Coming at you out of St. Charles, Illinois, the special When Lit Pinball Podcast starts now. Hello and welcome to episode number 82. That's 82 of the special When Lit Pinball Podcast, Pinball Land. Thanks for joining us. I'm Ken Cromwell. I am Bill Webb. We've got exciting things to talk about today, including a new release. But first, let's check in with Bill Webb. Bill, what's going on, bud? Not much, man. Just hanging in there. How about you? I've got a lot going on, man. So I was contacted today. You know, we're trying to do that 24-hour charity stream, which is going to take place Friday, December 20th at 6 p.m. to Saturday, December 21st at 6 p.m. And we're getting ready to, you know, finalize some things. I was contacted today. Now, get this. This is pretty incredible by a gentleman. He's off the East Coast. Some of you may know him because he's a pinballer. He's an enthusiast. He helps run a tournament out in New York City. And his name is Adam Schwartz. So Adam, he contacts me today and he says, listen, I've always really liked the Project Pinball Initiative. And when I heard what you guys were doing, it made me want to get involved. So Adam has offered anyone that donates anything, he's going to offer a dollar-to-dollar match to our charity fundraising efforts for Project Pinball. That's incredible. It's incredible. So that means if you donate a dollar, guess what? You're going to have $2 donated to Project Pinball Charity and Care of the Special Inlet Fundraiser. If you donate $1,000, it's going to be $2,000. And it's just an incredible offer of generosity from Adam. They not only get involved but kind of help support it. He said he listens to the show. And I'm just excited. And it's very – I don't know what – I can't even describe the words. It's humbling. But it's just very it's shocking to know that so many people have reached out and wanted to help. Kaneda just sold his Big Lebowski pinball machine at $16,000. Right. So he goes ahead and he donates $3,500, which was the profit on the Big Lebowski to the Project Pinball charity fundraiser that we're running. But guess what? That $3,500 becomes $7,000. Now, if you remember, $8,000 is what we needed to raise the money to place one machine in a children's hospital. So the sale of that machine alone has almost facilitated full price for a machine to go into a Chicago-based charity, Pinball Children's Hospital. Now, and we're going to get in the news in one second, but I think this is important to talk about because it's fresh on my mind. Again, I spoke to Adam today. The original plan was to raise $8,000 for one pinball machine. And then we're like, hey, let's try to raise $16,000 for two pinball machines. It's looking at this point because we've got some donations that we've kind of accumulated behind the scenes. Okay. But it looks like three machines is not out of the question. Which is awesome. It's amazing. Now, instead of being selfish and let's put three machines in Chicago, I was speaking with Adam today and we spoke about this bill. Yes. Let's get one in Chicago. Okay. Let's get one on the East Coast in New York City where these guys are out of Adams out of there. and he's matching everybody dollar for dollar. Canada's got $3,500 that he's thrown into this, right? And Canada's from New York too. Right, exactly. Let's get a machine via Project Pinball out to a children's hospital in New York City area. I think it would be great for those guys to be able to take part in any type of a ceremony where that's being introduced to the hospital. And if we come up with a third one, let's find another city that we can put a pinball machine in. Assuming that Daniel Spoler, the guy that's running Project Pinball, is okay with spreading the wealth, But, I mean, why not get a machine into a city or a hospital that normally there wouldn't be fundraising efforts for at this time? What do you think of, like, Los Angeles, Dallas, Fort Worth maybe? Yeah, Dallas would be really fun. Like, I want to see, and we can check where there are machines and where there are not machines because I think it would be fun to spread the machines throughout the United States. And we were talking, too, like Jurassic Park Pro would be such an awesome machine to put in. I don't know how the selection process is going to take place regarding the machines that are going into the hospital. um but i mean that seems like that would be an awesome theme right at jurassic park pro yeah man you know what dude anything just for the kids i mean you look at some of these you know situations that some of these families are in with these kids and you know um i've had uh you know in-laws that were uh sick recently and spent some time in hospitals and uh you know to see a kid or anything like that go through that so just to you know change their outlook on life even if it's three minutes at a time, dude, is still, you know, an incredible feat. So I'm, I'm overwhelmed by this, by the generosity of everybody that's, um, influenced this. So am I. Now we've got, you know, a couple of weeks left before we officially start the fundraiser, but, you know, listen guys, if you've ever considered contributing to Project Pinball, consider our fundraising efforts because you're going to be matched dollar for dollar. So thanks to everybody that's gotten involved so far. And we look forward to getting everybody on board as we get closer to the fundraiser and more information about how you can donate and exact specific times will be available later. But without further ado, why don't we get into the pinball news? Let's do it. Getting the news from around the industry in this week's Industry Buzz. Hey, this is Kaz with a quick American pinball update. Dan informed me that there are five Oktoberfests for sale with the original prototype artwork and art blades. They do have new playfields, code, and hardware. So if you are a fan of the original design, you can buy these rare prototypes, and they are the same price as the current design. Also, new merchandise with the new mascot Amy Penn by Joel DeGuzman should be available this week. I also reached out to programmer Joe Schober, and he and the team are hard at work on Penn No. 3. He said that they haven't forgotten about Oktoberfest and Houdini owners and have new code updates coming for both titles. For American Pinball, this is Brian Cosner. Hi, this is Ken Rudberg with your Jersey Jack update. So I was reading on Pinsight about a user whose Pirates of the Caribbean machine just stopped booting. He couldn't get anything to happen except for some red lights to show up on the motherboard. In doing some research, I found out that this sometimes can happen on Jersey Jack machines, and you should know about it because it's pretty easy to fix. Basically what's happening is the motherboard needs to be reset. So that kind of simulates pushing the button on your computer to reset the computer. And you can do that by shorting out a couple of pins on the motherboard. Sounds complicated. It's not really. There's a thread on Pinside called JJ Pirates of the Caribbean Troubleshooting Tips, Issues, and Tech. And it outlines the way that you can reset that. But this no boot situation with a Jersey Jack machine can be caused by turning off the machine when the boot process isn't done. And this apparently happens a lot during the holidays when people are in your house that might not know how to turn a machine on properly. For Special When Lit, this is your Jersey Jack update with Ken Rudberg. The rumor mill bets stranger. Elvira gets a topper. And more code updates. Hey guys, Craig here again, your Special When Lit Stern News Correspondent. Well, with the news of the upcoming Rick and Morty title by Spooky Pinball taking the pinball world by surprise and dominating headlines this past week, the Stern rumor mill responded by churning even faster as pinheads continue to speculate on both Stern's next title and release date. With the smart money being placed on a Brian Eddy-designed Stranger Things pin, it remains to be seen if Stern will make this announcement in the coming days to try and capture some last-minute dollars of collectors trying to put some Stranger Things magic under the Christmas tree. We shall wait and see. And speaking of buying frenzy, with the recent announcement of the limited edition R2-D2 Star Wars topper, Stern is now giving their all-access subscribers a sneak peek of the upcoming Elvira's House of Horrors shooter knob and topper accessory, which will presumably be available before Christmas as well, although no firm date has been formally announced. And lastly, Stern Pinball continues to roll out new code for both Jurassic Park with version .96 and for Elvira's House of Horrors with code .88. These codes contain multiple new wizard modes, bug fixes, enhancements, and additional polish and can be downloaded via old-school Ethernet from the Stern website. That's all for this week. For Special When Lit, I'm Craig Bobby. Catch you on the flip side. Hi there, Dr. John with the Special When Lit spooky update. Well, what can one say? I think it can all be summed up by this. Hey, Morty, guess what? We got our own pinball machine, Morty. It's our own game. Geez, oh no, oh no. It's spooky pinball, Morty. They made a game just for us, Morty, just for us. You're scaring me, calm down. This isn't that exciting, Rick. It's just a pinball machine. They could have made a pinball machine about anybody, like some superhero or a rock band, but no, it's about us, Morty. We've got a pinball machine now. It's mostly about me, though, not so much about you, but hey, you know, ride those coattails, kid. So 750 games coming from Spooky, and this is the long-awaited second offering by Scott Dinesy, The old haunted house party was a ruse. Who would have known? They anticipate it will be ready for purchase around Christmas time. Those who don't know about the Fang Club yet, I would get in because you get a two-week head start on other orders. And I am a big fan of the show and have no doubt this game is going to sell out quick. Charlie has always said he wants games to be delivered early as possible after announcement. So I'm thinking they'll be ramping up and building the games right about now. looking forward to it i hope you all are too that's it for this week so there you have it dr john with the confirmation st spooky pinball finally has announced their next game it's scott denisi number two and that is rick and morty of adult swim and cartoon network bill first thoughts first impressions on the license you know i had to do some research on it because it's not one that i'm familiar with but i don't watch a whole lot of tv normally um i think it's a strong license I think it's a great license for a pinball. I do like how you can incorporate that into a pinball machine. I think if they do add a family-friendly feature into that so it doesn't have the swearing. Because I watched some YouTube videos on Rick and Morty, and they were a little out there as far as their humor and language. So, I mean, you might want to be careful with having that with kids in the house. But as long as there's a family-friendly mode in there. Yeah, from what I understand, Spooky has said there will be a family-friendly mode for the game. So you're not subject to crude adult humor. And some of that's pretty crude. Sure, yeah. Which is fun. I don't mind that. I don't shy away from that. For Pinball Night, it was just the guys. Yeah, sure. Right, exactly. On Christmas Eve, they might be a little frowned upon. So they're going to make 750 of these things. And you figure when you look at the amount of machines that Spooky Pinball can put out, it's approximately 500 machines a year. So they're going to take the next 18 to 24 months to knock out 750 of these games. Do you think that 750 games is a little bit too many games? Is it not enough games? How does the number correlate to the success of sales, in your opinion? I think that they'll do just fine with it. I'm sure midway through that they might have some people dropping out because they just want their machine. Kind of like... Well, it's the pinball hype train, right? It is the pinball hype train. If you don't get a machine in a certain amount of time, it's like, Do you want to wait around? Because over the next two years, you're going to see 10 machines released by all the other companies most likely. Oh, yeah. But, I mean, that happened with Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle. People were dropping out, selling spots, and other people were buying them and flipping them. So, I mean, I'm kind of expecting some of that to be happening. But I'm sure they'll sell them. I have a feeling they'll sell all 750. Okay, so they'll sell all 750. because it's said that it's going to be limited to 750 does it create additional hyper buzz that that kind of initiates people's willingness to want to go in and buy something sight unseen even we haven't seen the game so are there people right now that are getting on distributor lists and are they reserving this absolutely but do they reserve all 750 before we see the game because what i'm thinking of right now is i think the title alone the theme absolutely will call to at least 750 50 people. And I think assuming the game is not a dud, right? Assuming the game isn't isn't horrible. Yeah. The theme alone can keep that in somebody's house or on location for a while. It'll earn well on location, I think. Yeah, I think that, you know, because it's a recognizable theme, it's something that somebody is proud to show somebody else in their in their house. Now, now it is Scott Danesi's second game and everybody for the most part. Well, TNA was a success as far as correct people accepting it so and i know you've seen the game and you flip the game but i don't and i know you can't speak of that out of respect for spooky pinball yes so i it'll be interesting to see what everyone's reactions are so right it'll be interesting to see what happens but this is scott's second release and i saw the whitewood when i saw it you know pre-production you know prototype to say the least right right i thought it shot well and i thought it had some interesting features so that's about you know i i think it is a it is a cool game i look forward to people's reactions. I really want to see it with artwork because playing Whitewood was a little more it wasn something that I used to So I think that it shows promise Again I think the success of this game because the license is already there and it already appeals to at least 750 people, it's going to come down to the gameplay. It's going to come down to the design of that play field. It's going to come down to pinball moments. It's going to come down to how it flips. and with Scott Benici, this being his second effort, not that there's additional pressure on him, but I'm assuming anytime any of these guys release a pinball machine, there's a sense of anticipation for the success and a little bit of, you know, fearfulness for the failure. And we're going to wait and see what happens with that. So, I mean, I wish Spooky the best of luck. And I congratulate him on the license because it's great that they have it. Huge. And, you know, Scott's a personal friend of ours. And if we know Scott, I mean, Scott doesn't mess around. He puts everything he can into things. He's been working on this for a while. So, you know, good luck to you, Scott. And we're looking forward to see how it turns out, obviously. Let me ask you this, because this theme is not something it's not like you're extremely recognizable. It is right. But it's a recent theme, too. It's not something that, hey, it's an 80s license that that 40 and 50 year olds are going to be familiar with. This is something that's been like closer to 2010. So does that play a role? And what I'm thinking of is this. The typical pinball buying market is what, like late 30s to mid 50s, somewhere in there. Now, a lot of these people are already established in lives. They've sent their kids to college. They've kind of paid their dues in life. They've you know, some might have their houses paid off and they've got an element of success that allows them to increase the amount of free capital they have to spend on things like pinball machines. Now, when you look at people that maybe came up watching a cartoon around 2010, does that level like of economics play a role in them being interested in buying this pinball machine? Is that something that you gave consideration to? Because it just dawned on me. is there a more recent license other than like major motion pictures that is like pretty theme heavy? I mean, and how does that play in that demographic of buyers? I mean, I'm sure 750 will sell out, right? Here, okay. At the very least, dude, what would you say? At least 10% are going to go into homes with multi-pin collections, right? I would say half or 60 or 70% will probably go into homes. I would say maybe one out of every four of these will hit location. I mean, that's just my – I don't know what that brings out. Yeah, that wasn't phrased best. I think despite gameplay or anything else, dude, I think 75 of these are going to sell easy just because of the fact that it's a different pinball machine. 750? No, I think 75. At least 75 to 100 of these are going to sell regardless of gameplay or animations or regardless. Just because it's Rick and Morty. It's just Rick and Morty. Okay, so 10%. Easy. Easy. Easy. Just because you've heard of Rick and Morty and you want that license on a machine. And another easy 10% are going to go into large collections with your big Lebowskis and other rare obscure games that don't hit the street too often. Okay. I mean, I see this game selling out really easy. Yeah, so do I. So do I. It'll sell out fast for sure. I think what you have to do, though, to a certain extent, in going back to the hype train cycle, we always talk about this. the game gets revealed and everybody's excited about the license and then it's really that's kind of where it's peaked right now right now we are in the right we are going down the hill on the hype train and it's because nobody is going to get a game in a couple days and and it's like it's such an emotional purchase when when a new pin is announced there's this hyper it's like oh my gosh i want to get this i want to be the first one to have it i want to be able to tell people yeah i'm in on this i'm in on this but then you know as months or weeks or months go by it's like you It's not the new fresh thing in your mind anymore. So at 750 units, does it survive an 18-month product manufacturing cycle? It does. But I hope that Spooky has these on the line right now. And I noticed it said, like, coming Christmas 2019. Now, does that mean that the reveal or the announcement has come Christmas 2019? Or do we actually see a Rick and Morty pinball machine leave Spooky Pinball and go into a home or on location before the end of the year? I would say we probably see one flipping in a home on Christmas Eve. Yeah. You think so? If I were them, that's how I would do it. I'd be like, okay, who's the closest one to this establishment? Let's go drop it off. The reveal was interesting, too, because when you saw the reveal, like the little teaser video, you'd go to SpookyPinball.com. At least if I went there, I didn't see any mention of the game. So it's like they had kind of revealed a game without advertising or at least teasing it on their website. And it was like it was a weird kind of time of day that it was kind of launched and uploaded. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I don't know. I just, again, I think back at like the best way to reveal a game to build hype. And then I thought to myself, does Spooky really need to put forth all that effort? Because I'm assuming that they know that they've got what they consider to be a home run license. It's not a super license, right? But it's an important enough license where do they really need to, and this is not saying anything like they're lazy, but do they really need to even work hard to try to sell the 750 or does it just sell themselves? You know what I mean? Does that game just sell itself? I think it's just going to sell itself, dude, in all honesty. So do I. I think it'll just sell itself. You know, it's not a crazy, crazy number of games. Even a bad title these days, I'm thinking, would warrant 7,000 games easy. From a major manufacturer, yeah, you would assume so. You would assume that your lowest-selling games of recent years had to have at least sold 400 or 500 pins. Dude, they sold like 500 dominoes. Yeah. I'm not saying that. Well, those probably all went to Domino's. Whatever, man. I don't care. Either way, they got someone bought them. You know. And that was a contract game nonetheless, but still. I think they're going to sell. The other thing I'm excited about with the license, and full disclosure, I've never once seen an episode of Rick and Morty. Now, obviously, as this now is gaining traction, I'm going to have to start watching some of these episodes because I want to see what's going on. But what I think is such a tremendous. Which you say, all right, so I'm just picturing in my head, Hulu or whoever is hosting these episodes, they're going to be like, we've had 20,000 downloads of Rick and Morty in the last 72 hours. What is going on? Hulu stock is going up. Yeah. And Rick and Morty is driving it. But what I think is exciting is it sounds like the creators of Rick and Morty are so personally involved in wanting to see. I mean, they did the voices or he did for the voices for the for the trailer, for the teaser. And just to kind of see that makes me believe that they're on board. And if it's if it's their brand that's on this pinball machine, it seems to me like they would want to work as best as possible as they can with with closely spooky and Scott and and Bowen and everybody that's over there to make sure that the game is a hit. And and I think that's tremendous, too, because when we look at the, you know, Jurassic Park is a game that everybody keeps coming back to as the most recent Stern. And we'll go back to that in a second because, guys, there's another game that's been announced post-Jurassic Park, but that seems to have gotten totally lost in the shuffle for some reason. But we saw how the assets of the license were lackluster. Now, it doesn't mean that they didn't do a good job, but there was not the assets that people had expected. There was some criticism on that initially. But it seems to me that you're going to have, at least based on what I'm speculating, you're going to have a licensee and a licensor that are working close together in order to come up with the ultimate release on a game. It doesn't seem like it happens too often. No, it doesn't, right? And one game that sticks in my mind that has happened kind of recently was Elvira. What are your thoughts on Elvira? Well, I really do like Elvira a lot. And the one thing that I'm puzzling, because now you're talking back. I'm going back to Stern a little bit. Okay. But the main premise of why I say this is because she worked closely with the development of this game. Ah, good point. She is a strong point in the animations, right? Yes. And that is one reason why I think you really like this game, because it's not like Jurassic Park, where the main characters are. I really like Jurassic Park, though. But I think they did a great job without the assets of the characters. So do I. I mean, they couldn't have done that any better, but this is a game that has all the, you know, has Elvira and everything else. So if Rick and Morty is anywhere near Elvira as far as being integrated with the actual characters, character voices and everything else, you know, you've got a strong theme. You have strong animations and the Rick and Morty voices inside of the game. Yeah, right. Call outs and everything. Scott's doing the music. Scott had a good time. Scott's doing music and light shows, I think he said. Yeah. So, yeah. So how is this not supposed to be a good game? And I say that, you know. It's going to come down to the play field design. That's why I keep saying everything else is there. If the play field does not hold up from a playability factor, that would be the only way I don't see this pin being successful. See, it's got enough stuff in it that I think that that won't be an issue. The other thing, though, you have to think about now is in the Stern camp, or at least the Stern fan club and those that are following Stern, is Stern going to counterpunch? Not a direct counterpunch towards Spooky, but are they going to throw their hat in a ring? And are they going to release a pinball machine before the end of the year? Are they going to release a title? And, you know, reading online and listening to podcasts and whatnot, you hear, well, why would they release a game so soon when Jurassic Park is still in production? And I keep thinking to myself, Elvira House of Horrors is still in production. And this game, for whatever reason, it's just like it's skipped over. Now, I realize it's not a cornerstone title, right? So I'm assuming because it's not a cornerstone title that there's not as much concern as to the sales of the game. I mean, every game should have, you know, I'm sure they need every game to be successful. But it's like when the general public is just talking about, well, they shouldn't undercut Jurassic Park sales by releasing a game this month. You're also potentially undercutting Elvira's House of Horror sales. I don't think so, though. I mean, yes, to a degree. But you're undercutting that title more than you would be undercutting Jurassic Park. I mean, I think it's the most recent game that's been released. But I think Elvira is kind of like a very niche kind of buyer for the most part. Unless you are not deeply in love with it, but you really enjoy the theme and you really enjoy the layout. It's not widely recognized as Jurassic Park. It's Elvira Stearns Rick and Morty. You know what I mean? Kind of. Because Rick and Morty's not known everywhere either. I think Stranger Things, if that's the actual game that comes out next. Which is the heavily rumored game is Stranger Things, which I'm freaking out about, right? Because if it's Stranger Things. Perfect comparison. Oh, my gosh. They're both recent themes. They're not 30-year-old themes. Exactly. Now, Stranger Things, I'm just assuming, I haven't done any research on this, and maybe I should do so before I speak, but I'm thinking Stranger Things might have a wider audience than Rick and Morty does. I think Stranger Things was the single most streamed series on Netflix in history when it first had come out. And I think since then, The Mandalorian has passed that up on Disney+, as far as the most amount of streams for a new series. But it's just, I mean, there's all this happening. Rick and Morty comes out. Elvira had just come out. Rick and Morty announced. And again, if Stern jumps in and they launch a title, and Bill, if it's Stranger Things, it's going to be an expensive freaking Christmas for me, man. because that's a game that I've been waiting for. And if the stars are aligning, and it is Brian Eddy on the game, it might be my last podcast today. I don't know that I'll be able to take it. I'll probably have some type of a heart attack, and it was nice knowing everybody. Pinball Land, thank you so much for following Special Unlit as we fade the black. You've got to stick it out until the 22nd of December. Charity stream has to go on regardless. I will stay for the charity stream. Next year you might be fundraising for me, because I will be in some type of a bad predicament. But, yeah, and, again, Stranger Things. The only thing that can mess up Stranger Things if it was announced as a title because, again, the license is going to carry you through as far as recognition and sales, right? Yeah. What could mess that up? Playfield design. If the playfield design sucks, the sales hinder. It's just how it's going to be. I think it's going to sell regardless. I think your initial boom is going to be there. Right, because I'm going to be buying one regardless. Now, do I keep it regardless? I don't know about that. You don't keep anything, so that doesn't even matter to me. That's true. But I've never had a dream license ever. I mean, in the history since I've been collecting pinball machines or buying and selling, the one that came the closest was Ghostbusters. And I no longer have a Ghostbusters. I since would like to get one back. But, I mean, as far as, like, the ultimate dream theme license for me, it would be Stranger Things. So, I don't know. I keep getting excited because I keep hearing about the rumors. We're going to bring up Ghostbusters a little later on, though, Ken. Yeah, absolutely. Now, going back to Elvira for just a second, we had Chuck Ernst on the Flip N Out Pinball stream this past week. And a couple quick updates for those of you. Hey, for the few of you in the niche market that enjoyed Elvira House of Horrors like I did, Chuck Ernst gave us some interesting tidbits. He said that there are 4,000 clips that can be utilized or that have been recorded or gathered for Elvira's House of Horrors. In comparison Batman 66 which is widely known for having a large amount of video assets has about 1 clips So you looking at 4 clips In addition I think right now there five or six deadheads that are coded in the game Chuck said, hey, guys, 15 deadheads, when it's all said and done, will be coded into this game. Also, in regards to the deadheads, there's been some user feedback. Not really thrilled with the way that the deadhead animations are displayed, the big floating head that kind of overlaps everything. and Chuck says that there's consideration for kind of revamping that graphical overlay a little bit. And then I did reach out to Jerry Thompson. Can you imagine why I reached out to Jerry Thompson? Because for me – For sound, maybe. Yeah, for sound, right? Jerry Thompson is the lead sound engineer at Stern Pinball, right? Yep, a great dude, by the way. Freaking Jerry and his wife, two of the nicest, most awesome people you'll ever meet to hang out with, have a beer, whatever. and the one thing that to me on Elvira right now because for me the audio is so impactful on the enjoyment of the game for me again it's like a party in the box is that the spinner sound is just I don't even notice it and I like to rip a spinner and I like to get that audio feedback for ripping a spinner and Elvira it's almost non-existent and I and I said Jerry please don't take this the wrong way I just feel like for such a satisfying shot for a lot of people that spinner just it's just there's no there's no audio payoff for it and he's like yeah yeah he goes you know what it's something that we're looking into he said lyman's got some more important things that he wants to address first but uh you know don't be surprised if you see a revamped spinner sound so that was kind of uh it was nice to be able to get some feedback from jerry so hopefully i was able to discuss that and if i wasn't i will be uh editing that out and re-uploading the episode at some point so spinner sounds subject to change so elvira's House of Horrors is there. What else do we have? We have Jersey Deck Pinball. I guess if your machine has a blinking light, you just got to go in there and just short-circuit your freaking board. What the heck is that? It sounds a little bit intense. Okay, for you, I've talked to some people that have had to do this. You've got to jumper the board, right? Yeah, you have to go to the garage. You have to get two screwdrivers and some jumper cables. I'm kidding. Oh, my gosh. I'm kidding. That's not what I was thinking. Well, you do have to short the board out in order to reset it. It sounds so major. It sounds terrible. But, you know, because I've heard more than one person having to do this, I haven't had to do that with either one of my games yet. Not to say that that day's not coming, but you never know. I've done this before on like an ATX computer power supply where you've got like the power supply Molex connector. And to jumper it to go on, you'd take a paper clip and you'd put it into two of the pinouts and then you'd fire it up and it would jumper and it would fire up. But for me to open up a machine and then to go in there and try to jump or something, like, I wouldn't – if I knew how to do it, I wouldn't mind doing it. Yeah. I'm just thinking for, like, the standard pinball purchaser to be told, hey, man, go in there and you're going to freaking jump your board. It sounds a little intimidating. You're going to see a spark. I'm kidding about that. I don't know if you're actually going to see a spark. If there's flames past seven seconds, you're going to want to – I've got to figure out how to do this, man, so I can kind of have a little insight on this. Well, I guess you can – You just got to fire it off while it's powering up. Ken Rudberg says you can check it out online. And I guess he says some of the causes are when the machine is booting, when you turn it on, it to be turned off before full boot. Yeah. Have you seen on any JJP games any type of disclaimer, do not turn this machine off until it's fully booted? I have not. I haven't either, but I haven't bought a new JJP since dialing LE, and it might have been on there. I just don't remember. But it seems like that would be pretty important to be able to maybe have a big freaking sticker somewhere that says, hey, hey, hey, let the machine fully boot before you turn it off. Otherwise, give it a minute to wake up and do its business. I get it. But you're climbing into the machine and you're going to freaking jumper the board. Yeah, but if you've got a six-year-old, they're not going to care. Well, you can put the six-year-old in there to jump the board. No. My point is this. Collateral damage. A six-year-old kid doesn't know what it means to cycle the on-off. Well, and that's true. And Jersey Jack games take a little while to get up and running. They do. They got a lot of crap in them. Sure, sure. I think the only thing that takes longer is like, man, American Pinball, that Oktoberfest. You turn that on, you go get a sandwich. Yeah. And come back and you're just about ready. Draw a warm bath. Just ready to go on. That's why you never turn it on and off. But in all fairness, I don't know the level of complexity. But I was just listening to Ken talk about that. And I was like, man, that's a little bit more intense for some people. Yeah. You know what, though? I could see them putting a button in there at some point or coming up with a better way of doing it. Or some type of fail-safe where if you turn the game off, the computer would know to keep going until it fully booted and then delay time itself out. But then you've got to bypass the power switch. Well, you know what? They need to sell some type of jumper kit for the game where you're not in there with pins and screwdrivers and I don't know. Again, it just was – There could be a better way of doing it, yes. It was so odd to hear us. But I think there's worse things in the world. No, I totally get it. For most of us, it's not a big deal. You go in your pinball repair room, you grab a screwdriver, and away you go. For the people that literally own one pin on Christmas Eve and they want to know why it's not working and they look it up online. That would suck. And hear me out, right? I can see that being a little more. You get your Willy Wonka Collector Edition comes on Christmas Eve. No, on 12-23, the day before, you think, well, this is going to be a great Christmas. Jersey Jack pulls up himself, and he's like, hey, let's set this up. You got some donuts? Let's go ahead and get that. We're going to set it up. Shakes hands. Everybody's happy. You know, they put it in the room. There's a big bow on top of it. And they turn it on. And Jack's already left. And they're like, all right, let's get a couple games in before the kids come downstairs so we can kind of test it out and play with it a little bit. And as the game's booting, you hear like kids coming downstairs. Kids coming downstairs. Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off. Boom. Turn the game off. Right? It's like, oh, let's not turn this on until tomorrow. Then you fire it up tomorrow. and it's like a red blinking light and it's like um what's what's going on here why why is this happening so i guess the moral of the story is don't turn your game on christmas eve at all no no the moral of the story is don't let your kids turn it on yeah don't let your kids play your pinball and if you ain't got five minutes to play it don't turn it on holy cow it's just intense anyhow um american pinball brian i'm gonna interrupt you here i love it okay so on wizard of Oz dude there's been times where I have shut it off and turned it back on like you know mid game you know Madeline my daughter has a ball going and it's you know I'm not playing you know two more balls so I'll just turn it off and turn it back on and there's a couple of times where it goes off and it doesn't come back on and I'm like okay turn it off again turn it back on dude and it comes right up so yeah I think now with like a lot of pc-based software running on these games It's a little bit different. And I'm trying to remember what. Oh, we were just talking about it last week, and it was spooky pinball. Dr. John was saying, Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle, if your game at the conclusion resets itself. It's okay. Right. It's a memory dump. It's supposed to be doing that. So there's behavior you're not used to seeing on some of these solid-state pinball machines that now might be a little bit more finicky. And I'm sure there's going to be workarounds in the future, but at least they're able to be fixed. Well, in the grand scheme of things. would you rather have a computer problem where you have to take a screwdriver in the thing or would you rather have a playfield issue or a cabinet issue yeah yeah i don't know i probably would rather just short out a couple wires but how many times have you gone into a repair or and this just happened recently to me like you're gonna add a mod right and it's like well this looks easy enough and then you're like 45 minutes into it you got all these pieces all over the place you get it all back together and there's like two extra screws and a washer and and you're like, well, they probably didn't need to put it in there. I can just imagine me getting into a game. It's like, ah, I can short these wires. And all of a sudden, this bank goes out, and this node board fails, and it's like, oh, no. Suddenly the house goes dim because you had the power supply on or something crazy. Did I ever tell you the Hobbit smog story when I got SmogLE? I know it. I'll just tell it real fast. But for all you listeners that have never heard it, I still find it entertaining, and I think it's pertinent to tell the story. A Jersey Jack game, coincidentally. I had acquired a Hobbit Smaug edition, and at one point, Smaug started – he stopped kind of moving his jaw up and down. He wasn't articulating his jaw for speech. So I went in to test, and I was testing it, and it was like the motor was seized or something. So I'm in there, and I'm poking around, and I forced the amount or the tolerance of the jaw to be too wide or too small or something. I forget what it was. And I remember at one point under the play field, there's smoke coming from from smog. And I was like, this is the most incredible thing that I've ever seen. And I'm glad that I'm testing this because I never would have known that he smokes. I would have just thought that he never did that before. And then as I'm thinking this, the actual smell of burning then starts happening. And then I'm like, so I unplugged the game and and I'm thinking and I'm just watching it. I'm like the game. I just got this game. It's going to light on fire. It's going to take the house down. It was a little bit scary, but thanks to Jersey Jack tech support, I was able to mail that in, and they gave me a discount on a replacement at the time. So smog was up and running. Anyhow, American Pinball, Brian Kosner is saying, hey, listen, American Pinball has prototype cabinets available for purchase at full price. So if you are looking at the old school art package for the prototype cabinets, You can not only buy one of these Oktoberfest prototypes, but you can also pay the full price. And it will get a new play field, but you don't get the butt-grabbing monkey. Exactly, exactly. So, and I guess an abbreviated version of Drain It or Save It. It's time for this week's edition of Drain It or Save It. Drain It or Save It, Bill. Prototype Oktoberfest for full price. Drain It or Save It. I'm going to Drain It. I'm going to Drain That, too. Are those cabinets just prototype? What I think it is, I don't know that they were actually like show games, right? Or were they? I think they were. They were the original cabinets from Expo when the game came out. Oh, they're not just like the extra cabinets they had with the prototype artwork? I don't think so. I'm going to have to listen to that again. Yeah, that'd be kind of strange. Why would you want to use show game at full price? Unless it's got the butt-grabbing monkey, I don't. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. There has to be a little bit more of a reason. Yeah, there's got to be something. Otherwise, I'd just rather have a new one box. Well, and there is the collector that does appreciate the more rare prototypes. The prototype collector is a very niche kind of market. Because I remember, like, and you know who told me this was Mike Fox. Mike Fox, he works at Pinball Life with Terry Disward. We got a story about Mike Fox today, too. All right, good. I talked to Mike Fox yesterday, as a matter of fact. He must have been making the rounds. but he would say you know when i had uh i had a couple prototypes before the most recent being the uh earthshaker prototype and he's like you know he's like the thing with the prototypes are is like you can ask more money for the prototype because they're rare but it's like if the buyer's not there it's just you're just not going to get it he's like but if you're able to wait at some point normally you'll find somebody that is wanting that rare piece and it can command a little bit more but he said prototypes in general are not going to command the dollars that people expect them to command and i've had a couple buddies locally that have come across some pretty obscure prototypes and they thought that they had uh not gold but they thought that they had absolutely done well for themselves as far as the investment and you know when it all was said and done the payoff wasn't what they had expected i mean they didn't lose money but it wasn't like this huge wasn't a 75 000 twilight zone no no geez no it was not okay what's your mike fox story though um we'll go into a bill's corner for that one okay we haven't done a bill's corner well i'm kind of out of news man i think that's that's it i mean no we're still have news ken we didn't talk about ghostbusters yet the ghostbusters trailer that was dropped today which you have not i did not see the ghostbusters trailer and it's funny because it's right this would be right in line with the vault edition that we've been discussing for ghostbusters so full disclosure I saw the trailer, and I'm kind of excited to see what happens with this. The trailer pulled me in enough that I probably will go see the movie. But, yes, Ken, I would love to see them vault that game next year. Yep, yep. I would not be surprised if you see a Ghostbusters vault. Will it be next year? I don't know, but I think that game warrants a vault. Now, I know there's some unfortunate history involved with the original designer of the game. But that being said, if George Gomez can go in and he can kind of redesign Sea Witch to make it a better playing Beatles pinball machine, why can't George Gomez go in and redesign a couple things to re-vault a Ghostbusters and make it a better playing game? There's no reason why not unless it's just not in their interest to any longer have association with that title. And if that were the case, I think that's very unfortunate because I think up until recently, that had to be their biggest seller. It might still be their biggest seller to date was Ghostbusters. Well, dude, the cabinet's pretty. The game plays there. Zombie Yeti artwork. The game plays there. His inaugural debut as a Stern artist. And it's gorgeous. It is gorgeous. I really think that that game could, with a couple of tweaks and throw the LCD in that sucker, dude, that thing could come alive. You know who's, speaking of Ghostbusters, you know who's ghosting me lately? Who? Zombie Yeti. Really so i hoping that just his facebook is broken because i reached out to so many people in regards to get audio for the holiday show And it interesting this year A lot of people that did the audio last year either chose not to do it this year or just never got back to me So I don't know if I've become like the most hated man in pinball podcasting or if just everybody's too busy. But we got a lot of new blood coming in this year for this show because guys that contributed just never followed up. And I reached out to somebody else just recently and said, hey, are you going to do this for me? Because you did such a great job last year. And literally the reply was, I've made a decision not to do it this year. I was like, oh, that sucks. So I don't know. Maybe we cancel the holiday show. Really? No. Oh, I was going to say. Okay. But no, so Zombie Yeti, like, I had a really good conversation with them at Expo. And I thought we were on the same page. He probably thinks you're spam now or something. I don't know, man. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe I had some drinks at Expo, and then I thought we were best friends, and now he's gone. Yeah, I'm going to do an episode of everybody that ghosted me on the holiday episode. So if you ghosted me, you're going to get called out on Special Win Lit Pinball Podcast in episode 83. The whole list. You really want to do an episode on people that ghosted us? No, I'm just kidding. I think it would be funny. I mean, it would be controversial for doing it. Trying to put the pressure on. Still waiting to hear back from who else that is – we'll just leave it at that. I didn't mean to call it Zombie Yeti, but the reason I'm calling out Zombie Yeti is because if for some reason he's just not reading my Facebook messages. Hopefully he's listening. Well, and hopefully somebody at Stern is listening or they can be like, hey, Ken was looking out for you. And he's a little sad because his audio last year was so awesome. Like he did a really good job, very creative. I did get a really crazy message that came in from Super Awesome Pinball Show, which is your Franchi, Van Der Veen, and Line trio. So that's kind of interesting. So a lot of people had fun with it, which is always nice. Look forward to hearing that. Yeah, I look forward to hearing from Zombietti at Expo next year. Oh, yeah. See, I feel Ken's anxiety from thinking about having to edit this. So everybody, give Ken a round of applause. Well, no, no, no. But it's not even editing. It's just as long as I have all the audio in on time, I've scheduled the time for it. But now it's like now I'm the bill collector collecting debts that nobody's accumulated. So really what I do is I'm cold calling. I'm like, hey, would you like to take part in this special one? And in all fairness, everybody that I had reached out to, I reached out to like in the same day. So if you got a message from me this year and you didn't get one last year, it's not because Zombie Yeti didn't return my messages. It's because I was trying to expand the show. We had 40 guests on last year. So I was like, let's go for 50 this year. And I don't know that it's going to be 50. So in any event, for those of you that did not return my message, you've hurt my feeling. You've hurt my pinball podcast feelings. Tsk, tsk. Now, we can still be friends, but I'm just not going to lie, a little disappointed. A little bit. Am I the most hated man in podcasting? I don't think so. Could be. Eh. Eh, whatever. Eh. Sorry. i mean we have to care yeah and you know i don't know we care we care i listen we care about people's feelings right you know if someone we piss somebody off we'll say we're sorry or make a public apology or whatever but you know if we don't know something we can't help that so i mean orbital albert and now i'm gonna i'm gonna make a show about me to you know reassure myself that i'm not like a complete jerk uh he had a he had an uh he does pinball nerds podcast and he did like this thing like the the 10 nicest guys in pinball and guess who came in on number one don't say ken cromwell no it was steve bodden oh okay i was gonna say but guess who came in number two not ken cromwell it was ken cromwell i came in number two yeah so that was awesome so i guess in parts of canada i'm well liked hey listen but Steven Bowden though is the class act yeah well steve he's a nice guy dude he is the nicest guy in pinball i don't know anybody that's ever mad at Steven Bowden hey and guess who submitted audio for the christmas special this year who Steven Bowden nice he did it last year too he got back to me even though he's so busy he's still able to do it guys what he's just a genuinely nice guy man yeah he's awesome i kind of like the freestyle going right now yeah no notes nothing else going on so yeah ghostbusters dude i'm hoping they vault that george fixes a few different things you know maybe changes the checkered past a little bit but even the code update that they dropped this previous uh uh fall, dude, you can't touch a Pro now for less than $4,900 to $5,000. Dude, at one point you could buy a Ghostbusters Pro for $4,200. Are you seeing Ghostbusters Pros premiums or at least really even coming up for sale right now? Not really. If there are, they're coming up at a higher price. And you think that's because of the code? I think it's because of the code. Yeah. I still think it's a great game, dude. Even when the Uncle Law was over, dude, he was on Ghostbusters two hours playing it. What if they vault it? And let's say you get video assets because they could do an LCD screen and still make it the shape of a DMD like color DMD does. Yeah. And you could still do video assets on that DMD or you could just colorize the game yourself in-house. I mean, they own that. So, I mean, you could get a color DMD. Like a Jurassic Park version of it. Dude, that would be cool. Well, and I'm even saying, yeah, you could have a graphical overlay, but you could just literally color all the dots. Yeah. Like a color DMD, and you could have that in your vault. That would be pretty awesome. You know, and you hear people asking about Lord of the Rings vaults. You hear people asking about Tron vaults. And to me, it seems like those, at least for Tron and Lord of the Rings, those are nice titles to be able to vault in the event of a sales slump where you got a couple releases back to back and you just aren't moving units and you need a quick fix. You pull in the big guns. You get your Lord of the Rings vault going. You pull in your big guns. You get your Tron vault going. And it's interesting, too, because with Tron and Lord of the Rings, right, there was just like – there was a pro, and was there an LE? Yeah. Well, there was – okay, so there was an LE for Lord of the Rings, but for Tron, I think there was not like an LE. There wasn't a premium, though, right? There was just like two trim levels maybe. I'm not sure, dude. That goes back a little beyond my – So you could introduce a new trim level without upsetting the LE buyers for some exclusivity. Yeah, I don't know. But, again, you can vault those and almost guarantee, I would think, 1,000 quick units being spoken for going out the door to kind of pick up some slack. And that's when you get the hate mail and the pitchforks from all the LE owners. Well, you know what? They get the hate mail and the pitchforks regardless of what they do. That's just true. It just is what it is. Dude, they got the biggest bullseye on their back for stuff like that, it seems like. Might as well make some money while you're doing it. Hey, if they don't make money, there's no reason why they stay in business. No, I totally get it. I understand. What else you got, man? Anything else going on? Yeah, we have a Bill's Corner. Uh-oh. What's happening? So, Ken, I started working on another game. Oh, no. I mean, awesome. What is it? I'm going to let you guess. Cactus Jacks. No. It's not Cactus Jacks. Getaway. No. It's not Getaway. You're working on another game, and it's not Getaway, and it's not. Oh, Transformers. Yeah, there you go. Started populating the play field last week. What did you say, the sand edition? Hurricane Sandy edition. The Hurricane Sandy edition. Now, for those of you that might be new to the podcast, Bill literally bought a Transformers that was pulled out of the ocean of Hurricane Sandy. Well, no, it was in a game room that was literally on the Jersey Shore. But the ocean was in the game room. The ocean had flooded the game room for about 18 hours. It's not like he scooped it out a kilometer offshore and pulled out a Transformers. It was in the ocean. It was in the ocean because the ocean had moved further inland. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, dude, I actually busted that out, dude, ordered a bunch of parts, saw Mike Fox. Actually, he was kind of the inspiration because when I went to get parts last week. Yeah. It's like, how's your Transformers coming, Bill? And for anyone that doesn't know. He told me he asked you about that also. I got so aggravated with this game because it just sucked the life out of me for pinball that I literally bought a bunch of other stuff and shoved it in my crawl space because I didn't even want to look at it. Well, your biggest issue was just trying to come up with a replacement wiring harness for the game, right? Because it's the LE. It was. Yeah. But, you know what? I'm going to give it a shot, dude, and see if it works. I actually gave some of the LED lights that hadn't been powered on since, you know, said flood, power, dude, and they actually turned on. Oh, okay. So there's a bunch of stuff that turned on still, and I was like, wow. Okay. So maybe. Nothing like some salt water to clean up those contacts. And, you know, and honestly. A little corrosion. for full disclosure the game has a new cabinet new boards new dmd a brand new transformer which is coming because i got a little nervous about using the old one new coin door um all i mean whatever you think a transformer's le should cost brand new yeah right now yep i'm over it so yeah and we're not done yet but right you know new play field i mean you know dude this game is basically brand new other than a handful of used parts. So, yeah, dude, we're working on getting the play field populated. And hopefully, hopefully, maybe not next week, but the week after, dude, I'll be able to tell you that it turns on. So for those of you that just missed out on Rick and Morty, there's a Transformers LE that's been fully restored, coming up for sale. You're not going to keep it? I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. I'm so mad at the game that, yeah, somebody gave me the right money. Well, you better do it before they vault Transformers. Yeah, okay. Okay. All right. Let's freestyle this for a minute. Yeah. You have Transformers. Right. You had ACDC released in the same year. Which one did they vault? Well, there's only one left to vault from that year, right? They are not doing it. Okay. ACDC came out the same year as Transformers? I think it did. I don't think it did. I think you're on prescription meds. That seems like – who designed Transformers? Who was the designer? George Gomez. So Gomez was on Transformers. Steve Ritchie was on ACDC. It seems like ACDC was a lot more current than Transformers. Transformers seems like it was years prior. But it'd be kind of interesting if they vaulted Transformers and made it like the cartoon edition of Transformers. Okay, March 1st, 2012 for ACDC. Okay. All right. We got some live phone lookup going on right now. March 1st, 2012. Over or under? And Transformers, I think, came out later than that. Really? Okay, I was wrong. what was it uh it can't transformers came out 2011 that's still closer than i had thought but it came out in like october so it's pretty they're five months apart dude yeah that they're they're close enough to be related almost yeah totally different games they're well different approaches to the games too yeah i know but it's just kind of like huh i don't know what would you rather have acdc or would you rather have transformers anything than transformers and it's not just the game it's not because the game it's just this one's been such a headache man i know i get it but honestly i started populating the play field the other night because our son started to sleep for three hours that night and i was like you know and mike fox going back to that story going to pinball life and of course he's got to be a smart aleck and say hey bill how's transformers coming along because this has been like the three or four year process with this game and of course you know i love mike but i want to slap him be like dude Why do you bring up this bad penny? So that night, dude, I was like pulling stuff out, you know, the stuff that was still in the crawl space. And, okay, what do I need, dude? You know, lit up the credit card on a bunch of stuff that I needed. And hopefully it turns out in the next two weeks. We'll see. I'm sure you'll be keeping us updated on a weekly basis on Transformers. I doubt there will be weekly updates. No. Okay. It will be like. Let us know when it's ready. Random updates. I don't have the time to work on this stuff like I used to. Like, World Wind Dude, I always had an update because there was something going on. but this will be time is very hard man between the work and holidays and family it's it's really difficult to get things done right now so sleep would just be nice sleep would be nice some extra hours in the day would be nice actually yeah i would i would take that but yeah that's all i got man you got anything else no man that's about it i want to say that this episode of special in the pinball podcast was brought to you by lermods.com and they're offering custom quality playfield mods and lighting for your pinball machine l-e-r-m-o-d-s visit lermods.com today So thank you, Rob and Kim. I want to thank all the correspondents for their efforts this week. Interesting week in the pinball news for sure. I want to thank everybody for listening. If you want to reach the show, several ways to do so. You can reach us at specialwhenlitpinballpodcasts at gmail.com. You know what's funny? I was talking to Jeff Teolis last week, and he's like, what's the email? And I said, specialwhenlitpinballpodcasts at gmail.com. And he's like, dude, that's god-awful long, man. He said, this is what was so funny. because your email is the international rescue of emails. You know, from Thunderbirds? Yeah. You just got to hit international rescue to start. I was like, yeah, so sorry. So that's where you can reach us. Maybe I'll get a shorter email set up for that. Or hit us up on Facebook, Special When Lit Pinball Podcast. And Bill, what's that Instagram? Special When Lit Pinball. How is Instagram going? Is it fun? Have you been on Instagram? A little bit, but nothing too crazy. We'll get some pictures up there. But thanks, everybody, for joining us. We've got Episode 83 coming up next week. We've got more information on the fundraiser that's coming up soon. Greg Freres is coming in right after the show. He's the artist of Elvira's House of Horrors. He's going to stream it with us on the Flip N Out Pinball Streaming Network. So catch us there. For Bill Webb, I am Ken Cromwell. Everybody have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody.