Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 233 - Evil Dead & Half-Life

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·54m 55s·analyzed·Nov 23, 2024
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Spooky's Evil Dead pinball impresses with theme immersion; market analysis suggests 45-50% of pandemic peak demand.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers Podcast discusses Spooky Pinball newly revealed Evil Dead pinball machine, detailing its features, design, and market implications. Hosts analyze current pinball market sales as roughly 45-50% of pandemic-era peak demand (2021-2022), driven by reduced LE production counts and economic headwinds. They also correct previous statements about American Pinball product lineup and clarify Riot Pinball's pre-order history with Wrath of Olympus.

Key Claims

  • Evil Dead is limited to 888 units with one trim level at $9,999 MSRP, with optional topper ($1,400) and butter cabinet ($1,500) add-ons

    high confidence · Dennis provides detailed pricing and production count information directly from official Spooky announcement

  • According to Nap Arcade, 500 of the 888 Evil Dead units were already sold as of the podcast date (late November 2024)

    high confidence · Dennis cites Nap Arcade report linked in show notes

  • Evil Dead's first two movies have two different licensors, requiring Spooky to work with both (Army of Darkness not included)

    medium confidence · Dennis mentions discovering this detail in featurette, notes it was not common knowledge

  • Current pinball sales are approximately 45-50% of the pandemic market peak (2021-2022)

    medium confidence · Dennis estimates ~50%, Tony suggests ~45%, both attributing decline to reduced LE production, economy, and end of pandemic demand surge

  • Pandemic supply chain constraints (particularly chip availability competing with Ford F-150 production) limited pinball production for 8-10 months post-pandemic

    medium confidence · Dennis explains supply chain dynamics; speaker claims this affected all manufacturers equally

  • American Pinball's clarification: only Oktoberfest is formally retired; Houdini and Legends of Valhalla are 'on pause' rather than discontinued

    high confidence · Dennis corrects previous episode statement with direct reference to American Pinball's clarifying statement

  • Bruce Campbell's call-outs on Evil Dead were poorly coached/delivered with flat enthusiasm

    medium confidence · Dennis observation from trailer; notes this may have been intentional to match character presentation

  • Evil Dead is a widebody machine; Spooky previously released Scooby-Doo as widebody but Looney Tunes was not

    high confidence · Dennis provides technical specification based on game specs

Notable Quotes

  • “They timed this for our show. Yes, thank you so much. They clearly went out and were like, when is Eclectic Gamers going to drop? Let's get all of this stuff out just before that happens.”

    Tony @ N/A — Playful acknowledgment of Spooky Pinball's release timing coinciding with podcast episode; reflects podcast's perceived influence in community

  • “You may be our number one pinball manufacturer at this point simply because of the respect you have shown to this podcast and its listeners.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Hosts credit Spooky Pinball for respecting podcast schedule; indicates close relationship between content creators and manufacturers

  • “Overall, this game screams theme immersion. I don't think we've seen a game that did this well at theme immersion since Labyrinth. Probably not. And in some ways, maybe this is even done better than Labyrinth.”

    Dennis @ N/A — High praise for Evil Dead's thematic execution; positioning it competitively against Labyrinth (Barrels of Fun), a critically acclaimed recent release

  • “With Spooky, whenever they've deviated from relatively pedestrian layouts, it just doesn't play well. Which has been a problem. And that's been an ongoing Spooky problem that several of their recent games have had that they've just not been that fun.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Critique of Spooky's recent game design philosophy; notes correlation between complex layouts and poor play experience in their recent releases

  • “I think it was really smart of them to go down to one model. I do too... I think just saying, here it is. Do you want the topper? Do you want the butter cab? I think that works really, really well.”

    Both Dennis and Tony @ N/A — Approval of Evil Dead's simplified product tier strategy versus Spooky's previous multi-edition approach; reflects market trend toward cleaner SKU management

  • “There was huge demand in 2021 and 2022 in particular... by March of 2023 was like the price peak, and then things just fell off a cliff.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Timeline analysis of pinball market cycle; identifies March 2023 as inflection point for price correction across collectibles including pinball

Entities

Spooky PinballcompanyEvil DeadgameBug EmerypersonChristopher FranchipersonBen HeckpersonBruce CampbellpersonGary TunicliffepersonBack Alley CreationscompanyMatt Montgomeryperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball clarifies product status: only Oktoberfest formally retired; Houdini and Legends of Valhalla are 'on pause' rather than discontinued, contradicting previous podcast statements

    high · Dennis issues quasi-correction citing American Pinball's clarifying statement; distinguishes between retirement and pause status due to confusion over manufacturer's initial phrasing

  • ?

    event_signal: Spooky Pinball coordinated Evil Dead reveal timing to align with Eclectic Gamers Podcast episode release, demonstrating respect for podcast's community standing

    medium · Dennis and Tony joke that 'They clearly went out and were like, when is Eclectic Gamers going to drop?' suggesting deliberate scheduling by manufacturer

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Evil Dead positioned as thematic design achievement comparable to or exceeding Labyrinth; demonstrates Spooky's capability to deliver high-quality theme immersion in widebody format

    medium · Dennis states 'Overall, this game screams theme immersion. I don't think we've seen a game that did this well at theme immersion since Labyrinth... maybe even done better than Labyrinth'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Spooky Pinball intentionally moved toward 'safe' playfield layouts after experiences with complex designs that didn't play well; Evil Dead widebody employs relatively pedestrian shot layout focused on fan-friendly geometry

    medium · Dennis describes Evil Dead layout as 'safe and very fan-like' in contrast to Halloween; notes 'whenever they've deviated from relatively pedestrian layouts, it just doesn't play well' reflects Spooky's recent design lessons

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.165

0:00
Welcome to the Collected Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 24th. This is episode 233. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. And a special thank you to Glenn W., who emailed us his remix of the Laser War music in honor of our last episode's discussion on what games could Stern remaster. than we thought. And I had mentioned Laser War. And out of that, I thought I'd put a little bit of that in here at the start of the episode. Also, before asking you what you've been doing, I do have a few corrections. Some of these are actually a couple of episodes ago that I meant to talk about, but last time we had a OneNote issue. We almost had another OneNote issue. But last time we had a OneNote issue on my part, so I did not end up getting them in. But Rare Hero on Pinside issued a correction regarding episode 231. In that episode, I said that Elvira Blood Red Kiss was a premium run. It was not a premium run. That was a limited edition run that they added on later of 500 units. And that's why people were so pissed off about Elvira in particular. Makes sense. So that is corrected. And then Corey W. emailed in a correction to our last episode, 232,
1:17
which a correction on me yet again. I was talking about American Pinball and I mentioned Riot not making the numbers of doing Legends of Valhalla on their own, so they ended up contracting with American Pinball. That is not the right game. It was Riot in both instances. However, Riot had first created Wrath of Olympus. That was the game they tried to sell 100 of in order to go into production. And so later they had a new game, Legends of Valhalla. You see the mythological tie-ins confused me, but they are both by Riot Pinball. But it was the pre-order count on Wrath of Olympus that they failed to hit, and thus the game was never mass-produced. a third thing before asking you what's been going on is i just want to go ahead and note on our uh pin site thread trey trey bow 69 wrote in and said this is regarding a tv show discussion we had the yakuza show was disappointing it played too straight with the without the goofy fun it's certainly not bad just super forgettable so unfortunately it is not like the games it's not silly that's the thing that had to be it had to it had to be good it had to and so they didn't do that. But what they did do is want to know what's been going on, Tony. Well, tell us. I had a bit of, I'm going to call it a lucky tree fall. Lucky tree fall. Okay. We've had a couple trees in our backyard along our fence line that were attacked by some sort of beetle and they killed them this summer. Yes, murder beetles. But I hadn't gotten around to taking one of them down and we had a lot of sustained high winds earlier this week. Yes. And it took it down. But I've been storing the stick truck in the backyard just behind the gate the double gate that lets me drive in and out of the backyard. And the tree came down on the stick truck. Luckily it came down on the bed of the stick truck. It was already beat to heck and didn't really do any major damage. but when it came down it like shattered so i was able to like cut it up against the truck and then drop it in the bed to haul it off so it's ready to go so it's basically pre-loaded pre-loaded yes about half of it was like pre-loaded into the bed so i was able to and then cut the rest up and put it in the bed haul it off to to the thing but it didn't that is pretty lucky yeah it didn't smash anything it didn't break anything it scratched up the paint that's already so in such bad shape that honestly it was hard to tell what was a new scratch and what was an old scratch and there were a couple more dents than there used to be that was kind of a lucky run other than that I finished what of Dungeon Crawler Carl is out that's the audio book you've been listening to the one where you just circle around my house instead of coming and finishing the podcast because you're like I gotta get through this fight yeah that one and I talked about it some on the discord But it's Definitely I had Some issues After I finished it as I started listening To the next audio book in my list Because I was just sitting there going This book is so Bad compared to what I just Listened to Like I was like The narration's fine It's got a good narrator The story's probably okay if forgettable It was one I'd gotten for free during a sale. But I was just like, I've got to change to something else. It's hard. It is too far below what I just finished. And I don't want anything huge and long because the next Stormlight Archive book comes out on the 6th. Yes, and that's a really long one, if I recall. Yeah, it's like 65 hours. So unfortunately it comes out The day after I get back From my work trip Oh that would have been good for your work trip It would have been perfect for the work trip But yeah I get back on the 5th and it comes out on the 6th It's like come on Bad luck So that's basically it Because my video gaming has not changed I've just basically been Playing satisfactory I wouldn't know anything about that Since you and Travis Murray continue to incessantly talk about it in a messenger chat that I happen to be a third wheel in. Valid. We should probably create a different chat that removes you from it. To be fair, I'm rebuilding the factory, guys. To be fair, you got your revenge. Did I? You did.

  • “I would say it might be half of the demand that it was... The LEs, the CEs, those limited counts... the Evil Dead being 888, The reduced count, only 500 LEs of the Metallica remastered.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Market demand analysis supported by specific production count evidence; cites multiple data points showing reduced LE demand

  • “I really kind of like some of the little details. I like the little shotgun loading shots where you're just hitting the shells and loading them to load them into the thing.”

    Tony @ N/A — Positive feedback on game mechanics; notes appreciation for thematic details that enhance gameplay experience

    • American Pinball
    company
    Riot Pinballcompany
    Dennisperson
    Tonyperson
    Barrels of Funcompany
    Nap Arcadecompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Jack Dangerperson
    Zach Minneyperson
    Labyrinthgame
    Metallicagame
    X-Mengame

    licensing_signal: Evil Dead movies (1 & 2) controlled by two different licensors; Army of Darkness excluded from game scope due to separate licensing requirements and thematic incompatibility with cabin setting

    medium · Dennis notes surprise discovery in featurette that first two films have different licensors; explains Army of Darkness would require separate game due to medieval castle/shopping center setting incompatibility

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball sales estimated at 45-50% of pandemic peak (2021-2022) driven by reduced LE production counts and economy; March 2023 marked inflection point for price correction

    medium · Dennis and Tony estimate current demand at 45-50% of peak; cite specific production reductions: Evil Dead 888 units, Metallica LE 500 units, X-Men LE reduced; note X-Men LE did not sell out despite popularity

  • $

    market_signal: Spooky released 30+ minute featurette and trailer featuring Bruce Campbell call-outs (though noted as poorly coached/flat delivery); comprehensive marketing approach for Evil Dead reveal

    high · Dennis references 'trailer that straight down the middle did link' and '30-plus minutes long' featurette; notes Bruce Campbell participation despite previous licensing concerns

  • ?

    announcement: Spooky Pinball officially reveals Evil Dead pinball with 888-unit limited run, single trim level, motorized Cheryl topper, and dual-shotgun shooter mechanism

    high · Detailed feature specification, pricing ($9,999 base + $1,400 topper + $1,500 butter cabinet options), production count, and design credits (Bug Emery, Christopher Franchi, Ben Heck, Gary Tunicliffe, Matt Montgomery)

  • ?

    product_strategy: Evil Dead topper designed by professional horror makeup artist Gary Tunicliffe; motorized Cheryl head with chain-rattling cellar door mechanism; represents aftermarket premium feature validation at $1,400 price point

    high · Dennis provides detailed topper specification: 'motorized to move up and down, and it causes chains that are on the door to rattle when it does it. And it's very well sculpted.' Both hosts affirm topper quality.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Spooky abandoned multi-tier edition strategy (Bloodsucker/Classic/LE/Collector) in favor of single-trim model with à la carte add-ons (topper, butter cabinet) for Evil Dead; represents simplification of SKU management

    high · Dennis notes 'It was always confusing. Everyone's getting the Bloodsucker edition, the classic, and then the orders they were built. It was all just too much. It was a little too a la carte.' Hosts affirm this change as market-smart decision

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Pandemic-era supply chain constraints (semiconductor competition with automotive industry, particularly Ford F-150 production) limited pinball manufacturing capacity 8-10 months post-lockdown, affecting all manufacturers equally

    medium · Dennis explains 'we use the same computer chip that the Ford F-150 uses, and Ford is the priority to the chip manufacturer for obvious reasons, so we can't build very many games'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Evil Dead features significant mechanical complexity (motorized toys, rotating head, lift ramp, dual shooter lanes, magnet saves, shaker motor) on platform with historically inconsistent build quality track record

    medium · Dennis expresses 'biggest concerns would be... a lot of moving mechs for a company that doesn't have the greatest build quality reputation including on their modern games and so there's a lot that could break here'

    • 5:51
    There's definitely been a lot of chat on a mobile game. I wouldn't add you to that. Alright, so yes.
    6:00
    So, I guess That's a good transition. That's my sister's fault primarily. So Dungeon Claw is a... Yeah, when it initially came out, because my head has been stuck on the whole Dungeon Claw, I saw it and I'm like, oh, that's that claw game thing that had come back that we talked about earlier. Yeah. So my sister really wanted us to play Dungeon Claw, and she messaged when it came out on Steam and mobile as a final release. And so I have played it. I haven't won it yet. It's 20 floors in the base game. I've gotten to floor 19. I got to floor 19 my first game because I am a pro at this sort of stuff. But she's like, you know, have you ever seen those movies where people are a professional gambler for their living? That was kind of how she was back in the day with the claw machines, like going in. Like all the pinball people are cringing right now because like claw machines have taken away all the pinball machines and everything. It's just kiddie gambling. She would go in and look at the layout and the configuration of the claw machines and figure which ones were vulnerable or ready to do a big payout. This plays up her alley. They're different characters and they have different styles. The pathing is a little different as you go along in terms of what you can do. I've played four characters so far. I got to floor 19 out of 20 twice with two different styles. So I haven't gone through all the character types yet, but that's what I'm doing right now is giving them each a test because do I like their kit? Do I hate it? It's different. So, yeah, I don't know if it's a Tony style game, though. I mean, you like dungeons. Yeah. But claws, claws are a much more delicate subject. But speaking of delicate, I just yesterday finished Final Fantasy four. The game. That's the first time for you. The first time. This is the third time on a third system. I have started this game. I finally won it. And just like the other three, thank you. It had like a 10-minute ending. And just like the other three pixel remasters, I got to the final boss, couldn't beat him. And this one was extra frustrating because there's a whole setup where you have to watch two other characters that you do not control fight his first form. Then his second form appears, wipes out your group. they fight him the two non-controllable characters fight him again lose then back on earth the people have to like pray for you and then you get your energy yes and it's all in little bits in little stages it's like a five minute thing so you wipe out and you have to go through that again there's no way to save in between so even with the pixel remaster there's no opportunity a quick save or anything so it was just like i'm losing so i load up guides uh and i'm like all right i was pretty much doing mostly what it was saying gave me a few other suggestions but i was pretty much doing this the right thing and then it was like same thing with all the other final fantasies okay dennis go and grind so i added like another 10 levels on the characters and i beat it first try it's like like eight i added like eight levels to the main character and and that got him high enough so because i was getting one shot by one of the spells yeah at least some of the characters were so i just needed a few more levels i was very close but i just need a little more hit points um and so i got it uh i've not started final fantasy now five five and six are the last of the pixel remasters i have won those games before right so this everything that i've done so far had been games that i played one and four before but i'd never won them and two and three were were japan only originally i never played them so now i haven't decided i'm going to like jump to Callisto Protocol, which is a game I got for my birthday. There's a Black Friday sale going on right now. It's satisfactory. So I don't know about satisfactory because I don't want to fall down the rabbit hole of building factories. We could start a multiplayer factory. I'm scared. Just take the multiplayer map. I already started Dungeon Claw. And now – and Alan Wake 2 is on sale for Black Friday. I'm thinking about buying it. But we could put together a thing and start a group satisfactory factory. Oh, whoa, whoa. This is like MMOs. This is getting bad. Don't make me do it. But you can do fun things. No, I don't believe it. You definitely don't completely redesign your factory because you need to build a new factory. You're just staring at the map and you're like, man, I don't want to start a new factory. I'm going to completely tear this old one apart and rebuild it. Doing the exact same stuff that it was already doing, but it looks prettier now. Yes, it's all about aesthetics. It's very sad.
    10:34
    Well, speaking of sad, let's jump into pinball. It's not all sad. I was going to say, I don't think pinball is sad. Well, I have to open with a quasi-correction. It is a correction, but I'm calling it quasi because it wasn't really our fault. So last episode, I said that American Pinball had finally discontinued production on Houdini and Legends of Valhalla, hence the correction about Wrath of Olympus versus Legends of Valhalla that we received. That is not actually true. American Pinball issued a clarifying statement. their phrasing in their statement about retiring those titles was not accurate they it was more of a they're not going to be on the line for a while at least houdini legend of valhalla once it hits its limited count will be done but so they aren't actually retired in the way we would think of them and had described them as being discontinued only oktoberfest is formally retired at the stage okay so kind of sad because i don't like being wrong but i was but i'm still a little sad but They were the ones who had to make the correction. Yes, so that's why it's quasi. It's a quasi-correction. So we have one major topic today. Hey, look, full kudos, credit, and accolades to Spooky. They timed this for our show. Yes, thank you so much. They clearly went out and were like, when is Eclectic Gamers going to drop? Let's get all of this stuff out just before that happens. Instead of like the Tuesday after. So we thank you. You may be our number one pinball manufacturer at this point simply because of the respect you have shown to this podcast and its listeners. So for those that have not maybe been under a rock, maybe because it's so recent, you haven't actually heard it yet, and that's conceivable. But Spooky Pinball has revealed Evil Dead Pinball, a game we know they have wanted to do for a long time. I remember me and Pepperidge Farm and probably Tony remember when I think it was Ben Heck who's involved in this project was so upset that Evil Dead wasn't happening. And at the time, and this was years ago, was my understanding was Bruce Campwell was too expensive. They couldn't justify bringing him in for call outs and it just they couldn't make it work. Right. But years have passed. Spooky has grown and times have changed. this game is designed by bug emery and spooky luke as a collaboration this is actually their fourth spooky pinball collaboration we've been seeing a lot of collaborations out of them recently the art is by christopher franchi which is why it looks very good yeah um the code as i mentioned ben heck he is the one handling code i'm assuming by code that also means rules uh i should go ahead and note that uh i have links uh to a trailer that straight down the middle did i I just linked the trailer. There's a whole featurette, but it's 30-plus minutes long, so I'm not linking that. And also an article over at Kinetisys, which has a lot of these details. The music is by Matt Montgomery. They did get Bruce Campwell for call-outs. They also got Laura Sleuter and Scott Eanes. I think it's Eanes. Apologies for any mispronunciations. And there are a lot of sculpts on this game, and they were done by Back Alley Creations So that the basic setup on that The game is limited to 888 units And actually I also have this linked in the show notes According to Nap Arcade, they've already sold 500 of them. I'm surprised they're not all gone. They might actually be gone by now. Well, maybe. I mean, it is the weekend, so they might not be processing them. But 888 is, again, this is a step back from the counts that we saw with the Looney Tunes Texas Chainsaw, the whole count with the Scooby-Doo game. They've scaled the count back. There's only one trim level now. I don't know if they got a lot of feedback because there used to be like Bloodsuckers Edition, Classic Edition, L.E. or Collector. I don't remember the names for it all. They have one tier, and it's $10,000. That's how much the game is. Well, $9,999. But, you know, I round up to the, you know. So these are going to be rounded, but within like a bug.
    14:34
    There are two add-ons. One is the old butter cabinet. If you want the butter cabinet look, which some people really like, that's an extra $1,500 that you would have to tack on. And then they have a topper that a lot of people are really praising. It's called the Cheryl topper, and that is another $1,400. The topper does look good. But actually, I mean, we're going to give our thoughts, but overall, my really too-long-didn't-listen summary would be the whole thing pretty much looks good. It does. So here are the features. The optional topper, which was designed by horror makeup designer Gary Tunicliffe, he has created a motorized Cheryl head that it's sort of like in a – it's the cellar door opening. And so the head is motorized to move up and down, and it causes chains that are on the door to rattle when it does it. And it's very well sculpted. It's good. And the lighting. It's real good. It's got good lighting, too. So that's the optional topper. I'm about to talk about the buttercap because everyone who's familiar or cares about buttercap knows what buttercap's like. I can't believe it's not butter. So some of the features. And again, there's only one model line, so these features are all that. The topper's optional. Everything else is included. um they're over on the left hand side of the game is the evil ash hand and it has a stepper that allows it to move back and forth there is a rotating linda head the head that's in the in the vice grip in the movie um it's over on the right hand side and so it spins uh there's evil scotty and ed pop-up bash toys think trolls from medieval madness that's a it's almost like they feel like they're in the same place right so uh there is a lower play field think acdc style but That's representing the fruit cellar, which is a key component in the movies.
    16:22
    Over on the far right, the shooter lane, it's actually a double shooter lane. It's a double barrel shotgun. And so balls can load into each of the lanes. And they kind of obviously there's a separator because they fire out slightly differently to represent the left and right side of the shotgun. The game has inline drop targets. It has a hidden orbit magnet. It has a shaker motor. It has a physical knocker. It does have a lift ramp. It has the cellar door, kind of like what the topper represents. But on the playfield, there's a cellar door that sometimes is a bash target, and it also sometimes is the entrance to the lower playfield.
    16:58
    Over in the upper right section is a cabin toy, which serves as a ball lock. The balls lock on the porch, representing the cabin and where they are staying.
    17:08
    And to be noted, when you hear all this stuff, this game is a widebody, which Spooky has done wide bodies before Looney Tunes was not a wide body but Scooby-Doo was so fairly recently they did have a wide body in their repertoire Tony in our internal notes I've included a number of the pictures I would loosely I don't want to go into a whole lot about the layout and such the layout I would describe broadly as safe and very fan-like in terms of a lot of the shots are towards the back a lot of the wide body towards the bottom seems to be designed to accommodate the double lane for the shooter for the shotgun so you'll notice that it slims down i think much more to a standard body kind of kind of towards at the midpoint of the play field maybe a little less than the midpoint and then after that you see a lot of things fan out where you have your your troll targets and you've got your your ramps and your ball lock and your cellar door but um i would describe it I'm going to use the word safe layout. And by safe, I don't mean necessarily that the game is going to be a long player, though spooky games tend to be. True. And as a wide body, it may play a little bit slow in and of itself anyway. However, by safe, I mean the layout's not weird like Halloween. I don't think a lot of people are going to be put off by the look of the layout. But I have a lot of close-ups of some of the toys and stuff for our own internal purposes, just to make it a little easier for us. But I think I've described them relatively well. So let's have a discussion. What do you think about this? I think it looks good. When I first saw it late last week, I was impressed.
    18:48
    I think the art's beautiful. I think it looks like it could be fun. I really kind of like some of the little details. I like the little shotgun loading shots where you're just hitting the shells and loading them to load them into the thing. I think that's a cool little thing.
    19:06
    So as always, until I actually play it, I won't know, but I have to admit I'm kind of excited for this one. It looks great. Overall, this game screams theme immersion. I don't think we've seen a game that did this well at theme immersion since Labyrinth. Probably not. And in some ways, maybe this is even done better than Labyrinth. Again, they leaned really heavily into the sculpts. So there are a lot of them. Actually, one of the most disappointing things was, well, I think it was excellent that they got Bruce Campbell for the call-outs from the trailer. It didn't sound like he was coached well on how to enthusiastically do call-outs. They're really, really flat. But again, the way his character presents, that may be the reason they went ahead. But it was great that they got him.
    19:56
    So they've got that. Clips from the movie. This does not have Army of Darkness. It does the first two evil deaths, which I only watched part of the featurette. But I did not realize that those two movies have two different licensors. So they had to work with two licensors to do that. Really? I did not know that either. It's an interesting little tidbit.
    20:14
    But yeah, the theme immersion is top notch, and that's what's exciting about it. Plus, in the case with Spooky, I like it better that when they don't do the really, really weird layouts. I feel kind of bad saying that because I like seeing what Jack Danger has been doing with Stern. And I do like seeing layouts that are not super-duper safe. But with Spooky, whenever they've deviated from relatively pedestrian layouts, it just doesn't play well. Which has been a problem. And that's been an ongoing Spooky problem that several of their recent games have had that they've just not been that fun. Yeah, it's just, I mean, you mentioned the shotgun shells as another nice little touch. There was also the tape player where the apron card would be on the right-hand side. Just nice little things like that. Of course, the Franchiart looks great. It's nice to see him have another project come out. This is an excellent theme for Spooky. Obviously, they lean as a horror-based pinball company inherently. This one is right up that alley. You can tell that they really wanted this one for quite a while. and they finally got it.
    21:34
    Yeah. What are my biggest concerns would be I, as a general rule, don't like wide-body and how they play. I didn't like how Scooby-Doo played. So I'm curious if this is going to play super floaty. I didn't get the impression that it's a particularly fast game from the video that I've been able to see. But of course, setup makes a big difference on that. Right. So the features and stuff, how fun is the lower play field, how fun is the geometry, that's obviously all these things are subjective I'll have questions there, I think the biggest thing and I've seen others mention this, it's not like a really creative Dennis thing, but I think you'll understand where I'm coming from this is a lot of moving mechs for a company that doesn't have the greatest build quality reputation including on their modern games and so there's a lot that could break here, but have they, with a smaller count are they doing better qc maybe well i mean we'll just have to we'll have to find out uh as they go along but i think the way they've executed on this game was the right way to do it i think this was smart i think it made sense for them to choose a wide body uh given everything they wanted to put in on it it feels like the world of the movie just looking at it they got all the right call outs they got all the right art they going with all the sculpts and not flat plastics i also think it was really smart of them to go down to one model i do too i i get why there's a And Stern with their three-model thing, it makes sense for a huge producer like Stern. I think with this, with Spooky, it was always confusing.
    23:06
    Everyone's getting the Bloodsucker edition, the classic, and then the orders they were built. It was all just too much. It was a little too a la carte. I think just saying, here it is. Do you want the topper? Do you want the butter cab? I think that works really, really well. I do, too, especially because of the changes we've seen recently due to the economy and everything else. Yeah. I mean, the game comes with art blades installed inside, so it's not just the black sides. It looks really good. It does. I'll look forward to playing this. Are you a fan of the Evil Dead movies? Yeah. I've seen Army of Darkness a lot more. Army of Darkness was my first one. It was my touchstone movie as a kid. That was the one I was shown first by my dad. And so I've seen Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 once, I think. I liked them. I thought Evil Dead 2 was sillier, if I remember correctly, and Evil Dead 1 was more straight-laced, but it was basically the same movie plots. Yeah, that was my basic thought. So in that regard, I mean, I know they're iconic. I know they've got a huge fan base. They're not movies that I've gone back and rewatched. They're not my cult classics, but I know I recognize the title. Yeah. Because I'm not like Army of Darkness. I've watched Army of Darkness within the last couple of years. But for me, that's more, like you said, that's more of the touchstone on this for me. But Army of Darkness is very much different where these are more of the classic kind of horror. Yeah. I think with Army of Darkness, you'd almost, because it's not taking place in the cabin, then Army of Darkness would warrant being its own game. If you were going for this level of theme immersion, it would have to, like the medieval castle and, and the, the shopping center. And so it'd be just like, yeah, I get why they didn't do that. Yeah. So anyway, good job, Spooky. This looks really, really impressive. And I'm very confident we will be able to experience this at Texas Pinball Festival, which incidentally, Tony and I have bought our tickets for Texas Pinball Festival. We do have the hotel room reserved. and so that should be a go. I'll put in my requests once I get my floating holidays back for work. I don't get them until the start of the year. I'll put my request in already because we don't have floating holidays.
    25:24
    Because I'm sure this will be at TPF. I've already seen some of them have been on the line already. By March, there will definitely be some out there. That'll be good. I'm really looking forward to it.
    25:38
    Okay. we did have one email that I wanted to touch on before we go to the video game segment and it is from Brian J who wrote in and I will read it as follows gentlemen how do you think current pinball sales compare to the peak of the market we had three to four years ago what percentage would each of you say we are at now personally I would believe the number would be around 45 based on the smaller runs of games as a whole but also the reduced numbers of le Jersey Jack and Stern, CE by Jersey Jack, and Spooky's Evil Dead at $888, which is just one edition. Another question I had was based on Stern appearing, they are going to do remasters of older games. How many remasters do you think we will get a year going forward? Finally, do you think we would be more likely to see remasters of The Simpsons Pinball Party and Ghostbusters or completely new machines of those themes? Thanks, Brian. Well, thank you, Brian, for writing in. And Brian actually asked a lot of questions, like three questions here. So let's take it in chunks. Let's do it in order. So, Tony, where do you think pinball sales are compared to the peak of the market, which he kind of based out as three or four years ago? I would say it's probably more two to three, but, eh, potato, potato. I don't have a problem with his – I think it's under half of what it was at that time just because of all of the changes, not in the economy and the very fact that we're out of the everybody stuck at home pandemic issues that drove sales so hard.
    27:11
    Yes, it's a little trick. And this is also where the years get a little tricky, because here's something that I think a lot of people might not inherently think about. But during the pandemic part of the struggle wasn just the demand for pinball It was hard for pinball to get the parts so their production counts were low True Lower than they should have been They could not meet demand, and it wasn't just a, holy cow, Godzilla's a great game and everyone wants Godzilla. It was, holy cow, we use the same computer chip that the Ford F-150 uses, and Ford is the priority to the chip manufacturer for obvious reasons, so we can't build very many games. And that plagued all – I mean because remember in the pandemic, it wasn't just like the stay-at-home stuff. That stuff resolved really quickly. It was those supply chain issues that went along for about eight to ten months I think even after the quote-unquote pandemic. That's a really good point. Yeah, so that's why I hesitate a little bit. There was huge demand in 2001 and 2002 in particular. 2001. Well, 2001 primarily, but I'm saying 2000, excuse me, 2020. Okay. No, 2001. 2001, there was no. I can tell you, there was no demand in 2001 or 2002. 2001 was like here by South Park. Yeah, thank you. Good catch. That would have been, I don't want the corrections on that. So 2021 was probably the peak year where we saw a huge lot of people get in the, because the pandemic hit in basically at the start of quarter two of 2020. and then people at first thought it was going to be resolved pretty quickly. By 2021, that's when you saw a lot of the prices start to go up on things. A lot of collectibles started to really go up into 2022. And then, like in the world of wristwatches, by March of 2023 was like the price peak, and then things just fell off a cliff. And all of a sudden, prices started to get back to normal. Now, some of those supply chain things didn't really resolve until later that year. But anyway, I think that was the pacing. I think it was sort of the start for that. But pinball was a little bit different. But all right. I think his personality is just close. I would say it might be half of the demand that it was. Now, that's sales themselves. I'm going to go ahead and say half because even though some of that stuff was slowed up, I mean, the LEs, the CEs, those limited counts, and we've seen these numbers, the Evil Dead being 888, The reduced count, only 500 LEs of the Metallica remastered.
    29:43
    The reduced count on the X-Men LE. And those are your whaley-est whales to ever whale. So with those things not flying off the shelf, the Metallica one did, but X-Men did not fly off the shelf. And that's a popular game. It wasn't like John Wick, which you can still easily get a John Wick LE, I believe. Right. easily so given those sort of challenges i think um yeah about half of where it kind of was peak pandemic but it gets complicated because of the the production things just um that was my tablet for those that heard the thump don't worry about it the um the conversations i've had with zach minnie who is the distributor for uh for flipping out pinball runs that distributorship um he had He had pointed out to me, like, you know, there's an issue where people think you're making money hand over fist when I didn't have any games to sell. It was like, no, there was tons of demand, but I couldn't get people their Godzillas. I don't get paid until the Godzillas are shipped. So it was sort of one of those instances where it wasn't necessarily as robust as you might think. The demand was definitely there, but not the supply. So now we don't have a supply issue, but the demand is also greatly, greatly diminished. So, okay, that's the first question. So the second question was, how many remasters do you think Stern's going to do per year? One. I agree. I think it'll take a slot of one of the flagship, because we know they'd already cut down on a big cornerstone launch, and I think they'll either use it to replace when they don't have that extra cornerstone or to have a year where they have an extra release. But I don't see them doing more than one remaster a year. Honestly, I could see them doing a remaster like every other year even. I agree with you that I think there will be a remaster every year. I do not believe it will take the spot of a cornerstone. I think we'll see three cornerstones a year, and the remaster will fall somewhere in there, probably in the fall, in place of the old model where they had three cornerstones and a vault. That's what I think they will do. I do think we will see one per year, though, not every other year.
    31:51
    And that's just because I don't think the lift is that – it's more of a lift than a vault. but given how big their teams are right now, I think the strategy is going to be, let's get the animation and code people to put in the extra effort on this stuff and reuse the layout, which isn't going to impact the designers. The irony is though, if any team is pressured, it's the rules and code development, which we've seen as the number one gripe with X-Men is how bare bones. I mean, it dropped really bare bones and it got moved up in the production schedule. You may be right. They may use that to accommodate some of those shifts and stuff, but my guess is they want to stick with the three cornerstones a year because they've got them – they paid their designers to get them. But this will help smooth over the John Wicks of the world where they flop. That's also true. And I wonder if it might not be easier to bring in extra coders and such and animation people than it is to bring in another designer to do design. Maybe. I personally think that Stern is very top-heavy on designers right now. They could get rid of some designers. I don't think they need this many. Because they've got Jack Danger, Keith Elwin, John Borg, and Brian Eddy. And on occasion, George Gomez has done a design, even though he's running the design teams and isn't really a part of that rotation proper. But that made sense in that pandemic-era demand. It doesn't really make sense now. And I think people are going to look and say, which designers' games are not doing well? And I wonder about their long-term viability with the company. Yeah, it's a valid question. The third and final question Brian had for us was, do you think it's more likely that we'll see Simpsons Pinball Party and Ghostbusters get remastered or see a new game designed from scratch with those themes? Oh, remastered. We're not going to see new games with those themes. Yeah. possibly the Simpsons, but even then I doubt it. Definitely not Ghostbusters. I was actually going to, no, again, I agree with you, remasters. And of those, Ghostbusters is a likely remaster. I think Simpsons Pinball Party is an unlikely remaster. I really just don't. As much fun as we had last episode coming up with things that they might do from the past, I really don't see them going back further than Sam. And Ghostbusters, though, would warrant a remaster given, well, it is Spike. could spike one and it had a dmd and they could lcd it uh i actually think if they were to do them from scratch ghostbusters would be more likely because i haven't heard a good thing about simpsons in years other than i know the show is still going on it's conceivable a new ghostbusters movie might find success and warrant it i think it's really unlikely though i mean have you even seen any of the recent no i i saw the one with the the four women as ghostbusters And I liked it until the third act, but I haven't seen the newest ones. Yeah, I haven't seen the two newest ones either with the kids. With Ant-Man, right? Ant-Man going around trying to shrink ghosts or something. I don't know. I didn't see it, so I don't understand the plot. But yeah, no, I just don't. I don't think they're – I think Ghostbusters is actually really likely to get a remaster. Simpsons Pinball Party, I don't think you'll ever see it again. If they were going to remaster a White Star game, it would be Lord of the Rings.
    35:15
    And even then, the movie's so old now. I mean, they would be unlikely. It's the same excuses as to why they won't remaster Tron. It's like, well, that movie's old. It didn't do well. Like, even the second Tron movie's old now. So aren't they working on a new Tron? Purportedly, yes. But both Tron movies flopped. And it is what it is. People only want that Tron game because they like Daft Punk. and they broke up. So leave them alone. Leave them alone. They just need to make a Daft Punk machine. That's what they need to do. Yes, and in fact, we have someone who was trying to homebrew one here in Kansas City. I don't know if he finished or not, though. But I know what we are finished with, and that's the pinball segment. So let's go into video games. Video games!
    36:02
    Okay. It's not in the notes. I'm going off script. they are holding for the next two weeks it started a day or two ago Star Citizen is open and free for anybody who wants to play without buying in for multi hundreds dollars worth of ships they're doing an open free play test thing so for those who are interested in trying out the Star Citizen there you go I don't know, I am bought into the Star Citizen You are And I've not played it What?
    36:42
    It's the greatest space game ever That's what some people claim I wonder if they'll make a pinball machine of Star Citizen I mean They've only made like 200 million dollars Or some insane number like that To make the game that's still in Pre-alpha If somehow Star Citizen money Ran out is it too big to fail? Would the government bail it out?
    37:07
    They're based in the UK, so probably not. Austerity measures, are they still going on? I think so. Now, to be fair, it does sound like we're getting real close to Squadron 42, which is what was originally supposed to be the whole thing, was the single-player Squadron 42 thing. Sounds like supposedly in the next couple of years, like they've been saying for the last several years. Path of Exile 2 They released their opening Video sequence That game's coming out next Month I believe In December Path of Exile Is a very popular game That took a lot of Diablo players In the giant gaps After the failure of Diablo 3 And before Diablo 4 came up Where a lot of people went and started playing it it's super popular. I've played it some. It's enjoyable, but it's one of those things that you could lose a lot of time into. When I played it, it was shortly after I came out of an MMO, so I was like, hmm. And you don't play any games as a suck-up a bunch of time. No, I do. I totally do, but I never really went deep into it because when I tried it, I'd just come out of playing an MMO, and I'm like, ooh. I just quit a game because I spent too much time playing one game. Yeah, I understand that.
    38:30
    Now, for an interesting thing, Steam has updated their policy on season passes. Oh, okay. I didn't know there was a policy on season passes. I don't know that they really had much of one before this. But their new update has to do with some blowback that they've had over the course of the last year. So they've put together new guidelines that developers must follow. they must provide a complete list of the dlc that is part of the season pass with a description of the dlc and the expected release dates of the dlc now the dlc can be pushed and those release dates can be changed but the for the season pass you have to have a list of of the dlc what's expected of them and an expected release date to put out the season pass, one of the DLCs has to be out. The only time you can't do that is, or you don't have to do that, is that if the season pass is included in the pre-purchase of a deluxe edition.
    39:33
    But for somebody to buy the season pass separately, one of the DLCs has to be out before you can offer the season pass for sale. I get it. Also, if any DLCs included in a season pass is canceled, the customers will be offered a refund for the value of the unreleased DLC. That's where a lot of the troubles have come up because games would release and have season passes available for purchase on launch day. Right. With no actually announced DLC, not really knowing when or what you were getting with that season pass. and then in several cases several companies have cancelled the DLCs and the season passes and the season passes have just ended but maybe one DLC dropped and people were just like oh well I got hosed over there was no pass it was one DLC pack so that is part of what all this is and Steam did put out this statement it's like Quote, by offering a season pass, you are promising future content. In the process of launching a season pass, you will be asked to commit to a launch timing for each content release in the season pass. That launch timing is a commitment to both customers and Steam. If you aren't ready to clearly communicate about the content included in each DLC and when each DLC will be ready for launch, you shouldn't offer a season pass on Steam. I agree with this change. Yeah, I've got no problem with this change. Which I thought it was a really good customer forward kind of change so i i applaud them yay um while we talking talking about steam uh on the 15th of november was the 20th anniversary of half 2 oh i think i read a little bit about yeah so we just missed it it was it was just a few days ago but they put out a new edition of Half-Life 2 with all sorts of all new documentary and creator's commentary or director's commentary and all sorts of stuff with it that also led to Half-Life 2 having its highest concurrent player base ever with people playing it. So. Hex. I think that was the sound effect for the healing in it. Don't remember. It's been so long. Pretty close. Yeah. I played it. I played its DLC. I played. Yeah. I played everything Half-Life 2 related, but not recently because it's been 20 years. It's been a long time. A long time. 20 years.
    42:12
    They put out a new trailer for Minecraft. It didn't help. The movie or? The movie. Because I was like, I didn't see it. Yeah. They put out a new Minecraft trailer for the movie. I don't know that it helped. It comes out on my birthday. Oh.
    42:29
    Have your kids mentioned it? Not yet. Papa? They saw the first trailer, and they were not necessarily really happy with it. Maybe they'll fix it like how Sonic got fixed. Meow. Maybe. I mean, this one does show them, like, punching a tree to get wood. Yes. Throwing stuff. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think it helped any. Okay. I think the only thing in the entire trailer that I laughed at was at the very, very beginning of the trailer. It was this little kid in an outfit with a pickaxe in his shoulder. And you just hear Jack Black saying, as a young child, I yearned for the mines.
    43:13
    Oh, my gosh. That's so silly. So that was it. That was it. Mines. You're so cool. I'll punch this tree for pile wood.
    43:35
    Baldur's Gate 3. That game's been out forever. Yeah, it came out last year. Not forever. It has, forever. It's been a year. I've seen it speed run twice, so it feels like forever. Yeah, that's because. All I know is bear drop. Bear drop. I'm going to do bear drop when I play it. I'm going to drop it there. You should play it. But now they have mod support. Oh, so Preston won't ask me about the next settlement?
    44:00
    That's a deep cut, people. Deep cut. But since the release of the mod support, they have more concurrent average daily users than they did last year. Wow. There's more people playing now than ever before. there has been more than 50 million mod downloads since mod support launch of which because uh laron really likes to put out all the funny stats because we've talked about funny stats in the past 10 000 of those downloads are a mod that all it does is change uh the undead guiding character that kind of does some guidance to you, Weather's name, to Bone Daddy.
    44:49
    Okay. It's probably the greatest mod ever. Well, that's why it has 10,000 downloads. Right. So they have definitely been working out very well for them. Baldur's Gate 3 is definitely, in my mind, the big winner out of the games from last year, especially if they're still going this strong. And in an interesting bit of news That's probably not a huge surprise Phil Spencer in an interview Put out that he doesn't think that there's a red line On game releases on Nintendo or PlayStation He doesn't think there is a single franchise Or a single game on Xbox That can't come to PlayStation or Nintendo He's fine with it as Xbox continues its slew towards just being a software developer. Yes, it's confusing a lot of people. This is consistent with where he's been at on a lot of things. And I get it because it's kind of a, hey, we as a company will make money wherever our games are played, so why would we limit that? Correct. But it's not asking the question of, well, why buy the hardware then sort of thing. And where it's been, though, is that what they might end up doing, because I've seen them do it on a few other things, is the idea of more of it being timed limited releases where it'll be out on Xbox first. But they don't do the same delays, at least what we've been seeing lately, as Sony has. Like Sony, sometimes there'll be a deal and it'll be a year. And Microsoft has lately been with some stuff being like, yeah, after a quarter of a year. I don't think it's even going to be a quarter of a year for Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones, I think it's only going to be like one or two months.
    46:33
    Yeah, I don't know on strategy. I mean, ultimately, you know, it probably is right that it makes Microsoft money this way, especially. But it's an interesting I wonder if the view changes with the next gen or not, because, again, they're not going to win this generation. Right. I mean, they never really won a generation. Not really. So so I think the thought is, well, at this point, you're not going to convince a lot of people that don't already own an Xbox Series X to buy one. So let's go ahead and get what we can financially, and then when the next hardware cycle rolls around, maybe we get more strict on the new – I mean, I don't know if that's the plan or not. I don't know. Everything hinges on Game Pass. I think they ultimately would love to have Game Pass on other systems. I think that's what they – like they did with PC. And I think you're right on that. I mean they are definitely at a point where they're not cannibalizing hardware sales by putting games out on other there's no their hardware sales are what they are going to be and they're not going to get any better I wonder when they're going to release their alarm clock you just you're master chief Cortana will tell you to wake up everybody needs a little blue waifu and then there's a there's a mod because we'll be able to get mods for it and we'll install the mod where it makes it all from the halo tv show instead oh what fun how much joy speaking of tv shows as of yesterday the final three episodes of season two of arcane dropped i've not watched the final three episodes i only watched the first six i highly i'm not a league of legends person i don't know anything about league of legends i don't like i don't like the moba play style so i've never played into it but i watched the first season of arcane because a bunch of people said you know what it's just a really good show and they're right that show is beautiful with amazing sound and music and the story is super interesting so I watched the second season that was out which was the first six episodes and it's again beautiful the art's amazing the sound is amazing the music's amazing everything about it is amazing the last three are out I just haven't had a chance to watch them yet so I highly recommend even if you're not a League of Legends person Arcane is good if you have the Netflix and okay well that's a good point So I'll go ahead and mention I've only seen because I think there's only one out. I saw the first episode in honor of the old RTS game, Dune Prophecy. So if you want beautiful costuming, Dune Prophecy's got it in galore. If you want to see Benny Jesuits going around Jesuiting everything, there you go. Dune Prophecy. Because that's on Max, isn't it? I think so, yeah. So I was able to see the first episode and I was like, okay, I don't know where this is going. Prophecy is a prequel. This is like less than 200 years after the Butlerian Jihad. Oh, so it's very early. It's like a really, really way. The founding of the order. Wow. Okay, that could be really cool. I don't know that that's ever been covered in any of the Dune books, but I also gave up on those. Yes, Kevin J. Anderson, we've not forgiven you. Yeah, I gave up on those books. The Thinking Machine is mad at this guy. The Thinking Machine. Quit saying the Thinking Machine. I get it. That's what Frank called them, but you don't have to spell it out every time. They had names. I still remember.
    50:28
    I don't remember where we were going, but I remember at one point we did listen to one of the audiobooks that had been narrated by Tim Curry. Those were the prequels that are about Leto Atreides, the Duke, as a young man. And those were good. Yeah. Only for Finnrig. Right. Yes. It was so good. Well, I mean, Tim Curry was doing it. So it actually sounded fun, not like how I was obnoxious. But yeah. Yeah, no, those were okay. Because those were kind of, let's do it like Dune, hero's journey, kind of action-y sort of things. And you knew most of the characters because they were like, you know, you had the emperor who was the emperor in Dune and the baron. It's just when they were younger. Yeah, they were younger. But the stuff for the Butlerian Jihad going back and like what Holtz and Jives and the resistance to the machines and the thinking machines and they're all named after Greek gods. And it was just like it was tedious. Maybe I should just listen to the abridged versions. They were long unabridged. Anyway, I don't recommend those. I don't know enough yet on Dune prophecy long term, but just FYI, it came out. because I didn't realize it would come out. I heard it was coming, but my Max subscription is one of the subscriptions. Yeah.
    51:49
    You know how you drop subscriptions for a while and let them build up stuff so you can binge it? Yeah. HBO Max is one of my things that – because basically what it amounts to is I keep the permanent subscriptions to the things that my kids watch all the time, and everything else I'll drop it, and I might grab it for a month out of the year and spend that month binge watching something. Maybe a good one to wait for it to finish and then binge it. Because the last time I had the Max and I binged stuff, there was good stuff there. Same for House of the Dragon. Yeah. It was okay. Yeah, because last time I did, I binged Chernobyl. I want to. I need to see Chernobyl. It's so good. I want to see it. It's really good. I have to add that. I didn't remember where it was on, that it was on HBO. Yeah. Max. Okay. So. Cool. I think we're done. We are. All right. If you want to reach out to us, email us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. You can also go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast, but that's not the best place to do the outreach. If you want to support the show through patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers, we got three different tiers. The lowest is a dollar a month.
    52:54
    Those are my main things. We're on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple weeks. That'll be after your trip. That'll be it. Yeah, like immediately after. Tony might be too tired. We might have to truncate. No, no. I actually – so I leave on the 4th, and we come back on the 5th. I've never been to Florida, so I've obviously never been to Orlando. But in this trip, I'm going to Orlando, and I did the math, and I will be in Orlando for exactly 29 hours, of which the vast majority is going to be doing directly work-related stuff. Yeah. So it's not much. So I get to kind of see what Florida is like in December, I guess. The interesting thing on it is I find it funny that I'm in Orlando and we got hotels at Universal Studios in the summer is where we're hoteling at because it wasn't very expensive. It's cheaper than our than than our TPF hotel by like a lot. Yeah, Texas, you need to sort out those hotels. Holy cow, they have gone up a lot. Yeah, that was shocking. And then also, I went ahead and took the day after off because our flight's not scheduled to land until 11 p.m.
    54:22
    I'm like, the flight lands. I mean, technically, if everything's on time, we land at a quarter till 11. But it means it's going to be after 11 by the time I get to the car. and then it's an hour drive from the airport home and i'm just like i'm not going to work the next day so i just scheduled a vacation day for the six because it's just like i'd be wiped out so so we will see but uh until the next episode my name is dennis i am tony goodbye