Hey everybody, are you ready for this? This is my podcast 150th episode, a sesquicentennial, man, let's get into it and talk about what's going on today in the world of pinball. Today, we've got some news about Alice in Wonderland. I just got back from Benton, Wisconsin to talk all about the brand new Spooky Factory. Got the full tour and everything, man. Can't wait to tell you all about that and some more new WAP episodes are dropping. Let's get this going. Hit the hi-hat. Oh, the Scott Danesi vibes are going along. Did everybody get their pinball Olympics tickets? I missed out on it again this year. I was there last year. It was fantastic. We are in the lead up to Chicago's Pinball Expo, which is coming up on the week of the 18th, right? I'm essentially working every single day until Expo starts, and then it's going to be like fun vacation time. I can't believe it. Like the biggest event of the year, the event of the fall is coming up, and there's going to be new games to play. People are going to be playing Avatar. X-Men's are going to be dripping everywhere. It's going to be fantastic. I'm hearing some more. We might even get another game there. Seems like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland will be making an appearance. That'll make up for the emptiness that Cuphead is leaving in our lives. We'll get to Alice here in a little bit, but I've got to share the hype and excitement that I got this week when I was invited down to Spooky's headquarters in Benton, Wisconsin, a hop, skip, stone throw, and a cheese curd away down there in southern Wisconsin. I was invited down to kind of tour the whole new factory. They're in there now, you guys. Spooky's moved across the street. Well, their main production facilities have moved across the street. Up on the hilltop, the Shining Tower on the Hill is a giant steel metal building where they have just the assembly line like they needed the whole time, man. These guys had been moving and building and growing and adding on organically as they've been building all since the Halcyon days of America's Most Haunted. And now on the production line, they've got Scooby-Doos, but mainly TCMs and Looney Tunes. They finished the whole run of the TNAs that they had re-released and done. And this place is cranking, man. It's great to see everything all in one vantage point. For those of you who have seen tours of the factory previously, it was essentially just like multiple rooms, multiple levels in this barn-type building where they try to do everything in-house. Powder coating is across the street. It's really a compound they got kicking here, you know. Cabinets come in. Everything gets assembled. But it was taking the playfields, dragging them upstairs, populating them, putting the wires on, then taking these populated playfields back downstairs, throwing them in the cabinet, and then doing the QC. But everything was several rooms apart. Hallways were involved. It was a lot of geometry. Now they've got one gigantic square footage facility where it's just one horseshoe-shaped line. You know, we start over here from playfields and then all the way down when it wraps around, it's QC and games going into boxes. So I was down there and I shot a bunch of footage, currently editing that, hoping to get that out soon on the YouTube channel. And then I'll be posting links to it all over the Facebook group and everything. The Don Spilman Podcast Facebook pages. It'll probably go on the TikTok page. It'll be everywhere. So looking forward to that. But Bug himself gave me an awesome tour, gave me a ton of pizza. We had a great time. Morgan Emery was there Luke was there the other Luke was there Charlie Emery made an appearance it was fantastic had a great time spent the whole day down there but yeah basically you know walking through the factory it was cool to see their process and procedures and also how they've addressed every single bit of issue that's been coming back to them there's no one more receptive than these guys from you know if there's a theme that you want them to make like just let them know because they're literally like starting new projects, it seems, weekly over there. And they listen. And they listen. Speaking to the quality control, which I know has been a big sticking point, you know, kind of back in the days of Halloween, it's all been improved. It's covered in the video. But basically, they're able to QC every single part of the assembly process from playfield, from lower playfield, from cabinet, from backbox, like all individually now. They built testing rigs for everything. So when it all comes together, there's much less chance for a switch that's not firing to be a problem that was in the backbox, say, because they've already been cleared. So it's great to see the happy employees that they have now where they only have to pivot and turn a few feet to get to the next station rather than getting their steps in running up and downstairs. We had some pizza. We went down to the old factory. Now, their old factory down there, the original building they were doing all the production in, which it seems so small in comparison now. Like, I don't know how they could ever go back. So that's now like new game development lab. That's where the metal parts are cut. You know, they make their own side armors. They make their own metal parts. It's all done on site. You know, they control the supply line. The supply line goes, you know, from one corner of the street to the other. You know, there's no worried about slow boats from China coming in and holding up production on a part or something. So just fantastic. Okay. Now, everybody's been asking me, Don, you've been on site. We know that Kerry Hardy was on site. we know that flipping out pinball straight down the middle was on-site filming we know they have a new game in development we know it's coming soon and we know you know something you dirty birdie so why don't you tell us what's going on now while i was there i'm not going to press these guys because i'm also friends with them too and they've got a business to run and i don't want to cause any friction or you know try to force them into an uncomfortable position or anything especially regarding game reveals i mean you know the success on a title can really hinge on that launched so i don't want to do anything that would push it i did casually mention like hey you know if you guys threw an nd in front of me i guess i'd probably sign it they said that's not necessary don uh don't even worry about that so more information will come when it comes i love to be surprised as much as anybody else what i can tell you is that these guys are excited about their next project um they have said they on record as saying that in this market they only going to produce games that have killer themes they don want to muck about with you know uh some strange you know boutique original theme that they came up with that they really think is going to sell like they want to like know emphatically that it's going to be something that they can sell units of because and part of it is because when they do get a license they do pay hefty fees because they want all of the assets from the license and they want to put it in there they want to hire the best voice actors and get it in there they want to make the game that they want to play i mean these guys love pinball too uh so i can see the enthusiasm in their eyes so i know something's coming soon i can say new game will be number 13 it's not going to be at expo the first show publicly that'll be shown out will be the pinball at the beach which is in February 8th and 9th, I think, down in Sarasota. Is it Sarasota? St. Petersburg. It's in Florida. It's by the beach. It's pinball at the beach. It sounds like it's going to be a super cool event. And I'm thinking I'm probably actually going to block some time off so I can get down there and check this out. Because if it's pinball, hanging out at a hotel on a beach, that's a far cry from Schaumburg and dodging traffic trying to get to your budget hotel that you could find. So at what better time than February? I think that's perfect. I want to hype this event some more. I'm going to look up some more information. and I'll confirm it on a future episode here. But whatever game 13 is, we'll be there at Pinball on the Beach. And I'm sure we're going to hear about it before then, prior to that. But yeah, so it's going to beat Texas Pinball Festival for public location. So that's fun. So new game, not announced yet. I don't have any details on it other than the guys are hype on it. It's going to be a single theme. Christopher Franchi is on the art. and this is the project that Franchi approached Spooky with like hey I think you know I heard you guys are doing this I want in on it and that led to them doing an exclusivity contract with Franchi so the designers are hype on the design the artist is hype on the design he's one of the coolest artists in pinball so you know my hype index is off the charts and I can't wait I can't wait it's a Schrodinger's cat I don't know what's in that room back there but I think it wants to escape and it probably will um probably not in october possibly in november but i would say definitely by december we should be hearing something pre-order bank should be opening um i know spooky likes to give their their staff time off in uh december for the holidays and for new years uh that gives them time to kind of retool the factory and then january when everybody returns from the winter holidays here in the united states of eagle land uh they can go right into production. And so that seems to be their jive. And that's kind of what I would expect. So exciting. We're going to get some new stuff there. Now I didn't just spend time at the factory. I was also invited on Bugs Scream and Stream Thursday night live stream. Hallelujah. It was super fun. We decided to play Capcom's Flipper Football, which I had heard about. All I knew was it was some kind of sports game that had inappropriate call outs and I was intrigued. so we got into playing it got into a four-way battle uh with with bug myself jesse from uh spooky pinball charlie emery himself uh pitch hitting there was many corn dogs um i was chugging diet coke it was fantastic and and like the level of competition and pressure was outrageous and that just drove everything even more to be like fantastic so go check that out on twitch on bug scream and stream uh it was a whole hour long uh extravaganza man three games we ended in like a split flipper tournament is not it was nuts it was nuts it was a great day at spooky pinball i didn't get home till after midnight my god that was fantastic so thanks so much for inviting me out there the footage is shot and it will be edited soon and hopefully up on youtube so you all can check out this cool factory um that we got to spend some time in and like it's cooking man man they're putting games in boxes they're getting games out if you order one you're going to get a game it's going to be qc'd the best that they've ever done um i've owned two of the brand new games right now and I'm making room for whatever this next one is. I think it's going to be hot. Can't wait. Speaking of games that we are waiting on, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Dutch Pinball Museum posted some images on Facebook last night of a bunch of people, about 10 people, huddled around in a secretive location with lights on this game and they all got to play Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Early word that's coming out is kind of what we've heard. Game's amazing. it's loaded it's going to put everything to shame well we've heard that um the hype i was remarking um just recently with some some folks that are in the industry and some friends uh that the hype for alice in wonderland is kind of dead i mean they'd come out with uh with some reveals we've got some some little shots and pictures some teaser pictures we saw that jabberwocky mechanism with the kung fu grip action uh we've seen we've seen some images of the back glass you know we know it's alice's adventures in wonderland we've seen some concept art it's a more adult take on Alice, like we were in, right? It's like, oh, perfect. It's like walking into a hot topic. I love it. Let's go. Right. And then just, just nothing, you know, and then we get an image and then nothing. And, you know, it's like, we got people under NDA and they're saying the game's amazing, but they can't share anything. And then just weeks go by and it's like, what's going on? We've had the X-Men launch that just devastated wallets. I mean, you know, I was taking a wait and see approach to Stern's next one. Lord knows I don't need a brand new machine in my game room, But like everybody else, we saw that reveal, and it's like, this looks like the best game Stern's produced in quite a while. And they just released Jaws, and this looks even more fantastic. So, you know, I'm in on that. So that drained the budget. And then I wasn't expecting to want an avatar. Even with the gameplay reveals that we got, those teaser images, showing off the new artwork, the lock that was underneath the play field, just that alone in isolation did not get me enthused for this game at all. I was like, okay, it's Jersey Jack. I know what to expect. It'll have great build quality. I'm not really into the avatar license as far as, you know, the films, although I really do love the theme park area. You know, that's kind of where I was at with it. So let's let this game come out. I'll play it on location. I don't have to worry about buying it. And then thankfully they invited me down. I got to play the game and the gameplay mechanics of this game. You know, seeing the thing in person, the full dressed package of this game you know with that Bader play field on the CE and I saw the UV reactive inks which we get to see at expo like that what pushed me over into like okay i think i want this game uh i played the le edition again on location interior this last week that just solidified it like these shots are fun the flippers feel good i love the the rainforest cafe-esque mechanic of the eclipse coming in and changing the whole play field like like i'm in i'm in you know i feel like I'm at Animal Kingdom, I'm down. For me, it's not so much an Avatar pin as it's a Walt Disney World attraction pin, which for me, that's my angle. I'm happy with that. But big hit, big hit to the pinball account, right? And then I know on the future horizon, sometime in January, Spooky's going to want some money for their new game. I want to get my order in so I get one of the first ones off the line because I hate to wait. I hate to wait. So I'm all tied up, right? So meanwhile, While Alice in Wonderland is chugging along out there, we still don't know enough about it to really judge, right? I know people that I trust their opinion. They say it's great. So I'm expecting a game that's going to be good. But until I know a price, until I know a release date, until I know what I'm getting for that and I can see it and then hopefully play it, I can't really commit myself and my budget to hype. You know, I can't just go and sign up for 15 extra shifts to grab another pin based on what I know now. But I don't think we're going to have to wait that long. I do think that a release is imminent. I like that they're releasing some content again. You know, hey, here's a bunch of us playing it. You know, they're not going to stay quiet. Ten people can't stay quiet about this for long. And so I don't think it's going to be another six months until this game is revealed at least, like the full reveal. And so what I'm hearing now, it's already trickling out, and we're probably going to get some more. I'm sure something will be up on App Arcade probably as I'm talking about this. But it sounds like this game is going to be at Pinball's Expo, which is in three weeks. I know it's three weeks because that's when my last shift ends and I can actually go to another pinball event. Working every day until then, I don't know how it happened, but, my God, it had to. But this game will be there. So I think we'll get a reveal probably prior to Expo. So we may be a week, a day, 5,365 minutes until we get a reveal of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But my question to everybody, and I pose this on the Discord, is anybody still excited about it at this point, given everything that's gone on? I don't like the idea of a game reveal being drug out for too long. A week seems like too long. We saw the week-long Shark Week reveal of Jaws where some teaser images came out. And then it was like, okay, you guys got to wait a day until we're going to give you an image. Then you got to wait a day until we're going to get a little teaser video. And then wait a day until we're going to get the full reveal. And then wait another day until you get actual gameplay and everything. And then what happened? The trailer leaked out day one, but it was lower quality and just kind of killed the buzz and everything. what I like to see from a pinball company is an announcement that announcement's coming like the day before hey Jonas tomorrow at 10 a.m everybody get ready clear your calendar we're going to do a reveal of something cool and then game full reveal just show us everything show us all the shots show us the video show us that curated edited video of the designers that can talk about kind of the behind the scenes stuff so we get a good sizzle reel we get a little bit of an in depth what's going on and then we know where do we order it uh when is it coming out when is it on the line and please dear god are any of them in boxes heading to locations so they can be played and are any in boxes that i can buy and get so it's not this you know let me tie up a 2500 deposit and then you know we'll let you know in six months about when it's going to come and then it seems like the game is always another three months away from production um tell me you've ordered a Pulp Fiction LE without telling me you've ordered a Pulp Fiction LE. You know, the word has been, okay, this game is going to be made sometime in the next two months, and every month it's another two months, right? So now we're into November, December for the Pulp Fiction LEs. Meanwhile, I've been enjoying my essay of Pulp Fiction for six months, it seems like, now. Having a great time with it. God, what a fantastic game. I'm getting better at it. I love it. Game is great, but the wait, man. The wait is brutal. The wait is brutal, and And that's the other thing that's kind of killing this hype for Alice. So Alice seems like it's going to be a great game. We don't have enough information, or at least I don't, to be able to make a decision. It's like, please put up, or I'm just going to, well, I already have. X-Men has come. X-Men has been ordered. Avatar has come. Avatar has been ordered. Spooky's on deck. If Alice was revealed today, I think I'm out. If Alice was revealed a month ago, I probably would have been in. And so I kind of got to figure that other people are in that same similar situation. So let me know. But game is supposedly loaded with mechanisms and is going to be priced at a point that is attractive and puts pressure on these LE and collector's edition prices from JJP and Stern, which I love. As a consumer and somebody has to pay money for pinball to have it in the house, and dang it, these things are so shiny box of lights, I want them. I need people putting pressure on the prices so they don't keep escalating and escalating especially before we get some bangers like Pokemon and Harry Potter when those come out so yeah so let me know are you hype on this game I can't wait to play it I think we're all going to get to play it at Expo so right now I'm celebrating that and you know more as I hear it but I think it's I think it's coming but uh you know I don't know if you order when you're going to get it who knows who knows we don't know yet and I need to know that in order to build my hype index further what else was going on this week yesterday as a man it's been it's been it's been work every day man uh all day was spooky so much fun uh yesterday it did an hour-long episode with shanghaz and special guest of we are pinball the we are pinball podcast uh kale hernandez from the electric bat arcade thank you kale for coming on it was an hour-long discussion that focused a lot on operating games which was great um electric bats bat cast does a great job at uh you know being a being a a popular location that's running tournaments and can give updates on how games are holding up on location where they just get brutally played and also how are they earning you know because that a part that missing you know a lot of us talk about you know the hype of pinball machines because we have them in our homes we play them on location But what is it like to operate them There not a huge voice for that in the pinball podcasting content contentinarium So I'm glad that they're out there because it gives such a great perspective on games like Venom, right? Derided on pin side, empty fan layout, the lower two thirds of the play field comes straight out of Stranger Things. Like we've all seen it before. I defend Venom because I think the code is fun to play. once I learned how to play it, but it took me, you know, 400 plays to really get to that point that, okay, now I get, like, what we're doing. I get the gameplay aspect. Okay, this is the part of it that I like. I do think the layout is pretty stripped. I do think the pro doesn't feel like a complete game, you know, so Venom gets derided, but location operators are earning money on Venom. The Insider Connected information that's fed back to Stern, we've heard that it's one of their best earners on location. Some of us would say that it's probably because people didn't buy it, so they can just go play it on location. The godfather effect, right? But that's a great perspective to have. Toy Story 4 earns great on location. We've heard that from everybody. Cengiz has said the same thing. And it didn't matter that it was only Toy Story 4. So if you're only hearing it from the enthusiast perspective, you're only going to get that one perspective, that one view. Toy Story 4, abject failure. Venom, abject failure. When it turns out, in the right market, these things make sense. And it's something that wouldn't occur to any of us otherwise. So it's good to hear that. So thanks, Cale, for coming on We Are Pinball. Check it out. We're on Spotify and everything. If you're listening to this podcast, you can just search We Are Pinball, and it will pop up too. Who doesn't want to spend time with Cale, man? I mean, of all the beards in pinball, he's got one of the best as well. He's got this warm central Arizona glow that comes out of him, tinged with a little bit of the low country of South Carolina. It's a perfect package, man. Perfect package. So go check that out. Check out Kale's package, everybody. You heard it here first. All right. So the other thing that's been going on in the interim, I like to play every pinball machine, especially new pinball machines. I love it. I've played them all except for a very few, very few. Abba I have not played yet. I'm hoping I can play it at Expo. So I'm excited about that. I tried to play Spinal Tap, you guys. I went all the way, I drove my car from Wisconsin to Las Vegas. And one of the first stops I made was at the pinball hall of fame, uh, where I did get to play Thunderbirds again, which was fun. Thunderbirds also at next level. And that's a, that's a much better arcade. Uh, but I did go to the pinball hall of fame and I went up to spinal tap and of course it was down, which of course, of course, um, I think it was, uh, my buddy Jason Ruford posted a video of some smoke coming from out of the play field. He had been there just prior to me. Uh, it sounds like spinal tap is back up and running so get there when why you can but I'm not making that drive again right now I'm gonna go to expo instead probably the better decision to make but I do like to play new pinball I did think about planning a trip this is crazy all the way to Australia to go to that Melbourne show just so I could play Blues Brothers just because it's a new game and plus I thought that would be hilarious like invest all that time and energy and effort to fly to the other side of the world for just one of the most lackluster releases of all time. The better half of me prevailed and I didn't pull that off, but I was honestly thinking about it. Other new game I have not played yet, which I'm really looking forward to playing at some point, is Hexa Pinball's Space Hunt. Remember that earworm of a song that dropped that seems like a year ago? The game's getting played all over France. Hexa refers to the hexagonal shape of France. France is called the hexagon colloquially, locally. So that's where the Hexer comes from. The game is very pink, and that's because it's from the Bordeaux region in the south of France, where there was a lot of, you know, in the city of Toulouse, there was a lot of red Joshua Clay, pink Joshua Clay that was used to build the bricks in the old town center. So it's called the Rose City or Le Vie en Rose. And so that's kind of where the pink comes from. So this game is absolutely French. And I love it. I love French culture. I love going to France. It's so cool to immerse yourself in a place where it's just, it's different than where you're at. Similar to going to Japan. It's just, it's just fun to be there. And for me, you know, a guy from, from California, from the States, you know, being in actual France, it's just like, it feels so exotic to me. It's just fun to go there. And it's only a plane flight away. So I saw some chatter again on the French sites that I follow and reached out and I was like, man, I really want to play this game. And they're like, bet, come on out, man. We've got wine, we've got food, we've got French culture, we've got pinball. Let's do it. I'm like, Highwood's a good time, and they're telling me the spring. And so now the spring in my head mechanism is starting to go. I want to play Hexapinball Space Hunt. I want to play Aspherus and course around the play field. We've seen gameplay footage. It's been at the French shows, but it hasn't landed here yet. And I think the reason for that is because it hasn't been UL listed, where you have to pay $30,000 or something, send one of your games to the UL listing to get the FCC clearance that this thing is safe to operate for it to be commercially sold in the U.S. Right now, the only way to get one here is to kind of import a one-off. And I've even looked into doing that just because I want to play this dang game. But it seems like the easiest way to do it, if this game's not going to make it to a major show here in the U.S., maybe another trip to France. And it's like, come on, twist my arm. Who wants to go? Let's plan a little quick group trip. Maybe we can bounce over to Europe. We could check out Hexa Pinball's game. We could stop by the Dutch Pinball Museum. maybe we swing by Dutch Pinball and see what's going on there you want to put together a spring trip get at me donspinballpodcast at gmail.com is one of the greatest ways to communicate with me love the emails that we get like and follow the Facebook page and creep around and lurk on my YouTube channel because I do have some projects in the works that will be heading up there make sure you're subscribed and that's the first place that you're going to see this spooky film drop as soon as I finish the editing which I'm going to start later today and heck who knows I may even finish it later today. Don's Pinball Podcast in effect 150 episodes. I can't believe it that we've made it this far. Another 50 to come. We've got WAP episodes. We're up to number 12 now. Just a fun group conversation. Having fun in pinball is a cool thing. Holding people and things accountable when they need to be is totally fine as well. We're all going to have fun at Expo in just a couple of weeks. I'm hyped. Let's go. Still want to see the Alice in Wonderland game though.