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The Pinball Show Ep 174: Trough Jam 2025 Phase 2: Dune, King Kong, & More Potter Teases

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 46m·analyzed·Apr 21, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.042

TL;DR

Dune and King Kong announced in explosive phase 2 of Trough Jam 2025 amid network closure news.

Summary

The Pinball Show discusses Trough Jam 2025 Phase 2, covering the rapid-fire announcements of Dune Pinball (Barrels of Fun) and King Kong Pinball (Stern) in mid-April, analyzing the marketing timing, game design philosophies, and industry dynamics during this competitive release window. The episode also mentions The Pinball Network's closure and production updates from Stern including Jaws, King Kong, Metallica, James Bond, Jurassic Park, and the vaulting of Rush.

Key Claims

  • The Pinball Network is closing due to financial reasons

    high confidence · Host states 'The Pinball Network's ending...It's got to do with money. Zach Minney, the bastard.' Full discussion deferred to previous episode 173 and Patreon

  • Dune Pinball was announced unexpectedly on April 8th at 6:38 PM with teaser and pics but no trailer

    high confidence · Host explicitly states: 'barrels of fun ends up launching dune pinball out of nowhere at this point nobody even knew what the title was...at 630 at night on Monday, 638 to be precise'

  • King Kong teaser aired on April 11th at 11 AM; official launch was April 15th at 11 AM

    high confidence · Host: 'Stern Pinball launches their teaser for King Kong Pinball at 11 a.m....King Kong, Myth of Terror Island is released at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 15th'

  • Rush Pinball is being vaulted until 2049

    high confidence · Host: 'Stern opened its vault...This time it's the Canadians...we're really going to dig in deep and throw your precious rush into the Stern vault...We ain't letting you out until 2049'

  • Stern is making more Jaws Premium in June/July due to dealer demand exceeding initial production

    high confidence · Host: 'they still didn't make as many as dealers needed orders for so they're going to make more i believe like june july'

  • Dune Pinball design team includes David Van Ness, Travis Mosman (mechanical engineering), Eric Pripke (programming), Colin McAlpine and Bowen Cairns (rules), and John Bergeron (art)

    high confidence · Host provides full credits: 'designed by David Van Ness and Travis Mosman...Programming, Eric Pripke...Rules by Colin McAlpine and Bowen Cairns...art by John Bergeron'

  • Dennis (co-host) considers Dune's art package his favorite art in pinball, citing the orange/blue complementary color palette and tribute artwork to Dune novels

    high confidence · Dennis: 'I think you have a lot of people that would agree with you. I do. And it is pretty stunning.' and 'I said like the smart thing that they did or Johnny did with with the palette'

Notable Quotes

  • “The Pinball Network is ending...It's got to do with money. Zach Minney, the bastard.”

    Host (Zach) @ ~0:05:00 — Major industry news: The Pinball Network, described as 'the industry's biggest and most successful media network conglomerate,' is closing due to financial constraints

  • “I think if anything, it may have exceeded [expectations], which I wasn't expecting. The perception in the hobby was exceeded.”

    Dennis (co-host) @ ~1:15:00 — Strong endorsement of Dune Pinball's quality relative to Barrels of Fun's sophomore release concerns

  • “I just love that the layout does what Jack Danger's stuff did, does what Elwynn's stuff does...You just want something that's just novel. You want something that you maybe haven't seen in a long time or haven't seen before.”

    Dennis @ ~1:30:00 — Establishes Dune as comparable to legendary designers' work in terms of playfield novelty and design innovation

  • “I'm not convinced this shoots well...the initial stream footage didn't make it look like it shot well”

    Dennis @ ~1:10:00 — Concern about initial media presentation of Dune shootability; points to potential learning curve for players

  • “barrels of fun ends up launching dune pinball out of nowhere at this point nobody even knew what the title was...at 630 at night on Monday, 638 to be precise”

    Host (Zach) @ ~0:45:00 — Unexpected timing and method of Dune announcement created marketing drama in Trough Jam Phase 2

  • “don't let the live stream be the first experience with the gameplay. Have something pre-recorded where it doesn't look like it's impossible for anyone to play.”

    Dennis @ ~1:20:00 — Critique of media coverage strategy: first gameplay impression should showcase approachability, not difficulty

  • “Jack said, go ape shit all you want. But never before have we seen a theme like Harry Potter come to this industry.”

    Host (Zach) @ ~0:35:00 — Jersey Jack positioning Harry Potter as unprecedented IP for pinball; indicates high stakes for theme licensing

Entities

The Pinball ShoworganizationThe Pinball NetworkorganizationBarrels of FuncompanyDune PinballgameKing Kong: Myth of Terror IslandgameJersey Jack PinballcompanyHarry Potter Pinballgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: The Pinball Network is shutting down due to financial constraints; described as 'the industry's biggest and most successful media network conglomerate'

    high · Host: 'The Pinball Network's ending...It's got to do with money. Zach Minney, the bastard.' Full context in episode 173

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Barrels of Fun launched additional teasers (April 14) during Stern's King Kong media event to maintain visibility and prevent being overshadowed by competitor announcement

    medium · Host: 'it seemed more like they were just trying to make sure they weren't forgotten about in the shuffle of discussion. Yes, which is smart from a marketing standpoint'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Initial media footage of Dune Pinball shows poor shootability; media struggled to demonstrate approachable gameplay. Critique applies to Barrels' failure to provide pre-recorded clean gameplay footage as context

    high · Dennis: 'I'm not convinced this shoots well...the initial stream footage didn't make it look like it shot well...when that media went there and was shooting this thing...they didn't do any service on shootability because they weren't hitting shots'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dune Pinball employs innovative, non-formulaic layout design with extensive use of sculpted plastics, diverters, and ball staging areas; intentionally difficult to shoot compared to approachable Stern designs

    high · Dennis: 'the layout is unique...I just love that the layout does what Jack Danger's stuff did, does what Elwynn's stuff does...this is a selfish layout for me because this is everything I think pinball players want'

  • $

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.318

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:09
Let's see how bad I'll piss off my wife by recording this morning. As long as you get done by Easter brunch. She was like, you realize we have kids and we hide eggs.
0:21
Just hide them really well so they have to spend a couple hours trying to find the last egg. She's like, that was yesterday too. She's like, this isn't President's Day. Like, come on. This is. Oh, come on. Port Lincoln. Geez, Zach. I'm like, well, this is what I do for the people. The people need me. It's about the people. The people need you, Dennis. I don't know about that. People need the pinball show.
0:50
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the pinball show episode 174 and the continuation of a special segment we've been doing from last episode titled Trough Jam. 2025. We're moving into phase two. You're really proud of the trough jam. I felt good about it. We put it out there a couple weeks ago and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Has it?
1:12
Is it the trough part or the jam part that they're really latching on to? Who doesn't love jam? I don't know. Superior over jelly all day long.
1:23

  • Dune has a unique, novel layout with extensive use of sculpted plastics, diverters, change states, and ball staging areas that is deliberately difficult to shoot

    high confidence · Dennis: 'the layout is unique...I just love that the layout does what Jack Danger's stuff did, does what Elwynn's stuff does...this is a selfish layout for me because this is everything I think pinball players want'

  • Barrels of Fun announced several Dune features via teaser posts: infinity glass included standard, new Horizon/HAL atmospheric lighting system, and Evergloss premium art decals

    high confidence · Host: 'barrels of fun jumping out and teasing...Hashtag included new infinity glass...on the 7th of April...on the 8th of April...they gave a reaction to the tariff...on the 8th...they do another hashtag included. Their new lighting system, Dennis, the Horizon, I think, Atmospheric Lighting System, or HAL'

  • Jersey Jack Pinball sent dealer emails with Harry Potter game details and opened pre-orders around April 8th with instructions to dealers not to call them 'pre-orders'

    high confidence · Host: 'Jersey Jack Pinball jumps on stage...he emails dealers to basically say, hey, we got Harry Potter. Here's some of the game details. And start taking...pre-orders are open, but don't open up pre-orders to your cut. So it's a pre-order, but don't call it a pre-order'

  • “I think that apron art is maybe my favorite apron art I've ever seen in Pimble. It is very cool. It's just beautiful.”

    Dennis @ ~1:05:00 — Extremely high praise for Dune's artwork, establishing it as a standout visual achievement in modern pinball

  • “I would rather have more of this and less safe stuff”

    Dennis @ ~1:35:00 — Advocates for risk-taking game design like Dune's unique layout over formulaic approaches

  • “You don't even need it. Just hover. You don't have to buy a ticket. You just have to preorder it, maybe.”

    Host (Zach) @ ~0:20:00 — Commentary on preorder culture and the saturation of new machine releases in Trough Jam 2025

    • Stern Pinball
    company
    Dennisperson
    Zachperson
    David Van Nessperson
    Travis Mosmanperson
    Eric Pripkeperson
    Colin McAlpineperson
    Bowen Cairnsperson
    John Bergeronperson
    Jack Dangerperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Zach Minneyperson
    Labyrinth Pinballgame
    Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
    Rush Pinballgame
    Tom Graffperson
    Labyrinthgame
    Trough Jam 2025event

    market_signal: Stern Pinball demand for Jaws Premium exceeds current production; additional production scheduled for June/July 2025

    high · Host: 'they still didn't make as many as dealers needed orders for so they're going to make more i believe like june july'

  • $

    market_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball positioning Harry Potter as unprecedented and pivotal moment in company and hobby history; opened pre-orders ~April 8th with strategic dealer instructions to avoid calling them 'pre-orders'

    high · Host: 'Jack comes in, and he emails dealers...Jack gets back on stage...to discuss the theme of Harry Potter, their next game being a pivotal moment not only in company history but in the hobby's history...it's a pre-order, but don't call it a pre-order'

  • ?

    announcement: King Kong: Myth of Terror Island officially announced by Stern Pinball on April 11th at 11 AM (teaser); launched April 15th at 11 AM with full media event

    high · Host: 'Stern Pinball launches their teaser for King Kong Pinball at 11 a.m....King Kong, Myth of Terror Island is released at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 15th'

  • ?

    announcement: Dune Pinball officially announced by Barrels of Fun on April 8th, 2025 at 6:38 PM with teaser and images; full trailer released April 15th at 2:53 PM

    high · Host provides precise timeline: 'barrels of fun ends up launching dune pinball out of nowhere...at 630 at night on Monday, 638 to be precise'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Barrels of Fun emphasizing included features to differentiate from competitors: infinity glass (standard), Horizon/HAL atmospheric lighting system, Evergloss premium art decals announced via teaser posts April 3-14

    high · Host: 'Hashtag included new infinity glass...we're including it on our next game...on the 8th of April...they do another hashtag included. Their new lighting system, Dennis, the Horizon...Atmospheric Lighting System, or HAL'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern Pinball Q2-Q3 2025 production pipeline confirmed: Jaws Premium (May-July repeating), King Kong (May Pro/Premium), Metallica Remastered Premium (April-May), James Bond Pro/Premium (Q3), Jurassic Park Pro/Premium (Q3)

    high · Host provides detailed production timeline: 'they're going to make more...Q3...We're going to be seeing more James Bond Pro and Premiums, Jurassic Park Pro and Premiums, Metallica Remastered Premium, and Jaws Premium'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern Pinball vaulting Rush Pinball until 2049; possible strategic decision to manage release calendar or IP licensing complexity

    medium · Host: 'Stern opened its vault to throw another game inside...you did nothing to us, Canada, so we're really going to dig in deep and throw your precious rush into the Stern vault...We ain't letting you out until 2049'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive community reception of Barrels of Fun tariff response and Dune announcement; strong perception that Dune exceeded sophomore release expectations and quality concerns

    high · Dennis: 'I think if anything, it may have exceeded [expectations], which I wasn't expecting. The perception in the hobby was exceeded...this may have been luck on Labyrinth or not, but this proves they can do it again'

    • I guess, well, maybe if you don't like seeds. We can even segue into King Kong having a log jam. There is a physical log jam on the new Stern King Kong game. But before we do that, we do have another big log that's floating down the proverbial toilet. And that is this, I think, may be our last pinball show on the Pinball Network. The Pinball Network's ending? That's right. Why? Does it have to do with money? It's got to do with money. Zach Minney, the bastard.
    1:59
    Yeah, so if you want that update, go check PennSci. No. If you... And you'll be even more confused. The Pinball Network is ending. We discussed at length about it last episode on 173. We even went into a deep dive on the conception of and the timeline and what happened throughout all of the Pinball Network. kind of the industry's biggest and most successful media network conglomerate that we're closing the doors on. We're not chaining it up, I don't think. Maybe we will. We don't need to burn it down, but we are closing it down. But, yeah, this may be the last Pinball Show episode. So you and I will. So what new RSS do we have to tell people to subscribe to?
    2:46
    This one. You don't have to go anywhere. I guess you were paying the bill on that one. That's the benefit of paying the bill and doing all the work for the last couple of years. That's our consolation prize, Dennis, that we get to do more work getting rid of other podcasts that are on here.
    3:06
    So we still have a lot of work to do. But no fear. The Pinball Show here is here to stay. And then go subscribe to all the other individuals. For the details, the patron, we had a lot of people join. I was really shocked that people cared about the background that much. The official club of the Pinball Show via Patreon, patreon.com slash thepinballshow. Go sign in because you're going to want to hear some exclusives. But people loved the exclusive content last week that we did cover, the TPN. Yeah, like you said, our biggest boom in new members. So I guess they liked it. We need to close more things down and talk about it, I guess. All in due time, Dennis. Okay. All in due time. But I think we need to get to the pinball Happy Easter, happy spring everybody It has been very stressful on me As somebody that works in this industry Pity you because you've had to do so many sales So we're just supposed to pity you Man, it really It did hell on me And we'll talk about that more But first, we've got to talk about the angel that is Stern Pinball Keeping the lights on everywhere Stern Pinball production updates The last couple of weeks they've been making Jaws Premium finally and uh they still didn't make as many as dealers needed orders for so they're going to make more i believe like june july but they did uh squirt out some jaws premium for us oh what a word they also on the line was king kong and we'll talk about that oh hey keith ellen speaking of ellen and jaws so the weird thing is i believe kong i don't know what kong version is on the production line i theoretically it should be the le because they're they're releasing the le's first but i thought i saw some non-le's and there was a something with a decal on the le so i don't know we should be getting le soon we'll talk about that when we talk about the release itself april i do believe they are going to run some more metallica remastered premiums this month as well over the next couple weeks so simultaneously with some of the kong games and then in may they're going to start running King Kong Pro and Premium models. So we'll have them shortly in the locations everywhere. Q3, I have some updates here for production of Stern Pinball. Q3, this would be July, August, September, summer months kind of thing. We're going to be seeing more James Bond Pro and Premiums, Jurassic Park Pro and Premiums, Metallica Remastered Premium, and Jaws Premium. So you can see kind of, listener, you'll see a pattern here where they make the most of what people want the most. And right now it's Metallica and Jaws. A lot of people really clamoring for those two titles. So they're making them kind of now, and they're going to make them again this summer. And another update, Stern opened its vault to throw another game inside. Oh, to put it in, not to take something out of the vault. Yes, it's a weird analogy, but we'll keep using it. This time it's the Canadians. I think this is more of a U.S. thing. Is this political? Is this punishment? That's right. You know what? You did nothing to us, Canada, so we're really going to dig in deep and throw your precious rush into the Stern vault. Let's see you live in the limelight in the closed vault. We ain't letting you out until 2049. That was pretty clever. Is that a thing? Is it 2049? Did I know that? I'm glad this game is vaulted. Oh, poor Ray Day. I never could get into it. I'm sorry, Ray Day. It's not you. It's me. I just, I could never, every time I have played it, the layout to me, you know what, I'll say I like the layout a little bit more than Turtles, but I just can't. I just can't get a feel for it. Right now on the side of the highway, there's a Tom Graff holding the time machine in his hand and a single tear trailing down his face. He just comes at it from a different place than I do. Tom, sorry. So that is the production updates. Let's jump into Trough Jam 2025. Phase two, Dennis. Get it on the edge of your seat. Again, even edgier edge. You don't even need it. Just hover. You don't have to buy a ticket. You just have to preorder it, maybe. Oh, boy. Oh, wait.
    7:24
    Sorry. Spoiler. You're getting my dander up this episode now, Dennis. People did like that tariff talk, though. A bit one-sided, that was, but that's okay. Oops. The hits keep coming. I'll take them. So, phase two. Phase one was girthy. Phase two is our big one. Phase two is the steak. Phase one was more the potatoes. Or the salad. Because phase two is the big licenses that people have known or highly suspected were coming, and now they're seeing them. Are you saying phase three is the sweet dessert? It could be. Phase three, more of like an aperitif or something. I don't know what those words mean. It could be key lime pie. Yuck.
    8:11
    Oh, key lime. No, actually, it's a little tart for me. My preferred pies are – I thought you said pecan. Oh. Yeah, pecan. Yeah. Pecan. Yeah, pecan. Whatever you want to say. However you want to – Caramel.
    8:24
    I don't think I ever told you this story. My maternal grandmother one time was talking to me about having a pecan of – and I was like, a pie? What is she talking about out in – she lived in Alaska. and grandma's in a can pecan that's no that's what it was oh it was for the cabins because it's alaska in the winter they wouldn't want to go to the outhouse and she literally had a pea can i didn't say like an old folger and she but she say it just like the pecan like pecan yeah she's like she's talking about this pecan and i'm like what why at night what do you need to have a can by your bed and i'm like just like one i hope it's like one little pecan just sitting there and she's like i finally realized no she's talking about like an old metal folgers can that's being used as a as like a as a bedpan that way you don't have to go out i mean i went out there once in the in the winter and at night i mean it was 20 below uh so i understood the desire not to go outside but i'm just doing because you had to walk to the outhouse i hope she at least rounded at the corners of that tin can.
    9:32
    Look, I didn't ask any questions. Grandma's got some cuts. Pecan. So how we're going to do this is we are going to mention the timeline as we go because we could just sit here and talk about, you know, Dune Pinball by Barrels of Fun or King Kong. Is that what we normally do? We could do that. But there was so much going on at such high-stakes times. I mean, they were trying to tease here, tease there. It was like a bordello. They're always trying to promote, though. But that's what it was.
    10:04
    People like to be let in behind the curtains here a little bit, don't they? There were rumors that weren't true. There's so much going on. So we're going to kind of briefly mention the timeline as we're going along Trough Jam Phase 2. But also, we're going to take a deeper look. And I've got a lot of feelings, a lot of feelings about how all of this went down over the last week and a half. And we're going to put that for our official club members. They deserve the juice. And the juice was gushing over the last week and a half. But let's jump into it. First off, we had, I'm going to say let's start around the 1st of April. We had like April 3rd. We had barrels of fun jumping out and teasing. Hashtag included new infinity glass. They said, look, where other people are making you pay for this stuff. We're hashtag including it on our next game. So that went over well. People like that. Oh, very cool. They also came back out on the 7th of April and they said they gave a reaction to the tariff. Everybody was worried about tariffs and how is this going to affect us? Really good PR move because it got a lot of positive publicity there. So barrels of fun trying to jump out in phase two and trying to position themselves well for their new release. And then on the 8th of April, 10-22 to be specific, they do another hashtag included. Their new lighting system, Dennis, the Horizon, I think, Atmospheric Lighting System, or HAL for short. And then they're rumbling. What are you doing, Dave? Yeah, do they have, what is it, Space Odyssey? What do they have? And then Jersey Jack Pinball on the 8th. Jersey Jack Pinball jumps on stage and says, wait a minute. And they push barrels off the stage. They're like, no. That was the sound. I heard it. Jack back flipped them, did a flash kick and knocked them off the stage. He did a quasi cartwheel.
    12:07
    I thought I heard barrels do the Chung Lee scream. No, no, no. Right? Okay. And then so Jack comes in, and he emails dealers to basically say, hey, we got Harry Potter. Here's some of the game details.
    12:22
    And start taking, he said, you know, pre-orders are open, but don't open up pre-orders to your cut. So it's a pre-order, but don't call it a pre-order. It's not, don't call it a comeback either. There are so many things here. This is where it's going into the Patreon. There are a lot of things here. Yeah, stick that in the Patreon because it's confusing. A lot of things here. But the end result was you can now message your dealer, and you can preorder Harry Potter, sight unseen if you'd like, but whether you give money shouldn't matter, but it does matter with some. But I don't know what to tell you. I don't know. You can guarantee a spot if you go to FlippinOutPenball.com. That's all I'm saying. Buy, buy, buy! Email me. They go to ******. So there's a lot to this. Just cut all that part out and put that in the Patreon. No wonder you were like, hey, I really think we should go this direction, not you do a bunch of, like, what are your top fives, Des? I lost some weight just last week and a half. A lot of sweating. Good sweats and bad sweats.
    13:19
    So we'll discuss all that. So Jersey Jack jumps in front. And then a couple of days go by. And then on the 11th of April, Jack gets back on stage. And he wants to have a pep rally to discuss the theme of Harry Potter, their next game being a pivotal moment not only in company history but in the hobby's history. Whoa. expectations are through the roof. Don't spend your money, guys. He really pumps this thing up. Don't spend your money. And so he's writing an open letter with the wax stamp on it for Harry Potter. He's really theming it all up. Oh, Jaime style. And people loved it. Hired an owl to fly it to us. People loved it. It was a good PR move. It worked. You don't know how these PR moves are going to work. Sometimes they fall flat on their face. Sometimes they work. So the barrels tariff reaction, that was a net gain. That was a big boost. This one from Jack worked. People really liked the tone of it, and it worked. And then on the same day, the 11th of April, let me pull up what day it was. Just a few hours later, if I recall. Just a few hours later on that Friday, two Fridays ago, Stern Pinball launches their teaser for King Kong Pinball at 11 a.m. And it showed up. Kong. It sounds like Jersey Jack kind of knew this was coming. Stern does these teasers on Friday. So many spies. Do you think Steve Ritchie was the spy all along? Yeah. Jack said, go ape shit all you want. But never before have we seen a theme like Harry Potter come to this industry. That's right. And King Kong, you know, that's one might argue, while well known, much like Godzilla, weaker theme. Definitely weaker than Harry Potter. So Stern, are they behind the ape ball? Are they weak here? Are they in a position of vulnerability?
    15:07
    Well, Barrels of Fun's starting getting a little skittish then. Oh, Barrels is like, don't forget about us. We made Labyrinth. We are World Under Glass. So behind the scenes, they're trying to figure out, I thought we were just battling Stern on this release. Now we've got Jack entering stage, right? And what are we going to do? Should we start teasing more stuff? Have we teased enough? Should we unveil the game? Is licensing ready for us to unveil the game? All of that, patreon.com slash pinball show. But even Barrels right now is like, oh, shit, I better go listen because he better not be saying it. Better keep it up.
    15:39
    This is how we get subs. We make the industry subscribe. I know. So then that following Monday, Barrels comes out. Teasing again. Hashtag included. Evergloss premium art decals. So glossy. Yeah, they were doing that around noon central time. And these things are cool. We'll talk about that during the release. All of these things are pretty awesome they're adding on this game. Now, they're kind of leading up to the big climax. I see what they're doing. It seemed more like they were just trying to make sure they weren't forgotten about in the shuffle of discussion. Yes, which is smart from a marketing standpoint. But then something happened I wasn't expecting, even as one of their authorized, probably one of their largest dealers. All right, at this point, we're going to see King Kong tomorrow and then barrels maybe later on this week. But then at 630 at night on Monday, 638 to be precise. barrels of fun ends up launching dune pinball out of nowhere at this point nobody even knew what the title was they just were doing hashtag included you know uh upgrades and stuff so dune pinball is released on monday at 6 38 at night not ideal but uh but they launch it with the teaser and pics but no trailer and then okay so then we'll go into all the dune thing but then after Where Dune was announced, but kind of announced, Barrels of Fun hosts a media event on the morning of Tuesday during the Stern launch. Because they even watched the Stern launch at the media, watched the trailer of King Kong at Barrels. And then, yeah, King Kong, Myth of Terror Island is released at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 15th. and then barrels of fun then follows up with releasing the official dune trailer at 253 the same day so much jammed trough this was very jammed big log big log then stern pinball they still have their media event to happen that happened on the 17th two days later but they even have a dealer event on the 16th which was on wednesday so let's jump into and like i said if you want to hear behind the scenes details on all of that it's super interesting if you care about uh what's in the sausage the pinball sausage that is subscribe dennis where do they subscribe at patreon.com slash the pinball show let's talk about barrels of fun launching tune yeah we first received like i said a teaser boom boom boom boom boom you know mac mac mac It did show a lot. But my argument was it didn't show enough. Because I knew what the game had. But King Kong just showed a gong.
    18:22
    I think that we'll talk about that. But I don't think that was a big teaser trailer either. But it's a teaser. It's not supposed to be big. That's my point. Just a morsel. Just a little morsel. I didn't want them to put that much in it. No, I agree. I thought they put too many morsels in. Yeah, because then you had the launch and they had the picks. So we had all that. But most people, when they see a game and they're putting their money down, they want to see a trailer. Like, I want to see. I don't know what any of this stuff does. But there's one model of this game, Dune. I do think it was a pleasant surprise by both Dune fans and non-fans of Dune or neutral fans of the franchise. You're a Dune fan. We'll go into it. And you spoke on the Flippin' Out Pinball stream. you deep dove into this release with Joel and Jared and Tom, designed by David Van Ness and Travis Mosman. Travis also did mechanical engineering. Programming, Eric Pripke. People love Pripke's work, so that's a big old positive. Rules by Colin McAlpine and Bowen Cairns, both prolific in this industry when it comes to competitive pinball, and at this point when it comes to rules creation in pinball. So people aren't worried about the code that might be the current status But long term, people are not worried about that art by John Bergeron. Johnny Crabb, for those familiar. When you seen this game, the pictures of it in the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom trailer teaser. What were your first thoughts? Pretty positive. You know, I still wasn't totally sure if they were going to base it off of the new movie or not. I figured they would, given their first game was Labyrinth. And if they're going to do a movie, they're going to do the new one, not going back to the David Lynch one. so overall with like the mechs and stuff again it it played to where i thought they their strength lies and that is that what we often call the world under glass um oh very much and so but again i was it's hard to get a good feel with just seeing the mechs um well let's let's throw it in there though the main worm mech the main worm mech was was pretty interesting yeah so then we'll throw in the whole trailer uh and then you've got that nice two two and a half minute cut of right what this game is all about and that was i mean pretty captivating seeing the dune franchise come to physical form in pinball just in that trailer they did a really good job in my opinion of portraying not only the theme and pinball but what you're getting with this game which was very exciting and uh sales have uh have spoken to that as well it's doing very well sales wise but When I first seen the trailer, that's what hooked me. I'm like, ah, okay. This is pretty amazing. And in my opinion, Barrels has done what people did not know if they could do after their first release. Was it luck that they came out with Labyrinth and it was that well done, that environmental, that world underclassy, that loaded? Maybe that was just luck. Maybe they just kind of put all their resources into the last, you know, how many years making something. And their sophomore average is going to be like, okay, you guys suck. Nope. I think if anything, it may have exceeded, which I wasn't expecting. The perception in the hobby was exceeded. So I think it was overall a good thing. Before jumping into our first impressions, the artwork. Did you like the artwork? Did you not like the artwork? This is coming from you as a fan of the, do we call them novels, I guess? Novels? I mean, I've read the novels. I'm not a super fan of the books. Once you get past the first book, the read gets a lot harder. So just – I mean it's just one of those things. It's like reading Lord of the Rings. The writing is more contemporary than how Lord of the Rings feels, but they're very philosophical, very slow books in a lot of ways once you get past the first one. Of course, this is based on the first one.
    22:13
    But yeah, no, actually I thought the art of the releases we have now seen, this one is my favorite art package. Oh, wow. I think you have a lot of people that would agree with you. I do. And it is pretty stunning. It's pretty stunning. It doesn't feel like a lot of what we see in pinball, so there was a nice respite from all of that. I think a lot of companies would have been scared to use this much brown. Sure. But like I said, we did a straight down the middle first impressions video to accompany the trailer. and I said like the smart thing that they did or Johnny did with with the palette here he leaned when it comes to sand you get browns and yellows he leaned more orange and then he complemented that with that iridescent blue uh with the darker blues that's a nice palette orange and blue people tend to like that so I thought that was really smart and I you know I I paid on I gave myself credit here because nobody else fucking noticed i brought up the fact of the like the playfield art some of the the apron art really really was like a a tribute to some of the illustrations uh on not only not only the novels uh the frank herbert stuff but also just like the theming in general uh on on dune i thought they did a really good job so much so that i like pulled a picture of the novel i think it was of the second novel or the third novel and then compared it to the playfield character art and like if somebody were to see those next to it they're like oh shit yeah i mean there it is like that's johnny crap not creating his own thing that's him like paying tribute uh an homage to the the classic artwork that people have loved um and i said it on that show and i'll say it here listener i think that apron art is maybe my favorite apron art I've ever seen in Pimble. It is very cool. It's just beautiful. Just beautifully done. And then we've heard from media people that in person, this thing really is beautiful and gorgeous as well. And it shouldn't be. Dunes should not be beautiful. It's sand. But it is Timothee Chalamet. I don't know. I am kind of crushing on him. I'm not going to lie. So the art checks for you.
    24:31
    It's good. Layout and design. This is where I think it shines. What are your thoughts on the layout and design is it a you know fan layout normal return to ramp no no i mean the layout is yeah the layout the layout is unique i like what the ball paths are doing i am not convinced this shoots well okay all right so i'm i'm not saying it shoots poorly i'm saying because again and part of this was with the reveal after the reveal the initial stream footage didn't make it look like it shot well so um but what they've done with the diverters the subway systems the ball pathing um i think it's you know it's interesting i like that they've done they pulled a blackwater 100 a lot of sculpted plastic over on that right hand side which obfuscates what's going on with the ball i don't think that this is going to be a hard game to figure out how the pathing's going to work i think there's sometimes with pinball it feels like people look at the stuff and it's like all of a sudden they become five-year-olds and they can't figure it out And it's like after like six games, you're going to understand. They're never that hard. Like the most complicated pathing game ever, I think, was Godfather. And I've never really heard people rant about, I don't know where the ball is coming out next. Well, that's because of use of diverters and change states and all of that. But people like change state. And this does have a lot of change state. But what I like is it's not all just a bunch of diverters sitting on top of ramps that you clearly see. They have still respected the idea of I want you to feel like you're on Arrakis. And then they put a lot of it under those plastics and stuff. So I like the way they've done it. And it doesn't look like a layout that really mimics much of anything else that we've seen before. So it feels fresh. Absolutely. So I like that part. I like those parts of it. Design-wise, I think it looks very interesting. It does. But I just don't – my feel on how it plays is a little more nebulous. Yeah and that one of the things that once we get our hands on it we be able to see better how it does feel because people were mixed on Labyrinth Labyrinth tended to be pretty difficult and uh what i would i was talking to retro ralph and he got a labyrinth recently and he's like damn this thing is just freaking like brutal and then i was like oh yeah like true and i tend to like like really nasty games because i just something hooks me about them but yeah and he was like but yeah this is like on labyrinth kind of unfair at points and i'm like I can't argue. I cannot argue. It's the same thing with Ghostbusters. I think Ghostbusters from a geometrical standpoint is unfair. From a design standpoint, it is unfair at times, and I'm okay with some of that. Some of that. It gets to a point. But I think this will be a little bit more forgiving. However, I still think based on when that media, when the media went there and was shooting this thing, and that was whether it was on Yam Cam or Nice Cam, they didn't do any service on shootability because they weren't hitting shots. Yes. This is where barrels had had, much like what Stern did, a video with gameplay. And we've talked about this for years because even Stern used to not do this. We've been preaching. It's like don't let the live stream be the first experience with the gameplay. Have something pre-recorded where it doesn't look like it's impossible for anyone to play. I don't even think they really needed that if they didn't have media come. But the first time somebody sees this game being shot, even if it's a really good play, you want to give them a taste of the fun that it is to shoot without the initial frustrations that a lot of people are going to have whenever they step up to a new game. As I do, I think they're going to tend to be a more difficult shooter than some of the easy-to-shoot Stern stuff. Because some of the Sterns, they have a range of difficulties, but some of the easier ones are pretty approachable. I don't know if that's going to be the case here, but we'll see on that. I just love that the layout does what Jack Danger's stuff did, does what Elwynn's stuff does. As a pinball player, you've seen so many layouts and you've shot so many things. You just want something that's just novel. You want something that you maybe haven't seen in a long time or haven't seen before. Or you see an area that you want to explore. That's what this game does in spades. It does a really good job of that. And bringing back the stuff that I love. This is a selfish layout for me because this is everything I think pinball players want. they want to explore new stuff and have new shots even if the end result is like some of the Gottlieb stuff some funky layouts and some of the shots are a little bit clankier but it's kind of cool to see the ball do that or to see them take a risk there like the right hand radical thing but nobody's given it enough love some have given it love they should have brought that back a long time ago this group finally did it and they put a drop target in front of it so it can act as another staged opportunity. This is like the staging company, and I love that. When you're blocking balls in the labyrinth, you're locking them at different spots. This is going to be no different. If anything, it's going to be more so. They've got plenty of areas you can stop and lock balls, including posts that are under those sand dunes in the back or magnets, magnet holds or shooting it to the, what's that? Oh, I think that's the harvester. Harvester, thank you. But having it go over the worm and through the woods to grandma's harvester up there, You've got a post that can hold it back there and then feed the upper flipper. And then even like the, the pain box popping out and then you're used to a kick back there on some of the like Jersey Jack games and such. No, it's like a hole that the ball can go through being staged and to use as like a, another radical thing where it can throw a ball out there, kinetically hit another ball to save it. There's all kinds of stuff like that, that I just, I think there's, there's a lot of thought that's going into this layout to be different and unique and I respect it enough to, you know, to, to speak on it to this extent on the podcast, because I would rather have more of this and less safe stuff. I just, even for pros and cons of the fork, the ball catching the fork and the magnet area that throws it around. I think this is going to be, if coded properly, it's going to be a lot of fun to shoot. But to your point, uh, is it going to shoot like a sleek stern i i don't know and it's going to be tougher so what about like toys and stuff like that it's got a lot of they yeah it it looks good i i thought i thought the toys are they're all pretty impressive obviously you mentioned the pain box which wasn't one i initially noticed because it's not always out but i think that was a really clever deployment over there for the left out lane obviously the the center feature of the worm that can eat the ball or also let you ride the worm and rises up to the habit trail. That's going to be the showstopper. Yeah. It's, um, so that's the centerpiece toy, but even the little thumper, like I think about my thing. I loved just because, I mean, it reminds me the little top of it. Okay. Yes. It looks like they just went to, um, to auto zone and picked up the little tire stem caps to put on for the top of that. That's what it looks like. They weathered it. However, maybe they did. I don't know, but, but it's so, theme appropriate and when you compare it to the stupid kung fu grip grip avatar knife like this is ironically really just moving up and down but it's so much more meaningful than that stupid knife especially when you pair it with like a shaker with the audio the upgraded audio with amplifier now and the assets visually in the back you see you know chalamet's blue eyes and as I noted earlier I don't want to underestimate the fact that they did some significant sculpted plastic work to represent the siege cave holes and stuff on the upper right again it's a really nice touch that's a touch I kind of expected because of what they did with Labyrinth but again it gives it texture you're not seeing booty right all over the place booty right so true the moldings are second to none And then I think that if they need to lean, talking about mechs and stuff, they need to lean on that backboard LCD because nobody else is doing that. And I just, there's so much potential there, especially if they're branding themselves as the world under glass company. I think they've done it here. Dare I say that there is no other company that's batting this high of an average. Like they're batting 100% here. And I think the LCD in the back helps with that. Everybody's like, oh, needs to have more, needs to have more. Look, sure. But guess what it is by default on day one? Better than a fucking decal. So I don't, it's, it's theming is quite wonderful in my opinion. But it's hard to find a flat plastic on this game. I love that they took the time to, to do all the sand molding when sand, all you got to do is a flat plastic. But they did molding to pull the world, the world in. I wasn't a Dune guy. The theme did nothing for me, but it does now. Like, I'm going to own this game. This game looks freaking killer. And there's so much going on that I love that when you – but you've got to do it all right. You've got to do everything to this degree in order to win some people over when it comes to a B-level theme, even maybe some RUC-level theme. But, yeah, it does it for me. Three spinners? Do you really need three spinners, Dennis? I mean, I like three spinner games because they all do stuff. Can you not just have ramps? Do you have to have ramps that also have diverters and flaps that come down to lead to a different orbit shot? Every damn shot seems like it could be diverted into a couple of different things. I love it. Oh, I forgot to talk about the beautiful back glass art. I've heard people say bad things about the back glass art. It's one of my favorite things on this whole game. For some reason, everybody's like, oh, it feels like Lord of the Rings. Fuck yeah, exactly. on Lord of the Rings, that is the only artwork on that entire game that is not worth the trash can and I know people are like, yeah but it's the times, yeah I agree I'm just saying, looking at that now I want to cheese grater the entirety of that damn game except for, if they remade that game, I would urge and encourage Stern to keep the same translate, it's beautiful that movie poster, so iconic I love it, it's like Jaws alright what else are we missing on the I don't love the back glasses on this don't get me wrong it's not like they're poorly balanced or anything but it feels so photoshopped montage it reminds me of the star trek back glass on the pro it's just like what everyone does let's just stick everyone's favorite character on here so hopefully you buy it I'm just saying it's not special I don't hate it, but it's not special. The play field is special. That is not. See, I'm seeing it more as the coloring they're using. The characters. Because if you pay close attention. It's the same color as the play field. No. It's not special. Because you'll see there are some characters missing. So it's not like this Photoshop. Because you can't put everything on there. And the play field did what you love. You don't have approvals for everybody. They didn't do every single character as a shot. Instead, they did some bigger set piece. Let's have this vista and people on the dune.
    36:14
    Yeah. A whole bunch of little windows. Yeah. Comic book style. Yeah, the backlash just screams the movie. That's true.
    36:22
    I'm just saying. It looks fine, but I wouldn't write home about it. What's the worm's name? Doesn't the worm have a name? They probably named the worm. In the books, the worm is called Shai-Halud. I think they gave it a pet name. I think the barrels calls it the same name as the worm from Labyrinth. The willy worm. Rules and code. I don't care. To me, that's like American Pinball and the monkey. Like, you want to do a thing like that? Is it completely irrelevant to anyone who's not, like, hardcore obsessing over the brand? Shia Lute sounds like a badass name. Does it have, like, a personality? Wadib and the Kizak's Hot Rock and all sorts of fun words. Smoke cigars. Oh, that would be a visual. putting a cigar in that worm's mouth on the playfield.
    37:08
    Okay, rules and code we don't know enough about. They've explained that it's going to be plenty deep. That's for damn sure. It feels light right now. Yes, yep, that is the one complaint is, like, even during the media day it said, like, pending license or approval and stuff. Yes, I'm hoping they don't get way behind like what happened with Stern and James Bond. I mean, yeah, that game is like they're making more now because it got to a good place. But, oh, that was such a rough ramp up because I think by all accounts, licensing, licensing just wasn't like the programmers were slow. The licensing just jeopardized things and not to jump too far ahead of rules and code, but kind of like tied to audio and sound. one of the initial concerns I've heard from people is purportedly they've got lots of call-outs and stuff, but people aren't hearing it yet.
    38:02
    Because that score in and of itself is just epic. It's such a good film score. I agree with you. The one thing that I like, though, about the whole rules and code department is that unlike, I mean, when people talked about Bond and is it going to get there, I have more confidence in the team working on this really then stern wow what when it comes to like stylistically no i'm talking about like lonnie ropp kind of you know like i like some of lonnie's stuff um and vinicore you know they did stranger things i really like that but bond really did nothing for me that older bond whereas this is at least new cinematic stuff cinematic stuff new filming stuff and i have the people who have created some of the codes that I love more than like Rick and Morty. I still think that code set is so much fun and it's almost like pinball level of perfection with, you know, your main objectives, but then sprinkling in these extra, uh, I'll call them Star Trek next generation artifact kind of stuff that just with the mega seeds. And then you've seen that again on labyrinth that they just executed so wonderfully. Well, that I just have legitimately zero concern about where this will end up as one of the better coded games ever. It just, by the pedigree alone, it just will. But to your point, how long will that take? That's whether or not people are up for that wait or waiting in general for it. Yes, I have zero worry about that. But time, they said it'll take up to a year to get it fully coded where they want to call it pretty much complete moving on kind of thing.
    39:57
    And then a lot of people, they're like, that's pretty damn long. But that's what we're seeing from a lot of companies. Not to say it's right, but I don't know. Animation, we don't really know. Audio and sound, like you said, some of that. What we got from the media event is it seems like this is going to be awesome. but it may take some time. I did like the code thing, the pain box. That was clever. Where you have to hold your hand on that action button. If you take it off, the ball dies. And if the system detects that you're cheating and putting your fat gut on that thing and both flipper buttons are touched at the same time, it says you're a fucking cheater and it kills you too. Yes. Smart. That was good. That was very smart. Very smart. So those little novel things I love. What else haven't we talked about? Pricing. So they came out with a whole – One tier? They're at 11,600. One model. I think they're limiting it to 1,000 units like they did Labyrinth kind of thing. Yeah, that's my understanding. Now, that price went up. Labyrinth was – A grand, right? Wasn't Labyrinth 10.6? Yep. Labyrinth was 10.6. I know behind the scenes, just from what I know, that they were worried about the whole – they kind of had the price set, and that's why they came out with the whole tier thing because they're like, look, we understand all the tariff stuff. We've set a price. And if we were going to consider the tariff stuff and add that in right now, it would have been higher. But if we were going to come in at 11.6, it was going to be more expensive than the last one because there's more going on in here, also licensing and everything. But a lot more going on. Bill of Materials is substantially higher. David Van Ness told me even the tariff stuff that did hit that they didn't add into this equation. And he's like, I just got this X-mini pallet of parts, and typically, you know, six months ago it would have cost this. Here's how much my bill was for this. And I was like, holy shit. It was like three times, four times as much kind of stuff. It was nuts. I thought tariffs don't make a difference. Well, they did on those couple pallets, absolutely.
    42:02
    But to my argument, the end result, it didn't because they're still – They're eating it. Stern isn't increasing their prices yet. I think all these companies will, though, at some point. If these tariffs do continue to hit and it isn't just bravado and stuff, it will affect. That's true. Production. They're wanting to get to about 20 games a week production goal. That way they can get through the majority, if not all, of these games by the end of the year. What was their rate for Labyrinth? I think similar. They were about $15, $20. Games a week. It took them probably two months to get to that point. But once they did, they were consistent with that, too. They were rocking and rolling. That's all contingent upon parts and stuff. But I don't see 20 games a week being a problem. I just think 20 games a week will come in June.
    43:04
    I think that's when they would get to 20 games per week. We do know that they are shipping now. they wanted to i mean there's a lot of why they held up uh releasing this game they wanted to keep the branding similar um their ethos is it ethos ethos is that what they yeah they're ethos yeah so they were they were really big on that and they landed that i would say if i'm being critical to them and they know because i speak with them often is it's it was going to be hard because of resources and timing to nail everything you did with Labyrinth, and I did think they slipped up when it came to the launch of this game. They didn't keep their, is it Pathos or Etho? I don't know what it is. They didn't keep their branding consistent when it came to the launch of this game because it was a bit of a mess, in my opinion. So I don't think it damaged the brand, but they have an area that they can do significantly better in in the future to uphold what they've worked so hardly to build up to this point. But they are shipping. I think two of them went out last week or this week going to, I think, a show. I think they're going to a show. And then they'll be going to different locations. They're preferencing locations, giving priority to that, Dennis and listener, to where they can get out at arcades. I know that for flipping out pinball, we're getting a showroom model so we can do some media on it, as well as other dealers getting showroom models, and they're going to locations. So we have a list of locations that you're going to be seeing, receiving them soon.
    44:38
    All right. Sales. Okay. How do you think this did? Oh, probably decent. As you said, market's down. Nobody wants games.
    44:47
    Did I say that? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or that was the narrative that I was saying that you said. Okay. A lot of people say that, though. Nobody's going to buy shit.
    44:59
    Nobody's buying anymore. The sales overall, here's the real deal. I knew what this product was going to be. And if you told me to estimate the sales or to project what I thought was going to happen to the sales, whenever Monday hit and they showed the pictures and the teaser trailer, sales were below what I would have estimated. And I was a little like, oh. But I knew that they weren't showing the product in a rightful way. Like they weren't giving it. And maybe that may be behind the Patreon too, but a lot of people were like, oh, it got leaked. There was a dealer that – I don't even know where this story came from. There was a dealer that leaked it, and then they had to then launch – I don't know if Barrels cares if I tell this, but it's the truth. Like that's not even – I don't know where that came from. That's not even close to being true. The reason they launched it was the reason they launched it. They had full control of that. I won't go into all of that, but there's other factors that make more sense and viably were actual truth. It wouldn't be a dealer. We didn't even have the damn – we didn't have any of it to leak. So there was no – Yeah, I think I saw a link somewhere where someone had found that a distributor had a page set up calling it Dune Pinball. That's me. Dennis, that's me. I have – Oh, is it? Yes. Surprise, surprise. So that's where some of this narrative came into like there was quote-unquote media news that was reporting like, oh, a dealer has dunepinball.com. And then they were trying to – No, no, no. I thought I saw a thing where someone had a page set up on their actual site where all of a sudden Dune was in the pinball list. Oh, okay. I got you. And then that person, whoever it was – I thought I saw a screenshot. It didn't look like your website though. Okay. But supposedly they had posted, like, here was the link for the Dune – like, it was in the drop-down list, and then they took it out, like, in an hour or two or something. And we'll talk about the whole domain and stuff like that. But I didn't look into it because I don't care. Everyone knew it was Dune. Well, everybody was saying, like, oh, DoonPinball.com. So I think it was NAP. It might have been NAP. It was like – I think this dealer is trying to jump out ahead. Well, I think after the Harry Potter pinball, people started, like, compiling lists of other, you know, known rumored games to see who owns the URL. He's trying to get an advantage or something. It's like, absolutely not. Or he's leaking information. No, absolutely not. I own a lot of domains, by the way, that I think might be pinball machines in the future, but it's just guesses. I mean, it's just – that's a thing that some of the people in the media just don't understand. It starts with a B. It's called business, so you have to – I'm running a business. I know it's hard to imagine business moves such as that, But that's what I'm trying to do, trying to work hard. So overall, I would say before that, the sales. But then once that trailer hit, and that was post King Kong. I was like, uh-oh, what are we going to do? No, sales have been good. Whew, good. And they were back up to what my estimation, almost to the T of what my estimate was. Maybe a little bit better than even I estimated because I knew that Kong would take a bite out. I really knew that it would take a bite out. And I was trying to be straight up with barrels whenever I was giving my assessment of what I thought was going to happen. I was kind of telling them, you know, as in this industry, with the timing that we've got right now for this product being launched, I think we all need to, whether you want to hear it or not, we need to temper some expectations of what this product is compared to the timing in which it's being released. I think that the well I mean obviously but like from a from a listener standpoint I get why it's important to your standpoint that hey you know what I stuck my estimate like it yes I know how to read the market from a listener standpoint your estimate is irrelevant what they want to know is over the six-day period or whatever how many more or less of these did you sell then labyrinth oh that's the number that's a hard it's gonna be less of course it's gonna be less of course. Why, of course? Do I want to bore people with the multi-factor reasons why? I mean, I don't know. Do you? You probably do because you like to bore the people. Meander about. We have spent like 50 minutes on Dune. That's true. We can move on. But quickly, if people do care, let us know.
    49:38
    Hashtag sky is falling. Different timing. Less than labyrinth. Sophomore effort inferior to freshman effort. That is not it. Hashtag sky. Yeah, it's timing. It's the market. It's so many different factors. It's a lot of stuff going on. There's many variables. Not to even mention, my sales are lower because whenever we were selling Labyrinth, I was one of three dealers. Whereas when we were selling Dune, I am one of 20-plus dealers. So that alone, you're going to see. You've been sabotaged. Yeah. But here's what I will say that I was very surprised upon. It may or may not be true. Well, this is true. Flippin' Out Pinball has sold more Dune pinball machines than King Kong Pros. How about that? Is that significant?
    50:29
    Sure. A lot of factors. I get it. But what's your argument? I'm feeling something there. Treating each model tier like its own thing beyond just being a – I'm trying to find a data point that's interesting here. It's not.
    50:45
    I think it's very interesting. It's devoid of context, and not enough people have played King Kong yet. So this is standard for all the sterns, is the premiums and LEs outsell the pro until people realize whether or not the pro actually plays well. And the pro looks super stripped down on King Kong. But you're asking me if they sold more or less. Compared to the same company, same thing. Oh, you're wanting to compare the same thing. We've got a lower LE count now, a lower run count on Dune than we did on Labyrinth. I don't think they're going to make all 1,000 of them. Yeah, my only data point could be at this point because it's so early that it is not sold as well as Labyrinth did a year and a half ago. And I think it looks – overall, I think this game looks really good. But unfortunately, going up $1,000 when everyone else is holding their price was not the ideal play here. I think that this game looks better than Labyrinth as a game. I agree. I absolutely agree. But I also like the license more, so I have to check my bias and make sure I'm not laying that in fact to my – Well, and I like the license less. I love Labyrinth as a license. I know you do. But yeah, going up $1,000 is significant too. Absolutely. I mean, just compare it with the fact that Stern held pricing and JJP has already indicated they will hold pricing, and JJP coming out with a mech-equivalent version of Harry Potter less than this game. And we have to remember – Do we know that? No, we're not allowed to spend our money. I thought 9999, right? I'm saying, do we know that it is just as mech-enriched? I thought it was said. I'm not saying the lighting and stuff, but I thought gameplay was going to be identical. No, no, I thought you meant when comparing to Dune here. Oh, no, no, no. I meant just the wizard version versus the arcade version.
    52:33
    It's not like a Stern Pro where you're giving up mechs. No, given what they've done here and if they've really been as aggressive to hold the pricing, I'm very curious now if Harry Potter looks stripped compared to Dune, given where Dune is priced.
    52:49
    Or is J.J.P. relying on their economies of scale and they're able to do more with less money because they buy more parts? Yeah, it's all very, very good. I guess we have to wait until phase three to see That right All right Let talk about King Kong Myth of Terror Island What is the myth I don know I mean Terror Island in and of itself is pretty scary Is the myth that it's not scary at all? What is the myth? I mean, maybe. Or maybe that he never was on Terror Island, and so that's the myth. This is the wrong island. Shit, it's like Shutter Island. Leo's really... That is a weird movie. And that movie would be a terrible pinball machine. The Hulk is really just a doctor. I fully expect J.J.P. to do it at some point. I love Shutter Island. It's a very good movie, but so is The Godfather, and it's not meant to be a pinball machine. That was my reference. Anyway, King Kong. Stern Pinball. Three models, Zach. Cornerstone Pro Premium LE. Can I please say, I mentioned this on that Flippin' Up stream that Joel invited me on, but I am so proud of Stern for not going back up to 1,000 LE units. I'm very. This was the right play. I'm very disappointed. Keep them hungry. Make their tummies rumble. I think that Keith Elwin should be known as the 1,000-unit L.A. man.
    54:08
    This is so good for the whales because it will better position, even though it's just a little bit under 1,000, it will better position for value retention in their L.A. I heard you compare yourself to a little beluga, cute little beluga. I might, at best, I would, like in my scenario, I was walking through an example, but I can't assume myself to be a blue whale. I'm not. You're a little beluga. I'm more like a little beluga whale with a squishy forehead. They're cute. I love those with the bulbous foreheads. Yes. Then you can push them and they squish in. Almost dolphin-esque. I love it. Yeah, 932 units. Why 932? Because King Kong was either written or the film or whatever it was, was 1932. The idea of tying these into things I find quaintly ridiculous. That part is not cool. Just make round numbers. I was teasing Stern. I said, this game sold so well that if anybody – I was telling the salesperson. I said, can you ask Gary or Seth, let's just go back. Let's do 1,000 and send the extra 68 units to me, and I'll buy them right now, please. because this has been selling as everybody thought it would be selling.
    55:27
    I saw someone on a social media, probably on a flipping out social media posting, saying it doesn't really matter because in a couple of years, they'll have the black and white version come out, and it'll be more valuable than the LE anyway. A couple of years? I was hoping by Q4.
    55:41
    I mean, maybe Q4 of next year. You know they're going to have to. I mean, if they're partnering this thing up so closely with Godzilla, like they are, I mean, the people who have the black and white Godzilla are going to want the black and white King Kong. No, it's a fair point. I don't disagree with you. Especially after all of this, I won't even say rightfully so, because I'll argue against it, the criticism of the color palette being used on this game. You know they're going to lean into that and be like, fine, here's your black and white. With red blood all over his hands. No, they've got to go fucking purple. I hope they go purple.
    56:22
    Black and white and purple. I would love. Come on, Yeti. Let's do it. You got the new studio art director, Jeremy Packer. Yeah, congratulations to him. Congrats, absolutely. So no price increase. I think that shocked a lot of people. Super smart. Stern knows what they're doing. Sometimes smart isn't always helpful, though, in business. They're like, oh, God. Yeah, that was. Again, if it was Spike 3, I think we'd have seen it. but maybe Spike 3 is a myth. Maybe it's like dry land and water world. Oh, King Kong, the myth of a new operating system. Of Spike 3. Yeah. So the design was Keith Elwin, the golden child, the golden man. He ain't no child. He's a man. Can't do no wrong. Shoots great. Best game he's done ever. Unequivocally. Game programming, Rick Nagel is back. Rick Nagel, mechanical engineering, Harrison Drake, the whole team is back. That's right. Art, well, no, no, I can't say that, because Art, Greg Freres, Kevin O'Connor, and new studio art director, Zombie Yeti. What in the hell happened here? A collaboration? Ah, yes. Well, kind of. Kind of. Kind of some, got to dig back into the prototype vault of Data East. Or was it Sega? I forget which. It was Data East. I thought it was, people have been kind of pooh-poohing, like, nobody even knew that game. So why would they do a throw up? It's like, well, because it's their company and this is kind of cool. I liked it. I liked the move. It was clever. I thought so, too. They're right that nobody really cares. I thought it was kind of cool. I mean, I thought they integrated it fine into the – I did, too. It's beautiful down there. Yeah. It's beautiful. I wouldn't go quite that far. The only thing I don't like – we'll jump into the art because there's a couple things I don't like. But I thought it looked really cool. Let's see here. Who else worked on this? So, yeah, they came in. I think Greg Frayers and Kevin O'Connor were doing the play field and all this stuff. And then Jeremy Packer stepped in after the fact and was helping them complete it. So he focused more on cabinet artwork, back glass probably kind of thing. But he probably lent himself too. Is it lent or lending?
    58:33
    Lent. I don't know. Lent themselves. It's Easter time. I know. That's what I'm saying. I won't even meet. I promise. Sound design. And Jerry Thompson, TPS, the pinball show announcer, Jerry Thompson. Yes.
    58:46
    Yeah. Jerry does good work. It's pinball with personality. Custom speech by Brian Q. Quinn from Impractical Jokers. This is the guy that got drunk and weird on. Yeah, I don't know about plugging this. It's like there's no. Remember that? To me, when I saw it, I thought, I mean, great. I'm glad you got custom. I'm honestly, they could have just used a coder and at Stern at this point. I'm like, I know, but I'm not going to get someone from a from a get someone from one of the King Kong movies. Get one from Peter Jackson. Get Jack Black to do it or something. Even though it's not themed on the movie, his beauty killed the beast. I don't know. Just I mean, was the Brian have anything to do with anything? I would argue against it if he didn't do a great job. Like people are loving the work that he did in the sound. I mean, OK, great. I just it's a weird. It's a weird. You sell one game because of this to Brian. That's all that did. That's all that you did. And if he did a bad job, people would be like, why is this a selling feature at all? Like, come on. Well, they probably knew it wasn't a bad job the moment they heard it. All right. So you've seen this game. First thoughts when you've seen this game? Because this was revealed when you've actually seen it all. Yeah. Looks good. It looks so good. Looks fucking awesome. It does. I mean, it's – I hate – you know what? I mean, I don't, because I don't inherently want to be negative, but I'm kind of at the point where it might be nice to see something like a quasi-miss from Elwynn. No, stop. Just to prove he's human. What are you doing? Fuck, no. Just to prove he's human. Oh. I'll still say that's Avengers. That's what Avengers is. Avengers is definitely not the worst one. Good lord. Don't you dare put that on anybody. No. No, the game-wise, mech-wise, shot-wise, again, he keeps making the layouts. He has certain tropes he likes to do.
    60:37
    Full credit to him here. I think he finally resisted doing a 180 ramp. Thank you. Which is one of my least favorite things. Gomez does a pretty good 180 ramp. I actually haven't really loved Elwins. We hate him. We talked about it. It's because it lets him squeeze an extra shot in is why they keep doing it. But it kills the good feeling of any shot. I don't like it. But, I mean, the gong, the gong of, I mean, it was in the teaser. It caught my eye. The sound effects tied in with that. The biplane. The little magnet spider.
    61:09
    I love the magnet spider. Why are people hating on the magnet spider? They hate it? I thought it's cool. People were hating on that thing. I think it's cool. I think it looks cool. Absolutely fits. I like how it's on a little metal plate. And so it's the magnetism of the electromagnets actually what's making it jiggle, not a coil. I thought it was awesome. That's neat. It's one of the biggest features you're missing in the Pro. I love that thing.
    61:31
    Yeah, no, and that's the thing. I mean, again, I don't have major criticisms of what I see here. It's hard to hear. And with the gameplay already being seen, yeah, it shoots well. Yeah, the stream was awesome. Again, I can see where some inspiration from some games is, but it's a unique layout. There's a reason that most of us media just gush over Keith Elwin games. Like, I assure you guys, it's not because Keith Elwin's out here chatting it up and buddy-buddy media because he's pretty cold when it comes to that. I don't talk with Keith. He helped me out when I had an issue with my Godzilla game, and, like, that's been the extent of our correspondence. We are not friends. Yeah. I do not talk to him. I do not hang out with him. I do not ask him to come on for interviews. I don't do anything with him. That's what I'm saying. So when it comes to – there's a reason why we all gush because they really set the – But we're not surprising anyone. I haven't honestly heard anyone go, you're wrong, all of his games suck. No one thinks that. Even the haters are like, yeah, I'll buy it. This game is awesome. It is the shining light in this industry and has been for the last five plus years.
    62:38
    It's been so severe, Zach, that some say this is why we heard out of JJP demands that we not spend our money on anything.
    62:51
    Absolutely. They had to know this game would be good. Yes. It's an expectation. Even without their spies, they had to know. But maybe he does get into a situation where people have so high expectations. They did this with Zombie Eddie. And after some of the art packages, people started poo-pooing just for the sake of poo-pooing. The big difference there, and to be fair, I think it's harder for an artist. I'll always sympathize that it could be harder for an artist. It's less measurement. is working in a particular medium. Elwynn has been able to keep... Actually, maybe it's not even that true because as I think about other pinball designers... Well, it's dependent on the designer. But a lot of designers have layout... I mean, Steve Ritchie's a case in point. I love me some Steve Ritchie layouts, but they look a lot alike. Elwynn has done a very good job making his layouts look different. Zombie Yeti's pinball art packages have started to look very samey.
    63:47
    Maybe that's why I liked it. I mean, yeah, same color palettes, the micro comics. Again, he's varied it up, too. But you start to see like there's a certain style that again, he's an artist. He's got his style. How many of them are how many of them are prolific in multiple styles of artwork? Well, that and same with it. And I was going to say, Owen isn't the only design like like Balser has that reputation to have been pretty dramatically different with a lot of his layouts. Most of the active designers have design tropes that constantly repeat. And I still argue, and I'll argue this for the years that I have, is that for whatever criticism that people give Zombie Yeti, his work changed an industry. It truly changed the way our expectations of what art should be. So that in and of itself is the only trophy, in my opinion, that he will ever need to justify why he sticks to his artwork. Because it may not be for everyone, but selfishly, I'm so freaking happy that it sings to me. Everybody's like, oh, this color, all this color. I'm even, because of Zombie Yeti, I'm going to give credit to Greg Fraze and Kevin O'Connor. Kevin O'Connor, who I'm usually mixed with on art. Take it or leave it. I just don't click with his art. Even Greg Ferrer is like, for whatever it's worth, Elvira artwork on the play field, like almost too much 90s for me. But on this, I love this package. I might like the play field package, Dennis, more than I do the cabinet art. How about that, Jeremy? I may. I just. And who was it? That's interesting to me because I actually like the Translight and the cabinet packages quite a bit. I think the color works fine there. It's the play field that looks over. That's what most people are saying right now. They're just, they're cramping all over that play field. And I had, whenever this game was, Greg and I, Greg works with Flippin' Out Pinball. So we were at the dealer seminar together. And he texted me as soon as we seen this. He goes, yeah, you're going to love this art package, don't you? And I'm like. Does that mean Greg didn't like it? No, he was mixed on it. He doesn't, he doesn't need this much color. He's more like you. I just don't know. It's not the colors.
    66:09
    They've got the jungle theme going on on the play. I get the idea of the colors and stuff. Some people say busyness. There's a lot of – It's busy. Well, and my big thing is that my impression is Jeremy really likes to dial that saturation level all the way to the right. And Greg Frayers, he packs things in. Think about Elvires. Think about some of the art packages he has done over the last several decades. Whereas I'm going to bring up another artist, though, where Franchi doesn't do – to me, he doesn't lean on saturation heavily. Now, I know some people don't like his style because it's more photorealistic. But he will throw in – he'll throw in colors that people would argue don't belong. I'm fine with color. I don't want to be – and I definitely don't agree with Greg who poo-pooed all over Deadpool's art package because it was too – Initially, yeah. What does Greg want? because he's like, no, this has got too many colors, and then Deadpool was too much of one color. What does he want? I love this art package. I just love all the color. Is this his best art package ever for pinball? I can't compare this with the other Zombietta stuff. Because for a while there, you were always saying the latest, like whatever one was on the line was Jeremy's best artwork. I can't compare it because this isn't all of Jeremy Packer's stuff.
    67:22
    You can compare it. I can't compare this to Playfield. It's not fair because he didn't have 100% universal control over it. I don't like the cabinet package as much as I do his other work, no. I don't. I like the Ellie artwork the best, though, because it does give me one of each side, which typically I don't like the lack of symmetry there. But the back glass, I just think that Ellie back glass, Dennis, is a winner. I just love the heroine in front. I just love the composition of Kong in the background. I love the Art Deco styling. that le is just now where they fell short for my opinion is hey stern zach here are we gonna wwe this powder coat shit like i'm i know john wick wasn't a great seller but can we be done with the black i need something to fill my plate or my game room with color and that's why i'm buying the le Give me something besides I'm tired of all this black. Black is the standard you use. You use a textured black for your non-LEs. So whatever you do, try to stay away from black so you differentiate your top package from all the others. I'm just so tired of black. But, Zach, it makes sense here thematically because you do have the Art Deco and you have, you know, that's a tuxedo black. I know. I get it. But I just don't want it. I want color. Sorry. That was my rant.
    68:56
    But yeah, the LE. I just love how busy and colorful the play field is. I don't know. I just do. What package do you like? Do you like the jungle package, or do you like the city package?
    69:10
    Overall, I do favor the city package. Okay, so premium. I would have been perfectly happy to mix it, like the sides being the dinosaur getting its mouth ripped open on the pro, but then go in with the premium for the Translight. Yeah.
    69:25
    So, yeah, for whatever people want to say about the R, I just hope that they keep doing this. Please just don't listen to people. I don't even know what the right answer is, but don't listen to them. I want this. This is what I want. Layout and design, A+. I mean, shit. We even saw the stream, which I'm always deathly afraid of. I'm like, why are you streaming live new products? Please don't do it. And sometimes it works out. This time, it worked out very, very well.
    69:52
    It actually, yeah, we've seen a bump in sales after the stream. And that's usually not a rarity, but that doesn't happen all the time. So the layout and design, it's like Dune to me. That's what I was teasing before we went into Phase 2 Troph Jam, because this is what pinball people want.
    70:12
    Star Trek is one of the greatest shooting pinball machines ever, but I don't want anything else like it afterwards. I'm good. I know what that feels like. I know what it looks like. Third flipper, side ramp, ramps that go straight up and they come straight back safely. I get it. I want new stuff to shoot at. Otherwise, I don't give a shit about new games except if they have like a theme that just screams to me. This is the perfect example, listener, that new pinball, like I'm almost going back on my whole themes because I won't because, of course, themes sell better than anything else. But I don't care about King Kong or Dune as a theme. I just don't care. But I'm more excited to play and own these than I am even the themes that I just love more than these because they have cool stuff that interacts with you and different layouts. Ultimately, I think that's what, as a group, most pinball people want. It'll do great. Looking at the mechs, the Kong Gong thing is cool. King Kong himself like what a cool toy that's like Jurassic Park level of toy there how he's interacting stopping balls he's Kong smashing the freaking subway car thing and balls are flying that's you that level right there we need something to that degree in every game to be a hit and they load it down like the biplane like you said they've got this little upper flipper the sweepable drop targets I feel almost like that was his – what Stern game do I not like that everybody loves that I think is overrated?
    71:49
    Batman 666. Quicksilver. Oh, Stern Electronics. Yeah, Quicksilver. Everybody's like, oh, that game's great. No, it's not. It sucks. That sweepable bank is way too close to the flipper, and it feels clunky. But it feels like that ode to that. And the river, Dennis, the log that lifts up in the river, it comes down to the – And he did like this little fathom-like thing where the middle in lane is really the out lane. The out lane sweeps to the in lane thing. I'm usually kind of mixed on that, though.
    72:19
    But we'll see how it plays out here. Spider. Oh, my God. My favorite thing on the whole thing. This sounds weird, and I hope it feels good. I love the little kickback thing where you hit it the right orb, and it swings around and hits that little got leap thing. And it kicks it and flips it right back to you. And it feeds that upper flipper. Oh, baby. And you can do the little pass. you can do the ball passes from the upper flippers you can hit the ramp and it feeds to the upper left flipper and then you go back and it feeds to the upper right flipper and you go back and forth you pay a little patty cake with yourself davis rules and code is going to be fucking awesome we don't know enough about it yet somebody said it is from day one though that does have quite a bit in it already uh animation people are kind of down on this what do you think about the animation we get no footage i liked it i liked the cartoon approach they're taking though i do too But again, I think maybe that's because I don't love the theme, and so you might as well make it original. I don't care to see anything from the original movie. I have no connection to the original movie, and I don't care to. But I didn't have any connection with the Godzilla stuff, but they were welcome assets for me because they were kind of campy and fun. I think I am kind of missing that here. I just don't think there's enough with King Kong. Godzilla just became a thing. With King Kong, what are we going to do? Are we going to do the original movie only? Are we going to do the original movie and then all the other various movies that happened like in the 80s? They're like all disconnected and it doesn't – there's not a unified theme to it other than that it's the same ape.
    73:49
    No, I think this is fine. I think this was more like what they did with Deadpool. Obviously, they've tried to make it not just be looking like a video game here. No, I thought – I need to see more of it to see how janky it might possibly be. But from what I've seen so far, I thought, no, I think this works fine. back up to really quick to just because people are everybody's giving the same shit out right now in the media but well there's nothing to say people be up no but people come to you and i for the true analysis yeah they do in our expertise bullshit we can be humble all we want but that's why we get the listens so i'm going to ask you this is this technically his best layout where does it fall does it fall to his best middle of the pack his worst gosh and i haven't played i know this is i don't feel that it's fair at all for me to say i'll say i mean i i don't think from a technical standpoint this will be able to to shoot as well as Godzilla or maybe even Avengers. Okay. I think this suits better than Avengers, but I also think Avengers is his worst layout. Oh, my. Avengers was so good. No. The banana ramp alone was annoying.
    75:11
    No, I would say this may... I think Jurassic Park was his worst layout. Really? Jurassic Park I would put as maybe his third best. Okay. We have very different tastes. Yeah, just that 180 ramp doesn't work. I'm going to put this at about Jurassic Park's. I think this is maybe his third or fourth best layout, but it's not as good as Jaws and it's not as good as Godzilla. I think this is better than this ends up being a better layout than Jaws. I wasn't high on Jaws layout. Really? I thought I think once I I wasn't sure at first, but as I've now been able to play it more, just the way the various feeds into that whole left side. Again, my least favorite part about Jaws is that 180 ramp. And Godzilla's 180 ramp for the left ramp shop pisses me off too. For me, Jaws was that 180 ramp. I think he did have a significant compromise in his design because of a mech feature, that shark fin. Say what you want, how fun it is, but I think it really compromised the geometry of that game and the shot layout of it, for better or worse. And I think the little flipper shooting to drop targets or back up, that's just not A-plus stuff to me. where I'm not seeing any egregious layout geometry stuff here. I think this looks like maybe his most fun layout. I don't know. This has so many linking combo flowy shots. Yeah, but that's just, again, we got that for years with fan layouts. You can pass between the two upper flippers. It's no different than passing between two lower flippers. It doesn't mean anything to me. That's totally different. It doesn't mean anything to me in here. I'm not saying it's not fun. And I'm just saying, like, this actually looks like the least mechanically interesting game he's had. Oh. Next to Iron Maiden, which is his first. What? See, I think this is, like, his most. Mm-mm. Nope. The subway ball block thing is inherently, like, we've seen tons of people do mechs like that. The monkey blocking the ball isn't as interesting as the fling the ball from Jurassic Park. The little kickback thing doesn't match the fascinating game state change and aesthetic integration of the Godzilla building. Again, I'm comparing premium LE versions to premium LE versions. What he's done here is he – This is mechanically more interesting than Jaws, but – Yeah, but it does go to a point that still pushes flow, which I think is very difficult to do. Yeah, but he hasn't had a single game that didn't push flow. So it's like maybe the James Bond 25th. I can't comment on that one, but – Yeah, it's more classic flow, but it's still – Yeah, yeah. Well, given the – no, all his games – like he's not – unless he wants to stop the ball, all of his games are flow games. They're not fan layouts, but they're flow games.
    77:55
    Is this flowier than the others? Maybe, but mechanically, it's less interesting to me. Maybe it's because he's got multiple – like cool bouncy spider, cool subway ball lock, cool eight-block path. But compared to just like a huge centerpiece thing like the building drop on Godzilla. And again, that captive ball with the magnet slinging around on Godzilla was so innovative. Everything here I've seen before.
    78:27
    I've never seen an ape hit over a subway car that's locking balls. Let's not. Either I'm using a little hyperbole or you're being way too nuanced. It's like we've seen plenty of things where something like – We just saw X-Men where they had the Sentinel hands block shots. Oh, that's cool too. Yeah, but I saw it first, so this one interests me less inherently. Okay. Like I've seen it already. I see your argument. I do. Don't get me wrong. I'm trying to nitpick here because the game looks great. I mean, what do you want me to say? That's right. What do you want me to do? It's beyond exceptional. Do I think I'm going to hate this game? No. Do I think I'm going to really enjoy this game? Yes. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. At some point in your being in pinball, you'll own this game, as will everybody else in pinball. Like this is another one of those. He's done it again. This never sells as much as Godzilla, though. No, no way. Again, time kind of thing. No way. Godzilla. Yeah. Godzilla is of its time. And there were things that worked in Godzilla's favor that are completely unfair. But even if this game is better than Godzilla, it will not outsell Godzilla. I think this game could sell more than Jaws And I don know how but I think it could I going to say no I going to say you wrong but it has a better shot than outselling Godzilla the difference where I have to hedge is Jaws is such a better theme than this and you know and I think you may be more down on Jaws than where would you write Jaws in his pantheon of games I actually ended up liking it way more than I thought I would. People like it. Some people like it more than Godzilla. The rules, too. I would argue I enjoy the rules of Jaws better than I do Godzilla.
    80:13
    That's such a bold... I just don't have enough time because I have so much time on Godzilla. It's so hard. What helps this layout, to me, it's... Well, it's the layout, but it's the damn toy. That identifiable toy is like Funhouse-esque. It's like Jurassic Park-esque. So what's your favorite toy? On this? Yeah. It has to be the Kong. No, it's the Gong. No, I don't get what people... You went Kong when everyone else went Gong. I don't know why people are going Gong. I hate to hate on that thing. Because the best thing people remember about ACDC is the satisfaction of hearing the sound when you hit the bell. That is not close to a bell. You know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of the Mandalorian Razor Crest Dangler.
    81:02
    I'm like, oh, don't make me think of that again. Now, I like five other toys more than I do the gong. Look, I'm here to say I'm kind of a gong hater. I don't get it. Maybe the coils will surprise me. But, yeah, give me the little Gottlieb kickback over that all day. Give me the log over that all day. don't get it give me the plane over that it's the ape anytime you can have a mech that has a personality and it like it characterizes the entirety of the product itself that machine him moving around tapping the glass with his hands catching a ball no that will go down more so than anything in that Jaws game ever could as identifiable more so than even Godzilla I would say that building because it is a personification of like I don't know that's just what T-Rex did that's just what it all does if it was small it would be different Ape tap glass is not as interesting to me as Mechagodzilla tummy grab that Mechagodzilla tummy grab is dumb like that doesn't do anything you take that back Kong's got character it's awesome he sucks the ball up into his tummy it's like the satellite from Goldknife You take that back.
    82:23
    All right. Audio and sound. This has been a highlight for people. I haven't listened enough to know, but people universally have said, like Jerry Thompson's work here is pretty superb. And that's a nice compliment, especially initial sound stuff for games. Sometimes there's not enough code in it and it gets poo-pooed. So, yeah, I think if it sounds good now to people's liking, then that's going to be in a good place. gameplay stream worked well. Pricing, they did not increase pricing, so we're still $12,999 for LEs, $96.99 premiums, and $69.99 pros. I think we do see an increase when they do Spike 3. I was surprised this wasn't a Spike 3, though. I don't think anything on when they're going to release the Spike system stuff. There's no rhyme or reason, it feels, to it. The production, they are pretty much shipping. This week, they plan on starting to ship out the LEs, so they are going out. That was a lot of talk, Dennis. I'm very tired. You know what's great is that everybody always talks about the battles of these games, like which one's going to hail supreme. And I know I said it months ago when I said, just wait, you guys. There's some stuff coming that it's going to be hard to pick between because they are all so well done. And I think these two exemplify exactly what I was teasing, is that you're not going to go wrong with either. and what we've seen a lot of people sales-wise purchase both. And we've heard it in our Discord. People are going to buy every game that comes out this year. There's no reason to not. If they're that good, people will find a way to do it. That's hence why I'm getting a ton of trades for these games, just a ton of trades. This is what pinball people want. So please, manufacturers, continue with this. Because in the market that we're in and the times that we're in right now, as we talked about on episode 173, you don't have a window of missing. It will crush you. You know what would crush a big ape like King Kong? A screaming goat. No.
    84:28
    It would. I think a goat would... We need a goat on this game somewhere. I don't think so. We've got to say thank you to Rodney. he's one of our big goats big goat rodney i finally i finally watched the video of the bobcat attack oh thank you how great was that the visual is just as good as the audio that bobcat was rabid and that guy's just freaking out yeah his wife had like over 20 puncture room in the house get in the house oh shoot that fucker he was just billy badass and there but the but the but the preceding part is he was like super mild-mannered until it that's right his wife how's it going have a great day that's a bobcat attack my wife oh shoot that fucker man i'm gonna have to watch that again but thanks rodney steve thank you bump away a tuna i want to see an ace ventura I just, I so want It's a little dated, maybe barrels will do that Do that instead of Goonies I know, everybody thinks they got Goonies Do not go in there Bumblebee tuna I just want so bad an Ace Ventura That's still my avatar on pin side I still sometimes will just say Dan Marino should die of gonorrhea and rotten hell People are like, why do you hate Dan Marino? I'm like, that's not the point. Never mind. It's not about hating Dan. I don't think anything of Dan. Oh, man. Well, I have kissed a man. I just love that movie. Both of them. Even though the second one is just objectively worse than the first. Except for the rhino birthing scene. That's making a comeback. The Panther, thank you so much. Rob. for the continued love and support. And I won't say to what Rob has purchased, but as a buddy of Rob's, I know to say congratulations on the new edition. He's got a new game coming his way. What do you think he purchased? And maybe it might not even be one of these new games, but if it was, which one do you think he went with? I would say King Kong. Okay, interesting. Rob, you'll have to reach out and let him know if it was, in fact, King Kong. Maybe it was both. What do you think the odds are that each of these guys, Rodney, what do you think the odds are that Rodney went with both Dune and King Kong?
    87:04
    You think yes or no? Not Rodney. Maybe one. I don't think he'd do two. What about Jabs? Neither. Okay. What about Rob? I think the B holds. Rob won. Won, okay.
    87:18
    Okay. My boy, Frankie. God, I love Frankie. What do you think, Frank? One. Frank with one? I think one of them. I want all of these guys to reach out and let us know because it's not like they're necessarily buying from Flippin' Out, so we don't know until they let us know. Yeah, we don't know. If not, then why? Joe. Both.
    87:40
    Hear that, Fox? Thank you, Fox and Frank, for the support. Thank you, Charlie, for the support. Did either one of these dingle his bell?
    87:51
    I'm going to say no. I think Charlie's going to wait a little bit. But that doesn't mean he's not going to come back and buy one. Wink, wink, Charlie. What about William the Dude? Oh, man, come on. Who are you going to believe? Those guys are... We dropped off the damn money. William probably bought all skews of them so far. We know that William got a big whale dick. We know... Like, William... It's like, why not get the pro-premium in LA of King Kong and Dune? He is picky, though. I do know he is picky, but he does like new stuff. Yeah. He does like new things. He's not afraid to try it. He can get rid of a game when he gets tired of it. So, I mean. What about that sweet? Four. I'm saying four. That sweet rooster.
    88:33
    You're going to rock out with my cock out. Josh. One. I think he gets one of these. Cockadoodledoo. And we know that John, our aquavelva, our sweet, sweet, succulent scent of nastiness. There's something about an aquavelva man. You shouldn't. I think he operates games, too, so he's got to go Kong here, I would think. Yeah, I think one there. Speaking of, operators right now get preferential treatment on Dune releases, too. So if any of you operators want one of the firsts in the country. Yeah, I never get the first of anything anymore. Let's jump on that. I didn't even talk about the art thing I don't like on King Kong, which is, I think it's totally Greg Frayer's. It feels like him at the bottom between the flippers, the little hands holding on the little. Oh, like they're holding the spears with the shield. I hate that. We didn't even talk about center post that has no need to even be there. Sorry, Keith. He doesn't like his games to play too hard. The first center post, and I'm like, it's because you don't need one. I don't care. Let's keep that one. So thank you all, Screaming Goat Club members. Discord, we're talking about all the goodies and who's bought what and all of that and what people think about what. Oh, the next Happy Hour Hangout. April 23rd. This week. Is that this? Wednesday. Yeah, this Wednesday. This Wednesday. 8 to 9 p.m. Central. Patreon folks that are the Nordman level or above have a link on the Patreon to it. I think we might see some new faces in there, too. We might. We had a lot of new members. I didn't pay attention to what tiers they all picked, but I guess I'll find out. Oh, this episode just would not be complete without the phase three cherry on the top of pinball market trends. Dennis Creasel.
    90:24
    I like your style, dude. Non-tariff edition. Oh, isn't that nice? I don't think I could. I don't think I could sit through another one. Turning up this week is the Pinball Market Trends Tariff Edition.
    90:42
    What? People loved it, and they hated it, but they loved it. They loved the numbers don't lie, Dennis. I only report the facts. And anymore, just that line in and of itself is trending up in this industry, as media cannot help but to just, look, they take the masterpiece that is the pinball show, and they regurgitate it in any and every which way they can. It's the flattery thing, right? imitation of the Flattery? I mean, I guess. When I was on the Flippin' Out stream with Joel and Tom and Jared, I saw on the chat a lot of people kept bringing, or at least one person kept bringing up tariffs, which I refused to address. I did, too. You got a lot of bye-bye-byes. You got a lot. I mean, it's time for us to level up, Dennis. I guess that's what I'm saying. But no, trending up this week, it's got to be the PMT Tariff Edition. We got a lot of messages.
    91:34
    The numbers were high on that episode and it was very entertaining. For those of you who want a good giggle or rage moment, go back and listen to it. It's good stuff. Also streaming out this week, coincidentally enough, pinball sales. How could they not be, right? For everybody that wanted to say nobody's buying a damn thing, boy, oh, boy, this last couple of weeks, pinball sales are up. Dare I say, could this be, listener, the largest week of pinball sales for all of 2025?
    92:04
    It's tough to say. I'm sure it's the largest sale so far. But we're not in phase three yet. Hey, I know. What's coming in phase three? Oh, I don't know. A wizard? Oh, my God. My wand is hard. I just can't wait. I can't wait to talk on Patreon about this whole thing. There's so much going on behind the scenes. All's turning up this week are trade-ins. Wow. Just as I had predicted and everybody threw tomatoes at me last week, I said, look, a lot of us hobbies have reserves. We've got a lot of games. So push comes to shove. We're still going to want the good new Keith Elwin. We're still going to want the world under glass that is doomed with the most atmospheric experience I'm hearing in quite some time. We'll just find a way to move around things so that we can get them. And how people are doing that are by trade-ins. so many dealers across the country that are that do trade-ins have spent countless hours mocking up and crunching some numbers for what they can trade in for the newest king kong or dune or it look i told somebody this recent week they said i want to trade in this and this towards a harry potter and i said the game hadn't even come out yet and they said well but i know i'm going to want one and i said well i would just wait just wait you know when it's released you might not want it and if you trade me in your games now i can't really give them back to you i mean they're already going to be mine they're going to be gone they're going to be resold and he just pushed i just want it and i said all right as long as you know that this is a form of non-refundable i can't get back a game that i resell so people are trading in in a frantic effort but that guy's getting himself a harry potter that's for game sure and i'm getting myself a what oh i got it here a fun house fun so yeah trade-ins are hot right now a lot of people trading in games also training up this week i'm going to give them credit dudes i'm going to tip our veteran caps to the pinball media yeah training up as pinball media because in pinball media now in 2025 it's quantity No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying what I love is when I'm working, there's so much I can consume now. These media events are really priming us listeners and consumers of their media content, and I've always got something. I love it. It doesn't get better. Used to, people were like, well, just by default, I might not like Kaneda, but there's a lot to listen to. Now he's got competition because all of these media events, people are podcasting weekly. They're podcasting sometimes multiple times a week. They're putting videos out there. They got their game cams out there. Some of them have an actual professional tripod and some lighting. I respect to those people that put in a little editing work. So there's just between the Kerry Hardys of the world, the triple drains of the world, the Don Pinball podcasts of the world, even the streamers of the world. people still streaming pinball there's so many people out there creating content um and some of it i don't like but guess what i'm so addicted to pinball i consume it anyway so i have to give everybody in the pinball media our our brethren and sistering is it sistering cistern cistern is a word but that's like a cistern something else it's not like a it's like a cistern a waterway or something i don't know but all of our brothers and sisters out there that are creating content I love you. Please keep it up. Because Stern is even finally getting that. They're understanding that a way to expand the pinball hobby is not just by making people drink beer at dirty old bars. That helps. But it's also in the community and the media that we have built, which is why we built TPN in the first place. We're always ahead of our time, aren't we, Dennis?
    96:05
    I don't know if that's true or not. But Stern's finally getting that. That's why they're doing these media events because this kind of stuff matters. Pinball media does matter. It does influence because otherwise people don't know what they're buying. They've got to find it. They've got to go out there and drive. No, we bring that pinball action right to you. Hot pinball action. So thank you to all of you pinball media creators because you're doing a lot of job, and I think that's fantastic. And some of you are doing exceptional work. Who did I disagree with this last week? It was my friend. Who was it? Shit, shit, shit. Hold up, hold up.
    96:40
    I'll give him a shout out. Triple, no, it wasn't Triple Drain. It was... Silver Bar Chronicles. No, it was Ralph. It was Ralph and... Ralph, Kale, and Jamie. So they were doing... What one was it? Because I saw the live stream with Ralph. Oh, he puts in some quality work, some fucking wonderful stuff. Shout out to Retro Ralph. But it was virtual. Jamie, the new... Oh, it was Wormhole, but now it's TB... Jamie, I'm fucking up your name. TB... It's Jamie. J-B-S. the JBS Pinball Show. New pinball show, but old pinball show because it's still a carrier from Warren Hall. They did a podcast and Kale, one of the people I love more than anybody in this whole hobby and industry. Just love Kale Hernandez with Electric Bat. Twiggy Award winning Electric Bat. But I disagreed with him to a level that I have not disagreed with anybody in quite some time. He totally botched it. And everybody right now, it's like the argument to made because he's like it's like when you when you argue against a greg or a dennis creasel the community loves these people so much that just by default they're going to disagree with me no matter what so you had some people support you on the tariff thing publicly i saw like where were those messages those messages are like three i mean it wasn't it was those messages come loud but they're behind the scenes they don't want to put that out there i mean i saw one come back oh kale you're so wrong i'll still trend you up but man you were wrong he did this whole assessment with Harry Potter where it was almost as if he was finding out what the theme was for the first time ever he was just so off base like what's this Harry Potter oh yeah I don't think this is a big theme at all uh not even only for pinball but at all like nobody's gonna care about Harry Potter I haven't heard anybody talking about Harry Potter and I was like Cale you're high like I don't know what you're talking I know he doesn't like Jersey Jack pinball games as much so maybe there was a there but it was to a degree that i was almost going to like pull off the road and call him be like dude what are you talking about but he does wonderful terrific work i need to go down to electric bat kale and rachel will you guys have me do you think they would not now no just because he's wrong doesn't mean that i don't love him i love you and you're wrong what do you mean that's the dentist statement that's what you would say with me no you don't use words like love No deal of the week this week. What? Don't you have a fun house?
    99:02
    Get yourself a fun house. Look, people, as always, I'm just here to report the facts because numbers don't lie, neither do my opinions on pinball market trends.
    99:16
    Dennis, where can people catch you? They can always email me, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. You can email us at thepinballshow at gmail.com. Make sure to sign up to patreon.com slash thepinballshow. Oh, you guys loved last episode's dedicated Patreon-exclusive club member episode. You're going to love this one maybe even more. I'll try to do what I can not to get myself in trouble, though. That's all I can promise. Very few of the distros, I think, are in our Patreon. Oh, you would be surprised.
    99:45
    Except now. Now that they've heard me, they're all going to subscribe. You know how many manufacturers message me, even more so even this week than most, of, oh, the dealers are pissed at you now. You've got so many pissed off dealers. And it's nothing that I do directly. So these manufacturers, you go back and tell them, you're mad at him because he's more creative and working harder? Guys can't bitch to us about that. We're good when our distros are working really hard. But yeah, I make them mad. It's what it is. There's a few of them out there that I love. Where was I going with that? You were going to say that it was time for your sponsorship plug. Oh, yeah. Where am I at? But first, SDTM, the video series we do on YouTube, myself and Greg Bone. We did a Dune Pinball first impressions. Yeah, I haven't watched it, but I do like your thumbnail with his blue eyes. You know, I spent more time on that thumbnail than most people spend editing an entire podcast.
    100:40
    That just shows my lack of efficiency when it comes to editing. Oh, and so sad. But, like, I'm not very efficient.
    100:49
    There's a standard I like to set. But thank you for the, because nobody usually cares about thumbnails, but that makes it all worthwhile. But yeah, you got to go check it out. I do think you in particular would like the first impressions because we do dive down deep into what we know about the Dune game. And yeah, we know a lot about that game. So go check that out. But yeah, of course, the sponsor of this show, the pinball show is none other than Flip and Out Pinball.
    101:20
    Pinball, I think flipping out. Flipping out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from flipping out. Buy, buy, buy. Product showcase this week has got to be Dune and King Kong. They don't even need to fight amongst themselves. Buy, buy, buy. I think the holy matrimony of Kong hugging that big old worm and the worms wearing a veil. I don't know why. Just wearing like a bridal veil. Man, what a honeymoon that would be. Can you picture that? Think of the porn between those two. buy, purchase, go play Dune and King Kong. That's the product showcase at Flippin' Out Pinball.
    101:57
    King Kong, right now I can get you, if you're a location, first run pro, maybe even a first run pro for non-locations, but certainly a first run premium, we can get you that. And if you want to trade in a game, we'll do that. Harry Potter pre-order, because they're open. If you want to order one, you can order one right now, the easiest way. So we had the domain harrypotterpinball.com. We have now since kind of funneled all of that through FlippinOutPinball.com. So you can go to FlippinOutPinball.com. We're opening up the website for pre-orders. And again, it's in there. It says, look, we don't want your money per se, but since other dealers are taking money, and then you can't convince a lot of customers that if I'm not taking money and somebody else is taking money, then they'll get in line quicker if they give money to somebody. It doesn't matter what I say. Some people just don't believe me. So if you find yourself in that belief set, give me your money. I will take it. It is not refundable, just like it is everywhere else. But if you have to give me your money, it's not going to change your place in line. But if you want to give me money, it's open to it. All those details are in FlippinOutPenball.com. For those of you who did preorder already with us, and there are a lot of you, big, super congratulations. you've got one not only in queue but secured guaranteed model of your choice so whenever that does come out we'll be sending out information here shortly too uh to just re-emphasize that you don't have to give us money but you do have a spot in line you're not going anywhere and it was as one of the largest dealers for jersey jack pinball i think you're going to be happy with your order and your support through flipping out pinball pre-owned games right now i've got a lot coming in i'm about to i got a lord of the rings in dennis that is so nice that i might replace the one i've got in my own collection so regardless pretty nice like a minty guy called it's in a basement it's his only pinball machine he bought it brand new back when it was released so one of those things oh shit so new that he didn't even know the magnet didn't work and the fuse looked so old and it was burned out and i just replaced it and it was just a fuse like that's how old that thing was but it's oh it's mint minty but he did replace the flippers so he was no he was not a noob now he did replace it to the high flippers rather than the medium ones that hobbyists now kind of flock to for lord of the rings but regardless there's going to be lord of the rings up for sale here soon jaws premium i didn't get as many as i've ordered but i still have like one or two left so nab those up free shipping dungeons and dragons metallica's uncanny x-men's avatars Elton John's, you name it, we've got it over at Flippin' Out Pinball. A lot of games are vaulted, so make sure you get a rush before they go away forever. I did finally sell my GTF, so I think it's time for me to open up a signature for myself.
    104:51
    GTF! Signature! You got screwed. Lost a lot of money. Will Phase 5 include Cuphead? People are trading in Cuphead before it's even released. It's really weird. I'm telling you, pinball people get it all backwards. All right, toppers, expression lighting kits, shaker motors, we've got it. Flipping out pinball media channel. Over at YouTube, Joel streams for us. He did a chat stream breaking down all the first impressions from Dennis Creasel. Tom Graff was on there. Thank you, Tom. Jared was on there from Joel's brother. So that was a lot of fun.
    105:31
    And, yeah, you guys entertained me, thoroughly entertained me. I don't know what he's streaming this week I think we may do Metallica because I don't think King Kong is going to be here yet so maybe a Metallica to show off all that new code and stuff, maybe Lord of the Rings or somehow, I don't know Dennis teaches people something that's easier it's pretty simple, I'm just going to tell them do not be wrong, when you look at King Kong the best way involved has to be the gong and always practice safe pinball and I love you, even if you're wrong
    106:05
    Thank you.