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The Pinball Show Ep 105: Rumor Corner

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 41m·analyzed·Jul 19, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Stern Comic-Con Venom rumors debated; Dennis predicts no reveal despite speculation.

Summary

The Pinball Show Episode 105 covers Stern Pinball's Comic-Con appearance, with heavy speculation about a potential Venom pinball machine announcement. Dennis and Zach debate whether Stern will reveal a new game at the convention, with Dennis skeptical due to production schedules and Stern's historical pattern of not announcing games at conventions. The episode also discusses potential design team members, Jersey Jack's Toy Story 4 release, Spooky's TNA 1.2 update, and broader industry production trends.

Key Claims

  • Stern Pinball does not announce new product games at conventions, period

    high confidence · Dennis states this as a historical pattern when explaining why he doesn't expect a Venom announcement at Comic-Con

  • Jersey Jack Pinball released Toy Story 4 successfully last month

    high confidence · Craig Bobby's news segment references this as a recent release preceding Venom rumors

  • Spooky Pinball is releasing TNA 1.2 (Total Nuclear Annihilation 1.2) with scorebit integration and bug fixes

    high confidence · Craig Bobby reports this was confirmed by Scott Denisay in a Loser Kid podcast interview

  • Todd McFarlane has indicated he would never work for Marvel again because he has Vision Comics

    medium confidence · Zach references this as something noted on NAP Arcade when discussing whether McFarlane might do Venom artwork

  • Stern has production gaps in August and significant room in September for bulk production scheduling

    medium confidence · Dennis references looking at production schedules to support his argument against an immediate Venom release

  • Brian Eddy is the frontrunner for lead designer on the rumored Venom game

    medium confidence · Craig Bobby's news segment identifies this as the rumored designer credit for Venom

  • Zombie Yeti is the rumored artist for Venom

    medium confidence · Craig Bobby identifies this as fan speculation for the Venom art credit

  • George Gomez is slated to take over Steve Ritchie's design position and may be working on a James Bond themed pin

    medium confidence · Craig Bobby mentions this as a rumor, with Gomez temporarily taking over until Jack Danger takes over long-term

  • Ray Davidson is the music guy at Stern and has been typecast as the music pinball designer

    high confidence · Dennis and Zach discuss how Rush just came out and Davidson does music pins, making another music pin unlikely soon

Notable Quotes

  • “Stern Pinball does not announce new product games at conventions, period. I can't think of the last time that they have done that.”

    Dennis @ ~42:00 — Key argument for why Dennis predicts no Venom reveal at Comic-Con, establishing historical precedent

  • “I think I might be getting a little leg in my face here because I don't think it's going to happen. You might be sucking a little crow toe.”

    Zach @ ~40:00 — Zach challenges Dennis's prediction, suggesting Dennis may be wrong and will have to eat crow

  • “Why not both? What if there is a Venom coming out, Spawn, and here's a kapow boutique black sabbath pin?”

    Zach @ ~45:00 — Explores possibility of multiple manufacturers releasing games simultaneously

  • “We have no coffee. Yeah, it's like an airplane, and we're out of coffee.”

    Dennis @ ~5:00 — Comedic anecdote about conference planning, establishes Dennis's character and humor style

  • “He's fine. He's good. I'd have seen you intervene and have finished my chicken.”

    Dennis @ ~20:00 — Anecdote about responding to a medical emergency during vacation, contrasts with his earlier callousness story

  • “I still don't know if it's next. But then again, the other rumors are Brian Eddy on design, Zombie Eddy on artwork. That all very much makes sense to me.”

    Zach @ ~55:00 — Indicates Venom as confirmed future release but timing uncertain; team composition plausible

  • “If anything, this is maybe a little tease of things to come. I can see that. This is a little way for them, this partnership, to maybe brainstorm some ideas over dinner after con.”

    Dennis @ ~43:00 — Offers alternative explanation for Comic-Con partnership beyond game announcement

  • “I can see now pretty much feels confirmed to me that Stern does have and will be doing a Venom machine. I still don't know if it's next.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyDennispersonZach ManypersonCraig BobbypersonTodd McFarlanepersonOzzy OsbournepersonBrian Eddyperson

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Dennis expresses skepticism about Venom Comic-Con reveal, positioning himself against media consensus and community speculation

    high · Dennis explicitly states 'You are in not the majority with that stance. You are in the non-majority' when disagreeing with Venom reveal prediction

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Multiple boutique manufacturers (Jersey Jack, Spooky) releasing games in quick succession; Stern's Comic-Con positioning as response to competitor momentum

    low · Context of Toy Story 4 success and TNA 1.2 release timing suggests competitive landscape

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Uncertainty about whether Todd McFarlane will do full playfield artwork vs. cab/translite art; potential collaboration complexity with Zombie Yeti

    medium · Zach analyzes technical constraints of playfield design for non-pinball commercial artists; discusses potential red-carpet treatment vs. actual involvement

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Todd McFarlane as potential Venom playfield artist would represent first-time foray into pinball commercial art; discussed as learning curve for comic book artist

    medium · Zach notes McFarlane's lack of experience in commercial product art and pinball's different design constraints vs comic art

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Todd McFarlane's Vision Comics conflict-of-interest potential regarding Marvel work; business relationship management required for Stern partnership

    medium · Zach references McFarlane's stated unwillingness to work for Marvel again, distinguishes Stern game deal from Marvel employment

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.305

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:11
The Pinball Network is online. Launching, The Pinball Show. Coming up this week on episode 105 of The Pinball Show, Dennis tells us about the importance of coffee. I tell you about the importance of having a good chill around during a medical emergency. We talk Stern Pinball venom rumors, me possibly sucking crow's toe as I disagree with other media prognostications, production updates for Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack on saps, upcoming spooky games, and adding coders. Dennis' take on the recent AP interview, Galactic Tank Force now with lunchbox accessory, a possible change in terms with multimorphic, not being room-retained, and pinball market trends. Thanks again for tuning in to the NAP Arcade Pinball Podcast.
1:03
Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for the Pinball Show. Dennis Creasel's got the news before Napa Caves It's Pinball with Personality Is that right, Tony? Yeah Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pinball Show We're in episode 105 I am Zach Many alongside the co-host with the most Dennis Creasel Yeah, thanks, Zach Well, hey, how are you, man? I've been missing you I'm fine, I've been so busy June was bad, June was rough Not bad, like negative, but June was professionally, it was extremely busy. So I was like, I can't do any fill-in stuff while you're going to not another country. And I, you know... You've been going to conference after conference after conference. Yeah, one of which I host one big one, big by our standards, which was, I mean, we had almost 100 people there, which was, I think, a record for us, but I almost unilaterally planned that. I couldn't go on location and play a lot of pinball because I was like, I cannot get COVID just before the meeting because no one will run it if I'm there. Sounds like somebody else did. You're drinking right there. Oh, yeah. No, actually, we had at least two different people expose me to COVID during that conference. That one was, yeah, I don't think she was sick yet, so that's probably why it worked out okay for me. And then there was someone who was there sick the first day, but they did wear a mask. They thought they had a cold. And it's just like, when you think you have a cold, just test at this point, please. Yeah, it's probably it. But I didn't sit near them. I was too busy working the event, dealing with the hotel, which did not have enough. Here, let me tell you. Let me paint you a scenario. Let me paint you a scenario, Zach. All right. So I'm not a coffee drinker. I don't drink coffee either. However, we both know lots of people who need coffee. Sure. As one might need oxygen. Yeah. Conferences are one of those people. Like we think of them as a mass of coffee consuming. Like an AA meeting. Yes. Yes, like one that's off the rails. Yeah. So I get there the very first day. Now, the first day of the event is not actually my event. There's a pre-conference event that one of our universities wanted to do, and they piggyback on my planning. So that way they don't have to go out for bid. So they can just reimburse me, and they'll use my facility, and I took care of the name badges. I took care of the registrations, all of that. I get down there because, of course, the hotel is only working with me because it's my name on the contract. And the university planner, he's a pale person anyway, but I mean he's like – it looks like someone drained him of his – he's totally exsanguinated. I'm like, what? Are you sick? He looked like Edward with no sparkle. Dennis, they don't have coffee. I'm like, well, we're an hour before the registration officially opens. I'm thinking, okay, they just haven't brewed any coffee yet. And I go to the lead banquet manager, and I said, yeah, I just was told that you guys don't have coffee. And he's like, I'm so sorry, man. We don't – like, no, we don't have – it's not that we don't have the coffee made. We have no coffee.

Zach @ ~50:00 — Zach moves toward consensus on Venom existence but maintains uncertainty on release timing

Zombie Yeti
person
George Gomezperson
Jack Dangerperson
Ray Davidsonperson
Scott Denisayperson
Steve Ritchieperson
San Diego Comic-Conevent
Venomgame
Toy Story 4game
TNA 1.2 / Total Nuclear Annihilation 1.2game
Rushgame
  • $

    market_signal: Stern production scheduling shows gaps in August and significant availability in September, suggesting bulk September production rather than July releases

    medium · Dennis references production schedule review as basis for arguing against immediate Venom release

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Ray Davidson characterized as Stern's dedicated 'music guy' typecast; typecast may limit flexibility for diverse project assignments

    medium · Dennis and Zach discuss how Rush just released and music genre designer pigeonholing makes another music pin unlikely soon

  • ?

    personnel_signal: George Gomez temporarily taking over from Steve Ritchie's design position; Jack Danger expected to take over long-term

    medium · Craig Bobby's news segment reports this organizational shift at Stern

  • ?

    announcement: Spooky Pinball's TNA 1.2 (Total Nuclear Annihilation 1.2) officially confirmed with scorebit integration and bug fixes; possible new multiball mode under consideration

    high · Craig Bobby cites confirmed interview with Scott Denisay on Loser Kid podcast

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern has at least three potential upcoming releases under discussion: Venom (primary), James Bond with George Gomez (secondary), plus unspecified additional title

    medium · Craig Bobby mentions 'one more trick up their sleeve yet in 2022' beyond Venom; George Gomez James Bond rumored

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Venom pinball machine from Stern heavily rumored for Comic-Con reveal based on Todd McFarlane and Ozzy Osbourne appearance at booth

    high · Craig Bobby reports Venom as primary speculation; Todd McFarlane is Venom creator; Ozzy appears in McFarlane's storylines. Dennis and Zach debate timing rather than existence.

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's Comic-Con partnership with Todd McFarlane and Ozzy Osbourne may be relationship-building/brainstorming rather than immediate game announcement

    medium · Dennis theorizes this as alternative explanation to game reveal; argues against Stern's pattern of announcing at conventions

    • 4:16
    Yeah, it's like an airplane, and we're out of coffee. What do you mean you have no coffee? We have – we do not have the means to produce coffee. We have no coffee grounds. We have no coffee beans. Does his eye start twitching? Is he like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, well, we're paying you, though, for endless coffee.
    4:37
    Like on the banquet order, I took this sort of endless, like it's $10 a person per day for unlimited ice water, tea, and coffee, which in conference speak is actually a pretty good deal. So I'm like, okay. You're like, I pride myself on my negotiations. I pride myself on, we're paying you almost $1,000 today just for coffee. Wow. So where is the coffee? Damn good coffee. Because we had an estimated count of 84 people that day. So $840 for these beverages. And 80%, if not 90%, wanted coffee, I can guarantee you. Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And people now, they don't just like to use the little paper cups that are set out there. They come in with their coffee portable mugs. They're ready. Yeah, the thermoses, and they fill them. Actually, I had attendees come up to me and say, Like, Dennis, can you maybe ask the attendees to not fill their thermoses until, like, the first two hours are done? Because they're coming up and they're wiping out the little – the carafts. And then we have to wait for the hotel to brew more because they only brewed enough to fill these two little carafts basically. And it's like, no, I'm not telling them that. That's too much. So what the hell happened? So the sales manager who I had worked with to produce the contracts and gave the menus to and all of that, she would not normally have been in, I guess, at this time, which was a little weird to me. I'm used to sales managers basically waiting on me hand and foot. She was out getting coffee. She was out at their other property in town taking their coffee to bring to us. Oh, so she was. Okay. So she came in. She's like in this tank top with torn jeans. She's like, I'm so sorry. I'm not. Like she fought a couple baristas. She actually said, I am not. We are not this unprofessional, Dennis. That's what she actually said to me. You're like, those pants tell me otherwise. We are not this unprofessional. So, yeah, they ran out of coffee. The person who was going to do prep, like, garbage prep kitchen work was a no-call, no-show. So none of the breakfast stuff had been pre-prepped. So breakfast was late. So no scones? No. No, they got them out. The muffins were 20 minutes late. The guy who was setting out the banquet stuff had to go and bake the muffins himself. Wow. And the rest of the breakfast stuff was out, like, five minutes late. They were, I mean, it was. And the university guy is like, he hated on them the rest of the event. He's like, I don't want to ever be back there. I'm like, well, I agreed to a three-year contract. Wow. People with bad coffee are grumpy too. I, as a non-coffee drinker, had absolutely no problem with this other than, of course, there was some blowback. But that being said, they comped the entire breakfast. That was over $1,000. Nice. And they gave discounts on other things throughout because they're like, we will do better. Did they play the COVID card? No. I'm so sick of people playing the COVID card. No, they did not. Anyway, so that was my stress. Is it over for now, though? Yeah. I have one more quote-unquote conference that all we do is arrange a couple of the presentations. I don't have to do any of the hotel coordination. You better stop by Starbucks first.
    7:45
    That's going to fall. There will be coffee in that room, and the host organization is responsible for taking care of that. So the point is I have a scapegoat ready to go. I drink your coffee. Now, you had some drama recently, some medical drama. Well, no, it's not as important as the coffee thing. It's just I didn't. I told of the tales and tribulations of Nicole and I's recent vacation, and I didn't fill in. It didn't seem like a humor moment, but the last day we did kind of save someone's life. You know, not a big deal. You're kind of like, eh, only a big deal to the world because it was Leonardo DiCaprio. If it was, I'd have been like, I'm giving the man mouth to mouth. He doesn't need mouth to mouth. No, I'll give him to him anyway. He needs good air. No, it was last night. My parents were kind enough to watch the kids, so Nicole and I can have a nice romantic dinner.
    8:35
    Because you didn't just get back from vacation. No, no, I'm talking about on the vacation. Oh, okay. My parents were with us, so they were like, we'll take the kids to an arcade or something. You guys go out. Have a nice evening. Because they never get to play arcade games at home. You know what? They just don't. And they were like, can we go to the arcade? I'm like, what the hell? Why am I going to go pay for this? So we went to a nice outdoor overlooking the beach. Sun was setting. There was love in the air, Dennis. That's all I can say. There was a lot of love in the air. But usually once Nicole gets one or two lemon drop martinis in, she's a little bit warmer to me. I love it. So everything was good.
    9:18
    Light cascading off her beautiful hair. And all of a sudden I heard, help, help. That's what I, sorry for your ears, listener. And in a panic, we turn around and five feet away from me, a gentleman, unfortunately, was having a grand mal seizure. Full, I think they call it tonic-clonic seizures now. They don't even call it grand mal. But full-blown seizure. He was with his family, a gentleman probably in his 60s, with his wife and two children. Children were a teenager, 18 or so. and a small 10-year-old little girl, and they, I guess, had not experienced him have a seizure before. So this was new to them. So they thought he was dying. I shit you not, there is a principle in psychology. I've been out of practice for a year, so I'm going to use that as an excuse as to why I don't know the social psychology concept or theory of why when something like this happens, no one, is this social attribution theory? No one either comes to aid or people just want to ignore it. Have you ever experienced anything like that?
    10:24
    I've heard about it, and I've definitely seen examples of it. The closest – It's like people are in shock. They're frozen. Well, I remember once where the closest I remember something like this happening was back at my old job. We had a board lunch. I don't know. I won't drag this one on too long. It might not. I'm going to come across as a little callous in it. No. But it works out. So anyway, so one of our board members was eating lunch, and he starts what the attendees think is choking. So like he's coughing. He's turning bright red. Most of the people, they're sitting there, and I think someone's going, he's choking, he's choking, he's choking. And I think someone else goes, what do we do? What do we do? But they're all still sitting there. Now, the reason why I mentioned why I could have been seen as callous was I continued to eat while this was happening. Yeah. And I said, he's still moving air. Don't do anything to him.
    11:31
    And he coughs out the piece of beef. It was beef. Yeah, well, of course, he was a county commissioner. What's for dinner? Yeah, that's how it is in Kansas. Second largest beef producing state in the nation. And, you know, he catches his breath. Because I do think there was someone, I think another one of our staff members said that she's like, I know Heimlich, you know, I can go and help him. And afterwards, he turned to me and he goes, I liked how you recognized that I was still able to breathe. I said, yes, well, you know, I was taught Heimlich as well, and we don't intervene while you're still moving air. I said, as I chewed on another piece of chicken, I had to rebel. I said, had you stopped breathing, I assure you I would have intervened. Oh. But you were fine. He's wheezing air. He's fine. As he's still red and gasping. He's got a strand of meat just hanging. And naturally, he went back and finished that piece. Did he really? Oh, yeah. Oh, man. But anyway. Badass. I believe it's called the bystander effect, where everybody thinks somebody else is going to help, or they just freeze and they don't know what to do. Yeah. No, I can see that. So I look around, and I'm like, shit, nobody's helping. It's like a split-second thing. Nobody's helping. I said, Nicole called 911. She calls 911. I rush over to the guy. I clear all the patio furniture and stuff. When somebody's having a seizure, you clear all that stuff out, and just so he wasn't going to hurt himself, and then proceeded to kind of get him. And at that point, somebody else kind of stepped in, but proceeded to get him on his side. That way, if he was eating, in the process of eating, He wasn't going to choke on that or odds of choking were going to be dissipated a little bit. So got him on his side and whatnot. And then, yeah, 911 took Damien forever asking too many questions, by the way. Like somebody's having a seizure. Just get out here. You don't need to know. Nicole was trying to find the family because they had just kind of run off out of in shock, screaming. He's dying. They didn't know what to do. So she's trying to get questions answered by the wife and children. And then it was a it was a mess. He ended up having two or three seizures there as we sat for the ambulance to to come. And but he was breathing and had my hand on his chest, make sure he's breathing and all of that jazz. But and then I was so proud. It's like a proud husband moment, a proud partner moment. My wife didn't skip a beat. She was talking to 9-1-1. After that, she then comforted the very terrified 10 year old little girl, didn't know what was happened to her dad. So the little girl didn't know what to do. Nicole had her separate, playing games on the phone and all of this the last night of vacation. What the hell? Wow. But he's fine. It's quite an adventure. He's fine. Yeah. He's good. I'd have seen you intervene and have finished my chicken.
    14:25
    And then the hotel tried to give a 15% discount because they were like, thank you so much for your help.
    14:33
    We'll cover the tip. How generous of them. I was like, you guys don't have to do that. It's ridiculous. So, scary stuff. Wow. Scary stuff. Well, what scary stuff does Craig Bobby have for us today? I'll see what you got, Craig.
    14:55
    Hello, and welcome back to the Pinball Show's Top Stories. I'm Craig Bobby. Lots going on this week with Venom, Venom, and yes, more Venom. Just as the dust is settling on the recent release of Jersey Jack Pinball's successful Toy Story 4 last month, we have rumors and news that the king of all pinball manufacturers, Stern Pinball, is about to release their new Marvel comic-based pin in the theme of Venom at next week's San Diego Comic-Con convention from July 21st to the 24th. Not only will Todd McFarlane, the creator of Marvel's Venom comic, be in attendance at the Stern booth, but 80s metal rocker and TV personality Ozzy Osbourne will also be present to greet fans and sign autographs. According to the NAP Arcade News website, Osbourne, who appears as a reoccurring character in some of McFarlane's storylines, is also releasing a new music video next week to coincide with the new Todd McFarlane artwork for a comic book that we packaged and sold with special editions of Osbourne's upcoming album titled Patient No. 9. McFarlane also produced the new music video for the title track of Ozzy's new album. Of course, with any new release, there are always tons of questions yet to be answered. First and foremost, who will be the game's lead designer, artist, and lead coder for this rumored Venom title? It seems the frontrunner for lead designer appears to be Brian Eddy with fan favorite Zombie Yeti on art, with the lead coder from Stern still a bit of a mystery. Of course, the elephant in the room in all this is could Todd McFarlane possibly be a co-artist with Yeti in some way, possibly designing the game's LE back glass and or could Ozzy Osbourne be doing some call outs or licensing some of his music to the game's soundtrack Could Venom be Stern's last release of the year? Now if I know Stern I'd be willing to say that they have one more trick up their sleeve yet in 2022 as George Gomez is slated to throw his design hat back into the ring possibly with a rumored James Bond themed pin as he temporarily takes over from Steve Ritchie's now vacant design position, presumably as Pinball podcast host and Stern ambassador Jack Danger gets his lead design legs under him to ultimately take over from Ritchie long term. But as always, we shall have to wait and see. And in other top stories, we have news courtesy of the Loser Kid podcast with their recent interview of Spooky Pinball's contract designer Scott Denisey, who was responsible for Spooky's runaway hit and cult classic, Total Nuclear Annihilation, and Adult Swim animated hit, Rick and Morty. During the interview, Denise confirmed recent rumors that Spooky will in fact be releasing TNA 2.0, or should we say TNA 1.2? As Denise wanted to emphasize that the new production was not as much as a fresh take on TNA, but simply a rerun of the popular title with very minor tweaks. Tweaks including scorebit integration and bug fixes, which could, with a capital C, include a new multiball mode if Scott feels it will add and not detract from the current flow and feel of the game. So lots going on as it continues to be a very busy summer in the world of pinball. Great to be back, guys, and can't wait for the new release confirmation and details from Stern Pinball next week. For the Pinball Show, I'm Craig Bobby. Catch you on the flip side.
    18:34
    Whew! That Craig Bobby, he's always bringing the heat. Or the symbiote. I love that he's back, the whole gang is back here. I want to jump into first, as we always do every week, the big boy, the Stern Pinball. Everybody's talking this week, Dennis, about the possibility of seeing a new game from Stern Pinball, maybe as soon as this week, and that is because Stern Pinball announced that they're going to be back at Comic-Con, San Diego Comic-Con, the big one, in July, let's see, into July 21st through the 24th. They are claiming, per Stern Pinball social media and official announcements, saying they're going to have their biggest SDCC splash yet. They're going to be unveiling a new booth with exciting new partnerships. And this is where the gossip and the rumors are coming and speculation. It's because they are partnering with Rebellion Republic, who's going to be bringing world-class music merchandise to the con, and together with Stern are going to be hosting, I'm reading this straight from the official announcement, they're going to be hosting Living Legend and Rock God, Ozzy Osbourne. The light in the window is a crack in the sky.
    19:49
    And comic book artist Todd McFarlane. The pair will be unveiling new artwork in a special edition comic by McFarlane by Osborne's highly anticipated album, Patient No. 9. So I could go on. You guys can read the full in-depth either at NAB Arcade or on Stern Pinball's social media. But what does this mean? A lot of media are speculating, Dennis, that this means that this heavily rumored Venom game, who, coincidentally, the creator is Todd McFarlane, they're going to be at their booth. We've got Ozzy Osbourne. People are thinking we're going to see a Venom pinball machine revealed next week. Not only that, we may see Todd McFarlane possibly on some art or even toy moldings. And maybe Ozzy Osbourne doing either music tracks or call-outs or something. What does this mean to you? I guess it means I'll be saving some money.
    20:44
    Ooh, not a big Venom fan, huh? No, I'm not. I never read it. Is it the tongue? No, I just don't know the property. I've never read it. I've not seen the movies. The only Venom I really know is from the Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man 3. So Topher Grace as Venom. Topher. Come on, Topher.
    21:04
    So, but, I mean, I would lean towards that speculation, Zach. Okay. Because we've been hearing the Venom rumor for a very long time at this point. And Todd McFarlane, that's kind of like the thing he's known for. Yep, that and Spawn. Yeah. You know, I think it was on Nap Arcade, there was a big play up about how Norman Osborn in one of the Earth versions of the world went by the nickname Ozzy. So if they go with that aesthetic, there would be a good logical reason to have Ozzy as doing call outs. And obviously, if you're using him for call outs, maybe you incorporate some of his music. So that's the main thing. I mean, I've heard others sort of speculate, well, maybe it's going to be like a Black Sabbath pin and Todd's going to do the art for the game. Yeah, I've heard that rumor as well. Which, interesting, but again, we've never really heard that. I doubt that for two reasons. One, while Stern has gotten a lot better about keeping a secret, we had not been hearing rumors about Black Sabbath or some sort of Aussie-themed game. And second, it would be highly, in my view, highly atypical at this point for Stern Pinball to release a music pin right after Rush. I absolutely agree. But then again, they did skip a cornerstone. They did. Or did they delay it? Who knows? But there's still this gap. Now, maybe we do the little girl, why not both? That's right. Why not both? what if there is here's the cornerstone coming out spawn and here's a kapow boutique black sabbath pin well it also worries me that craig bobby's all in on this he's saying we're seeing it it's happening well he's all like benny twi'lak's face dancer able to change what he looks like and the dune fans will appreciate that and he's just going to go in and just like stern thinks he's one of them at this point. He's the get smart mahogany table in the boardroom. Yeah, he's like a transformer, but not like a Michael Bay transformer that goes around going, I'll kill you. He's like a nice transformer.
    23:11
    Here's what I think. I don't think we're going to get a reveal this week. Zach, you are in not the majority with that stance. You are in the non-majority. I think I might be getting a little leg in my face here because I don't think it's going to happen. You might be sucking a little crow toe. I may. I just may. Listener, I don't... And here's why. I don't think it's going to happen because of the production schedules. I'm looking at this production schedule and I'm seeing gaps in... Basically, we got some room in August. We got some room. A lot of room in September, I'll add. And I feel like if they're planning on the bulk of their production in September. There's no way in hell we're going to see it as early as the end of July. They just don't do that. Number two, Stern Pinball does not announce new product games at conventions, period. I can't think of the last time that they have done that. They just don't do it. I think, if anything, this is maybe a little tease of things to come. I can see that. This is a little way for them, this partnership, to maybe brainstorm some ideas over dinner after con, you know, in between sessions to think of how they're going to reveal it in two weeks following. But I don't see anything. I don't even see a title announcement this week. I think the tease itself is just that McFarlane and Ozzy Osbourne are going to be in the booth. And I also would be very surprised if Ozzy Osbourne has anything to do with this release. Do you think this is just like, hey, he's already going to be at the convention promoting his album. We've done this arrangement with Rebellion Republic to just let him hang out in the booth for a little while just for the heck of it. He's going to walk a whole 30 feet, so it's not a big deal. Yeah, Jody Dankberg was probably talking to his people because if they are in the booth, Jody Dankberg's probably like, hey, are you guys in negotiations with any other pinball company about a potential Black Sabbath or Aussie Osborne-themed game? They were like, no. And he's like, okay, not that we're going to. We not requesting that but if there was a conflict of interest we not really interested We would love to have Aussie and his crew in our booth just for support and blah blah blah And then try to foster a relationship But I don't know. Just something feels off here. I don't know. Okay. Well, I will say that I think that Venom ends up being the next release. I can see it, yeah. But you do make a really strong argument about the – they do not – you're right. I tried to think about convention reveals for their games, and no, they just don't do it. They don't do it. No, they do not do it because you've got a lot of the executives and stuff there, especially at a Comic-Con. They're not going to be handling all of that reveal stuff. And maybe Zach Sharp and the marketing team can handle that at home if they don't go. But it just feels like a lot going on. Zach can neither confirm nor deny that he has the capabilities. I thought we could see the rumored James Bond next with a George Gomez. This does feel like more of a Venom release. But I'm still not even sold that it's Venom next. I'm not. I mean, I don't – well, I mean, it wouldn't have to be, but it has been a long-running rumor. I definitely don't think it's Black Sabbath next, even if they had already secured it and had been working on it or planning to. I just couldn't imagine. No, I don't see why. I mean, can you imagine – again, Rush just came out. Could you imagine Raymond Davidson being ready to do another music pin at this point? Because that's all he does. He's the music guy. That's his typecast. That's his role. I can see now pretty much feels confirmed to me that Stern does have and will be doing a Venom machine. I still don't know if it's next.
    27:03
    But then again, the other rumors are Brian Eddy on design, Zombie Eddy on artwork. That all very much makes sense to me. Todd McFarlane, I don't know if you can get him to do artwork or even toy molding. I don't think he'd do the play field. I think that you could probably convince him to do the translates, maybe the cab side art. Like an Ellie people are talking about. Maybe he does the Ellie translation. I mean, I've seen some – I think it was on Nap Arcade again, noting that Todd McFarlane has indicated how he would never work for Marvel again because he's got Vision Comics and Marvel's a competitor. But doing a game for Stern is not working for Marvel either. So I could – but I also don't think he would want to invest the time to do a play field layout, especially given that everyone who's done play field layouts who have moved over from doing other art have noted that the first one is kind of a bit of a learning curve because you've got to get used to the idea of, oh, well, these are going to – these spots are going to be covered up because they're going to be ramps, and you have to have certain spots for inserts. This is a different way of thinking. It's a different way of commercial art. and I don't know enough about Todd but he's been so involved as a comic artist he's not really in my mind a commercial artist who's used to doing product so that's true and does Jeremy Pachter I know that Zombie Eddie would probably roll out the red carpet for Todd to do an Ellie but it's still I think maybe you know behind the scenes if I'm Zombie Eddie I'm like well damn I still want to like I don't know if I want to give up doing a piece I think Jeremy likes getting paid so he's getting paid by Stern to do whatever and they want to have Todd do some other aspect of it I mean I know he's noted several times Jeremy that the Stern assignments have been coming so quickly for him that it was a lot of work like he was going from project to project to project which was really good during the pandemic because there wasn't a lot of like bands that needed posters and stuff because they weren't touring. But I think he might be, and this is my speculation, he might be wanting to get back to a little bit more of an eclectic style of design and not just doing like wall-to-wall pinball. Yeah, I can see that. Even if it is good, stable money. Do you think there's a chance that George Gomez is on this project? I don't. Right, right. No, I don't. I don't think that Gomez is on Venom. All the reports are he's on Richie's Game, which, you know, I've been hearing Bond, but no, I don't think this is a Gomez game. If Eddie is on design on a rumored Venom game, we've asked it before, but do you have any guesses as to who would be doing Code? As lead? Yeah, I don't think it's Ray because he's just still dealing with Rush. You know, and has Ray been lead on Code yet?
    29:54
    No. I mean, it'll probably happen at some point. It will happen at some point. But I also think that means Timmy's out. Yeah, Tim's out. Because he's just off of Rush, too.
    30:04
    My initial guess is if it's Eddie in particular, it's possible that that Ropp would do it. Okay. We haven't seen Lonnie do lead since Stranger Things, right? Stranger Things, I think, yeah. And, again, that could be as part of the collaborative package. Maybe they bring back and have Mike Venacore help with the rule design there, as he has before. As he has before with Eddie. We know Tanya has been reported. Tanya might be, if he's done with all the Insider Connected building stuff on the stage. He's going to have one this year.
    30:35
    Okay, Tanya wouldn't be a bad guess, especially because he did another comic book theme. I think it's going to be none of them.
    30:44
    You've finally gotten your dream job, making rules that you don't understand. I would be, yeah, coding would not be my strong suit. Well, you get someone else to program it. You get Rick to do the programming, and you're just like, implement my will, Rick. And Rick's like, who are you?
    31:01
    Oh, you're that guy. No, I think we're going to see another tandem that we did on Mandalorian, and we're going to see Dwight Sullivan. Oh, yeah. It's been a while for Dwight since his last game. Yeah, Mando, right, was the last one. So that's what I would guess. And then I think you then see Tanya working with George Gomez, potentially on a rumored bond. So do you think everything's like coalescing around teams like how Elwynn's had his team?
    31:32
    Everybody's fitting in. Everybody's getting comfortable. Because it felt like Sexton was Richie's coder because no one else could stand working for him. Well, that was a rumor. And obviously Nagel is always with Elwynn because Elwynn likes to craft his own rules. Unless Sexton's like, look, I've done two music pins back to back. Give me something else. Well, but he had Black Knight Sword of Rage. He did have that, yeah. It had a Hydra.
    31:58
    Deep Root wanted a Hydra. You might not have known about that. Rising Action leads to a Hydra. So a lot of speculation going around. We'll see what happens. I think Venom is an interesting choice of theme. I think it fits Stern's pinball wheelhouse better than anybody. Yeah, I still think it's a weird pick, though. It's not, I guess. I mean, Sony's been still doing movies with it. They're not hot. But there's so many other Marvel properties, and Stern has done so much with Marvel. To me, it's like, why not a Thor or something? Because everybody would want the movie, right? Yeah. Venom's like the only one that people are like, no, I'm good. I know. Oh, yeah, I'm okay with the comic. Yeah, I mean, that's a fair enough point. That didn't stop them from doing comic Avengers and comic Jurassic Park, you know, non-movie versions. It hasn't stopped them before, so why would it stop them on Thor? Comic Jaws? Oh.
    32:53
    We're going to need a bigger cell. Sorry, listeners, that was a really stupid joke. That was a really dumb comic joke. It wasn't even worth it. I may edit it out. That was bad.
    33:08
    Okay, so that's the rumors and speculations coming up. A lot of people are all in. I am not. We'll see what happens. We're also going to see what happens very soon on production of Stern Pinball. You've been saying that there's not really a lot of openings until September. Yeah, they're rolling out. I mean, last week, or this past week, they were producing Rush Premiums and Jurassic Park Pros. I knew about the Jurassic Parks. Yeah, I think I may even have one spot available for each of flipping out pinball thing. Next up, then, I think this coming week when you guys are listening, Godzilla Pro going back on the line, followed up with Godzilla Premium in the last week of July. So third week of July, Godzilla Pro. Fourth week of July, Godzilla Premium. That's the one everyone wants. That's right. Running into the first week of August. So hopefully they will just keep cranking those out. Second and third weeks of August are going to be Star Wars Pro and Premium. The rumors are this is the last run. I've seen that. I've seen on Nap Arcade, courtesy of Little Shop of Games, like a newsletter, Nap Arcade saying that Little Shop of Games is indicating that this is the last call for Star Wars. I can confirm that I have not received as a dealer that information. So that would be news to me. Still, it could be true. Or Little Shop of Games is like, I don't want to order any more of them. That's right. Or they could have made a mistake. Maybe they have an inside in there. Distributors don't make mistakes. They make memories. Yeah. They try to make sales. Well, a year ago, that wouldn't have been a problem. But welcome to the real world now. Welcome to 2022.
    34:50
    Welcome to not weird times, normal times. I'm ready to buy five pinball machines. Awesome. Which ones? The ones you don't have. Shit. So we'll see. I can tell you that we have Star Wars Pro and Premium coming in, and we also have an outstanding amount of orders, outstanding financially. So we still have more, basically, left to be made in the future. They could just cut those promptly, but they're on the schedule right now for us. So I don't know. And then in the last week of August, it's going to be Led Zeppelin Pro and Premium. That is the last call for that. Yeah, that's super confirmed. That is confirmed. So you see a little bit of lightning in August here. lighten... What's the difference between if you're not darkening, but lightening something versus lightening and thunder?
    35:42
    What do you mean? Do they sound the same? I don't think so. I'm going to lighten this or lightening. But you see, August, if they're making Led Zeppelin pro and premium, even if it's the last call, I don't think they make tons of tons of them. So we see that. And then September, what do we got September September we have that last call of Guardians Pro and at this point that's the only thing scheduled for September alternative all could change it could throw in more and more I do think listener this is good news but for those that have been waiting forever for Godzilla Premium I do think that they will add at least one more run before the end of the year because remember Dennis right now as schedule shows production wise from CIRM Pinball officially we do not have anything scheduled past July for the year of 2022 for Godzilla Pro Premium.
    36:37
    And it doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I do see them adding one. I would love two, three, four runs, but I see them adding another run to that. So there's hope. There's hope as well across the street from Stern Pinball, with a company called Jersey Jack Pinball. Oh.
    36:55
    Saps is on fire. That is the super awesome pinball show. So they interviewed company founder Jack Guarneri of Jersey Jack Pinball this last week. Some interesting interview information. Right now everybody's like, how are you going to sit on that, Zach? Yeah. Well, I have to say on the prior discussions with American Pinball, it was kind of interesting because I've often heard a narrative that, well, Zach only criticizes things he doesn't sell. Yeah. But you do sell American Pinballs, maybe not after your comments. Well, I was waiting for a possible call or a wrist slap. I was very transparent. They were probably quite familiar with your style before you were selling for them. I believe so. I've not heard from them yet. Doesn't mean it won't happen, but I haven't heard from them yet. But back to Jersey Jack Pinball. I guess this was a little bit dated of an interview because Jack talked about 300 Toy Story LE games having been shipped at that point in time. And I thought, okay, I guess that's good. I'm surprised not more if they had some already in the pipeline ready at announcement. And then later on the interview, he said we're a few days in, and there's been 300 or so ships. So I'm like, oh, okay. So that was probably two weeks ago they recorded or something. So those numbers are probably higher. One thing that confused me in the interview, I don't know what to make of this because I guess there wasn't enough details. Jack Ranieri said that they broke a record selling more new commercial products in one day with Toy Story 4 pinball machine launch in the entire amusement industry than any other product produced in history. I don't even know what this means. And I haven't heard this. So, listeners, I have not heard this interview yet.
    38:40
    And I'm like, what does that mean? How would they know that? Well, exactly. Because a lot of companies are private and they don't share their sales numbers. So is he saying that tongue-in-cheek saying, well, if you don't share your sales numbers, then by default I am hired? I don't know what that means. I mean, it sounds like good for them. It sounds cool. Yeah. If I learned anything from the AP interview, sounding cool is what matters. Yeah. Sometimes not the truth. So I don't know what that means.
    39:11
    Franchi, last time I was kind of poking him a little bit for throwing shade at some of the J.J.P. and Stern reveal videos. I was like, oh, come on. I'm a part of that, so I took offense. But then this episode, he was kind of talking about heralding these JJP videos as the best out there and asked about the company's called Element Studios that does those for Jersey Jack Timble, those scissor reels. So they talked about that a little bit. Did they talk about your video? Yeah, Christian Line referenced the SDTM video. And it wasn't an SDTM video. It was actually a – I guess we produced it, but it was a JJP video. So it wasn't our piece. Jack talked about having longer agreement terms for Disney and Toy Story than he did for Warner Brothers and Wonka. That's why you see that. That's why you see Wonka being made when it was. Oh, okay. So he refuted any of the idea that Wonka was going to be Toy Story and then they had to switch it. He said, no, that wasn't the case. I hadn't. I mean, maybe I vaguely remember the discussions of that. It was more me and others were a little more surprised they didn't do Toy Story over GNR's place because of the proximity to the movie. Yeah. Well, if you have the same designer, though, you're going to have to give them a little bit of time because Dialed In took a little bit probably too long for Pat to design. And then he had Wonka, and then he had Toy Story. Yeah, they had to squeeze it in somewhere there.
    40:33
    I was surprised at hearing this. I didn't know this. Jack Granary indicated that Disney threw them for a loop because they actually bumped up Toy Story 4 a whole year the release of the film yeah but that was the again and that's interesting but that being said like wasn't GNR out the year after Toy Story 4 came out so it's like again that seems to only matter if they had actually done the flip that I wanted which was Toy Story over GNR what I will say is that It's almost as if timeline wise, they could have come out with Toy Story 4 closer to the film release if Eric Menier would have been designing it. But maybe for whatever reason, that was not a possibility.
    41:21
    Hmm. Is that vague enough? It's pretty vague. OK. I didn't take offense. They also talked about other theming and licensing in a very roundabout way. Jack Guarneri basically said he passed on Jaws, the theme for Pinball. Really? Yeah. He didn't ever say Jaws, but then Franchi and Christian were doing the dun-dun in the background. They said they knew about what he was talking about. And Jack said that he passed on it because he needed more assets than just a movie poster. Ooh. Really? So he didn't think he could get more assets? I suppose that wasn't a possibility. Like, you didn't think, I mean, maybe not Michael Caine, but Lance Guest, Karen Young. Oh, she doesn't really act anymore. Mario Van Peebles, perhaps. People won't drive us. No, no. Well, he wasn't in it.
    42:17
    And Jaws? Oh, you're talking original. I'm sorry. We were on Jersey Jack. I thought we were talking Jaws 4. Oh, I see what you're saying. Damn it. You're good. You even had me.
    42:27
    No, no, no, no. Oh, excuse me. Jaws, the revenge. I'm pretty sure they can get full assets for that. The fucking best podcaster in this industry. You realize that?
    42:38
    Do you realize that? And that's speaking to a guy with an ego. You're better than me at this. What have we done? She has a psychic connection to the shark in that one. Zach. Psychic connection. Pinball magic. It's just begging. Just begging for it. You know how many people message me? giving compliments about you. It's the whole Greg Bone effect again. I get so sick of it. I love it because I'm your biggest fan, but I still get sick of it.
    43:09
    So, yeah, in a roundabout way, Jack Winery said he passed on Jaws because, yeah, just the movie poster asset. So if Stern does do a Jaws in the future, it'll be interesting to see if they get anything more than just the shark. I mean, that's been long noted that there's, in terms of the lack of assets with Jaws has been expected. I kind of look towards, and I know while you despise virtual pinball, you know, Zen Studios does have a Jaws table. So I think it's conceivable that, yeah, if Stern does it, that it's going to center around the shark. Maybe they use a bunch of sound alikes. We got some farewell and adieu bubbly bobos going on, and it is what it is. Then again, I mean, to be fair, Zen Studios also has a show called The Pinball Show, but they're not covering pinball. They're just covering virtual pinball. Well, they did get a neon sign made with the show name, so they couldn't really change it once they committed. Whatever's in studios, eat my ass. And as you have talked at length about in the past, Dennis, you speculated that J.J.P. no longer was going to do standard editions because it didn't sell very well. Jack Granary did confirm that. He said the standard edition went away on Toy Story 4 because people weren't buying the standard editions of previously launched titles. Yeah. I thought the standard for Wonka looked okay, but you gave up a lot with the GNR standard. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I know because I played that one, and it's fairly unmemorable. Do you feel like people have given up a lot when they buy a Ultraman or Halloween pinball from Spooky? I mean, it depends. Giving up their deposits a little bit. Sure, sure. Yeah, there's a little bit of that, and there's some that are all in. Actually, I checked one of the Halloween threads on Pinside about, I think, under a week ago, and I saw someone posting about, hey, guys, we're almost there. We get a few more, like, over 8.2 reviews. We'll push Halloween into the top 50.
    45:12
    And I thought, well, that sounds like gaming the system, but it is the Pinside ranking, so do whatever you want. It's better than Toy Story 4's reviews right now on the Pinside top 300. Oh, I haven't looked at them. They're low. But we'll talk about that. The Halloween reviews are – maybe I shouldn't say surprisingly, but I'll say they are overly positive in those that left detailed comments versus what you actually hear with discussions with people that have played it. Oh, I see. I'll put it that way. And some games are going to appeal to people more than others. So it's not that I don't believe that those people commenting are lying. It's that I think a lot of people who don't like the game haven't bothered to leave a review. Oh, okay. Some of the more negative ones have gotten a lot of – Pinsiders have flagged this rating, too. So that could be part of it. Don't get flagged. Trying to suppress alternative opinions. I just want to be able to get the updated code on it. I'm looking forward to that. Why do you struggle so – Oh, this code has not yet come out. I thought you meant – No, I haven't updated it since I opened this game. Zach, come on.
    46:13
    It's a flash stick. It's a Mac. Quit being a Mac. Quit being a Mac, baby. I think we all listening, all the listeners agree that your beholdenness to Mac is a mistake.
    46:25
    Why? Because it doesn't work with anything. It works with this podcast because 90% of the listeners are listening on an iPhone. Listen, iPhone is a different beast. It's a different beast entirely. Hi, I'm Mac. I'm PC. You are PC and I am Mac. You realize that? Remember those old commercials? No, you're not cool. Shut up. I am Justin Long, damn it. Justin Long never went out on a commercial and looked into the camera and said that we need iPhone competitive number seven.
    46:58
    Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC. Action! Action! Action! Zuntite, you okay? No, I'm not okay. I have that virus that's going around. Oh, yeah. You better stay back. This one's a doozy. That's okay. I'll be fine. No, no, do not be a hero. Last year there were 114,000 known viruses for feces. Feces? Not mags. So, just grab this. I think I got a crash. Hey, if you feel like that'll help, good. He'd have looked at you in your beady little eyes and said, go fuck yourself. Justin Long was cool for a minute and then annoyed everybody else. It's probably pretty accurate. I still enjoy his performance in Dodgeball. I think his performance in Jeepers Creepers was damn good. Oh, that is a good one. And he was in one of my favorite horror films of all time, Drag Me to Hell. He was really good in that. I haven't seen that. He was a supporting member there. You know his very first – You've not seen Drag Me to Hell? No, I haven't. You like horror films, right? I do. Okay. I recommend that one highly. Will that be the next spooky game? I'm hearing from Joel Ingeborg that they might have a double release. I don't think it's ever big enough. Scooby-Doo and Drag Me to Hell. Yeah. Other people are saying – you bring that up. Joel did say another double feature here, kind of like we've seen in Ultraman and Halloween. But other media are saying no. It is only a single release, and it is Scooby-Doo. I had been only hearing single release as well. So I don't.
    48:27
    But my sourcing isn't great. Spooky, they run a tight ship over there. I don't have the best sourcing with Spooky. Well, email eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. If you work for Spooky, you want to be my spy. Okay.
    48:43
    Remy Cooney. There we go. Rumor Corner. Stupid. Don't you judge. Do you know how many of my rumor quantities that people email in has tripled ever since that song got sent? Yeah, and the validity of those keeps going down. Look, Rumor Corner is not here to be a 100% accurate source of truth. It's not Truth Corner. I am rumor-tained. That's all it seeks is to rumor-tain you. I was rumored hearing that Ben Heck is going to start coding Spooky's next next game. Yeah, I love that. The next next game. They're always looking onto the horizon. Now, I have a question for you after hearing this. And again, since it sounds like you have also only seen the same rumor I did about this and the information that Nap Arcade. God, we're citing him an awful lot. It's fucking Nap Arcade Pinball Podcast. It's just like, oh, this guy's head is going to get so big. He's not going to be able to fit it in front of the screen of that Mandalorian he bought. In front of a Nap Arcade-sponsored hat that you can buy now at naparcade.com. Ding! But so here's the thing. The last I had really heard about the game work that Ben Heck was doing involving Spooky was this sort of like collaboration between Spooky and Chicago Gaming. Where CGC was going to make it, but it was kind of going to be worked on in this some sort of collaborative relationship with Spooky. Is that this? And based off of this statement, is it still involving CGC or is the thing moved entirely back in-house to Spooky? That's a really great question. One that I don't have the answers to. What I can tell you is that CGC oftentimes says a lot of things on when things are coming out and they miss them entirely timeline-wise. So it would not surprise me, Dennis and listener, if CGC was telling Spooky, hey, here's our timeline. I think we are going to be able to manufacture the game you guys design and develop and code, our partnership with the Ben Heck and all of that at X time, and then it ends up getting moved around. Okay.
    50:45
    But it does sound like to me that is the thing. Okay. But based off of your experience it wouldn be out of reason to think that Spooky next next game is actually different than the CGC game Wait a minute No maybe I going to go I don't because he would have said he's designing it. And at that collaboration, it sounded as if he was designing that game between CGC and Spooky. Right. No, my understanding was it was going to be a Ben Heck creation. Yeah. So I would say no. I would say the next next game is Spooky being like, look, we need fucking coders. We need coders. So, as I said, Ben, we're not deep into this next next game yet. We know that we're working with you guys on CGC. Can you come in? We'll contract you out to help with some coding as we're building up our coding team over here because that's almost a defunct area at this point. So, no, I think that this next next game is not Ben Hecht's designed game. Okay. That's a reasonable argument. Let me ask you a different question then. So the next game, are they saying we've already – are we – yeah, Scooby-Doo. Are we saying that they're saying that they've given up on it having good code, that they're not going to – that they had to turn to Ben for the next, next game, but whatever's happened with Halloween and Ultraman is what's going to happen with Scooby-Doo? Or is the next, next game Scooby-Doo, and the next game is the TNA 2.0 or 1.5 or whatever Scott wants to call it? next game i wouldn't think so either but i i float it because if what your argument is and i think it's a decent argument that they've recognized that they need some rules expertise back in after bowen has no longer been involved with the company it seems weird to only fix that as of the next game so that's to me it's suggesting that the next game's code is done no no way the next games code you're like the emperor no no no i no there's no way because they're still freaking working on the code on these games no they're no no no there's no way i think that maybe they're going to pull in more people and they may have already and haven't announced it on this next game working on that but when you get a figurehead like a ben heck let's be fair you're not going to be able to keep anything under the wraps if he knows something uh regarding his work with coding or designing. Ben, feel free to write in for Rumor Corner at Collecticamerspodcast.gmail.com anytime. I'll be more than happy. I'm sorry, Ben. It is what it is. I'll be more than happy to not name you like Zach. I'm sorry. I think they're probably going to get more code. Or, I think the ignorant thing to do, not in a derogatory way, just pure definition of ignorance, they may have said, you know what? Let's just do, let's not do a double feature. We don't want to put too much on Phasma. He should be able to handle just Scooby-Doo alone. Maybe that's what they're thinking. And then the next game we'll have Ben Heck help, you know. Well, my understanding from what reports I've had is Phasma is a strong coder. The question has been more about the rules development. Like he can implement whatever rules you want, but balanced rules that are fun for a wide range of skill levels of players are more difficult than just finding a good programmer. And I think the young crew kind of running Spooky Pinball right now, I think they're very open and they want to make everybody happy, but they're young, and I think they have a little bit of, what do the kids call it, swagger? I think Bug Emery probably thinks to himself, at the end of the day, fuck you all. I'll make the games that I want that's what's got us here in the first place. We'll figure it out. I really kind of think that, and I respect that. I actually do. I wouldn't go so far as to put it on a – for me to put it on a level of respect, but I'll put it on a level of logic. Halloween and Ultraman still sold out in a day, so really does it matter if I think they're not good? It doesn't. Like they made the money. As long as it can continue to sell out, and in my view, you want to do the low-hanging fruit. Drop Scooby-Doo and see if it sells out still. And if it does, then whatever you're doing, no matter how much complaining there might be, it's still not enough versus you've still got the sales there. So I would continue to run it. It was my same logic for why rerun TNA? Why not just keep until you need to fill the line? Why not just keep dropping licensed titles that people love and buy sight unseen? It's working until it doesn't work. I wouldn't switch. and if I see them come out with a game that maybe is not beloved like some other games in the industry, until I see them release like a Halloween and just say we're done with it, we're never going to touch it again, but they haven't done that. They continue to go back, listen to feedback. They continue to want to revamp and improve that game. So until they start doing that, I'm not as worried. No, I'm just not. But then again, I have a Halloween and I enjoy it. You love it. It's game of the year. I don't know. I can't even say I've played it enough to say I love it. I may love it, but I haven't played it enough. It's a spooky game, so look. You've had it a long time, though. I bet I got 30 games. Why don't you update the code? Honestly, that's why I haven't played. The part that doesn't make any sense to me is your talk about them and their code updates is totally moot, because even though you have the game, you never play the code updates. I haven't played it for two reasons. They mean nothing to you. One is because I don't want to play when I know there's updated code. And I just don't know how to fuck with it. And number two, there's a piece that's not functioning correctly. One of the LED strips had come off, and I got a bad daisy chain somewhere. Yeah, but I just can't. It's just lights. That's not even indicator lights. It feels like something's wrong. So every time I go to that game, I'm like, no, it's not full experience. I can't turn that one on. Oh, my God. And I just don't have time. It's not 2020 anymore. You can't be like this. Well, it's not 2024 yet. yet and American Pinball doesn't have four lines quite yet but that's their plans only for now I think they're planning far more lines Octo manufacturing it sounds like they're trying to go right in line when you bring in that many people from Deep Root it's only a matter of time osmosis just permeates and everything what was your take last week I had a very colorful discussion and my own takes on recent AP announcements. Some might say judgy. You were fairly judgy. Only reporting the facts. I was just clearing up and clarifying for people truth from fiction. That's all. What was your take on either my takes or just the entire interview with the whole spending time talking about losing a license or the success of Deluxe Law? I did hear the interview, and I did hear your comments. I'd say this is too freeform for me. Ask me a specific area, and I'll give you a comment. Do you think it was a great idea for American Pinball to spend the majority of their requested interview to talk about them not being able to secure, even kind of sounding like they lost the Sega license of Sonic the Hedgehog? No, I do not. I feel like even though they spent so much time emphasizing how Ryan McQuaid was part of the family at this point, that it kind of – when you spend so much talking about not having the license that his homebrew that got him the job, I didn't get it. I thought it sort of undermined what he would bring to the table. Did it make sense to you a little bit more that maybe a reason for doing so is to weave some type of narrative?
    58:32
    Yeah, but I don't know what the narrative is yet. So maybe it will pay dividends in the future. I just, it seemed excessive to walk through all of that and be like, especially how detailed it was like, but it's not Stern that has it, someone else. And it's like, I don't know. Again, I can't help but think back to when Spooky came out really publicly and railed against Stern for stealing the Godzilla license. And, you know, and that was interesting in the sense that it did force George Gomez to, or force is a strong word. But he did surprise me in an interview, did end up admitting that they did have the license after that had happened. And Spooky got a lot of public support, too. Oh, a tremendous amount, which for a couple of reasons. One, they got their story out first. And two, if you listen to just their story, it does sound very nefarious. You listen to Stern's version, it sounds a bit more innocuous, a little less like we're trying to destroy a little guy and a little more. We really wanted this license, too. I think a lot of people at the time, though, had a lot of trouble believing Stern actually cared about having Godzilla. But what I think is interesting, if we talk about paying dividends in the future, it doesn't always pay dividends in the direction you think. And so you look at the case of Stern and Godzilla, and I know – well, I own Godzilla. I'm not a huge Godzilla license fan. I know hardcore Godzilla license fans, and a number have been very blunt and said, I am absolutely glad that Spooky did not get this title. Sure. I can see it. And it doesn't hurt when you've got like game of the decade. No way. I mean, when it came out as good as it did, it's just sort of like – I mean, it's hard to – and that's the same thing. Like they're trying to do the – it felt to me David was trying to do the opposite here and say, we all know, and we don't all know because a lot of people really have never played the homebrew. But sort of saying Sonic Spinball is the greatest that Sonic could ever be.
    60:28
    I'm like, I've seen it, but I've not played it, so I don't know if that's true or not. either but looks cool but that was sort of the argument that the that spooky felt like it was trying to give with godzilla's we're such hardcore godzilla fans we will make the best game possible for godzilla and i'm like after seeing what elwynn did uh that is that would have been tough i'm not saying it's impossible but it would have been tough well we've seen that it doesn't matter how big of fans you are of a of an ip it doesn't matter how beloved you are in an industry being the emery's a good game bypasses all and i think i like ramikway as a guy because he's i've chatted with i think he's great good good dude i'm excited for his stuff but that's not what was selling that game it's the license that sold that game that can be put on anything licenses licenses sell games though that wasn't the impression i got out of that interview yeah yeah what about uh speaking of licenses selling games they were talking about the original theming and superiority with how much freedom you have in lunchboxes. What was your take on that? Who buys an original theme's lunchbox, though? I don't get it.
    61:33
    It's like an original theme action figure. The ease of doing the art, the ease of not having to run every design decision through a license holder, that's true. But I thought the reason why all these other companies pay that sacrifice is because it gets them sales. And honestly, we are so down that rabbit hole of homeowners and what percentage of the purchasing population they are that I didn't think this was for debate anymore. Look at everyone who's gone from unlicensed to licensed. I mean, from Stern only doing licensed games for years now to Multimorphic doing Weird Al and seeing that huge surge in sales versus anything else they've done. It speaks for itself. Licenses move games. And spooky, yes. And CGC may see it in the future. They may. And in defense of CGC, remakes are licensed games. They are already. These are proven titles. CGC has only picked smart titles to redo.
    62:35
    They're not opening up their own original. The creative freedom argument I sympathize with from the artist's perspective, though I myself am not an artist and lack truly understanding that world. But I can try and empathize with it. From a sales and marketing perspective, it's a mistake. It's just a mistake to do unlicensed. But it doesn't feel – it almost feels like they're trying to spin this because they're not able to get the big properties, whether they can afford it or not have good negotiation skills. But I don't even think that's the case. The way that they made it sound is they have all the resources in the world. They just prefer it. I just don't get that angle. No, I don't understand it. And am I supposed to believe that Hot Wheels sold less than Oktoberfest and Houdini? Because I don't think that's true. No, I wouldn't think that's true either. And they didn't claim that. I'm just saying it was a license, and a lot of people were really receptive to it. And while it was not, I think it's a C-tier license from a home collection standpoint. It is a well-known license, and I thought they had a lot of good ideas behind. For a first licensed game, it wasn't a bad pick. It wasn't a bad pick. What about when they were discussing, Dayfix was discussing the major success of Legends of Valhalla as a game, flying out the doors. They can't, you know, it's just in such a high demand of a game. I mean, do you believe it? Well, I kind of. I mean, when it's when it's limited to 500 units, 500 units, it's decent. I mean, it's sort of like we've talked about in the past the success of Total Nuclear Annihilation, which was a very, very, very successful spooky game. A game, though, that had a ton of homegrown love by going around to shows, and it still only sold 550. It didn't set the world on fire in terms of unit sales. But so much so that he has some hard numbers, and there is a standard edition being made that he already has orders up to 600 on. And again, I'm not – I get – well, how can he have orders in? There's not even a price for it, right? Correct. There's no official orders that have happened yet. Well, then I don't – okay, so there have been inquiries about a standard. That's why I brought it up on the podcast. And when I heard the interview, my thought was – because I wasn't aware of any official information on pricing and what features it will or won't have versus the deluxe. My thought was I could envision there being a number of people that have gone up to David Fix and said, hey, I'd really be interested in a Legends of Valhalla with either them articulating it or the subtle part being, but not at the price of the deluxe. So you got to show me what you got on the standard and maybe I'll buy it. You think there's 600 people that have done that?
    65:21
    But no, I don't. Okay. But I also, like, I don't see a lot of, maybe just my pinball friends don't buy Legends of Valhalla. Because I don't know anyone with it. I don't see it anywhere. I, are all 500, have they shipped all those out yet?
    65:39
    Zach, you're a distributor. Can you tell me, like, have those all gone out? Because it, it seems slow. You know what you're doing. It seems slow. You know what you're doing. What am I doing? I'm answering your questions. You ask the questions. I give you the answers.
    65:57
    Yeah. I think that some dealers don't have any more that they have to worry about getting shipped to them. Some dealers are still waiting. I'll say that. Okay. What about their ideas that a street release is kind of the way to reveal new products? Not only that, but then doubling down and kind of shitting on the full package reveals launches that we're receiving from people like Stern or JJP. Wrong. Well, I'm sorry it's not the 90s anymore. And remember, the market is very homeowner-oriented now. I think having games available for people to play is a good component of a strategy. But I cannot make the mental leap of saying putting out information, video, gameplay, tutorial guidance, sizzle stuff on the Internet is inferior to sticking some games in three arcades in Chicago. like you're just not going to expose it to enough people and it's still going to get out on the internet except we it's going to be on potato cams with garbage sound and bad angles and shaking and it's going to make your game look like crap yeah so it's it's it was just a weird there's a reason why i think a lot of people have been praising including apparently on the subsequent interview on super awesome pinball show the video choices that jersey jack has been making like jersey jack's reveal strategy to me is the top of the industry. Yeah, because Jersey Jack said, why not both? When they revealed everything, the next day they were at arcade. I did totally agree with David Fix, his desire to be pro-consumer and let people have the opportunity to try a game before they buy it. As a consumer, I appreciate that. But that's not necessarily the same thing that sells games. Let's go back, again, reference back to Spooky. Let's not even show you Halloween and they all sold out. How can you You as a seller dislike the – it's like it works. It works. So you don't have to do it that way. And if David's strategy is to position American Pinball as like the most pro-consumer of the pinball manufacturers, maybe that can pay dividends in some capacity. But I don't think that means we go so far as to not put together videos and reveals and stuff, right? Well, I think you can do a both strategy here. It will take more work, but it can be done. To me, they're in a put-up-or-shut-up situation. David Fix has come in. He's made a lot of big moves. He's said a lot of pretty interesting to controversial things, including criticism about some of their prior game releases at AP.
    68:29
    And so in some ways, it's been very, very refreshing. But in other ways, I also look and I see he's brought in all these designers. There have been changes to the programmers and coders and rules developers. There's just been a lot of change there. And since he's arrived, to my knowledge, the only new game has been Riot's developed Legends of Valhalla. I'm waiting to actually see all of this talk in something.
    68:53
    And it's hard for someone like me, who is not a seller of these games and rarely a buyer of new pinball machines in general, to hear talk about putting in a fourth line when I'm like, I'm still waiting to see you get past your fourth game. or 50% produced of your recent game. I just, I'm like, I see all this stuff like Dennis Nordman and we're going to do these Barry Osler games and we've got this find a home brewer and turn them into a star. We've got Scott and them doing another game with us after Legends of Valhalla. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, and all I see is they've productionified Legends of Valhalla. I know Bowden's been working on rules with that. So I've seen that aspect of additional development, but otherwise I'm not seeing anything produced. other than words. I'm hearing a lot of words.
    69:41
    And this is a company where when he came in, David was talking three games a year, like Stern. And they've got the designers on board for it. But again, I can't help but draw the parallel to Deep Root, which also seemed very designer top heavy. Except we know American Pinball can build games.
    70:02
    Where's the release? To me, love is a contract job. So I haven't seen anything wholly original to American Pinball since Hot Wheels, and it's been a while. I was listening. I want to give you a lot of credit. The Eclectic Gamers podcast last week, and Dennis and Tony talked about being given information about American Pinball and trademarks that they have open and that they've recently closed. Two of them including the new names Galactic Tank Force and Galactic Star Force. Or as the cool kids are saying, GTF or GSF. What the hell, Dennis? What is Tank Force and Star Force? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're like all the other licenses we've seen with American Pinball, where they've wordmarked original concepts.
    70:55
    And, yeah, someone had told me to check out their – I hadn't just been checking them regularly. Those both dropped in late June. and so you know just it was a check with the trademark office they've got updates so yeah i and my thinking initially is you know one of two things one they're thinking about kind of the spooky style of a twofer where they'll just reskin the game and or they weren't quite sure the direction the design wanted to go with the theme so they took tanks and they took like generic star space stuff and that's what i'm guessing you know it'll be and that's i've heard again as the rumors have flowed in since I came out with the wordmark stuff's true. People can go and search it. I was going to put links in my show notes, but unfortunately the way the search engine works is it logs out after a while and the link is dead, so you have to just research it. But I'm hearing rumors now. I haven't done this on RumorCorps, so this is a special TPS rumor. Oh, shit! Is that it is just one and that it is tank. Oh, really? Yeah. See, I thought maybe they go with both because and i'm not trying to be on the opposite of snowflakey over here but you have to be careful whenever you're producing a product around tanks that are used for wars because maybe you go to release this and something topical is going on in the world that probably wouldn't be the most sensitive to a tank themed release and i thought just as a backup maybe we have star force because nobody can be mad at buzz lightyear so that's what i was thinking i did uh Now that you said that about Tank, it's very interesting that Canadian Pinball Podcast was watching that. He's reporting that Nordman had been showing pictures in his cell phone to people. This dates back a little bit now of a game based around a tank, and that when you fold the head down, the machine then resembles a tank.
    72:52
    Oh, the actual physical machine. Interesting. Because that's all American Pinball needs is yet another cabinet design. why does it matter when you have the head folded down well maybe it will be fun for people like you when they're moving them I'm driving a little you just see my kids be like alright guys unplug the game we'll take the turn into tank men and then they're like what the fuck did I do go ahead and push it Billy push it push that tank I won't let the license name you guys were kind of raving it over there I heard you like oh actually you know it's kind of well as a game it might be a perfectly fun it's just the name isn't going to move units is the thing right it's not a license it's not going to move units so it doesn't mean it won't be a great playing game i would rather just be what makes the tank force galactic they must be laser tanks they're going to be galactic freaking lasers i thought you're going to tell me that the the tanks in the game would fold down like transformers and then turn into spaceships Hence why they were a galactic tank force.
    73:56
    Tanks in space. I wish the tanks just had legs and they're like, hi. As fun as that one's been for me, I thought it was more telling that they let the Sherlock Holmes trademark expire. There was something there. That was, of all their unlicensed stuff, right up there really with Houdini, I'd say. But I think even more so. You know what I think happened there, though, Dennis? What? I think that when Josh Coogler left, so did the Sherlock Holmes. I've heard – and since then, again, the rumors flow like wine, Zach. And yeah, the reports are that was a theme that Coogler was big on. And so without him, there's not the same level of interest, which when we're talking about non-original but also unlicensed because they're so old themes, Sherlock I thought was a really good – I actually liked it better than Houdini. I understand – Houdini is so low-hanging fruit because people think about magic tricks and all the time. But I just thought Sherlock is so famous that – I think it's in a similar category. of people know what that license is. Those are what we, what we call non-original unlicensed themes. And I actually think there's a place there that you could successfully play in without, if you, if you really don't want to have to comply with a licensors terms without going full on original and you still maybe have some sort of nostalgia tie in, you know, the idea is like Alice in Wonderland sort of stuff, but there are some things, yeah. Things, things that could have a tie. It depends on, obviously it depends because there's a lot of stuff that's there and people will know it but also not really feel an attachment to it but anyway so long sherlock holmes welcome into the scene galactic tank force with lunchbox gtf i wonder if the lunchbox whenever you fold it down it looks like a tank too got little wheels on it your pb and j is rolling away there or it wouldn't have wheels it would have a it would have a track track on it and you open the lunchbox by slamming the head of it, kind of like a Ukrainian drone.
    75:56
    And it just pops open and there's your sandwich. There's your sandwich. All right. Dasvidaniya, peanut butter jelly. Have you still not watched Stranger Things? No, I don't have Netflix. Dennis, if I get Netflix for you, would you watch it? No. At this point, it's a principle. If I don get Netflix for you would you watch it just let it go like frozen Let it go Let it be No it let it go You right I'm thinking of the Beatles. Let it be!
    76:30
    That's all I can sing, actually. Poor John. We've reduced him to the cold. Never bothered him anyway. Whispers words of wisdom. I wonder if they whispered any words of wisdom over to Multimorphic. There's some news going on. I don't know if it's... A little bit, I guess. I don't know if it's big news yet. It's more of a head-scratching, like, I wonder what's going on here. We don't have all the details, but it has come to our attention that there may have been some changes in terms from multi-morphic. Maybe. I went to their website on there, and we're talking about the ordering details on acquiring a P3. I didn't notice any fundamental changes when I read through it, other than there is a notation, at least when I last looked at their website, which was a few days ago, that said at the bottom, note that these instructions are subject to change at any time. That notation didn't exist back in March, which the Wayback Machine was able to confirm because I thought, I don't think there was a notation like that. We're talking about the reference that if you're waiting six months after when they said they were going to deliver your game, then you can have your refund back. And that language is still in there. Okay. But this additional piece now says. And this piece might just be as simple as a, well, I don't think it would be necessary. I could see them maybe thinking, let's put a notation that these terms that are on the sales page, like they don't exist in perpetuity. If we want to change them in the future, we can. Now, surely they're not thinking that that gives them the ability to have a statement and then change it once someone's already committed to a sale. I hope not. I'm not an attorney and nothing I say on this podcast should be construed as legal advice, but I would advise people to talk with an attorney about contract law if they think that that is the direction that that would allow because I'm skeptical of it. But I also – when I read this, I don't get the vibe that that was the intent. I think there's just a – maybe people think that we'll always offer – there's a language about a 5% discount and there's language on what the transfer fee is. And if people think that's going to be that way forever, they maybe just wanted to make it clear, hey, you know, we might want to change these at some point. And they just stuck in a disclaimer so that people would know that. And this all becomes a little bit more relevant in the topic of discussion here on the Pinball Show because we know that there have been significant delays to not only Weird Al module productions, but also game productions from Multimorphic, those P3 machines, and they keep bumping them back. And we did hear from the Collected Gamers podcast last week that they're having significant hiring difficulties. And by the pay that they're trying to look for equipment people to put the fabricators to put these things together, there are comparable jobs in the area that pay much more. So it may be difficult to get these workers. Thus, what does this do to the outlook of these games? So that's why we're bringing it up. Right, right. And so – and I should clarify that we don't – the comments about the difficulty on hiring workers is simply that – well, we know that there's a very low unemployment rate in the United States right now. But their job listing that Multimorphic had over on Indeed had listed that they were trying to hire multiple assemblers and also that they were urgently hiring I think was the name of the tag. I'm not looking at it right now, so I can't confirm that was the exact language. But it was flagged as like a priority hire sort of thing. And they listed the pay at $15 an hour. Now, since that EGP episode, I have had people send me images of like fast food signs around. I'm assuming around town. They're kind of near. They're not in Austin, but they're kind of near Austin. And I don't know where all the signs were exactly because they're not all geocoded. But, you know, showing what like fast food is hiring because when you're talking $15 an hour, that's one of the areas that that's very similar. But Tony from Eclectic Gamers had done some research of just looking on Indeed at other jobs in that town and things like the Bucky's convenience store paying $16 an hour. And so there's a lot of stuff that seems like it's less work for around the same price was kind of what we drew as a conclusion when we did some quick job searching. So that would lend credence to the idea as to why they need multiple openings still filled is it's a tight labor market. And unless you can pay a lot, why do a harder job versus an easier job would be what I would wonder if I were one of those workers looking for a job. And I will say that covering pinball and doing content creation for five-plus years, I feel like I'm almost like a – are we a veteran yet? Maybe of pinball podcasting. Man, maybe I'm jaded and I say things that I shouldn't say and I'm too open and honest. But I just, and this is not a reflection of what you've said nor what you believed in this, but for myself, I continue to worry about the product and continue to worry about the company. This isn't me saying it's all doomed or anything, but if you can't get people to put together the games, you're releasing and announcing a product that you know damn well that you can't have anytime soon and you can't put it together. and then you're already having these delays, and then all of a sudden on the website there's new technical language.
    81:42
    I worry that what happens then is if the six months of things come up and people do start canceling and getting their deposit back, and they do so in groups, I don't know if they're really hurting this bad and this is what they're willing to pay. Maybe I'm putting too many dots together, but it seems like a possible huge, huge mess in the future. But, again, that's just my off-the-cuff, ignorant type of hobbyist thinking. I don't know. I don't want to speak against Multimorphic because every time we do this shit, I am just burned to the ground and drilled to the ground by people who come at me hot and heavy from this fan base. So believe me, I don't want to bring this shit up, but it does seem interesting to me. So I will do so, and I am worried about it. I do think, at least for my part, I have to note that the notation about the instruction change, I do not know when that went live on the website. It may have been – the Wayback Machine only has a – when I looked, it seemed to only have a snapshot from March. So we know it wasn't there in March, but I don't know if this was a very, very recent addition or if it was a couple weeks after that snapshot. I have no idea. So it's just someone had contacted me about – had mentioned some things about a purchase. And so I had gone because I was trying to remember the terms. And when I saw the notation, I thought, I don't think that was there when I first was doing podcast coverage for Weird Al. But it was so long ago, I couldn't remember, so I way-backed it. And then I was like, oh, way-back's got one right around – when Weird Al had already been announced. So it was a good little comparison. And don't you think it's fair to say that that person was very concerned? Yes, on the delay front. Yes, and not being able to get their money back. The message went to more than just me. Yeah, that was the issue. And I will say in terms of what have I been seeing, because I don't monitor the super closely. I do follow one of the Weird Al threads on Pinside.
    83:42
    Modules I know are going out. I don't know if they're going out at the speed Multimorphic planned or faster or slower. I don't know. But I do see people getting modules. We know Kevin with Buffalo got his module. I know Nick Baldridge, who's a podcast host and develops for P3. He just recently got his module. And I think one of the Flippin' and Mashin' – I forget which one. One of their hosts got their module just a couple days ago. So they're definitely shipping products. So they're building stuff.
    84:10
    I wonder more – It seems like just modules, though. Well, that's – I have not seen announcements of recent recipients of entire P3 systems. And I do know multiple people who have ordered P3 systems, several of which ordered before Weird Al, and they are still waiting for the system. So that was kind of where the research. And remember, they did announce that there was that close group of people on Discord that kind of got to pre-order it prior to the reveal anyway. So maybe that's part of this, too. I don't know. But I'd assume most of the people, if not all of them that were on the Discord already had the platform would be my just my gut assumption. Like, why else would you be on the Discord unless you already were into the platform? So they would just need modules. Like, it's not – and surely modules are quicker, right? That's just one little part versus the whole thing plus the modules. I would think so. But part of it makes sense. But back to your area of hobbyist concern, the issue, of course, I think is obvious to anyone would be if the delays get so bad as to they start missing the ship dates by over six months, if people start to cancel, does that put things financially in a bind? And it really just depends on how much liquid capital is available. And we don't know the answer to that. We do. We do not. So it might not be an issue. Or maybe it is. We don't know. We're just talking about it. But, yeah, because it was a little over a month ago where I think Multimorphic had announced at the time, I think to some of the preorders, that they were behind but not by a lot. They were behind by, I think they said, two weeks. Well, that's not bad then. And clearly, I mean, they do have the ads open to try and bring on more people, and they may be bringing on people, and they just haven't fully brought on as many as they want, which would explain why the ad is still up, or last I looked. Anyway, it's interesting, but it's news. It's an interesting product, and I still want to get more time on Weird Al. Yeah, you weren't very nice to the germs mode. I thought that was a fun mode. It was so stupid. Dennis, we went really long this week. It was the grand malls stuff. Well, that poor guy. Man, I'm still thinking about him. Nicole was so freaked out. So I thought, last week, I extended an entire episode to fit Pinball Market Trends. So this week, you're going to not do it at all. Well, no, it would only be fair to see how condensed I can make this week's Pinball Market Trends. Or should I say, Pinball Market Trends. turning up this week is cactus canyon remake want to know why do no well if you look at the pin side top 100 cactus canyon remake has now landed in the top 10 just ahead of elvira's house of horrors twilight zone and jjp's pirates of the caribbean is the sharp uh lyman code out for that yet it's not okay i was at a tournament yesterday and People asked, and I said, you know, I don't think so, but I'm not positive. Turning down this week, CGC, where in the hell are the LEs and the Enhanced Code? There's still any parts for toppers, last I heard. That was weeks and weeks ago, though. But no, they continue to make SEs at a good pace, and people are loving this game, and it's inside the top ten. I mean, it is a Bally Williams, so it doesn't surprise me, but being ahead of the likes of Elvira, Twilight Zone, and Pirates of the Caribbean, Ian, nicely done, CGC. All's training up this week. Believe it or not, now this is a disclaimer here. This training up is a slow burn. We're seeing two titles that weren't getting the love during announcement, but they're starting to heat up a little bit, and that is Rush and Toy Story 4. After you're done throwing tables and produce, hear me out. Rush is a sneaky little title that I'm going to be honest with you I don't own it and I still don't get it maybe I need more time on it but my buddy Greg Bone has been cramming this damn thing every time I talk to him on the phone he's like I'm telling you Zach this game is special this game is damn good I talk to other people and especially competitive pinball people they've all got chubs over this Rush game maybe it's the code maybe it's the layout maybe it's a little of both but I'm starting to see, especially in the sales, thankfully. The slow burn there. Toy Story 4 as well. A slow little burn. Now, does that burn get it hot enough to come back from the pit of Mordor that it was sent to? I don't know, but there is objectively, numbers don't lie, only report to facts, a slow, nice little creeping burn on these two titles. You can even, in the future, listener, look for Rush to keep burning as the new code updates come out and we get some accessories to finally be revealed, I think that's going to revitalize some interest in that title in particular. And speaking of teases alone, Jersey Jack this last week teasing some upcoming accessories for Toy Story 4. A topper? I don't know. We'll see. Can't say the same for other games though because trending down this week is an Elwynn game.
    89:19
    Sorry, Keith. You may be the GOAT, but every once in a while you're going to have something trend down because you sell so many of them. It's a good problem to have. trending down this week is Avengers Infinity Quest Pro and Premium Editions. LEs aren't going down too bad. Those are fine. But it's the Pro and Premiums that we're seeing. We had a recent run of them, so just that makes sense that we're seeing them more often on the secondary market, but a little bit more significant than I'm seeing other titles, especially other Keith Elwin titles. And that probably does not surprise many of you. And hey, sometimes Pinball Market Trends is boring, but they are hashtag the facts ish.
    89:56
    Infinity Quest Pro and Premium going down a little bit on the secondary market. You're down an average of about $300 than what it was a couple weeks ago. It's going down. That's it for your Pinball Market Trends. Last week, Dennis, if you actually listened through Pinball Market Trends, it was kind of the whole episode, so you had no choice. I skipped through chunks. Did you not hear all of the spectacular deals of the week? Oh, my God. It's going to be the whole thing. I thought he was joking. I just started my skip 30-second button. Just like our listeners do when I do my impressions, precious. I did a Gollum last week, didn't I? I didn't know you did. The deals of the week, they were really good last week. People said, I admit, those were really good, four really good deals of the week. and I thought since it was such a hit I'll give you another deals of the week courtesy of our sponsor Flippin' Out Pinball. Ding! Bye bye bye! This week's deal of the week is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles premium. Remember they're not going to make that thing until December so a little bit hotter now than they were six months ago when they were making a lot of them. Pre-owned, great condition Insider Connected already on it don't have to worry about that and a shaker motor. The damn thing is gorgeous. These things are going in the AIDS so they're going below new in box. They're going in the eights right now. Right now, if you mention the pinball show and the glory that it is, I'm going to give you a deal of the week for $7,700 for this game. Buy, buy, buy!
    91:33
    That's over... $1,200 less than what you're going to get one brand new for, and it includes Insider Connected and a shaker motor. That's like $300 value right there. Buy, buy, buy! You've got to mention that, though, because otherwise I have it listed for $8,200. Sorry.
    91:48
    We're such givers here at the Pinball Show. And we don't have deals with the WTF this week. I was about to say something about a yellow brick road for $25,000, but I just didn't have the courage to do so. But the pinball bounty, I'm switching it up a little bit. We're going to sit radical on the shelf for now. You guys are not doing worth a shit getting me a radical. So instead, in its place, we're going to have Valley's Dolly Parton. Here you come again Just when I've begun to get myself together If you guys want to make $1,000, it's so simple and easy. Just find a way for me to get a minty, a fresh, maybe a restored. I don't care how much it is. Just find me the nicest example of Valley's Dolly Parton.
    92:35
    And I'll give you $1,000 if I buy that game. It's super simple. It's super easy. It's why you love us over here at the Pinball Shows, Pinball Market Trends. And as always, I'm just here to report the facts, because numbers don't lie on pinball market trends.
    92:53
    All right, Dennis, what you got going on the rest of the day, buddy? Oh, gosh. I just got a rest. All the grass? No, I did that a few days ago. Oh. I might go bike. I hope you don't. You should have been on that 5K with Tony. Just saying. He didn't invite me. He was like, did you hear his reasoning? It was, Dennis, I think you just abandoned me. Like, where did this reputation for abandonment come from?
    93:21
    I'm not going to. I thought you would just see like people actually running and just go. So you're not staying back with him? I'm like, what? If you had asked me to do the 5K with you, it wouldn't have been my assumption that, oh, you want me to go and win it. Okay. She would have just brought your bike. where can people catch you they want to reach out to me especially with juicy rumors for rumor corner i'm always looking for those over at eclectic gamers podcast.gmail.com you can also go to eclectic gamers podcast as the slash after facebook.com and send a message to the messenger app the rumor corner how did that just hit more powerful than market trends and i know it frosts you maybe you could get a market trend song that isn't just some eagle dying the the irony of you giving me so much shit year at not even month year after year about the four years the validity and the actual data coming from pinball market trends and everything it is and then you start a segment on the other podcast called fucking other rumor corner how dare you don't you judge me rumor corner exists to entertain the people and they know it's full of lies and deceit oh my god I should have done. So go check out EGP. Go follow, like, subscribe. They've got a damn good show. And Rumor Corner is witty. It's actually really good. But damn if it's not a slap in the face. But I like it rough, Dennis. I will say this.
    94:53
    Now you know how Greg Bone feels from that contest. You're talking about Norm. I should have trained this up. I'm eating crow's toe really quick on the film The Batman. Have you seen that? No, I haven't. I crapped on it early on and did not get through it because I got halfway through, lost interest, fell asleep numerous times, and I gave up on it. I went back and watched it. I will tell you right now, because I don't do the DC Comics, I think all that justice, it's all stupid, overacted, too dark. Even the Harley Quinn bullshit, what was that? The bad guys, the anti-hero. Oh, come on, Puddin'. So stupid and poorly done. So dumb. So, so stupid. So I went back and watched the Batman. And I'm going to tell you right now, probably my favorite Batman of any of the films featuring Batman. It was exceptionally well done. From the cinematography to the writing to the acting, it was beautiful. You cannot watch it with any shred of lights on because you won't be able to see it because it's very dark. But so, so, so, so, so good. I'll watch it again. That's how good it was. Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. You can catch me at thepinballnetwork at gmail.com, over at Straight Down the Middle, watching the video series, or Flippin' Out Pinball. We get a lot of exciting stuff. I've been delaying this whole Flippin' Out Vault because I haven't had time to put it together, but it is coming. And I just got a piece that was going to be doing consignment as part of that. We'll talk about details of consignment and what you can do to sell your products through the vault coming up. But a really neat piece, actually, one of a kind, that will be up for sale very soon. And product showcase this week for Flippin' Out Pinball is Rush Premium. If you hear this, I do believe I have one spot open. So bye, bye, bye. Bye, bye, bye. Also Jurassic Park Pro. I think I have one spot available for that. Buy yourself a Toy Story 4 pre-order. And we did get our hands. We were able to secure a handful of more CEs, believe it or not.
    96:51
    So message me. I may have one. I'm working through my back order list of the people I thought were shit out of luck. but now that we got our hands on a handful more, I was like, hell yeah, I'll secure that. So we may have more of those. Mandalorian Pro and Premium. Call us for some special stuff on those if you want a Mandalorian Pro or Premium. We also have Rush Pros, Avengers Pro. I believe I have one more left. See, I turned it down. It doesn't make sense to my business but I do so because it keeps it real.
    97:22
    I love you, AP. You got any Elvira 40th? I do have a number 40. the coveted number 40 i covered all the other ones can you believe that i can number 69 is gone number 35 is gone they're all gone uh i do have that batman 66 le pre-owned no clue how that's still here i thought you guys liked batman damn corvette i think is still around people are sniffing on it banners accessories whatever else you want uh get yourself a golden tea switch it up a little bit. Merchandise. Yeah. TPN last week, Fox Cities just did as we're speaking, they're doing it. The Fox Cities three-strike tournament at the, was it Pancake Shop or something? Lumberjack Johnny's? Something like that. It was on July 17th. So go watch the VOD of that. And this week, Dennis, I believe that we're going to get another final round pinball podcast. I think I saw a little teaser from them on that. Uh-huh. It's coming. We might even get a free play. We haven't had a free play in a while and we have not had a triple train. Bill and Amanda's schedule has been really rough to align because she's working so much. She's a worker. She's an ass-kicker. So I think that's all for next week. A lot of streams. A hell of a lot of streams. Many, many streams. Well, you know what? We don't watch it. The stream numbers are going to... The culmination of the stream numbers for the week is going to outdo those numbers for podcast.
    98:49
    No! I don't believe it. I find it hard to believe, but last week it was just our podcast. And I've noticed, though, that some of the streamers have realized the Talking Heads stream gets them bigger numbers. Well, VODs do show up. I mean, people consume VODs more than they do live. So that's good. You don't get a bunch of copyright strikes when they aren't streaming the game.
    99:16
    Oh, that music. All right, Dennis. I think that's it. That was a hearty, hearty news week. We'll see what happens next week, whether I am going to be eating crow or sucking crow's toe, and whether everybody else is right or whether they're all wrong, and I'm the brilliant, well-intended, know-it-all sycophant that everybody thinks I am. For Dennis Creasel, I'm Zach Mann. And for those of you who have been longing to use your psychic powers to hunt down a giant great white shark, one which could be tased with some sort of electromagnetic device of some sort to jump up into the air have the capability to roar like a lion and then be impaled by a ship in which somehow the impalement causes it to explode unfortunately Jersey Jack pinball has let you down and always practice safe pinball and you may be rumored tamed but it holds no candle to the wind that is pinball market The wind like a fart.
    100:18
    Vimica ne. So now that it's over, can we just say goodbye? I had to go pee while you were talking about Toy Story. I figured I had a good lull.
    100:37
    Wonderfully, you can still hear me now that I switched those over. Yeah. Okay. Unfortunately. Yeah. Sadly.
    100:46
    I did get a lot of people liked last episode because solos are, you know how they are. People hate them. All it was was market trends. Yeah, but it made sense, though, format-wise. It's like, well, let's just expand the news into the market trends and fill out the... I thought it was a quite clever thing to do. I guess the numbers don't lie. I don't know. I haven't even looked at numbers lately. Were they bad? no I don't think I mean I don't know I didn't look either I don't care we have the largest pinball podcast in the world who really fucking cares about the specifics at this point no more tears just a hand in the bush In the boss