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🎙️ Chatting with MXV – Stern’s Wizard on Uncanny X-Men & John Wick code evolution

Gonzo's Pinball Flipperama·video·1h 8m·analyzed·Aug 4, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

MXV details major X-Men & Wick code overhauls emphasizing casual accessibility and mode personality differentiation.

Summary

Mike Vinacore (MXV) discusses his career trajectory from Williams/Bally Midway QA lead to Stern Pinball designer, then deep-dives into major code overhauls for Uncanny X-Men and John Wick. Key changes include streamlining mode start consistency on X-Men (all modes now start from right flipper), reworking the eight X-Men modes to have distinct personalities, eliminating multiball stacking, moving Beast Lab to qualify modes, and implementing perks/power-ups system. X-Men received a larger overhaul than Wick, with emphasis on casual player accessibility and balancing difficulty for diverse skill levels.

Key Claims

  • X-Men received a much bigger overhaul than John Wick in recent code drops

    high confidence · MXV directly states 'yeah there's gonna be more stuff changing in X-Men more drastically I would say than in Wick'

  • All X-Men modes now start from the right flipper for consistency and clarity

    high confidence · MXV explains streamlined mode activation: 'okay modes start here and always feed the one flipper you know the right flipper'

  • The eight X-Men modes previously felt too similar in gameplay despite different theming

    high confidence · MXV notes 'there was like a sameness to the eight modes like they don't...it's almost like pick one at random it didn't matter because they all kind of felt too similar'

  • Multiball stacking has been removed from X-Men

    high confidence · MXV states 'and multiple stacking is not a thing now right? Correct yeah'

  • Beast Lab will be reworked to be the mode qualifier instead of arrow shots

    high confidence · MXV explains 'I want to change how you qualify starting modes...I want to move the mode start to be probably on the Beast Lab'

  • X-Men was brought forward in production schedule, causing initial code incompleteness

    high confidence · Host references 'we know X-Men was brought forward' and MXV acknowledges deadline pressures

  • MXV is not a programmer but works on rule design and visual layout (light shows) for Stern games

    high confidence · MXV explicitly states 'I am not a programmer...if I wrote one line of code in any of our games it wouldn't compile'

  • Nick (identified as software tester at Stern) grew up around MXV and now manages him professionally

    high confidence · MXV: 'his dad and I worked together at Midway games...and now you know he is one of my bosses here at Stern'

  • Approximately 70% of the pinball market is home collectors, not operators or location players

Notable Quotes

  • “I am not a programmer and it would so it's a disservice to the programmers who are insanely you know they're brilliant talented people. I'm not one of those.”

    Mike Vinacore (MXV)@ 6:55 — Establishes MXV's actual role vs community perception; clarifies he does rule design and light work, not code

  • “Bond went from being a game that was Papa Duke average on release due to multiple reasons to being in my opinion one of Stern's best games”

    Host (Gonzo)@ 10:20 — Establishes Bond as precedent for post-release code evolution improving games significantly; sets expectations for X-Men and Wick trajectory

  • “modes start here and always feed the one flipper you know the right flipper um and then we the uh we're gonna have the other stuff that's not that feed the other flipper so there's a very clear distinction of what you're about to do”

    Mike Vinacore (MXV)@ 14:37 — Core UX design philosophy for X-Men rework targeting casual player clarity

  • “I want them all to feel like moments and save the city really should have should and will feel like a bigger deal than it current than it was because that's more like a mini Wizard type of thing because it's 18 shots to get there.”

    Mike Vinacore (MXV)@ 23:36 — Design intent to make multiballs special events rather than commodities; justifies stacking removal

  • “I'm a huge advocate of add a ball on the button. I want the player to have control of their destiny of like, I'm going to choose when to use it.”

    Mike Vinacore (MXV)@ 18:20 — Design philosophy: player agency over randomness; used to resurrect drained multiballs

Entities

Mike VinacorepersonStern PinballcompanyJack DangerpersonUncanny X-MengameJohn WickgameGonzopersonNickperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: MXV discussing transparent communication with players about changes and iterative development; references Bond as successful precedent of post-release improvement changing player perception

    high · Host emphasizes Bond trajectory as precedent: 'Bond went from being...average on release...to being one of Stern's best games'

  • ?

    community_signal: MXV acknowledges kid players (children under 13) competing at local Pinball Expos and filtering toward games that are accessible; design philosophy must accommodate next generation

    high · MXV: 'my 10-year-old was like under 13 champion at our local Pinball Expo...she loved the artwork and she loved the shots but she didn't play it for long because she just found it was too hard'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern actively using casual/family playtesting to validate difficulty balance; internal culture emphasizes inclusive design across skill levels

    high · MXV on design balance: 'as designers like we have that's a balance we always have try to find every game that we design is you have to have stuff for every type of player right the casuals the intermediates the hardcore tournament pl'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tension between hardcore tournament players (perceiving new X-Men code as too easy) and casual majority market; design team prioritizes accessibility over competitive difficulty

    high · Host: 'hardcore players are saying the games have become too easy.' MXV responds focusing on 70% home market majority and bringing new generation into pinball

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bishop roaming shot mechanic worked on Dungeons & Dragons but failed on X-Men due to playfield layout incompatibility and faster gameplay; switched to Deadpool-style single-shot mechanic

Topics

X-Men code overhaul and design philosophyprimaryJohn Wick code updates and improvementsprimaryCasual vs hardcore player balance in game designprimaryMXV's career history and role at SternprimaryPost-release code evolution and player expectationssecondaryMultiball design philosophy and stacking removalsecondaryBeast Lab redesign as mode qualifiersecondaryLight show design and concert photography connectionmentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.78)— Generally optimistic tone about X-Men and Wick improvements. MXV expresses confidence in design decisions and community reception. Gonzo is supportive and engaged. Some acknowledgment of initial release issues but framed as solvable through iteration. Respect for player feedback and balancing competing design priorities.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.204

0:00
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, depending on when you are. I'm down under. We have Mike Vinicore in the US in the morning. Mike, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Very good. It's been a minute. I've been MIA for a couple of weeks. Chris has been. Gonzo has been MIA. And you've been busy the last couple of weeks too. Oh, yeah, yeah. We had a massive week of Stern Code drops a couple weeks ago. We had X-Men, we had Week, we had Jaws, we had Dungeons and Dragons. It was pretty full on.
0:40
And we're going to talk about, obviously, everything that we've seen with your involvement with X-Men and Week.
0:47
And I really appreciate it. We've been trying to get together and the planets just haven't aligned. A lot of that's got to do with the time zone and me misreading an email. So apologies. Yeah, it's all right. I'm not a morning person. So one of the benefits of working from home is I can start work at the same time but sleep an hour later. So it's even harder. More importantly, not wear pants. Well, I always wear pants because I'm on Zoom all day. So if I got up to go get a snack or go to lunch or to move something on one of my games or play it, everybody would see me. So we, you know, everyone knows, everyone's heard MXV at some point. they they've heard about you i know you don't you don't do a lot of social media stuff i haven't seen a lot of interviews uh i know i've seen you in some stern stream recently which has been great and i saw you blow up a couple games as well um let's start before we get into that like you've obviously been doing pinball for a while we spoke before and you mentioned when you worked at williams doing um uh medieval madness well i didn't work i mean so when i worked at williams Valley Midway, I started in the video game side of the business. And then later in my career at that company, I ran their field test program where we would place games on locations and track the earnings and update them as we're developing them before they were going to production. That's a lost art in the internet age. You can't do that because you can't hide anything anymore, right? Back in those days, there were no smartphones. People didn't have cameras on them. um there was barely an internet so we could put a you know we could put games in our local arcades you know months before we would actually go into full production um so when i did that i was in charge of doing it for both video and pinball yeah right so how did you get into pinball did you like obviously become did you pick up and go i just want to go with pinball no i uh well so i'm pretty old i'm in my mid-50s so when i was a little kid as soon as my hands were big enough to reach the flipper buttons. There was an arcade at the end of my block, and my dad used to take me to play pinball with him because he liked it. So this was in a pre-video game age, right? The Kong was out, but not even Space Invaders yet. So I have vivid memories of him taking me there, and I would play. I'd have to stand on a stool still, and I would play pinball and play games with him, and he would just give me. I'd keep asking him for quarters because I was no good at it. And then the video games came through, and I got obsessed with those even more. But I always loved pinball and whatever we had at the arcade, I would still always play. And then when I got a little bit older, like middle school era, my cousin, a much older cousin, he's about 20 years or so older than me. He he worked. He was the manager of that same arcade. So I lived there. So, you know, like every day after school, all day Saturday and just hung out with him like he was more of a parent to me than my dad was at that point. So I just lived at that arcade. And then later I worked there up until it closed. I was assistant manager there the last couple of years. So I was always around it. And then, but it was my obsession with Mortal Kombat that led me to go work at Williams Valley Midway because I wanted to work on Mortal Kombat games. Wow. yeah and then i met a guy at a punk rock concert let's spend the bull weevils for playing he was wearing a mortal kombat t-shirt and you couldn't buy merch back then right it wasn't a thing so i ran up to him perfect stranger and i didn't and i was very shy and standoffish at that time so i didn't even talk to people i didn't know but i needed that shirt so i'm like where'd you get that shirt i want it i'm like just you want to trade i'll give you my shirt you know and um he's like well i work in midway games i'm like you do not get out of here he goes no i do and i made him show me his business card to prove it because i didn't believe him and then i don't know where i had the nerve to ask him for a job but i'm like you know i'd love to be a game tester for you guys would you need such a thing i wouldn't even know how to go about trying to get you that kind of gig and he said you know what i'm working on a game and we could use some testing soon give me your number and i'll call you i thought he was gonna throw it away when as soon as i turned around he just standing next to a garbage can. It was right next to the bar. But to his credit, he called me, and that was my foot in the door at that company. And then my talent kept me, and then I became one of the first two game testers they ever had. And I lobbied for them to make it a full-time gig. We would just do it as contractors, me and this guy named Eddie Ferrier. We're a tag team. And they would have us come in every time there were games to work on, and they would pay us hourly. but then I you know I was like I was at that crossroads in life I'm like I need a full-time job with health benefits I'm like you guys have to hire us full-time or I have to leave and thankfully you know they valued us enough to like they made a full-time position for us so I started the QA department there yeah wow awesome Mortal Kombat is one of those games that I've just like I want a Mortal Kombat people machine you know it's I would love to do one oh no whether it was just such a graphic game um i remember over here we had one and we all heard back in the 90s that there was one at the local arcade and then we started playing it and it had green blood and everyone thought what is going on here like you know it's yeah and back then we didn't like you said we didn't we couldn't do reviews we didn't have apart from magazines but they'd be so delayed especially being in australia right yeah um so we're reading stuff and yeah mortal combat was such an impactful um uh you know part well part of nostalgia really like it's just you think video games everyone thinks street fighter mortal kombat and jute nukem half the time that's another video game i'm trying to rally for a pinball game this jute nukem um so uh and getting into so your role at stern um in relation to like code right are you there to come up with ideas and write code or you like or are you just passing that on and someone else is writing code yeah so one of the things that a lot of people uh misunderstand is i am not a programmer and it would so it's a disservice to the programmers who are insanely you know they're brilliant talented people i'm not one of those i i don't if i wrote one line of code in any of our games it wouldn't compile like i don't know what i'm doing so i work with the leads on various teams and and the capacity changes of what I'm there to serve them their needs in aid and rule design so in some cases it's a ton of rule design and in some cases it's a little bit in the case of like Keith Allen's team they don't need the help so I don't ever work on his games these days um and that's not a knock on them they're you know they just I'm just here to I'm I'm a I'm a resource for whoever needs it and on top of that I also do so I work with the programmers but they so we'll come up with stuff usually together or I'll pitch something or I'll just design it. It really depends on the project. And then the lead programmer has to go and program it. So in the case of like James Bond, you know, Lonnie and I would brainstorm, you know, for hours over everything. And then we'd come up with something we both liked and agreed that we think is going to be fun. Then he'd have to go program it. And then once he gets it in the game, then we both play it and we would both have to like it for it to stay. So the game would pretty much tell us, hey, this is good or bad. And sometimes you'll have stuff that we'll come up with on paper we think is brilliant. And then in practice, it's not fun and we got to go back to the drawing board. So on top of that, if it's a music pin that has expression lights, I did those light shows. And that's not with programming. I have a visual tool I use that they gave me to lay those out. it's fairly tedious time-consuming work but to me it's absolutely worth it because i love the way they turn out like being a concert photographer part-time they're like they came to me they're like you want to do these like we think you'd be good at it and it was their idea i'm like well i have to learn it and what if i suck at it i'm like oh we'll tell you if you're bad at it i said all right if i'm suck at it just kick me off the project no hard feelings i just want what's best for the game yeah they're like no you'll be good at it we we believe in you they believed in me more than I did. And then once I got the hang of it, like then I did get good at it and people seemed to really like that. So if there's a music band, I'll do it. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say your record collection is probably good for a resume. It seems I can see that. That and I do concert photography part time and I have for the last 22 years. So they're like, you spend half your life at like rock concerts. Like you should know you would know better than anybody in this building, like what the stuff should look like. Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. And I'm glad you brought up Bond because that's a good segue into both of these things actually and I think Bond was a really good example and I've said it in multiple streams and I told George Gomez when he had him on the channel that for me you know I was one of those people at first when I got Bond that I was like oh man I'm just not gelling with it I don't really understand what's going on and then you know being patient was one of those things about well I'm going to put it aside for now and let's just see what happens right because we all know it's not new in pinball games don't come out fully finished you know code is an evolving thing and i think one of the things one of the pros and cons about today's day is you can get games out to people and get feedback um even in the video game world and you can keep doing updates and fixing bug fixes and blah blah blah um and bond went from being a game that was pretty average on release due to multiple reasons to being in my opinion one of stern's best games um and i think you know when it comes to wic and x-men you know, obviously going, well, they've been out for nearly a year. Where are we at? And being so impatient about it, you know, I think people need to remember that, like, look what happened with Bond, right? Yeah. And I do think, and I will put my devil's advocate hat here on, that, yes, when you spend a lot of money on a pinball machine, there is a bit of expectation, well, it shouldn't be a little bit empty. And, yes, maybe it was rushed out in production because the game was brought forward and all that. We don't need to get into that. But, you know, I think sometimes people forget that. And I think sometimes there are the people that are knocking on the door that maybe have valid arguments.

medium confidence · Host states 'the fact of the matter is is that a majority of the 70 of the market is home'

“qualifying the modes through just shooting all the various arrow shots feels limp like I feel like you tell me if you feel the same way a lot myself and Jack Danger we always feel like we're constantly in modes and we're never like in main play doing anything”

Mike Vinacore (MXV)@ 21:34 — Identifies core pacing problem: too many easy mode starts; justifies major Beast Lab redesign

  • “the more you play it you know and then see hopefully get farther into the game the more they play it.”

    Mike Vinacore (MXV)@ 26:24 — Design philosophy: games should scale difficulty with player skill to retain engagement

  • “he's a very casual player, which is a huge asset to the company because us better players will tend to skew things too hard”

    Mike Vinacore (MXV)@ 25:41 — Explains internal playtesting methodology: casual testers (company owner) balance expert designer tendency to over-complicate

    • Williams Bally Midway
    company
    James Bond 007game
    Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eyegame
    Deadpoolgame
    George Gomezperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Lonnieperson
    Eddie Ferrierperson
    Mortal Kombatgame

    high · MXV: 'it just doesn't work for this playfield so that was really why we decided to change it...let's just go with like the Deadpool style where it'll take the most valuable shot'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Original X-Men mode qualification via arrow shots criticized as feeling 'limp' and keeping players constantly in modes rather than main play; Beast Lab redesign aims to fix pacing

    high · MXV: 'qualifying the modes through just shooting all the various arrow shots feels limp...we're constantly in modes and we're never like in main play doing anything'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: MXV articulates deliberate design philosophy balancing casual accessibility with hardcore depth; specific examples include Sentinel multiball scaling difficulty, mode personality differentiation, and perks/power-ups system

    high · Detailed discussion of designing for 70% home market majority, casual player testers, and scaling difficulty based on player feedback

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Nick (software tester at Stern) has professional/familial relationship with MXV dating back to Midway days; now supervises MXV; internal playtesting uses casual player (company leadership) as difficulty checkpoint

    high · MXV: 'his dad and I worked together at Midway games...and now you know he is one of my bosses here at Stern...Stern will always come and play your game and be like, where's my multiball?'

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Men receiving significant post-release code updates addressing playfield ergonomics (right flipper mode start consistency), mode clarity (reducing sameness), and mechanical design (multiball stacking removal)

    high · MXV: 'there's gonna be more stuff changing in X-Men more drastically...we're gonna rework the eight modes to give them more unique personalities'

  • ?

    product_concern: X-Men launched with incomplete code and game design issues (mode sameness, confusing mechanics, multiball stacking) requiring major rework post-release

    high · MXV confirms larger overhaul for X-Men than Wick; acknowledges game was 'brought forward' in production; discusses code state evolution

  • ?

    product_strategy: Beast Lab redesign planned to qualify modes instead of arrow shots, with future plans for varied Sentinel multiball flavors and additional cosmetic/perk additions to gameplay clarity

    high · MXV: 'we want to do more with that and we'll flesh that out as we progress over the coming months...There'll be different flavors of killing the Sentinels'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Modern pinball design leverages post-release code updates for game evolution; contrasts with pre-internet era where games had to be complete at release

    high · Host references modern ability to update games post-release vs old Williams era: 'it's not new in pinball games don't come out fully finished you know code is an evolving thing'

    • 11:12
    But there's, you know, again, people don't know what's happening behind closed doors, right? And you guys are a big oiled machine at Stern and deadlines are important and production deadlines are important and keeping, you know, the board happy and everything. Like it's a domino effect, right? And George did explain to us a little bit on the channel the fact that X-Men was bought. forward and blah blah blah um and we know where the code's at and i think x-men which we'll touch on um because that's probably had is it fair to say a much bigger overhaul than john wick yeah um yeah i would say that's a that's a fair statement um yeah there's gonna be more stuff changing in x-men more drastically i would say than in wick um but wick a lot is changing in wick too but i'd say that wick was in a little bit better shape it was also out longer so it had more development time before lonnie and i you know took it over um so but they're both getting some pretty big overhauls here so with um x-men i mean i'm a huge x-men ambassador i've got my x-men watch i don't think people can see oh nice oh yeah yeah it's a little danger room i've had that on there you'll see that on the on the instagram but um love the layout i'm a huge jack danger fan and he'll be on the channel hopefully next week um and you know the layout is in my opinion one of the quirkiest ones stern's ever made and one of the best ones i just love shooting x-men um and you know the code i was pretty happy with it like it was you know it was very straightforward and especially for that genre which it appeals to superheroes appeal to pretty much everybody especially new generation that we're trying to pull into pinball um it was it was pretty straightforward um yes it probably didn't have a bit of personality in the modes and stuff like that but we knew it probably was going to be coming then when we're not 12 months i think october will be 12 months but then you come along and obviously things change now one of the things that i really thought was interesting um is the way that the activating the modes where now it's all off the right flipper where the post comes up and holds the ball uh the skill shots are different so do you want to run through some of that to go into detail because i know you sure a video you you guys did as a um a stream and if you haven't seen that go watch nick blow up 700 million points on oh yeah yeah i mean nicknamed nick the sniper because he's just that accurate at shooting you know flipping games now he i've watched that kid grow up literally since the day he was born because his dad and i worked together at midway games you know when i started midway and his dad was my last manager when i worked in midway games and now you know he is one of my bosses here at stern so i watched nick grow up and become one of the you know he's a top level player he's amazing and he he's technically his role is game testing right yeah yeah he's one of our two uh software testers now um and and he's a huge asset where you know we're happy and lucky to have him um so the the reason for the change on the how the mold start it was very confusing to people especially more casual and novice players of like everything started a mode and sometimes it's on the left flipper and sometimes it's on the right flipper and um there was no you know consistency of like why that was and we wanted to streamline it to make it much more much clearer like okay modes start here and always feed the one flipper you know the right flipper um and then we the uh we're gonna have the other stuff that's not that feed the other flipper so there's a very clear distinction of what you're about to do because you know again a lot of casuals don't even understand that they started a mode yeah but they'll they'll it'll be easier for them to pick up on that and learn this if there's a consistency or it's like okay these things always happen here and there's also more there's more shots you can hit from the right flipper too correct correct yeah so um and we are going to rework the the eight modes to give them more unique personalities um some of them will become more difficult because they're a little bit easy some of them are a little bit easy um but there was a to me and to some other people um there was like a sameness to the eight modes like they don't and john wick kind of suffered the same thing with the jobs the adversary battles are fantastic like there were five of them in john wick and they were very unique and you know they feel like their own thing um we want the jobs to be like that too and wick and the modes to be like that in x-men where this mode doesn't feel like that mode where i'm just shooting the same arrow shots you know it doesn't like it's almost like pick one at random it didn't matter because they all kind of felt too similar and the um which is great it is true i think one of the things i found is that the modes did feel the same but they were just skinned you know wolverine and then the next one was beast and i did like that obviously the biggest overhaul is the future um yeah or you had to do two modes complete them then you got to go to the future and then we had to read a lot of text uh to understand what we had to do which like it's in pinball you got short window how to get that message across so the the big texting was a little bit difficult but i do like the idea now that every time you complete that one mode, you go straight to the future. Yeah. Save your person. So if you're playing Wolverine's mode, you're saving Wolverine. Yeah. And then basically it's just destroying Sentinels, right? And then. You're destroying Sentinels. Yeah. You're in the future battling Sentinels to save the character, you know, the X-Man. Yeah. And then if you successfully do that and exit the future before that time runs out then your reward is you get a perk or a power that now helps you for the rest of the game Now in the future I want to make it so you do different things There'll be different flavors of killing the Sentinels. It won't always be the same one. This was just how we started it and wanted to see how it went. we will circle back when we get some of the more other stuff done to give some variety so you're not playing the same version of the future eight times eight times and the perks that you get by defeating the sentinels and saving the mutant um are they then on the screen like do you know what perk you've got there wasn't time to get it done in that last release that it absolutely will tell you what your perk is and then we'll also add it to the instant info but when you win the perk it will in a future update tell you this is what you got. So some of those perks, I'm assuming, are going to be things like add a ball or extra ball or... Yeah, there's a... One of them makes Bishop shoot two shots instead of one. One of them makes the gambit multiplier three acts instead of two. One of them is add a ball on the button. We took the add a ball off of the way it was done before where you were just bashing that beast target. I'm a huge advocate of add a ball on the button. I want the player to have control of their destiny of like, I'm going to choose when to use it. And me as a player, I save my add a balls to resurrect a multi-ball I just drained out of. Like that's, to me, that's like a superpower I love. And when it was like in earlier times, we would do it on like a mystery award where you hit a shot. I like the idea of I can hit that button, and now I save that multiball.
    18:51
    So the attaball got moved to the button. There's longer ball savers for one of the perks. I'm forgetting what all of them were off the top of my head because we did perks in John Wick too, and I don't want to co-mingle them. But there are some overlap where they have similar perks, and we did perks on Bond. That was my pitch for the Spectre weapons in Bond. And, you know, I put perks on that stuff because people tend to ignore those Spectre weapons. I'm like, I'm going to give them a real reason to want to play those and not just play the modes, you know? Yeah, no, for sure. And that touching on bishops, right, because I struggled with that bishop, the old bishop shot where you had to hold it down. And I didn't I actually didn't know until you mentioned it on the stream. Right. Yeah. Now, this is either my lack of paying attention or reading, but I didn't actually know that it was a roaming shot before. So it's a little bit like the one on D&D, right? It was exactly the same. Yep, it was exactly the same as on D&D. And the reason why it worked on D&D so well, thematically it was perfect for Dungeons & Dragons. But the way that play field layout lent itself better to a roving thing, whereas the shots on X-Men are like zigzagging all over the place. So it's really hard to follow. and that there's you need faster reaction time on x-men because it's such a fast game yeah and and very atypical play field right so you didn't have time to hold that thing down unless you were trapped up and then it just it just felt like it was too cumbersome and not very useful and like george and jack and myself we all really didn't like it the old way um and we again we liked it in dungeons and dragons and like it just doesn't work for this play field so that was really why we decided to change it in this one was like let's just go with like the deadpool style where it'll take the most valuable shot and award it to you it makes more sense on the x-men play field to do it that way and um so now bishop you just hit him once and it just clears the most like the most important shot on the in the mode yeah it'll calculate what's the most lucrative shot for you like the one that will help you the most usually points wise right so and then that's the one that will award yeah right awesome um and you mentioned before b slab so what b slab was always a bit of a gray area because i never fully understood exactly what it did and it was never i don't think it was fully written in any way before right so what's the idea with b so because i reckon that's got like a lot of potential it does and we're still i'm still figuring that out but i would i want to change how you qualify starting modes i feel like qualifying the modes by just shooting all the various arrow shots limp like i feel like you tell me if you feel the same way a lot myself and jack we always feel like we're constantly in modes and we're never like in main play doing anything and largely because like all right if i make three combos like if i do a three-way combo i'm in a mode yeah so i want to move the mode start to be probably on the beast lab to qualify it so that way you can stay in main play like we just added those sentinel hurry ups when and they're based off of combos so um freeing up think you know freeing up the arrow shots to not just stick you in a mode when you even if you don't want to be in one currently will give us more uh freedom to do more in main play and have more to do other than just mode mode mode multi-ball you know yeah yeah well that's cool there is a bunch of potential on that thing because it's like the premium lease has that captive ball thing yeah different levels so i want to do more with that and we'll flesh that out as we progress over the coming months you know um and multiple stacking is not a thing now right correct yeah i i felt like and again i wasn't the only one we felt like the multi-ball stacking did a disservice to the multi-balls themselves that i i never knew which one I was in yes and I would start one inside another and then it really breaks the immersion of like multi balls are a special thing and especially for a casual player like the coolest thing they may see is a multi ball it should feel like a moment and most multi balls in most games do and this one just felt like they got watered down because sometimes you have all three going at once and you didn't even really know that you which one you started and I wanted to be more clear and make them more special so it's a big deal when you get to a multi-ball especially for the more casual players like when my girlfriend plays the game she'll get the sentinel multi-ball now but she won't probably get to save the city because she won't be able to make that many shots accurately to start it so i want them all to feel like moments and save the city really should have should and will feel like a bigger deal than it current than it was because that's more like a mini wizard type of thing because it's 18 shots to get there yeah so like it needs to be rewarding and a big deal to get there and it shouldn't be and the theme of it was the coolest of the three multiballs in my opinion oh it's it's the one thing that do not change because i i'm a sucker for 8-bit 16-bit and all that old school nintendo nes music and and that really honestly when i played that the first time and that hit i was like this is hardcore nostalgia right here oh yeah so the visuals and audio will not change in that yeah the rules will and that'll be more even more fun but the bones of that one were were solid i love the presentation the concept of like you're clear in the different territories to save the city like that was all great i just wanted to like shine up the rules a bit to make it even more fun to play and a little bit more straightforward um to me my x-men also the bones were really good that one's going to get some minor tweaks and polish but the overall presentation and what you do will largely be the same um but just a little bit of tweaking to it which it makes sense for that to start off the left flipper where the ball looks like it's levitating because that's part of cerebro versus the mode the mode starting in cerebro yes yes so that that does make sense um now you said you mentioned your partner playing Sentinel multiball, she gets that. That is easier to get now, obviously. It is, yeah. But it gets harder? It does, yeah. The first time you get it, it's six shots. It doesn't matter where you hit the Sentinel. And then it gets progressively harder every time beyond that to where you have to hit it way more times. But again, you need to have something.
    25:35
    Gary will always come and play your game and be like, where's my multiball? He's a very casual player. For somebody that's been in the pinball industry since he was born, he's very much a casual player, which is a huge asset to the company because us better players will tend to skew things too hard. And Gary will come and play your game and be like, this is too hard. Where's the multiball for me? And then that's the reality check of like, oh, yeah, we need to make this more accessible, right? that was very much the case of the sentinel multi-ball like it's the big bash toy near the center of the play field like you know the novices the casuals need to happen into that so they can have like this cool moment that will want them to play more and then get better at playing you know and then see hopefully get farther into the game the more they play it yeah and the one of the things you're right because i i'm a casual player and but i i'm a sucker for multiballs and one of the things is knowing like i know in a particular game there's three and i always try and get those three yeah as opposed to like i don't know which one i'm getting or how like can i get the other one or uh how far away am i from the other one um and you know it's one of the things where for me like the more multiples the better i know some people like especially tournament players they're like oh no too many multiballs or you know they they last too long yeah it's as much as and i think there's been a little bit of critique now with the new code for weekend x-men where the hardcore players are saying the games have become too easy right right and or easier to start things let's say um yeah but i think the what uh and i understand that and you know i probably agreed to some element for those type of people but the fact of the matter is is that a majority of the 70 of the market is home right number one number two out of that 70 i can't imagine like a massive percentage would be hardcore tournament players correct yeah but then we're also trying to bring new people and like my seven-year-old and my 10-year-old you know my 10-year-old was like under 13 champion at our local expo and she she you know for her to be playing pinball is a great thing because it brings a whole new generation in um and if the games are too hard and i actually have to say when we first got x-men she loved the artwork and she loved the shots yeah but she didn't play it for long because she just found it was too hard for her to play she's probably never started in the sentinel multiball i would imagine no no yeah yes i would start it and i would let and then she take over well my son would take over the type of thing so there is that you know finding that balance is tough because even for you guys who you've got jack and keith and you know they're guys that are very good players right so you're designing a game because they're going oh this is easy but then you know the you know then um gary rocks up who's a casual player and goes this is hard like yeah you know it must be challenging it is and as designers like we have to that's a balance we always have to try to find in every game that we design is you have to have stuff for the cat every type of player right the casuals the intermediates the hardcore tournament players like you need to satisfy all those and it's a delicate balance of trying to get all that stuff in there without breaking any of it you know it's like there needs to be stuff close enough we always say close enough to the start button where a casual like somebody like gary can come in you know bat the ball around get into a multi-ball have some fun and their game could be over in three minutes but they got to do something cool and see neat stuff you know and interact with the devices and then you need a guy like a keith ellen or a rate or raymond you know davidson where okay there's got to be enough to keep them interested because there might be playing that game for 20 minutes half hour or in the case of bond nick played it for like 45 minutes to get through the whole game on stream for us you know yeah um so you have to satisfy all of that and you can't leave any of it out you know it's got there's got to be something for everybody yeah and i think certain themes make it even harder because certain themes and i think one of the things like i was a massive ninja turtle fan and collector um and my kids used to get demoralized on turtles because the the scoring uh is low right and it's a tough shooter uh it is yeah i mean that like you put ninja turtles in the room with other games and kids will always go to ninja turtles right so it can always be hard to find that that niche right and and i think sometimes you'll hit it and win it uh and there may be you know it is you can't please everyone right so i guess the only negative thing i've read is some of these tournament players are just saying that the game's too easy for them now right we we make a lot of settings in there that you can make your games harder you know like you could go in there and make that sentinel multiball hard again if you want to yeah um if and and you know tournament and a lot of those tournaments they do stuff like that i mean i don't play in tournaments i don't find them to be any fun at all i get why people do it and why they have fun it just for the way i play pinball i like to do it more socially with my friends and compete for scores that way i play in one pinball league but i've never been interested in going to a thing where they strip all the fun out of the game they'll remove pulse They'll set everything on super hard. There's no ball saver. They'll put lightning flippers on the thing to make it even drainier. Like, I don't want – that doesn't appeal to me as a player. That's not why I play pinball.
    31:17
    But I get that there's a segment of the people that do, and they're accustomed to that. Like, when I used to play games at Lyman's house, he would have all the ball savers off and the outlanes all the way open. I'm like, why do you make your games so hard? And he goes, because that's how I play them in tournaments, and this is how I can practice. I'm like, oh, I get it. but I'm like my Adams family is more fun than yours because I didn't do that to mine you know yeah mine's not pitched at eight eight uh eight degrees right right yeah and and the outlanes are all the way open and you know you turned off everything and you made everything hard you can't start the modes in the swamp I mean his Adams family because um he turned it off because that's what they did you know I'm just like yeah I'm like that was a good segue because that was my question so for people that are saying that it's hard it's easy to start the modes in week and it's easy to do so you can change that stuff right you absolutely can yeah yeah we have a ridiculous amount of settings in our games i mean if you look at batman when i was working on batman with lyman i'm like lyman we have like 300 game settings in here now it was it was insane he made a setting for everything i'm not saying it was wrong there's just so much in the games and we do want to make people especially the people at home be able to customize it to their liking and to match their skill sets. Maybe they want more of a challenge and want to make everything harder, you know? Maybe they want to make it easier because they've got little kids at home and they want the kids to be able to see more. So, yeah.
    32:41
    I actually, speaking of Lyman, the other day I was looking at my King Kong and I saw the little Easter egg of the Lyman, Easter egg in the limestone on the end. Oh, yeah.
    32:51
    It was amazing how much impact he's had that he's still kind of popping up everywhere at the moment. um he he is the reason i have a job at stern he lobbied for years to george to hire me and we worked together at williams valley midway in the 90s we were great friends for 25 years until he passed away um and then he's the reason why i have a job there like he kept pitching it and then when the time was right george came after me and you know and and approached me to offer me a job that I've been waiting for for years, you know.
    33:23
    And I learned so much from him. I mean, a lot of the reasons why people like my contributions to these games are largely due to things that Lyman taught me over the years, especially when we worked on games together at Stern. You know, we were in each other's office every day talking about what we liked and didn't like about pinball. We worked on a couple of games together while he was there. And he explained why he did things to me the way he did. and he was a credible mentor to me in like how you approach rule design. Yeah, and I mean, his influence will be felt for a long time, I think. Oh forever He was the best in the business in the 21st century you know for sure And you know and even at the tail end of the 20th century you know he was to me you know you got a Mount Rushmore of pinball like people that advance pinball rules and gameplay, he's the top, he's the number one slot on that Mount Rushmore, you know.
    34:23
    So, obviously, one thing I did notice with X-Men is the light show. the light shows have changed too oh yeah that's all cory because he's yeah uh i have no influence in the light shows but yeah he's made some better light shows for sure i think and it wasn't that it wasn't like the light shows were bad before but a lot of times we'll have placeholder light shows you know to get something in there so there's feedback and then you go back and you polish it when you get more of the game done you know and in that case like cory has gone in and polished a couple things as he's been in there because it made sense to do so and uh i'm assuming you've got obviously a plan for wizard modes mini wizard modes um yeah we're still working on some of that stuff was planned like what they are but not necessarily the rules and when we get the main game i'll rework to all of our liking then we'll you know we'll do it like we do any other game we'll get all the main stuff we'll work our way to the wizard modes because they're the farthest thing out that the least amount of people see but yeah there's there's you know we have plans in place and we're scheduled to do all of that we'll move on to week um so week is one of my favorite movie franchise i'm a huge counter reads fan um and when the game was rumored i was like oh man like a couple things i really want to see in the game and if winston's not doing call outs we riot and all this right like i was like winston's gonna be the man and we came out and as a casual player wick kicked my ass because those three shots those three rams are like you know they're it's fast and i think i remember when i interviewed uh elliot and tim at the time i said to him one thing i really like about that game is that the flippers are your weapon like your guns and it's like a first person shooter right and i think i blew elliot's mind as well because he's like that's a really good way of putting it because yeah technically the bullets are yours and the ball's yours and you know and it was a fast-paced game probably more i wouldn't say like a novice person won't last long on week because those it's a tough shoot they definitely do not yeah just the physics of it it's it's it's a tough shooter like you said it's got some tight shots and it's very fast yeah and the code update you guys just did ironically and you didn't change the layout right right right but it made it made it feel like to me and again i'm not a great player um but i was averaging you know 50 to 80 uh mil um so 8 000 and then i'm all of a sudden i'm at like 100 mil right so right it's kind of like well it's amazing how code can change those shots are still tight especially that middle ram kills me every time but you know now obviously you guys have made it easier to start modes so with the um the always forget what the crate yeah right um so it but it gets harder right right it goes one two three and then it's like three three three three yeah and um there was always a confusion and there wasn't much direction about like okay well what am i doing in the middle of these modes like is there a progress bar what's this about has that all changed or is that still in the progress it's still in progress for example um the seven jobs we've added perks to them so now there's a reason to want to beat them but the set there's a very much uh a sameness to those seven jobs and i think it's universally felt like before nobody noticed because nobody could get anywhere the enemies blocked your shots you'd shoot this thing with the arrows lit you would never get it um so nobody was finishing a mode almost ever um and so you didn't really even realize like okay they all feel the same largely the same right everything was just chase the arrows nothing was utilizing like the targets or the spinner um you know everything was just like shoot these five shots um in different and then just the patterns would change of when you shot what so we want to we're going to go back and then give them more unique personalities and change the rules to many of them to make them feel different from each other and utilize more of this play field, which is a fantastic shooting game. I think now that I'm actually getting somewhere in the game, playing it, it's really starting to make the play field layout shine. I'm like, wow, this is even a better game than I realized just to shoot it because I'm having a lot more fun with it. So those jobs will change. So the rules are going to evolve to where they don't feel like so similar to each other. And one of the things, and again, I've addressed this before where they said it feels easier now. One of the things I personally do like is that those shots aren't blocked by the three enemy dots, which originally were a little bit AI. They kind of changed. and now they're more like a shot multiplier though, aren't they? They are a shot multiplier. So if they're blinking, you can kill them.
    39:36
    So basically think of it like this. There's an arrow lit and there's enemies on this thing that are blinking. John Wick has killed the enemies and done the – as he's progressing this job, right? So it should be worth more because you did more than one thing. you killed these enemies and you did the you know whatever the part of the job was when you shot that arrow um if the enemies are solid that means they're armored they will not multiply the shot so if and each one is a plus one multiplier right so if there's three blinking ones that's a 4x shot and then when you make it they all go away because you killed them all and then the shot goes away because you made it yeah if for example there's three and two of them are blinking and one of them a solid the two blinking ones will go away and that will be a 3x shot the solid one will turn into blinking so it left behind a 2x shot yeah so you have to remove the armor um so if you wait too long to to shoot a shot those aren't things could be armored and now the shot is actually worth less points than it could have been yeah you know 30 seconds ago or 10 seconds ago So there's a real strategy of picking your shots, like, okay, I want to save these enemies for when it's lit, but if I wait too long, now they're armored. So it's kind of like a balance of it doesn't block your shot, but the armor will block the multiplication of the shot and your ability to kill that enemy on one hit.
    41:06
    And I think that's really reminiscent of the films, though, because in the films it's very rare, and it was one of the things I nitpicked on as a real buff of the films was like well the shots are being blocked and they're really hard but in the films like you never see keanu really being stopped for that long because he's such a good shot that it's just bang bang move on bang bang and even if he's being surrounded by three guys he's out of it very quickly you know yeah he just kind of like move move yeah he just mowed through people and they were just like a it was like slowing down just the minimum amount of slowing down over a speed bump when you're driving at high speeds you know like all right i'll get banged up a bit but i'm going to keep going you know and it's not going to deter me for very long and that's kind of like what we were going for in changing that rule because i felt like before all i did was shoot enemies and i never even in a multi-ball i was never getting a jackpot very often because the enemies were always there and the longer you played the more they were it was like it was kind of felt like whack-a-mole or like i'm you know i'm trying to and then the moles just kept coming out so fast you couldn't whack them fast enough and then i wasn't getting very far into anything yeah And that then was one of the things I noticed playing it. I haven't spent a lot of time on it, but just very quickly. Yeah. Was the the advisories has changed and the Winston the has changed as well. The multi ball there. Yeah. The rules to the Winston multi ball changed. And in the release that we did last week, the rules to excommunicado multi ball changed, not only in how you play it, but how you qualify it. So before you have to, you had to hit, complete the standup targets three times, you know, you had to do three sets to light it. And then you started in the dance club and it didn't, to Lonnie and myself were like, it should start in the dance club. Like you should qualify it in a dance club then. It should be about the dance club. And then the super jackpot and the old rule was in the dance club and it still is. And the old rule had moving shots, but they started on the hardest ones and then they would work their way. And then it would be a double jet super if you lined them up. But because you could get a 4X super with the new rules with the enemies, that was too much multiplication. So we changed the – we kept the roving thing where you make it, they move. But we started it easier, and then it works its way to the harder shots. And then when you clear them, then the super is lit on the dance club to collect it. the premium and le have the beginning of the thing where you it holds the ball in the dance club and you've got like 15 seconds of shooting things to build your jackpot value we kept that um but on the premium le when it serves you the next ball right it's holding the one in the dance club and now you've got one in the shooter lane you used to just auto plunge it and then you we you now can skill shot it into the dance club and if you do it adds a ball to the multi-ball and it adds 500k to the super jackpot value so you could on the premium in le you could make that up to a it'll guarantee the two ball multi-ball but you can get it up to a four and then really boost your super but if you can you only get one shot at it if you blow that skill shot you can't add any more balls yeah um that's a hard shot to do it is it's such a little you know into the back of But it's so satisfying when you do it, though. It is. I found once we got that rule in place, I'm all or nothing. I'll either get two in a row, sometimes three, or I'll just miss it completely every time.
    44:41
    So it puts a lot of pressure on you, but there's a great reward to skill shotting in there. You get that one timer in there, and then you could do it again if you do it again. That multi-ball can be extremely lucrative if you do all that. The pro doesn't have the drop target. You can't stage a ball in there. so on the pro it's just strictly a two ball you you shoot it in there then then you build for for the 15 seconds and when the building phase is over then it shoots that second ball out and it's always a two ball multi-ball on the pro um and one of the things obviously um the ramps had your allies right yes sharon and um akira and always forget the other one um and you loaded them up before you started a mode? How does that change now? Right now, we say that they're on sabbatical because we had to disable the feature. Because what they used to do doesn't apply in the new world of John Wick because the enemies don't block your shots. They will be coming back and they will do their powers. Their abilities, what they do will change in relation to what the new rules are in regards to the enemies. and um and we're we're gonna tweak maybe how how you qualify them or you know there's going to be some changes to that part of it too i won't reveal yet but they will come back with different abilities that make sense to the new rules and that you know when in regards to that and um we may revisit how they're qualified or used you know no i'm glad to hear that they absolutely are coming back we just had we didn't have enough time we wanted to get something out yeah um and we also had to do a lot of brainstorming like all right what compelling thing can we do with these allies now that you know applies to the new will set yeah and i'm glad because again being a movie buff most people probably would notice but being a buff of the films like you know the main one in the middle uh he's like the the concierge guy at the hotel right yeah why is he helping me in the battles like what's he doing for me like he's not shooting with me because he doesn't pick up a gun right so right right um but yeah no that's cool i'm glad to know that um the lights out and funny one thing about the lights out is when it started and it used to use the bell right yeah that sound of the bells is one of the most therapeutic sounds in the world for me it's actually my tech phone when someone doesn't really i've got the i call the airplane you know when you ring for the um yeah for the for the flight attendant yeah yeah and i've and i love that right and then when i heard it coming to to week and you've been in the lights out because in the film for those that don't know because a lot of people don't know this uh the lights out mode is because the guy's blind and he uses these devices to uh put in in the path and they go off when people walk and he knows that there's people coming towards him yeah emotions motion sensors motion sensors so then he knew where to shoot yeah yeah yeah so he knew where they were coming and obviously you know he's blind he hasn't got superpowers but um and that's changed though right because it's not as easy to get that action button now right so now so the way the lights out is qualified that stays so you spell yaga and then it lights the button red and then when you press it the lights go out and then it's 2x playfield multiplier that part remains the same what we changed was the motion sensor part of it so in the old rule set every time you spelled yago you know from the second time onward if you didn't have if you hadn't used your lights out you would build up these motion sensors and then during lights out if you pressed it it would add time to the thing and it would light up randomly one section of the play field yeah um i found that people were just stopped all they would do is just like stockpile motion sensors and then you'd stay in lights out forever you could just keep it going um and then you could qualify lights out while you're in lights out so when you got out you could just do it again and it was just like it was way to me it broke the game it was just like this is too powerful you know um i like the motion sensor concept it was fantastic and the lights out concept was fantastic i just we just thought that lani and i felt like the implementation could be better um so what we did was we made the motion sensor a perk that you earn by completing one of the jobs and then when you activate it lights up the shots that are currently lit and not just the gi and the section and it's like a split second it's not even one second so you got you hit it and then you got to look and remember okay what's lit so i know where what where are the shots that i need to hit right now and then you can't use it again there's a cool off period it's about four seconds I think and before you could use it again you could keep using it minus the cool down period for the duration of lights out and you'll have that motion sensibility for the rest of the game once you earn it um and it and when Lonnie pits the thing of the button and then like being able to repeat it I wanted to do like a roving thing and like in and then we were looking at the where the lights were I'm like yeah it's not going to work so good if it was swirling because of the insert layout didn't lend itself to that kind of light show and and Lonnie's like what if we just made it where you hit the button and it revealed it briefly i'm like that could be cool and then he wanted to do repeating and i'm first like i'm like no like you know once and then he goes well let's try it repeating because like and then he liked it and when i played it i'm like oh this is fantastic this is the way so um that's what it became and it was it was a true collaboration of the two of us and it turned out to be like now i love getting it because there's something really fun about figuring out when you could smack that button again to light up your shots and knowing I can't do it again for a few seconds, right? Then I got to study them. I'm like, okay, I got to make these and I'll do it again. Yeah. I actually think that lights out mode and even before, it was a real pinball moment because it's something about when all those lights went out and it was kind of eerie. It was very eerie. And then it hit the bell and the bell was so satisfying to hear. I love that sound. Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic. And it was a pinball moment. I really enjoyed it So now so out of curiosity if you go into lights out and you haven completed that mode you don have any way of getting the belt Correct yeah The only way to get the door a lot of people call them the doorbells The only way to get the motion sensor is you have to play it and beat that one job that gives you the motion sensor perk, and then you'll always have it for the rest of that game. And is the perk – is it the same job? It's the same, yeah. No, so in the, in earlier code revisions, there was a randomness of, like, this job and this faction. That's all, it's the same every day forever. There's no randomness anymore of that. There's no randomness of, like, how to start an adversary battle. It's, now it's always 10 enemies killed, not in multiball. You have to kill them in not multiball. um because like someday one you know randomly it would be 36 or 38 enemies to light an adversary battle again really nobody was seeing them you know nobody was i never got to play those modes because it was too many it's too hard to do there's too many enemies that you know so for people that don't know that's the scoop on the far left right yeah the far left yeah the administration shot those um those modes are really really fun and there's a lot of risk and reward there because you know you have a pretty long ball saver in them and you can get collector cash out you can if there's a good push your luck everything about those modes was super fun it's just that nobody was able to get to them before and now they're actually attainable yeah um and so that was adversaries um the modes themselves when you go into the trunk and yeah the the jobs yeah in the jobs they are random no they're they used to be now yeah yeah now the the the job is tied to a faction and it's always the same with the same rules every day yeah the randomness is now gone okay um and um the winston shot so the deconsecrated multi-ball yeah that's one that i missed i don't how so how's that actually started now oh that it's the same the Deconsecrated one, that's off Winston where you spell Winston. Yeah, and then you lock three balls on the center ramp. That part's all stayed the same. But is it easier or not? It got a little bit easier, and then we made it one shot harder on this last week's release because to space it out more from the car multiballs, which is the easiest one to start. Yeah, and actually there's a debate at the moment. I was trying to explain car multiball to someone, and then someone else was explaining, can you just make it official? So with Car Multi-Ball, you start it by hitting the car. It says car on the play field, right? Right, and then you have to shoot the left orbit to start it. Left orbit, yep. Yeah. And does that become harder as well over time? To start it? We haven't touched it, so I'm pretty sure it does. At some point, right now it picks at random which one you're going to play because there's four different flavors of it. At some point, we want to... not only polish up those four to to spice them up a little bit better but have a deterministic way of you choose which one that you are going to start that'll happen at some point where you know kind of like james bond where if you hit the gold finger target you're toggling what your next mode is we'll do something similar to that with the car when we when we can when we get to that that part of the game one of the things i've found interesting was like obviously especially at the beginning when the everyone blocked the shots the enemies blocked the shots i always thought it'd be cool to have something off the action button where because in the movies wick does use grenades and that will clear the enemies or long range users uh daggers occasionally oh yeah yeah you know which probably upset the whole thing about the guns but we won't go there um so you know i thought there was always something cool to do an action button to clear because there isn't like a clear shot with that action button at the moment is there correct yeah the action button has it's pretty full now so it's got your lights out slash doorbell or your motion sensor um add a ball now lives on there because that's a perk that you're in the job um that one i know because it was one we just added last week the far right job so there's seven right the far farthest one right that's the job that gives you the add a ball oh yeah So it's a short press for lights out, short press for motion sensor, and those two can't live at the same time because motion sensor doesn't happen unless you're already in lights out. But on the long press, you have add a ball, and on the premium in LE, we added that swipe a ball feature, which we had in Bond and Stranger Things.
    55:59
    That's only on the premium LE because it has a physical ball lock. That's a long press. But, again, there's no overlap. You can't swipe a ball if you have and have not used your add-a-ball for that ball. Because when you get the perk, you get one per ball, add-a-ball. But if you use it up and you're on a premium LE and you've got balls locked, now if you're in anything that's not the Winston multi-ball that DeCounts could, you can steal your own locks to become add-a-balls. But you have to pay them back with interest, meaning to re-lock those, it's one step harder than it was before to qualify those locks.
    56:37
    And as the ball save, you know, you hit the left. The outlane? The outlane. That hasn't changed, correct? That hasn't changed. One of the perks, though, is it will light both of them instead of one. So if you get the one perk, then every time you qualify the marker ball save, you get both outlanes lit and you can use them up, you know. Yeah. But the current rule without the perk is exactly how it was. You qualified it off the markers. You can lane change it with the flippers. Yeah. Yeah, awesome. You mentioned something before we've gone on to an hour, so we'll wrap up. So one thing you did mention before, risk and reward, and I can't believe I didn't mention it because it's on my watch and we didn't even talk about it, was Danger Room, right? Yeah. And Danger Room, one of the things I loved going in there was very heavily risk and reward, right? So we'll quickly touch on that. I know now when you go in, a lot of people are like, oh you got ball save because it's just to give people you know an opportunity to to get back in the game um i like the ball save feature because sometimes it happens so fast when you get in there that yeah you don't you don't even realize it it's gone yeah yeah so i think that's cool there's obviously at the top of the screen with the three elements so if you do a certain amount of spinners shots and ramps yeah there's perks has that evolved or is that still the same where it's just three levels right now it's still the same that's gonna a lot that's a lot of that's gonna change yeah um i want we're gonna add more purpose to the danger room where it will affect like the modes when we redo the modes right because in x-men lore they practice in the danger room they were training for like when they are in real world scenarios like fights and battles um like we want that to feel like you do that in the game where okay if you go training the danger room before you place a mode it's going to greatly enhance your scoring or something in the mode right because you train for it and like now this mode scoring so we're gonna we haven't got to that part of the you know that's on the to-do list yep it will coincide with when we start reworking the the eight modes yeah so there will be there will be much more purpose for the danger room yep i think the danger room and obviously not being a traditional italian bottom um was a great thing i don't know whether we'll see it again but um it's it's just uh you know i'm a sucker for upper play fields and lower play fields and even though this hasn't got one it like it feels like it does right because it's pretty much an upper play field just at the front of the game um i do like that there's a ball save it's not for everybody i'm sure i'll get hammered in the comments about that but it's just one per ball too like the first time you go in there at a ball you get a brief ball save just to get so you understand what's going on and then you're on your own for the rest of that ball it doesn't come out every time it was funny because i was talking to a couple guys the other day they were going oh we like that the sentinel only breaks it now during the multi-ball the wire fall right because they were like it used to always go down the middle when it like would just break it and i was like you know what mine never did like i mine was a hundred percent of the time on mine it was crazy i always felt like because the hands are lit up right and you know that when the hands lit it was going to break so because i knew that and maybe because i'm so heavily invested into the whole lore of x-men and maybe i'm overthinking it but because i knew it was coming i kind of knew i had to save the ball yeah but i think a lot of people don't know that and didn't know that and it would drain for them right right um i don't think it's it's not a design flaw as people said oh no no not at all it's supposed to be dangerous you It's like I'm fighting back.
    60:18
    So now we brought that back outside of the multi-ball where when you start the sentinel hurry up, it's like when you hit that combo threshold, either the finger will stop the ball or the thing will break. And then two sentinels come down and you have to attack you. And they're hurry ups and you have to clear them before they run out. So now we've brought that back. And there is a setting, too, that you can bring back the other behavior where it would come out. yeah yeah so you can make it so it does it all the time yes yes yeah yeah i might have to try that because i actually i do miss it at the same time like i'm like it's it's cool that it's not there but i kind of wish it was there as well like a choice maybe but yeah setting's a good thing um look it's it's been great chatting to you because having um chatting to you about two games that I'm personally heavily invested in in relation to theme and a connection to is cool to talk on because like I've had the experience personally with them and knowing kind of what I liked and what I didn't like because no game's perfect and it's not going to appeal to everybody but it's cool knowing that the games you know the fact that like we get a game and then it evolves has so much replay value now okay maybe it came out and it wasn't for everybody and they're gone or it should have been like that in the first place but it's been a journey and i like that journey in a way yeah like it's not i understand that people go oh it shouldn't be that way and i understand that and into some element i do agree but i do like being part of that journey you know because the thing with pinball is you you know you buy it and the intention wasn't i don't think for people to buy it and then go well i'm not waiting any more than three months and i'm going to flip it and and then i've lost a couple grand now it's your fault type of thing yeah that's the part i struggle a little bit with um but i understand sometimes people can be impatient especially if space is an issue um and they can only have two games and they happen to have a wick and a x-men yeah i can empathize with a little bit of the fact that like you've got only two games and they're two games that need work right so yeah i can understand that i can as well and then you know for various reasons both of those had a fairly long gap between software updates and that's not the norm for us you know we try not to let that happen um we try to keep a pretty steady cadence um but you know for a variety of reasons on both of those projects a longer gap than anybody would have liked happened and now you know now we're trying to get on a good cadence of like okay you know we're going to give you some regular updates now on a much more consistent pace and get you know and get these games to be complete and even more fun you know and you know not only with insider connect because as soon as there's an update people rush to the arcade to play that yeah and uh which is one of the cool things at the beginning with contracts on WIC because you'd see contracts and then people were like, we need to get to the arcade because Insider Connects becomes such an addiction. My 10-year-old is like, I need to log in, I need to log in because she wants to get achievements and then she wants to check the achievements. So I can understand that and I hope the contracts come back because I think it's a really good business move to drive people to arcades, right? I can tell you with certainty that, yes, they are coming back. So I won't say when, but I don't know how long this will take to come out, but I will tell you that in the not-too-distant future, you'll see some contracts again. Yeah, cool. Because I think this is beneficial for pinball. I think it's just going to drive more people back to the arcade. And, you know, I'm really excited to see where we go. And hopefully Jack next week will come on the channel and have a chat. I've been trying to pin him down since October. and we'll talk to him. And, you know, there's a big change happening, obviously, at Stern with Jack. And, you know, the thing with Jack, it's interesting because following him as a Twitch streamer, he really put pinball kind of on the map for people that either didn't have access to go play them, wanted some form of interaction, had it during COVID because they were on their own, and he really helped put a community together. And now with his design elements, even though there's only three games and he's working on another one and whatever it is. And even if he never creates another game again, I still think the impact he brought on his layout for Foo and especially X-Men, I think will impact design forever.
    65:06
    You know, so if his purpose was just to do those games, but now bring people into Stern a bit more, so be it. You know, like I'm okay with that. I really admired him for the uniqueness and that he took big chances. He didn't play it safe with those last two playfield designs, and they were both excellent. He really thought outside of the box, and it showed, and they were both really great shooting games and fun games. So I admired him for that. Also, he was very much a pioneer of pinball streaming. I really credit him with one that popularized that, Like that really wasn't the thing. And then he made it a thing. Now everybody streams and it's fantastic. Like I'm glad that pinball has a growing audience, but he's largely, he should be largely credited with spearheading that, you know? Oh, and, and the growing the community. I mean, like when there's people that I'm introducing to pinball, I send them Jack dead flip links from YouTube because he's got a personality and a persona about him that he feels like he's talking directly to you. even though there's a hundred other people watching at the same time. Yeah. And then he tells you, and then he tells you that he loves you and it gets all fuzzy and warm. And then like, you know, it's so he's got that way. And, and, and I think in a way having someone like that stuck in an office is probably not a great thing. And, you know, I think some of that needs to be with the people or at least talking to the people. I think it's a smart move. So I'm looking forward to talking to him more. Yeah, I agree. He's a, he's a great ambassador for pinball in general. Yeah. Sorry, you were saying? Oh, he's a great ambassador, a great host too, you know.
    66:54
    He just adds another element of fun to the pinball universe, you know. Yeah, no, for sure. Well, look, Mike, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. We finally got there and great to keep talking for hours, obviously, but we like to keep these to an hour, hour and 15 because people tend to start falling asleep listening to my voice for that long. But I really appreciate it. And hopefully there'll be another release. We can get you back in and do a part two. I'll come in at any time you want. I'll be happy to do it. And we will discuss more X-Men more week and take it from there. So thank you very much, guys. Don't forget to like, subscribe and tell your friends and all that jazz. head over to Stern's channel because Mike did an awesome video on X-Men and Stern sorry X-Men and Week on the new code drops and go watch Nick blow up X-Men that was impressive yeah he's a great player 20 minutes alright guys thank you very much we'll see you on the flip side alright thanks for having me