Screaming to the end of the week, it's Don's Pinball Podcast, episode number 75, the golden anniversary episode. Coming up, we've got some news on new Elvira drops just out of nowhere, just today. We got Labyrinth coming up later today. We got even more stuff to talk about. Let's kick in. I can't believe that I'm coming at you guys for the 75th time already this year. And it doesn't feel like I've been rushing or pulled in 10 directions. Well, not from pinball anyway, from life, of course. But here we are. Let's gather around again. It's Friday. It's storming here in the center of Wisconsin. Fall is creeping around the corner, and so is Pinball Expo next week, which I am hyped for. And in preparation for Expo, Stern is doing a little other news drop. So this was rumored to be the month that the Elvira toppers were going to get rerun. These things were selling for $1,500, $2,500, at least listed on Pinside. And then, boom, they're going to come out with another run of them, and it was supposed to be this month. Well, it turns out they're not only coming out with the Elvira toppers. Also, they're doing a new edition of Elvira. So I got the email this morning from Stern with the teaser video saying Elvira's coming, you know, and then some big glitter red lips there at the end. Didn't think much of it other than, well, okay, they got a new factory. They'll do another run of the premiums, right? We'll probably look at 10.5. But no, no, no, good sir. They're going full JP30th on this. They're releasing another 500 limited editions of Elvira. I think there's more limited editions than there were non-limited editions of this game. But 12,999, 500 episodes, 500 edition size units will be produced of what they're calling the Blood Red Kiss Edition. Now, Deuce has been trickling in throughout the morning. I just saw on App Arcade that he mentioned there's going to be black and white art in like a blood red powder coat. The red powder coat, I get it. It's been done before. uh they probably have the same armor i would imagine because it looks like blood dripping but black and white art now are they talking about you know black and white with accents for the back glass because if they go the jp 30th route there should be new cabin and art and a new back glass at least for this edition but you know are they just going to do like black and white on the back glass or are we going to get l virus house of horrors tell me they're they're doing this. Elvira's House of Horrors, OG layout, but with black and white art like Munsters was, or the black and white editions of Twilight Zone people have been making. I don't know if I like that. I don't know if I'm a fan of that at all. I dig the black and white aesthetic. It worked on Munsters. When that show originally came out, it was black and white. And it was kind of cool to see the black and white play field, but with colored accents here and there. I think it worked for Munsters. I don't know yet how I feel about this. I want to see it. I want to see this game. Probably what they'll do is a reveal a little bit later today of some more detail. They're going to stepwise progression here, but I just don't know how viral with black and white play field. The art is so good on there already with all the purple hues and everything. Man, mod makers probably have already fired up their printing machines coming out with new art blades and things, but this thing, this thing should come with the art blades, right? I mean, that's what the, you know, if they follow the JP 30th model. So anyway, that is wild. Um, I've already heard some mixed, uh, mixed reviews on this from the distributors. Some of them are very excited. They can't wait to have more product to sell. They think it's going to sell well. Others are thinking, you know, maybe, uh, the, the last runner premiums had difficulty selling through. So we'll see what happens either way. I think, you know, one thing that's got going for is the addition of only 500. So that's what will be produced. They can produce that, I guess, like in a week now. But we should see by the end of the month, Elvira is running out. So Stern will probably have this at Expo now that I'm thinking about it. You know, they released this now. You've got one week to get hyped for it. And then we should be able to see in person in Expo the black and white play field with the red glitter armor that this is probably going to come with. Are you hyped for it? Are you not? Let me know. Comment below on the Facebook page or email me, donspinballpodcast at gmail.com, which is the pipeline to the Don line if you need to get any kind of direct access. So that was wild. It's been just overwhelming with news just the last few days. And then, boom, it's still dropping. And we've still got more to come later today. What else is going on? Last night, I went out to the distribution warehouse and I picked up my Venom Premium. It is now here and set up. if you want to follow along the antics that went along with that unboxing, a couple of fun things happened. First off, I decided to save the box, so I laid it down flat, and then you get to see me struggle dragging this machine out of the box, for one. Number two, I got to test out the Pin Boost from Pinball Adventures. What this is is a two-part system, right? There's a powder-coated metal, you know, rolly wedge that you stick underneath the machine when it's in its vertical orientation to help lean it forward onto the front legs which lifts the back up just enough to slide an airbag underneath And you inflate this airbag this airbag designed to lift car vehicles and it will then lift up your machine from its ground position to an area high enough that you can then put the legs on without having to reach down and put the thing up on a stool, which is the typical way that we do these. It is much safer on the back. I like the way that the product rolled forward, at least. I think if nothing else, that should be commercially available just because it's always hard to lift these things up from a deadlift from the ground. But if it's already six to eight inches up off the ground, that makes that part at least a little easier. It also would give you enough clearance to put the lift carts underneath too if you use that method. But I went ahead and tried out this prototype that I bought from Pinball Adventures, and it works, man. I've been testing it out and trying it, switching off legs to put pin gulps on and things, and I've been happy with it. It even lifts Lebowski up, and that machine is 800 pounds. So check that out on the live stream. You know, scroll through. It's kind of toward the mid part. You know, my head was in a weird place. I think I was pre-viral last night or something or low blood pressure or dehydrated. But there was some antics for sure. I also started putting in some mods that I've received, flip mods. I bought a shooter rod from them. They sent me some other things to go show off. So we were doing that. I got my Rocket City Pinball start button that I paid $30 for. It is fantastic. I do like these things. I'm a fan of the start buttons. So you can check out all of that. I was able to play through Venom. It's playing great out of the box. Knock on wood. I haven't had any issues just yet, but I've only put maybe 10 games through there. Wasn't even logged in. It's still sitting where I unboxed it. So that's exciting. If you want to get in on getting one of these Venoms, or if you want to get in on the list for the Elvira Premium, where could you go to? I think you could go see our friends at Mad Pinball because they're taking an interest list right now. Don't be sad. Be mad. Be glad. Tell your dad. Who should you email over there at Mad Pinball? Jeff at MadPinball.com. That's the way to get through to him. Eight four words that rhyme with all. Knives and all. Knives and all. Need a pen, come at it all. All right, here come the robot voices. Kid ball, kid ball, kid ball, kid ball, kid ball, kid ball, kid ball, kid ball. Y'all can't see it, but I'm doing like my own little personal get jiggy with it move during that jingle band fire. So in other marketing news, I received my next round of T-shirts that I've gotten in. I'm going to do a little side here right now. I've got comfort fit shirts in now from Sunday Cool Tees recommended to me by a friend. They came in. I did graphics on the front and the back. I picked the two greatest selling and most popular graphic designs, the skull with the flippers and everything and the mushrooms that are pop bumpers, full face on the front. And then I got a silkscreen logo of just the circular podcast logo on the back between the shoulder blades. I got them in two different colors. One's like a kind of a bluer slate gray. The other one's more of a charcoal. They fit great. A lot better than even the ones I was using with Sticker Mule. So if you want to check these out, I've got them ready to go. The price is $30 delivered to the U.S., but they all come with the stickers now too. Patreon members, of course you get a discount. Just email me. Let me know what you got. I've got all sizes in stock except for smalls right now. But if you're medium, large, extra large, or if you're XX, buddy, I got you covered. Front and back, top to bottom, inside out. Let me know. Just posted some pictures up on the Facebook page. Go check them out. I'm digging. these new shirts, man. We're doing things. We're pushing products. We're creating things that I would buy that I like. And so I think it's been a good strat going forward. So check those out there on the Facebook page. What else do we have to talk about? We've got a ton of things to talk about. Let's talk about some Pulp Fiction. So if you'll remember from a month, six weeks ago, Mr. Josh Sharpe there was talking on an interview and he mentioned that he believes that the first SKUs for Pulp Fiction were due to leave the factory in October, which was a bit revolutionary at the time because we weren't anticipating these to get made until like February, March at the earliest. But I have heard through means, rumors, birdies are tweeting, that Pulp Fiction is on the line right now at a factory, probably at CGC, where they're getting made. Now, in what numbers, in what capacity, who really knows? I have not heard anything about that. I don't know if they're making two games a week just to get things out on location. I don't know if they're going to do over a hundred a week. I don't know if they're doing the LEs. I don't know if they're doing the Black Door Special Editions for locations with the bill acceptors or bill acceptor ready. That I don't know. Who knows? Hopefully we'll find out something soon. But it was interesting that, yeah, this just seemed to come to fruition. Something is on the factory floor, apparently at CGC for Pulp Fiction. So we will have to wait and see. The speculation I have been doing, I know the limited edition sold out those $1,000 deposits for that juicy looking topper and the bad mother flipper emblem down there on the apron. Also, you get mirror blades and a little chrome bezel for the speaker panel. All that looks great. And we saw initially on Pinside you know after the rush was on for these things and they quickly sold out people were offering up to to take over their deposit Now that was months ago and we still months away from I think people being asked to pay their full balance for these games. And in that time, we're going to see Elvira's Hot Kiss black and white out. We're going to see Venom's hitting out. We're going to see Stern with their new Cornerstone release by January, February. We're going to see something new from Jersey Jack. Labyrinth is coming out. Pinball Brothers has something coming out too. Another run of Aliens I'm going to talk about. And Elements is out. So all of these new games, the gaming landscape is going to be different in March 2024 than it was, you know, what, July, June, May 2023 was. So I'm wondering if people that are hanging on to these LE deposits will have maybe moved on to, oh, you know, I need to get that LE Jaws. I need to get the black and white version of Elements or whatever ends up coming out. where they end up selling their LE deposits for cost maybe. I don't know if that'll happen, but I don't think we're going to see a rush of people selling their $1,000 deposits for $3,000 here after the first of the year. So I can't wait to see what happens there. Anything else I hear, I'll put out there. It'll probably hit the Patreon first and the rest of every fan that's out there. So, you know, five bucks a month, get in on it. I've been putting content up there a lot more frequently and people seem to be digging it, man. We're having a good community, a good time up there. That's five bucks, man. you know buy me a couple games of godfather that's what i say um but yeah so pulps are being come out or coming out um i really don't know if they're gonna do the ellies first which i think they should since you know those are the ones that you know commanded the most money and everything but maybe there may be some parts delays with the topper and they just want to run these special editions i don't know i i could get an email from uh from my district that i haven't ordered at um at any point now so we'll have to wait and see pulp fiction's playing great i hope there'll be some more at Expo that we can all play with. Maybe Mark Ritchie will be hanging out. Seems like a cool guy to go meet. What else do we have? Oh, I made an appearance on the pinball chinwag. I'm telling you, I'm making a difference in the community. This was fantastic. I was invited onto Gonzo's pinball flipperama. He does a every few week podcast called the chinwag. They're located over there in the United Kingdom. So, you know, my British invasion is ongoing. We recorded for a full hour. It's up on their YouTube page. And I think it was a great conversation. I mean, I looked up and we had just started and then all of a sudden it's been over an hour. Great conversation with those blokes over there. Always fun to make some European connections. I want to be big in Europe. Can I continue to play European domination? You know, I'm a big European fan. We've been going there the last two summers. And if you want to go there, holler at me, dude, I'll help you out. It's easier than you think it is. Don't let cost or anything be a barrier. there are ways to do it. But yeah, go check that out. Great conversation. You know, if you've got yourself a little road trip or a long commute at work, it works good as just an audio podcast as well. So go give him, you know, a like and a share and a subscribe and whatever. Moving on. New food code dropped. Man, it's been nonstop this week. So out of nowhere, 0.98 code is now available for Foo Fighters. It took me overnight to get it to download on my Wi-Fi, but I woke up this morning, went down there, game was still on. It had downloaded and installed, and it was able to play it a bit. I need to restart the game and then really kind of go through all the modes to see all these new call-outs. But that's what was reported was in addition to the typical bug fixes that you get with a new code update, there's also new call-outs. And I started hearing some just pushing the buttons before the game even starts. So I'm hoping that they've really fleshed out the other modes. I played through Chicago and I did hear some cool new quips from the Alien Overlord Master. One of them was an internet meme. It was all your deep dish pizza are belong to me, which takes me back to the Newgrounds days. That was fun hearing that. I can't wait to go through and see what else is in there. I still think that Mr. Jack Danger should have voiced the radio DJ for Chicago and I didn't hear that. That's why I played Chicago first to see if he had appeared in there. Maybe it is and I just need to play better or longer to hear that. Go check out the food code. It's still not at 1 yet. It's still not 1.0 code so there's still more to come um i wonder if we're going to get uh first the 1.0 code or if we're going to get the topper that's rumored to be coming out for foo fighters a a sleuth on the internet in the community went through some of the line by line code for foo fighters and found lines of code for foo topper which we knew was coming at some point but also for foo topper head control leading to speculation that this will be the second coming of the black knight topper with the movable head and everything and the insults. I would love to see like a motorized Voltron head for the FooBot that's incorporated into the game. Topper idea I had was to recreate a fictitious play set that you could have ordered for this fictitious Saturday morning show and have that up there with the action figures and everything. Whatever, if the Topper comes with some kind of action figures for each member of the band and a movable FooBot head that's motorized and maybe talks to you, I think that's fantastic. I would love to have a Voltron-styled Dave Grohl head moving around on top of my pinball machine. That would be awesome. So we're looking forward to that. When are we going to get it? Who knows? It may be there for sale at Expo, for all I know, in the way Stern just drops information as soon as it's ready to go. So we're looking forward to some of that. Also, this popped up yesterday. Pinball Brothers. We knew they were doing something. There was speculation that they may have a new game, their follow to Queen Rhapsody and Champions Edition or that they may have been doing this real rumored remake is it Twilight Zone that seems to be pretty much dead from what I hearing Maybe it was a thing at some point and that why it seems so strong of a rumor for that remake Regardless they have come out with the Ellen Ripley edition of Alien. So this will be their version of Alien that'll be in production from here going forward, and it will come with new sculpts. It'll have an available topper, which probably means it's going to be costing extra and not come with it out of the box. sculpts, but there'll be more movie clips. So I think what we are getting is for sure code update. We're going to get sculpts that will be going forward in the new game. And there'll also be a topper available. And I think the topper, the sculpts and the new code will be available to all versions of Alien that have been purchased prior, which I think is a great move for them to do. But if you've been on the fence on ordering an Alien at some point, this is the game for you. Now, this will be the definitive version going forward. No word yet on price. I haven't reached out to distributors data mining that yet. But Pinball Magazine's podcast did an interview with the two guys from Pinball Brothers, who it turns out I don't think are actually brothers. And they kind of go through. They're a little bit cagey about some of the details. And some of this was clarified later. It was featured on NAP Arcade as well. So there will be new art as well. That was the other thing. Not full reveal yet. in little words on the teaser photo that they had. It said, you know, final art pending license or approval. So I think that's why they haven't done the full release yet. But if you're a fan of Alien, which it's not a terrible game, it's just not for me for my game room, but I do play it when I come across it. It is something that's relatively rare. I don't see it at a ton of locations. So if you want something new and you're ready and you already got your Stranger Things and your Blood Kiss Edition Elvira ordered and you need something else, Alien will be there. I'm hoping that it's going to be here at the Pinball Expo here next week. I kind of think they would have to have something there. They had Aliens and Queens last year, so they should be able to repeat that. So we should have some word on exactly what sculpts they're talking about. And also, I hope we can see what the topper looks like, because there's so much you can do with an alien topper with that franchise. So Ellen Ripley edition is coming. I'm thinking that she's going to be more prominently displayed as a character. they were saying before they explained it away that when you're playing the alien game you were playing the role of ellen ripley and that's why she wasn't really prominently featured in any of the cut scenes or anything but now they said no we're going to flesh all that out so i don't know if that was maybe a licensing concern that they had early on that they've worked out or what what have you but it looks like a definitive edition of alien is coming out so that will be fun we will look forward to that who's making these sculpts you asked well it's our friend your friend and mine, Lior from The Art of Pinball, right? The mad Israeli, the dude who's captured our hearts with his Godzilla bridge sculpt that I love so much is not only doing sculpts for Dutch Pinball, but apparently Pinball Brothers as well. So these are going to be some cool sculpts. I like his work he does. I think for the price, it's pretty pricey. So this would go into your game that you want to showcase, not necessarily something you would need to go out through each of your, you know, 10 games in your lineup and fill them with Lior stuff. But the fact that it will come like this from the factory going forward, I do like that, sir. Yes, I do. So I'm excited to see what kind of sculpts Lior has come up with for Alien. They'll be included and there'll be a topper as well. Hopefully he designed the topper too. And hopefully he's working on that big Lebowski topper. Waiting to hear more from that. Dutch Pinball is going to be at Expo. They said they aren't bringing any new games, but they haven't said anything other than that. So maybe we'll get to see some glimpse on what Lear's been working with for Dutch Pinball. How fantastic would that be? I'm so hyped for next week. I'm going to be there every day. What else do we have? Today, oh, like save the best for last, the Labyrinth trailer is supposed to come out today. It's Friday the 13th here in the United States of Eagle Land. And we got the teaser trailer already from what turned out to be Barrels of Fun Pinball, right? This was who we'd been calling the mystery pinball company that people leave in the exclamation point flipper stickers everywhere, you know, from here to Tempe, Arizona. They're supposed to have a trailer at some point today. Now, last time they released their teaser trailer at 1 p.m., which is 13 o'clock on the military calendar. 13 hours features prominently in the world of Labyrinth. And so probably since I haven't seen anything yet, it's probably gonna be 1 o'clock this afternoon when a trailer's released. I'm going to do my level best to have a reveal video up on the YouTube channel for Don's Pinball Podcast. So be sure to check that out for some of my instant reactions. That's always fun. People dig those, yo. So, yeah, that's the news wrap of everything we have now. Wait to hear more about Labyrinth. I can't wait for that. Elvira just dropped in our laps with glitter red kisses. Email jeff at madpinball.com. If you want to get on a list for anything, if you want a shirt, I don't have a Wix site yet. I don't have a GoDaddy. You email me at DonSpinballPodcast at gmail.com and let me know what you want, and I will bring that hookup, homie. Oh, yeah. Love that groovy bass line. What's up, everybody? DonSpinballPodcast at gmail.com is the way to get a hold of me. Come on the Facebook page. Give me a follow, man. We're almost to 600. Email Jeff. Tell him I sent you. And everybody else, I got new gear for your back, man. You don't got to be topless this winter. I think that's all I have. Always a good time Episode 75 Can you believe it? Later