Journalist Tool

Kineticist

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

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Episode 93 - T-Rex Ate a Deathstar

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 16m·analyzed·Jul 29, 2019
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Stern announces Star Wars home edition and Jurassic Park; hosts question market fit and pricing strategy.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers discusses two major Stern pinball announcements: Star Wars (a home edition revealed at Comic-Con with a $4,500 MSRP featuring a novel Newton ball lock mechanic) and Jurassic Park (a new Keith Elwin design based on the 1993 film with four ramps, a T-Rex ball-eating toy, and Wayne Knight providing character voice-overs). Hosts debate whether Stern's market positioning will succeed, particularly skepticism about the Star Wars home edition's price point and commercial viability.

Key Claims

  • Star Wars home edition MSRP is $4,500 with MAP pricing around $4,000, approximately $1,700 cheaper than a Stern Pro

    high confidence · Hosts cite official Comic-Con announcement and pricing comparisons

  • Star Wars playfield layout is reminiscent of Spider-Man with modified shot placement and added drop targets

    medium confidence · Dennis's visual assessment of the layout based on Comic-Con footage

  • Big Lebowski pre-orders total approximately 300 units, with 185 fully paid for

    medium confidence · Tony cites additional research clarifying earlier report of 300 pre-orders

  • Jurassic Park is a Keith Elwin design based on the 1993 film with no movie clips, instead using custom animation

    high confidence · Hosts cite IGN article confirmation in show notes

  • Wayne Knight (Dennis Nedry actor) is providing character call-outs for Jurassic Park

    high confidence · Hosts discuss casting announcement for voice work

  • Jurassic Park has four ramps and a Newton ball mechanic tied to a vehicle bash toy

    high confidence · Hosts describe mechanical features from official announcement

  • Milestar Electronics was the rebranding of Gottlieb due to contractual constraints from Columbia Pictures acquisition

    medium confidence · Tony cites David Thiel's email clarification regarding licensing terms

  • Tony qualified for A Division at Carrie's Summer Pinball Tournament for the first time, finishing third overall

    high confidence · Tony's direct tournament participation account

Notable Quotes

  • “I think like any of the other home pins is it's trying to be this in-between thing, something that's smaller and cheaper for people to have in their homes as an everyday thing, but still being as close to a full-featured pinball as possible, which means it's going to be in the price range where the people who really want pinball are like, I want a real pinball machine, not this”

    Dennis @ ~35:00 — Core critique of Stern's market positioning for home edition Star Wars—caught between segments with competing priorities

  • “It's not commercial. It's not commercial. So that's fine. But I think the collectors and all that level aren't going to go after this and it still too expensive for the kind of home market”

    Dennis @ ~36:00 — Explains why neither collectors nor casual home players will adopt the home edition at current pricing

  • “If I can go online and buy a not new in box pin that's way better than this for $1,500 or $2,000, why would I spend $4,000 on this?”

    Tony @ ~38:00 — Identifies the secondary market value proposition as a direct competitor to the new home edition

  • “I would like to see that on some other stuff. That's a cool idea. Because it's inexpensive, and it doesn't take up much space, so you can fit those things pretty much anywhere you'd want.”

    Dennis @ ~30:00 — Positive reaction to Newton ball lock innovation; identifies it as replicable design element for future machines

  • “I think hope springs eternal. That's what I think. I think they're looking for a way to break into a new market, and I don't think it's going to work.”

    Dennis @ ~40:00 — Skepticism about Stern's business strategy for home editions despite optimistic market entry intentions

  • “Maybe the right answer then was to try and figure out the way to just let this be commercially operatable and then sell this separate from your pro premium LE tiers. A street series, which was designed to just be cheaper.”

    Tony @ ~50:00 — Proposes alternative market strategy: commercial-grade 'street tier' below Pro to capture operator and resale value

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyStar Wars (Stern Pinball Machine)gameJurassic Park (Stern Pinball Machine)gameGeorge GomezpersonKeith ElwinpersonWayne KnightpersonDavid ThielpersonDutch Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Secondary market used pinball machines directly compete with Stern home editions on price/value; used Data East Star Wars trades at $3,500-$3,800 vs. $4,500 new home edition

    high · Tony: 'If I can go online and buy a not new in box pin that's way better than this for $1,500 or $2,000, why would I spend $4,000 on this?'; Pinside pricing data cited

  • ?

    announcement: Jurassic Park confirmed as Keith Elwin design based on 1993 film with four ramps, T-Rex toy, Wayne Knight voice work, and custom animation (no movie clips)

    high · IGN article confirmation; hosts cite specific mechanical and casting details

  • ?

    historical_signal: Milestar Electronics rebranding tied to Columbia Pictures acquisition contractual language forcing Gottlieb name removal from non-pinball products; David Thiel provides internal documentation

    medium · Tony cites David Thiel email: 'contractual language that Columbia had signed with Gottlieb basically forced them to change the name if they were going to brand stuff beyond pinball'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Star Wars home edition lacks movie audio/video clips, relying on custom animation; Walking Dead used as example of licensing limitations preventing actor call-outs

    high · Hosts note Star Wars 'had a lot of audio and video clips from the movie... Those were straight from the movie'; contrast with Walking Dead's generic playfield

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Wayne Knight casting for Jurassic Park represents successful actor engagement from original film; contrasts with Walking Dead's inability to secure actor voice-overs

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.231

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, July 28th. This is episode 93 and I am Tony. I'm Dennis. We're back. We got news. We got like four video game topics. Got two big pinball topics. But we always do introductions before we go into the meat of the matter. The meat of the matter. Yes. So we'll go into the meat of your brain matter to find out what's been happening since the last episode.
0:47
My car started acting up and then it started throwing codes, like random codes. I mean, it threw two codes. I checked them. I looked them up online, cleared the codes.
1:00
The next morning on the drive to work, it threw four codes. Checked them, looked them up, cleared them, got home. It threw six codes. It's like, okay, I have got to hunt this problem down. No, it's all the codes. So I start looking. So I start hunting for this problem, and I can't find it. And we think it's a vacuum leak. It sounds like a vacuum leak. Well, my car has one of those big plastic heat shields over the top of the motor. Okay. And we looked at all the vacuum hoses that were visible without taking the heat shield off. Couldn't find nothing. So we took the heat shield off. Yeah, there was a hole the size of the end of my pinky in a vacuum hose right in the middle of the thing. If I'd taken that off two days previously, I would have found it instantly.
1:50
Well. The fix took, you know, like an inch and a half chunk of hose. That was it. Once we found it, the fix took like 40 seconds. Oh, that's good. And it was free because the guy at the auto parts store was like, yeah, we sell this by the foot. Just take it.

“It's everything about this is full-size. Like the playfield's full-size, the mechs are standard mechs. It's not like the old, what are they, the Zizzle machines?”

Tony @ ~45:00 — Clarification that Star Wars home edition uses full commercial-grade components, not reduced-scale hardware

The Big Lebowski (Dutch Pinball Machine)
game
Carrie Wingperson
Milestar Electronicscompany
Gottliebcompany
Jack Dangerperson
This Week in Pinballorganization
Carrie's Summer Pinball Tournamentevent
Comic-Conevent
Spider-Man (Stern Home Edition)game
Data East Jurassic Park (1993)game
Pinsideorganization
Walking Dead (Stern Pinball)game

high · Hosts praise Wayne Knight casting as memorable franchise element; frame as positive example of licensing leverage

  • $

    market_signal: Hosts express doubt about adequacy of Stern's market research for home edition viability despite optimistic business positioning

    medium · Dennis: 'hope springs eternal... I don't think it's going to work... Stern may know something we don't. I mean, I'm hoping they did some market research'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Newton ball lock mechanism identified as inexpensive, space-efficient innovation likely to be adopted in future Stern designs

    high · Dennis: 'I do like the little physical ball capture... That was cool. That really impressed me. I think we'll start seeing that on some other stuff... it's inexpensive, and it doesn't take up much space'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Star Wars home edition positioned between market segments with competing needs—too expensive for casual home market, non-commercial status disqualifies collector segment, price higher than secondary market alternatives

    high · Dennis: 'it's going to be in the price range where the people who really want pinball are like, I want a real pinball machine, not this... collectors aren't going to go after this and it still too expensive for the kind of home market'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Star Wars home edition provides alternative playfield layout for Stern's contract/vault game development pipeline beyond primary cornerstone releases

    medium · Tony: 'they now have another full-size playfield layout that they could use for those contract jobs like Primus and Supreme and stuff'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern exploring alternative market segments with home editions; Star Wars likely positioned to capture licensed IP enthusiasts willing to pay premium prices despite non-commercial status

    medium · Dennis: 'trying to break into a new market... they're looking for way to capture Star Wars collectors' vs. Tony's skepticism about market research validity

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Tony qualified for A Division at Carrie's Summer Pinball Tournament, finishing in third place overall—first A Division qualification in tournament history

    high · Tony: 'I actually qualified for A Division, which I'd never done before... I took third. But I got my little envelope of money. I got a trophy'

    • 2:08
    So that worked out. It all worked out. So my car is running again. Code free. It's code free. It no longer tries to die when it's idling at anything under half throttle. It has power again. Good. Yay. Awesome. You always got to worry because I'm sitting at 215,000 miles on it. Yeah. So you always got to worry when something starts acting up. So, and other than that, I, we did a big community outreach thing at work on Friday night. So that's what I did on my Friday night was I spent the whole night out teaching people about my job and interacting with the public. And that was fun. You like that. You like that community engagement stuff. I do. It's some of my favorite parts about the job. And then yesterday, there was an event that I did not attend that you'll talk about. That I've been considering attending, but we had a bunch of family stuff to do. We got back from running all the family stuff, and it's like, I might be able to make it. I'm looking at the time. It's like, no, I couldn't make it in time. I think I'll go take a nap instead. So about 1.30 I laid down and thought I'll take a 45 minute nap Just get a little energy back Then I'll go work in the yard and I'll do some other stuff I woke up at 6 I didn't go to bed last night Until I finally decided that I should probably Try to go to sleep at like 2 And I saw 4 o'clock And then I woke up at 6.30 this morning So It was well yeah four hour naps are not a good thing i apparently needed the rest but oh a little rough it sounds like it tragic terrible speaking of tragic we have a correction quasi correction i have to qualify it from the last episode when we were discussing dutch pinball and the big lebowski you had looked and found a site a source that had indicated that there were 300 Big Lebowski's pre-ordered. I want to add a clarification from additional information I saw after that episode. It looked like there was confirmation that 185 of those are fully paid for. So I don't know how paid for the other ones are. If they gave partial deposits, if the 185 is conservative, I don't know. But I just thought I'd throw that out there for folks in case they thought it sounded high. Yeah, to have everything out there. The number I found just said that there were like 300 confirmed orders right right and so and there were other things where that might count the like the coin taker order right 40 40 ish i don't know how many deposits coin taker actually had i think they only disseminated 35 of the 40 and the other five went to nitro but i think canada yeah but i think coin taker coordinated all of it so anyway so just a little bit of clarification there uh let's see since the last episode i did have an article a new article that I wrote over with This Week in Pinball. It's about Milestar Electronics. I called it Milestar Electronics. I subtitled it too, so it didn't sound so lame. Got Leaves Forgotten Year. I do have a link in the show notes. It's about 1,200 words. So is it Milestar or Milstar? I was saying Milstar, but I went back and pulled some 80s videos from them or people talking about them, and they all said Milestar. So now I'm thinking, okay, well, that might sound... I'm trying to think in the 80s would they think milestar sounds cooler probably yeah it sounds more like mylar which would make you know yeah yeah so why not but and i was going like milstar because we're milling out some new game i don't know what i was thinking that you know i mispronounce at least half of everything and actually i had a note from david feel i hope i'm saying his last name right who we've discussed before a lot of people in pinball know him because he's done a lot of sound packages. He's over with working with Deep Root at this point, but he had been with Jersey Jack Pinball up through, I think Pirates, and he did Star Trek, Stern Star Trek. That's his sound package. My niece, that was a video that had some popularity a while ago, because she sang the end words to Laser War, which was one of the first pinball machines, maybe the first pinball machine. It's the first I know of that he worked on with Data East. so anyway he was with Gottlieb I did not remember this because I don't think he worked on any Gottlieb pinball machines but he did Qbert the video the arcade game Qbert and and some other arcade games for Gottlieb and so he wrote in after he read the article to provide some more information regarding what he believes was also involved with the name change because in the article I note that I had read a reference that Milestar sent out a notice to, I guess, the distributors explaining that the name change was to modernize to make it happy stuff. And David wrote to me to say, well, internally, what his understanding was is when the Gottlieb family sold their company to Columbia Pictures, the terms of the contract specified it was for branding on pinball and the family was getting pretty upset that Gottlieb was slapping the Gottlieb name on video games and and there was some talk about them even expand Milestar expanding beyond that so by the time Coca-Cola bought Columbia there was some that the contractual language that Columbia had signed with Gottlieb basically forced them to change the name if they we're going to brand stuff beyond pinball. Interesting. So just a little added little piece of information into the mix for those of you. A little eclectic gamer sneak peek that's not in the article about a little more content. So that was interesting. So you're going to put out a – it wouldn't be a retraction. No, it would be like an update. I might update it in my personal version. Like if I ever anthologize all of this or something, I don't think I'll – I don't think I'll go to the trouble to have Jeff update it. I don't know. I'll have to think about it. Well, if Jeff listens to this, he can decide if he wants me to give him an extra paragraph. But I'll probably add it to my notes because I like to have as much information as I can. It was very difficult to find a lot of stuff on Milestar and the logic behind much of anything they did. Because, well, it was so long ago, pre-internet, and it was only around for a year. I mean, when David Thiel wrote me, he, being with them, he didn't know they had released pinball machines under the branding of Milestar. Really? That's how segregated the groups were. Huh. He wasn't at the same plant or anything. So, yeah, it's just very different. And then finally, the item that you referenced, Carrie Wing, champion pinball player. Every year, right around her birthday, she has her summer tournament. The Carrie's Summer Pinball Tournament, I think is the title. It's something like that. It's like four words. and because her birthday falls a little bit before pinberg it's run like a mini pinberg so that's an all-day tournament starts in the afternoon you do you do four player ideally rounds with three game banks instead of four pinberg does four and then you based off of how you place on each of those games you fill out your little score sheets and you turn them in and you go and it's three rounds of qualifying and then if you qualify top eight go into a division and then the next four after that go into b division and then the a division folks are split into two groups of four and the top two from each of those advance into the finals and then the b division's already in the finals with the four because you do the same thing over and over sort of stuff and all the games are grouped into banks so you can't mix and match they're already assigned in terms of era and such. So, so I went and did that. I got there one minute before it started because I decided I didn't get a haircut during the week because I had meetings. And so I did that and there was a line. So I had to wait. And then I thought I should bring food or else I would be a bad guest. So I had to stop and get food. And then I was running my, and there was the target guy didn't know how to do the target stuff so it was kind of slow and but i was checking my little google map and it's like no i should be able to make it with three minutes but i had to park up the street so it took me a minute to walk and a minute to open the door kind of close kind of close but i'm here i'm here well that was the start where they started to write and the sign in was right in the entryway so and they were actually going over the tournament rules at that time so in reality I probably had another five minutes and would have been sick but but people noticed that I was like whoa he's kind of cutting it a little close here I was like I know what I'm doing don't worry about that did you make sure to did you make sure to own it you walked in with the right strut and get the whole just the kind of head lift a little as much of a strut as you can have while carrying a target bag full of cookies I mean I don't know how cool you look with that. Once they saw the cookies, they were pretty impressed. So I do not do game-by-game plays. Ryan C., who asked me if I would be doing, looking forward to hearing me do that on this episode, because it went fairly well for me. In the three rounds, I actually qualified for A Division, which I'd never done before. Like at any tournament, I don't think I've ever been A division. And I think I entered into the semifinals in A in sixth place out of the eight. So I had some decent games, but I was at the lower end of that. Then in the semifinals, I won all of them. Nice. First place on all. Once I won the second one, I was already in. So was the bank like just all of the machines you already own? No, but I actually played the same bank three of those four sets because I kept getting assigned it. So I got very familiar with Sing Along, your favorite System 11. Sing Along is not your favorite System 11. I'm now prompting you to name your favorite System 11. Oh, I know it. No, apparently you have no favorite anymore.
    12:31
    The problem is I keep thinking Getaway and it's the other one. It's the other one. That's right. High Speed. See, I was thinking Need for Speed, and I'm like, no, that's the video game. Nope. Yeah. High Speed was in that bank. Can you tell I have like two hours of sleep? No, it sounded like you had a four-hour nap, so I don't know what your problem is. And Elvira and the Party Monsters was also in that bank. Interesting bank. It was. So did that. Went to the finals. That was on a different bank. That bank did have Star Trek in it. And so I did not win Star Trek, but I took third. I almost had second, but Phil came back. So anyway, at the end of that bank of finals, Steve Hill had won, and Eric German was fourth. Phil and I tied. So then we had to play a tiebreaker, which was, per the rules, it was a two-ball play on any game that didn't have a ball save. And the game was randomly chosen. Otherwise, it was one ball on a ball save game, two balls on a non-ball save. And we were put on a 60s game called Bowling Queen. I played my two balls. I had to go first. And I don't remember what Kerry exactly said. I think it was along the lines of, oh, no. So I knew I didn't do well. I have no context on Bowling Queen. It's like I had over 100 points. I thought maybe this is good. And then I hear this, oh, no. I thought, oh, that bad. And when Phil didn't even need to finish his first ball, yes. So I took third. But I got my little envelope of money. I got a trophy. Yay! And it was fun. It's a fun event. I went last year. It was my first time. I've never made it to the event. It's fine. Because last year, I worked that weekend last year. And this year, we had some family stuff to take care of on Saturday. But anyway. One of these days. It's a fun tournament. Yes. And then we shall nap. And now, while you are recovered from your nap, we will move right into more pinball. Pinball news. We have two pinball news topics, Tony. They're both huge. We're not playing 20 questions today. Yay! Don't say yay. You did well last time. And so, first thing we're going to open with is the item that dropped at Comic-Con. So, just a little bit after we recorded last time. and that would be Star Wars the pin it's not the right sound I wanted to do the last Starfighter sounds but that's not right either what would that do to your throat that scream, trying to do that scream your throat as it flies by well yeah I don't think I could do it so I'm not sure I could even hurt myself trying maybe so we have a link to the announcement of this game in the show notes for anyone who hasn't heard about it yet But this is a home edition version of Star Wars. It is not the Steve Ritchie Star Wars layout. This is a George Gomez layout. I feel it looks very much like a modified layout of Spider-Man. It's not a clone. There's differences. There are drop targets in front of the left ramp. They've moved some shots around a little bit. Basic placement, by and large, I feel is very reminiscent of Spider-Man, in my opinion. The game is different than some of the past pin models. Like the legs are externally connected like a traditional pinball machine. The play field is, and this is like other home editions that Stern has done. It is a full length play field. It's full size. The cabinet is smaller though. Yeah. And it is at a lower new in box price point. The MSRP is $4,500.
    16:19
    For comparison purposes, MSRP on a Stern Pro is $6,000. the minimum advertisable price minimum I don't think they call it map the map pricing is $39.99 so it's a $4,000 game whereas I believe it's $56,000 $5,700 is minimum advertised for pros I think it's like I think it's $5,700 at this point so we're talking practically speaking it's about a $1,700 difference I assuming you've seen some stuff on this new Stern Star Wars Yes, and I heard your deep dive on This Week in Pinball. I didn't mean for that to be a deep dive. That's probably Zach's fault. Zach may have caused that. I did watch some of the Comic-Con footage that Jack Danger with Deadflip streamed as well. So I actually, that was my first, I think I saw that before I even looked at photos. I watched his stream. So a lot of people have already picked this over. So I think the main thing to talk about is, do you think this works for Stern? Do you think they're going to sell a lot of these? None of their other ones have done very well. No. No? No. Do you think it's just the price? I think so. But this game, and again, something that's been covered to death, I do like the little physical ball capture, ball lock thing. The little Newton ball as it goes in and out, or as I describe it, It's like a fall-in lock, and then you have a captive ball, and you hit the captive ball, it gets released. I like that. That was cool. That really impressed me. I thought that was a really cool idea. I think we'll start seeing that on some other stuff. I would like to see that on some other stuff. That's a cool idea. Because it's inexpensive, and it doesn't take up much space, so you can fit those things pretty much anywhere you'd want. Right. I mean, I looked at how small, because it's really just one rollover switch and a little wire form to hold the ball. You can just catch that little ball. Yeah, that was a cool little idea. But no, I think like any of the other home pens is it's trying to be this in-between thing, something that's smaller and cheaper for people to have in their homes as an everyday thing, but still being as close to a full-featured pinball as possible, which means it's going to be in the price range where the people who really want pinball are like, I want a real pinball machine, not this, even though this is in every way a real pinball machine, as far as I'm concerned. It's just a kind of stepped-down machine. It's like something below a – it's like an amateur. It's below a pro. It's a home pin. It's below a pro level. Right. It's not commercial. So that's fine. But I think the collectors and all that level aren going to go after this and it still too expensive for the kind of home market that would actually look at something like this because it such a unit tasker device It not like a virtual pen that can do lots of other things, or you can play video games and arcade games on, or you can do all sorts of stuff with it. It's literally just this. This is going to go into places where the people who have to have every Star Wars thing they can get their hands on and have the money to fill collections out and maybe a few other. I don't think it's going to be a huge mover. Okay. So do you think Stern botched their analysis of the market then? Or do you think they think that there are enough of those high-end Star Wars collectors that that's what they're banking on? Is that, oh, yeah, there are enough of these people that have the money to go to Comic-Con and buy all this stuff, and we're going to get a decent enough percentage of that and other Star Wars aficionados to just sell 1,000 of it? I mean, I don't even know how many they're thinking they want to sell. I don't know. I think hope springs eternal. That's what I think. I think they're looking for a way to break into a new market, and I don't think it's going to – I don't – I have a hard time believing it's going to work. Yeah, and that's – Especially because of the price point. I mean, you're looking, I mean, it's at $4,000, you're $2,000, which is a lot of money under a pro, but you're still at $4,000. I don't think the kind of thing that I'm looking for is realistic for over $2,000. And even then I'm hard pressed to see how many people who aren't real pinball people, real pinheads, are going to go over $2,000. If I can go online and buy a not new in box pin that's way better than this for $1,500 or $2,000, why would I spend $4,000 on this? Those are good questions. And as I noted on this week in Pinball Podcast, that's the part where I think the game shoots well. I think it looks fun. But because you didn't make it commercial, you've basically ruled out the collector market, as you've noted. Most of the collectors aren't going to be inclined to get it because either they feel they can only go for commercial games or it could be a question also of resale value. Like pinball machines, commercial pinball machines hold their value pretty well. Home models historically haven't nearly as well. So if you got tired of it, how would you move it along? and $4,000 is a lot of money, even setting aside that it is a significant savings versus a new inbox Stern Pro. And what I had pointed out then, and I still point out is if I know anyone who's into pinball or is interested in getting a pinball into their home, the first thing I always recommend is I say, you need to get a used one. You need to go and buy yourself a used pin. Now this does solve some issues for those that might be intimidated about having to work on a used pin because they're going to be afraid there's going to be things that they need to fix. But that's always going to be a risk in any pinball. But I guess there's that. There's that market where it's like, I'd rather just pay the $4,000 and have a brand new in-box game, which isn't going to cost me as much as a commercial new in-box game, but isn't going to have the problems with me getting something from Sega in the 90s. I guess there's that, but I just don't know if there's a lot of people I agree with you if they got this down to $2,000 I think you would see a significant amount of units move but how much more stuff to keep whatever profit margin they're going for would they have to sacrifice to drop it by half I don't think it's believable to get the price down there but just according to Pennside the estimated value of a Data East Star Wars is between 33 and 3,800. Yeah, that sounds about right. Last I've ever seen them listed in the area, they were usually around 35-ish. So yeah, I get it. Maybe not everyone who might go for this is going to do the research to know about going for used game, and maybe they don't know anyone else. I see the idea of we want to get someone who's trying to fill out their game room, perhaps with an eclectic assortment of things, and they're thinking, okay, well, I want to get a foosball table, I want to get a pool table, I want to get an air hockey, and maybe I want to get a pinball machine. But the thing is, especially when you talk scaled-down units, like all of those other ones are cheaper. Right. So that's just the one thing where I wonder what their market research told them. Here's what I actually think would have sold more units for them. Put in the CoinMex into this thing, let it actually have operatable software, and release a smaller cabinet, smaller screen, almost street-level-esque version of games and call them something else like, I don't know, standard editions. That way we can just confuse it with everyone else just like we already are with all the LE terms and everything. And see if you could sell them if you actually still kept them quote-unquote commercial. Everything about this is full-size. Like the playfield's full-size, the mechs are standard mechs. It's not like the old, what are they, the Zizzle machines? Yeah, it's not a Zizzle. That were super tiny. And it's serviceable. It's Spike 2. It's got, all right, so it's got one node board in it. So it's doing things like both the slings fire at the same time. Yeah, but that's where you get, that's where the savings are. If it still could be thrown into a bar and operated, if it was, if the cabinet's durability is commercially great, have they, I don't know where else the sacrifices were. As long as the cabinet's thick enough that people can throw the thing around, I think you can have it commercial grade. And, okay, yeah, this super cheaper standard edition doesn't have our standard screen. It's got the iPhone 4 for a screen. But, hey, I mean, but it's commercial. Then there would be collectors who would accept it, just like collectors are completely accepting, gameplay aside in some cases, of the street-level games from Premiere. They're completely accepting of Safecracker as a real pinball machine. Right. But all of those things can be routed and make money. And so if you're not going to get it cheap enough to really push into homes, and I think your point's right about that, I almost think maybe the right answer then was to try and figure out the way to just let this be commercially operatable and then sell this separate from your pro premium LE tiers. But you'll have these, I don't want to call them street tiers, but I guess that's what I will, a street series, which was designed to just be cheaper. Right. Now, I do have a question for you. But do you think that there could have been anything other than Star Wars that might have been big enough to even have a go at this? I think it's probably the best one that they've recently worked with. But sure, any other, like a Marvel theme would probably have been Avengers. Yeah. I mean, was there an Avengers pin? There was a Transformers pin, Spider-Man Home Edition. There was something else that came out around the, maybe it was Avengers. I guess they've done it before. Like, Spider-Man Home Edition was their best, the pin of, it was the, feature-wise, it was the best one. And then there were two prior The Pins that were a little bit cheaper, I guess. And then before that, they had a couple classic editions. Very few units made. Iron Man had a classic edition. Yeah. And it looked, I think, fairly similar to Borg's regular Iron Man. But anyway, yeah, maybe.
    27:12
    Star Wars, I think, was probably the best one, yeah. I can't come up with something that I would have so easily named. because it had a lot of audio and video clips from the movie. I mean, it seems to be totally oriented towards fans of Star Wars. Like, just listen to... Those were straight from the movie. I dropped those in for people. Anyway, yeah, I'm skeptical, even though I think the game overall looked pretty good. I just, yeah, I just don't think it's cheap enough. Yeah, like I said, there were things in it I thought looked cool. the gameplay looked cool. I just think it's... But Stern may know something we don't. I mean, I'm hoping they did some market research and found that there is an audience that can afford this and that it's sizable enough that it was worth their time to do. Right. But I guess even if not, they now have another full-size playfield layout that they could use for those contract jobs like Primus and Supreme and stuff. That's true. That's very true. So give them another choice. And it also gives them a spot to try out some innovations like that little ball lock thing and some other stuff that they might not know for sure if they want to throw it on a...
    28:27
    What was the thing? A cornerstone machine. Yeah, cornerstone. That's the new thing now. Well, there's been some references to the cornerstones. I think Castern, I believe in some interviews, had described their... They try and have these three main releases, and they, I believe, use that term to distinguish them from vault editions, but also to distinguish them from the Kapow releases and such. So very much Stern-branded solo games oriented towards operators and collectors, which is a mouthful. So we say Cornerstone, which always makes me think of Vanessa Corningstone from Anchorman.
    29:08
    But, okay, so that was the first news piece. Now let's go to the more modern news piece from this last week, which is a cornerstone title. It's everyone's favorite hit game. It's Jurassic Park.
    29:29
    Welcome to Jurassic Park. Yay. Let's get another Jurassic Park because that's what needed redone. And so, well, so, okay. As Tony has noted, this looks very reminiscent in a lot of ways to the 1993 Data East Jurassic Park game.
    29:52
    I note that for a few reasons. One, the artwork on the playfield is really laid out as to be the island that the, like, Ila Nublar from the first movie, which, though, that was the layout art of the playfield on the Daddy East game. It's a three-flipper game with the upper right flipper, just like the Daddy East game had the upper right flipper. You have a T-Rex, which at least on the upper Echelon models, eats the ball, which is reminiscent. And throws the ball, which actually that looked kind of cool. It's different. So let's run through the features. This is a different artist this time.
    30:34
    So we can touch on the art in a bit. So Keith Elwynn design. It's based on the 93 film. It has been confirmed. And I do have a link to the IGN article for people who want to read up on this and look at some photos from them in the show notes. But there are no movie clips in this movie, Penn.
    30:56
    Okay, that's fine. They are doing custom animation like they did with Black Knight. They did get Wayne Knight, who played Nedry. Ah, ah, ah. For people who don't remember the Dennis Nedry character. Right. Who tries to steal the little alien. Oh, my God. This is not my day. Tried to steal the little embryos. I think that's what they were. He didn't take the eggs. He took the test tubes, the DNA samples. DNA samples and embryos and stuff. Yeah. So anyway, he had a memorable but relatively small role in the film. Anyway, he's doing the sound and speech as his character for it. So I guess they've got Wayne in to do call-outs, which would be cool.
    31:39
    I always like when you get somebody recognizable from the franchise or the license to do the work. That's one of the biggest gripes about the Walking Dead pinball machine. They got the rights to do art on the trans light in the sides of the cabinet, but there is a reason why the play field is generic. There's no call-outs from the show. There's no custom call-outs from anyone who's an actor with the show, and the DMD clips are DMD clips, so they don't look like the show. And that was, they didn't have the rights to any of that. Right. And apparently they didn't bring in someone. Surely one of those cast members, that's at least, anyway, that's a long time ago. But so as we noted, three flippers, the game does have four ramps. That's pretty atypical for a stern.
    32:32
    It does have a Newton ball, which is tied to a vehicle bash toy kind of in the upper center, upper right-ish a little bit. So you hit the balls and it moves the vehicle. And then the vehicle itself, I guess, is a bash toy on it. So that's pretty cool. That's on all the models. The Premium LE model has an animatronic T-Rex, which, as Tony has noted, will physically pick up the ball and toss it. Or I've also seen it described as a vomit, a ball-vomiting T-Rex. On the Pro, there is the T-Rex head that just sits over the ramp. It's just static. I think it's just a molded plastic.
    33:15
    The premium models have the Raptor pin as a ball lock, the one from the scene with the goat. So it's physical. There's also a, on the far right ramp side, there's a helicopter. On the Premium and LE model, the blade is a spinner. And it hits the prop and then it spins. And I guess it gives you points, I would assume. You would hope. And then the pop bumpers, they are mosquito and amber molded looking on the fancy model. stern does also have a ambered uh trapped mosquito for the ball plunger as a as an optional mod i don't believe it comes on any of them that would be a cool mod it is i think that one would actually still feel good in your hand a lot of uh plunger mods i see don't don't are not comfortable i still my hand still aches from the time i grabbed optimus prime on transformers it just was not an ideal uh pricing i i don't believe there's been any sort of price increase on this. So the Pro is MSRP'd at $6,000. It's being listed online for about $5,800.
    34:29
    So the MSRP didn't go up, but that list price at least is higher than I, because I've been talking $5,700 lately for pens and now it's $5,800. Premium model MSRP is $5,600 and the LE is $9,000. And both of those are also almost assuredly obtainable at slightly lower amounts, as is typical with purchasing on SternPen. So just bear in mind that the actual rate you can get is lower than the MSRP.
    34:58
    So let's start our talk. You kind of gave a look and I think even made a sound that the listeners could hear when we started to mention the art.
    35:09
    I'm not a fan of the art. Right. And this is a new artist for pinball, I believe. Yeah. Let me see. I think he goes by the name Johnny Crap. Which is good for him. Which has allowed no shortage of jokes. I believe his actual name is Jonathan Bergean. Yeah. I'm sure I'm saying that wrong. Like, I missay everything. But he has some good art. I've actually looked at his website. He's got some good art that I really like. That's some art that's like, ah, it's okay. But I'm real hit and miss on the Jurassic Park art. Like, real hit and miss. Does it look too cartoony to you? No, it's very specific.
    36:02
    I could be wrong. Maybe it's been too long since I've seen the movies, but the Jeeps look terrible. Well, apparently they could not get the right from Jeep to use Jeeps, so they had to modify it and even give it a new name. Yeah. Yeah, they look terrible. Okay, well, I think George Gomez may have came up with what those vehicles are, but I'm not sure. This is based on Jurassic Park, and now I'm going to be that guy, the guy I complain about sometimes. I'm going to be that guy. I'm trying to figure out why the LE has a Spinosaurus on it I don't recall it being in the Jurassic Park movie.
    36:43
    There may have been a Spinosaurus. There was in the second movie, if I remember. It was either the second or the third movie, I remember. But I don't recall it being in the first one. But I also haven't seen the first one in a decade. Yeah, I can't correct you on it because I'm not sure if that's incorrect. But they made the Spinosaurus and the Translite look very aggressive, which I don't remember ever being presented aggressively in any of the movies. Right. And then I feel like it's just, I don't know if it's a proportion thing or it's an angle thing or something, but the whole trans light on the premium just, it kind of hurts my head. It feels like the proportions are off weird and that it's like... Like the spitter dinosaurs, the same size as the T-Rex?
    37:41
    I thought that was the pro. I don't know. I'm looking at... Right now, I'm just looking at Johnny's site, and he doesn't have them labeled. Right, right, because that's where I am, too. But I saw from a listing before that, like, the... Okay. Yeah. I thought it was the pro was the one that had the spitter and the T-Rex. So it's the Velociraptors on the premium. The Velociraptors is on the premium, and then the T-Rex and the Spinosaurus was the LE is what I thought I saw on what I was looking at information on. I like the premium back trans light. I don't know. See, and that's the thing. That's why I'm trying to admit if I'm just being that guy. You're probably that guy. Why do you like that? Looking at it it feels like maybe it just the angle or the way the one raptor is looking It just everything feels like it shifted She a clever girl She being a clever girl Well she looks a little bulimic Wow. But it's just weird. I don't know. I'm not a big fan. I don't despise it. The side panel art on the premium looks a little weird.
    38:47
    But like I said, a lot of this could be – Because some of the stuff, when you look at the play field, I like Nedry on the play field. He looks hilarious. I thought, I mean, since he's going to be doing call-outs, it makes sense to me. But I just thought it was so weird because he's the only character. I know. I don't want to say he had a bit part, but he's not a star of that movie. No, everything that happened in the movie is because of him.
    39:11
    But he definitely wasn't a star of the movie. And the T-Rex looks a little stoned. stoned the one right below him this like the sling t-rex the sling t-rex looks like looks like he's gotten in he looks like he found some shrooms or something but i mean the play field doesn't look that that bad now see whereas i'm pretty good with the side art and the trans lights not a huge fan of the well quite frankly it's not the art it's the decision to do the island again oh yeah that's I was just talking about the art. I think it looks fine. I don't like the decision. I just... And that's probably my biggest thing. This looks like, when I look at the layout, this looks fun to shoot.
    39:57
    I think I may have... I'll go so far as to say, I think I'll probably enjoy shooting this more than I did Iron Maiden.
    40:05
    Iron Maiden frustrated me with that whole upper right section and how the flippers were used there. I know a lot of people loved it. I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it either. I was pretty meh on that. This with the, so you've got the ramp with the T-Rex, and then you've got the kind of middle shot, which looks like it's the spitter shot, which I believe feeds into the middle ramp. And then you've got the right ramp, which I think goes into a curly Q style. I think one of our area players, Will Yaska, told me he looked at this and he thought why'd Stern make Oktoberfest?
    40:48
    And the first thing that made me think he thought that was the color scheme on the art package. But the next thing that made me think it was it's the spiral ramp. That would be a trigger. But he also thinks the shot layout is somewhat akin. And the other ramp is the one for the upper right flipper that feeds over to the left. Your warp ramp shot. Yeah, it's got the one little arrow it looks like where the T-Rex arrow looks like? Yeah. Yeah, I think that ultimately feeds up onto a ramp. I'm not sure which go where. Because it looks like that one big solid steel ramp goes up, kicks around into that wire form ramp that Curly Q's down. That's what it's looking like to me. Yeah, some of these ramps are going into the back box area. That's something that I really associate with John Borg. Like he did that on The Walking Dead. Whereas Steve Ritchie ramps are usually shallower and they don't tend to go that far back. I see at least one of these is doing that. And we haven't seen gameplay yet. For those interested in gameplay, Monday the 29th, Deadflip will be streaming. So Jack Danger will have gameplay. I'm not sure if they're doing all the models or what, but it will have stuff. It will have dinosaurs. So go check that out if you're interested in seeing more about Jurassic Park.
    42:03
    Overall, much like Iron – actually, I'd say even more than Iron Maiden. This does, even the pro model, this really looks full. It does. And it doesn't, it seems like from, let me see, I had the feature matrix pulled up. There we go. Feature matrix. It looks to me that the only major losses on the feature matrix are that ball lock and the T-Rex actually eating the ball and moving and stuff. Yeah. And again, depending on who you are, my guess will be that a lot of competitive players will probably prefer the pro for having the flow of not having that T-Rex fling a ball. I mean, that was part of their teaser video. I mean, it just flings the ball. That is chaotic. And a lot of competitive players, especially fans of modern games, do not want chaotic things like that. So they'll favor the pro for that. And so for them, probably the only thing they would really miss is the physical ball lock. Right. And that spinner.
    43:14
    Yes. And the spinner. Especially if it makes a really cool helicopter sound. And it better go. It better be cool.
    43:22
    So let's see. What do you think of, I mean, beyond like the art, there are other throwback things. They brought back the smart missile. There's chaos mode. Those were both weird decisions to make. Especially the smart missile, because, again, I haven't seen the movie in a decade, but I don't recall when they went in and started using smart missiles everywhere. That and chaos mode are total references to just the pinball machine from 93. Is something going to pop up on the back glass where I'm going to have to start rapid tapping the lock bar button?
    43:56
    Like I had to rapid pull the trigger? Oh, do you think that the... I mean, I see the button there. Do you think that button's going to be the smart missile now? I'm assuming. Of course it is. Well, but the old one was on the trigger. There is no trigger, though. It's going to be anything that requires a button push to trigger. Just like on Black Knight, they moved the Magna Save there, so it's now even harder to hit in time. That was so casuals would be able to know where it is.
    44:21
    I understand. That's what I was told. Because they drilled holes in for monsters to put in flipper buttons. They did. They can drill holes on the side if they wanted to. They didn't want to. I still can't get over, man. Those Jeeps look like they look like MRAPs or something. Yeah, all right. The Jeeps are bad. I think we all agree with that. It looks like some army surplus stuff.
    44:44
    Yeah. Now let me ask you the super important question. Is my Daddy East Jurassic Park more valuable, less valuable, or the same valuable now that this has been revealed?
    44:56
    I'm going to go with less valuable. I see. That's my concern. I should have solved it before this was announced. Unless this turns out to be a complete turd. It's an L-win. They're not going to hate it. It's not going to be. They're not going to hate it. I would be in pure shock if it was.
    45:13
    The one thing I don't think we mentioned, or I completely missed it when I was looking at the pictures, but I love the fact that they got the John Williams score. Yeah, that's right. I did read that in a listing that they did get the score. And I thought that was smart because that – and again, the Data East one right at the start played that intro. It's just – it's John Williams. It's iconic. I mean half of Steven Spielberg's millions belong to John Williams.
    45:43
    That's true. So that – yeah, I'm glad about that. I think it will be interesting to see what the custom animations are. This, to me, seems like an odd blend of homage to Data East's Jurassic Park, more so than the movie. Yeah. But also, it seems to really be emphasizing the dinosaurs, which I think was smart. That's good. That's my one thing with the, instead of doing the island, I'd rather them just splatter more dinosaurs everywhere. Right. You can't really have too many dinosaurs. I agree. So that would have been my recommendation, but if you weren't going to actually do the movie. but given that they're doing so little from the movie i'm quite frankly pretty surprised they didn't try and do jurassic world where i would have thought getting the assets would have been easier yeah but i guess if they feel really strongly that the custom look is going to be good i i think this will be their best seller of the year i think just calling it jurassic and again most kids aren't going to be like well the i agree with tony the velociraptors look bulimic and he's not proportional and that doesn't look like a real Jeep, I think those would be like dinosaurs squee. Right. No, no, no, no. My thoughts on the art are super minor. I mean, it's not like... Does this kill Wonka? Is Wonka alive?
    47:01
    Hair 403 just got there a couple days ago. I know. I did see that post. Yeah. Do you think the markets are different? I think the markets are going to be too different. Yeah, I wasn't sure that this really has an impact on it. I can guarantee you right now, this blows Wonka's sales out of the water. Well, sure. That's a given. Yeah. I mean, but is it, this is true, pure nostalgia, right? With people who have, but the difference is, is this is something that will have more draw.
    47:34
    Operators are going to love this. This is a real franchise, right? Wonka never turned into, I mean, there were like two books and everyone remembers the one old movie and gets mad at the new movie. Right now, It was a good old movie, but this is a mega billion dollar franchise.
    47:53
    Right. You're looking at the difference between, I mean, for the nostalgia pull and this and that, Wonka is on Munster's level as far as I'm concerned. For the same type of... I think it's more relevant than that. I wouldn't sink to that level. Munster's was the weirdest, in my view, mistake of a choice that Stern has made in a number of years. That's valid. It does have a higher nostalgia pull than that. But I don't think it touches this. Now, in honor of Zach Minney, what do your eight people you know at work think of Jurassic Park? I don't know. We've never talked about it. Could be less popular than Toy Story, then, is what you're saying. It's possible. One of them hated Jurassic World. The other thought they were good popcorn movies. Yeah. When I saw it, I was kind of in between. I had fun watching the movie, I guess I would say. I definitely say it's a good popcorn movie. But it's doing the soft reboot thing, and so I felt it just followed. It's become real popular to do the soft reboot. In fact, in some ways, Jurassic World 2 is more tolerable just because it goes more its own way than the first, which is what you would expect. I mean, it's kind of like when you start talking about the sequels in Star Wars and how the second one is different. And that upset a lot of people, but it was different, whereas the first one felt like we were kind of rehashing. Yeah. It wasn't quite that scene-by-scene remake of Psycho that came out in the 90s. Oh, God. Remember that? Yes, yes. What a stupid idea. It's like, that was just, that was a really bad idea. It's like, okay, you're taking an iconic movie and you're not trying to do your own spin on it, so you don't have that excuse. You're going to try and duplicate it. But why duplicate it when we can watch the original? It made no sense. I don't know. I'm not an artist. I'm just a common plebe doing my common plebe thing. Now, I do have a question. Are you happy with Wayne Knight for the call-outs, or do you wish they could have gotten somebody with a bit higher cachet, as it were? I'm okay with Wayne Knight doing them, just because he's so obnoxious in the film that it fits really well. But that's one of the areas where I wonder if, since they don't even have audio from the film, and 1993 did, I mean, you've got the whole, like, Samuel L. Jackson, hold on to your butts. Right. Ian Freeze from Sam Neill. It's not going to have any of that. I want to hear how the sound's put together. Right. Because Carl Urban's Star Trek was amazing. Right. He did all the custom call-outs, but we still had audio from the film. So there were all sorts of parts when you're playing the modes. When you're playing Space Jump, you're hearing dialogue from that scene. Right. So it was really immersive. I worry that it won't be immersive with just Wayne Knight doing the call outs is it going to be a Pirates where I hear that what's his name Hibbs or Gibbs the actor who played Gibbs does a great job on the call outs in that but you don't have any other audio from Pirates going on and some people felt that that wasn't immersive enough and now everyone thinks it's immersive enough because they can't buy them anymore but hey false scarcity will do that I would prefer Jeff Goldblum Yeah and really They should have been able to afford him So Yeah I just want to hear him say something like Life finds a way Actually at this point I think I would just be happy to find Any pinball machine To be made that could get Jeff Goldblum To do the call outs for it It would be neat but I'm okay with this So we should start pushing for our The fly pinball machine. All right. Well, I've never even heard anyone pitch that one in the, what 80s thing should be made into a pin? So maybe not. Maybe we don't do the plot. Maybe we do a new, hey, we're doing rehashes. Not very many people got to play Independence Day from Sega. Maybe we redo Independence Day. It might have been a possibility if that second movie hadn't been, oh, Earth Girls are easy. Oh, gosh. Oh, Earth Girls are easy would be such a great pinball machine. I don't know.
    52:19
    Maybe. It's been a long time since I've seen that. But anyway, so that's our Jurassic Park stuff. The T-Rex is loose!
    52:31
    Oh, T-Rex got him. Let's move on to video games. Tony, you've dug deep into the video game vault and found, I think, at least four big news things going on. Yeah, four primary big. Not all of them are big. They're big. But they're big-ish. The big one, the truly big one, is the stern level secret for Overwatch.
    52:57
    2-2-2 Rolok came on. Yeah, Rolok! People have talked about it for forever, but it's been rumored for a while. People have talked about it, and it's a thing, and it's happening. Yep. So, outside of the arcade play like Mayhem and Mystery Heroes and the special arcade play modes, all the main modes are going to a 2-2-2 system where every team is going to be locked and forced to have two DPS, two support, two tanks. Which means Goats is dead. But in all honesty, Goats was pretty much dead already. Yeah, and that's where I – that was my concern is that this would actually end up stifling creativity because goats ended up dying from a variety of other factors already. Right. So it wasn't really necessary. That being said, it does add some new strategic thinking that has to go into play on a lot of stuff. And this is going to have some interesting impacts on the latter. Very much so. About the SR. Yeah. which is our ranking that we currently it's a unified SR that you get regardless of what you play. And your SR has to do with what the caliber of players you're put up against. And they're broadly group you into, into metal codes. So I'm normally in gold. So there's like bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master. And then within master there's grandmaster. Yeah. Which is like everybody over like 4200 or something like that? Yeah, yeah. It's like the – 4400? I don't know if it's that. I mean, with Grandmaster, I think it's – is that limited to just the top 500 or are they – It might be. Are they a stratosphere within Grandmaster? Anyway, I'm not Grandmaster. And those of you listening, you'll never be one either. Just putting you in your place so you know. Don't be thinking that just because you know how to play Barracora that you're going to be able to do this. the uh no and like you were saying on the sr they did they are splitting the sr so you will get sr for your dps play you will get sr you'll have a separate sr as your uh tank play and a separate sr as your support play and when you're doing placements you have to do all of them yes they're going to make you play all three role varieties which is something that does not happen to me Hasn't been happening to me very much. I'm normally playing support, followed by tank, and on occasion DPS. See, and I'm the other way. I play tank and then support normally, followed by DPS. So this is going to be, that'll be pretty interesting. I think the biggest thing that I'm looking to see the complaints about is going to be queue times for DPS players.
    55:48
    Yes, it could be. but I mean maybe that'll get people to branch out a little bit I mean I can't say I'm going to really miss going into a ranked match and having four people all think that they're the best sniper in the game and then we lose and they could blame everybody why didn't I get heals I had that the other day in a I think it was a mystery hero too this guy took the time to send me a message because He was Winston and I was Ana. And, of course, he's jumping around everywhere. He's surrounded by enemy shields. I'm not being able to heal him very successfully. So, unsurprisingly, his message was that he wanted healing. Though I think the way he expressed it, it was very negative. It was, heal me. It was a fairly long word for a gamer. I can't remember what he called me. It was not nice, though.
    56:45
    It's like, simpleton, heal me, or something like that. It wasn't that, but I was like, oh, I wouldn't have nanoed him had I read that.
    56:54
    To be fair, he wasn't positioning himself very well either. Right. That's one of those things you have to think about as a tank. I just thought he's probably naturally a DPS. Probably a Genji. It felt like that. Don't they all feel like Genjis? Well, that or Widows.
    57:15
    But anyway, so that's different. Plus, I know there's a lot of character adjustments being tested right now. Right. There are heavy ones because, case in point, Brigitte is a support who can really fill the support role if there only two supports Yeah Because she kind of this hybrid thing Yeah it was where they decided they wanted to see what would happen if you crossbred a Reinhardt with a Lucia. And apparently it created God. Basically. And they've been trying to undo that ever since.
    57:51
    But if you undo it too much, no one will play her, and then she becomes Mercy and people will feel sad. It's been a big struggle coupled with that they've rolled out a new hero. Yes. So that always requires balance adjustments in this sort of game because it's a hero shooter. And whatever, and I did see after I made my notes, but I read this morning, they've already curled adjustments to Sigma out to boost him.
    58:18
    They've made a few adjustments, just minor tweaks, which we knew would come, but they've been making them on the PTR. But Sigma is their new hero. He's a shield tank, which is our other shield tanks are Ryan and Orisa. Yep. They're often thought of as main tanks. Right.
    58:38
    And his shield, where Orisa can throw a shield close and move around behind it. Ryan's shield is on his arm so he can move it around. Sigma's shield, he actually throws it and deploys it forward. Kind of like that shield they tested on Symmetra for a while, where she threw the shield forward. You can do that with Sigma, except for hit a point and stop. Yeah, he controls where he stops. Right. So he can throw his shield in place. And also his attack is a short-ranged shot where he's got two shots. Because he's basically all about gravity manipulation. Right. So he's basically shooting marbles at you. He's got two little balls that he floats around with in his hand and he shoots them at people. And apparently they hurt himself. Do they? If they hit him, yeah. Nice. That's not very many characters work that way. They do bounce. They do bounce because I've seen some video of him doing some bounce stuff. He does self-damage. At this point, the only other person I know of who does that is Pharah.
    59:39
    Tracer. Oh, well, they're all, yeah. Yeah. Tracer came with her pulse bomb. Did you, that's neither here nor there. Did you see the pulse bomb death last night in Overwatch? No, because I was playing in a tournament. Okay. That was, I can't remember who it was. He's playing Tracer. He stuck Brigitte. She jumped away from her team, and he recalled, and she landed directly where he recalled. So the pulse bomb took him out too. It was hilarious.
    60:10
    And his ultimate is looking to be pretty cool because he kind of jumps up in the air like Doomfist does,
    60:22
    and you choose the area like Doomfist does. but when you trigger it, what it does is it lifts all the opposing players inside the circle off of the ground. And I've already seen video off the PTR of it being used to end a whole bunch of control point stuff. Yep. Because it's like, boom, you're off the point. And I've also seen it used, I saw at least one where he used it to lift the entire opposing team to be high-mood. Yep. Finally, McCree has a friend. McCree's like, hey, you like me? He really, really likes me. Why does Sigma not wear shoes?
    61:02
    According to the article I read, it was an intentional design choice to show that he's institutionalized because that man's backstory is pure nightmare fuel. I'm not even going to try to describe it. You can watch it, but it is so much nightmare fuel and so different from anybody else in Overwatch that it's kind of impressive, really. Yeah, he's messed up. Yeah, he's all sorts of messed up. Exciting times, exciting changes coming in now with Overwatch. I'm going to... I've already decided when they do the shortened, because they're going to do that shortened competitive season to do a full-strength test of the 2-2-2 Roloc, I'm going to actually play it. Oh, okay. I haven't played competitive since season... I do because I always want to get my placements in at least because I want gold gun points. I don't think any of the gold guns look good. It's not about – it's when people see me, they want me to have the character. So I get my characters because they go, oh, he knows what he's doing because he has a gold gun. It's all illusion.
    62:11
    Shadows and mirrors. Yes. Shadows and mirrors. So you referenced Doomfist when you were talking about Sigma. So I know, because I've seen some complaining that there's some big Doom news. There is. Doom, as they say. At QuakeCon this year, they went ahead and released, or I should say re-released, Doom, Doom 2, and Doom 3. Hmm. And it's available on Android, iOS, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. So you can play the original Doom on pretty much everything in existence at this point. Yep.
    62:51
    But Bethesda being Bethesda decided they should go ahead and stick their foot in it. Because that's all they've done for the last year and a half. Do we have to buy Fallout 76 to play it? You don't have to buy Fallout 76 to play it. But you do have to log into your Bethesda account. I didn't have to do that when I had Doom and Doom 2 originally. Well, you do now. Technically, according to their press release they put out late yesterday, that's a mistake. It's not supposed to be required. Well, yes, I think we all agree it's a mistake. But go on. Apparently, it's not a requirement or wasn't supposed to be required. It's a coding issue that made it required. It's supposed to be optional because playing those games will allow you to earn special things for Doom Eternal when it comes out. Okay. Okay, so it was a coding issue means they told their programmers to code this in and that it was a mistake. They realized they wish they hadn't liked having to do that. Okay. Now the best thing to come out of this Isn't the fact that they've made an updated Version of Doom that will run on modern computers And modern things so you can play Doom Which is a great game We played especially Doom 2 A lot This was like pre-quake High school Secretly installed on the computer labs Because the IT people didn't know anything back then Right It was awesome Yeah that was great but the best thing to come out of this is the memes because the screen says you must log in to your Bethesda account to play it and it says or it'll do that or it says you must have a Bethesda login to play please connect to the internet if you're not connected to the internet so people have taken that and started generating memes on it like Mario with the little toad guy at the end of the castle says sorry Peach is in another castle please connect to the internet that's so good and and there's so many like like like a final fantasy game where the opening screen all it says it doesn't say start it says please connect to the internet this is so you know i've liked so much of what bethesda's done and lately it feels like they don't know what they're doing i know it's it's it's a lot of a lot of unforced errors has been rough on them. Like real, real rough. But yeah, no, the new memes has been getting some really good. That's the best part to come out of it is the memes. We all win then. Yeah, we all win. Going on to the more minor one that I would consider. Mainly just because it affects my deep personal interest.
    65:46
    I've talked here a lot about Battletech. and I'm a huge fan of the Battletech game I'm a huge fan of Battletech the franchise well the latest of the games that have been played by more people, the MechWarrior games which are based in the Battletech universe and all that but it's the one where you're the actual first person mech driving guy it is MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries it's being developed by Piranha who did the MechWarrior Online, a multiplayer arena combat game. And it's been delayed. This is its second delay. Its first delay was pushed from late last year to September of this year. And now it's been pushed back to December because they have to do some finished polishing on it. Oh, yeah, and they decided that they're going to go ahead and be an Epic Games Store exclusive. I hope their other games don't get rated down on Steam. I haven't seen it yet. Okay. But that doesn't mean it hasn't started.
    66:54
    And they did go so far as they came out and said with the announcement that they will refund all pre-orders for people who want them. Oh, who don't want to deal with Epic. Right. Okay. Well, that's nice of them. That's nice of them because Epic's ecosystem, their store system, is terrible.
    67:21
    I understand Steam is a mature product, and it's had decades to get to where it's at. But it's like the Epic Game Store guys, when they looked at Steam, they were like, no, don't even look over there. Don't even look at them. We'll just do our own thing. We won't even look at what works over there and make something similar to it to make our system okay. It's just rough. I use it. It's a weird choice. I've used it, but it is rough. It's a weird choice. That reminds me of what I had heard about, and I guess this has all been corrected, so I want to know if this has been connected. Throwback to pinball.
    68:00
    One of the things that came out when the Suncoast sent out their first cosmic carnival, There was no way to prop the play field up against the back box without having someone hold it or to be strapped. They didn't configure the rails to let you do that.
    68:17
    It's like, maybe you should have looked at, you know, any other pinball machine that had ever been made. That had ever been made. To their credit, that has been resolved. But it's just an interesting miss. How many got shipped out like that? Just one, I think. Just one? Yeah, they sent one out to someone, and then he gave them an assessment of everything. So it wasn't like the worst way to do it. It's still, to me, it's such a weird miss. Because it's like, if you'd ever worked on a pinball machine, you've almost, almost assuredly had to fully prop up the play field at some point. How else do you ever work on anything in the back? Right. I mean, I need to do it to change bulbs. The first time I had a pinball machine, I didn't know that. I propped it on my head and changed all the bulbs. And I was like, this really hurts. I was a simple. Maybe I should have cut that one out No, people need to know that I'm real Just like all the other human boys and girls out there I'm a real boy Okay, so Poor Epic And quasi-poor Nintendo? And quasi-poor Nintendo, yeah I've been seeing some stuff about this There's some real serious stuff on this I saw a, it was recommended to me, and I don't own a Switch, but I actually had a recommended to me video on how I can take apart and repair my Joy-Cons. Really? Yes. How did that get recommended to you? I don't know. Maybe I wasn't logged in at all and it was just a generic, like, he looks like someone who wants to fix Joy-Sticks. What Dennis is talking about here is that the Nintendo Switch has been having a hardware issue. The Joy-Cons, specifically the analog sticks on the Joy-Cons, are starting to have random movement and interactions even when they're not being touched or used. And they've been calling it the Joy-Con drift. It's been more typical from reports in the left Joy-Con because that's the one where you use the analog stick the most. There is not a single specific confirmed issue of what the issue is. They just know that it's happening. Sometimes people have them and they don't ever have a problem. Other people have gotten ones and been having problems almost immediately. So it's a real interesting issue. The problem is Nintendo, being Nintendo, basically acted like it didn't happen. So if you were outside of your warranty period, they charged you $40 to repair it. You can buy a single Joy-Con for $50 or a pair for $80.
    70:55
    So you might as well just buy a pair. So you might as well just buy a pair of new ones and not worry about shipping it off to get repaired and waiting for it to come back. I've had drift on like 360, after years of use, but I've had drift on things before. Yeah, this is apparently beyond normal. This is interesting because this is pretty recent. Yeah, we're looking at, I mean, the oldest Joy-Cons are two years old. Right. And they're getting significant drift. And there have been reports of people having drift on Joy-Cons that they've been using for less than six months.
    71:27
    But Nintendo has reportedly, because Nintendo has not confirmed this, but according to memos that have been leaked to Vice,
    71:40
    Nintendo's new internal ruling on this is that they will repair Joy-Cons, no questions asked. even outside the warranty, for free. And if somebody who's paid for a warranty repair calls them and asks for a refund, they're to, you know, confirm the work happened and then issue the refund.
    72:06
    This has been semi-confirmed by Vice because Vice had a switch with Drifting Joy-Cons that was out of warranty, and they called Nintendo, and they were sent the shipping label to send it in free of charge to be repaired. Okay. So I would call that a hard yes. Yes. Interesting that they won't confirm it, but they might not want to establish in writing that this is now like a new warranty provision. Again, referencing pinball, the warranties of Stern pinball don't cover the ghosting of inserts and clear-code separation issues. However, it has been repeatedly confirmed that, at least in dramatic cases, Stern has replaced play fields for people free of charge. Which makes sense. But they never say that they will in writing. Right, because then they get locked in. That's a bunch of legal stuff. Well, at least Nintendo's doing the right thing, even though they're not advertising it. And that's the surprising thing with this issue, is because Nintendo's kind of known for their hardware being rock solid. I mean, Nintendo's are their controllers where you smash them against the wall and you pick them up and keep playing and they're fine. Unlike, you know, most of the other systems where when you heave the controller, it shatters. That's why we don't throw our controllers.
    73:24
    I understand that. But it happens. I guess. You're just supposed to punch the desk. I don't understand. I will have you know, I have never thrown a controller. You've emphasized thrown very specifically.
    73:40
    What did you do? I did have a rage moment where I twisted a controller pretty much in half. I mean, I was holding either end. I got so mad and I twisted in opposite directions and it broke several of the things free and then it was kind of gappy and the buttons fell out. It didn't work. I broke it. You broke it, right. But I didn't throw it. Okay, that's fair. And that was a PS1 controller. They were of lighter substance back then. I mean it wasn't a duke I'm not the Hulk I couldn't break a duke like that Yeah but do you want to hold one Well exactly I normally just pound on the arms of the chair Yeah that's what I Typically I'll do that Or I'll hit my leg or something Or I'll cuss Because I do that occasionally I do that more than occasionally Yeah Overwatch actually makes me very toxic sometimes people will send me a note team chat? I'm like you don't want me in team chat because the moment you fail me and you will fail me I'm going to be saying stuff but I feel to my credit when I mess up I call myself out on it too because sometimes the failures are mine just not usually it's everyone else's failure it's everybody else I had a May last night ice wall and archway as I started trying to go through with my rip tire. And I couldn't get around it. And they don't know that they can take the ice wall away. Yeah. And my rip tire timed out before I could get anywhere near the enemy because of it. Yep. It was terrible. And she didn't even do the voice line sorry to you. No. She didn't do anything. Nope. Except fail you. Well, yeah, but it is me. It is. But we love her anyway. Yes. Speaking of love, We've reached the end of our show, so I'd love to do our closing credits. You can always reach out to us via email, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com, or you can find us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in two weeks with probably no new pinball machines to reveal, I don't think. I think we're going to enter a lull. I would assume. We might be able to talk a little bit about gameplay on Jurassic Park. If we make it to 403 Club, because there is a tournament next weekend, we might be able to comment on Wonka with first-hand gameplay. That's what I was hoping for. I honestly kind of hoped to do it for this one, but between my stuff going on Friday, the tournament yesterday. And they only got the game in on Thursday. Right. I knew there was no way. It was delayed by a week. Yeah, I knew there was no way we were going to get it in this episode. I'd hoped for it when I'd seen the notice that it was on its way, but like I said it just didn't work out. It didn't work out. But we have another opportunity coming up. Yes. Anyway until two weeks for now I am Dennis and I am Tony. Goodbye. See ya.