event formerly known as Expo and stick with those times and consistencies? It gets extra complicated because, though some of this has been walked back, when Rob announced Pinballpalooza, he suggested that he had a lot of industry support that was going to be at his show. And that may be true still. However, for example, Spooky was explicitly called out as being an entity that would be at his show and not at Expo. And so Charlie, who runs Spooky Pinball, had to come out publicly and say, I did not say that I would not be at Pinball Expo. We weren't at Pinball Expo in 2017, but we have been at it in prior years, and it's possible that we would still be at it in the future. So it's not clear. I guess maybe for those listeners who aren't really familiar, which wouldn't be too surprising because Tony and I had never been to Expo, so we don't talk about it much, though I know it's been mentioned before. I think the thing for people to sort of bear in mind is Pinball Expo has a reputation, at least in recent years, of being fairly unpleasant for vendors in particular to attend. And most of the blame that I have always seen online has been thrown on Mike for that. That he can be an abrasive individual and he's alienated a lot of attendees. And names like Spooky have been thrown out as suspected as being alienated from Pinball Expo, and that's why they're not actually there lately. Don't know if that's all true or not. Other people have come to Mike's defense online since this news broke saying that Mike has to deal with the harder part of the show. Rob's got the easier side of it, so Mike's the one who's put under more stress. So while he does get more gruff than Rob does, it's because the work that he has to do for the show is the more frustrating work in the first place. And I don't, so anyway, what are your thoughts, Tony?
    22:11
    Yay, drama! I've heard the complaints about Expo, and I know that for years and years and years, Expo was the big convention, and I know that's been sliding for the last few years just based upon how I've been paying attention. There's been other conventions and such that have been moving ahead of it, or at least in people in fan views as being bigger deals than Expo. So what caused this? I don't know. There seems to be some anger in some of the This Week in Pinball interviews. There seems to be some real anger, an undercurrent of anger running there just under the surface. So we're going to see what happens. But I was in shock when I saw this earlier this week. when the first This Week in Pinball interview was posted, because it was like, where did this come from? This came out of left field. And it seems really late in the year. It's funny saying that in March, but for considering the kind of work that it takes to put together a convention and everything, because I know there are local conventions that I've had some dealings with, and most of them have shows planned out and contracts signed one, two, three years in advance. So it seems weird for this to be a kind of roll-out-of-nowhere thing where suddenly it's like, ah, we're split up and I'm going to start my own convention that's going to basically fight the original convention. It seems like there's going to be a lot of animosity there no matter what, and I think it's going to turn into a mess, especially if one or the other gets a bigger industry, like a bigger, noticeably bigger industry presence. Yeah, I think that the reason, my assumption is the reason why the pinball palooza is planned in September is that he was probably subject to whatever dates were still available at a convention center large enough to hold it. Because it is pretty late to get the contract signed. And I'm also not surprised that Mike has indicated, well, I still have to hold a event formerly known as Expo. I've got two years left on my contract and there are serious penalties for breaking it. So even if he didn't want to do it, you have to do it or else you end up paying quite a bit of money. And that's normal as well. We put on an annual convention every year. We usually sign contracts three to five years out. We have cut things fairly close before, but we're so set on what sort of dates we need that we usually need to do at least two years' notice. And even then, we've ended up having to fluctuate our own event by up to a month versus where we want it just because we can't get enough of the block. We can't get enough rooms for enough days in a row to hold the event we want. And it's because we didn't sign it three or five years out when that's happened. So all that makes sense to me because I think in an ideal world, in a strategic ideal world, I mean in an anti-drama ideal world, Pinball Palooza would be put at the same time at just a rival facility as the former Pinball Expo, and then you fight it out deathmatch style like that. And you're just like, no, you can't attend. You see, technically, you could still attend both. And a lot of people are going to try and walk that line and say, well, we'll just be at both. A lot of the industry people will probably say that. And given how many are headquartered in the Chicago area, that could be pretty easy for them to accomplish. but if you ran it at both at the you know both events at the same time that's where you decide which one wins and which one loses did Mike alienate too many people and Rob wins by default or is it well we view Mike's one is the truest existing it's the true pinball expo because it hasn't really broken the chain of anything and everything else is just too weird the dates are too strange we already are playing for October and Rob's just can't succeed because it's the upstart and no one's going to trust that's going to be successful. So you just default to the one that looks most like what you were familiar with. I have no idea. But yes, I could tell that there's obviously drama going on. I'm reading too much. I'm going to read too much into it and say my sense was that Mike felt blindsided by Rob breaking away. I'm going to assume that the issue was that Rob heard all the complaints about Mike, and Mike's not willing to make the changes that Rob wants to see. And so Rob has gone ahead and said, well, I'm spinning off, and I have no idea. Most of the commentary that I have seen suggests that Rob is the one who probably owns the Pinball Expo name because Mike came on later, but I have no idea how they've signed things in terms of their ownership stake. So that's, well, Rob may have been the first to be involved with, quote-unquote, Pinball Expo. That doesn't necessarily mean he controls the name. He might just have the longest tenure with relation to it. But, you know, that's why neither of them are going to use it, because both of them are clearly unsure who controls the name itself. Because normally I think whoever controls the name is probably going to be the one who wins in the end, because they'll be the ones that are able to say, we're Pinball Expo. You're just the late, late show.
    27:38
    No offense to the late, late show. And that's just going to depend upon how things go. And the first pinball palooza is going to be a rushed, throaty thing. I mean, yes, they've got plenty of experience, but still you're starting this late to put together something for this year. It's definitely going to not have as much polish as you would normally see. At least I would assume so. I would guess so as well. I mean, I don't know what all goes into because I've never been to Expo. I don't know how complicated it is per se. I mean, when I look at, let me just take Texas because that's the one I'm familiar with. I take the Texas show and I take my work conference. They both run about the same period of time. My sense is that the level of work is probably less on the Texas side. I don't mean that in a disparaging way. It seems like the hardest thing that would be involved in a show like Texas is figuring out how to place all the pinball machines in regards to the circuit breakers and the electrical and the layout and the walking. And that's most of the planning. And very little effort has to go into the seminars and stuff. Whereas we've got booth placements which aren't electrically concerning, but they still have a layout concern. And we actually spend most of our time trying to come up with workshops and bring in outside speakers to present at the workshops and coordinating schedules and trying to make sure you have all these topics that appeal to all these different governmental department heads at the same time so you don't have this crossover. So, you know, there's a lot more because ours is educational and structure. But I don't know. I don't really have a good sense about how big Expo is because, I mean, you like look at Texas. all the seminars are like back to back to back, but you don't run concurrently. So you avoid all of that sort of work, but there's gotta be a lot of effort. I assume most of the effort in figuring out, well, where do you set the vendors in the hall? Cause they're in with the games and how does that all work? And I, but I don't know if expo puts the game separate from the vendors or if it's, I know they have less and less games. They're not nearly as big as Texas. So, but I also don't know how many people work on it because it's just Rob by himself. That's a lot of work for one person.
    29:54
    Yeah, well, I'm assuming that there will be volunteers and assistants and helpers at the higher levels too, not just the volunteers that you normally find.
    30:06
    Once the time comes up, you need to have an upper-level admin staff line. I'm assuming both people have that.
    30:14
    It's even possible that they share people between the two. I mean, I don't know. Well, we will keep our eyes on it, and we'll keep people informed. It's just one of those things. Pinball drama. Yay.
    30:27
    Drama. Okay, well, I only have down two more pinball topics, and neither of them are really news, so they're not going to take too long. The first is Laser War. Daddy East 1987. Their very first game. Daddy East's first game. Joe Kamikawa designed it. The reason I'm bringing it up is that I have been assisting, very, very minorly assisting, with my dad, who picked up a project laser war just under five weeks ago for my brother-in-law's birthday, which was yesterday. So we dropped off the laser war yesterday, and it was the worst project I have ever had to work on. and so it was it was my dad likes to call it the basket case we have I'd say up until this point the worst pinball machine for bringing back to life was my wood braille scoreboard that I got back in 2012 which it just had all this cold solder that kept popping loose that was the frustration with it this did not have that but the the problem that we ran into with laser war is that it clearly, it wasn't so much a project machine as it was a parts machine. And so it was missing a lot, just a lot of stuff, just a lot. So the play field was in pretty good shape, but there were boards that were missing.
    31:57
    Almost all the plastics were missing. The wires were cut underneath the play field because they didn't just, like if you wanted a coil, you didn't just solder it. You just went ahead and cut the wires off at the source or cut them off near the wiring harness in some cases. So it was just, it was like a puzzle where, and the manual that came out with LaserWar isn't as good as the later Data East manuals. So like one of the first things I did was I, on one weekend, I opened the thing up. I got out the manual like on the coils and I would just circle the ones that were missing, except the manual didn't show all the coils. So even when I circled the ones that weren't there, there were still others that weren't there that weren't in the manual.
    32:38
    So it just, I'm amazed it got done in under five weeks. It ran way over budget on price. But it does work. And it's actually a pretty fun rule set. But anyway, so that's been, I haven't been talking to anyone about this other than a couple area people knew that I picked it up, that I picked their brain on, like Todd with Big Daddy knew, because we had to get the boards from him to fix it, because it was missing a couple boards, I believe.
    33:08
    Their main MPU board was there, but it had hacks on it. It looked like someone might have even clipped some of the transistors off, maybe to salvage for another game or something. So it was just like, we'll just replace the board outright. Price-wise, had it just been the back box stuff missing that we saw from the photos, it would have been within budget. But with just the sheer amount of plastics and all the orders that it took from Marco and Pinball Life and some other sources, you do an order and then you realize there was still more stuff. And it wasn't easy to account for everything that was missing on it.
    33:43
    But it looks pretty good now. Kind of a clever game. But anyway, we were getting real close to his birthday. And so on Super Bowl Sunday, actually, the Laser War, it had been listed in the past before. And the price had dropped on it. And so my dad decided, okay, well, we don't have much time left. So let's get this and do it as a project. But anyway, FYI, when a project says $300, it doesn't mean it's going to end at $300.
    34:10
    So that's the moral. I do have a gameplay video. I took a brief video kind of with a Twitch setup. I finally got my cameras on the little mic stand and everything when Amazon had a sale on those. So I used that and just recorded like a four-minute video of some of the gameplay and how it works. Because the rules for its era, I think, are pretty clever. But anyway, FYI on that.
    34:36
    And last pinball topic. Ted Zale, he was a designer at Bally. He designed a game that you're pretty fond of, Campus Queen.
    34:47
    Yeah. I have also been working for months now on an article on Ted's Dale. So I thought I'd share a story on that briefly. I do have a link to the article, of course, in the show notes. I also have a link to a video because I only co-wrote this article. I wasn't the primary. Well, I suppose I might have written most of the words, but it was a pretty even split on the writing work with Dr. Stephen Dolefeld, if I'm pronouncing his name right. He's been doing a lot of research on Ted Zale. And what happened was, and this wasn't on Pinside, wasn't on Tilt Forums, it wasn't on any of the myriad of Facebook pinball groups I'm a member of. It was on Reddit that Stephen and I started discussing Zale, and it was in regards to that article I wrote in late November on Harry Williams and Bally. And since Zale worked for Bally, it just sort of came up, and then we were messaging each other, and he indicated, oh, I have a video presentation. Well, he had a presentation at Pentastic, which is another pinball show, like an hour-long presentation on Ted's veil. And I said, oh, well, you know, we've been talking about the Harry Williams article. Incidentally, I'm the one who wrote the Harry Williams article. He's like, oh, well, I would love to put my veil information together in an article. I just have a bunch of slides. I've always done it as a verbal presentation. And so I said, okay, well, we can collaborate and work on an article together. So I took a lot of his notes and such, and I started, you know, built this outline of the article. It's not just about Zale at Valley. We walk pretty much through his entire life with a big focus, of course, on what we know about him in the coin-off industry. And the reason it took so long is just that there is so much that's still not known about Ted Zale that when I think maybe we were set, Stephen would say, well, I found another thing that we might be able to learn more about the artists they work with. And so we would see if that would pan out or not. And most of the stuff sadly did not because it just almost every primary source from that period is dead now So you can confirm a lot of things anymore And the record keeping was shoddy at a lot of these places or there were fires that took out the records And so there is a ton of stuff It's not as long of a list as it was back with his fantastic presentation, because there were some of the things that he was missing that I knew already or I remembered hearing about. And then we were able to find some more things. But like there's no photo like we don't. I've never seen a photo of Ted Zale. there's not known to be a public photo of him even though he worked in the industry for years and maybe someone does have an old newsletter or something that has his face but we don't know what he looks like so anyway it just took quite a while because there was still a lot of research going on with it but I think it turned out pretty well and so that just published yesterday so I'll have a link as I said I have a link to the article I also have a link to Steven's presentation at Pentastic if you'd rather listen to an hour-long talk about Ted Zale and his work. Because, obviously, he's known for zipper flippers if he's known for anything, but he had a lot of innovations in pinball, a number of which are still used today. So, anyway, check it out if you're interested in some pinball history.
    38:10
    That's really interesting to me that we're so used to nowadays where everybody's taking pictures constantly of everything. And if you want to take a picture, it's like a quarter second to whip out your phone and take a picture. So there's pictures of everything. And to not even be able to find an industry picture or at an industry get-together or even a group shot from the company at some point with a picture that has him in it is just so strange considering just how easy pictures are nowadays compared to how many there are. Yeah, I'm very surprised that he's not. And maybe, I think Bally ran a couple of newsletters, but I wasn't able to find copies of them. So I wondered if maybe he showed up in any of those, but maybe he didn't. He came on, and the thing about it is, Bally was not into Flipper Pinball. And then they brought Zale on, and so he started working on Flipper Pinball for them. And then eventually, they started focusing on other devices when O'Donnell came in, And Flipper Pinball was kind of left to its own devices. And I think a lot of people don't really view the Zale period as the strong Bally period. Well, we remember when we had Nick on, he mentioned right around Captain Fantastic.
    39:31
    And after Bally brought in a new lead designer, it was when Bally started to steal Gottlieb's Thunder and have the big sales on the pinball side and stuff. So Zale kind of predates that period, even though he was very prolific, much like how Gottlieb's designer was very prolific. But he had a lot of innovation, and the zipper flippers really stand out to people because they were so unique. And they were popular for the time, too. Williams cloned them and made some games with some knockoff zipper flippers. but I mean, you know, Fireball, for example, which is a very loved game, not just for its zipper flippers, it was the first one with the spinning disc, and here we are in 2018 talking about Jersey Jack's Pirates of the Caribbean, which has, what, three spinning discs, so it's, yeah, it's just interesting, but yeah, you'd have thought at least a photo, a lot of the times the designers posed for the, for the show-off photos or the mock-up photos for the flyers for the games, but the other designers who worked under him have confirmed on all instances I'm aware of, They've said everyone in the photos, even if they don't know who they are, they know it's not Ted. So it's like, okay, well, not even one of those happened to have him. And it's not like they hired models back then. They just got people around the office to stand in front of the machine for the flyer photo. So it's just, yeah, it's really strange.
    40:51
    A lot of his pre-Bally stuff isn't known either. So, okay, he was with Genco. So that's probably where he knew Steve Kordak from. But when did he start at Genco? No idea. What did he do before he got hired at Bally that after he left Genco? I don't know. Steven, I know, really feels very strongly that he joined Midway, which had just started up and started making gun games. But there's no documentation that proves that. I had someone, I think I saw someone on Reddit post that they thought maybe he went over to Chicago Gaming. I know Steven feels really strongly that the gun games at Midway, he's basing his theory based off of that the gun games at Midway look so much like what Zale designed for Genco. That's the basis of that argument. And when the factory opened, Midway opened right when Ginkgo was closing. But, you know, it'd be nice to have a confirmation somewhere, but we just don't know.
    41:41
    Yeah, that's just weird. There's a lot of stuff like that. That's just so weird. That we just don't know about. We don't even know the exact year that he left Bali.
    41:51
    It's maybe one of his protégés thought it was around 1970, but based off of another designer there saying that he mailed in a design, because he kept saying the designs after he retired. There was a game, I think, in 69 that was indicated to have been sent in when he retired and moved to Arkansas. So that means it's not 70, if that's true. So, yeah, it's just all sorts of stuff. There's a lot in that EM era that isn't really well known, but I have not ever encountered anything with this many enigmas tied to it. So good thing it's not my area of expertise. That's where Stephen comes in. And he gets to live and breathe that stuff. But it was a fun article, I think, and it turned out pretty well.
    42:36
    So. Yeah, that's kind of crazy. That's just interesting to see how hard it is to find information from what's relatively not that long ago. I'm surprised that Bally, and maybe Bally had the records. But, you know, once Bally went away and got absorbed by Williams, who knows what they kept. I think about where I work and we still have some filing cabinets with some of the historic stuff but we even discussed should we just get rid of this at this point who cares about this stuff well maybe a historian would but I don't want to keep it around forever maybe we'll just keep the minutes and recycle the rest that sort of stuff it comes up well that was it for the pinball section so let's go ahead and get into video games and I know you have stuff to tell us about Subnautica is One of those games That just kind of gets into you The uh It was an early release game and I had Nothing to do with the early release I didn't touch That game until after it went Live with an Actual game release And I picked it up because Somebody gave me a Just kind of a they're like Oh try this and I saw a video and it's like Well, that looks kind of cool.
    43:59
    But once I started playing it, this game, it's a survival game. And I've played plenty of survival games in the past. But this one kind of grabbed me in a different way. I'm going to give you just a general background of Subnautica. You are a crew member on a spaceship that is out building jump gates. And your ship goes down and you crash on a planet. And you have to survive. And the planet is almost all water. so you've got your life pod and that's it and you gather up more resources and there's a they've got basically replicator tech so it's like if you feed enough resources in and you can make pretty much anything and so you can start building a base and building submarines and building better equipment and building better gear and that's what you do is you gather resources and you gather blueprints because your blueprint database has been damaged, and you gather and you build better ships and better gear, and you go get more resources. And there's a storyline, and I'm not going to get into the storyline. It's very interesting. But the big thing for me is this game, it gives me a feel,
    45:13
    it gives me the same kind of feel that Firewatch gave me. The art's different. The story's completely different. This is a totally different style of game. But like Firewatch where I could sit down and just play Firewatch and I enjoyed it and I liked the view and it was just kind of a relaxing play on game that was a lot of fun. Subnautica is doing the same thing for me. When I'm watching a video, when I'm watching Overwatch League or something else, a lot of times I'll fire up Subnautica and I'll run Subnautica and I'll just gather resources and work on putting together stuff before I jump into the next bit of the storyline. Before I go do the next big deep exploration That requires real close attention I'll tend my aquariums And I'll tend my plants And just get stuff organized And it is a surprisingly enjoyable game In all honesty Subnautica The play of it And the base building aspect of it And the survival aspect of it is what I wanted from No Man's Sky.
    46:25
    Except you're only on one planet, there's all sorts of really interesting life forms. You interact in different ways, you do different things. Subnautica gets what I kind of felt like I wanted from No Man's Sky and makes it right on an obviously much smaller scale. I mean, if you could take something like the survival, the collection, the base building, and this and that of Subnautica, and add it to a game that lets you do exploration, it would be the perfect game. At least until the next perfect game came out.
    47:03
    I'm Firewatch 2 and I like your Boogaloo. Yeah. No, I've been real happy with Subnautica. I mean, all the creatures are well-designed and interesting. I was able to build an RV Well it's a large submarine I call it my RV I named it Rebecca And explore the world and that's what I do And even when I'm not I'll just explore, cruise around the oceans And explore and look for Resources and stuff because again It's a survival game You have to find the stuff and you have to make water And you have to make food and you have to Eat and drink and all that To maintain or else you'll die.
    47:48
    Can it be one? Yes, you can get off the planet. I'm not there yet, but the storyline does have, because on the storyline,
    47:57
    just the basic gist of the storyline is you are trapped on the planet. You have to gather everything you need to build a rocket to get off of the planet. There are challenges and things that have to be done to let you do that successfully. I'm not going to get into the challenges, obviously, because there's some really interesting story stuff, and I feel like getting into it would give away a lot of fun. But, yes, no, there is a goal. The goal is to get off planet, and you just have to get through your challenges to do that. Okay. All right, yeah, so it makes sense to me as a survival game approach.
    48:43
    Yeah. Sounds very wet, though. It is very wet because you are in pretty much purely aquatic. There's some land and there's some stuff you can do above the water, but pretty much everything is all underwater.
    49:03
    Hmm. Okay. Well, when did that, is that a new game or has it been out a while? It launched, I want to say the 12th of January. is when it came out officially. It's new. It came out officially, but now it's early access. I've seen video, and I've heard people talk about it for one or two years now, but I've always just steered away from it because I stopped doing early access except for very specific accounts.
    49:37
    PUBG. Well, I haven't done – I've not played PUBG. Show your strength. I'm stronger than that but yeah no there's all sorts of stuff out there from when they were in the alpha and beta stages but no I didn't pick it up until it went actually live actual release version which was in January well let's see one of the games that I finally got through the first story arc of was Dragon Ball FighterZ or Fighter Z. I think I'm supposed to say Fighter Z. Yeah. It came with three story arcs with the game. I say it that way because I'm not sure if there's a plan to add additional stories with DLC. I want to think I heard that there is.
    50:27
    So anyway, I thought I'd just weigh in a little bit about the first story arc without explaining too much. Well, it's Dragon Ball, so it's not exactly like there's spoilers. But here's sort of the plot of that first arc. the way it's working is the Dragon Ball characters have all been disabled of their powers they have next to no strikes they're basically just regular humans at this point and you, the player are like a spirit in a way and you can move from body to body to body and when you are in them and controlling them you can access all of their powers as if they had not been nerfed by whatever is nerfing their abilities. So they've integrated you as the player into the storyline as, hey, you need to go into Vegeta, and now Vegeta can do all of his power. He has all his abilities, and Goku can do Kami Kami Ha if you're in him. You have to do it for him, though. So that's how it's explaining, like, why are you not just destroying the entire world as Goku? Because you're you, and you don't know how to do all that stuff. You have to learn your controller. so that's the idea and you're trying to figure out in the first story arc what is the cause of all of this and by the end of the first story arc you understand who your nemesis is and what's going on with that the arc is used as there are tutorials in the game but this arc is used as a very easy sort of immerse you and turn up the water while you're the frog in the pot style of teaching you most of the combat is pretty basic they'll walk you through a lot of the maneuvers and they'll even re-remind you at various tutorials fights that you can engage in as you've probably seen Tony because I know you have it and it just sort of goes along and they don't fight back too much so it's almost like playing on very easy back with Street Fighter if you wanted to do the story modes instead of you could turn it way down if you really wanted to just get through the stories it was pretty much like that until the last map of the first story arc and then all of a sudden you could see there was a precipitous increase in the capabilities of the opponents to fight you but I just thought at least just going off the first story arc in addition to that the story was very Dragon Ball so if you like Dragon Ball Z you'll like the story line for better or for worse but I just thought it had a the game has a really good use of the tutorial system during the stories and easing you into the more sophisticated combat styles that you can partake in yeah I felt the same way I've played through the first couple of story arcs. I'm not all the way through the second arc. But I think you're right. The first arc is very much a teach-you-to-play, teach-you-the-everything arc. And it's enjoyable. I've played some multiplayer and been utterly annihilated because the first story arc and the first half of the second story arc are definitely not enough to turn you into a multiplayer champion. That's for sure. So are you hesitant to enter into Evo this year? I think I'm going to take a pass on Evo this year. I might try, you know, never. Aw, come on. They have pools. You'll be fine. It's like a pinball tournament. But the games don't change. My glory days of fighting games are long, long overdue. Not if you want to play. I might have had an actual chance, you know, 15, 20 years ago, but not now. Hey, they're still playing that old Smash game. You can still play that.
    54:14
    I don't like Smash. I know. Smash makes no sense as a fighting game to me. I'm pretty certain I've been on this soapbox before, but I just don't understand it. I don't find it enjoyable to watch. I don't understand how it would be enjoyable. Well, why don't you explain to me instead the difference between strategy and tactics by talking about XCOM 2, War of the Chosen. Woo!
    54:41
    War of the Chosen. No one's going to get that reference except you. And let's leave them that way. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
    54:52
    War of the Chosen is the newest DLC for XCOM 2. I've heard other people comment that it might as well be XCOM 3 Because of the amount of changes and all the stuff they add to the game And I'm not necessarily going to disagree with that It does add a lot to the game and it changes the story overall It adds in other factions besides just XCOM that are fighting to free humanity It's hard I mean, the old joke is, you know, oh, this game's XCOM hard. No, this game is bloody hard. I have played through XCOM and XCOM 2 both on veteran multiple times. I've had successful Iron Man playthroughs on them. War of the Chosen on veteran, I am getting annihilated. It is just so much harder. because what they've done is there's a lot of extra stories. So you've got the normal XCOM 2 storyline with the rescue of the commander, which is you and all that, but there's other factions added in. And in addition to having these other factions which you work with and help and you get some of their people to come and run with you and join your teams and they have special abilities based upon their faction. It turns out that there are also three assassins that the aliens have They're chosen special fighters And each one has a whole bunch of their own special abilities And since you are using these factions that are helping you out and coming forward These chosen are being sent against you as well So occasionally you'll fight them And there's one who has, like the abilities that was in the DLC where some of the king monsters had, where they could, you know, move, attack, and then move again, or they respond to attacks. Like, one of the chosen I fought is, like, always stealthed, except for when they're attacking, and then they run away and disappear into stealth again. So you can't get a good shot at them unless you know roughly where they are, and you can just kind of heap explosives their way.
    57:13
    And it was a hard fight. And as I'm sitting right now, I'm not that far into it. I was not playing an Iron Man game, luckily, because I'm basically having to save scum through most of the, at least the bigger, more event-oriented missions, not the standard normal missions. I'm getting through those okay, but the big event-oriented missions, I'm having to save scum to pull through them. Do you think that they've made it too hard? No, I don't think they've made it too hard. I think it's been a long time since I've played XCOM 2, because I haven't played XCOM 2 since the last round of DLC came out. And while it's moved up, I can definitely see where once I'm being more careful and paying more, I don't want to say paying more attention, because I'm paying attention, but once I learn all the various things, I think it'll be okay. It'll be difficult, but playable. And again, I'm playing on veteran status, so it's not like I'm playing on the easiest status or even the second. I mean, veterans, it's not the hardest, but it's up there, and it is definitely harder. I don't think it's too hard. I think if I was more comfortable with it overall, I could probably play it okay. But there's enough randomness thrown into XCOM that it doesn't take much for something to go bad. Because I've had a couple times where it's like, well, I have a 90% chance to hit, and then I miss. Like every shot with like three people, they all had over a 90% chance to hit. And then suddenly things have been completely reversed because the odds have just rolled against me, and I've gone from being in a really good position to having a guy dead and another guy panicked. and it should never have happened because I should have made some shots that I didn't make. And that's just the random, that's just RNG.
    59:20
    Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I've forgotten about the couple lower settings people could switch to because the XCOM 2, and I don't remember what I was last playing it on. I liked it, but I didn't finish it. And as the fights were taking so long, I just didn't feel I could keep investing the time in the game when I had so many other things to play that hadn't started yet. and that's why I didn't finish it, even though I was liking it. And I just thought, it's just taking me too long to get through a match.
    59:47
    And, you know, that's on me, really. Yeah, that's kind of where I've built into right now is because between Subnautica and Dragon Ball FighterZ, XCOM 2 War of the Chosen, Into the Breach, Bayonetta 2, Mario and Rabbids King, all these, I'm still playing Legend of Zelda, All these things have piled up, and I'm way behind in game playing.
    60:12
    And Overwatch League doesn't help because it's like, ah, I'm not going to play any Switch games because I'm using the TV to stream Overwatch League, and I don't want to play something that requires me to pay really super tight attention, so I'll play Subnautica where I'm just gathering and pausing, or Into the Breach where I can, if I turn away and I stare at the TV for 45 minutes and then turn back, nothing's happened, so it's no big deal.
    60:39
    Right. Yeah, I get that. I've actually been playing a game that I've been playing for as long as I think I've been podcasting, and that's Gems of War. And I second in our list of games to talk about because they have had, fairly recently, a couple weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago, launched another title update. They keep supporting this game. I'm not surprised because there are microtransactions in it, so some people are probably buying things. and the thing that they've done mostly with the title update is what you can do as a guild. So you can join guilds in the game. It's really the best way to play the game, especially if you don't want to spend money because you can get a lot of resources by the communal efforts of the guild, investing in-game earned currencies and such into getting things unlocked. And for quite a while now, it's all been an event called Guild Wars. Every week there would be Guild Wars. you're paired up based off of how you ranked the prior week your guild versus another guild you fight a different guild every single day like Tuesday through Sunday and you can win up to five matches you only get to play five matches and based off your performance you earn points for your guild they earn points for their guild and one of the two guilds that you're facing off with that day wins after the day is over and you get goodies for that and it has helped the guild out so it's been like that every single week ever since they launched Guild Wars. This new title update has changed that, so now it looks like things are on a three-week cycle. One week will be Guild Wars, and then another week will be Raid Boss, and another week will be Invasion, and then it should reset again. And I think they've done this for two reasons. One, so you don't get so bored constantly doing the same thing over and over. And two, so that you can spend all that in-game gems, in-game money, all the stuff that you're earning. The problem with Guild Wars is If you're like me, you built your awesome Guild Wars team, and you just use that team. I have a PvP team. It's designed to destroy. It's very successful. I usually win at least four out of five matches in a Guild Wars fight, even if I matched up against a better team. It's just how it works. Because there are advantages when you're the one playing, and they're controlled by the AI anyway. So, I don't ever really need to spend anything to upgrade that team. That team is fully upgraded. Until I get more cards so I can take them to their highest level, I can't really do anything with it. And the cards are awarded randomly, so it's not like I could ever go to the store and buy them.
    63:13
    So, what they've done here, Raid Boss and Invasion work kind of, they work pretty much the same. And it's not against another team PvP style, it's PvE style. So in Raid Boss, your team has a limit. It has to be a particular kingdom. All the cards in the game, all these creature cards, they all belong to particular kingdoms. So you can only build a team out of a kingdom, which is not how most people build their Guild Wars teams. So now I need different cards upgraded. Uh-oh, got to spend some stuff. That's the strategy there. And what you do is you work through the lower tiers of these AI enemies until you get to a boss. And if you win the boss fight, you can do the same fight again, but the boss, and the boss doesn't change. but he gets harder. He keeps leveling up more and more and more. So, of course, I did it until I could just never beat the boss. He was just too good. Too good versus my cards.
    64:09
    And then in Evasion, they have tower cards instead. So they're creatures, but they're all a tower type. It's sort of like a card-based version of playing tower defense. And as you progress more and more through the series of whatever you're trying to invade, you face more and more towers until you get to, like as of today, which is the last day of the event, you always face four cards. So I face a full set of four towers, and I just barely can beat them anymore.
    64:40
    And unlike Raid Boss, the teams are not a particular kingdom type. This time they're a particular troop type. So, for example, all your cards have to be beast cards. Hey, look, the team I built for Raid Boss the prior week wasn't beast. So now I need to upgrade these cards. So you see, they're trying to, and those are going to change with each set of Raid Boss and Invasion. So they're going to try and make you upgrade more and more cards. So now there's an incentive to spend all this in-game currency. So I think that's the strategy. Raid Boss and Invasion do play differently from each other. They feel enough different that I think it's also supposed to just give you that sense of variety.
    65:18
    And the final thing the title update did is they added a new game, a little mini game called Gnome Vault. So you can get these keys and you can go and play Gnome Vault, sort of like there's a treasure hunt thing and stuff. It's pretty minor, and getting the Gnome Vault keys is difficult. I seem to earn about a key a week, so it's not a hard game. It's just hard to get to play the game. But they're just adding more diversity for guilds to stick together, because what inevitably was happening with our guild in Guild Wars, and I don't really communicate with the guild much, but I do watch them. and I give them resources and things, that you start to lose players because you're just doing the PvP thing every single week, and it's just a grind. And eventually it's like, what are you doing? I mean, I have every achievement in Gems of War, including all these title update achievements now, except for reaching level 500. So the nice thing about title updates is they introduce new achievements to try and strive for, and they typically require a decent amount of time investment. So I think overall it's a pretty good addition. I'll tell you what, when you're obviously having to dump all of your in-game currency, you've banked on a bunch of beast cards that you'll never use outside of this one invasion event. It can be a bit frustrating.
    66:32
    Yeah, it seems like that's kind of an issue, and quality of life upgrades and stuff like this are important for a lot of these mobile and free-to-play, the microtransaction point games. I know that I played Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, and it's the same way. And as things get stale, you'll start noticing guild members. They're not quitting the guild. They're just quitting the game and not saying anything. They're just disappearing and are gone.
    67:02
    And quality of life and new raids, new different events are good for keeping people interested and keeping people in. I've played a little bit of Gems of War, but I've not played a whole lot of it. so it is an enjoyable game though yeah i like it because i really like the puzzle quest games and that's ultimately what it is and they've added some new single player story campaigns they keep adding new kingdoms so i've worked through those as well and they're always really really corny storylines which i like but uh what tell me about into the breach because i assume it doesn't have a corny storyline.
    67:39
    Well, no, but its storyline is kind of interesting. Basically, End of the Breach, to start out, is from the people who made FTL. I don't know if you ever played FTL.
    67:56
    I have not, but I've heard in the world of roguelikes it is often mentioned. Yes, it is. It's a very good one of those. Well,
    68:05
    Into the Breach is another roguelike from the same people and in this case there are these monster bugs that are attacking Earth and you play as a trio of robots or tanks, machines, your little attack squadron and what you do is you go down to various islands of mankind and fight them and try to save as many people as you can.
    68:39
    And where this game gets interesting is when you lose, because that's what will happen is you will lose, when you lose, one of your pilots is, you get to choose, is sent through time and goes to a different, And it's kind of a mini-worlds approach to time travel because you're sent through time. So you're sent back into the past, but you're also sent to a different dimension, basically, and you get to try again. And you just keep doing this. Every time you build up and you go, there are certain things that you unlock will get unlocked and stay unlocked, like the different islands you can fight on to fight the kaju. And when you get to the point where you lose, you're temporarily sucked up and thrown back and dropped into another dimension, and you start over at the beginning and try to maintain and try to win. I ain't won yet.
    69:50
    I've been utterly wiped out a couple of times, but it's addicting. And it uses a lot of interesting dynamics because you're not just stomping around and punching enemies to death. A lot of the attacks have a move component. So, like, I'll walk up with my big robot and punch an enemy, and it will cause one damage to that enemy and push them back one square. And then I've got an artillery piece And that artillery piece will fire And the square that artillery piece hits Anything in that square takes one damage But anything in the four squares Directly off of that square Gets pushed away one square There are abilities I can walk my giant robot up And I can get an ability That will let me grab something That's in the square in front of me And throw it to the square behind me I can have a tank that You can have a tank that shoots a shot That when it hits an enemy it pushes that enemy a square So you're doing a lot of Moving of your opponents In addition to damaging them And the opponents come up from below the ground So you can You can actually do attacks To move your opponents Onto where an enemy is about to pop out of the ground So that enemy can't come up And your opponent that you moved on that square takes damage And the way they do this is It starts the enemy moves After the enemy moves they choose all their attacks And it shows you What they're attacking and where they're attacking And then you get to Go through and make your moves And your attacks And then their attacks trigger So if they're going to attack One of the buildings you can use a push move To push them so their shot will hit a mountain Or will hit nothing now Or you can if you can do enough damage to kill one, you can kill it. And there's a whole bunch of different squad types that you can activate or that you can unlock as you play, and you can use those different squads, and they all have different powers and different abilities. Like one of the squadrons I use a lot of is the Rusty Squadron, and they've got a plane. You've got a fighter plane that does bombing, but when you bomb, you drop smoke bombs. But there's another part of that unit, he uses an artillery missile, he's got a passive bonus that makes it so that any enemies in smoke take damage. So when you bomb them, you cause one point of damage, you drop a smoke cloud on them. Because of the smoke cloud, they can no longer attack until they leave the smoke cloud. And when the next turn starts, they'll take a point of damage from the smoke cloud. So I really enjoy that one because I can use it to, I don't have to defeat or push enemies out of the way. I can just drop that smoke cloud on them and they can't attack. And it comes with another walker unit that has the ability to, every time he attacks, he just pushes everybody right in contact with him away. And you can do it so you push them away and you can upgrade him so when you push them away, you get a shield. So you'll push everybody away and then you'll put a shield over yourself. So he's real good for setting up and using to block sight lines and block damage lines because you'll take the hit on the shield instead of taking the hit on the thing. And it's just, there's a lot of strategy in the game, but it's fast. I mean, you can play through a whole thing in a couple of minutes with no problem. Every mission is, you know, about four turns. And you blow through your four turns, and then the Cods, you run away, and you either succeeded or you didn't. You get your bonuses, you move on. And once you've lost enough stuff to have the timeline be lost, zip you pop up and you go back into the past and you try again Since this is by the creators of FTL is there any element from FTL or concept from FTL that you wish was in Into the Breach that isn already there
    74:09
    No, not really. Nothing I can think of. I mean, they're all about permadeath. So if you get a mech destroyed The pilot of the mech is killed And the mech is It is damaged But it's not utterly destroyed Unless it takes another hit Then it's utterly destroyed I've never had that happen But when you go into the next thing That mech will now be operating Under AI control And the pilot that was in it The pilot who had been leveling up And earning special abilities and special skills He's dead so it's gone until you find another pilot. And the way you find pilots or you can find other bonuses is occasionally a mission will have a time pod that is sent from another timeline that failed, has been sent back in time. In those cases, sometimes it will have a pilot, sometimes it will have a reactor core to power up a mech, sometimes it will have a special weapon or a special ability thing in it, sometimes it will have a couple things in it. so it's just, I mean, I find all that, that's really good, but there's nothing from FTL that I can see that would be needed here that's not already here.
    75:20
    Okay, I was just curious. Well, let's see, let me cover the last game that I've played recently, and that's the South, excuse me, South Park, The Fractured But Whole, and I finally won it yesterday, So, I thought I'd finally give some summary thoughts. Mostly in comparison to South Park, The Stick of Truth, because gameplay-wise, concept-wise, it's all very related. In fact, the storyline of The Fractured Butthole relies upon the storyline of The Stick of Truth. It plays out, you're the same character, or you can be the same character as you were, in theory you are, from The Stick of Truth.
    75:59
    If you like South Park, obviously, as I've noted before, you like the South Park humor, you'll like this. You don't have to be current on the show to be able to play it or follow along or anything. It's a standalone story.
    76:09
    I think, having played both, that it seemed like the stick of truth was edgier in terms of what they put in, shock value, whatever they wanted to do, and just in terms of that sort of irreverency. It felt more irreverent than the Fractured But Whole does, but the gameplay of Fractured is better. For example, one of my frustrations with the Stick of Truth is when you'd have that turn-based combat, you spent a lot of your effort on having to be ready because it was very quick-time event-oriented in terms of, oh, well, you have to hit this button. No, no, no, this time it's this button, and do this button to do a lot of the moves and stuff. In this game, they went a different route. The moves are more grid-based. It's almost, I don't want to call it a tactical RPG. It doesn't rise to that level, but it's very much placement of your character versus the enemy's, and different people have different attacks. So there's that tactical light level to it, but in terms of having to do a quick time event to do the particular attacks or to defend yourself on an Xbox controller, for example, it's all the A button. It's not a whole bunch of this, oh, you've got to do the little quick time pattern and figure out which button will properly save Kenny when he does his super special move. So I prefer it this way. I don't like quick time heavy gameplay styles. I find it gimmicky. It's like an easy mode way of trying to add difficulty to your otherwise pretty mundane turn-based combat. It's the easy mode way of adding difficulty. Yes. Easy mode for the developers to add difficulty for the player. It perfectly makes sense. Everyone agrees with me who's listening. Another change that I like for Fractured is you're not, your costume and weapons, I mean, weapons are all power. So there's not really weapons. Your costumes are just decorative, so you can put yourself in whatever. How you want to make your character look is up to you. It doesn't affect gameplay. You're basically slotting special components to give your superpowers enhancements. So, you know, a minor thing, but in sick of truth, what you were going around with was a little more, it fit more in the sense, but I do sort of favor how they did it. There's a lot of superhero costumes you can find. And it's not like, oh, I found the gloves to this. Where's the rest of it? Typically, you find the sets pretty close together or you craft them. So you can make yourself look like a variety of weird superheroes. It's just sort of a cool little RPG element they put in.
    78:37
    So anyway, and I think just some of the other things they learned from the first one in terms of accessing the map and stuff. It just felt smoother. So overall, it's an improved game in my view. and I would probably I would play Stick of Truth first if you haven't and since I think all the copies of Fractured come with Stick of Truth you might as well it's a good game in it's own right I enjoyed Stick of Truth a lot the beginning of it really does feed off of a lot of Stick of Truth so I recommend going ahead and putting the time in on that game they both I think probably play about the same length of time to get through the story So, anyway, I really liked it.
    79:20
    Yeah, I've heard mixed things on Fractured But Whole compared to Stick of Truth. Pretty much it seems like Stick of Truth, most people like it better.
    79:31
    Yeah, I think the story is better in Stick of Truth. But I cannot think of a single thing in Stick of Truth, gameplay-wise, mechanically, that's superior. I think Fractured is a better playing game. but I think it's fair to say that it's not as compelling of a story as Fractured, and it's not as funny as Fractured.
    79:53
    All right. A stick. A stick's funnier. A stick's got a better story, for sure. This is just a – it hinges a little too much on the whole Marvel-DC franchise. Obviously, it's going to play to that because you're being superheroes now, but it's just – I mean, it's not really surprising. It sort of moves in the way you would expect it to move.
    80:16
    But let's move on to Battletech. Tell me about Battletech. Battletech is finally coming out of its beta. This was the game I kick-started, and I've talked about it at length. In fact, Paul has posted a video of the skirmishes they had in the beta on our YouTube channel. and they're finally going to actually launch, which is pretty quick. The game was, the Kickstarter was originally launched on the 29th of September in 2015 and it's April of 2018 is when the game is going to officially release. They don't have the date for sure in April. It's just listed as April. You can now pre-order the game on Steam.
    81:06
    I'm ready to go play. I'm ready for the single player. That's the whole reason I bought this game is for the single player and for the Battletech lore. I love Battletech. I've always loved Battletech.
    81:20
    So I'm excited that it is coming and that it will be completed and done. This game does have the largest amount of money I've ever put into a Kickstarter.
    81:34
    I backed this game at a level of $275. Yeah, I know I'm crazy That's almost a laser war But it's done Or almost done And it's looking to be successful And I got all the stuff I wanted out of it All of the physical rewards I mean, I've had them for two years now Because they all came out And I had them all early 2016 So all that was left was the game And they've been doing the game in beta And I've played the game in beta And it was enjoyable So I'm ready for the launch And this has been a very successful Kickstarter overall Are you going to post more video once the official launch happens? Yeah, I'm planning on it I'm going to have to tinker with my recording setup some I was hoping to stream But my current system and my current setup, I can't I need a separate system. I can't play a game and stream it. It's too much for my system to do both. So for me to do streaming, I'm going to have to wait until I can build a system and get an external capture card so I can use a separate system to stream from the one I'm playing on.
    83:00
    I don't know when that will happen. It's something that I've got in the looks, but I've not even started touching the work on it. So who knows? But recording, I should be able to record. That last one I recorded went pretty well. I should be able to record another one pretty well and release it. My only issue is going to be working on the editing, and that's just because I haven't learned very much video editing software yet because I haven't really had a need for it. Yeah. Well, it's pretty easy to pick up. if you're not having to do anything fancy. Yeah, because when I released the last one, I literally recorded it, did it all stream. There were no cuts. There was no nothing. It was just a straight shot. What I recorded was what I released. So I can, at the bare minimum, do something like that without too much of an issue.
    83:50
    Yep. Well, let's go into Nintendo Direct. Did you watch the Nintendo Direct? Because I did not. I did, and I was at work. but I watched the clips and stuff afterwards.
    84:04
    There was a big talk about a Nintendo Direct in January that never happened. They had that mini-direct where they announced a couple of, just a bunch of remakes and stuff. Right, and you said there was something about that you were saying mathematically the next real big Nintendo Direct would come within a certain period. Yeah, there had been a thing going around on the Internet that was showing that every mini Direct Nintendo ever did, they followed it with a full-size Direct in like 30 days or something like that. That didn't happen. Hmm. How odd. That was broken. Strange how I thought that that might not happen. Weird.
    84:44
    Now, this Direct, because the Direct followed almost 60 days later, Because this direct was on the 8th And the mini direct was on the 11th of January So Now this direct It's got some news A lot of remakes Some new stuff being thrown in There's a WarioWare collection game for the 3DS coming out They're remaking Luigi's Mansion which was a pretty popular GameCube game for the 3DS. And then when the Switch news hit, it's also mostly remakes. They're Okami, they're making an HD remaster for the Switch.
    85:31
    They're going to put out an Amiibo for Dark Souls, because there's the Dark Souls version for Switch. There are The Octopath Traveler Which is a Square Enix RPG Is coming to Switch on July 13th And I don't know I've gotten to the point with Square Enix It could be good but it could be horrible They're just not the company they used to be But the big announcements seem to be There is a sequel for No More Heroes, which was a very popular game.
    86:19
    And there is a paid DLC for Splatoon 2 coming in late April. And it's going to have a single-player DLC. It's got a big single-player, a bunch of single-player levels, and a big single-player story. I don't play Splatoon I can tell you my daughter was Screaming excited when she saw The video for it She's a big Splatoon player So she's super Excited for that one And Mario Tennis Aces Is coming, yay I guess The Information on the Hyrule Warriors They finally gave it a date of May 18th Uh, speaking of the Fractured Butthole, Switch is getting it. Uh, in late April, they're going to be able to, they're going to be getting the Fractured Butthole. And there's a couple other things, nothing really important. They're getting Undertale, uh, Crash Bandicoot Insane Trilogy, uh, Little Nightmares Complete Edition, which is a puzzle game. And, no, there's, there's nothing huge. Nothing really important announced overall. there's a Smash Brothers game but nobody cares because Smash Brothers is a terrible game and that's about it so they're getting a lot of third party support which historically some people would probably say was a problem for them if you didn't have another system to play those things on yeah it has historically been their problem they've been doing pretty good about getting ports and remakes onto the Switch I'm pretty happy with where things look to be going overall. I kind of hoped for a couple more major game announcements out of this Direct, or at least to get some more information on, like, Metroid, which has been previously announced.
    88:22
    That'll probably hold for closer to E3 at this stage. That's a safe guess now that this Direct's done. Right. So we'll see. I know that Super Smash is actually the major announcement out of the direct because people have been asking about a Smash on Switch since the day Switch was announced. So I guess that's the big announcement. But we'll just have to see how it works. Nintendo seems to be doing a real good job with the Switch. I mean, good enough I bought one, and they seem to be selling really well, and their popularity is really high. So, good for Nintendo.
    89:06
    Okay. Well, I think that gets us through the video game segment. So, as noted at the start, we do have a tabletop segment that Tony gets to talk about because it's all about one game, Robotech RPG Tactics. So, it's been such a long time. You'll probably need to walk everyone through what this project was like and what its final fate has been. So, good luck with that. Yeah. Yay. Well, for all those people who've been wanting, you know, four- and five-hour episode podcasts, here we go. It won't be that bad.
    89:40
    Robotech RPG Tactics is a Kickstarter that was launched in April of 2013. Now, this Kickstarter was for a minis-based tabletop combat game based upon the Robotech franchise,
    90:00
    which if you don't know what the Robotech franchise is, it is the Americanized version of the Macross Saga anime, and what it basically amounts to is culture is important, airplanes that can turn into robots are really cool,
    90:22
    and Lin-Manuel should die. But what he... Robotech is back now. Let me sing my song. But what... The thing is, is when I was young, I loved this show. I still like the show. It's not a terrible show.
    90:41
    But I loved the show when I was younger. And the... I'm a big fan of minis-based tabletop games. So when this announcement came out, it seemed like an obvious thing to me. But the goal was the $70,000. They were looking for $70,000. They raised $1.4 million plus more with add-on purchases after the game was, after the Kickstarter was finished.
    91:10
    Now, this has turned. So it's very successful. It was successful. The Kickstarter was very successful. Yes. There was a lot of hope going in. It was the kind of thing that was looking for it. Now, there were issues going into it that I didn't know about, basically because I had very little to do with Palladium Books, who is the company with the gaming copyright for Robotech in the United States.
    91:40
    So I didn't really know, and apparently they've had some issues with other stuff in the past. Now, their primary thing is Rifts, which is kind of a sci-fi version of Dungeons & Dragons, but really complicated. I've played it. It's not a terrible game. There are a lot of books. It's definitely one of those ones where they do not embrace the lock things down like D&D does, where you're having much for your hand for how you do things. And there's a lot of choices in this and that, but they've had some issues in the past with books coming out and announcements and stuff. But I didn't really know about any of that. But for the mini side, they were getting help from Ninja Division, who's had several successful Kickstarters, has put out several models and their own little mini tabletop games that have all been pretty successful, so I thought all in all it was in good hands.
    92:43
    And that was probably a mistake on my part. This is, without a doubt, the biggest train wreck of a Kickstarter I have been involved in.
    92:57
    It is the biggest failure of a Kickstarter I've been involved in, without a doubt. They started with all the kind of, you know how Kickstarters are, or maybe you don't if you haven't taken part in a Kickstarter. There's lots of communications during the Kickstarter process, lots of updates, lots of announcements, lots of new information that comes out. And they did real good about that. The funding for the game ended where they hit their $1.4 million on the 20th of May, 2013.
    93:30
    There were basic updates going on during this whole time. They were giving you good information. It's like, oh, here's some pictures of units. Here's some ideas that we're working on. Here's this. Here's that. General stuff.
    93:43
    The first major, I should call it, warning sign, or what should have been the first major warning sign, happened with an update announced on January 30th of 2014. So we're already rocking almost a year since the Kickstarter ended.
    94:02
    They made the announcement that they were going to have to split the Kickstarter rewards into two waves.
    94:09
    Wave 1 was going to be just the basic game and some of the basic add-ons. All of the exclusive stuff and a lot of the special units and all of the upgrades and the stuff that came from having the Kickstarter go above and beyond was all going to be moved into Wave 2. And as the announcement was made, the original plan was that Wave 1 was going to ship in June of 2014, and Wave 2 was supposed to ship in October of 2014.
    94:42
    So it wasn't going to be too much time between the two. No, there was only going to be a few months between the two, and it was just supposed to be for ease of getting things done, because they had all the basic stuff done and ready to start, supposedly, and they had a lot more work to do on the other stuff, so they thought by splitting it, people could get their games, and they could get playing, and they could build height for the game, and wave two would just follow it up. As people really got into the game, learned, and just started getting used to it, then the wave two add-ons would show up, and it would boost the popularity that much more. Yeah. Sure. Yeah! Great idea.
    95:25
    This split my order in half because of the $200 I was into this Kickstarter for, about $100 of it covered the basic game and stuff I had on. Between $60 and $100 was all stuff that was moved to Wave 2. Now, the only issue for that was there were several things that I was super excited for that were things that was like, you know, even if this Kickstarter fails, or not doesn't fail, but I mean, if this game sucks, if I don't want to play this game, there are units here that for the models, I want it just for those models because they're so cool and I want to have them and put them together and paint them up and display them. And all of those models got moved to Wave 2. So, yay me. things start falling apart there quickly.
    96:32
    Now, there were issues showing up besides just the split because they'd been giving us information about the models and stuff, and people were starting to get upset because, frankly, the models were not in the standard tabletop gaming type models where putting together each individual model might have, you know, four to six, maybe eight pieces.
    97:00
    Because they decided that they wanted to have the maximum amount of detail on every single model to make it as just perfectly detailed to the show as possible. These models, each individual little model And these models are, you know, small Six millimeter models They're, I mean, they're not six millimeters But that's the scale, it's a six millimeter scale But these are small models I'm talking probably the size, basically the size of your thumb And these models were having 12 to 20 pieces To assemble each individual model and for each piece on the board you were typically having to assemble three models because of how the Veritech fighters worked so to have a single Veritech on the board you would have a fighter mode model that you would have to build you would have a battle mode that you would have to build which was that Veritech in a robot form and you would have the Gearwalk mode that you would have to build which was like halfway in between so it was like a fighter jet with arms and legs but it was still kind of fighter forming so suddenly just to build one usable unit you'd have to build three models and those three models had as many bits as a lot of tabletop games had for entire squads so there was starting to be some pushback from the kickstarter backers due to concerns about that and how complicated it was to do things with a high level of detail.
    98:45
    I think they went too hard for the detail. I think they were too concerned about the detail, and that caused a lot of their problems.
    98:54
    But at the same time, that was, I mean, it was their thing. It was what they said, and they talked about high detail from the beginning, so it was what they pushed, and it just worked out in a way that wasn't great. And things started falling apart. their communication was getting pretty bad they had gone from down to the point where they were only putting out maybe two updates a month and most of them were just quick little uninformative bits or like oh sorry I've been sick so I haven't been able to make updates here's a picture of a model and it was just that type of stuff it wasn't until June of 2014 that we got any more information and on June 12th of 2014, they announced that Wave 1 was going into production.
    99:47
    Okay, so they're behind versus the ship date, but maybe not by a lot. Yeah, they're behind versus the ship date, but not by a lot.
    99:58
    So, I mean, it's not terrible. Things aren't broken. We're not insane. I mean, this type of work, it's always slow. So everything is behind. I've very rarely ever been part of a Kickstarter where they dropped on things when they said, not a big deal.
    100:17
    And then two weeks later on the 26th of June, they came back and had another update where they just explained what was going on with the manufacturing. And that they would have the first rounds of container shipping in July.
    100:34
    And this and that. It's like, okay, cool, that's fine, good update, you know, that's not bad, two weeks for a production run going on, okay, that makes sense. Finally, on July 10th, they announced that the containers would start shipping on July 17th, which they did from everything the first container rolled out on the 17th. But then they started running into more trouble, because their plan was they're going to start putting together the orders to ship out to the Kickstarter backers as soon as they arrive. But since the container was slated to arrive before Gen Con, they also made an announcement that they were going to take some of the stuff off the first container that was slated to go to Kickstarter backers and take it to Gen Con and sell it to people at Gen Con instead.
    101:31
    And then they would make up the Kickstarter backers coming off of the other containers that are coming behind.
    101:40
    That's an interesting decision. I mean, if they hadn't gone so far above what their original Kickstarter was, my initial thought would be you must be hurting for money to want to do this strategy. I know. It sounds kind of funny, doesn't it? And, oh, the outcry. The outcry was huge. So many people were upset. I was upset. I was annoyed. But, again, it was one of those things that things happen. I stayed out of all of the conversations on the updates and the Kickstarter and the forums. I never got involved. I read everything, and I stayed abreast of the situation, but I didn't actually take part in any of the conversations myself.
    102:23
    Now, they decided, because of the outcry of this, that they would run a poll. And it was a very unscientific poll, and the poll was directly asking permission to sell stuff at Gen Con. And the way they ran the poll was they wanted people to make comments on the Kickstarter update page that said yes or no.
    102:50
    And yes, you can sell one. with like 78% of the Kickstarter backers voting yes. Wow, that's a huge level of support. Well, if you didn't say anything, if you didn't respond, if you didn't say yes or no, they didn't count that as an abstain. They counted that as a yes.
    103:17
    That doesn't make any sense, though. Well, no, no, it doesn't. That makes no sense at all. So you couldn't abstain. I abstained. I mean, I honestly wasn't overly concerned. If they wanted to find whatever, as long as I got my stuff, I would have been fine.
    103:35
    But it just created a larger rift with the community, especially when it came out that, oh, well, we just can't. If they didn't respond, that's a yes, because they obviously don't care. Well, they do publish that rift stuff, so maybe that makes sense. Exactly.
    103:50
    And then all of this drama that was created and all this pain ended up being just completely null and void anyway.
    103:59
    Because customs locked the first container down for like a month. The first container was in the U.S. before August. It didn't get released from customs until the 23rd of August. So that container was on lockdown For a month So they didn't take anything to Gen Con anyway They just got to make a lot of anger With them and their Kickstarter backers So They gave us a new update Telling us all the joys When it finally came out They'd given us updates letting us know That it was locked in customs And then on the 23rd It was released from customs and they were going to start shipping as soon as everything arrived in their office and they also gave us an update on wave two. Everything is in motion. Wave two is coming. That's a direct quote.
    104:58
    And that's basically what the mantra for wave two was, was that wave two is coming. We're working on it. It's coming. We promise. Cross our heart. Swear to God. Coming.
    105:12
    Okay. So what about wave one then? It's out of customs now at least. They're saying good things about wave two. Right. Wave one is out of customs.
    105:22
    The shipping starts, and the shipping to North America goes pretty well. I received my wave one stuff on October 8th of 2014. I actually had to go online and go and look because I had pictures of it. I had to go and look and find it. But, yeah, I got it on October 8th of 2014. They had several more issues with containers being delayed and shipping slowed down throughout September and October.
    105:52
    There was a fire at the dockyard that slowed a container down. There was a strike that slowed a container down. There was various other issues. At one point, another one of the containers was held for checking, and that was container, I don't remember, I think it was Container 5 that got held for checking, and Container 6 and 7 arrived before 5 arrived because Container 5 was held for checking for so long.
    106:21
    So, yeah, they had some shipping issues. They had some issues there, but it wasn't bad. They were getting containers off enough that they were able to get pretty much all of North America taken care of with their Wave 1 packages by October. So October 2014, when we were supposed to be receiving Wave 2, North America had received all of Wave 1.
    106:44
    And all of their updates that they put from October through February of 2015 was talking, was pretty much about shipping to international customers and delays with containers. And that was all the updates. No more Wave 2 talk, no more talking about anything. It was just all of that. Okay, but Wave 2 should be close now, right? Wave 2 should be close. Yeah. Right, right. Wave 2 should be close. Based upon everything that was said, Wave 2 should be, I mean, we're on the cusp of Wave 2, obviously.
    107:17
    On the 28th of February, 2015, they kicked out a new update. And I lost my place. There we go, in my notes. on the 20th of February 2015 they kicked out a new update on wave 2 with pictures but that's where we start running into a problem most of the pictures are just screenshots of 3D models and a lot of those 3D models were some of the original ones that were shown when the Kickstarter launched and but they're supposedly, yeah, this is the models we're working on, and we're doing this and that. And once again, I quote, this is from Kevin, the head of Palladium, who did this post.
    108:14
    I've been promising Wave 2 updates and pictures for a while now, but it's taken me so long to start posting them, some have begun to express some doubts. Yeah, we did. No, I'm sorry about that. there's no reason you guys should ever feel in the dark so much that you start to worry about whether we've even been working on this stuff. Well, we are. All wave two pieces are either done or in active development, but pictures are worth more than words. So here you go. So it's all done or actively being worked on. And then they gave us pictures, which include a lot of pictures that were available from the Kickstarter originally.
    108:51
    This is February of 2015. Today, right now, we're in 2018, and I'm going to give you a little hint. I don't have Wave 2.
    109:04
    No! Yeah, you can see where this is going. Yeah, well, the types of the photos look good, and saying things are done or in active development is another way to say that they're not done.
    109:16
    Right. It's like, it's all either done or in active development. There might not be anything done. Everything could be in active development. And it could be in active development. It could be it being on a piece of paper that says, yeah, we'll start development eventually. Right. I mean, because to me, from all the other information you've already walked us through, the challenge that I would be having is the way they described the breakup of Wave 1 and Wave 2, rather than it all being at once, was about logistic issues. And I could even see thinking that those logistic issues made sense given the delays on the containers and everything along those lines. But I would have assumed by when I'm saying logistics, I mean production. Not that any of this stuff wasn't actually ready for production yet. That all that groundwork should be done. It's the same argument we see sometimes when we cover the pinball hobby and people go, well, why isn't the wizard mode in Big Lebowski done yet? That you haven't been able to ship more games. that has nothing to do with the ability or inability to finish your code. Right. And that's where we're running into an issue is that this has that exact thing going on. It's like, well, these aren't done. Well, you've been working on them for two years now, and you told us this would be coming out six months before, and they're not even ready to start production yet. That has nothing to do with any shipping issues. that has nothing to do with any of the logistical issues. It purely the fact that they were not getting done what they claimed was ready to go when the Kickstarter launched When the Kickstarter launched they were talking about being ready to ship in 40 days And nobody believed that Nobody believed that they would be ready to ship 40 days after the end of the Kickstarter because this is reality. But two years is a little bit farther than anybody actually thought it would happen. Okay, so we're at the point now where it's looking like the train isn't really on tracks anymore. But as you already noted, we've got a number of years between then and today. So what happened next? Well, what happened next is that the update slowed down a lot. The next update was March 17th of 2015, so almost a full month later.
    111:36
    And all that there was in that update was we're still shipping to international customers and were getting ready to start shipping to, like, Australia and some of these other countries. Wave 1. Yeah, Wave 1. And then nothing again until the 13th of May, where they announced, Wave 1 shipping is done. All Kickstarter backers have had their Wave 1 stuff shipped. So it took nine months from the arrival of the first container until they were done shipping Wave 1 to Kickstarter backers. And if I remember your timeline, it was just under a year versus what they thought would first be when Wave 1 would have been shipped out. Because I think that was around June of the prior year.
    112:22
    Right. Okay. I mean, I understand. I mean, there were a lot of Kickstarter backers. There were 5,000-plus Kickstarter backers, as I recall.
    112:32
    And it takes time to ship stuff. I mean, I think nine months might be a little long to take to ship all of that. But, I mean, they were waiting for containers to come in and this and that. So, okay, we'll let it go.
    112:48
    The Wave 1 stuff isn't the issue. Then in late May, there were a couple more. They put out a couple of updates.
    112:58
    One saying that we have a major update coming that is going to update everybody on Wave 2 and what's going on. and then they put out another update that says, well, this update, that major update is going to take a little longer than we expected, but it's coming. We promise it's coming.
    113:17
    So finally, on June 7th of 2015, the major update came, and the major update opened with them saying that basically they were lost in the woods and everything was a lot harder than they expected. and then they launched into a biography of the company basically and the project. I mean, this entire update looked to be a huge, it was a two-post update and it seemed to be this huge update that was all about what was coming and what was going on and in truth, it was them talking about the plans that led them up to the Kickstarter and they basically laid out the biography and the history of the Kickstarter. It was a two-update of nothing. They explained who they were as a company, talked about details leading up to their plans for the game. They talked about how hard it was and how they were left dazed. Then they started shifting blame to Ninja Division and the manufacturing brokers and the manufacturers for stripping issues and delays and problems that were had. everything was very much a well it wasn't our fault none of this was our fault then they talk some more about the project and the kickstarter and what was going on during the kickstarter none of this has anything to do with what we're waiting on or what we're looking for updates on it is literally all like biography fluff stuff but they make sure to go out of their way to let us know that the game is not abandoned they're still committed to the game and once wave 2 is done everything will be great and they're working on it.
    115:00
    And then came what was the next stage of upset. I mean, at this point, looking at it from 2018, what happened was, in my mind, an actual attempt to divert the anger of the Kickstarter backers. this was all a deception and a mask because they decided, they started talking about changing the scale of the miniatures. So after Wave 1 was out, spending all the time and money designing and getting Wave 1 created, they started talking about changing the miniature size, that maybe it would be better if they went with a larger style miniature, moving it up to a 15mm from a 16mm size. and that's what they were talking about. And it, of course, set off all the backers because everybody just got done receiving their models that are in 6mm scale.
    116:04
    And they're talking about maybe doing Wave 2 in 15mm. They're talking about maybe relaunching Wave 1 all new, remade with 15mm scale instead of 6mm scale.
    116:14
    At the time, I thought it was insane. Now, like I said, I think it was a deception to get people to be talking about something other than the fact that there was literally nothing in this update.
    116:26
    They finished up this update by saying that they were hoping to have Wave 2 out by the end of 2015, but no promises.
    116:35
    And that they're talking about some other things that are going to be coming in Robotech and some other additions that are going to be happening. But this isn't stopping us from building Wave 2. Wave 2 is coming. We promise. We swear. Cross our hearts.
    116:49
    And then they started talking about convention exclusives that you could get from at the conventions or that Kickstarter backers could get while you wait for Wave 2, which is coming. We promise. We swear. It's coming. Cross our hearts.
    117:05
    So you see where this is going? Down would be the direction that I'm thinking. I mean, the issue with the rescale. And so, all right, it makes a little more sense in the sense that at first I was like, well, that's not going to go with anything they'd already shipped out. So I see why they'd say, well, we'd also redo wave one. But unless there was some sort of incredible cost savings, there's no logic to changing. You should have decided that before you went into production in the first place, obviously, but sort of spinning off of that a little bit more. That also, though it was, I think, later confirmed by the Wave 2 plan by the year end, was we're not even close to being ready to send Wave 2 units into production if we're still willing to talk about scale.
    117:54
    Right. And what they were talking, they literally were talking about, well, maybe we'll do a split run where, when we do a reprint of the Wave 1 stuff, we'll do them in 15 millimeter, and we'll do half of our Wave 2 stuff in 6mm to send out to the people who want to keep with the 6mm that they already have from Wave 1, and the other half we'll do in 15mm so it'll match with our new Wave 1 stuff at 15mm. Because this is when they started talking about the big re-release of the game and the rebirth and all this other stuff. No, none of this makes sense. It doesn't make any sense. This is all stuff that they should have decided. If 6mm was a problem because it was 15 pieces and people's fingers were bleeding because they were trying to assemble all this, and it was expensive to get it at that level of detail at that small of a size, that should have all been determined before the Kickstarter was done. They should have costed that out already. Or Ninja Division should have told them this is the size. I mean, Ninja Division has experience in all of this, and I'm not inclined to throw Ninja Division under the bus. My takeaway was always that they were approached and said, we want to do this with this size and da-da-da-da-da.
    119:12
    And it's either yes or no, and you should have had all the pricing and everything and the feasibility done. So I don't understand why this is being discussed after you've already done half of your waves.
    119:24
    Yeah, and this is why I think at this point it was all a deception. It was a decoy. It was a mask. It was to get people to talking about something else, to get the people that were already upset, and there's no way you can stop them from being upset, but it gets them upset onto a new thing. And I honestly think that's what this was because for the next several months, all of the talk and all of the updates they put out, everything is discussing scale change. So it worked. It worked.
    119:55
    The next big update was on August 26th of 2015. and it's all about nasty, how he put it, he put it as nasty chatter from people saying the funds from the Kickstarter had been misappropriated and misused, the money is gone, etc.
    120:17
    They say that none of that's true. The money's not gone, it hasn't been misappropriated, it hasn't been misused. they are working on wave 2 and that these people need to you know believe in them and it's coming and they need to stop because they're putting out so much news and they're saying so many bad things that it's hurting the brand and wave 1 that's not part of the wave 1 that they're just selling retail isn't selling as well because when you go online and look stuff there's all this nasty news and nasty stuff about the game and about Wave 2 and about Palladium. So it's making things worse. It's not helping.
    121:03
    Yeah, there was some serious talk and anger and frustrations in the comments. There are lots of things that the way they, from this point, I look back, and there are warning signs everywhere. And a lot of those people who were being the most vocal had obviously seen those warning signs back then and picked them up correctly. Because, once again, I'll let you in on a secret. The money was gone.
    121:37
    Completely and utterly gone. There was nothing left. But that's not what they said then in 2015. We didn't find out about the money being gone until two weeks ago in 2018.
    121:52
    So, obviously, there were some lies that continued to roll for the next three years. But to help appease people, they included pictures of the models that had been sent for engineering and tooling. So, obviously, wave two is getting close. granted most of them were the same pictures we've been seeing again and again and again since the Kickstarter launched a few updates a few this and that nothing they were pictures that we hadn't seen this hadn't seen some of the pictures before but for the most part it was just here look see we're really doing it wave 2 is coming promise and then nothing it went there were a couple minor updates that were nothing important, and they were just, again, talking about some of the various things until the 11th of December of 2015. So there were a couple minor updates, once, maybe one a month, F that, until December 11th, and then they got an update saying, we've not forgotten about you. We haven't put out an update since October, and nothing of importance since August, but wave two is coming. It's not now. It's definitely not by the end of the year because it's the end of the year. But we're going to give you more insight next week. We're going to put out a big post with a pulling back the screen so you can see what's going on in the stuff next week. But there is stuff going on in the background, but because of NDAs and legal reasons, we can't talk about a lot of it. So just, it's coming. Wave 2 is coming. It's slower than we thought, but it's coming. We'll tell you more next week. okay sure we'll see what happens then the longest week to ever happen happens because the next update doesn't come out until the 29th of January 2016 so you know that was a really really long week now this update had some major news that major news was that they had renewed their Robotech gaming license from Harmony Gold, and so they still have the Robotech license. Well, that's good, because you can't put out a game without the license, obviously. They also let us know that they're moving forward with the game and that Wave 2 will be coming as soon as they can.
    124:19
    We're not forgotten about Wave 2. It is coming. We're working on it. And then radio silence until March 3rd. So now we've looked at, we were told on the 11th that there would be a major update with lots of information coming in the week. Now up to March 3rd, there was no more information. There was no insight. They didn't say anything on the 1 and January 29th of import other than like, yeah, we remember you. It's still coming. March 3rd. So March 3, 2016, they released a picture of a, like a potato quality picture of a model of the SDF-1 that is one of the exclusives that was going to be part of Wave 2. That is one of the exclusives I was waiting on primarily. The resin model of the SDF-1 and the large model of the monster were the two big things I was really looking forward to out of the whole Kickstarter. but since they released it later it's a potato quality picture and they're like here it is oh and don't listen to the people who are saying the wave 2 is never coming it'll be here as soon as it can don't listen to those people they're wrong we're working on it it's coming we promise then in March there's one more update in March and one in April both showing prototypes of the models one of them is an updated version of the SDF1 model and One of them was just Updated picture of some prototypes Of some of the other wave 2 models And then Nothing else Until July 27th Of 2016 so you know 3 months They put out A thing And I'm just going to give you the short of it Wave 2 is coming Seriously we promise cross our hearts it's coming Promise that's basically what it amounted to and then nothing else until September 29th of 2016 when they put up an information thing where it's like, hey, we have some stat cards for some of the Wave 2 units. We put them up so you can download them, so you can use these stat cards with stand-ins for your Wave 2 units so you can see what it's going to be like once your Wave 2 units arrive because, you know, Wave 2 is coming, we promise.
    126:42
    And also we're in talks with manufacturers for Wave 2 And we can't get any deeper into it Because you know NDAs and this and that We're trying to find the manufacturers Who can do it for the best price Okay That's cool And that was That was the September 9th update Nothing else Until the 3rd of February 2017 So you know Half a year Definitely working on it Yeah But, big update Big-ish update They popped out and said Hey, we're sorry We know how it looks Wave 2's coming It'll be out at the end of this year We've been working on something exciting That is going to change everything And get you Wave 2 by the end of the year That's what it amounted to It was definitely more verbose than that, but it amounted to the end of 2017.
    127:48
    And then things got messed up. I mean, it got really weird, and I missed most of it because it took place on forums that I was not following. but a gentleman who helps design the game and who did some work on occasion with Palladium posted to one of the forums his name is Carmen Belair and he was trying to create his own game His own game company. And he was starting to launch into it with a Kickstarter based upon, for making a board game of Rifts that he was developing under license for Palladium. And he started posting online and went to the various threads and forum and comment pages for the Robotech game. and was making posts. Now, most of these posts have been deleted. I can't even find them anymore. I haven't been able to find them. I never read them in the first place because of what's coming out of this.
    129:13
    But from the screenshots and the comments I've seen on it, basically what it amounted to is, hey, I'm launching a Kickstarter project.
    129:26
    It is to put out a RIF board game. and if my project is a big enough success, I'll be able to quit my main job and do this full time and that will also give me time and ability to help Palladium get Robotech back on track and I can do more work for Robotech and we can help get Wave 2 done and we can help get the game going again. Uh-oh.
    129:54
    The reaction was bad. Yeah. It was really bad. A lot of people felt like this whole thing was basically him holding Wave 2 hostage to his Kickstarter going well.
    130:09
    And it's the internet. So things got very, very heated and very, very nasty. And then things got bad. Because the next update we had was from Kevin, the president of Palladium Books, where he made the announcement that Carmen attempted suicide because of how nasty the Robotech backers were to him. and the entire post was basically an attack on the backers and the people who didn't believe and the people who were nasty and mean and said mean things.
    130:48
    And, yeah, it got weird. He put out a clarification post on the 23rd of February of 2017 saying that he didn't blame all the backers, just the backers who were full of vitriol and disrespect.
    131:06
    And he went on a little longer in that vein. And then he made sure to finish to know that Wave 2 is coming.
    131:13
    And so that's where we were sitting in February of 2017. And like I said, I missed all of the lead-up to this. I missed Carmen's post. I missed everything. So I never saw it, and I don't know how bad it got, but it was apparently pretty bad, seeing as it upset him enough that he attempted to kill himself.
    131:38
    Yeah, so now we're sitting four years into this Kickstarter thing, four years in, and there's nothing but hate and vitriol on both sides. There are some people who make comments Who are very much In most of the updates Not talking about these two specific updates That talk about the suicide attempt There are some people like Okay, well we believe in them We have to hold faith and this and that But they're pretty much drowned out And The Kevin's very much attacked the backers In these two updates and in the comments of those updates, the backers attacked back.
    132:28
    At least some of them attacked back and it's like, I stand by what I've said and this isn't our fault. I'm very sorry this happened, but that has nothing to do with us and has nothing to do with this game.
    132:42
    So things that were already at a head and nasty just got nastier. there were no more posts until june of 2017 um when palladium introduced a new business manager and he let us and he just made a post saying hey i'm the new business manager i'm taking over the updates because obviously we haven't heard anything from kevin since the whole deal with carmen and that there's going to be a lot more updates coming, and there's a lot of good stuff going on with Wave 2, and it's coming. It's really, really coming.
    133:20
    And then the next day, he did a follow-up with just a couple of Q&As, a short fact about himself, and letting people know that, yes, Wave 2's coming, and it might happen by the end of 2017. But they promised and crossed their hearts.
    133:38
    Yes, I know they did. But they were, yeah, no. No. And then there were 13 updates through the summer and fall and winter of 2017. There were a couple pictures, some test renders of some custom bases to put your models on instead of just having round plastic rings that the models came with. There were custom bases designed to look like the deck of the SDF-1. There were some pictures of those and lots and lots of talk about, yeah, we're working on wave two. It's coming, but it's not going to make it in 2017. We're sorry. We tried. It's coming. It's almost here, but we're not going to make it.
    134:28
    And then there was, again, a big drought between a tiny non-existent December post that was just, hey, I've been sick. We're working on it. and that's where they showed some of the pictures and stuff, until February 21st of 2018.
    134:46
    So, you know, a couple weeks ago, there was a list that, just a quick update that said, hey, several of the links on the campaign page are pointed to a site no longer controlled by us, and there's some, we've had reports of malicious code on it, So don't click on any of the links in the campaign thing until we get the links transitioned to our new page. They said nothing about the game. They said nothing about Wave 2. It was literally just that.
    135:19
    And then six days later, February 27th, they finally fessed up and told the truth. There will be no Wave 2. Their license has expired and was not renewed. and everything else on that update was a breakdown of what went wrong. And they admitted in February of 2018 that the money was all gone with the production of Wave 1.
    135:50
    And they were talking just in 2017 that there was still money there. Right, and you mentioned repeatedly that they constantly said, Don't believe the people that say that there isn't any money left, that we've misused the money or run out of money, that that's all not true. But it turns out the not true is not true.
    136:11
    That's right. It was true. It was all true. They never told anyone they didn't have the money to produce wave two. It was all gone. What they did in the three years between the money disappearing because of wave one and them finally throwing in the towel was they tried to find support and options to get wave two made without people knowing that there was no money. they figured that wave 2 would cost a half million dollars to get made and shipped they tried to push their wave 1 products real hard so hopefully they'd get enough money from wave 1 sales to get wave 2 made except of obviously because of all the issues online and no wave 2 nobody wanted to buy wave 1 the game never took off they tried to cut deals with companies for other things to get money set up so that they could get Wave 2 launched. According to them, they worked on all sorts of stuff, because a lot of their updates had involved them talking about stuff. They were, oh, we're talking to this company about this project and this project and this project, but we haven't forgot you. Wave 2 is coming. Well, it turns out some of that is true, because all of those projects they were talking about that had nothing to do with the game were about trying to get Wave 2 made, supposedly. but it never happened and they lost their license and they have to divest and get rid of everything related to Robotech and that means Wave 2 is gone Wave 2 is done there's no chance of it happening even if there had been money for it so they decided that they would kick the Kickstarter backers in the nuts one last time and they said that you could use all of the money you had tied up in Wave 2 stuff to buy Wave 1 stuff, since they have to get rid of Wave 1 stuff anyway.
    138:15
    But we're going to have to have you pay for the shipping, because we don't have any money to even pay to ship it to you. So if you want your Wave 2 rewards, they're never happening. But you can change that money at a terrible, terrible markup, because they had a price list for Wave 2 stuff, that was like bottom dollar for Wave 2 stuff, but they were selling Wave 1 stuff at retail.
    138:42
    So you would go, well, here's the money I put in for a Kickstarter, but I can't get Wave 1 stuff at the Kickstarter price for Wave 1 stuff. I have to get Wave 1 stuff at retail price. Oh, and I have to pay for the shipping to send it to me. So it's gone. It's dead. they've put out several updates since but they've all just been clarifying the shipping stuff they set up and clarifying the order and how to go about things and it's just it's dead this freaking five year long bit of insanity is over and I'm out between $60 and $100.
    139:31
    I've never even put together my models, my Wave 1 models, because of the complexity and I just never had the time. I still have them. I might put them together someday, but man, I hate to even look at the box where they're at. It's sitting out in the garage right now.
    139:49
    It's just the biggest failure of a Kickstarter I've been involved in. and it's so crazy to me that they knew. They knew in 2015.
    140:06
    They might have known in 2014, honestly, that there was no money and Wave 2 was not happening. And it took until they lost. I mean, they even re-upped their license at one point after they knew that Wave 2 wasn't coming. and they still when their license expired in 18 they're like sorry it's not happening we lied, we've been lying for years I mean it's just I can tell you for a fact I'm not going to have anything to do with Palladium books ever again I'm nothing do you think that Palladium books survives the fallout of this Kickstarter implosion given how mismanaged it will come across to practically anyone. Even if you didn't care about the line or anything. That got strung along for half a decade for nothing, for no reason.
    141:05
    They couldn't manage the project well. I don't know. They still have been posting their weekly updates because they put weekly updates for just Palladium in general, not just Robotech.
    141:28
    And they supposedly I don't know. I don't think they're ever going to get a successful Kickstarter again. The question is, can they maintain, is there enough people playing riffs? Is there enough riff stuff being put together and Rift stuff shipping to keep the company in existence. It's entirely possible. I think Rift's players, since it's just books and most of them are anymore or just released in like PDF form, I think it's entirely possible that they will stay active as a company with just at least a limited store, just enough to keep Rift's going. I don't know if there's, unless there, it's all going to depend upon if a class action lawsuit comes together.
    142:25
    Now, I have to tell you, they are having an open house. Palladium Books is having an open house where everybody gets to come to their offices, and they're going to have games and they're going to have all sorts of stuff and stuff for sale and talks and this and that.
    142:47
    And I have so considered it. If it wasn't as far as it is, because it's going to run from the 20th to the 22nd, but Palladium is in Wisconsin.
    143:04
    But not that far. Man, I know. It's not that far. I just, with Texas, and I've got a wedding in April that I'm attending. I don't have any more time than I can take time off.
    143:21
    But I've considered just going to see, just to see, because you know there's going to be people there. Oh, yeah, have to be.
    143:30
    That are going to be there with anger and vitriol. but their open house is $55 wow I guess my house is open for $55 as well if people I don't have any riffs or any Robotech and do my minmay impression that's about it but I mean they obviously haven't updated their page since they made all of their announcements but their whole announcement for the open house is oh there's 100 plus Palladium gaming events playing games run by Kevin and other Palladium creators. Enjoy our Robotech RPG tactics, tournaments, games, products, and demos. Participate in panel talks with question and answer chats. Meet the Palladium staff. Meet Carmen Belair and other Palladium creators.
    144:23
    Oh, man. It's definitely going to be an interesting thing. And I said Wisconsin. I meant Michigan. They're in Michigan. Oh, well. So, yeah, it is an ordeal. And it's an ordeal that I think if they had flat out come out in 2015 and said, everything's more expensive than we thought. We can do phase one, or wave one. We can't do wave two. We don't have the money. there would have been anger and there would have definitely been a bloody lawsuit but I think it would have still been better than what they are ending up with now yeah I think you're right well there looks to be a lawsuit now there's a couple groups that are putting together a lawsuit as we speak so we'll see what comes of it it's just a class action because there are people who are out I mean I'm out between 60 and 100 bucks there are people who are out multiple thousands of dollars on wave 2 ouch yeah I completely understand especially if I had a thousand or more on anything I think it's definitely worth considering litigation especially under a class action setup where there's a lot of defrayment on the total across all the parties.
    146:06
    Yeah. Well, thank you, Tony, for walking us through the long saga of Robotech. And we've had a number of listeners say they like the deep dive stuff. So here you go. This is deep. This was a dive. And sometimes what you don't find buried treasure on a shipwreck that sunk. Sometimes all you find is death. Poo. And poo. now I do if anybody for some reason wants to look at the updates that were available on the Kickstarter page I did include the link in our links so you can go look at it and look at the updates where they update and where they've added information and stuff yeah it's all there readily accessible well I think we can close it out so thanks oh I definitely I only think so. My voice is weak. Yeah, I can tell. So, again, thanks, everyone, for listening. You can communicate with us via email, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. We're also online at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're on Twitter and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And, obviously, since we're getting ready to head to Texas, there will be a lot of Instagrams posting the trip like I did last year. and we'll have our next episode a week after Texas, and it will be about our experiences at the Texas Pinball Festival, obviously, primarily, because we'll have had at the words don't make sense as I say them, Texas Pinball Festival. You just rearrange those words, and it will make sense. Until then, we'll talk to you all in two weeks. See you.