primus pinball revealed deeproot pinballs launch postponed beatles pinball goes into production hi my name is jonathan houston from pinball magazine and with me is i am martin air from pinball news in london and welcome to our free monthly podcast in which we are covering the Pimble News of the past month, which in this case is November 2018. Indeed, November was relatively quiet, but there's still some exciting news going on last month. So this podcast shouldn't be too long, but it should be packed full of useful information and little tidbits of knowledge that we picked up along the way, because we've both been pretty busy, haven't we, over the past month? Yeah, but isn't that always the case? I mean, our podcasts are always chock-full with useful information. Oh, absolutely. But this one's probably not going to be like two hours. Let me just put it that way. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. So there's, well, what came quite as a surprise for many, at least sort of for me, because I've been busy over the past couple of weeks with other stuff, the Primus pinball manufactured by Stern I did realize that there was some talk about it for like a month and a half up front but not in the traditional sense like monsters that we've known a year up front that Stern is working on and so there's hardly a surprise that they're working on that game in this case the Primus game I was almost at the point they were saying like Stern and finally did it, they managed to keep a game a secret. Yeah, they did, although it's, strictly speaking, not their game, is it? It's a contract game for them. This is a project from, well, it's an artist-led game, shall we say. It's a passion project from, well, you know who's involved in the game. Right, well, obviously the band had to be Primus is a band, for those who don't know You might know them from their theme song for the South Park animated TV show That's one of the things that they did, apparently And apparently they had sort of the idea to have a pinball machine themed after them And as it happens, Zombie Yeti, who is doing artwork for Stern on several games, happens to be one of the artists on Primus' gig posters or whatever you call that. Yeah, he was a big fan of Zoltron, who did a little of their album artwork, I think, and was friendly with him, and the two of them together came up with the idea of doing the artwork for a pimple machine. And basically they took it to Stern as a contract project and worked out a deal between the band, Stern, and themselves. Right. And so we're talking about a limited, a very limited edition of 100 games only, plus an additional aid for the bands, their management, the artists, and one additional game that's going to the creator of South Park. and so there's 100 games available for purchase for fans and from what i understood is that they're down to the last 20 at the moment so and then for those wondering what game are we talking about we're talking about a re-theme of woe nelly big juicy melons the same playfield layout is used But they're using the cabinet as it was used in the iteration of the Pabst Can Crusher game. Yeah. What's the difference between the cabinets then? Did the cabinet change for Pabst Can Crusher over the Wonelli one? Yeah. The Wonelli one had a wooden trim around the playfield. And the Wonelli game basically had the whole crate thing going on. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, free crate. Yeah, and with Pepcan Crusher, it became just a more standard cabinet, but not as high as the stern, or not as deep. The normal stern. Yeah. So basically, since this is a single-level game, the glass is pretty close to the playfield, so to speak. which actually I think I mentioned that in the previous podcast I would have hoped that for the Beatles they would have used this type of cabinet because it would make it look far more authentic as to an EM style type of game but Stern didn't and as it turns out now these cabinets are being used for Primus Yes it's an interesting choice of playfield layout or a fairly modern band, one would say, to use a sort of retro playfield design and layout. Well... It's not something which you'd immediately associate with being popular with the Primus fan base, should we say. Right. My guess is, since this is a contract game, Chances are Primus had two options to choose from if they wanted to have a pinball machine. Either use the O'Neilly layout, which is probably the cheapest to re-theme, because you have to apply new artwork for it, of course, and a new soundtrack and do new voice calls and all that kind of stuff. But that's about it. The alternative might have been, and this is pure speculation on my end, and we don't do speculation, I know that, But if you're going to Stern Pinball and you're looking to have a game themed after your Rock Band, they might also say, like with Supreme, okay, take the Spider-Man Home layout. And in case of Supreme, the artwork was very cheap to apply to that. It certainly should have been, yes. Yeah. But since that game also has a dot matrix display, that means that you're also having to work on content for that display. And that might have been too costly for Primus, resulting in the choice for Ronelli Big QC Melons re-themed, so to speak. But again, pure speculation on my end, so don't quote me on that. But you're talking about costly, which would kind of suggest that this would be a cheaper game. And yet the retail price, I believe, is looking at 7995. in US dollars. So it's not exactly a cheap option either. So either Sterner are looking to get a good markup, or somebody's looking to get a good markup, or there are a bunch of other costs involved, which maybe we're not seeing here. I think the math is pretty easy to do. Based on if you look at the bill of materials of that game, I think it's very, let's say, just to be on the safe side that it costs Stern $4,000 to make that gain. I think that's pretty generous, but yes. Yes, okay. Okay, but then we're on the safe side. So let's say $4,000, bill of materials, all the labor involved, and so on. Obviously, Stern, if that's their cost, they would want to have a markup. you know um so they might be selling the games to primus for six thousand and then it's up to primus to sell them and since there's only 100 limited edition you mark it up to eight so stern takes a profit of two grand at the minimum per game and primus does as well and that's how you make $200,000 in a couple of weeks. Yeah, I guess so. It kind of, I would challenge those figures, of course, but I'm sure you would as well. Just from the top of my head, we're just purely speculating here, but if Stern is offering such an option, then that's probably what you're looking at. So, I mean, CERN's not going to do this for free, and neither should they. And it's not a problem either. And obviously the game is not targeted at pinheads, but it's more targeted at diehard Primus fans, I guess. Well, exactly. That's why I thought the actual choice of playfield design is probably not the best one for Primus fans who are probably unfamiliar with pinball, that this wouldn't be their, shall we say, their best introduction to pinball, or the best introduction to the modern standard of pinball, shall we say. On the other hand, and we didn't discuss it yet, but I have to say hats off to Zoltron and Zombietti for the artwork, because it's a very colourful, drop-dead gorgeous game. It is, absolutely, and being an older game, there's plenty of space on the playfield in which to show off their work. And I think it looks, the cabinet particularly and the back glass are both beautiful pieces of work. Playfield is a little busy, shall I say. Clutter. Yeah. But I think it still, as a package, holds up very well. Yeah. And it looks nice when illuminated too. So, and hey, if there's 100 people willing to chime in to pay $8,000 for a game like that, I congratulate everybody involved in having a successful game run. Absolutely. If they sell the whole lot, or just sell the whole lot, then they pitched it absolutely perfectly. and even if they don't sell the whole lot they're still big time in the black number so no worries about anybody over there no they'll always sell them one way or another I think if they end up with 20 left over they'll sell them over the next few years without any difficulty at all yeah so a couple of years from now you might see a new one still in box pop up and it will go for an amazing figure so So, yeah, they will show. So, Stern have been busy doing that, but they've also been busy in various other ways as well. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The Beatles, then, which was shown for the first time at IAPA in Florida, wasn't it? Yes. The show down there. Yeah, the funny story is, before we had to IAPA, the weekend prior to IAPA was the Dutch Pinball Open. We were both there. We did our quiz, and you wrote a great report from that event on our Pinball News website. Do check that out. I would recommend that to everybody. I actually, because I knew there was a Beatles game in London, and I actually tried to get that game to be at the show. And Gary Stern was very firm, saying, no, the game will debut at IAPA and not anywhere else. yeah we can understand they want to have their people there they don't want to as i understand the game that was in london at that point was a prototype game right not a production game so there would have been differences and stern would have wanted someone from from their side to be there to babysit it and explain any any changes that would have been made prior to production so no hard feelings to gary stern it was Sure, it would have been great, but I understand, and that's okay. It was worth giving it a shot. Absolutely, you should always try these things. But speaking of London, and of course, so the game debuted at the IAPA show, and I think they had two models. They had two, yeah. Yeah. We got the first videos, which were very noisy in the background and it was very difficult to basically understand what was going on, at least for me. and after that they, well, basically Stern did an event in New York City at Modern Pimple, where the game was revealed or launched, probably. Yeah, launched, I think. Yeah, where they had Cousin Brucie there, who's the announcer on the game. Right. And I think, was Jack there, just streaming from there? Jeff Danger was streaming from there, and the game is also at a pop-up store in London where you got to play it. Yeah, absolutely. I found out about this a couple of weeks ago and found that in a shopping center in central London, They were doing this promotional event for the game, which had four of the gold models or gold edition models in a sort of art gallery type setting, surrounded by lots of Beatles memorabilia. And it seemed a very strange scene because there's never been anything like this for any previous Stern launches in the UK. But then more information came out about this, and it turned out that the owner of the UK Stern distributor, who also distributed a lot of other products and a big player in the coin-op and amusement game called Electrocoin, the owner of that was quite instrumental in organizing the agreement between Apple Corp, who are the license holders for Beatles and Stern and Kapow, Joe Kamenkow. So he has quite an interest in how this game turned out. And also he himself is a huge fan of a more simplistic, maybe a single level type play field. So the Sea Witch redesign that we've seen is ideal for that. and a simpler, easier to understand and more accessible game. So he was in contact with Apple about the license, and also he's a friend of the owner of this large shopping center who was very keen to do a kind of event there because the whole shopping center has just been redesigned and reopened, so it's a good promotion for them too. Right. So Apple were thoroughly on board with this as well. So they provided all the memorabilia, all the stuff that's on the walls and in frames was provided by Apple. And ElectroCoin provided the four machines from CERN. And they still also have the original prototype back at the factory, back at the ElectroCoin office in North London, which is not that far away from where I'm speaking to you now. So it's a very nice event. All the games are on free play Anybody can just rock up And go and play some games Enjoy the whole experience of the The Beatles Memorabilia And just get Involved in the whole Beatles feel Because it is It's sort of like White Album Very plain on the walls And with Little collections of Album covers And posters and tickets Well, basically what you would find at any Beatle fanatic that is collecting Beatles memorabilia. Absolutely right, yeah. So that's all there, and four games to play, and the event runs until December the 12th. Right. So having been in London earlier this year, I actually visited the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, I think that is. right next door is actually a um a beatles um uh shop i would say where lots of beatles products including gold records and all that kind of stuff is being sold is it anywhere close to where this exhibition is held so that that people visiting that store might visit both at the same uh in the same trip or is it um it's it's probably I would say it's walking distance. My place of work is, I would say, 15 minutes walk from Baker Street. And then the Brunswick Centre, where this pop-up store is, is probably another 20 minutes walk in the same direction. So you're probably looking at least half an hour's walk from Baker Street to get there. Or you can take the tube very easily and get there. so yeah if you're going to one you should certainly go for the other right well if you're into the Beatles yeah for sure if you're just into pinball then well then still the Beatles store is interesting because it had in the in the shopping window it had a yellow submarine toy pinball machine which I actually thought that would be fun to other people found that game in the meantime as well but during the summer of this year the thought occurred to post that picture as like, first image of a Beatles Pimple Machine. I didn't, but the thought occurred, but I was a good boy, I didn't, I didn't. Well done, we won't want to annoy anyone. Right, so... But anyway, so Beatles has been launched. You played it. Would you care to talk about what you think of gameplay? Or is that not something for this podcast? No, I can just, because it's a simple game, it won't take very long to talk about the gameplay. It seemed a fun, fast, and enjoyable game, I would say. Certainly good value to play, especially when it's free. but it would be worthwhile playing on location as well the lack of features on the playfield doesn't seem to detract from the fun value of the game I would say it was probably the thing which got me the most about it we've seen the playfield, we've seen the artwork what you don't get to see on any of the stills or press releases is the quality of the animations on the LCD display and I think they're absolutely wonderful they're really very well done they clearly i'll say clearly but from somebody who works in the business of uh of video graphics um it they clearly didn't have a lot of assets to work with in terms of video they had a lot of stills and um they kind of do it a bit like like the batman thing with a smaller screen within the main screen with the surround um but that doesn't seem to really just detract they do lots of moves on stills they do have some clips of the band playing but I would say the main thing is probably going to be the music and the music's in there and there's lots of music in there though interestingly I did find out that there are not necessarily whole songs in the game there are bits of songs, there are sections of songs but they Apple were charging virtually on a sort of per second basis for how much of each song they wanted to use. It wasn't like, we're going to use this song, you get all of it. No, you don't get all of it. You get as much as you're willing to pay for. Right, okay. So some of the songs are a bit truncated, but not that you necessarily notice just playing the game, but if you're a Beatles fan, you might think, oh, that's weird, the song sort of stopped there and gone back and looped. Well, it hadn't gone all the way through. Well, I might hope that looping is one thing, but they could loop it seamlessly that it doesn't occur like, hey, this is the third time I heard the first verse or something like that. Yeah, because most of the songs are mode-based, and most of those modes are based on timers. You're not going to be hearing the same thing repeated too many times. But I do want to go back and just reiterate what I was saying about the graphics. They've done some lovely sort of in-house generated effects for when you complete Beatlemania and when you get an extra ball. And it's really sort of very dynamic and colorful and impressive work. You know, I know how much effort goes into doing those graphics. And I think that's something people will be surprised by the first time they see it. okay since this is a uh a reuse of the um the sea witch layout what i'm curious about and this might be an odd question um stern electronics pop bumpers do have a certain feel to them um the current stern pop bumpers also have a certain feel to them which is but it's not as rubbery i would say as the stern electronic pop bumpers um did did you notice any difference having i assume you've played sea witch before yeah yeah uh well this is a brand new game so the pop bumpers were very active and um they are surrounded by by rubber bands so there's a lot of action going on up there in the pop bumper area although it was uh it was a bit frustrating because the top right hand corner of the pop bumpers there are four drop targets spelling 1964 and I could not for the life of me get the four to be knocked down from the pop bumpers when I was playing it and I was playing it with a friend who may call in today or may not and he would just shoot the ball to the pop bumpers and it would immediately hit the number four and I'd go oh for goodness sake I've been trying to get that for like five or six visits the pop bumpers and it never hits it. But there's a lot of action going on in the pop bumpers, so I think that's very good. But probably the better area to concentrate on is the spinners, which are a new design using optos rather than microswitches, which obviously introduces a lot less friction into the spinning motion. They're not having to depress a microswitch switch every time they spin, which takes it back to the feel of the original stone electronics spinners. so you can really nail mostly the right one I found you can probably do the left one as well you nail them and they spin for like 20 seconds or something which is exactly what you want if you get a really good shot not really authentic to EM gameplay because they wouldn't spin for 20 seconds but still it's nice but the Stern electronic ones were they were famous for their spinners and this very much has that feel to it. Okay, good. So a fun game and if you're a Beatles fan then you won't be disappointed? No, I don't think so. If you're a pinball fan, obviously you'll be familiar with the layout but I think there's enough different in it to still produce a lot of fun and maybe the price tag might be a little challenging, shall we say, without wishing to get back into previous problems. But it's clear that it's a Beatles game. It's as much a Beatles game as you could possibly imagine. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, right. Okay. So, well, that's Beatles then. But there's still more news on Stern Pinball, as their programmers have been cranking out code updates for Metallica, which was quite a surprise. And then KISS came out, which apparently really is a big update on that game and a very good one. And Batman 66 finally reached its 1.00 software release. Well, George Gomez did promise that would be coming out It would reach 1.0 this year And there it is But yeah, I think you're right The KISS one is probably the biggest Update Probably if we've seen it on any game for a long time It seems to have totally transformed it In a good way And given it a lot more Longevity to it Metallica was a surprise And I wasn't expecting to see that at all But But I think it's probably put a few Ghostbusters fans' noses out of joint that they haven't concentrated on that up until now. But I think Metallica must be down as done by now, wouldn't you think? I think so. Also, apparently they're no longer running Metallica, unless they come up with a vault edition or whatever. So it's kind of appropriate that they're done building the game, and the code is finally finished. Yeah, if you're a Metallica fan, it's always nice to see new features coming along, or in fact any game that's been out for a while. As you say, Metallica's not in production anymore, or I don't think it is. So Yeah, let's keep Let's keep going back and looking at the games Which really need the updates Ghostbusters Let's Take our hats off to Stern That they're continuing to support Their older games Right, well, so Ghostbusters might be In need of an update But I'm wondering How far will they take this back Because I don't see Stern taking this back All the way to Wheel of Fortune which has been basically in need of a code update ever since the game was released. Yeah. But at that point, the philosophy was like, hey, we're not building these anymore, so why bother? Yeah. Well, obviously that's changed. They're bringing out Metallica updates. Right. Oh, well. Unless it turns out they've renewed the license and we don't know about it. Well, like I said, they still might do a vault edition at some point. So, oh well, we'll just have to see. So anyway, code updates from Stern, and from one code update to another, if we look at Jersey Jack, the most important news from them from the past month is that they have been releasing code updates for The Hobbits, which is now at 3.00 and dialed in which is now at 1.57 and neither of those are finished yet I know that the Hobbit 3.0 has some, I don't want to call them bugs but maybe features which are going to be tweaked slightly in a further update I know Ted has been working on that and has been very proactive in engaging the community and getting feedback and getting beta testers out there, which is good to see. And, yeah, people have been coming back to him and asking about whether things are going to be included or notice things which have changed and whether they're working as designed. And I'm sure there will be at least one more update just to probably round it all off. but I don't think there are going to be any more features added to the game at this point because they've actually done quite a lot to it recently, and I think they're feeling it's a pretty rounded and complete product now, which I haven't played the latest version, but from reading the notes and hearing what people have said about it, it certainly does seem as if a lot of the concerns with the game have been addressed. Right, okay. There's not that much news from Jersey Jack Pinball to report, or I must be missing something. I know that Pirates is currently in production and they're shipping those games. Jean-Paul De Wynne, who is the LCD animator for Jersey Jack Pinball, he did a great seminar at the Dutch Pinball Open, which I would like to thank Jean-Paul for. Yes, I sat there for it and it was very entertaining just as it was the previous year. Yeah, so you wrote up a report about the show and there's some details on that seminar as well. Jean-Paul, although seminars were not recorded at the show, Jean-Paul had his seminar recorded by his brother and maybe that will become available at some point through the Jersey Jack Facebook or Twitch stream or something like that. I'm not sure. Certainly if he puts it on YouTube, I'll link to it through the DPO report. In Pinball News as well. Right. But for all these show organizers in the U.S. or wherever they are, if you're looking for a seminar speaker, I would highly recommend Sean Paul DeWin because he really has a visually very impressive show, a seminar, to discuss all the work that he's done on, well, in this case, Pirates, but also all the other previous Josie Jack Pingle games. Yeah, I would recommend seeing it. I really do hope that his seminar is available online, because he had a lot of detailed information about the Pirates game and the whole thinking behind how it was designed and all the graphics were drawn up, because I certainly hadn't realized the way that the display is divided up into sections, the vertical columns for all the movies running across the screen, and the way that various aspects, various elements of the screen, how they work and how they interact with other elements. But it really is something you need to see. So, yeah, even if this video is available on YouTube, certainly seeing him in person gives you a huge amount of background information about the whole thought process that went into the design of Pirates. Yes, and I've seen other seminars by Jean-Paul. He also has one on Hobbit and on Dialed In. And again, so much information that you don't realize that goes into the game before they get where they eventually end up. Yes, absolutely right. Right. I forgot one. we have to head back to Stern for just a second. Not for a game that's in production, but for a game which will be in production. We've known about this for over a year and the game was sort of expected to be launched this month, December. Rumor has it that it could have either been Beatles or this game and we're talking about the monsters um and apparently beatles got prioritized but so we're still we're waiting for monsters to be launched and um there was a new leak and let's put that in between quotes um yeah um from uh what appears to be well, if you take all the clues from the photos that were leaked and it's traceable to probably the Greek distributor for Stern Pinball who leaked certain images, but it would be very stupid if the Greek distributor for Stern Pinball would be leaking images that would be traceable back to that distributor because it might affect their status. Yeah, which weren't authorized to be leaked. Right. So either the way authorized to be leaked and then see how things go or it was carefully orchestrated um but either way so there's a couple of pictures that came out of the upcoming monsters game where it appears that the uh what was announced originally as the premium cabinet artwork is now going to be used on the pro model i think um that's correct there was a um an image of the playfield artwork, but not a populated playfield, and a close-up of a, I guess, what is a still from a video of a section of the playfield. So it's all a ramp, and it's a very colorful game, and we just have to wait and see until they are ready to reveal it, and so we get to play it. Yeah, I also think it's worth pointing out that probably what we have seen so far is almost certainly from the pro model. Right, because there's a very... It's been rumoured that the premium and LE model will have a lower playfield. Yes, quite. Kind of like an ACDC type affair. Well, let's not hope that it's something like that. I was hoping more in something like haunted house or something like that. That would be more interesting, I guess. But what we see in the playing field does have a kind of large blank area in the center, which could easily be turned into a window to a lower playing field on the upper models. Right. So, but anyway, so let's just, whenever they release the game, let's all act very surprised. and um you know so um and interestingly in an interview with some some horror podcast butch patrick who plays the character of eddie monster in the show who will be a special guest at the texas pinball festival in march announced that the game will be at the texas pinball festival in March, and I think he mentioned it would be a launch, but the overall expectation is that either the game is launched either later this month or early January to be presented at the CES show and the EAG show in London. Well, it would be good if that's the case, because that means we'll get to see it first in London, because obviously we're both going to be there, aren't we? Yes, we are. yep so um the original thinking was i think that um it it may be held uh the launch may be in in january or february but it would still be a big promotion going on rolling into the texas show because they have two members of the the monsters cast and i don't know who the other person is but I'm not familiar with the show at all. Neither am I It the Pets Patch or something the woman who played Marilyn Munster in the show the blonde one Okay Well they both guest stars at the Texas Pinball Festival so they clearly doing a big push on the Munsters at that show So it's still going to be relatively new and still being the promoter, as the current Stern or the latest Stern game at that point. So that's a good mid-match. Oh, we don't know that, because at the current pace that Stern is cranking out games, we might have seen three other games by then. That's true. Yeah, who knows what else they're working on. They're making games by the 100 now. They could probably do a run of those a month. Yeah, so we could play a lot of new titles. Now, we were supposed to be playing a lot of new titles at the Texas Pinball Show, But earlier today, and this is really just fresh from the press, so to speak, Deep Root Pinball, who announced that they would be launching their company at the Texas Pinball Festival next year, basically postponed their reveal and they will not be showing off their games and company and what have you at the Texas Pinball Show. yes that's um i would say it's a shock but it's it's not really if you think it if you've been following the progress and and know anything about pinball manufacturing it did seem that they it would be a real challenge for them to get um even one game ready in time for the texas show in march which is you know we're looking at four months away so considering they haven't as far as we know they haven't even started manufacture or don't have manufacturing facilities and um still somewhere away from being in that position. But to do what they were planning to do, which was to launch, what, four or five games? Possibly even more. Maybe even more at the Texas show. Just seemed totally impossible. And today the announcement was that they postponed indefinitely. I wouldn't say impossible, but I would say very ambitious. But again, it turns out to be very ambitious. Well, we know that, despite what other people have said, pinball is not easy At least the pinball manufacturing is not easy Design, talk, ideas, yeah, easy But actually getting a game made which is robust, reliable and ready to sell Which was their other intention, was to have the games there You put your money down and you get them So that didn't seem something that was feasible to me, at least, in such a short time scale. Well, it's the biggest hurdle for any company in pinball. We've seen it with other companies. It's the manufacturing beast that needs to be controlled, and that's the difficult part. You know, you have to, aside from having a manufacturing plan, you also need to control your supply chain. well that's the problem absolutely one part manufacturer somebody's making the flipper mech says oh no we've got a problem with this and it's going to take another month to sort it out there goes your launch right so no Deep Root at Texas Pinball Festival although I'm pretty sure that some team members of Deep Root Pinball will be at the show I'm sure they will have a big presence at the show they just won't have any games available to show off or to sell to the public. At this point, I'm not even sure whether they would have any presence at the show, but as far as what I understood is, we might not even see any Deepwood games in 2019. There's no guarantee. They haven't given a point at which they will be ready to show their games. Right. So, you know, but they will need they will need a large show to do the kind of launch they're talking about. So really, without going outside the US, we're looking at either Expo in October or Texas again next March. And being a Texas based company in 2020, I'm talking about now. Right. Bigger Texas based company. It certainly would be easy for them to have a large presence at a Texas show. So, yeah, you're right, it could be a 12-month delay on the announcement. Right, and, well, obviously there's other pinball shows. I mean, there's shows in Atlanta where they might go, and there's the Houston show, which is even in Texas, which usually coincides with Expo, but then you'd rather be at Expo, I assume. I think so, yes. But there's other shows. I mean, and it doesn't stick to one show. I mean, once you launch your company at one show, then there's all the other shows to make sure that you're also present. So we'll just have to wait and see how things will develop further on. I'm sure there are plenty of other show organizers who are getting in contact with Robert at Deep Root around about this time, suggesting that they might like to launch at their show later in the year or early next year. But at the end of the day, it's going to be down to whenever the games are ready to show, and they're not going to show them until they are. Well, it's also going to be interesting to see. I mean, obviously, they are working with several designers. I mean, we've got John Poppadoo there, we've got Barry Osler, we've got Jon Norris, and we've got Dennis Nordman. I don't think I'm missing anyone right okay and most of these are working on multiple games but obviously not every game is as complex as the others so it could very well be that they might be ready let's say for example September to launch one game but then the question is are they going to or are they holding off on that game because they want to make a real big impact and launch, I don't know, seven games at the same time. Well, yeah, it's true. I mean, they made promises of what they're going to do and made promises of when they're going to do them. The when isn't happening, so maybe the what is also going to be adjusted to deal with the timescales and manufacturing capabilities that they actually have. Right. So we might be looking at a completely different launch for DeepRoot than originally was planned. Heck, even the five days of DeepRoot might be completely off the table at this point. Yeah, it's going to be hard to do that anywhere else, really, other than in Texas, I would have thought. But we'll see. We'll see what they come up with. I'm sure they're working now on relaunch plans. Right. Okay. So moving on to companies that are actually producing pinball games at the moment. Spooky Pinball. Yes. They've obviously had a big success with Total Nuclear Annihilation, or TNA, as we can call it from here on. Right. I think if it's not yet their biggest seller, it's just about to be their biggest seller. at 550, I think they're aiming for. Is that right? Yes, that is right. It's already their biggest seller because I have three games on order. And so far, their biggest run was 500 games. And one of my games is already 510. And what I understood is that they're very close to maxing out at 550, at which they will stop the production. So they are still, if people are interested in buying a total nuclear annihilation game, they might still be able to order one from Spooky soon, and else just depending on what becomes available on the second-hand market. Although there's no guarantee they won't make any more, though, is there? True, but it will take time because then they need to finish. Oh, of course. They will start building Alice Cooper as soon as they can. Quite possibly still before the end of this year, they will start production on Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle. And most likely they're also, well, it depends how far the development of Scott D'Anessi's second game will be, whether that can go into production after the production of Alice Cooper games is done, or they might revisit Total Nuclear Annihilation. That's true, yes. Yeah, they could do. But although, to be fair, I don't think Spooky have got a problem with downtime on their production line at the moment. They seem to have more games in the pipeline than they're able to produce. Right. And with Scott's second game also well into development, it doesn't seem like there will be a gap where they could just throw in another run of 100 or 150 TNAs. But it might happen. So here's where I'm sort of holding off on that in the sense that I know how long it took Scott to develop his first game. And it appears to me that if he would have to be taken into production the second game right after Alice Cooper, that would basically indicate that he would have a significant less time to develop that game. Obviously, he won't be involved in every aspect of the game. He might not produce the music for it this time or leave the coding to someone else. But still, there's a lot less time involved this time. So you may hope that the game is ready to go into production. Software-wise, they might still be able to tweak a lot after it is in production. But contrary to the first time, Scott will not be able to take his game to various pinball shows to see how the response is. And they have people playing it and just changes based on suggestions from people and all that kind of stuff. So we'll have to see whether Scott will be ready with his second game or whether they need something else to continue production. But that's all way into the future First they need to build 300 Alice Cooper games And that's going to take them At least 6 months I'd say So That's still a little bit of time Yeah plenty of time I'd say But we'll see There may be another game After Alice Before Scott's second game goes into production Right there might even be another contract game In between you don't know Yeah absolutely Yeah, we certainly heard rumors about Scooby-Doo being a potential contract game for the pinball company, Nick Parks. That may come to fruition and would be a good one to pop into the schedule there. Right, although at this point, having read some interviews with Nick Parks, I don't think the Scooby-Doo license is currently... I'm not sure about the status of that and whether that's at the moment very realistic, but who knows, you know. I'd love to be surprised. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's not as if Nick and Brooke aren't busy enough with their other plans for arcades and their pinball hall of fame in Chicago that they're working on, which they plan to have open by Expo next year. So that would be a lot of work for them, and I'm sure having to deal with designing or manufacturing another game is probably something they could well do without. Right. So now, since we're talking about the pinball company, so we've seen the Primus pinball machine selling for $8,000, manufactured by Stern, being the Bonelli cabinet. But the Jetsons game that the pinball company designed, which was built by Spooky Pinball, that's currently also limited to 100 games. Although they could have built more, but they didn't. So that makes me wonder, does that make that game more collectible now? What, the Jetsons? Yes, because that was a game that everybody was like, at this price point, pass, but if it would have been cheaper, then again, if limited edition runs of 100 equal a price tag of $8,000 or something in that neighborhood, then that's a good excuse to buy that Jetsons game. Well, if 100 is now the kind of minimum order on any contract game, then you may well be seeing quite a few runs of a hundred of various different titles coming out over the next few years, which may make some of the earlier titles of which there were some left over in the run or were not produced in that number. I don't think that will make those more desirable because they are in danger of being left behind. as, you know, if you and I wanted to come together and come up with an idea for a game, we could make a hundred of them and get them contract manufactured. That doesn't necessarily make them collectible or rare. If they don't sell well. Well, they will be rare. Collectible is different. Well, desirable. Yeah. But keep in mind that in case of Primus, it was a reuse of an existing design In the case of the Jetsons, it was actually a new design. It was, yeah. But again, both games are relatively simple to build in terms of features on the playfield. True. Then again, having said that, I remember playing the Jetsons, and although the object of the game is rather simple, basically spell out all the names on the playfield of the characters in the game, I was not able to do that. So it's not that simple. It seems easy, but it's actually more difficult than you think, which actually is a good thing in pinball. Well, you're confusing simple with easy. It can still be a very simple objective, a simple rule set, but the game can still be assessed not sufficiently hard. The shots can be tight and make it difficult to achieve. Right. Okay. So anyway, let's hope that Nick Pars has some surprises coming up. I'm sure he has. one way or another, either games or locations to play them at. Right, okay. So then moving on to Chicago Gaming. Yeah. Monster Bash Remake is in production and shipping. Yes, and doing very well by all accounts. Right. Yeah, they lived up to their reputation once again, so kudos to Chicago Gaming for living up to the hype, I would say, and the quality aspect of the game. Yeah, the game looks beautiful, plays very well, and is obviously clearly put together very well, and there's a big demand for it. If you thought that medieval and attack may have diminished or used up all the demand for remakes, I think Monster Bash has shown that there's still plenty of demand for them, and it's selling very well indeed, I think. Yeah, well, so I'm happy for them, and that's basically all the news there is to report on Chicago Gaming, as far as I understand it. Yeah, I think they're just getting on with the game and building it and selling it. I think they said they weren't going to be building any more medievals for a while. Right. But certainly when I was in the factory there, they had a large number of boxes of attacks ready to go, If people wanted to buy them, I don't think they were all necessarily allocated to distributors or to customers, but they had a large number there that were – I think they probably made all of those they were going to do for a while, and they really wanted to just concentrate on building monster bashes, which is understandable, because doing one game at a time is a lot easier than having to sort the line over back to an older title. Right. Okay. Well, I'm just happy to see that they're cranking out games and that the quality of the games is, I'd say, very high level and possibly raising the bar for others even. So I'm happy to see that. They're actually adding things, adding quality to the game with the RGB lighting that they put into it and the topper. And they've made it into a much, much more interactive and, to me, enjoyable game to play than the original. The original always seemed a bit a little simplistic in the rule set. And although it was a very high production value in terms of the graphics and the call-outs and the animations, they've added lighting effects to that list now with RGB lighting, which really does add another level to the game. Yeah. I haven't played it yet, but I look forward to playing it. I'm very familiar with the game. I used to own one. I regret selling one, but, oh, well, what are you going to do? At the time, it took me years to get rid of it, so that's the story. Hold on, what do I hear? Is that you or is that me? Oh, it's not me. Oh, no. Are you sure it's not you? Hold on, where's that noise coming from? Oh, it must be me. Oh yeah I think it must be It not me calling you so who is it Based on the ringtone I say it Gary Oh Gary Stern calling I wonder if he heard what we were saying about the work going on at the factory No, I'm not referring to Gary Stern, I'm afraid. I'm talking about a different Gary. Oh, I can't think of any other Garys. Who else could that be? Oh, not Gary Flower. Oh, right, yeah. No, it must be Gary Flower. I gave him his own ringtone. You should answer that. You can find out what it is he wants. I'm sure he's got some useful information. Okay, well, let's see if we can tie him in this time. Yeah, we've been trying to get him on the show for so long. It would be really good if you could. Right, okay. So, hold on. Let me plug in my phone. Oh, okay. Hold on, hold on. He hung up. What? Yeah, he hung up. Oh, he must know that we're about to put him on the show. He's a bit microphone shy, I think, Gary. He doesn't like speaking in public. He's just not very patient, I guess. I'm sure it was your voicemail kicked in or something. No, no, no. He's using WhatsApp to call. I don't have a voicemail to that. So he must have hung up. Oh, well. Better luck next time. We will get him on the show, I'm sure. Well, it's destined to be, I'd say. And he's been trying very hard. So at some point it must happen. He rings in at just the right time and also just at the wrong time. Right. So, anyway, speaking of UK contacts, trying to bridge over to another topic, Team Pinball. Yes, another seminar speaker at the Dutch Pinball Open Expo was Janos Kiss, who did a very nice presentation talking about the development of the team pinball first game the Mafia and how the three founders of the company came together how they decided to build a pinball and how they set up their company from scratch really creating I think they made 11 initially There were 10 that were for sale, but they made a run of 11 machines, one of which was probably a prototype more than a production game. And, of course, you and I were both over there, weren't we, at the official launch? Yes, and I have to thank Janos to come over and do the seminar because we had been looking at getting either Janos or another member of Team Pimble to do a seminar, and eventually Janos was able to hop over. and it was sort of a last-minute type of arrangement, but we were happy to fit him in, and we're happy that he did his seminar. And the game was available to play on the floor for the whole weekend. Thank you for mentioning that. We have to thank Stefan Riedler from RS Pinball in Austria for that, and Pinball Universe as well, because he shipped the game to Pinball Universe, And they brought the game to the show in Rundan so people could play it, where it sat very nice next to my Total Nuclear Annihilation. Yes, yes, two sort of single-level games, really. Yeah, and not to take anything away from the Mafia, but Total Nuclear Annihilation was definitely the hit at the show. It was the very first time the game was publicly at a pinball show in the Netherlands, and people loved it. Can't say anything different. Okay. Well, it was great to see both those games available to play, and I guess it was the first time that the Mafia had been available to play as well. Correct. Yeah, and, well, speaking of the Mafia, the reason to bring it up is, Apparently, Joe from Pinball Star has mentioned that the production for the Mafia, which was originally maxed out at 100 units, has now been reduced to only 20. So they're going to build like 10 or 9 more games, and that's about it. So that should maybe add value to the collectability of the game. I'm not sure whether it will add anything to the fun factor in the game, or reasons why people want to buy it. But if you're looking for a rare game, then the Mafia is certainly destined to be one. yes and I think they always said that their intention was to build them in batches of 10 so I dare say if they get enough orders in for another 10 and push up to 30 then they would do them but it wasn't worth their while building ones or twos of the game so we'll have to see whether any more orders come in as far as I know it's not officially restricted to 20 units, but maybe that's what they think they can sell at the moment before they move on to the second title. It will also be interesting to see whether they will be working on a second game and how they... Oh, I'm sure they will, yes. How they will do with that. Obviously, the first one has its learning course, and who knows? Maybe in a few years' time those mafia games are highly collectible because they're the very first of Team Pinball, which at that point might be a very successful UK pinball company. And if you want to have all of their games in a row, then finding a mafia game might not be that easy after all. Yeah, good point. And of course, all sorts of things could happen with the group there. they might decide that actually building the games is not something that excites them any further, and they'd rather contact manufacturing them than somebody else. So that might be a way to go as well, particularly if they can get the costs down and be able to produce the games at a better price. Right. I would probably recommend that. I mean, if they would be able to design games and just focus on the design of games, is build a prototype and then source production out to a spooky pinball or maybe at some point in the future a deep root or whatever company might be interested in doing that. Jersey Jack might be an option. I'm not sure where the Stern pinball would be, but never say never. They did that in the past as well. So American pinball might be an option as well. All those companies need to keep their lines going, and at some point they might be like, hey, if we don't have any games of our own to manufacture, then why not manufacture the game of someone else? Yeah, true. Or they could go with a non-Pimble manufacturer, another contract manufacturer, although obviously there have been certain problems with doing that in the past. Right. So, oh well, we'll just have to see. So basically there's going to be a couple of Mafia games available, and it might be your last chance to get one. Yes, and good luck to Team Pinball with whatever they're working on next. Right. So I also mentioned American Pinball, and basically the news from them this month was Joe Balcer has been looking at tweaking the layout of the game a little bit, which I guess is normal in the sense after having it displayed at a show and you see like, okay, this is a problem or that might be a problem. Small tweaks in the layout. And aside from that, we already discussed the artwork of the game and apparently there was the Pinsenetti pinball show this weekend. And apparently they had an Oktoberfest game over there which has what appears to be a temporary back class that has been altered to take away the monkey business, I would say, that was on the back class going on. But it's not the final artwork for the back class, as I understood it. No, that's my understanding too, that work is still going on on both the artwork and the design package. Bear in mind when the game was shown at Expo it was basically just been built at that point, a couple of days before. So it's no surprise that after having a good test at that show and after the show there were a few issues which come up which I think they can improve or other features they wanted to add And, yeah, doing a bit of a post-show pre-production tweakage is very definitely standard and to be welcomed, I think. I haven't kind of said, well, that's the game as it is, take it or leave it. They listen to feedback and learning how the game plays and what they can do to make it better, both with the design and with the artwork. right and on top of that they are scheduled to move facilities so they got plenty to worry about absolutely yeah when we're talking when we did the sort of look around the factory we saw the place they were planning to move to by by the end of this year well actually not just moved by the end of the year to be up and manufacturing in the new facility by the end of this year so that at the time seemed a very ambitious schedule but they certainly seemed very determined to achieve that Robert take note there are companies who can do it yes let's see if they do actually do it and whether they are in there before the end of the year building Oktoberfest games let's hope they are But giving credit to American Pinball, last year they said they wanted to be in production with Houdini. And clearly, okay, they sort of hand-built the first Houdini game, but they did deliver that to – they sort of went into production, and then it took them three months to get fully in production. But the time it took the company to basically present themselves and get into production, that was actually quite impressive. So I'm very confident that they might be able to handle this move as smooth as it appeared on the outside for bystanders, as their original set up the manufacturing facility went. Yeah, definitely a company which sets themselves challenging deadlines and has repeatedly met them. So there's no reason to believe they won't make this one as well. Right. Okay. So I guess that rounds it up for this episode of the November 2018 recap, unless there's anything else that you might want to add, because I can't think of anything else that's worth mentioning at the moment. No. If there's any other thing I could do this time is do a little plug for the diary page on the Pinball News site. We've been adding a lot of new dates, dates of shows throughout 2019 and into 2020. Now there are at least a couple of shows in 2020 on there now. And a little shout out now to our buddy Jim Shelberg, Pin Game Journal, who's been very helpful working with me to get some of these dates nailed down, talking to the organisers of shows and making sure that you can plan as far ahead as possible and also correcting a couple of erroneous assumptions I'd made about where shows would be held next year, whether they actually move location and in some cases even move dates as well. So thanks, Jim. I'll give you a shout out here. but that's a good place we're trying to make this the definitive place to look if you want to know the schedule of shows for Into the Future so we're looking at least 18 months ahead now for many of those so thanks Jim and that's the end of my plug well speaking of plugs and connecting from Game Journal which is a magazine to Pinball Magazine I have a little bit of news two ways there will be a free supplement downloadable PDF available later this month which will be an interview with pinball programmer and designer John Osborne the interview was originally supposed to be part of pinball magazine number 5 which is available in the pinball magazine webshop but since I maxed out on the number of pages that could be included in the magazine I had to leave the interview out and I figured it would be nice to make it available after all because it does fit in with the rest of the magazine the focus is John Osborne was actually hired by Wayne Iance who is the pinball designer that is being focused on in the magazine and as such we're talking about his relation with Wayne working on the Wayne, their friendship but also all the games that John designed while working at Guthrie so that's coming up and since it's December usually I send out a mailing like okay if you want to order your copies of Pinball Magazine for the holidays do so now and um this year i didn't and the main reason i didn't is because i came up with a solution in the sense that um in the past years i've had instances where um i shipped out a batch of orders of magazines at the last week of november and it took three months for them to arrive because apparently uh other postal packages were prioritized and and all that kind of stuff I had batches that shipped in January that arrived quicker than what shipped in November or December. So I didn't rush anybody into like order now so you get your magazines delivered in time for the holidays. Obviously, the magazines do make a great gift for events like Christmas and such. but the alternative what I'm coming up with now is everybody that is ordering a or placing an order in the pinball magazine web shop they will receive in case they want to use it as a gift I can't promise that the magazines will arrive in time but I can promise that I will send everybody a certificate indicating the order which looks very nice you can print that certificate and So you have something to give to whoever you're giving it to. So they know what's coming. They have a little anticipation that it's on its way. But with the postal services not being very reliable in the month of December, this is the best way at the moment that I could come up with something to still make sure that people don't fall into, like, oh, where's my gift, where's my gift? And that happened in previous years. so by all means knock yourself out in the pinball magazine web shop ordering anything that you like but keep in mind that delivery might not be in time for Christmas but you will have something to present and there's the supplement magazine coming as well so you might be able to print that and that should keep people busy as well so that's the end of my plug good well I think we're fully plugged and And I think we can draw this podcast to a close for this month. We're looking back at the month of November. Right. So since it is December and I don't expect us to record another podcast in the meantime before we do the recap of December, I would like to take the opportunity and wish everybody a Merry Christmas. Yes, a very Merry Christmas, happy holidays, whatever celebration you are having. Hope you have a wonderful time this December, and we will have a wonderful time ourselves. And we're looking forward to seeing you again after all the excitement's over, but maybe before the new year, I don't know. Or if not, then very shortly into 2019. Right, so until then from both of us have a lovely time and we'll be back with the next Pinball Magazine, Pinball News joint podcast looking back at December so until then from both of us goodbye from me, bye bye