3, 2, 1, let's go. Thank you Grummel for the intro. It's Don's Pinball Podcast coming back. Episode number 220. We don't rest in the pinball hobby. Mainly because it's too much fun, man. Trap balls, hit the targets, rip the spinners, and rip the face off the industry. Who wants to talk about some cabinetry? Let's go. boom oh let it with a thud hey everybody how you doing do you want to have a nice well-reasoned and relaxing discussion about pinball because i've got one for you and we're to talk about cabinets because this exploded it must be the doldrums of winter we must be getting hit with storm after storm here in central chicago because the outrage at the moment is but and i'm talking about these butt joints on the spike three cabinet i think it's multi it's multifactorial how this even became a thing maybe everything is just fine maybe it's an overreaction maybe it's not maybe maybe we just don't know and i think that's where this is all coming from so to catch everybody up that's you know reasonable and out there with jobs and families and just having fun with pinball not over analyzing everything we have a new platform from big dogster and pinball down there in chicago the reign of spike 2 has ended they've sunsetted that program and so we are now having our faces blistered with the brilliance that is spike 3 but what exactly is it we still don't quite know and i don't know why that is because that that part doesn't make much sense to me we got the first inkling of what this was essentially it's an upgrade there's a new cpu based on raspberry pi i know that much i don't know much about raspberry pi is until one from another but maybe this one's got like a double crust or something like it's super powerful or whatever i know there's the option to put more speakers in the system i dig that and there's the bigger screen and it's better resolution true or blacks i love that uh audio is upgraded with a built-in amplifier in the pie board or whatever so like i get it and i don't think that uh the real hold up or stumbling block for pinball innovation was necessarily processor speed because it's not as if graphics are being rendered in real time on that lcd screen or anything it's playing pre-rendered clips pre-rendered sound and everything else is just you know a high-tech form of relays and such, right? Rollover switches, proximity switches, stand-up targets, and the like, right? And plastics, man. Plastics don't need processing power. So what else was coming? Now, when Fall of the Empire got released, the newest cornerstone from Stern Pinball, they said, here's a Spike 3 system. Here's a Spike 3 backbox. But the cabinet, the lower part, that big furniture piece down there, that's still Spike 2. Innovations are coming. They're currently being innovated. And so we got The Walking Dead remastered, a game that I think only I was asking for, but I dig it. I still think that it deserved to have the full big screen treatment. I really wanted clips. I really don't think we're getting them. Kind of sucks. But the game, now that we're finally getting to see it, actually looks fun. We'll talk about that in a second. But now we're starting to see exactly what this cabinet is. And it is a total redesign. Now, this wooden box that pinball machines are made out of, it really hasn't changed in a while. Like, I've got some Gottlieb games from the 90s. I've got Gottlieb games from the 70s. And essentially, it was plywood cabinetry. I've seen some innovations with some compound miters and things along the way. I've seen really cool ways to join the wood together that kind of blew me away. Go take a look at the big Lebowski. Pull that lockdown bar off and look at that joint. Just stare at it, man. Craftsmanship takes 10 years. But man, something about letting it soak in the Netherlands, that cabinet box came out phenomenal. Every time I had to lift the play field to do something or muck around or add a mod, I was just running my hands over that wood, man. It was awesome. There's like nine layers of plywood or something in there. Phenomenal. Love that. And so I kind of dug the Spike 2 system. I built my own replica based right off of Spike 2. Did the same measurements and everything. Figured out a way to recreate the angles. especially that compound miter bevel that's right underneath the lockdown bar. Most people probably don't notice this, but take the lockdown bar off your spike too and look at the corners and how that's kind of beveled down at like an outer 45-degree angle. It's super cool, man. I dig that. I found a way to replicate it, and oh, man, it got my creative juices satiated, man. That was awesome. So on this new system, the first words we were hearing was IKEA. You pull the lockdown bar up, and instead of seeing a nice joined piece of wood, you know, at that 90-degree corner, it's just kind of butted up against each other, which to me, as a hobbyist woodworker, tells me that there's either dowels in there or biscuits or something. Is it a biscuit joint, a biscuit butt joint? Now, I went with rabbit joints on mine, and it seems to be at least industry standard for building cabinets. Those of you in cabinetry may know what I talk about or if you stayed awake in woodshop in high school. But essentially, if it's just butted together, it's really just the simplest type of joint you can make. doesn't tend to be very strong on its own. So it requires some bracing, requires some dowels or something in there to glue everything together and hold it. Now I had mine rabbit jointed, and then I glued it, clamped it, and then Brad nailed it to put it all together. But you know, I'm building something in my garage. These guys are building an industry. So from the looks of it, the plywood has changed. It's not strictly a plywood construction with like that melamine or that hard uh formica kind of on the outside the sick decals too that black bit it looks like what they've done is taken an mdf sandwiched plywood which does exist in the industry is used to build furniture is commercially available like it does make sense it's like a it's a composite of two different uh materials kind of uh better than the sum of its parts right plywood is industry standard for strength for durability knock this thing around, man, it's going to hold up better than anything else, better than particle board, better than the MDF that they were using in the old home editions, right? So this actually uses like a masonite, a hardboard, an MDF, like an eighth of an inch layer, sandwiched between the five layers of ply. Before we had seven layers of ply with that melameter formica on it. Now we get five layers with this hardboard. I guess that's fine. I just don't like the look of it looking down there. I have to guess though, and here's really the crux of all this. This has been dropped on us i'm someone that follows every single stern release i'm someone that buys every single stern release of varying trim levels you know and i still pick up stern releases use second hand and you know i'm i'm a sucker for for first party toppers i mean i buy the accessories you know you know i'm that dude i'm not just i'm watching this and this game the walking dead remastered has come out and it's been out there like somewhere it's at ace gogi right it's um retro Ralph has one, flip it out of streaming them. But like, I don't have one at district one up the street for me when we do our tournaments. I don't see it in interior. I don't see it in Madison at IO arcade. Like I don't see this game anywhere. This is the first game since John wick that the doors to Stern haven't been open to, you know, public media folks to come in and give ourselves a look. See, this was been one of the greatest innovations of pinball releases is letting media just, just come by. You don't have to show us early. I don't need to sign an NDA, launch the game, and then have like a public afternoon. And that's really where I'd like to see it get to. Forget just the media invites. Just let the public come by. If you're in the Chicago region, which I am, throw the doors open from noon to 6, have some little sips and nibbles. Bring the new game out into the open area along with all the other wonderful Stern products and accessories that are out there. And let the public just have a look, have a play on it. The designers can kind of mingle, and then we can get questions answered. And then when it comes time for this game to be ordered, to be delivered, we can all be talking from a perspective of having seen this thing. And to date, I still haven't seen like a little making of featurette of like here's our new cabinet. Here's how we're assembling it. Here the reasoning behind why we went instead of doing strictly plywood We went with this composite material Here why you seeing bolts in new places on the side of your panels And people are talking about you know if you scratch a decal you can pull off the whole side of the cabinet and throw another one on there That's wild. Why would you do that? It's so easy to re-decal a cabinet. Why would you pull the whole thing off? And, you know, if someone puts a forklift through one of the panels, it does make it easier to replace it. And so I guess rather than boxing your game up, refusing it and sending it back with FedEx, at least you could accept delivery and then get a panel that the customer could replace themselves, I guess. But I don't know. We're just guessing because there hasn't been just a featurette of like here's our new cabinet design. Let me walk you through it. Here's Mr. Jack Danger, and here's General John Q. Public we brought in, and they're going to assemble one here in 10 minutes and show you like all the cool innovations that we're putting into this thing. Like why haven't we gotten that? That seems to be pretty simple. I was listening to the roundtable discussion, JBS show. Go check it out if you haven't listened to it. Kale, Retro Ralph, and Jamie Birchall himself, they get together and they do a great talk about once a week or once every other week. And they really were holding some people to some grindstones here. I believe it was on that show. Forgive me if I'm wrong. I was listening to everybody's show recently. But they happened to call out, like, where is the communication coming from Stern? We heard that Jack Danger had stepped down from his design role. I hope he finds his way back to it at some point because I really love his games. But he was going to be like head of community, you know, and they were just like, OK, where is he? We haven't seen the guy. You know, this guy should be all up in our face, man. Who can't take enough Jack, man? Bring it. And then, you know, speak of the devil. And he appeared. Now I've seen an ass Jack. Number three is up. I've got to go check that out. He live streamed Walking Dead with what looks like actual release code now. So probably some forthcoming code that will be released where the for license or approval stuff is gone from there. And I was actually able to sit and see a live stream of this game that has already been released and is already shipping and already being built in the factory. And you know what? Despite what you think about the art, because that's all we had to talk about, despite the speculation on the cabinet, because, again, we have to speculate. It's hard to see him. I was actually able to see the gameplay, and it looked fun. Ray Day and Jack were playing it. John Borg was hanging out there in the background. It looked fun. It looked like a really fun game. I've always liked The Walking Dead as its layout. I haven't had a ton of time to develop a deep relationship with it. It's a game that I've always considered, but there was always like a Spike 2 with a big shiny screen dangled in front of me that I would get. I would go get Jaws or go get John Wick or Dungeons & Dragons or, oh, Stranger Things is having another rerun. I'm going to go get that, and I just haven't made it around to have time and space in the budget to grab that Walking Dead. And now there's a new one with a screen, and I love that. And now it's like, okay, this is a game for me. Knowing me, I should have already bought one of these things, but I haven't because I'm still kind of trepidatious here, man. Is it a step up? Is it a step down? Am I paying more, getting less? I just don't know. And for a purchase like this, I just want some reassurances. I don't want to bag on Stern and jump on him. Sure, I needle online. when I'm doom scrolling, watching TV at home, and I'll throw some quips out there. But I just want to know. I want to know. I want to get this thing in my hands and shake it around. And I live in the Chicago area, and I haven't seen this game yet. People that were down there at CES or Comic-Con were able to see it. Some of the top streamers were able to see it. But I've just not seen it, like, blossoming in arcade. You know, where are all the launch parties? You know, I want to go to one of these things and get to play it. I'm still excited about it. But I just don't have enough information, and I kind of think it should be forthcoming. Forthcoming it is. In about 15 minutes, I think Cary Hardy is going live tonight as I'm recording this, Tuesday night. And he's going to have George Gomez on there to probably put all of this stuff to bed and answer the questions. Yay. I'm glad. I'm glad. But I want to kind of think that it was the community asking these questions that are then pushing them to do this. And I want to just keep kind of pushing them further because the more that we can get good feedback and keep good communication with Stern, the more satisfied I'll be when I do purchase one of these things in the future that I know I can contact these guys. There's a face to the company, and I'm kind of on the same team. I'm on board with what they're doing because I'm aware of it, right? So Spike 3 is here. I'm still waiting to know more about it. What do you guys think? I know it's a lot. This has to be winter, right? and we're just sitting here, you know, staring at our thumbs and butt joints in cabinets underneath lockdown bars that 99% of people that play these pinball machines, if they even know about them, wouldn't even know about, right? So that's where I am at that. I can't wait to finish up recording here. We'll pop over to Carrie's stream, and then we'll be entertained. And then there's some Jack Danger content out there. So I think that's super fun. But, you know, wouldn't it be nice if there was just, like, an afternoon where there was like a holiday party, throw the doors open for a couple hours in the afternoon. You don't have to have a big factory tour, you know, keep rolling things along, but let the public kind of wander into that cool showroom that you have and, you know, show off some of your stuff. Let some of the marketing guys come in there and mingle, mangle back and forth. Maybe a couple of, you know, podcasters set up in the corner, do a couple quick interviews or something. You know, no big deal. And then we'll all go to Illuminati's in the afternoon. We don't have to darken your doorstep past 6 o'clock. No one's got to stay late tonight. um you know i just think i just think uh i just think it could be fun i just think it can be fun all right what do we got what do we got barrels of fun barrels of fun is cooking man uh they're they've what is it called it's an elf on the shelf but it's like a David Van Es on the shelf or something they're calling it and i'm not exactly sure what they're doing but i keep seeing pictures pop up of this stuffed David Van Es in the factory somewhere and i guess they're doing giveaways and prizes and things i really have to spend some more time looking at it But I'm excited for these guys. I'm excited. I was very excited when I saw Labyrinth at Expo. You know, well, we knew something was coming. They were kind of teasing us for a while. And then here's a game loaded with sculpts for an affordable price for a recognizable theme. And they got David Bowie and the music was in there. And I saw Labyrinth growing up and I love Muppets. And so, hey, here we are, man. Here we are. How cool is this? The follow up Dune, while I see where they were going, it wasn't a theme that spoke to me strongly enough to go ahead and grab it. and it sure wasn't the code doing it at launch although everybody's been telling me this game is better this is like this has to be barrels of fun's james bond right a game that you know wasn't that greatly coded and at release but like grew later on to the point that people are like legitimately heralding this game and they're like don you have to play dune now and i'm like but i already played it and i'm on to something else now so i guess just like bond i have to come back to dune at this point so barrels you got yourself your dune that's fantastic you made your wizard of oz with labyrinth that's awesome and man like swung for the fences and got a winchester mystery house triple double this is great so completely sailing i like this i like this now i know this competition between you know pinball companies and stuff and some of my friends you know work at a company and maybe there's some history there something that i am not privy to all the details of nor is it any of my business nor do i even want to get into it but i will say this as a pinball fan i will love it when barrels of fun comes out with just like a massive hit if i can say is that controversial i'm gonna go ahead and say that i want them to create something that just shocks the industry makes everybody take notice about what's possible in pinball and then will drive me to be like all right how are we going to top this let's figure out a way to do it right and then we like go back and forth and just things there's a pinball arms race you know when you go to uh let's let's do this let's do this all right you go to the county fair and what do you got you got one rides operator that owns all the rides there so you get one ferris wheel one dark ride one gravitron and a couple of kitty rides and like that's all that you get at your county fair every time they come maybe now and then they'll they'll bring something new but like they don't have any competition there's one rides operator that's how carnivals work in the u.s by and large in europe every ride is owned by an independent operator you have places like the prodder in uh in vienna you have places like uh you know all the rides and attractions that are at octoberfest or like the winter fairs in the uk and like somebody can just buy a ferris wheel and like show up and be like all right i renting my spot here here my ferris wheel you pay me you ride my ride And then the guy across from him is like all right well I have a Ferris wheel and it on fire I have fire effects and I play Rammstein on my Ferris wheel So you want to come and ride mine. And then the other guy's like, dang it, we're going to get bikini ladies operating this ride over here. So you'll come ride this one. And the whole thing operates like that. Like every ride at the entire fun fair is all individually owned and everybody's competing with each other and like leveling up everything. So you get rides with longer ride cycles. You get pyrotechnics. You get blasting music. Like everybody's trying to be as loud and as flashy and like much better than anybody else. And it's like walking down Las Vegas Boulevard and you're like looking at Paris and looking at Excalibur if you have to. Looking at New York, New York and like everything is competing for your attention. And when industries like that compete, who wins but the player, but the person that's in there, the consumer is winning because of everything that's going on. When you get things like Netflix and Warner Brothers merging and then pretty soon there's going to be four large media companies that own absolutely everything, we're going to see competition then start to homogenize. And that's not a great place to be. I know it's great for business, but as a consumer of media, as a consumer of carnival rides, and damn it, as a consumer of pinball excitement, I love it when there's competition between everybody. So I love that there's all these companies all vying for relevancy. And I'm like, bring it. Yeah, bring it. Now, Stern may couch there and say, you know, other companies releases are just a blip on our radar, but you got to see the excitement that's there. And, you know, if I'm buying a barrels of fun game and I'm buying a spooky game and I'm buying a JJP game, I'm looking at The Walking Dead like my budget already went to these three other ones. So while, yes, I do think that game plays amazingly cool based on the stream that I saw, I'm going to have to wait and see and play it until I can get super excited about it. But I'm OK with that world. I want Stern to punch back so hard and come with something that just completely blows us away. But when they release these new products like Spike 3's cabinet and there's really no background of what we're actually getting, I still don't even know. I bought myself a Fall of the Empire, a premium version, and I would love to have some expression lights in there. I would love to have the good speakers and the lights, but I don't know when they're coming. I don't know if they're coming. I don't know if there'll be a short window where they're available and then they're not anymore. And I got to wait another year till I could finally get one. I have no idea what the price is. And with the price of the LE coming down, you know, should I, you know, do I feel like maybe I should have just waited and got an LE and then I could have got everything all at once, you know, but like I didn't need to have, I don't need to have an LE every time. I just want some fun gameplay. I want some Star Wars fun time. I want some expression lights. And where are they? And when are they coming? And how much are they going to cost? No idea. No idea. We can't even find out about the X-Men shooter rod, let alone accessories for Fall of the Empire. See how I get drugged back to Stern. But, hey, take that David on a shelf and hide him all over the factory and give away some fun stuff and keep this stuff going. I like the fact. Remember this? If you bought a Labyrinth or if you bought a Dune. No, if you bought a Labyrinth, you were automatically entered in a chance to win their next game, which was Dune. And then if you bought a Dune, there's no way you're in a contest to win a Winchester. But I would like to see this. And I think I'll mention this to David. If you buy a Barrels of Fun game, I think you should be absolutely head of the line on their next release. You should have like a protected window that you can order. Or if you do order, you have an opportunity to request to have your game be in the preliminary build so you don't have to wait. If you buy a game from them, your next game that you buy from them, you should be getting it first. and then everybody else that has to wait will go in and buy one knowing that on the next time they'll get added to that early list you know and we reward the people that are there buying every single game like what if stern was doing that with me man if i would have had like early access and a chance to get something special with like a walking dead because i bought a fall of the empire because i bought a john wick because i bought a dungeons and dragons and a stranger things and a metallica remastered and all that they say hey you're one of our like you know five-star members here here's here's a little perk spend some more money with us you know and like my dopey butt i'd probably go in and do that let's see some of that coming man i think that would be super duper fun speaking of fun do you like toppers do you like star wars do you like space princes battling with laser sabers oh there's a topper from the electric playground it sounds like i'm reading ad copy here but i love this they dropped this a couple of days ago i'm sitting in a drive-thru, I think it was at Checkers. I might have been at McDonald's. I might have been completely out of my head and lack of sleep. I was somewhere and I looked down at my phone and I saw this and I went ahead and put a $100 deposit down on a $799 topper because it has two lightsabers that flash up and blink and interact with the game. Which game? I guess technically any game you want to put that light sensor on. But I've been kind of a fan and following what the Electric Playground's been doing. And yeah, I'm in on an early build of one of these Star Wars toppers. So that's super cool. Go check it out. Even if you don't end up purchasing one, go look at what they're doing for that price point and that interactivity and just kind of think like what's possible. I love what they're doing. I love how they're able to complement games. And I like how they're partnering with companies, too, like they're partnering with DPX to do add on accessories for the DPX topper. Not that anybody has it, but if you did, you have a little accessory for it. Like, that's super fun. And, you know, they're making toppers for old games, like back in antiquity, you know. So if you've got that Elton John, the Brown Dirt Cowboy, you can go ahead and get your Cabin Fantastic topper. I think there's another Papaduke game topper coming out, a Circus Voltaire or something. Like, that's cool, man. If you're one of the collectors that has a Circus Voltaire, for some reason, Ringmaster creeps me out. But if you got one, now you can put a little topper on it. You have that option. and they're bringing it to you. So shout out to the electric playground for that. We'll give you an air horn. What else do we got to talk about tonight, man? I just wanted to record. I'm having fun. I'm playing a lot of pinball. I'm picking up another dark night tomorrow. Super excited about that. Shout out to Dan. This is all fun. What else? I'm trying to read my own writing. Oh, I was watching. I was sitting on the couch. We'll do it a little side. I was watching TV with the wife. And, you know, I tend to watch like YouTube crime reality shows pretty much all the time or like First Amendment auditors or just like people getting in uncomfortable, like cringy situations. My wife, on the other hand, she puts on television programs from the 80s and just lets them run the background while she reads. So I come upstairs and I plop down and you can't do that on television. It's playing. Remember this Canadian produced television show for children that was on Nickelodeon back in the day when we was kids? Remember Moose? Remember Alanis Morissette? Remember saying I don't know and getting slimed? Remember that that's the show that Nickelodeon's green slime came from that exists even till now was from that throwback? So I'm watching this show, and the episode was all about cigarettes for some reason, which you probably couldn't do today. Like every skit worked in smoking somehow. It was super fun. This kid, one of the characters on the show, made a very clairvoyant observation. It said, you know, why do people that smoke just want to quit and people that don't smoke are curious about starting? Now, this was like being a kid in the 80s before we knew as much as we know now. But I was like, that's pretty profound for 1980s children's television. So way to go, Canada. Give yourself a little pat on the back, man. And Moose is as awesome as ever, man. What a character. Anyway, watching the show and they do this skit where they're at this diner and Barf is the bartender back there or the guy making the burgers or something. um if you say something he'll say that he heard that in the background there's a pinball machine and like me mr you know i'm awake to pinball now in pinball reality and being a pin spotter i see it and the first thing i'm thinking of is like what's that game have i played it um and so all you could see you see it was in the background it was an electromechanical game looked 70s it looked either got leaves or williams ended up being a williams but there was some airbrushed bowling pins on the side. They were blue in color. So I'm like, aha, got to be a strikes and spares, right? Because that's like the only old style bowling game I could think of. Wasn't that at all. Wasn't that at all. But thankfully for Pinside, I was able to go just Google bowling pinball machines and I found it. I found it. It was a third strike by Williams, 1974, I think, electromechanical game. I don't think I've played this, but it was in an episode of You Can't Do That on Television from the 80s. And I was just sitting there watching it and I was like, ah, pinballs. What is that? So how fun. So I look it up on pin side and I can look at all the pictures and stuff. And then I go down to sales. There's three of them available Three of these games that I just saw on the television One of them is a thousand dollars and it in the Chicago area I can go have it tomorrow I can just walk upstairs watch an old children television program that I watched in the 80s It was Canadian produced on Nickelodeon back before they had commercials. And then it's an episode about smoking with children. And then I see a game, and I can go on Pinside. I found one, and I can go get one in my house tomorrow. How fun is that, man? This hobby is pretty cool sometimes that you can just go ahead and do that. You see that? I found it. It's right there, $1,000, and hey, it looks like it's in pretty good condition too. So I'll keep my eyes open if I ever come across one to play the game that I saw, and you can't do that on television. But that's super fun. That's super fun. Speaking of stuff that's super fun, I haven't had a ton of time that I would call my own recently. I think I'm in day 22 of a 22-day work stretch. So it's been hard to spend what little downtime I have to sit down and record some interactive live streams and stuff. I actually wasn't able to do my Sunday live this week because it just would have been me. I don't even know what I would have been saying. I was just so sleep deprived. But since I am a bit of a night owl, I was up and it's very easy now to pop on to Patreon live. And so I was in the Discord, which is a cool place to hang out. Go check out the Don's Pinball Podcast Discord. Go ahead and post on the Facebook page. I'll get you the link. But I was like, hey, do you guys just want to go live real quick? And they're like, yeah, sure. So over on Patreon, Boom Live, and there we are, communicating, talking about stuff. It's secure behind a paywall, so I don't have to worry about the whole world and industry is staring at it. We can just kind of talk amongst ourselves, and it's just kind of like a fun place to hang out. And I don't think anybody's going to twist words or take screenshots and send them somewhere or something. So we had a fun time, and the conversation got around to Jersey Jack Pinball. I am a fan of their top-level trim games. I think Godfather CE looks phenomenal. I think the gameplay is worth about $500 less than the lowest price I could find it, so I haven't bought one yet. But, man, I love them Gold Lions. I love the big screen that J. Paul DeWin guy does great animations and things. Like when you start the multi-balls. Look at the screen, man. Those are all like original animations, and they're all fantastic. I love how it looks up there. I like the sound. I like what they're doing. I like what they're doing. I loved my avatar. I love the avatar topper. I love the color changing day night aspect. Like I'm playing in a rainforest cafe, man. I'm here for it. I got myself a Harry Potter. It was super cool. I ended up needing a house more than I needed to keep a Harry Potter machine. So it's no longer with me, but yeah, dude, it's phenomenal, man. They're going to sell 5,000 of these things. And I don't think the market's going to flood with them. Like we saw with guns and roses. I think it's going to be like a perpetual, maybe you'll be able to find one for 12, five, but they're probably going to stay North of that. So now I'm looking at, all right, Sonic the Hedgehog. What is it going to take for me to go at a $15,000 level on a Sonic the Hedgehog game? And we kind of brainstormed. And so I was like, all right, guys, let's picture this. We're at the pitch meeting here. Okay, get everybody in the room. All right, everybody, you're all employees here. We're doing Sonic the Hedgehog. All right. Steve Ritchie is up on it. All right. We've talked privately before. But now we're going to collaborate. Just everybody bring your ideas. And I was trying to think like if I was there and I really wanted to come up with my best push for an idea of what they could make that me as an end consumer would want to go in on that $15,000 level. Here's what we came up with. Now, Steve Ritchie's games, you know, when they come out, they always have, let's call them relics of those past, right? The warp ramp that we've seen in Star Wars or Star Trek, Star Trek, The Next Generation, Elton John. Like we know that one and other games as well. So, you know, I want to take some of what he's done before more recently, like Star Wars 2017. The best part about that game was the hyperspace loop. You know, it was a really hard shot to get into it. Like, we don't have to take that part of it. But I love that magnetic accelerating hyperloop around the entire play field was super cool. And, like, does that not spell Sonic the Hedgehog, right? So I was like, let's take that. But let's take a base game. Let's draw some inspiration, not from Star Trek, the motion picture game. uh not from star trek the next generation let's go with uh not full throttle uh but uh no fear remember no fear a hell of a great game that guy did it had the giant skull there you could shoot him in the right in the mouth it had all those fun looping ramps that big orbit and then you could get up on top where that upper flipper was hanging out and then there was that repeatable loop up there man this is like mr high speed right he made this well he made this jump ramp into a plastic loop that was repeatable and that's super fun like you just want to get your ball up there and smack it around it's like a Banzai Run but like more action-packed so what if we took no fear as a base concept you know of like you know this whole thing looks like a play set like you're there with your hot wheels just making jumps and stuff let's take that kind of concept add in a magnetically driven loop ramp and then like mix in sonic the hedgehog theme and music and horizontal spinners like the end of the episodes and you can collect rings and if you have enough rings and your ball drains you can hit a ball save you lose your rings but you come back and as long as you can catch a ring you can keep playing like you know bring that gameplay into it and i think we would have a game let's cook it on four cylinders man okay so we got an arcade uh limited edition a collector's edition what's gonna differentiate these okay you get an acrylic topper with the mid-range one you get the shaker motor you get the uh rad cows and whatnot the good version though is going to come with that good topper and this was somebody from the patreon that had this idea what if there was a way to Banzai Run this ball from the play field up through the backbox to the topper where you can have a couple of loops or a giant corkscrew or something that's on there right how fun would that be to like be racing around the play field and at the right time if you hit the right shot or the right upper flipper move or hit the action button at the right time boom the ball jumps up to the topper and is racing around wire forms and back down through the cabinet how fun would that be of course if we're blue sky spit balling that's something you can you can consider but when it comes to building something you got to make it like feasible right like how can you have a ball ripping through the backbox like that's that's it's phenomenal um so what if you had take a page from the electric playground and their awesome twilight zone topper what if you had a ball staged up on the topper just stay just waiting with a kicker up there maybe one or two balls you had a wire form layout with a couple of loops and a corkscrew or something and then you know you can hit the ball into this hyperloop it would race around twice and then there would stop there'd be some animations on the screen showing the ball screaming up to the top then all of a sudden everybody's looking up there's lights and sounds and then boom ball's going through some curly cues and then drops back down goes back to get restaged and then boom the magnets kick on and the ball comes back out again and it's like racing all over the place amazing you would have to have that you know looking at the three versions yeah if you want to put one on location grab the arcade if you just want the great gameplay arcades maybe the one or maybe the wizard but pointing everybody to that fifteen thousand dollar one would be a ball racing around on a topper i it's only been done before with the electric playground as far as i know pulp fiction does it but imagine just rocketing around up there and a company like jjp i think they could do it do you think they care do you think they're listening to me let me know don's pinball podcast at gmail.com if you want to get yourself a game or or do the cool thing and use the new mad pinball email address at info at mad pinball.com and get yourself on a list man we got so many great rumored games coming out you don't want to be left out you want to put your best foot forward just first right of refusal costs nothing info at mad pinball.com it's what i do to make sure that i'm on a list so if galaxy quest comes out or something like at least i had my name in there you know or like i want what jjp has got next because if i do go on a sonic the hedgehog i don't want to be waiting nine months for it i want it now man i want it now i want to come pick it up so they're the people that can hook it up and they have a new email address one consolidated email address to reach all of mad pinball go talk to them about pinson addy talk to them about jeff sernava's new haircut i don't care whatever you want to talk about beards and and having a beard out there in the wild this is don i have a podcast i like pinball and i like chip tunes and so we're going to play this one again as the outro my email address Don's Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. If you want to hang out on the cool Patreon lives, get some giveaways, be a bro, support the show, patreon.com backslash Don's Pinball Podcast. I'm excited. I'm going to get me some Diet Coke. Shout out to Jamie Burchill. And then we'll check out Kerry's live. Be cool, everybody.