Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 3rd, and this is episode 50. We made it. We're over the hill. That's 50 years old. Kick, stretch, kick. 50. Did you ever see that skit from SNL? No. Then that made no sense to you. But it was funny back in the 90s. Well, that's impressive for an SNL skit from the 90s to be funny. There were a few of them. There were a few. I'm Tony. Oh, okay. I'm Dennis. And what have you been doing, Dennis? Oh, gosh. Nothing. Nothing good. I did go out to the monthly pinball tournament at the 403 club last night they have a guardians of the galaxy now so how was it I didn't get to go obviously because of I'm on call and we're having issues at work so I couldn't go but I saw the post on Facebook that they had it and there might have been some under the breath swearing as I stared at my work computer and knew you were off having a chance to play it I only got one whole game in on it. I didn't get any tournament games on it. I did get one in, though, before. I got there early enough because I saw that it was set up. So I was like, I'm going to get in there. I'm going to at least get a game on it. I liked it for, I mean, when you look at it, when you're playing it, different people had different reactions. I didn't hear anyone who didn't really like it, but some people look at it and they feel very Metallica about it. I look at it and I get more of the Iron Man feel because of the war machine kickback is the rocket kickback and things like that. But it's fun to load up Groot. I like the orb shot. And it's a Borg design, so I don't think you can backhand those ramps. I think you have to do those front-hand shots just like you would on either Metallica or Iron Man. So it's got a pretty significant challenge amount. My ball times were not Iron Man short, but probably about Metallica short, which Metallica was a pretty difficult game for me. Not quite as bad as Iron Man on time, but, you know, challenging. and very colorful and of course the sounds are fun so that was really neat and I also got to in tournament actually play Walking Dead and the reason why I'm going to note that we'll hit it in the pinball segment but there was actually a surprise code update to Walking Dead and they were installing that just before the tournament started so I got to do a little bit with that other than that not a whole lot going on I thought I'd note a couple other little things in the intro, though. I've been kind of, fingers crossed, holding out hope that we were going to get a total nuclear annihilation on location. I hadn't heard anyone planning to do it, but I just kind of hoped that we would see it because it was such a fun white wood. And as we noted, I'm aware of one area collector who had indicated interest in acquiring one. Well, I did see in one of our area Facebook discussions, which actually was talking about Guardians of the Galaxy, someone had mentioned that they really wanted to play TNA or total nuclear annihilation and unfortunately the route operator I thought was the most likely to get it said that they couldn't afford to roll the dice on another spooky machine and when someone else weighed in saying but TNA would be a top earner they responded that it can't earn when it's broken three out of seven days a week and so while I remember the last time I ever saw the Rob Zombie game on route it was broken I did not realize it was breaking that many times But it just goes to show how one bad experience can really turn people off to a boutique company. And now at this stage, I don't think we'll ever see one en route in the Kansas City area, at least not while it's in production. Yeah, probably not. I think that's a safe assumption. And the only other thing I'll note is I heard on one of the other pinball podcasts I listened to, a Slam Tilt podcast, which just went on hiatus for about a month. they mentioned our episode with Nick from North American Pinball Tour on our EM Talk. And they actually also mentioned something about how Nick had secured them some super secret game that they aren't yet revealing. I thought that was interesting because naturally, who could resist but telling us what that game was? So we held off on announcing what the game was on the episode with Nick. however i'm ever so tempted to go ahead and scoop them on it uh i don't let let let them have their no no no we we should do a little blackmail we should like demand something something something juicy something that like they gotta give us something this is this is the high-powered politicking of of podcasts the listeners are getting into the world i just what could i demand And from the podcast that has everything, I don't know. What would they give us? Now, maybe they should suggest something. But no, no, it'll be interesting when that gets announced. But it has absolutely nothing to do with us, actually, so I have no interest in discussing it. But anyway, I just wanted to note that we heard about that. We appreciate them liking that episode. It was a lot of fun for us to do. We don't talk electromechanical a lot, so it was a treat to have Nick. Oh, yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was a great night. And the feedback I've gotten from outside the podcasting realm about that episode has all been positive. So what have you been doing, Tony? I have been working, but really I've been doing a lot more than that. I have been spending more time playing Factorio. I've been spending a bunch more time playing Cold Waters. So I don't have a lot of new video game stuff to talk about because everything I've been playing are games that I've already talked about more than anybody cares to hear about. but I've also been listening and I thought it would be done by now but it hasn't I am listening still to the latest Brandon Sanderson book in his Stormlight Archive and it is so good I'm so happy with this book I love all of the Stormlight books they are his kind of magnum opus they're his Dark Tower they're his Wheel of Time and And it's got an amazing level of Brandon Sanderson. I don't know if you've read anything by him, but he's all about magic systems. Like all of his worlds have very specific magic systems that, unlike, you know, in a lot of magic fantasy stuff or anime or movies or whatever, where basically your power is just whatever it needs to be at the time for the plot, his systems have rules that are laid down from day one. These are the rules, and there's no, oh, the power of his heart and friendship is letting him get more strong. No, these are the rules. It works according to these rules, and this is the only way it works. And I really enjoy every magic system he's made has been unique and interesting, but I really, really like this one. and it's been a fun listen so far because as i'm listening to it and i'm going through it i've kind of formed in my mind where the story was going you know how you do when you're reading a book or something right and i kind of formed in my mind where the story was going and i kind of figured it's like okay this one specific item is going to be uh probably the climatic end of the story where it'll this will be the big hit at the end and then everything else will be clean up and then it happened and there were still 20 hours left in the book and i'm like okay i am completely wrong with where this is going and it's still going and it's really good and i've been really happy with it hmm no i don't think i've ever read him uh who helped me because i know you were you recommended it i had once wanted to read a fantasy series that actually was really heavy in magic because most of them i felt like it was just sort of tacked on who was who was the author who wrote the books where the worlds were really interlaced with magic and then the tanks came and ruined everything man i can't remember now it wasn't him though no it wasn't i don't recognize this name okay well that's the only that's the only really magic magical world i remember reading that was dark sword trilogy okay dark sword trilogy because that that's the one where everybody's got magic and then the main character doesn't have any magic. So he's, yeah. Yeah, and it's Margaret Jim Weisz and Tracy Hickman. Yeah, and they've done a lot of fantasy books. Yeah. So, yeah, that was the one where then, yeah, tanks came. Yeah, the tanks. Spoiler, the tanks came. Yeah. Okay, well, good. I'm glad you found another book that works really well in the fantasy setting. Yeah, no, I tend to find a fair number of good ones. Of course, like I said, they're mainly, I hit the big ones. I mean, Ice and Fire, I mean, Wheel of Times, obviously. One of the grand fantasy things, provided you can handle the tics of the writer. because there's lots of crossing arms and harrumphing and super, super detailed descriptions of every single outfit that anybody wears ever. And my wife's sticking her tongue out at me. It's her favorite series. Yeah, I've never read it, but it is exceedingly popular. Yeah, and long. Very long. That's the main thing I've also heard about it. It's very long. well since we have a long well i have no idea this episode will be long but we definitely have a lot of individualized topics under our two categories so let's go ahead and transition on into pinball the first couple i know are going to be quick though uh one i kind of already hinted at which was walking dead surprise code update hooray no one knew this one was coming because it the stern of the union newsletter that uh Zach Sharpe now that he's in charge of marketing with Stern Pinball has started up. It didn't mention this one. So, and I read the notes, or at least most of them. It was long. It was a massive patch, and patch is probably the accurate way to describe it. They did add some new code things, certain, I think, some of the insert stuff. There's some aspects about the scoring and some of the modes. Like, I think there were a few modes where the Jackpots actually started at zero points for the first time you hit them, and then they would give you points. So those have been changed to actually have higher starting values because zero is kind of low. But pretty much everything else were patches from things that there were ways, if you got deep enough in the game, that it could reset the entire system to just other finicky little things that weren't always working right. So there was a massive amount of cleanup to it. And as I noted, I did get a game in on it with the new code. The baseline stuff's all presented the same way, all the shots. So there's nothing dramatic from when you're early in the game. You're not going to notice anything. But anyway, it is there, so it was a little bit of news. Next little bit of news topic I thought I wanted to mention real quick would be Highway Pinball. They, I think just after our episode 48, actually, made a public announcement about essentially the state of the company. They acknowledged that things were worse off than they originally thought when they came in with their cash infusion. No. I know. Your mind is blown, Tony. And I'm sure this will also blow your mind. It's taken them longer to get things going than they thought it would. No. I can't believe it. I refuse to believe that. Okay. That state of denial, hold it as long as possible. Keep the dream alive, because my dreams have died. They did indicate there is still the plan to release the limited edition versions of the Alien Pinball game soon, and that they are continuing to make more standard edition games, and I believe I've seen separate reports of more of those going out. However, they have now finally indicated what I think a lot of people were noticing, and that is those who pre-ordered under the old system cannot all get their games first. New buyers are going to the front of the line over at least a portion of the pre-order buyers. And that's why you're seeing people who are putting deposits down with CoinTaker, for example, are then getting their game in less than a month. And there are other people that have had money in since 2015 that still don't have the game, that ordered SE versions. It's not just the LE people waiting. So it's the only way. They don't have the cash to do it otherwise. And it's also not everyone has gotten a refund yet. There are pending refund requests. They've acknowledged that, and they've acknowledged they don't have the money. They have to sell more games to get enough money to do the refunds. So that's the state. I'm actually, if anything, amazed that people are actually buying games, considering it's flat out, well, we need people to buy games so we can afford to give refunds to the people because there's problems with our game. I understand the economy of it. I understand that they have to have money coming in to build games. And so obviously they're going to have to have, when somebody buys a game, they're going to send it to them immediately because that's the money they're going to use to build the games for the people who've already paid money years ago to get the game. Sure. I mean, I get it in the sense that those that are buying now, because they're buying through the distributors with a refundable deposit, they're not really at risk of anything because Highway doesn't get the money until the game is built and shipped to the distributor. So CoinTaker holds onto that deposit and if you want out, you get your money back. So essentially anyone who wants to buy now they're not facing any purchase risk. The risk that I'm a bit surprised at in terms of people still being interested would be if Highway goes away I would think that the fear about part acquisition would start to become an issue because I don't know how much of it's customized. and difficult to, you know, it's the reason why do people worry about getting a Zacharia game or getting an Atari game? It's because the parts are kind of rare, some of the parts at least. Yeah. I don't know. I also don't know how many, though, they're really selling. I mean, it was a big to-do when a container came over with games, but that was 20 games. So when you think about it, it's not, I mean, the big Lebowski had over 50 that went out, I thought. So this is not like impressive numbers yet. Sort of a separate, it wasn't a part of this announcement, but I want to throw it into this segment, was Barry Osler, famed pinball designer from the Williams era. He did games like Space Shuttle and I think Junkyard was his, the Pinbot games. He is contracted with Highway and is working on game number two for them. And maybe game number three as well, actually, I think. so how much of that is something that you can actually think will ever happen i remain deeply skeptical i mean i'm i bet you i i bet you his design is done i don't i don't know about it getting made i think it's a long shot i i still lean towards that highway won't be able to survive this uh this alien thing i maybe they do enough alien sales to right the ship basically recoup their investment uh get everyone their games so it's not a total disaster but after that i would assume they'd pull the plug but i don't know once you have all the tooling up and everything and the line becomes efficient and they can hold on to employees for the construction and you know maybe it makes sense but i don't know it's a their current price point on alien is high i know pinball is expensive now but i mean eight thousand you're that's a crowded market houdini's are cheaper than that stern pros are cheaper than that you can get stern premiums about that price i mean the only ones that are really over them honestly is jersey jack and and dutch so it's just it is what it is but i like how you just just dropped houdini into that list because that's another thing that i'm still waiting for yeah uh i mean they indicated i thought an intention to actually be ready to ship by by year end and i wasn't really going to talk about American Pinball in the context of Houdini, at least in the pinball segment this time. But I don't know if they're going to make that or not. They have been, their programmer is pretty active on pin side. So he's been constantly doing updates. So I've constantly seen the photos of the parts coming in and things like that. So I've seen the incremental steps of production. I do think it's a little interesting though, that they did whip together those prototypes so fast, and there was so much praise, you know, that three-month turnaround. Yeah. The Gottlieb design style. People, three months wasn't anything special. Gottlieb did it for years. No one liked the result, but Gottlieb did it for years. But it's sort of funny. It's like, hey, look, we built a game in three months, and then it's nine months later and we're still waiting for it sort of thing. Or almost nine months. Yeah, but I can understand. I think that was completely built around getting them the kind of press. They had to have something to counteract where they were due to their whole issue. They had to do something, and I think it worked really well for them. Yeah, no. There's not really been any blowback. And they were very clear when that happened that the expectation wasn't until the end of the year that they'd be ready to ship games to buyers. So they've not missed any timelines. I just thought it was an interesting approach, an approach I wouldn't recommend they do on future games, but they're in a position that I could easily see them doing future games. Yeah, at this point, I'm not willing to call, which is surprising because I honestly thought that company was dead. not horribly long ago when the initial outburst happened a year ago. But now I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Well, if we do what we did last year for our next episode, which will be the last one of December, I believe we could do our year-end review and we can talk about all the predictions we missed. Yeah, I was thinking about doing that for this and for video games next episode. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about so that's what we're going to plan on folks so there you go sneak peek at episode 51 uh all right let's go to pinball topic number three now this one yeah this was going to be interesting this was a lot of fun this is deep root pinball i know we've mentioned them before but i think we only mentioned them one time and that was back when we realized that they were around and that John Papadiuk commonly referred to as j-pop was associated with them as a pinball designer and for those that don't remember the history John Papadiuk was associated with american pinball and that was a big noteworthy thing because he was associated with his own company zidware which had planned to make three games uh magic girl uh retro atomic zombie adventure land commonly called braza and alice in Wonderland and none of those got made by Zidware and Zidware through J-Pop announced they were out of money American Pinball comes along and says we're going to do a deal with J-Pop he was going to give them a Houdini design they were going to make Magic Girl games they did make the Magic Girl games but they did not use this Houdini design and he was disassociated with the company and they brought in other people who made a whole new Houdini. They just kept the theme. That's it. So that was it in a nutshell. Well, Deep Root had, just a few days ago, an interview with them was published and conducted by This Week in Pinball. I don't know. Have we mentioned This Week in Pinball on the show before? Not that I can recall. I'm not going to say for sure that it hasn't been. I don't remember doing it. Right. Well, okay. There's a website, Weekly Update. Actually, if you want to read about pinball news, it's the best condensed, concise source to find out happenings in pinball on a weekly basis, hence the name, This Week in Pinball. In the show notes, there will be a direct link to their interview with Deep Root because that's the subject of this. But a number of the other podcasts, some of the pinball-only podcasts, rely actually pretty heavily on This Week in Pinball, I think, to build their news segments out. But I'm still, I guess, more traditional or just stuck in my ways of trying to track my own threads. And I don't – obviously, because we're biweekly, we don't go into the depth that you will see in terms of the number of topics that this week in Pinball covers. But anyway, it's a good site to go and bookmark. I follow it. I followed it for months. So it's pretty handy for just reading up on news. Anyway, I think this is our first interview that they've done or at least what I call a long-form interview. And not that it's too long. I think it takes less than five minutes to read, but I wanted to point it out for a couple of reasons. I recommend people go and read it. Number one. Oh, yeah, definitely. Number one. That needs to be read. It does. It really does. I think there are two reasons behind that. The first is the questions are really good. So credit to This Week in Pinball because it actually is an interview that feels like a real interview. It's not rude or anything, but it asks all the relevant questions. the other reason why people need to read it no no this weekend pinball was not rude the other reason that one needs to read it is because the responses from deep root pinball are a delicious examination of the psychology of an attorney that almost comes across as a villain in a john grissom novel it was fascinating i bet in reality he's he's probably a very nice person to get along with but wow i have to say these were some bold answers and they are i uh he gives a good interview i'll say that much because it was yeah i'm reading this in my the rainmaker a time to kill voice going on here like holy cow he is not pulling punches so well and part of me and when i read it part of me thought and wondered if this what might not have been one of those things or he might not be one of those people who it is better to actually have heard because i wonder a voice tone would have changed it so it wouldn't have come off quite so um snooty hmm it does um it does read off a little lawyerly would be how i describe and i mean i don't the whole time in the interview it's noting that the response is deep root it wasn't saying the person's name i I think it was the head of Deep Root who is an attorney. We'll get a little bit into that in a bit. I wanted to touch on just briefly. I'm not going to read the interview out loud. People need to just go and read it at This Week in Pinball. But here are the bullet points. The Deep Root has offered settlement terms. And currently, those settlement terms are for people who are customers of Zidware but are not in litigation against Zidware. and there is a separate document that you can access that's linked that will explain why Deep Root had offered these terms to the litigants and then pulled it back. And that's a fascinating read as well because it's also, I would describe, as aggressively toned. The second point I'd note is that Deep Root repeatedly claimed that making pinball is easy. The third point would be that J-Pop was the right choice for them as a designer and that they had considered other options. Fourth point was that they are in negotiations with the artist commonly known as Zombie Yeti, who did a lot of the artwork for Magic Girl. Another bullet point is that they are threatening to litigate against American Pinball. American Pinball does not help resolve some matters. I'm assuming that has to do with the license or who controls Magic Girl. It might involve some of the other Zidware games. I'm not clear. another bullet point was that the magic girl programmer he goes by the handle apple juice on pin side deep root is claiming that they think he appears on the surface of things to be in breach of zidware's contract with him and they have suggested that they being deep root will take action if apple juice continues to be defamatory so that's sort of a summary um you've already hit on some of the tone stuff, but I guess, Tony, just what to you? I know you read the interview. What stands out? What did you think? It was probably the boldest interview in pinball that I have heard or read in three years. Oh, yeah, no, this was an amazingly bold, bold interview. A lot of it came off, it did come off, like I said earlier almost holier than thou at some point. Yes, snooting was your word. Yeah, that's why I'm wondering about tone. If the tone of the actual interview vocally would come off different than how it played out in the questioning. And I have no idea if the interview was conducted orally or if it was written for him. Yeah, I have no idea. I know there were points like at one point he's playing the whole I've got a secret card that was kind of annoying, if anything. The five days of deep root thing? Yeah, the five days of deep root and just kind of playing, trying to play coy about it. Yeah, I think he was, to me, I took that as a build up, sort of hyping a marketing strategy that they're planning on. Yeah, I'm sure that's what it was. I mean, that's what it seemed like. But no, just overall, it came off very, we're the best. We're better than anybody in the entire world. and everybody else is just going to be just might as well not even exist anymore once we hit the market. Yeah, I saw that tone as well. A few thoughts that I had. I thought it was a little odd that when they were questioned about what other developers, or it was pinball designers, I should say, were considered before they settled on J-Pop. They had noted that a number of the ones that you might think of are already tied up doing other projects. When pressed on that, they wouldn't name names because some might get in trouble with their jobs, and that's fine. I totally understood that. Completely understood. Except then, a little bit later, they have no problem throwing Scott Danesi's name out as one they approached. Now, I know that Scott Danesi doesn't work directly for spooky pinball, But I still thought it was odd that they were willing to mention that they approached him as a designer, but it was all of a sudden sacrosanct not to name any other names. Again, it was sort of like a – maybe there was one – my take was there might have been one designer who said, I'm working for JJP right now. Don't tell him. My name needs to be secret, and then he just kind of extended it to everyone. And I think that's cool, but I would have extended it to Scott Denisey as well. Just because he's new and doing it with Spooky doesn't make him any less of a designer. I would have given him the same consideration that I was giving all the rest. I thought it was a little odd. I thought it was really odd to call out the Magic Girl programmer about the quote-unquote defamation, but more so the speculation about that he might be in breach of his employment contract with Zidware. which is way outside of the realm of Deep Root's business, honestly. Yeah. That contract is not with Deep Root. They acknowledge that as well. I have seen that Apple Juice has posted back on Pinside, and you can search it if you want in the thread about the interview, where he's pushed back against that, claiming that he was not. What happens is the interview points out like he's been paid a certain amount of money. but Applejuice's response is that he was not paid everything he was supposed to be paid so the you can go you see both of those and you almost get an impression that oh the interview mentions this amount like hundred thousand I think dollars was what was mentioned as if oh he's gotten he got everything but you know if he was contracted to get a certain amount of money and it doesn't matter if he got a lot of money if he didn't get paid everything he was supposed to get paid, he still got cheated. But I think he even noted that those amount, he does not know where that hundred thousand came from because that is not accurate. So he even challenged that. So again, that's one of those areas where I thought it was bold, but to me odd that you would go ahead and go with that line of attack, that kind of name dropping. It's a strategy that it can be, You can get blowback if you start stomping on toes, and a lot of people are very sympathetic to the plight of the programmer, especially because it's felt that he's always had a leg down versus Zombie Yeti, who always seems to get more consideration, probably because it's so easy to see what he did on display, even when the game doesn't work. Yeah. So I thought that was a little odd. and then the but there was one thing that actually a lot of people online have taken issue with but i i'm a bit more sympathetic to and that was the that the deep roots claims uh did a couple times in the interview that that making pinball is easy uh a lot of people got i think almost mad that they would say that but you know i'm going to say this is someone with zero manufacturing experience, I don't think it's nearly as hard as people constantly try and make you think it is. They only were building these freaking games since, what, the 30s? It's not. Sometimes people act like it's some sort of lost art that no one can figure out. It can't be that hard to make a pinball machine. Now, I think what happened is you have a lot of people that get into this who are really passionate about an idea, and they have absolutely no idea to execute a manufacturing business and that's why they fail but they fail manufacturing just about anything but it is harder than you know it's not like making a video game cabinet so so yeah i would not go and say making pinball is easy but the whole making pinball is hard has become this sort of rote statement now and i think it's used as an excuse a little too much to excuse when people have delays i don't think it's quite as hard as some people like to play up in the industry at this point because it's almost a crutch. So I was a little sympathetic to that, but they made it sound like just anyone could go in and become a pinball manufacturing company. I personally wouldn't go that far, but what do I know? Anything else that stood out to you, though, in terms of the interview? The easy thing was one of those things that jumped out at the fact that they're saying that they can build a Ferrari for the price of a Kia. Oh, yes. Yes, the Kia Ferrari. Yeah. Cargument. The cargument. That's one of those things that is kind of weird to me. I mean, it's just they constantly refer to how this is not just easy, but we've worked in harder situations. We've dealt with stuff that's much more complicated, much harder than this. So this is just going to be kind of an easy side project type thing. And how just the way they targeted everybody currently in pinball and the way they acted to the other current manufacturers really came off as snooty. I'm just going to stay with snooty. Yeah. I think that's the nice way to say it without you having to come back through and beep me. Yeah. We don't want me to beep. No, I get it. I mean, there were some suggestions that they have a different idea, a different way of doing the manufacturing. And, I mean, some of that does make – I mean, it did pique my curiosity, so the interview worked in that regard. They've got some ideas on some different building materials or something like that. that again it's they're not that many players in pinball it's not inconceivable to think oh well this is the way we've always done it so people haven't considered plastic playfields and maybe they didn't work in the early 80s because of costs but things are different now and maybe it's a cheaper op you know things like that i could see i don't know the the the uh sheer um puff puffery of the ferrari kia thing though it's a little yeah that's a little you know maybe it's because we're mid we're midwesterners and we're not you know that might work on the coast but that does that that stuff comes across a little differently around here though i believe he's from texas so but that you know that state is it in itself its own country so i actually we did have a we did have a listener uh jason knapp hopefully i'm saying his name right uh he asked us on our one of our social medias if uh we could research whether deep root was an already successful company, as was suggested in the interview. So I did take some time to look into that. And I think there are two things going on here. So first, let's just talk about Deep Root as a company itself. They have successfully raised money. I'm including a link in the show notes to the San Antonio Business Journal, which had an article earlier this year about Deep Root. They had two entities that have successfully raised money in equity. So Deep Root Growth Runs Deep Fund LLC. They raised about $8.5 million in equity since 2014. And that is a portfolio, financial portfolio, consists mostly of life insurance settlements. And then they also have Deep Root 575 Fund LLC, which has raised about $6.7 million in equity. That is also an investment fund, as the name would suggest. I don't know what the strategy of the investment is in it. And the head of Deep Root is an attorney, as I've noted before, named Robert Mueller. Not that Robert Mueller. It's like the name I think is spelled identical to the Russia investigation Robert Mueller. And they're both attorneys. So unless he's moonlighting, he's like, well, yeah, I go after – I do Russian investigations when I'm not busy running deeper, which would be very funny, but it's not really likely. This Robert Mueller is actually a former employee of the United Services Automobile Association. It's commonly known as USAA. You've probably seen their commercials if you ever watch football. They do diversified financial services. and was noted as a past corporate sponsor of the San Antonio Scorpion soccer team. So here's my – in response to Jason's query, here's what I think was going on. I don't think that Mueller – I think he's the interviewee in the This Week in Pinball interview. And given the referencing of being an attorney during the interview, I don't think – there's a part in there where he talks about having multiple industry experience. I don't think he meant that Deep Root, the organization, has had multiple industry experience. I think he means he has, as an individual, actually done things in multiple industries. And everything that I've seen would indicate, yes, that's true. It seems that he's worked in estate planning, insurance products, and investments. So those are different fields. And I think any of those industries could probably be accurately described as cutthroat, which is what he references in that he's had experience in industries more cutthroat than pinball. But the thing is, I also did not see in his history any manufacturing experience. Deep Root as an organization seems to have been up until this point entirely financial services in scope. So when he makes that statement about having enough capability, experience, expertise and money to do this Deep Root pinball thing and referencing that he thinks pinball is easy, my assessment would be that he doesn't think making pinball requires much experience or expertise. You just need capability and money. That's my take. And whether or not we agree with that, everyone gets to make up their own mind. So that's where I think he's coming from on that. I don't think he meant that Deep Root had been involved in multiple industries. I just think he, as a person working, has obviously had a fairly diverse career in a few different fields. I didn't see any in manufacturing, though. So this would be a new venture, I think. Yeah, I mean, that kind of makes you wonder, well, just because you've been able to deal with the other stuff in a way that works through the complexity of the legal part of it, that doesn't mean manufacturing is easy. It's not just, well, we give money to Company B. Company B does project. Project's done. Everything's good. I mean, we can just look at stuff we've talked about today. Look at Dutch. Look at highway. I mean, both of those are situations where it hasn't been an easy thing to walk into. Sure. But, I mean, it could be as simple as thinking, well, they're not very smart. And he may be smarter than they are. You know, that would obviously, saying it like that comes across as perhaps a tad arrogant. But that might be – it may be that simple of a takeaway that, yeah, that he may think that most of these startups have maybe been passionate about pinball, and that's about the only thing they got going for them. So I'm not – I would be deeply skeptical. I mean I've had – obviously being involved in this hobby, I've had thoughts about things. I've thought I could probably execute companies better than some of the manufacturers that have attempted it. But the one thing that would always stop me from wanting to ever actually do the experiment would be I have no manufacturing experience. I am a government hack. I have no idea how to build things in a business sense, and I would be terrified to try and do it. So I would never want to risk my money in such an experiment. It's not my training. Now, if I got a job with a manufacturing company and got familiar with the process, I'd probably be able to pick it up, and I'd be like, okay, I get it now. But, you know, it's a hobby. I'm not that interested in it. You know maybe one of them needs a researcher Oh my God No they don no they don here a history of failures just don do this um actually i uh that be a good thing for our our next little topic in fact but um i didn't have any really anything else to uh to mention on this uh it was a great interview i i hope i hope they get more like this because this is a lot of fun yeah that was a really good it was a good interview i mean for everything else and everything I've said, it's definitely an interview that I would recommend reading. It's worth the short amount of time it takes to go through it. Well worth it. Yep. Okay, let's go to our next pinball topic. This one was a research one I did. Research man! Inspiring. All the children want to grow up and be research people. I don't get to do as much research as I used to for my job because I'm more administrative at this point. But anyway, so sometimes I get to exercise some creativity. That's what the podcast is for, after all. But some things just lend themselves better, I think, to written form. And when we were doing Episode 49 with Nick, as listeners may recall, we briefly touched upon Skyrocket. It was in the top 10 EM list on the Pennside listing, and Nick had it pretty high in his own list. I think it was around four or so. and it was interesting because it was a harry williams design but it was made by bally which was not a company he's really associated with so nick was surprised that it was made by harry williams because he just recalled that it was a bally game and when i read it when i was doing my research for the episode i thought oh that's weird but i didn't think too much about it and so i wrote an article uh with there's a link to it in the show notes pinball news ran it kind of like they did with my street level one and it explores my theory behind why harry williams had a couple of games there's another game also released in 71 called firecracker that he's given design credit for and too long didn't read version even though it's only like a thousand words so you guys should just go read it is that i think it was because sam stern briefly worked for bally and sam and harry were friends and that's how it happened so i'm not really wanting to talk about the article here. Instead, I'm going to talk about the response to the article. Because, you know, Tony, we've been doing this almost two years now. Almost. Almost. At the end of January will be our two-year anniversary. And I have written, in that time period, two articles that I've had published in Pinball. And both men in the last month. Yeah, yeah. My street-level one was It was early November, I think, or mid-November. Yeah, mid-November. And then just a few days ago was this one on Harry Williams. I have had now more blowback from article writing than I have for all the things we say on this podcast. It's just like, okay. So here's the story. I thought it was an interesting story, so I wanted to go ahead and share it. Martin, who is the editor of Pinball News. I don't get paid with the articles or anything. I was trying to find a home for the first one. He liked it. I guess the response was good. So he said, you have more stuff like this. I'm interested in it. And I'm like, okay, I'll keep it in mind. And so I did the Harry Williams one because my interest got peaked when we were talking with Nick. And I finally had enough time to do my research and put it all together. It goes, so Thursday morning, I'm getting ready to go to work. I check my computer. Martin has his draft up because he has to do a lot of editing to get it formatted properly for the site and everything. I proof it. I give my changes, and I sign off on it, and it goes live. So I drive into the office. I get there. I get my stuff ready, and I have a message for Martin, and it goes, uh-oh. And then he opens a PaceSin, a message that came in to him from Gary Stern. Gary Stern wants to be contacted because there were, as it was described, terrible inaccuracies with my piece. So Martin asks if I'd be willing to talk to Gary, and I say sure. And so he has a cell phone number, so I'm calling Gary, and I'm thinking, this is always the concern. This is the fear that a researcher has, at least one that cares about their quality. It's always making a mistake in a report or in numbers or in anything, especially if your whole hypothesis – I mean, it's okay if the hypothesis gets pushed back against for things that maybe you couldn't account for, but you don't want to misinterpret anything. So I'm doing this call and I'm thinking terrible inaccuracies. What did I screw up? Did I get the names mixed up? Were there more than one Harry Williams? I'm trying to think, did I have the dates wrong? But at the same time, I'm thinking, I sourced this really well. I mean, not to pat myself on the back, but it is very well sourced. And that's all linked in the article. So you can go, if you're curious, you can go and read or listen to everything I use. And that's why I do it that way. So people can trace it all back and understand exactly what I'm using to construct my narrative. So he answers. He's in his car. I introduced myself because he'd gotten a hold of Martin, not me. and I apologize for any – if it upset him because obviously it was to be a fun piece. I wasn't trying to slight anyone. It's not a hatchet job. I've done hatchet work before. You'll know if it's hatchet work, folks, but I don't ever see a reason to do that in pinball. But yeah, sometimes on the government side, we've had to deal with opposition in certain ways. But the – anyway, so I'm just like, okay, so what are the inaccuracies? because the nice thing about things being online is we can go and fix it. But I'm already thinking, uh-oh, myself, because I load up the article so I can go and jump to any sections at Pinball News. It already had over 700 views. It's only been an hour, so I'm like, this has already gotten out. So I survey. The genie doesn't want to really fit back in the bottle, so I hope I didn't screw up too, too bad. But this made it sound pretty catastrophic. and then as I'm talking to him it really only focused in primarily on one thing there's a line where it mentions that Sam, it has to do with Sam buying Harry Williams out and about embarrassment and that was the part and it was during the discussion and let me, I should have made it clear up front but Gary Stern was polite the entire conversation he wasn't yelling, he wasn't rude It was a totally friendly phone conversation. But it became clear to me that, obviously, taking off my little history hat and putting on my talking to a person hat, I'm like, oh, okay, yes, this is his dad. So he's going to be sensitive to this sort of stuff. And so I don't know, though, if he had read the paragraph very closely or not, but I wasn't speculating with that. I was referencing an interview that Williams pinball designer Steve Kordek had given. So that's where that information came from, and it was sourced. So he explained how that wasn't accurate. And I said, okay, I get it, but this is a Steve Kordek's claim, and I credit it to Steve Kordek. So I didn't present it as fact. I presented it as this is what Steve said. And, you know, he indicated, well, but that's not right. And I said, okay, well, if you would like to give me some counter language, I'll be more than happy to put that in. Martin and I are fine with that. We can give it more balance. so and the only other thing he really we really touched on he gave me some history stuff and he kind of affirmed some of the other things the things that i was caring about in the article which was nice but the only other thing was that he had wished that i had reached out to him before running the article that he would have sort of expected it now part of that is perhaps i know you study journalism tony i did not so i'm not a trained journalist i never i am not a trained journalist i studied journalism yes but i changed my major very early on yeah but you had even back in your high school days you did stuff with journalism i had well yeah all through none of that i had none of that so some of that could just be that you know i'm more of a researcher not a journalist so that that's on me but on the flip side uh this was a focus on information and happenings essentially from 1969 to 1971. In the chronology, there is no reason for me to think that Gary would know anything more than any other family member of anyone. I mean, I don't know. Growing up, my dad didn't come home and talk about work. So I'm not used to that. But is there like, well, you're not, I mean, here's the thing. All the primaries are deceased. So everything was secondary source and almost all the secondaries are deceased as well. Now, I might be more inclined to believe Gary's version than Steve Kordak's version, but there's no reason for me to necessarily think that Gary knew anything about this particular period. That he does is great. So anyway, I offered to do a revision. I held off on promoting the article towards the end of the day. I still haven't heard back, so I don't know if he reread it and then realized, okay, this is Steve's claim and didn't care or he forgot about it or what. I think it's one of those things where F, from a journalistic standpoint, is just put in both sides and let the people decide which one they think is more likely. Sure, and I talked to Martin about that afterwards. He was in agreement with me that we shouldn't pull the article down because of these disagreements, that the inaccuracies might be on the sources, but we clearly identified who the sources are, so we didn't commit an error in that regard. I'm a bit surprised that I haven't gotten – later, I had a meeting, so I couldn't stay on the phone with him. And so later that day, I sent him an email with some suggested language as best as I could reconstruct from what limited – I tried to take notes as best I could from the phone call. And I haven't heard back on it. I need him to sign off, though, because I didn't record that conversation, and I wasn't doing good notes. So I need to know for sure if I captured everything accurately. whenever I've dealt with the press in my job I can't think of a single time they ever gave me more than 24 hours to respond so I'm a bit surprised it's taken this maybe in the business side they're a little more kind but if he gets it to me I'll get it in there but last I looked that piece is almost at 1300 viewers now I don't know how many more people are going to bother reading it but anyway it was sort of interesting because it's like when I did the street level one, Jon Norris was kind enough to leave a comment, and Martin let me know about that, and that was right after the article came out. And then apparently within an hour of him posting this one, Gary wrote in to complain. So I guess industry people read the pinball news. So that's nice. Yay, pinball. Well, congratulations. You've now had contacts with the higher-ups. Do you want an interview with Gary? No, we've had the talk. We're not really interview people. You wanted to guest host? Well, yeah, exactly. I'll sit down and have a conversation with anybody. Okay. You might need to reach out to him at this stage because I might not be allowed on the tour for a little while, so to speak. But he was very polite. We'll do the tour here real quick. Yeah. But anyway, it was a perfectly friendly conversation. It was just, oh, I'm just not used to all this out of hobby stuff. I'm just sticking my hand in every boiling pot there is, I guess. I just thought this was a fun little fluff piece of interesting pinball history. All the other responses I've had have been positive. Incidentally, if you guys like that sort of article stuff, let Martin at Pinball News know. I think he's always looking to know what type of articles people want to see. One last little thing. I think it's probably time for us to pick a new tournament for us to do Because we're well enough past the System 11 finale at this stage. And part of the reason I'm bringing it up is one of our listeners on Facebook, hopefully I'll say the name right, but as everyone knows, I say no names correctly on this show, Andreas Nervin, did a couple suggestions. I wanted to figure out probably which one should we go with here. He suggested either we do Gottlieb System 3, which I'll note would be easy to establish and seed, but familiarity might be low versus what we've typically done at least between us two and his other suggestion was pinball collectors shame games and we need to define what that means and how to seed it out but it could be a lot of fun to do some sort of contest or I should say tournament with games that are I don't know it depends how we define what shame means if it's a game like you would want to own but you wouldn't want to admit or I don't know but What are your thoughts, Tony? Or we could do something else entirely, but those were his suggestions. I think the shame game is, I'm not really sure how we set something like that up as a tournament, but I could see where it would be fun to go with a thing where people just contact us with, well, these are the games that aren't well liked or are ugly or this or that, but I don't know why, but I love this game, and I have this game in my lineup, and I'm not planning on getting rid of it because even though it's a hated game, I love it. Something like that I could see because otherwise, I mean, how do you decide what's a shame game? That was my big hang-up. Yeah, you know, that's okay. I think that one would be more fun, so I like the idea of it. But let me tell you, probably by the next episode, well, I should be able to by the next episode, but I'll probably look at setting up maybe a Google form or something that we can disseminate a link out to and people could type in a game that they want and then we can see how many results we get of shame games and then we can randomly seed them or something. And then we'll have to decide, though, what is it? Which of these shameful games would you rather own or do the, which of these more shameful games is more shameful? and try and figure out what the trashiest example was. But it might be more fun to find out what is the best of the shameful games because otherwise Hercules might win. So we've got to consider poor Hercules. And maybe we might impose some protective rules. Like if it's in the pin side top 100 or 200, we axe it and say, no, that's not shameful enough. You've got to get real trashy. You got to get down in the weeds. Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll look at putting some sort of system together, and Tony and I will talk about it off air to figure out a way to execute, but something like that. We'll plan on doing something along those lines. It'll be very different from anything we've done before, so that should be fun. Yeah, I think that will be fun. Okay, Tony, video games, lead us off, because there's been a lot of news going on. Oh, there's always a lot of news in video games. There's just a couple things I want to hit on, and none of them are going to be like huge, huge. But I'm going to start back to something we've referenced over the last two episodes, EA and loot boxes. They love their loot. They do. They gave an interview talk that's listed up on Polygon. We'll have the link in the show notes. But they were talking about cosmetic loot boxes. And they were basically saying That there will not be Cosmetic loot boxes And they did not plan on there being cosmetic loot boxes Because Of Canon They don't want cosmetics Because they don't want to Do things that would Mess up the Canon costuming For some reason They don't want to Yeah. So I can't dress up Luke Skywalker as an Ewok because he would never have done that in the movies? Right, and their reference is they didn't want to put stuff out like pink Darth Vader or a white Darth Vader. Hello Kitty Darth Vader is what everyone wants. I know it is, but at the same time, it's one of those things that is humorous to me because even going away from doing, You know, well, let's put out a pink Darth Vader is simply, I mean, you could do Darth Vader with his helmet off. You could do Darth Vader from episode three after he'd made the turn. But before he hit the suit, he was still Vader. You could go with some of the likes of when he had some damage to the suit, stuff like that. And that's just on Darth Vader. If you look at the other characters I mean they don't all wear The exact same thing all the time I mean there's no reason you can't Make those changes But at the same time And as is pointed out In This thing is you have Stuff where you can have people From movies 40 years Apart from each other Fighting each other And that's kind of against canon So Yeah, I don't get, yeah, this doesn't make sense to me because of that. That's what I was thinking of in particular. Yeah, no, it's weird. You bring in your Darth Maul hero and he's busy fighting against Han Solo or something. It doesn't make sense as it is from a canon standpoint. So, yeah, it's just, it's weird. then when you look at, I mean considering this is a game that has a lot of common foot soldiers why can't you get the little armor coloration bits to be a so your stormtrooper looks like a like he's an officer or the little things like the sand troopers had or or why can't you get something to change your, the rebel troops so oh hey this rebel troop isn't a human I mean it's just it's weird I think it just sounded like a throw up an excuse why we didn't do it that way type thing and EA's become such a big target since this whole loot crate debacle went up and it doesn't help that their beta for the new UFC game looks like it's just as heavily loot crate loot crated up I've been reading some bad reports about it I mean it's not a game I would have ever played anyway but the fact that literally to get moves in that game comes from stuff like crates so oh yeah sure everybody has a jab but I spent $15 and I got this superstar jab that hits harder and faster and everything it's insane to me okay well I think it's silly but I don't understand anything they've been doing with Battlefront lately. I don understand anything he been doing other than hey let make the monies So speaking of making the monies and silly let go ahead and jump over to Star Citizen I love this one. Oh, Star Citizen. Apparently, they've decided that putting out $850 Starship packs that you can buy to give you a single ship in the game when it launches, if it launches. and giving you the ability to go and drop $15,000 on the game so you can start out with access to every single ship in the game. Actually, I don't think the $15,000 gives you access to every ship. I think it just gives you access to a large percentage of the ships. Yeah, $15,000 sounds a little low, so I'm glad it's not everything. Well, yeah, it's understandable. But now, now they've added to their whole little funding bit of darkness. Now they're selling land claim licenses. Well, these land claim licenses, they're cheap. For Star Citizen, they are super cheap. 50 bucks. Oh. $50 gives you the ability to claim a single 4km by 4km parcel of land that has been zoned for commercial, residential, or industrial use. It's as easy as that. For $50 on a game that's not out yet, has no release date, has not had a major update in almost a year for its even beta stuff, you can buy ability to own some land that you can make modifications to and build a business or a house or something with a system that's not even designed yet and not working yet and not anything but if you really want to you can spend $100 and get the ability to get an 8km by 8km claim because you know 4k by 4k just might not be enough. You might need that 8k. At what point are they expecting to introduce the ability to sell me bridges? I would guess that that'll probably come in like three or four update waves from now. Maybe five. We'll have to see. So have people not lost faith in this game yet? Because this sounds like the definition of vaporware, but so odd because it's still actually trying to take and make more and more money. I mean, I can't say this as being successful or not on the land claim thing, but I don't understand. A lot of people have really, really started to lose faith in Star Citizen. A lot of the people who were really large, strong followers have started to give up on it. But there are still hardcore people. There are literally people with $15,000 and $20,000 into this game that is, at best, alpha. I don't know. I'm $100 into this game, and I haven't touched it. Oh, I didn't know you were in on it. Yeah, I was in on it. I've mentioned it on the show before. I blocked it. I mean, I really liked Chris Roberts and the Wing Commander and all that. So I liked his games a lot in the 90s. That's why I got in on it. And, I mean, it was a long time ago. I mean, I got in on it. Let's see, the Kickstarter was in 2012, and I actually missed the Kickstarter. I got in on the, in 2013, when they first opened up their continuing funding thing through their website. That's when I got in on it. So, four years ago, and I've never seen anything. I've never seen anything. The last time I loaded anything up about it was right after they launched their very first module, which was the hangars module. Right, I remember that. I played around in the hangars module a little bit and looked at my ship that I'd purchased, and I've never, ever, ever touched it since. There is a timeline that somebody created that is on Imgur. Let me get a copy of that. I'll add that to the links just in case anybody is interested in it that covers all of their major patches on the releases stuff. It's got a real interesting Coverage Because it shows their first stuff And their first launches Were in 2014 And that was the last time I messed with anything was the hangar module And they've added stuff Since then The arena commander Which was the first flight test stuff I never did anything with it Then they added racing And they added All sorts of other little modules. I'm sorry, yeah, 2013 was the hangar module, which was the last time I had anything to do with it. Then they did a whole bunch of pages to that. They added the flight module. They added racing. I haven't touched either of those. Those were both in 2014, about three months apart. And then they added a playtest kind of universe thing, the PTU. And they just started adding more little modules because they're designing it, supposedly, as individual modules that are getting clicked together and will eventually be a main game. Okay. Yeah, but there has been nothing at all since April of 2017. And that was a minor patch to a minor patch to a minor patch. There has not been a major release of any form since December of 2016, and their 3.0 patch was supposed to have landed earlier this year and got pushed. And it is not going to happen. 3.0 isn't going to hit this year, and it will hit next year at the earliest, unless there's some big surprise where it's going to drop. right here at the end of the year, but I doubt it. A lot of the features that they were originally talking about 3.0 sounds like they've been kicked out of 3.0. It's such a mess, and there are still people just completely pouring tons of money into it, and people who are still... It has a hype level that is just so amazing, especially for what has amounted to this many years of just BS, trying to drag people on and still getting money. It's amazing to me. I mean, the hype on this game makes No Man's Sky look like something nobody had ever heard of and never got any coverage. and yet somehow it is still a huge to-do with huge popular backing. I don't know. I mean, they're sitting at $180 million, $200 million, something like that, that they've raised over the years. Let me check their funding real quick. Their latest stats are $172 million have been raised. in the last, you know, four years. And they still are creating stretch goals. And they still are creating all this other stuff. I don't know. It's sad. It's horrible. I know they had a single-player version of this because they've turned Star Citizen into a giant MMO creature, a persistent world MMO monster. But they were just going to put out a single-player game before Star Citizen hits called Squadron 42. Right, I heard about that. And there's been Really no news on it either As far as I've seen It started It's got Serious voice acting I mean Gary Oldman, Mark Dick Hamill They've got all sorts of Solid voice actors in it But nothing Has come of it I mean John Rhys Davis Gillian Anderson, Andy Serkis I mean This is not a minor thing But I've not heard Anything about it I've not heard anything I think it's I don't know I think it's going to be terrible When it happens I have hopes but it's just This is Probably the biggest boondoggle In video games right now and they're making so much money and they're still making money. I don't understand it. Well, we'll just have to keep our eyes on it because I can't explain it. Yeah, it's... I just don't understand a lot of things. Do you understand Battletech? I understand Battletech. Talk to me about Battletech. Cleanse the palates of the listener. I'm cleansing the palates. The Harebrained Schemes Battletech game is getting closer. to complete. They did a couple interviews lately where they've put out details on what's coming. They've put out some more details including a YouTube video showing some of the missions from the single player or showing a single mission from the single player. And they have launched the multiplayer beta test I haven't played it yet I've been playing other things and I just have not had a chance to sit down and play it but this is the game I actually have decent hopes for because they seem to be going in a really good straight direction and they have a pardon me they have gone out of their way to keep the people happy, and they haven't gone completely insane with stuff like Star Citizen has. They haven't thrown any of that stuff in there. It's expected to come out in 2018, which is what they've said since the beginning, and we'll have to see. I have high hopes for this. What I've seen from what they've put out so far looks good. the single player arena combat and mech combat was a ton of fun I did the one video of it I've played a lot more of it than that and I'm looking forward to playing some of the multiplayer I just haven't had a chance to sit down and play it lately so it's going to be this is my palette cleanse hope for the future game it's probably the thing I'm most looking forward to in 2018. Oh, cool. Yeah, I knew you were really excited about this one. And it sounded like things have been, well, I know there were some minor delays on, just in terms of where they thought they were and they had to go back and clean a little bit of stuff up. But they've stuck to the timelines pretty well. So professional would be the word. Yeah, and Hairbrain Schemes is a decent company that has done good work before. they put out those the Shadowrun Returns and Shadowrun Dragonfall that's all Harebrained Schemes and they were really well received well done versions of Shadowrun that kept with all of the old Shadowrun stuff and kept the feel of Shadowrun while still being a solid fun playing video game. And that seems to be what they're doing with Battletech. Hmm. Okay. Well, I haven't played those Shadowrun games. I've played one, but not one of theirs. Yeah. Good. I'm glad it sounds like that one's working out. Oh, I'm hopeful. It might end up crashing and burning, because everything does, it seems like. But no, I'm got real high hopes for this. And again, this is one of those things. Battletech is one of those franchises that is super important to me and super, it was a big deal when I was younger. I mean, Battletech was my first miniatures game I ever played. Battletech was not my first RPG, but probably my first one I really got into. I mean, I played some D&D before I ever played Battletech, but Battletech was my first big RPG, and now I'm back into D&D. but it's one of those things that it's just, it hits all those points. And for me, it's a combination of the solid nostalgia with something that is still fun. Yeah, yeah, I get that. Well, let's see. I've only really been working on one game. I did finish the main story of War Dwarf, So I finally got a chance to start Wolfenstein II, the new Colossus, because I decided I didn't want to start another sandbox quite yet. And unfortunately, I haven't played it over the last few days, but I am decently along in the game. So in terms of mechanics, it plays very much like the original Wolfenstein reboot. The story is even more crazy, though. You know, it's always really weird because there's that mech and stuff. It's sort of this steampunk, well, not steampunk, but, you know, it's like taking that 30s, 40s tech and just sort of adding some weird magic style stuff to it. And there are some things that are borderline magic, like techno-mage style things going on. And that was in the first Wolfenstein. That's back. That's all back. Your crew of allies from the first game, there are some in this one, but it seems to focus a bit more on introducing new characters. but they just kind of like cranked the the camp up to 11 in a lot of ways but it's sort of weird i still think it works it works but it's a little more pushing the envelope in a lot of ways there are some very visceral scenes especially early on that are you know probably will be difficult for some people to to kind of uh deal with if they're not they're not you know familiar with games that go kind of that brutal uh there are it's it's very in your face about some of the um you know in terms of what its metaphors are we can't really say they're metaphors it's more like hey look we'll just have uh the nazis controlling texas and now the clan can walk down the street with them sort of thing i mean it's in your face is in your face about it uh but i mean it deals with all themes from from that and supremacy to child abuse there's a lot of stuff in that that they've packed in. Mechanically, it feels great to play. It's that blend of stealth shooter where if you want to be sneaky and go around and try and take out commanders so they can't sound alarms, you've got that option. If you want to go in with heavy weaponry, you can do that. If you want to be dual wielding and acting like you're Sylvester Stallone in First Blood Part 2, you can do that. It gives you all that same choice that you had in the first game. and I think much like that one there is still a very big emphasis on narrative there's a lot of elements where your character talks to himself kind of keeping that tone that it wants which is a fairly dark serious tone in those regards and you see the cut scenes which are wacky but they're still being addressed by the characters pretty seriously it's been a lot of fun so I'd say if you liked the original I'll call it the original reboot of the Wolfenstein franchise this one, I can't imagine you not liking it. The only risk would be for people that would find it maybe a little some of the topics might make them a little uncomfortable, but that is what it is. So you just have to accept that it's going to deal with some of those themes, and some people just don't like to deal with them. I don't know how much the crossover is of people that don't like that, but like to play violent shooters, but hey, FYI if you care. But as The game itself, very, very good. I wouldn't be surprised if it wins a few awards. Good. I really enjoyed the first one. Yeah, first one's good. And then they did a little arcade-level prequel. That one's almost devoid of story. Mechanics are great, but it serves as a prequel to the first reboot game. It's worth playing, but don't expect the same narrative experience you get from this or the first one. Yeah, I'm going to grab it. It's like Ward or it's one of those things that I'm going to eventually end up with. It just hasn't happened yet. Yeah, it was a gift. So it was on my pile. Okay, that's all I have. Yeah, I think that covers us for this episode. That's right. So for reminders to people, you can reach out to us at CollectorsGamersPodcast.gmail.com or on Facebook at CollectorsGamersPodcast.com slash CollectorsGamersPodcast. we're on twitter and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers uh twitter is yeah i just can't do twitter i'm getting better at instagram when i'm actually out doing pinball stuff and things that might interest overall i've been starting to do some more stuff on the instagrams uh but i've just never been able to get into twitter i don't think i can pull myself down to the small character requirements. I think they're making more changes to that. Looking at the calendar, actually, I don't know if we'll do the year-end review next episode, because next episode we'd normally record on the 17th, and then in theory, the 31st would be the episode that we'd then do. So we have to kind of decide how to handle that, because that's New Year's Eve. It's early enough. I won't have a problem doing a record. Yeah, I'm not going to be doing anything. I'm too old, let's be honest. Well, I've got the phone again at work. I'm not going to be exactly doing anything fancy. So we'll probably have different topics in the next episode then because we won't have to do the wrap-up at that point. But until then, I'm Dennis. And I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody.