I heard it through the grapevine, you've been hanging by a thread, rumors at the dog park, sticking everyone's nose in what you did. Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up. Ah, good morning everybody, welcome to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, one year older and two years wiser, maybe. Happy birthday to me yesterday, thank you everybody for all the birthday wishes. It was so nice to have an entire day getting inundated and bombarded with nothing but good vibes. Had a beautiful morning with my family. Great dinner with Brenda. For those of you that have had young kids, you know that an evening out is not easy to come by. So it was a lot of fun. And I just want to say from the bottom of my soul that you all out there make my life so much more complete. and every day we wake up in this community and we have friends and we're not alone. And that's amazing. And that's the power of the hobby. And that's why you don't have to spend $13,000 or $15,000 on a pinball machine to really find the true value of this hobby. I've said it all along. It's all about the people. Now, speaking of people, there are people out there that are already unboxing their Star Wars LEs. And it never ceases to amaze me how quickly Stern Pinball can get these games out the door. They need to. They need to get as much of that $13,000 as they possibly can get their hands on because we all know which direction Star Wars is going in. And look, we're hearing the same stuff we always hear. It looks better in person. John Wick, King Kong all look better in person. Of course, every pinball machine looks better in person. It's a pinball machine. It's not supposed to look better in pictures. It's supposed to light up and it's supposed to look really good. I still have no Star Wars FOMO. I really don't. I keep looking at it. I don't love the blue. I see people with a lineup of Star Wars games. Like there's a dude with like Mando, with the Richie game, with this game, with the Data East game. And just seeing all the Star Wars games in a row makes me feel bad for the guy. It doesn't make me feel great because they're all just mediocre pins. If you have four average pins, it doesn't add up to a great experience. And so I guess this is just what it's always going to be. We're just never going to get an amazing Star Wars game. And maybe, just maybe, it's time to move on from Star Wars. It's time to look at other things. And I think Stern must be feeling that. I keep hearing that the sales of this game are not very good. The fact that like almost two weeks later, Star Wars LE is still for sale. They couldn't even sell out of Star Wars with only $770 being made. There has to be, there has to be alarm bells going off over at Stern Pinball. I heard back from some Stern employees after my last free show where I was sort of telling it as it is. And I think a lot of people over there are feeling exactly the same sentiment that I put out into the world. That Stern Pinball is an amazing company in need of a little bit, maybe a big reset. They make games better than anybody. They make more games than anybody. They are very efficient. They have so much talent. But for some reason, the soul of Stern Pinball seems to be missing. The swagger is missing. The confidence is missing and the games are being looked at like they are overpriced and nobody has a sense anymore of FOMO or urgency or a need to have it right away. And it's the opposite. If you buy a Stern new in box right away, you kind of are telegraphing to people that you don't have common sense because there's no point in buying any of these things new in box right now. The code's not done. I mean, they're still doing code updates for John freaking Wick. I was like in the John Wick thread. You know, when you ever want to feel lonely in life, you ever want to feel like, you know, you don't want to keep going on, go into the John Wick thread. It's really lonely. It's only 100 pages. Game been out for what like over a year And it a lonely lonely place And you know it like whenever there a John Wick code update it like take your two fingers rub them back and forth The world's smallest violin playing a song for all those owners. It's like, who cares? Like when I read about, oh man, they're changing the balance of the battles. I can't wait to see how the scoring is going to be better balanced on John Wick. I mean, talk about it. You could have the greatest sex drive going. You could be ready to go. And someone could tell you that John Wick's scoring is better balanced and your libido would be gone. Gone. I mean, there's no way to clear out a bar full of hot women. Then run into that bar and say, hey, ladies, John Wick codes at 0.97. Who wants to come home with me and get some contracts and see better balanced scoring? Yeah, nobody. Nobody. So John Wick LE code update. You know what's funny is like Stern will keep doing it though. I mean, at least they keep doing it. It's like, we're going to do it anyway. It's like, does anyone own this game? I don't think so, but we're going to keep doing the code updates. I will give them credit. No one consistently updates code as well as Stern. There's like a new code update every month and they're on top of it. Now, the only problem is you just don't want to buy the games. Did you see the code update of King Kong where an owner went and added the original King Kong movie clips and all of a sudden now the game looks amazing. It looks like the proper game to put next to Godzilla. Why Stern Pinball didn't get the clips for King Kong is the reason why nobody really wants King Kong. They should have done this title justice. They should have made the art look more like the original King Kong movie posters and they should have gone and got the iconic King Kong movie footage. They cut a corner and we all saw it and that is why we didn't buy it. You made Godzilla right. You made King Kong wrong. Shame on you, Stern. Pinball. All right, here's the other thing. I don't think we're going to see The Walking Dead remastered at Expo. When we were at Expo last year, that's when they dropped Metallica remastered at the Stern party, but I don't think they're going to do it. I think Star Wars sales are very low and I don't think they're going to usher out The Walking Dead right away. They might do it anyway. Stern will do this. They will absolutely destroy the energy around the current game to bring out something new because they just want to keep everything on schedule. So we shall see. I think The Walking Dead Remastered is going to maybe have a price increase. The response to it is going to be lukewarm. I think everybody wanted a Tron. And I'm just here to tell you, I think Stern Pinball is in trouble. I really do. If Elliot Elliot Eismin's Transformers is next, I mean, Elliot, really? Really? Does he have what it takes? I don't think so. John Wick is not an indication that this guy is ready for primetime and he's going to get another chance at the plate with G1 Transformers. I know I also heard a rumor through the grapevine that another pinball manufacturer also has maybe the ability to make Transformers because something about these licenses people forget is exclusive Progressivity is not guaranteed. It's up to the license holder. They can license out these games, these IPs to multiple companies if they want to. Speaking about IPs, did you see the rumor that Evil Knievel's family reached out to American Pinball and gave them the opportunity to make a brand new Evil Knievel game? It might have been the only great move David Fix has ever done over there by telling them, no, thank you. if anyone thinks evil Knievel is going to sell games in 2025 talk about irrelevant talk about nobody cares the Knievel family is not having a moment it's like no no no no no that's not the direction you go in with a pinball company all right what else is going on in the world of pinball so for you cactus canyon owners out there you know I popped into this thread I'm like why this is thread blowing up and I was reading many, many pages about the Cactus Canyon upgrade kit. It's $1,250 and man, are people having issues with this upgrade kit. There's a lot of problems with the USB cable is way too tight for some idiotic reason. They didn't give enough slack in the USB cable. So when you lift the play field, it is tight enough to strangle somebody and the owners don't like that at all. That never should have gone out the door to customers And they knew it was tight They even say in the instructions on how to do the install that it going to be very tight Why would you do that? You made the mistake. You should have ordered it with a longer cable. But that's not the big issue. People are tearing these things apart because the switches aren't working properly. The post, the bracket on the left side seems to be engineered all wrong. And so the screws are not lining up or the post is not lining up properly. And it's all because of that bracket. And looking at these pictures of people having to spend $1,200 to disassemble a mod to try to get it to work right is absolutely a joke. And you know how I feel about CGC. This company, in my honest opinion, just is not worth supporting the way they treat their customers. They go radio silent. Now they're doing this. There's no communication from them on if there's a fix in the works. And now everyone who ordered one is just anxious. And now they don't even want to get them yet. If you're waiting on yours or you paid for yours, now you're hoping they don't send it out. You're hoping that they fix it first. Silly. There's no reason why. Like this game is like two and a half years old. Why would anything not be properly quality tested before it goes to customers? There's no excuse. That's happening over there in Cactus Canyon land. Now I'm going to talk about a company in a way I don't normally talk about a company. And that company is Spooky Pinball. And I love Spooky Pinball. And I really can't wait for their next game. And I was in the thread for Evil Dead. And I was reading about something happening over there. And I started to see something that I need to call them out on. And you know I love you guys. But Luke, I'm going to talk directly to you, brother. I'm going to talk directly to you because I was reading something that I should not have read. Something that was said on Pinside that should not have been written. Look, there's an old saying that is still true today. And this is the hardest thing, especially when you're a pinball manufacturer, especially when you've got these grown men babies that are buying your product, especially a product that's got a steel ball bouncing around a bunch of wood and plastic, and these grown men wanna keep their games perfect every single day. Here's the issue. Irregardless of the product you make, the old phrase still rings true today, and that phrase is, the customer is always right. And I know this is so hard, right, because that phrase is true, and you always want people that are watching your brand and watching your behavior. You always want people to feel that you have that mentality. And the hard part about the customer is always right is half of the time, they're not right. But you need to still go along with whatever their complaints are and do your best to come to a solution, an amicable solution that makes everybody feel good. So the story here is that there is a customer who says that his game, his play field had some bulges happening around the playfield. And then he unscrewed some of the posts and the screws looked a little bit long, almost as if the screws were about to pierce through the playfield and that's what was causing the bulge. Now, look, if this was happening on every single Evil Dead game, we would be seeing reports of this left and right. We're not. So it feels like a very isolated incident. And so this guy starts a post and he says, hey, I reached out and they've been ghosting me. Not really accurate. Like he never really supplied Spooky with any of the photos, you know? And so it's like, come on. We know Spooky always gets back to its customers. We know Spooky picks up the phone. I think Bug reached out to him a couple of times, was unable to get him. But here's the thing I saw that I never want to see again. Okay. Because this guy has issues, you know, the pin side babies are going to be like, oh man, like You got to get him a fully populated play field tomorrow. It's inexcusable, yada, yada, yada. Okay, no, like Spooky shouldn't do that. They need to collect all the facts and they need to see what the real issue is first. And that's fine. But I saw Luke write something and I'm like, oh man, Luke, you can't write this. And he said something along the lines of all of you people commenting is the reason why manufacturers don come on pin side right And I read that and I was like Luke come on man never write that Your company and your brand is beloved because you are on pin side because you do, you do engage in real time with the community. The number one thing you should never do as someone internally, one of the leaders of spooky pinball is never, ever, this is true with relationships in life, never put the threat of abandonment out in the world that we're going to leave here if this continues, right? No, no, there's nothing that should ever happen that should ever rattle you that much. And I know it was probably late at night and I know it's annoying reading people on pins. I mean, I get it, Luke, man. There's no more annoying place to be than on pin side, but you know, you just got to let those comments roll off your shoulder a little bit more. And I know Luke is an amazing guy. I need to give him that marketing advice because it's true. Like never say that. Right. And I think they're going to take care of this guy. I think it's going to be a non-issue and I think it's going to be a win-win. And sometimes it is good. It is good at times to upload things to pin side and just shine a light on some issues because every once in a while, there might be some changes they need to make at the factory. And you know how we are in pinball. Like we're all Guinea pigs for every single game. And so that's it. That's it. Always treat the customer like they are right. Always take the high road and never, never, if you're spooky, ever put the fear that you're going to abandon the community. You're tired of reading people's comments that are not to your liking. If I took to heart everyone's comments that were not to my liking, I would not be doing this show. I would have run away a long time ago because there are a lot of great people in this hobby and there's very few minority that are very nasty, very mean, have very dark intentions and you got to just kind of roll with it. All right. So I want to say I was wrong. I edited out of my last podcast. Jason Knapp never said that I was sharing fake photos. All he said is that Planetary and Pedretti have said that Melvin is not working on this game. That's somewhat true, but Melvin made the prototype of Big Bang Bar. I'm going to have a treat for everybody today. I'm going to do this both here on Patreon and also out on Facebook. I'm going to share more images of the Big Bang Bar prototype. And what's funny about one of them is you're going to see Big Bang Bar prototype play field sitting inside an alien cabinet. It's so funny to me that people think that after all these years, Kaneda would share fake photos. Trust me. You know what I'm going to do for you right now as an exclusive news? I'm going to tell you all of the titles that Pedretti Gaming has and they can remake. Okay, are you ready? The following titles are on the roster to be remade by Pedretti Gaming. First is Big Bang Bar. They also have Tales of the Arabian Nights. They have Circus Voltaire. They have Theater of Magic. and the last one, which is the most difficult one because they have to deal with a movie studio, but they also have The Addams Family. Those are the games that Rick has given to Pedretti to remake. He's probably right now like, damn it, who told Kanae to that? And now did not each and every one of you just earn your $5 or more subscription with that information so you can go to Pinside, special case at this you know look people don't get it people don't get it this is where it's at this is where it's at have a great friday everybody we will talk to you soon canada out getting ready for expo in two weeks let's do this baby Outro Music