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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast May 2025 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 8m·analyzed·Jun 6, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Jersey Jack Pinball launches Harry Potter game to record positive reception with unified playfield strategy.

Summary

Jersey Jack Pinball revealed their Harry Potter pinball machine on June 5, 2025, after a delay from the planned May launch due to promotional material quality issues. The game launches in three editions (Arcade ~$10k, Wizard $12k, Collector's Edition $15k) with unified playfield design across all models but varying cosmetic features. Jack Guarnieri discusses the 10-year licensing process, design philosophy prioritizing accessibility over artificial differentiation, and the overwhelmingly positive community reception.

Key Claims

  • Harry Potter is Jersey Jack Pinball's 11th pinball title

    high confidence · Hosts state game is JJP's newest 11th pinball title at launch on June 5, 2025

  • The Harry Potter license took 10 years to secure

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri: 'with a license like this especially that took me 10 years to get' and 'because of the license the period of time I had it mentally committed'

  • Game delayed from May to June launch due to promotional material quality concerns

    high confidence · Hosts state delay was 'basically down to not having all the assets, well, not the assets, the promotional material at the quality which Jersey Jack Pinball wanted it to be'

  • Approximately 50-60 games shipped at launch to distributors

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri: 'We probably shipped about 50 or 60 games so far, really, to distributors right now'

  • All three editions share identical playfields and core gameplay

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri: 'The play fields are all the same between the three models' and extensive explanation of why cosmetic-only differentiation was chosen

  • David Thiel created 100+ original songs for the game plus orchestral John Williams license

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri: 'David Thiel...did more than 100 original songs that are in the game, as well as the original John Williams, Hedwig's theme'

  • Collector's Edition artwork created by Mina Lima, a husband-wife design team

    high confidence · Jack discusses Mina Lima's prior work on Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando and their stores in London, Chicago, New Jersey/New York

  • No production cap announced; sales limited only by order window deadline

    high confidence · Jack Guarnieri: 'people think it's unlimited, but it's limited by the amount of time we'll accept orders for' and 'We're building them to order'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's like Christmas. It really is great. People love the game, which is what, when you create something like this, you hope people love it.”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Early in interview — Captures Guarnieri's emotional investment in the launch and immediate positive reception

  • “With a license like this especially that took me 10 years to get, Why would we limit the amount of games that people want to buy?”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Mid-interview — Explains the decision to not cap production, framing it as justified given the licensing effort invested

  • “my blood types be positive, so I can't be negative”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Later in interview — Personal philosophy statement about maintaining positive outlook in the pinball industry

  • “We build them with passion. I said that when I started the company. It's still true today. You can see it on our games.”

    Jack Guarnieri @ During discussion of launch strategy — Core company philosophy statement differentiating from competitor approach

  • “the last time this many people said good things about your games at a launch and I had to think and I said never”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Discussing reception — Acknowledges Harry Potter's reception as unprecedented positive for JJP

  • “When you put the word pinball in it's ten times the effort and probably two or three times the cost because of what it is”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Late in interview — Industry insight about complexity and cost multiplication of pinball licensing

  • “You license a property and you go fishing. And you say, I want this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And then your person or persons, they go back and they see what they have.”

    Jack Guarnieri @ Discussing licensing process — Reveals non-itemized nature of licensing negotiations

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyHarry PottergameJack GuarnieripersonEric MeunierpersonJoe KatzpersonDavid ThielpersonJean-Paul De Winperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack Pinball shifting from capped production to build-to-order model with time-limited order window

    high · Jack Guarnieri: 'people think it's unlimited, but it's limited by the amount of time we'll accept orders for' and 'We're building them to order, which is different' from prior allocation-based approach

  • ?

    design_philosophy: JJP prioritizing manufacturing simplicity and value proposition over cosmetic differentiation between product tiers

    high · Jack Guarnieri: 'I didn't want to differentiate more things because once you start taking things off, it changes the whole game. It makes it look cheap, not inexpensive' and rationale about factory efficiency and identical code

  • ?

    event_signal: Multiple international distributors receiving games at launch including France, Germany, Australia, South America simultaneously

    high · Jack Guarnieri: 'Christophe has his game tomorrow morning... Phil Palmer will have one... All our distributors in Europe will have games, as well as Australia, South America, the United States'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Harry Potter licensing involved both Warner Brothers and J.K. Rowling's management with non-itemized asset discovery process

    high · Jack Guarnieri describes iterative 'fishing' process for rights; 10-year effort to secure; multiple approval layers for artwork, animation, sound

  • $

    market_signal: Official Harry Potter trailer received exceptional community praise; positioned as best pinball machine trailer ever created

    high · Martin Ape: 'probably the best trailer video for a pinball machine I've ever seen, with all the orchestral sounds'; Jack confirms intentional delay to launch with high-quality promotional assets

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.386

0:00
Harry Potter finally revealed Predator not yet revealed in-depth interview with Jack Wannary Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined by I am Martin Ape and I'm the editor of Pinball News and Jonathan and I are here to look back at all the exciting events that took place in the month of May 2025 and the first few days of June, because we deliberately delayed this Pincast recording so we could bring you the very latest news about a new game launch, which we'll get to in a moment.
0:45
A new game launch happened actually moments ago. Well, a couple of hours ago, but still. Yes, so it's sort of hot off the press, if that's a term when it comes to Pincast. But apart from that, May was a relatively quiet month We were kind of waiting for things to happen In particular, the new game launch Lots of cheeses, but not everything came through yet No And before that, don't forget we had two big game reveals in April We did We had King Kong by Stern Pinball and June by Battle of the Clowns That's right And those games have been showing up on location and at dealerships, and at shows as well for you to enjoy. But we will get on with the news because, as we said, there's not a huge amount, but we do have, as we mentioned in the headlines, an in-depth interview with Jack Maneri. And why would we have that interview? Well, because our main headline was about the reveal, finally, of Jersey Jack Pimble's Harry Potter game, which took place, as Jonathan said, just a few hours ago and has kept us busy during the day. And I have to say, it was a... We both, before we forget, Martin and I both wrote articles on the game. and efforts up front. And so, if you want to take a close look at photos of the game and all the videos that are available right now, you can go to pinballnews.com or pinball-magazine.com and they're both at the top of the current stories. Indeed.
2:37
There's more information coming out now and over the next few days, I'm sure, as we will find out. Right. And as we mentioned, sorry for interrupting. No, no. We do have the interview with Jack O'Neill in which he discusses a lot of things that you will not hear or read anywhere else. Well, after it's published, of course, there's the website that will gladly take all the info from Jack and publish that as well. And we appreciate it if you mention us.
Mina Lima
company
Jonathan Eustonperson
Martin Apeperson
Pinball Magazineorganization
Pinball Newsorganization
Warner Brotherscompany
J.K. Rowling's managementorganization
John Williamsperson
  • ?

    personnel_signal: Joe Katz (lead programmer) working intensive schedule with minimal time off since prior holiday

    high · Jack Guarnieri: 'I don't think he's had a day off since, I don't know when, last Christmas'

  • ?

    announcement: Jersey Jack Pinball's Harry Potter pinball machine officially revealed June 5, 2025 with three-tier pricing structure

    high · Official launch with trailer video, promotional materials, and distributor shipments initiated

  • ?

    product_strategy: JJP implementing unified playfield strategy across all three tiers with cosmetic-only differentiation (sparkle effects, powder coating, lighting, topper presence)

    high · Jack Guarnieri detailed explanation of identical playfield and gameplay mechanics across Arcade/Wizard/Collector's editions, with only cosmetic differences

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Harry Potter achieving record-setting positive reception compared to all prior JJP game launches

    high · Jack Guarnieri: 'when was the last time this many people said good things about your games at a launch and I had to think and I said never'; hosts confirm 'overwhelmingly positive reception'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Limited initial inventory with controlled distribution strategy ('watering can' metaphor) requiring feathered rollout to all distributors

    high · Jack Guarnieri: 'It's like I have a watering can that can water five acres and I've got a 10-acre lot... Everybody has to get something' due to Collector's Edition order backlog

    • 3:08
    But there's a lot of info. If you want to hear it firsthand, then definitely check out the interview with Jack. Yes, so as we were saying, the game launched today, which is the 5th of June, which on the 5th is now the 6th of June. Yes, so it launched on the 5th. We were expecting it to launch earlier, in fact in May, but unfortunately that didn't happen. You'll hear reasons why that didn't happen in our interview, but it's basically down to not having all the assets, well, not the assets, the promotional material at the quality which Jersey Jack Pinball wanted it to be. So they went back and redid some stuff, and that just delayed the launch by a little bit and did it over into June, which has had a few little knock-on effects, which we will come to in a minute, but I have to say that the launch has been hugely positively received from what I've seen both online and speaking to other people, I think everybody has been very I think my impression is that people were trepidatious and worried that the game wouldn't live up to everything they'd hoped because when you take a huge great license like Harry Potter, which has eight movies worth of material covering seven books,
    4:45
    and it's so well known and such a big part of popular culture, and everybody who knows about it says, oh, it's got to have this in it, it's got to have that in it. They thought there's no way they would ever be able to live up to those expectations.
    4:58
    And from what we've seen so far, and these are still early days, and we haven't played it, and we haven't even seen any gameplay video to talk about yet.
    5:09
    It seems to have fulfilled most people's hopes. Is that the feeling you're getting? Yeah, and, well, earlier today, or at noon, JTJ launched this trailer video, which is probably the best trailer video for a pinball machine I've ever seen, with all the orchestral sounds that I expect are also in the game and so I'm not even a very big Harry Potter fan actually I don't think I've seen even all the movies maybe only two or three but this really got me hyped up like whoa look at this, this game really has the wow factor and then quadruple it or you know it's I tested Jean-Paul De Win who did the animations that I had to pick up my chin from the floor I'm sure you appreciated that we should probably give a little bit of background to the game and mention that as we were talking to Jack about the game and the licensing of it just recently it came as no surprise when there were indeed the three editions which we had spoken about before the collector's edition, the wizard's edition and the arcade edition, with the arcade edition being the cheapest and coming in at or just below the US$10,000 mark. The Wizard Edition, US$2,000 more, and the Collector Edition, US$3,000 more than that, at US$15,000, which is basically the same prices that Jersey Jack have been using for their Collector and Limited Editions.
    7:00
    For Avatar? Yes, for Avatar, and the previous game, I think I was going to say. I think it was the same for Elton John. Elton John, yes. Yes, I think it was, anyway.
    7:10
    And the artwork package on it is very striking. The collector edition has a completely different style of artwork on the cabinet. It's done by a design studio called Mina Lima, who Eric Meunier, the game designer, knew about and admired their work and got them to do the Collector Edition version of it. The Wizard Edition and the Arcade Edition share the same art packet, which is probably more traditional and features one side of the game, including the evil or the dark side of the franchise, the characters, and the other side giving the good and the lighter side. So it's a game of two halves, as they say. Literally, if you look at the front of the cabinet, round the coin door, the left-hand side is dark and the right-hand side is dark, cool, blues and greens, and the right-hand side is warm oranges and yellows and reds. Even on the playfields, I have to say, because the left is red and the right is green. Yes, that's right. And the back glass as well.
    8:31
    That's the same thing. It's split down the middle. It's a game with a split personality, you could say. Yes, it almost reminds me of the old Transformers game from Stern, where they had the Autobots and Decepticons. Yes, and one side was purple and one side was blue. not quite as marked as that but it's definitely a theme running through the game and I was very very impressed I can't wait to get my hands on it and then well aside from the photos that we seen and the articles that we wrote there's really not that much more to say about the game other than let's talk to Jack Warnieri yeah absolutely it's fine with you because he knows a lot more about getting there and the game itself so let me give Jack a proper introduction today is June the 5th and we might as well call that Harry Potter Timball Day because earlier today at noon Eastern Standard Time Jersey Jack Pinball revealed their newest 11th pinball title, Harry Potter, long anticipating.
    9:55
    A few months ago, Jack Guarnieri, I think it was at the Texas Pinball Festival, where he announced the game and he said, if you're in the market for a new game, you better hold on to your money until you see Harry Potter. And what a disappointment. So welcome, Jack Guarnieri.
    10:10
    Thank you very much, both of you. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, thank you for joining us on what must be a very busy day for you with the launch of a new game. That's always going to be one of the busiest days of the year for you, yeah? It's like Christmas. It really is great.
    10:26
    People love the game, which is what, when you create something like this, you hope people love it. And it seems to be the case, so we're very happy. Right, well, we spoke to you about it before and the issues of getting the license for it. and you were then saying, you know, people have said it would be an impossible license, but if you're persistent enough, such as you are, nothing is impossible. So are you happy with the process that went through in order to get this game to the market and with everything that's included in it?
    11:08
    Yeah, no, I am very happy. I'm thrilled. I'm happy that we're at the place we're at right now, showing the game, and games are shipping, and they're getting to locations, and our distributors first all around the world. The whole licensing really, you know, it's like anything else. There's a process to it. And the people were great. Everybody was great. Everybody was very attentive. They were into it. They loved it. The Harry Potter social media pages shared everything. you know they're truly partners and they love what we did and it shows in the game it made a better game so for this game you were dealing with both Warner Brothers as the movie company and also with J.K. Rowling's management company as well is that right? right and then of course we're dealing with ourselves which we create something sometimes and we look at it again and we say You know, this could be this way, this could be that way. So you have a lot of eyes on the game. Not just artwork, but all the animation and everything else, sound. I think, you know, David Thiel is, I don't want to steal his thunder, but he did more than 100 original songs that are in the game, as well as the original John Williams, Hedwig's theme, that everybody's familiar with, performed by an orchestra. because the only way you can license the song is if the orchestra performs it. You can't license it, publishing rights, and make your own music. You can't do it with that song. Not allowed. Right. Hmm. Okay. So that must sound great.
    12:50
    Now you say there were a lot of eyes on the game and you mentioned the artwork and the animation, but does it also come for the game design, which Eric did?
    13:03
    Well, everybody's critical of everything. Everybody has an opinion. So Eric might do something, and Eric likes it. Somebody else might like it. Somebody might have a comment. You know, it's a big iteration process.
    13:20
    Okay, so let's go back to what you've actually shown today, you know, the three different editions. You've added the arcade edition, which we spoke about before, as being a sub-$10,000... A new standard. Yeah, a new... Yeah, I guess you could say that, a new standard. Well, yeah, I was going to ask, is that a new standard? Is that something you'll do on a game-by-game basis? But also I wanted to... I really wanted to ask about... What's particularly interesting to me is that the collector's edition has a very different look and feel and art package to it as created by Mina Lima. and how did that come to happen?
    14:06
    Well, that came about because of Eric. Eric's a huge Harry Potter collector and fan and he knew of MinaLima. It's a husband and wife team. They do amazing artwork and they've done Harry Potter franchise work at the Wizarding World and they spent two years designing all the graphic elements for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter,
    14:32
    Diagon Alley at Universal Orlando Resort, and many other things. They have stores. They have a store in London. They have a store in Chicago. They have a store in New Jersey, New York, I mean. So their artwork is just,
    14:47
    you know, you're looking at a picture at this moment of the CE game. Yep. But if you're standing next to the game, it just knocks you off your feet. It's just stunning, stunning. And, you know, maybe you're a fan of the movie artwork, but the play field has the movie artwork on it. So you have all your characters on the play field. The play fields are all the same between the three models. Yes. The play field on the CE has the sparkle effect, which is, I just can't say beautiful enough. It's just strikingly beautiful. Really, really nice. Yes, I was doing a real comparison between the CE and the arcade edition. and when I did that, first of all, I couldn't believe that, essentially, there was no difference at all. You know, I actually did a process in Photoshop where you subtract one image from the other and look at the differences between the two of them, and I was expecting to see a kind of mech's not there, and various other elements of the game missing in one and not in the other. The only differences that came through were the sparkles. That's all I could see. I could see a black screen. The spark was on it.
    16:00
    Well, we know I was an operator for many years, and it wouldn't matter. We took out things that really don't matter for the playability of the game or the earnings of the game. So what's different? You don't have the powder coating, the color-shifting powder coating. You have black body armor. Okay? No problem. You don't have hot blades. It doesn't contribute to the money the game makes. You don't have a Shaker motor, you don't have Invisiglass. You could always add a Shaker motor, you could always add Invisiglass. You don't have a topper. You don't have radcals, you have decals instead. You don't have the lighting that goes around the monitor in the back box. It's basically the way we made all of our games with one strip of lighting in the top of it.
    16:47
    And I think that's it. I think it's the volume control in the front. Oh, yeah, the volume control. Thanks. Yeah. And, you know, the play field is the same play field. So if they build games, what I really wanted to do was I didn't want to differentiate more things because once you start taking things off, it changes the whole game. It makes it look cheap, not inexpensive.
    17:11
    And now you have to, if you're building up play fields, you're going to have a pile of play fields for the wizard game and a pile of play fields for the arcade game. They're all the same now. It makes it simpler in the factory to put things together. So, it's a better value. And so, it makes it easier to code as well because you haven't got to deal with things being in one or not in the other. And, you know, it's a better value to whoever buys it. So, in a time where people are raising prices, we're lowering prices and keeping prices the same. We didn't go up on the CE game. We didn't go up on the Wizard game, which was the LE before. before i just decided to call it wizard because i could um and i wanted um i wanted to have everything play the same across the board which i think is really important so you're not getting uh shortchanged anything any model you buy no absolutely and um and you uh you as far as i can tell you you haven't limited any of these games on the production is that right
    18:17
    That's right. Right, okay. That's the first time, though, I think, isn't it? Probably so. Yeah. Okay. Now, the collector game. Go ahead. Yeah.
    18:32
    I was going to explain about the collector game. Yeah, please do. Well, people think it's unlimited, but it's limited by the amount of time we'll accept orders for. So the timeframe where we announced last call, and that's it. So it's not unlimited. We're building them to order, which is different.
    18:53
    The difference was we didn't want to go to our distributors and say, here's your allocation. I won't say I allocated 50 games to distributor X, and in an afternoon or two days or three days he sells us 50 games. He's out of business. He's done selling the product.
    19:13
    With a license like this especially that took me 10 years to get, Why would we limit the amount of games that people want to buy? Because what happened in the past when we did sell out,
    19:23
    there were always people that distributors had that wanted the game. Distributors didn't have a game for them. And the people got mad, and they didn't buy the LE. They didn't buy anything. They got mad, and they went away, and the distributor lost them as a customer. And we said, with this game, we want everybody on the Earth and in the universe that wants to buy Harry Potter game, they should be able to get it. So that's the way we did it. Right. But presumably people previously saw some value in having a limited run of the games that they have. Okay. Which is fine. I've got an answer for you. Yep. I've got an answer for you.
    20:02
    So we made about 125 standard Guns N' Roses. We made about 150 standard Wizard of Oz. We made 135 standard Pirates, I think. So those are the most rare games we ever made. How come they're not like 30, 40, 50 grand each? They're very rare. Okay. You know, my other thing is they built 22,000 Addams families. Go find me a good one somewhere. You know, so it's not about the number of the games. It's about the quality of the games. And the collective market, they don't care how many there are. You know what they care about? They care that they got a game.
    20:38
    Okay. And that's what I wanted to make sure that they get. So that kind of implies that you'll be taking that policy going forward with future titles? Well, we'll see how it works out. If it blows up, a lot of people are going to say, you know, whatever, and change it. But when the facts change, we change our opinion. So I know a lot. I'm doing this a long time. I know the market. I know the customer base. I know the product. But you could still be wrong. So, you know, you need to try different things. and this was something different to try. And I asked our distributors before we decided to do it, and when all of them understood it, they thought it was a great idea. You know, if there was pushback, if there was pushback, I might have tried it anyway. But if there was pushback, I probably wouldn't have tried it. You know, but everybody, when they realize that they're not unlimited,
    21:32
    everything is limited except aggravation. That's what I used to say. But they're not unlimited. There's a time frame. and at the end of the time and I personally I'm Jersey Jack I have to say this, I don't have to say this I don't think you're going to start to see this game selling at a discount anytime soon I really don't it's not like any other game, it really isn't it's a title and a property that's been long awaited and the game itself I think is really magnificent, I've had one at home for three weeks and I've been playing it I've got about 200 players on the game and I love the game. And I don't love everything equally. Some things I love more than other things, and I really love this a lot.
    22:18
    Right. And you've had people over who played the game and they were very interested too, I understand.
    22:24
    I did. I had a couple of friends that were over today after one o'clock, I think it was, the first people started coming over. and they love the game so much. I called Eric on the phone at the factory and I let the people tell Eric what they thought of the game and Eric was very happy to hear that. He answered some questions with them about the wizard modes and different things in the game and it was really good. And, you know, the whole team has been working really hard. Joe Katz, God bless him. I don't think he's had a day off since, I don't know when, last Christmas. two years ago. But they're just very dedicated and they wanted to make the best game they could possibly make. You mentioned earlier that games were at distributors. So how long have you been building this game and where which distributors have the game? Are there any overseas distributors that have that yet?
    23:30
    I don't want to ask you how many machines are out there, but is this something that we'll be able to go into a distributor store anywhere and play from tomorrow?
    23:43
    Yes. Tomorrow, many distributors will have the game already. We shipped games. We probably shipped about 50 or 60 games so far, really, to distributors right now. There's a show in France this weekend. Christophe has his game tomorrow morning. I'm sure he'll be on social media opening it and talking about it and he'll have it at the show. So that's one in Europe. Phil Palmer will have one. Our German distributors will have them. All our distributors in Europe will have games, as well as Australia, South America, the United States.
    24:23
    Everybody will have a game. And then next week, CE order games will start going out in the order that they were purchased. and we'll feather them in. You know, if a distributor ordered 50, he might get 10. You know, he's not going to get 50. Everything. It's like I have a watering can that can water five acres and I've got a 10-acre lot. I've got to sprinkle things around right now. Everybody has to get something. So it's important to get games out on location so that people get to play them and see them. You know, it's great looking at some expert player playing it. I don't play that way. You know, I've got to see the game myself. and I have to like it. And the people that came over today, I can tell you, all of them bought a game. So, you know, I wasn't here to sell games. But, look, I sell games. That's what I do. So they called their distributors and they ordered games. And they wanted them as soon as they could get them, which everybody wants.
    25:22
    Okay. Now, speaking of today, Jack, I think I got an X from you. at like 5 a.m. this morning from you, and that's 5 a.m. your time, to be exact. So I assume you haven't had any rest since then. It must have been a very long day. So can you briefly walk me through the last couple of things that happened before launch and what happened at noon? Well, you know, it's not a very long day for me.
    26:00
    I live for this. You plan for this. We don't run a sprint. We run a marathon. And really, some of the people in our company, you know, said, hey, this is great. When it's all over, we can relax. And not really. We're just beginning right now. Now it's building the games, tripping the games, supporting the games, getting the games on location, taking care of the operators, taking care of home customers. You know, so now this is the exciting part for me. nobody's working on this game longer than me because of the license the period of time I had it mentally committed in my mind that this is something that I wanted to do I wanted to see the company do this and it was a dream you remember the picture I sent you with Willy Wonka in the background and Ron Weasley and the Wizard of Oz and when the picture was taken I only had the Wizard of Oz property and the other two were just a dream and I'm happy to say that dream came true because of a lot of hard work of a lot of people to make it happen.
    27:03
    And to make a launch go the right way, you have a lot of assets that a lot of different people have control of. And while you want to trust everybody and everybody has an NDA, you know, the ship leaks all over the place. And, you know, I don't believe that there's anything as bad publicity. Somebody leaked pictures here and somebody leaked pictures there. I kind of wish they weren't blurry if they're going to leak pictures of the show, the thing, you know, because you never get a second chance to make a first impression and all that. You know, it doesn't spoil my launch.
    27:40
    You know, people wrote things like, oh, Jersey Jack needs a hit game. Duh, everybody needs a hit game. We didn't make a game for it to be junk and not sell. We don't build games with a calculator. We build them with passion. I said that when I started the company. It's still true today. You can see it on our games. So you have all these different people, different entities, marketing companies, and things like that, and you have things timed to go out at a certain time.
    28:09
    Most of the time it works out. Sometimes it don't work out. But you know what? You take it as it goes, and you take it in stride, and we're not looking for people that lead something.
    28:20
    Everybody's excited about it. It's pinball. At least they're talking about it. It could be a lot worse if nobody cared.
    28:26
    Yeah. Right. Okay. So, hold on. Then we have Noom. The word is out. The campaign started rolling on social media. The amazing trailer video goes out, and I was really blown away. So what happened to your phone?
    28:49
    Oh, my goodness. My phone blew up. My phone got really hot. It was at 27%. It went from about 70% to 27% in like an hour and a half.
    29:07
    It was going crazy. It was all good. It was all good things. People congratulating us, people saying a lot of good things.
    29:16
    The last time, one of my customer friends that just left a little while ago said, when was the last time this many people said good things about your games at a launch and I had to think and I said never because even as great as it was as game changing as it was there were people that said things that were extremely negative bordering on nasty and you know The Hobbit was its own story dialed in, everybody hated the name change the name and the next day I said hey maybe I'm changing the name don't change the name we like the name so you know pinball people are pinball people you know I used to say a pinball sales they're nuts but they're all nuts you know because we we're just like them we're the same thing so um it's natural to have an opinion it's natural to not like everything that somebody does and it's natural to try to accept criticism with a thick skin and in the spirit it's intended to be given and we appreciate that.
    30:26
    Right, well I think as you said it's been an overwhelmingly positive reception and I think probably personally I'd say it's the most positive reception any of your games have had up until now. So I think that's a... And this for a title where people had huge expectations as well. So pretty much basically waiting to be let down. And it worked. So congratulations. Somebody on the internet had a poll. Somebody took a screen grab of somebody that put up a poll. What do you expect the reveal to be today? Better than you expected, worse than you expected. You know, like, it's funny.
    31:10
    You know, a lot of people thinking different ways. I've said it many times, my blood types be positive, so I can't be negative.
    31:19
    You can't do this in this industry, in any industry, I would say, but especially in this industry. When you put the word pinball into anything, it's like putting the word marine into something. When you do anything marine, it's always ten times the cost because it's for a ship and the water. when you put the word pinball in it's ten times the effort and probably two or three times the cost because of what it is hmm well on the subject of what it is, I'd like to actually just take you back a little bit to the licensing aspect of this game and I mean to me when I first saw when I first thought you had Harry Potter I thought well it that I have of Harry Potter Then when you say you have all the movies I thinking that a huge cast of people and potentially a massive number of different agreements with agents and actors and movie companies to work through. but I'm not sure if that's still the way it works anymore because that used to be the case when people didn't when actors and so on didn't assign their rights to movie companies when they made a movie when you licensed these eight movies seven books, eight movies did all the assets and all the rights to those assets and people's likenesses and voices and I'm guessing not the music because that obviously has to be licensed separately what did you get let me cut to the chase what did you get when you got the Harry Potter license as far as talent goes so the simple answer is I got everything we needed and the funny thing about licensing anything for our category when you get a license it's not like a bill of particulars or anything broken down You have all these characters. You have these movies, these clips, this, that. You don't get anything written in a list. Okay? You license a property and you go fishing. And you say, I want this, this, this, this, this, this, this. And then your person or persons, they go back and they see what they have. Because they don't know sometimes. And sometimes I was, not this license, but another license. I was told I had to license something. And then I found out from another person at the company, different company, that I didn't have to license that item. It was already covered under our license. So I spent, you know, a month trying to get something that I already had. But nobody realized it until somebody said it, you know, because there's a lot of different people. But unlike many companies in this segment of licensing, people come and go.
    34:27
    Yes. Like in The Wizard of Oz. There are some people that at companies 20 years, not unlike other companies in other kind of categories of business, but, you know, Disney's laying people off. Paramount does their thing. Warner Brothers does their thing. And there's a lot of shifting and moving. So when you make relationships, I make relationships in every level of the company over time. And believe me, you need those relationships sometimes because if somebody leaves and you don't know anybody, you're in trouble. So it's been something that I didn't know I was going to do years ago. I enjoy it you know it's fun it really is fun I like the challenge I think that's what makes it fun for me if it was just easy and I could walk up and go get the license for you know whatever it is you could pick anybody could do it not everybody could get Harry Potter and I'm proud I'm not bragging. I'm very humble and very thankful and very appreciative. But, you know, I had a lot of competition, and they lost. And I didn't lose. And it's not to thumb my nose in anybody's face, but, you know, we make a great product. And the people that had the IP believed in our product and believed we could make the best product. And I think we did make the best product. and we represented the brand in all the movies and the characters and everything. We choreographed everything and we made it a game that is Harry Potter.
    36:22
    Well, I know in previous licenses, or at least one in particular, you thought you had the license and then you've had people trying to take it away from you, other competitors. Yeah, that was bad. Yeah, anything like that happen this time around? Or was once you go out with people, hands off? You know, I'm not going to get into it. Everybody knows publicly that there was a post by some other company congratulating us on getting the license.
    36:52
    People can make what they want out of that. Really, I'm going to stay out of that whole thing. You know, there was a story about a fox with some grapes, and the fox was trying to get the grapes and he jumped a bunch of times and he couldn't get the grapes so he told everybody the grapes were sour. He didn't really want them anyway.
    37:14
    So sometimes you get that situation in business and you just rise above it and you keep your head up and you don't get pulled into the negativity of what other people want you to get into. And pinball to me is not a negative, it's a positive. It's a happy thing When I play my games And other games that aren't mine I smile, I laugh, I have a good time To me, that's what it's about It's not about getting in the mud With anybody Whether it's a customer or a competitor Or an employee or anybody And battling about it Life's too short Today of all days We all are celebrating The launch of the game So what does that mean for you now? Now the game's known, okay, people have seen it.
    38:05
    What's the next part of the JJP marketing strategy? Are there going to be more videos, gameplay videos, more informational videos coming out? Yeah, yeah. And you're going to be traveling the world selling it? You can count on that. So there'll be gameplay videos that'll pop up, you know, today, tomorrow, the next day. certainly our distributors will be putting up videos and streaming and things like that so you'll get a range of players that don't know how to play to expert players that you know play very well i will say this before i go to the travel plot the game has to be set up the right way the back legs need to be up the game needs to be at seven and a half degrees that's how eric designed it, that's how it needs to be set up there's paperwork in the game box so it's set up the right way that's important and yes, I will be travelling I'll be in the UK maybe I'll see you Martin on the 21st you certainly will that's great, we could have some Spotted Dick yes, I was hoping to see you over in Valkyrie Brook in Austria yeah, you know, I would have been there if we had games the timing was a little off and stuff on. The guy is just amazing. The guy is like Superman. I don't know how he does it. I really don't know. He's got a lot of energy and a lot of passion. All my games were there. All ten were there. They were. And Frank Bonner sent me a text. He says, All the games are here, but no Jersey Jack one area. And I said, Frank, I'll see you somewhere soon.
    39:45
    But, you know, I'll be going there. I know I'm going to Australia soon. wherever I need to be, I'll be, like always. It's just great to look. You know, the people that came by my house, it's great to look at their faces and their reactions. And when they're playing the game, it's what I said many years ago, you know, it's like the chef in the kitchen coming out asking the people, how's the food? You know, it's just great to hear. And that's why I called Eric. I wanted him to hear from people who played the game because basically hardly anybody has played the game outside of the company. You know, years ago you could bring games to a test location and put them out and observe what's going on. Today with social media, the first place I brought it to would be crawling with people, you know, would skew the bookkeeping and the audits and the times and everything like that. It would be kind of worthless. I was waiting for Jonathan to pipe up with his question I feel like I've taken up most of the time but I was going to ask when can we expect a gameplay video but you already sort of answered that should be probably in the next couple of days maybe even today I don't know there's so many things going on I can't I don't want to be and I can't be involved with every single thing anymore. It's just, it's gotten so big that it's great that we have great people taking care of things. Right. So, with previous games, once the game was announced, it was also for sale in the Jersey Jack webshop.
    41:30
    I don't recall seeing anything pointing towards the Jersey Jack pinball webshop at this time. Is there a reason for that? or did they just not pay an application?
    41:44
    No, everything in the media that we put together says call your distributor because we'd rather everything go through a distributor.
    41:53
    The website, Jersey Jack Pinball website that's been relaunched, and it looks beautiful and it's very functional. We're getting more of the service elements back up there, loading them back up, code downloads and things like that. It does sell games. It does take orders. If it gets an order from an area, a geographic area, where we have a distributor, we send the order over to that distributor. We're not looking to take orders away from people. But there are people who like to buy from us for whatever reason. They might not deal with the distributor near them for whatever reason. So we want people to deal with the relationship they're comfortable with. We're not getting in the middle of that and telling people, you live in you know stumble uh texas then you got to deal with a certain person or anything like that there's choices everywhere and um yeah just i don't care where they buy it as long as they buy it right okay um there was also um well the northwest pinball uh and arcade show is coming up and they were supposed to be the first public event that would have the Harry Potter game. But apparently, that's now no longer the case, and even the appearance of the design team has been cancelled. Is there any particular reason for that? So, like everything, it's, you know, you've got to scratch the surface. So, about a month ago, when we knew the date, we thought we would have a team to go to the show, and go there with, you know, 10 games or something like that. And the way things rolled out, because I was waiting for a video to be completed, you know, the date just crept up on us, and it wasn't worth, you know, knocking everybody out to overnight games at $1,700 each on an airplane to go do the show and have Eric go there and all that stuff. So we made a decision that, you know, we were going to Southern Pride. We already made that decision as well. So we'll have everything down there. We'll have people down there. I can't be there because I'll be standing in, I'll be standing with Martin in the UK that same day. But, you know, Eric would go wherever he's asked to go. and he'll be a lot of places doing presentations and answering questions and things like that. He'll be doing that at Southern Fright. And Charlie Martin, our distributor in the area of Seattle, he will have a game at the Seattle Pinball Museum this weekend. So he has his game. And if you want to play the game in the Seattle area, go to Seattle Pinball Museum starting tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. so there's still a game out there it's at the distributor's place and not at the show ok so the games that are out there they're not running, well I'm assuming they're not running what will be the final code, they are still some way towards completion, I think the game code version was like 0.8, I think I saw somewhere around that number, so there's still a lot more to go into the game.
    45:29
    That's what I take from that code version. Is that accurate? And if so, what else is going to go into it? Well, you could ask Joe Cass what's going to go into it because there's so much stuff that goes into it. You know, you talk about a game that has eight movies. When we did Hobbit and it went from two movies to three I thought it was a lot. But David Thiel, I think I even, I knew it, but I read it on Facebook maybe. You know, he wrote, I think I said, 116 songs. Yeah.
    46:06
    Three times as much audio in this as there was in The Hobbit, I think. Yeah. And The Hobbit is gigantic.
    46:14
    So there's a lot more coming. It's not a box of lights. The name I coined when we first had Wizard of Oz, it's not a box of lights. It's a real game. and there's wizard modes in it and it's fun to play and it's growing every day. We don't send out a bare bones game. Other people would say this game is finished.
    46:34
    You know, but for us, it's not finished. Not yet. Soon. Maybe it's another month, month and a half, two months, something like that. During the summer it will be finished. Before the end of the summer it will be finished.
    46:49
    Code-wise. Speaking of... yeah ok well speaking of growing Jack earlier today I had a brief call with Jean-Paul De Wyn who did art direction of the game LTV animations and artwork as well what can you tell about the Dutch invasion that's been a blessing I mean, there are many, many, many talented pinball people in, I guess it's the Nadelands, right?
    47:29
    Right, yes. Just to clarify, when you started your company, Jean-Paul Levin was hired to do the LCD animations,
    47:43
    and he has been working on every title since. and he has also been expanding well starting working solo for you and he has been expanding his team so there's now five Dutch talents so to speak that have been working on this Harry Potter game six if you include John Baldwin's daughter so how come I don't have you working on it too Can you afford me?
    48:20
    I don't know. I'll have to talk about it. Okay, let's talk. I kid, I kid. No, I'd love to work for you, you know that. But you already do. You already do.
    48:38
    Hang on. You're playing him. We need to talk. We're only joking. You guys are never chills for me. You get a hard time with a lot of things.
    48:52
    We never give you a hard time. I'm just sorry we're not in France drinking champagne and eating chocolate bars. It'll happen again, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get that out soon. But, no, I just noticed the Dutch team working on your titles is growing, hence my paraphrasing of the Dutch invasion. And, well, I'm happy to hear that you're happy with what they're doing for you.
    49:21
    We love them. You know, the time zone difference is beneficial to us. We wake up and there's all kinds of artwork submitted. and then we're ready to go to sleep and some of them are still awake so it's been great Right, I do need to ask you about what I assume you have a good knowledge of this but what is, to me at least the most significant mechanism in the game and that's the moving staircase which seems to me an amazing bit of mechanical design.
    50:04
    Yeah. Are you able to tell us a bit more about that? Because I don't think from any of the videos that I've seen or any of the literature I've seen, it really kind of explained just what it's capable of doing and how it works. Well, there's 13 ball paths that it creates, and it creates the different shots all during the game.
    50:28
    And people like Dan Lacek and Mechanical Engineering and Eric and some other people got this thing to work pretty much perfectly. You know, nothing in a pinball machine ever works perfectly. You could hit a target. You could hit a stand-up target with a ball and it scores. Next game you could hit the stand-up target with a ball and maybe it doesn't score. Maybe you glance the target or whatever. So things don't work all the time. We need things on our games to work all the time. And we spend a lot of effort and energy to get them to that level. And there's some critical people in the company that go through testing,
    51:06
    not just testing in a closet and you hear things clicking and clacking, but play testing to make sure they work. Because we don't want to have people in our tech support and in daily recalls and problems and everything like that. Look, pinball, we've said it many times, the steel ball rolling around, crashing into wood and metal and rubber and plastic, whatever, and it's trying to destroy itself, right? That's what it's trying to do. The goal of that ball is to destroy the game. So we need to make sure everything works. But that's a great mechanism that Eric created and his team, and it's a lot of fun in the game. the Death Eater is crazy you knock this target down you get in the Death Eater and the target goes back up and then all the lights flash green and different colors and that ball comes out of there like 250 miles an hour and you better be prepared for it and there's a lot of loop shots orbit shots that you can do Joe Cass can get things to go around you know, ten times. I can only get them maybe two times.
    52:18
    You could do a figure eight with the ball in this game. It's just crazy. It's different, which is great.
    52:27
    I really need to see this. I need more videos. I want to see all the things it's capable of. I feel like I've only just scratched the surface at this stage. I know.
    52:38
    I suppose the first thing is to get your hands on the machine and go to your distributor and play it. Right. And then next week you can go to locations and play it. The week after, you know, every week, obviously, more games are going out. So, you know, like I said before about building the CE first,
    52:57
    the silly explanation is, you know, you pay for a first class ticket, you get on the plane first. There should be some CEs built first. So that's what we did. Now we're going to rotate CE, Arcade, and Wizard. We're going to build all three. I don't know at the same time but there's going to be you know 100, 200 this 100, 200 that another couple hundred of this and try to do what I said before with the watering can like sprinkle them around right so just out of curiosity so it took you 10 years to get this license obviously or at least I assume you're very familiar with the license itself the movies.
    53:43
    Which brings up the question, was there anything that you were like from the movies, from the storyline that you absolutely wanted to be in the game that you told Eric?
    54:00
    Respecting, of course, that he's doing his thing, but a certain aspect or element of the game had to be in there for you.
    54:09
    No, I think You know, Eric knows the story so much better than me and many other people. Having read all the books and being in the culture of the Harry Potter game and the franchise, he was the perfect designer to do the game. When I brought him to Warner Brothers in March of 2023, we had our meeting.
    54:35
    You know, some people at the time thought, like, it wouldn't be Eric designing the game. and personally I felt he was the only person in the company that could be the designer of the game. I mean, there are other people on the team, but he had a passion for it, and I knew, having hired Eric out of college, I knew he would make something great, and I believe he made something great. We'll see. Time will tell, but first blush, it's a game changer. It really is. So to me, it's like when I said in Texas, it's like another Wizard of Oz. And that's what I said, and people thought I was losing my memory or something or losing my mind or something wrong with Jack. He said that the next game is Harry Potter, and don't buy anything until you see Harry Potter. I'll tell you what. At 11.59, nobody was buying anything. At 12.01, the whole world is buying this game.
    55:39
    Jen is buried in paperwork. Michael Fox is buried on his computer. A whole bunch of people are, you know, very happy that they're not disappointed that we made something really good, maybe great.
    55:55
    And pinball goes on. The Jews are happy. They'll get a lot of trade-ins of different games. You know, it's a catalyst. You know, what makes sales are customers, consumers that want to buy something. That's what makes it happen. If you don't have the product, you don't have the sales. And we're giving our distributors the product. We're giving them good food. We're not giving them games that aren't finished. We're not giving them games that are stripped down, overpriced.
    56:29
    These games are expensive. They're not overpriced. They're expensive because of all the time and millions of dollars to develop them and all the time to build them and all the time to support them and transport of parts and tariffs and all kinds of crazy things that go into the picture. And that's what we do. We try to do our best and keep it real for our customers. We respect them and we appreciate their loyalty and their business. I think with this title you've actually created quite a conundrum for a number of your buyers because they were almost thinking, well, we've got to have the collector's edition because it's the only one that's going to have everything on the playfield. And then they come out and seen the wizard edition and gone, oh, well, everything's on that playfield as well. and indeed on the arcade game and then I started thinking, well, do I need everything that's in the... well, obviously you don't need anything, but can I justify everything that's in the collector's edition? And rather than having the collector's edition being like a slam dunk, as it might have been for top-end collectors in the past, they're sort of in two minds about which edition to get. and I think you've also as I'm sure you intended brought in a whole bunch of people with the arcade edition who thought that a Jersey Jack pinball was out of their price range so which is obviously a great thing to do and get them on the ladder so is this just something for this title because it is such a special title to have these three editions? Or is it something that you think is going to be policy going forward? Or is it something you're going to just do on a game-by-game basis? Well, we'll see. But if it works, it's a new formula for us. And you need to do different things. You need to adjust to the market. and you need to grow your base, which I try to do with every title that we build.
    59:01
    Wizard of Oz brought in different people to pinball than before Wizard of Oz. It brought young people and women especially to play pinball. And I knew it would. And I said, well, if you put her in the bar, every lady that's at the bar is going to be playing the game. And that's what happened. With Harry Potter, you have millions and millions of people that love Harry Potter. They don't even know that those pinball machines are still made. They don't even know what a pinball machine is. They don't know a play field in a game from a cornfield. So we're going to get a lot of new people coming in and buying Harry Potter. The game to me, if I put my pinballsales.com hat on, this game to me says take my money.
    59:51
    It's just I want it. You know, I had games like that in the past at pinball sales. When we had Monopoly, it was a great vanilla theme. It was good action. It was priced right. And I sold the most out of anybody in the world. It was the same when I had Pirates of the Caribbean. It was the same when I had The Simpsons.
    60:12
    Those games, they sold. They were good games and people related to them and they sold. But we're trying to make something for everybody, as you can see. And it's hard to be everything to everybody, but we can try. Why not?
    60:29
    So what's your metric for success of this three-tier method of selling? Sell a lot of each model. and it looks so far it looks like that's what's going on you know there are people buying we had somebody today buy a CE and an arcade edition one for one house and one for another house so you know if you have a few homes and you want to buy a few games we'll build them for you know this game has something... Go ahead.
    61:10
    Well, the only thing that I'm wondering right now is you have a hit game, no doubt about it. This is a game you'll be building for a very long time.
    61:26
    Does that mean it's going to take a long time before we see the next game? Probably. Okay. probably I mean look the market doesn't call for four or five games from one manufacturer I'm sorry I think things got overbuilt because there are many manufacturers now not just one or two or three or four I think there's you guys know better than me there's 12, 13, 14, 15 16 maybe another guy opened up while we have this talk right now the world really can't absorb these games and if you bought three pinball machines a year maybe you decided you're only buying one or two and the one or two you're going to buy are not going to be flipper games where you're going to flip it and lose a thousand or two thousand dollars or make a thousand or two thousand dollars you're going to be more selective and more attentive to what you buy and look a hobby is not about buying pinball machines and making money off them that's not what we do okay except if you're an operator we want you to make money on your game i mean i sold you know games years ago for two or three grand that are worth 10 12 grand today so people the people that are in the hobby 10 15 20 years and they have a collection that collection went up exponentially maybe the games they bought lately haven't gone up exponentially but the market is a different market. You know, everything goes up and everything goes down and then it goes back up and then it goes back down. You bought the games to have fun with, to play with, to have with your friends and your family. You didn't buy them as an investment. You know, I told people to buy Apple in 2000. If you did that, you made some money. You know, I told them to buy Amazon in 2003. If you did that, you made money. That's a different thing altogether. It's not a pinball machine. Pinball machine is a different kind of thing. If the white water I sold you in 2004 for three grand is now worth six grand, you know, high-five yourself. If you bought a game and it's worth a thousand, two thousand, some games I see are $5,000 less than what they were. I'm not going to mention what they are, but we all know what they are.
    63:50
    You know, as they say, it is what it is. It's not a money-making investment business. We're not investment advisors, we're makers of games. Oh, quite right too. And also if you're... the actual value of the machine only ever comes into it if you cashing out really Because if you buying an equivalent game or trading your game for an equivalent that game would probably have gone up by the same amount as yours has Exactly. So you won't be buying anymore, you'll be buying the same level as you would have done if it hadn't gone up. You hit it right on the head, Martin. If it's like the real estate market, the value of your home went up, you can get a lot more money than you paid for it, but you have to move somewhere. And if you're moving somewhere, chances are the price of that house, condo, whatever it is, went up too. So maybe you didn't score. I mean, if you're downsizing, it's one thing. If you're selling your games off and there are people that go through different life changes and they retire or they pass away, unfortunately, games change hands. And, you know, you've got to hope that your wife doesn't sell you games when you're dead for the price that you told her you bought them at. I said, you know, your friend Jerry comes over and says, you know, it's too bad about Charlie. You know, it's really, you know. Charlie told me he was giving me that Medieval Madness for like 500 bucks. You know, I didn't want to take it from him because, you know, he was still playing it. You know, he was sick. But, you know, I'll give you 600 bucks for it, you know. So, I'm sure that never happens. I'm sure. Yeah. I mean, I just think so. Now, I do need to ask you one more question about Harry Potter, because that's what we're talking about.
    65:37
    Are there any... Well, two questions then. Are there any sort of technical innovations in this game which we haven't seen in earlier J.J.P. games? And are we any closer to getting a sort of replacement for the scorebit system or going beyond that and having more collaborative sort of leaderboards and record-keeping and achievements and that kind of stuff that's been mooted for a long time, and people were wondering whether it may turn up in Harry Potter. I'm guessing it hasn't because I haven't seen it promoted anywhere. Right. So your first question I'll answer last, and your last question I'll answer first. Okay. So the answer simply is yes. We're working on it. We're developing it. and was spending a good amount of money on it. And we're working on it.
    66:34
    I'll say that. You can't put any time on it. I'll say that. And your first question that I'm answering last is there is something in this game that's never been done in pinball and really any game that I've ever seen in my years, and I call it Jersey Jack Pinball Game Changer. and what it is included with every game are three plastic key fobs that have a QR code on each one of them and they represent easy normal and wizard and they'll be on the key ring with your keys to the game so you can start your game you can walk up to your game door closed start your game push the begin button before you shoot the ball take one of those key fobs, let's say the easy one and point it at the camera and the game reverts the easy rules or the game reverts the normal rules or the game reverts the wizard which is really hard and it's the first time ever that I know of that a player, you know customer, player, whatever can walk up to the game and select the difficulty level on a pinball machine.
    67:54
    Yes, absolutely. And how long does that stick for? You know, you start another game straight afterwards. Does it stay in the difficulty level that you previously selected? Every game you're going to flash the QR code. And this is something I thought about a good 15 years ago. I wanted to do this. and we were never able to do it. We were stretched very thin and I forgot about it. Then I remembered it and I forgot about it. And a couple of years ago, I brought it up again.
    68:28
    And really as a surprise, Joe Katz and Duncan Brown brought it home and they showed it to me in Chicago a couple of months ago and I was floored. I just, you know, I could have cried because you hear from customers that, you know, my son doesn't play very well. And, you know, he doesn't get to see a lot of things in the game. And he gets frustrated. And they're like, well, good. Put it on easy. And you shoot around a little bit. You're going to get multi-ball. You're going to get to see wizard modes. You're going to get to see more things progressing and happening. And we want to make one thing in the Nolan Bushnell game design philosophy. Easy to understand, difficult to master. And this is something which will help build better pinball players because it gives them an option to learn the game differently,
    69:26
    see more things, be more encouraged than discouraged. Because, you know, operators, and I don't mean operators. I'm not going to say anything negative. But operators, you know, the game comes in. they don't all update the code when it needs to be updated. They don't level the game the right way necessarily. They don't set up the game the right way, and they don't really change the factory settings based on the environment of the customer base at the location. And that's a broad statement, and it's not true for everybody certainly. We have a lot of pinball customers, Peter Rose and other people around the country that I could think of, that are very diligent and very active downloading code updates and making sure everything's level and making sure everything's clean and working. You know, a lot of games on location, they play, but they don't work.
    70:16
    You can play the game, but the features of the game are disabled because something's broken, and you can't get to different elements of the game that it was designed to do. So It's a challenge But this gives you This gives you A better experience For the customer potentially The player potentially And also Differentiates Jersey Jack pinball From everybody else Because nobody else could do this This raises a whole bunch of questions In my mind straight away Firstly Is that QR code tied to that game? Or is it something you could take with you If you go on location, for instance, and see the game there, is it something that will affect operated games, or is it something you need to enable in your home game? It'll work on any game. It's a generic QR code then, because it'll get published. I know what you're talking about. Let's say the game is set for free play, or something like that. In the easy mode, you can't get it. You can't turn the game upside down. You can't have a great player play easy and turn the game upside down.
    71:27
    It'll know that. It won't award certain things that the player might want, like free games or something like that.
    71:38
    Right, okay. So there's compensation, or it takes away some aspects of the game if you do go into easy play, but it's designed for a more fun, more casual play style. Yeah, I mean, the key fobs themselves were kind of designed for, you could put them on the apron, you could double-stick tape them to the apron. People could take pictures of them and use their phone to use them. You could put them on a card or something like that if you wanted to. I think that's what Christoph did for the show this weekend. He put them on cards. you can do a lot of things with it it's just the beginning of it I think it's going to evolve to be something bigger, I have a pending patent on it so I'm pretty sure that we'll prevail with that and I think it will be something great it's something very different and the people that I've spoken to about it, a handful of people that I told about it, they were very excited about it. Because they get a lot of people say, you know, the game's too hard. You know, the game's too hard. And you can't go in and set it easy for you and then close the door and then come back and set it hard for somebody else, you know.
    73:02
    Okay. So now we've got a way for a QR code that sets the game on location on free play. Yeah. That would be good. We could have one to open the safe in the bank next to. I would rather go free after the free play on the game yeah I'm sure you'll play to it as well yes oh well so actually I was going to ask about the game changer pending presence but you just answered that and explained it very thoroughly thank you for that I guess well I guess that wraps it up for our talk to you. Thank you very much for your time. Unless Mark has more questions.
    73:53
    I will have a lot more questions, but I need to get my hands on the game. So I look forward to doing that very soon. I think I'll just wrap it up and say congratulations on a very successful launch. I think, as you were saying earlier, I think probably your most successful new game launch certainly since The Wizard of Oz because that was a game changer, that was an industry changer when it came out.
    74:22
    Congratulations on finally bringing home 10 years of licensing negotiations and getting the game out there. And congratulations to the whole team who worked on it. And I think it looks incredible and I can't wait to get to my hands on it. well I hope you do soon and at least on the 21st when we do together you'll be able to play it if not before sooner and I want to thank you both for everything that you do for pinball and that you do for the good of pinball and promoting it and really to everybody listening all the pinball community on behalf of Jersey Jack Pinball my partners Leonard and Brett Abbas everybody that works for the company we appreciate your loyalty we appreciate your business we appreciate you and we're trying to build products that we can make money on not a lot but that promotes pinball and lets you have a fun playing pinball and that's what we're going to continue to do we're going to continue to innovate and make great games thank you very much Jack thank you guys Well thanks very much again Jack for taking time out on what is obviously a very busy day with the launch of Harry Potter for Dirty Jack Pimple and spending some time with us to give us an in-depth look at how that game came together Yeah much appreciated and always happy to have Jack on lots of insights that you don't usually get anywhere else Yep anybody knows the answer we get to our own questions yes we're very much appreciative of his time now one thing we didn't mention there is more news one thing we didn't mention with Jack was that our contact there and a contact for other media people as well Ken Cromwell he has just left Jersey Jack Pinball He's been there for about five years I believe Five years, yeah And he I believe he wanted to move on To pass his new Into a more sales orientated Role And in that regard he has joined Flippin' Out Pinball So Zach is there And where he will be doing Exactly that, I believe So it didn't come as a total shock to Jersey Jack and Pinball. They'd given them good notice. Plenty of notice, yeah. Just the timing of it was arranged such that he would leave at the end of May, by which time Harry Potter should have launched. But, of course, Harry Potter was delayed, and it just so happened that he had left a couple of days before the game did launch. but yeah so it was incidental yeah it was scheduled and yeah there's no ill thinking or anything about that it's just time to move on no and the door is still open for Ken if he wants to come back yeah absolutely yeah well at least until they appoint someone else which they haven't done yet yeah then it could get awkward yeah but we knew which Ken, all the best at flipping out pinball Absolutely Big success We'll see you at pinball shows in the future as well and it's always nice to see you It is, yeah So I think with that is there any more news from Jersey Jack Pinball?
    78:19
    No, I guess that's it I think that's it It's been a landmark month for them Congratulations on the entire team for the Harry Potter game Absolutely, so we move on to our second headline Which was about a latter of a game launch Now you can kind of understand why that might be But we are of course talking about Pinball Brothers Based in Sweden And they have an upcoming game Which they have formally announced As being based on the Predator movie so that's almost a companion piece to Alien because there was of course Alien vs Predator whether there will be an Alien vs Predator pinball we don't know yet but we do know that Predator pinball brothers would be the company to do it you'd think so wouldn't you yeah so we know it's coming out but it hasn't been announced yet we don't know whether there was any desire to not launch against Harry Potter which would be quite understandable if that was the case. But there have been lots and lots of teasers on social media. I think they've been getting a bit of kickback on that and people are just saying, just show us the game already. You know, we've been teasing it for long enough and let's see what you've actually got to show us. Because they have been teasing with quite a lot of images, one blurry picture of the playfield and some details, well, very few details about the game itself, including that it's a wide-body game, did we say? Yeah, yeah. So that's what we know. I did reach out to Daniel Jensen, the CEO of People Brothers, and he came back to me earlier today saying that he is busy in the development cave so to speak and didn't have much time to come on or anything and basically the only newsworthy thing that he mentioned is that things will become a lot clearer next week make of that what you want because that doesn't necessarily mean that we will see a reveal next week. It could also be that we get a date for the reveal and another date. Perhaps that blurry picture will become a bit clearer next week. That could also be the case, yes.
    81:01
    Okay, well, let's hope we get to see what they've been working on with Predator before too much longer, because I think people are getting a bit impatient.
    81:10
    Right. I am. I just hope they have the game ready, if Daniel still is in the development case, then I'm a little bit worried that the game might not be as finished as people are expecting it to be. So, just hoping that that's not the case and that they do have the game ready to be revealed, so to speak.
    81:37
    Again, we'll be reporting on that announcement or the reveal in our next episode. We will indeed. Yep, whatever it was they came out with.
    81:48
    Right. Okay, so I think that's it for Pinball Brothers up in Sweden. Let's head over to the US and to Barrels of Fun Pinball in Houston. Yes. And you may remember that last month, and I think even the month before that, we reported on a program that Barrels of Fun are running for existing Labyrinth game owners. where they could enter their name into a prize draw in order to win a brand new copy of game number two, which at that point hadn't been revealed as being June, but now we know it is. And that's indeed what happened. So registered owners could sign up and they would get one entry into the draw. And the lucky winner of that draw was a chap called Michael Lye from Forney in Texas who did indeed win himself a brand new Dune game okay well congratulations to Michael yeah and but if you didn't win this time then there is still hope because when they are ready to launch game number three which will take a while well yeah take a little while if you are registered with them with your either your Labyrinth or your Dune game, then you will be entered into another draw to win game number three. And if you are fortunate enough to own both games, then you get two entries into the draw, which is part of... Yeah, it is a nice... Nice program. Yeah, it's a part of what David Van Ness has been describing as their sort of family of Bowser Fun game owners that they like to engage with and reward for their loyalty in owning the game. So,
    83:49
    yeah, and you don't need to be the original buyer of the game, you just need to be the person who is owning the game at the time of the entries into the draw. Yeah, I do wonder how does that work, because let's say I own a Labyrinth game now, I register my game, I sell it off somebody else registers the same game then what happens?
    84:14
    well I think there will be a window where you register your game for the draw so if two people register it at the same time then it becomes more complicated but assuming you're not registering a game you don't own any more no but you could have already registered it oh well, not our problem No, not quite.
    84:39
    Yeah. And I understood Peros of Fun also attended the licensing show in Las Vegas. Yeah. David, I think it was David, or it would have been Brian, but I think it was David, did a short walkthrough video of the show, which didn't look hugely interesting, I have to say. But I guess if you're not looking for particular licenses or themes, or trends, then it's probably not that interesting.
    85:12
    Right. But I guess they're working on picking up new licenses for games, well, for Arrows of Fun's case, could be game number five, six, and upwards, because they've already got game three and four and possibly five already in development. In development, yes. Yeah, so they already know what those are going to be, assuming the licenses don't fall through for any particular reason. Well, it's always good to at least show your face at these events and mingle with these parties to build a relationship, you know. Absolutely. Yeah, even if you're not getting a license now, you might get one in the future, and at least you know which face belongs to what name.
    86:02
    Yeah, and keep in touch with the companies that you do have licenses. Yes. Or from. Yeah, just in case, as Jack was saying earlier, in case some of the personnel changes at those companies, and the more people there that you know, the easier it will be to keep that relationship you spoke about going. Right. So, speaking of David and F, you ran into David in Austria.
    86:30
    Yes, indeed. I was at the European Pinball Championship in Austria. held in Bokla Brook in the centre of the country which was an amazing event and David was there as was his family, his wife and kids and they were doing a bit of a European tour and at one of those events David came to the EPC and did a seminar on the making of Dune which I don't think I've seen him speak about the making of Dune it's fairly recently launched so it could well be the first time you'll see behind the scenes development pictures and information about how that game came to be and obviously if you weren't there you would have missed out but fortunately I was there and I was recording it all so you will find a recording of David's presentation on the Pinball News YouTube channel and shortly on the Pinball News website in the show report, which I am currently working on, but was delayed a little bit by a certain game being launched. I couldn't say today, but it's now yesterday. So we'll be catching up and bringing full details of that show and David's seminar, as well as all the other seminars that took place at the EPC, which there were five in total. But there was more from David because he didn't just do the seminar, he also did a signing for Bimble Flyers, Bimble Transite posters.
    88:14
    So he was on the stage signing these things for people who wanted them and it was quite cute people. And not only that, on Saturday night he ran a couple of what's called barrel ball tournaments. Now, if you're not familiar with barrel ball, you might be more familiar with something called stall ball Well, that works on the basis that you have a game and a whole bunch of people sign up to take part in the tournament They form a line, the person at the front of the line walks up to the machine, flips the ball tries to lock it in either a ball lock or a saucer or a scoop or something like that if they do that then they leave the machine and go to the back of the line to play again however if you drain the ball then you're out of that tournament yeah yeah that's you done so as you can see it could be like just two or three flips and then you're either out or you're back and to the back of the line yeah so the line moves fairly quickly yeah and eventually there's only one play unless full wings. That's right. Well, that's store ball. Barrel ball is a slight twist on that because obviously none of the games which you might play store ball on are designed for it, whereas Labyrinth actually is designed for barrel ball. So it does it slightly differently by lighting certain shots, and you have to make those shots in order to keep going in the tournament. If you make one of the red shots, which you're meant to shoot then you're out you don't have to drain but um same kind of idea and that's built into the labyrinth software so it's a nice easy and fun um tournament or competition to run either at a show or a family get together so i think it's a good fun okay very uh very uh very nice to hear um i'm looking forward to playing uh barrel ball um at one of my future events that i will be attending.
    90:17
    Mm, yep, it's, as I say, it was so easy to run that I think there were about three tournaments held just on Saturday night, so it moves quickly. It looks a bit daunting at first, you see this huge line of people, and we do this at the UK Pinfest show as well. The line snakes all the way around the building, but, or around the hall, I should say, on like three sides of it, but once it gets going, you're soon either going back to the end of the line or you're out. Right. So, yeah, good fun. Anyway, everyone enjoys it and there's a nice prize for the winner. Okay. So, did you happen to talk to David at the event? I certainly did. And, in fact, I took the opportunity to have a little sit down with him and have his take on the latest edition of our What's Cooking With feature. So David's going to give us his favourite dish, a very easy to make dish I should say. And so let's go back to Bockerbrook in Austria and find out from David. So today we're joined by Chief Mischief Maker of Barrels Upon Pinball, Mr David Van Ness. Hello David. Thanks. Hello, Martin. How are you today? Oh, very good, thanks. Looking forward to your recipe. So as we find out what's cooking with David and Matt. Yes, well, you know, I'm happy to share what we used to do in Australia and we still do it today in the offices at Barrels of Fun. Wow, yeah, me too. How can people cook this or make it up? Make it up? Well, it's really, really complicated, Martin. So what you're going to have to find is the thickest white bread that you can. It has to be really nice and thick and light and bouncy. You're going to get some margarine. Okay? But not by the way we want margarine. We want it spread nicely. So you're going to take a white piece of bread. You're going to put margarine on it. And then you get the most special ingredients, hundreds and thousands. Right. So this is what we call in Australia fairy bread. So it's called fairy bread. And it goes. Absolutely. And we always would, you know, when I'm in America, they'll go, what do you like? I'll say fairy bread, and they always think how complicated it is. So they're like, they're really curious of what it is, and then I bring out fairy bread. So you sprinkle on your hundred thousands on your bread, and you've got to cut it into triangles, and you fill that plate up. Now, the history of fairy bread is very, it basically comes from the older times, the generations, where people didn't have a lot of money, and it was very simple to make. Yes. And it was always served at kids' parties. So even to this day, people of my age, you go to their birthday parties, they will have fairy bread there. and nine out of ten times that's the first thing that goes because people just enjoy fairy bread and that's something that we even to this day we celebrate at the factory every month or every we celebrate everyone's birthday in the factory so when it came my birthday for the first time everyone was there i had fairy bread and for a week we're teasing what are you going what are we going to do we're going to do fairy bread what's that and like for some reason i don't know why they didn't google it but we eventually bought them fairy bread and uh they were like really, that's it? And when they had it, it was gone literally in minutes. So it's just one of those things. It's really, really simple, but it's a very Australian thing to do, and we love having it. Great. Well, it certainly sounds like something we should all be trying out. So get your fairy bread made up, and let us know how it went. So thank you very much, David. Thank you, Martin. Well, thank you very much again, David, for doing that, and it was good fun. and yes, if you want to make that particular meal or snack, then obviously very easy to do. I don't think Jonathan's a big fan of margarine though, are you? No, no, better margarine on my toast or bread or whatever. No, no. Right. But I love the sprinkles and yeah, so. Of course, yeah. Okay, well, a nice easy one to make and seems to be very popular at the Barrels of Fun Factory. Right. So, speaking of which... Well, oh yeah, go ahead.
    94:31
    No, I was going to say, you remember a couple of months ago we reported on the fact that Browns and Fromm had introduced their version, or their take on the non-re... or anti-reflective glass called Infinity Glass. Right. Well, there's a chance to actually win from Infinity Glass for yourself, although you have to jump through quite a few hoops in order to be in with a chance of doing it which might mean not that many people enter, so your odds of winning might be better Right, so basically I've looked at this there's a post on the Barrels of Fun Facebook and probably also Instagram and all the other socials
    95:23
    and that has to be or you have to at least share that or post a photo or story with the hashtags LabyrinthLove and JunePinball and InfinityGlassChallenge to show your fandom favorite moments or dream game room setup.
    95:47
    And then eventually five fans will win some exciting prizes which include a free piece of InfinityGlass and surprise goodies from the Barrels of Fun Vault.
    95:59
    But, like you said, quite a few hoops to jump through, but then again, that could also mean everybody's backing down or out. Yeah. You're one of the few entering. Yeah. Yeah, I like those odds, yes. But yes it a bit of work As we see later there are some easier competitions you can enter to win prizes from pinball manufacturers Right
    96:29
    And then last but not least, from Beryl for Fun. Yeah. You may remember a while ago we reported on a series called Tested, hosted by a chap called Adam Savage. and he did a program about the making of the Labyrinth game. Well, it was a big success, and he has gone ahead and done a new The Making Of video, and this time about the Dune pinball at Barrels of Fun. So if you go to YouTube and search for Tested and Adam Savage or search for Barrels of Fun pinball, you'll find that, and you can watch and see exactly how G-Pinball came to exist and how they built it right, ok, well that sounds interesting I might have to check that out and that does round it up for Barrels of Fun Pinball I suppose we should definitely not forget about that big manufacturer in Elk Grove Village Stern Pinball, you might have heard of them and there's some news Yeah, some news from them as well.
    97:42
    Although nothing big, obviously. We had the King Kong reveal last month, which is the game they're currently building.
    97:51
    So the most notable news from Stern Pinball the past month is that The Mandalorian is going into the Stern Vault, meaning no more production for at least two years. that does not mean that they will not have any games left in stock that might not become available for sale, but still, it's not going to be on the production line.
    98:16
    Maybe not a big surprise. I don't think the theme is as hot anymore as it was when the game came out. And the license probably expired by now.
    98:28
    Yeah, I would have thought so. Yeah, I don't think they're going to be making any more series over the Mandalorian, at least as far as I'm aware, and kind of slipped out of public consciousness at the moment, as attention moved to a different part of the Star Wars franchise. Right. So, yeah.
    98:49
    Wouldn't expect to see that back in production any, well, certainly not for two years, but probably not even after that. Right. Okay. So, on to a more recent game, although not entirely, but then again, yes and no. We're talking about Metallica Remastered, which is actually the game you can win if you register on Stern's email list between April 19th and June 30th for a chance to win the Metallica Remastered Premium. If you're already on the list, you need to fill out the form to confirm your email. And if you want a bonus entry,
    99:39
    then log in to Stern Thimble Insider Connected app during the promotional period of April 19th to June 30th.
    99:49
    Right, I'm in. Yeah, now you're not, because it's for U.S. residents only. I'm so sorry. I know you wanted this game so bad you wanted to win it.
    100:03
    Well, it's not that. I didn't want anybody else to win it. That was the key thing. Yeah. Oh, well. U.S. residents only. Too bad for all those overseas loyal customers that never get a chance to win anything.
    100:19
    Yeah. Yeah, sounds dodgy to me, but okay, fair enough. Their game, their rules. Right, okay. Now, speaking of rules, you have probably got some code updates from Stern. Oh, have I? Have I? Oh, yes, I have, yes.
    100:39
    Yes, four games got updates in the month of May. Venom started off getting 1.06 of code, which just added some new lighting and shaker motor effects and a few tweaks to achievements.
    100:55
    Metallica Remastered, we were just talking about that, gets version 1.01, so just above version 1, which added the, oh, you remember, we've spoken before about how Stern's service menu has always been sort of based on the old dot matrix display and it looked very archaic. Well, with King Kong, they upgraded that to have a full graphical user interface and they started rolling that back into some of the older games and Metallica remastered, not exactly old, but it now got the full service user interface.
    101:30
    They took the opportunity to also change some of the rules and fix some of the bugs in it. Dungeons & Dragons, not the current title, but the title before that, that also got the new service menu user interface in version 0.9 which added over 40 new achievements for those of you who care about that also added a new cut scenes gameplay mode which allow you to view all the cut scenes in the game in one go if that's of interest to you and we might find some there you didn't know existed because you haven't got that far through it yet so there's an opportunity to watch them changed some of the rules including the main dragon multi-ball rules and some tweaks to gameplay and scoring but they also came out with another update on the 27th, so 19 days later, which added three new dungeon crawl awards, and changed some more of the rules, and added some more new sound effects to it. Finally, King Kong, which is the current game, came out with version 0.82, so still fairly early code, on the 15th of May, and as you'd expect from early code, they were changing a lot of things in this one. so they changed the gameplay added and changed some of the rules lots of bug fixes lots more call outs, sound effects, light shows, shaker effects and a new bunch of high score table entries to give you more of a chance of seeing your name on the screen at some point, at least your initials and that is the code update for Stern Pinball in May 2025 right, ok then well I wouldn't say next door but close enough, American Pinball just to stick around in the US for a little bit yeah I heard there were some good deals on American titles in Memorial Day sales especially Galactic Tank Force American People was offering the game for slightly under 8,000 dollars but there have been Galactic Tank Force signature editions new in box sale even at 7,000 dollars so yeah, you might be tempting and in the UK you could get it just under 8,000 pounds including 20% VAT And on the same subject of Galactic Tank Force, Dennis Nordman reported on his Facebook that they which is probably Paul Reno and Dennis, sold out all their Galactic Tank Force games, which resulted in me assuming, and you know what happens when you assume things, but I figured, I believe, that it was suing American Pinball for unpaid royalties that he was supposed to be getting for the design of Collective Tank Force and other games that never saw the light of day. Seems to me that American Pinball may have struck a deal with Dennis and paid him in the form of a bunch of games that Dennis had to sell off himself. Which he did. and then his post saying that while they sold out, American people may still have some, as we just mentioned earlier on.
    105:10
    Hmm, whichever's selling them in the Memorial Day sale. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, although obviously Memorial Day is over for this year, there's very likely to be similar discounts available on those games for other memorable public holidays in the U.S. or in global ones. Yeah, or even because of Wednesday.
    105:34
    Oh, I like the sound of that sale. Yes. Okay. So, no news from American Pimble regarding the third-party manufacturing offer that they're currently offering, so to speak, for upstarting pimble companies that are looking for a partner. So, no news regarding that, but, well, we still hope to hear from American people. And the same goes for the development slash reveal or announcement of Cuphead, which is the game that is almost ready to go, but we're still waiting for them to actually give it a go. Yeah, I think I can probably confirm now that that was the next game or will be maybe the next game as I think it's pretty widely known by now and has been confirmed by the people working on the game but yeah it's whether they're also picking their time to announce it around once the big beasts of King Kong and Harry Potter are out and launched like some other companies and Predator and Predator, yeah well, yeah let's see ok, so let's head back to your neck of the woods and Dutch Pinball who are also at the well, represented at the European Pinball Championship with their three games from Bride of Pinball, Lebowski and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, their Dutch Pinball exclusive title. And there's some news from them. Well, yeah, the news is mostly, well, obviously they're building their Alice's in Wonderland games. The news regarding Dutch Pinball has mostly to do with the potential 50% terrorist on European goods sent to the US, which will start at the 9th of July, this 50% tariff increment, which is probably not enough time for machines to ship by sea and clear customs by that date. So that's a bit of a risk to ship games. if they would have been ready already. But then again, the whole terrorist situation is a situation that might be completely different tomorrow from today. So it's probably best to wait for negotiations to begin and see where they end up with.
    108:41
    And that's the only news from Dutch Fribble. But that people is not the only one facing terrorist problems, because we also have Wonderland Amusements, who announced their Alice is Going to Wonderland game, funded by a Kickstarter campaign, which was heavily funded. something like that, five times more than what they were aiming for. But they are building their games in Hong Kong, which is China. And Chinese products, well, as of whenever we looked this up, well, let's put it differently, they came out with a statement saying, as of today, our product category is facing a 145% tariff on Chinese import. That said, we're still months away from needing to file our import paperwork, and it is a fast-moving situation. Most analysts believe one or two things will happen before then. A. The overall tariff will be reduced closer to the lower rate most of the rest of the world's or b. amusement machines like ours will receive a carve-out or reduced rate as has historically been the case. As we have previously stated, it is our intention to pay the terrorist amount and not shift that burden to backers. In the worst-case scenario, we may opt to hold shipments at our factories temporarily while we wait for this to settle.
    110:25
    Many industries are lobbying hard for summer relief before the holiday season is impacted too dramatically.
    110:32
    Know that we are monitoring developments daily, just like everyone else in our shoes. Yes, well, they may end up doing the same thing that Dutch Pinball are, and holding shipments to the US. But in the case of Wonderland Amusements, I think you could only buy the game, You're going to back it through Kicksfelter if you were in the US. So all the machines are going that way. So if they hold it temporarily, that temporary duration is an unknown amount and an unknown time and could be years if no deal is ever reached. I believe some kind of reduction in that tariff has already happened but as they say it's a volatile situation and no one really knows what's going to happen.
    111:32
    So they have to wait and see. And then we will report on it. Yep, we certainly will. Okay. So, how about Spooky Pinball?
    111:47
    Well, a little bit of news from Spooky Pinball. Spooky Luke and Morgan Emery from Spooky Pinball were guests at the European Pinball Championships in Vockerbrook in Austria they were supposed to be holding a seminar talking about what's going on at Spooky Factory and some behind the scenes views but unfortunately they both got a little ill they'd been travelling around Europe and I think have been in Italy recently before they came to Austria and were not well enough to do that so they did attend the show signed some autographs did a signing session on the table and chatted to fans of Spooky Games but didn't stay around long enough to do a seminar so unfortunately we didn't get to hear that and you won't be able to watch it which is strange but never mind I hope they enjoyed their trip to Austria as much as everybody else there did and I'm sure they were impressed by what they saw now for the EPC the organiser Stefan Riedler had the entire line-up of spooky pinball games all the way from America's Most Haunted up to the very latest game The Evil Dead not The Evil Dead, Evil Dead I should say with every game in between including games like Domino's Pizza and the Jetsons through Scooby-Doo and Halloween and games like that Looney Tunes and Ultraman as well both versions of that game there so part of a very impressive line-up of machines at that show now we've got some Evil Dead some new code for Evil Dead came out on the 16th, which added Terrell Multiball and added a new Linda Trick, because she tries to trick you with various changes to the gameplay. Well, this latest one reverses the flippers, which is always good for a laugh. And there are also some rule and scoring changes and a few fixes to bugs. Not that bug. Bugs in the game code. Right. And that's it, I think, for Spooky. Okay. I got some news from Andrew McBain from Pinball Adventures. Oh, good to know. Yeah, you may remember them. They're, I think, the only Canadian pinball manufacturer, although their first game, Pony Factory, I believe, only had a very small run, and the development of their next title, Elements, is taking years. yeah can't make it any better but Andrew sent out a message to I believe several media outlets but I happen to be one of them and I'll just read it out loud so you get it sort of straight from the horse's mouth if that's an appropriate expression it'll do So, an update from Bimble Adventures, elements, progress, and what's next. Now, here we go. Hi, everyone. Apologies for the delays since the last update. As you can imagine, we're running several businesses. The ones bringing in the most revenue tend to take priority. I'm sure many of you can relate. So, where are we with elements? We're just waiting on a few more parts to arrive for our boards to complete final testing. We hope that we'll wrap up this week. The cabinets have all been modified and now include a new rail system that makes lifting the playfield much simpler. Something we think most users will really appreciate. We redesigned the back box with high quality adjustable hinges and added metal accents above and below the large display screen. These elements will be powder-coated in a unique finish to represent the theme of the game. It is going to stand out! All rules, music, voiceovers and videoclips have been finalized and implemented. The unique feature allows players to play their own music in the background, a personal touch we think people will love.
    116:35
    We've made some final changes to the artwork and text on the playfields to make it pop more visually. You'll see what we mean in the photos we've sent over. Actually, I only received one and it didn't stand out to me. all ramps, side rails and metal guides will be will also be powder coated giving the game a rich medieval look that complements the theme beautifully if all goes according to plan we're aiming to showcase gameplay by the end of next month which would be July I think, as always metal work would work and art takes time but we're getting close The game will be priced at around 8,000 US dollars and will only be one edition produced. We're limiting production to, pay attention, three to four units per month on a first-come, first-served basis.
    117:42
    We're also about 80% finished with our next game, Sushi Madness. and we hope to share gameplay footage in the coming months. Stay tuned.
    117:54
    So, all that news for three to four games built in a month. If ever. Yeah. Yes. Yes, if it ever happens. Which it certainly hasn't happened so far. Yeah. And assuming they get the orders for the games. Yes. Now, you played Elements, or at least another type of the game. You were very excited about it. So there is potential there, but let's say they get 80 orders and you're at the end of the line and they're building three, four games a month.
    118:29
    You'll be waiting for... Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's two years. Yeah. Well, they'll probably all be waiting two years to place the order.
    118:39
    Oh, well. So anyway, well, that's the news from Pimble and Danger, and we wish them all the best. and of course, yeah.
    118:49
    Yeah, well, they're in a good, could be in a good position to take advantage of pinball sales into Canada. Yeah. If tariffs make American games too expensive. Right. But they need to get their act together and get moving quickly. Yeah, well, the quickly part is something we haven't seen from pinball adventurers yet. I wish them all the best, but we really need to start seeing games, I think. But that's my personal opinion. Yeah. Anyway.
    119:27
    Okay, well, let's move to another company who has been producing games, and that's Hexapimble over in France.
    119:35
    Not much news from them, other than the fact that they have been celebrating the third anniversary of the team starting the company. Right. so they are now we are three you know they can they can claim three years in the pinball uh business um still only one model though with uh space hunt but uh people seem to like it people who play it seem to like it it just doesn't seem to get out there very much right and uh it's a shame because it should do but uh it's getting good good uh traction within france where it's appearing at quite a few local shows but not appearing in many in the US very much or in any of the big events okay yeah unless someone happens to take you know one like they did at Pinball Expo where Rob Burke took his own yeah space hunt game there right okay so and there And there is a little bit more news, they will be attending, I think it's called the SOUD, the South West people show in France. So I saw an announcement on their Facebook timeline. They will be showing off their game over there as well, so if you happen to be in France and attending that show, then you get the chance to play Space and True. Okay, let's move to another, even more recent start-up, a Hexer running three years old, Ramp's pinball, they're a little less old than that. Oh yeah, well, yeah. So, and, what's the news? Well, no news.
    121:27
    They were supposed to launch their road trip game in April, you can kind of understand why it may not have been the best time in which to launch a new game what with several King Kong and Harry Potter all about to launch and no particular date given but Road Trip which is their first title seems to have gone missing in action at the moment There's no updates on any of their social media feeds or details of what they've been working on in the meantime when it hasn't been launched. So I hope that's still in development and can see the light of day. Right. So we'll bring you any news on that as and when we receive it. Yeah. Okay. So then, well, we have Homepin in Taiwan, a manufacturer of the Blues Brothers, which is their current title. There have basically been no news. I did reach out to Mike, asking about, well, what the current situation is, and he told me he had been putting out many fires for a month or so, and is also catching up with numerous loose ends around the place that need his attention. Yeah, that sounds familiar if you're a small business and you have to wear a lot hats so it's not surprising so that's the latest from from hoping and that's all I have to report on that okay well no real news from them but we all have a bunch of companies where we have literally no news at all so I'm not having okay just go to this then quickly to Randers of the rather fast yeah okay No news from...
    123:27
    Podretti Gaming. Or... Podretti Pinball. Whichever you prefer. And there's also no news from... Multimorphic. Okay, we're still waiting on the start of the build of Portal, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, indeed. Yes, I was just thinking today that Portal is another game featuring the voice talent of Mark Silk. Right. along as we've just seen today's launch of Harry Potter, also features... Everybody wants to work in pinball. He does, yeah, that's right. And then there's also... Also. No news from... Turner Pinball. Right. They have their medieval arcade game, which... Merlin's, yeah. Oh, yeah, sorry, yeah.
    124:14
    Merlin's arcade game, which actually got quite a good response I have to say when it did yeah I think Turner Pimble have applied for a registered trademark regarding that game but that's all the news that I came across so then also no news from Chicago Gaming well that's not surprising nope Despite promises to share more news That ended Rather quickly But they're still building games So let them build games And that's Oh well, we'll see No news from Vector Pinball in Australia Okay I have nothing to add to that And speaking of Australia Is there any news from Hager's Pinball No, no news at all. Checked on them as well. Okay. And who else do we have no news from? No news from Victronic in Spain. Okay. How about Cardona people in the US? No news from them either. Okay. How about SDR people in Spain? Hmm, let me check. No, no news from them either. Okay. What sort of people in Spain then? Well, funnily enough, you should mention that Because there's no news from them either Okay, laugh but not please Did you have any news from Circus Maximus? What do you think? No, it's been eight years since our last update So it's probably time that we call it a day with Circus Maximus I don't think they're ever going to mention their Python's Pinball Circus game.
    126:17
    And the Kingpin, either. That game. No, or Kingpin, no, which was supposed to be funding Python's Pinball Circus development. Yeah. So, no, if that game ever gets made, I don't suppose it will be them that makes it. Right, OK. Any other news?
    126:38
    Well, I've already mentioned about the EPC in Austria, so we won't go into that too much more. To mention, there's a chap called Kirk Hobbs who wants us to correct a fact that we reported from the Texas Pinball Festival as to exactly who it was who asked Jack what the next game title would be.
    126:58
    We reported it was Stefan Rieger, and Jack confirmed that it was, but apparently it wasn't. It was Kirk himself who got in touch over the internet and asked this question. So, sorry it wasn't Stefan and it was Kirk, but that's now corrected. So there you go. Okay. And that rounds it up for our recap of the Pimble Industry News for May 2025.
    127:30
    And our exclusive interview with Jack Ranieri and your What's Cooking with Dave Zamas. Yes, indeed. Yeah, we have quite a lot of stuff considering there's a very little happening apart from the launch of Harry Potter. But anyway, we will be back at the start of July. You can imagine that. The start of July with our next Pincast. Academy.
    127:55
    Yeah, well, you have to. Looking back at all the events in the pinball world throughout this exciting month of June. So, until then, from me, Martin Ayer of Pinball News, and Jonathan Euston of Pinball Magazine.
    128:12
    We hope you have a really joyous June and we look forward to joining you again next month for the very next edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast. So, bye for now. Bye-bye.