This is such an exciting day for me because Spooky Pinball's latest game, Beetlejuice, just showed up in the garage. Now, this is a follow-up to their highly successful game, Evil Dead. Evil Dead didn't sell out initially, but as soon as people caught word of it, it was on fire and you couldn't even get one. I did a video on it. I was blown away by it. The theme integration, the whole package alto together was just pinball magic. Now, the thing is that's a lot of pressure for Spooky Pinball. Can they do that again with Beetlejuice? Well, here's the crazy thing. Beetlejuice sold out before it was even for sale. So, clearly the hype around this company is big. Right now, the boutique companies have a lot of momentum. Spooky especially. So, does Beetlejuice live up to the hype of their successes with Evil Dead? Let's find out. All right, let's start with theme integration. First off, is this a good theme for pinball? Absolutely. I think it's also a really great theme for Spooky. They tend to choose these kind of outlier cult classic movies, and I feel like Beetlejuice is one of them, although Beetlejuice probably is a little more mainstream. So, then you'd ask yourself, how well did they integrate the theme into a pinball machine? There's tons of movie assets here that are tied to modes in the game. So, while you're playing, you are playing specific movie sequences, which I think they did a really good job at. My only negative right now is Evil Dead was so good because of the Bruce Campbell call outs. The call outs were amazing and it also guided you through the game. Right now, I'd say there really isn't a guide guiding you through the game. So, I don't know if they're going to add these call outs later, but I did struggle a bit because you kind of have to look at the LCD to see what you're supposed to do next. And that was not the case with Evil Dead. Evil Dead, you always knew what we were going to do because the call outs were just guiding you through the game. Getting back to assets, they just recently had a code update and it's still really new. So, they just added more movie assets to the game and I'd expect them to add more and more and more as the game matures and more start shipping out. There's probably only 30ish that are out in the wild now. So, just like Evil Dead, they kept making it better. Spooky does a really good job with continual code updates. So, I expect them to do the same thing for Beetlejuice. Okay, we're going to shift gears and do some gameplay. I'm standing in front of the game right now. I'm going to show you like three or four different modes within the game just so you can get an idea of how the game plays and some of the cool movie moments that Spooky integrated into the game. All right, the first mode we're going to start with is Till Death. I'll shut up so you can see the cut scenes. got a great fan.
We got to gather witnesses. So, there's certain shots we need to hit.
Okay, we got to have four shots here. All right. Come on, baby. Okay, I'm going to do the left orbit. There we go. Okay, two more shots. That wasn't good. Getting squirly. All right, we're going to backhand the Dante's shot. Perfect. All right, we're looking good. Now the ceremony has started. Okay, I can't remember what we do now. I think we have to hit the left orbit again.
So, we can increase our multiplier by hitting the left ramp. Sorry, I said orbit. I meant left ramp. Or we can increase the shot value by hitting the right. Or we can hit the drop target under Beetlejuice to interrupt the ceremony. Uh, I'm going to do whatever I can. That's what we're going to do. All right. Let's see if I'm going to try to interrupt the ceremony, I think. Uh, let's see. Okay. Come on. A little scoop happy here. There. Got it. Okay. Interruption one of four. All right. I need to hit the right orbit again, but I'm not going to do it from there. So, O. Okay, I got a ball save. I'm going to use my Magna save. And I accidentally got it off the Magna Save, which I'm fine with. So now I have two more interruptions.
Okay, now my shot multiplier is at 2x. I got to hit the sandworm shot. It's right there. It's wide open for me. Ed Boon. All right, one more interruption to go. Okay, three out of four. Um, if I can backhand Dante's Inferno, I'm pretty good. Actually, no. It's sandworm mouth shot ends the ceremony. So I got to wait till he's down in that position he's in right now. Oh, I missed him. Let's see if I get him again. Missed him again. Come on. This will literally end the mode. I got to do it. Uh-oh. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm getting very squirly, but we got this.
Here we go. Ed Boon. I got it. Check this out. This is awesome. This is the kind of crazy Spooky does. Listen to the shaker motor going nuts. I love it. All right, we beat the mode. We beat the mode. All right, that was pretty good. Good job, everybody.
All right, the next mode I'm going to show off is grave dig.
We're in the model.
This mode you actually have to hit the scoops, which there's three of. There's one on the right, one dead center, and one in the back. I'll let the cut scene play so you can see really quick. Another iconic scene from the movie. All right, we're up. It's our turn. I'm gonna try the dead center scoop first, just cuz it's right in front of me and I missed it. I love when I play pinball on when I'm filming myself. It always is such a fun time. No pressure. There we go. All right, we got the first one. Now we're going to try the one in the back. Uh-oh. All right, I'm going use my Magna Save. Thank God. That thing comes in handy quite a bit. All right, we did the right scoop. Now, we're just going to do the one in the back. Actually, I Oh, there we go. I got it. I got the other scoop by accident, so I'm okay with that. Now, I got to Oops. We're going to hit it eventually. All right,
we got Balty Ball. So, let's show that off. This is the waiting room multiball. So hopefully we can use this to our advantage. We still have that shot on the right. We need to hit. Uh-oh. Now we're down to
Now we're in trouble. Damn. I can't hit the shot, man.
Oh, I got a ball save. All right. We are going to finish this mode. All right. Right shot. No. Okay. We're hitting it right now. This is it. Got it. I still haven't figured out this fly squatter thing. Oh my gosh. The shaker motor. We're We're We're going to finish this mode. Uhoh. No. O. Okay, here we go. We just got to get that left ramp. Ed Boon. Uhoh. This is stressing me out. There's a lot more shots to this mode than I thought. Okay.
All right. We're in a little bit of a groove right now.
I didn't realize how I didn't realize how long this mode is. A little bit. All right. There we go. I got to do this. Ed Boon. Ed Boon. We're in a flow now, baby. Oh
Okay, we should be able to backhand Dante's Inferno. I I got this.
And we Oh, no. All right. Did we get a ball save?
All right. Well, we didn't finish that mode, but that's uh that's how it goes sometimes. All right. This mode is a fan favorite from Pinball at the Beach. You guessed it,
the Deo dinner mode.
Now, if you don't know,
the flippers and everything in the game become possessed and everything is orchestrated. So, it's pretty insane. Now, it doesn't happen till the chorus kicks in. So, in a minute, you're going to see it all freak out.
And it definitely becomes challenging to play when the game is flipping for you. That's for sure. I don't know how far I'm going to get, but we'll try to get as far as we can. Oh See that? I didn't even do that.
It flipped for me,
but it it flips at crazy time, so you don't know what's going to happen or when it's going to happen.
Oh my god, this is insane. Um, you'll definitely appreciate this the first time you play it cuz it's just so insane.
I'm not Yeah, this isn't going well. But it's fun. It's not Oh my god. All right. Oh, I keep forgetting I have a ball. I have the Magnus safe. I should have used that.
Okay, I got to get the couch. I think that's all that's left. The couch. No. Okay, the cow. I don't know. I don't even know anymore.
No. All right. Well,
you get the point. It's pretty crazy. It's totally something spooky would do and uh you'll have a lot of fun with it when you play that mode. Hopefully, you enjoyed the gameplay. Now, we're going to pivot to artwork. The art on this cabinet is absolutely beautiful. If you liked Evil Dead, that's the same artist Christopher Franchie. He came back to do the Beetlejuice game. And when I tell you, he encompassed the whole Beetlejuice world and brought it to life in the artwork that he created for this cabinet. between the side art, the playfield, the back glass, the art on the side of the backbox, it is all there and it looks amazing. And then they used this purple powder coating for the armor and the side rails. It just brought it all together. And man, he just didn't miss any detail. If you've ever seen art packages he's done before, like Batman 66 for instance, he's just so detailoriented and I could tell he just puts a lot of passion into making the artwork unique and something that really sucks you in to that universe of whatever the theme or IP is for that game. Now, I got the butter cabinet this time around. I did it before actually with Evil Dead. What that is is the artwork is directly printed on the cabinet and then they laminate over that. It just makes it pop. Now, keep in mind if you didn't get that, you're still going to really love it. It's still going to look great, but the butter cabinet just brings it to a whole other level. Now, if you're interested in future spooky titles, obviously the butter cabinet does come at a cost. But if you're just looking for something that's beautiful, like you want your piece to stand out in your lineup, you can't go wrong with the butter cabinet. Speaking of that, I think this is one of those games if you never even played it and you just wanted like the sexiest thing you could put in a room, this is pretty up there with some of the best art packages I've ever seen on a pinball machine. So, props to Franchie. You totally nailed it out of the park on this one. All right, let's talk a little bit about shots and layout. The layout is pretty simple, although there's a lot packed into it. So, when you first kind of stand over it, you're like, "Wow, there's a lot of stuff in this game to shoot at." But when you take a step back and you play it a little bit, you'll find that the shots are easy to find. In the beginning, you may have a little bit of a tough time because you're probably figuring out how the heck does this sandworm work and things like that. The sandworm has this ability where you can spam the action button to lower the sandworm so you can shoot him in his mouth. Now, that wasn't directly obvious to me because there's no call outs really in the game. If you listen to the gameplay, I have the call outs turned on. But I don't think Spooky liked them, so they shut them off. So, I don't know what the future of the call outs are. But unless you're looking at the LCD, it's going to be hard for you to learn the game. So, I would suggest you have a friend over and you you really look at what the LCD is instructing you to do, and you'll be getting the shots and understanding how to navigate through the code in no time. The ramp shots are pretty easy to hit. The Dante's Inferno and the Beetlejuice and then the one next to it, which I can't remember the name, and they're pretty satisfying, but I did find at first it felt a little clunky initially, but it was because I hadn't found the shots yet. But I think once you get it going, you're going to be like, "Wow, there's some flow to it." Now, it's not Lwin level flow, but there's definitely some flow to it. My only caveat on the layout, the thing I don't like that much is probably the waiting room in the back left. I feel like that flipper, that shot just isn't as satisfying as I would hope it would be. But um but that's how you qualify the lock for the waiting room multiball. I think that's what it's called. So overall, I'm happy with the layout and design. Let's talk about the state of the code. There was already a decent amount of modes in the game when it first shipped, and they just added two more modes, till death and gravedig. So you got to see a little bit of the mode, so you kind of have a taste of what the code brings. I think they do a good job at Spooky building modes that kind of make sense and the lights do guide you through it. But my biggest beef right now with it is the lack of call outs cuz I think the game for being a rather approachable layout and a easier shooter than let's say Evil Dead. I would like to see more call outs, more instruction on telling you what to do. But if you just look at the lights, it does kind of guide you. But you will find a lot of that information is on the LCD. And uh I don't know, I'm not the best pinball player, so I for me to keep glancing at the LCD and looking down and then playing it can be can be challenging at times. But they integrated a lot of cool things to the code like the as seen on TV mode where you hold down the button and play with one hand. I thought that was really clever. There there's just a lot of like thematic stuff. They really tied the theme in well, but that's just what Spooky does. They're really good at that. So I feel like their games are really made for the home. So, if you bought this for your house, I think you're going to love it. I think sometimes these games can be a little challenging on location um just because some of them can be longer players. I would say this one would probably be a longer player once you find all the shots. But I'm very happy with where the code is right now. But if this is anything like what they did with Evil Dead, they progressed that code a ton. They even had a stream that they did on Evil Dead to I think it was their one of their final wizard modes. They actually used community feedback to make the mode. I think I have that right. But they they're very receptive to what the community says. And so I I don't feel like you're going to have a problem with the code long term. I like it as it is right now, but if Evil Dead was any example, then they're going to put the time in to keep on continuing to make it better. So I'm very confident in that. But if you get this game and you're in one of the earlier numbers, then I think you're, you know, you're gonna still have a lot to chew on until the game evolves because they they um, you know, when you start getting into more the December time frame of this year, uh, I'm sure they'll have it almost wrapped up. But, uh, but yeah, I think you'll enjoy the code for what it is right now. And, uh, my only gripe would be, let's get some call outs in there to help guide you through it. Time to talk about the audio package. Take a picture. Overall, the audio package is really good. The music is there. The sound effects are there. The spooky speak option that they just added is really cool. It's a little gimmicky, but it's neat. Like, when you turn on the game, you have to say, "This is the moment you've all been waiting for. The demonstration of Spooky Speak, Spooky's latest technology." Are you ready? All right, here we go. Beetlejuice. Don't even say his name.
Okay. I don't want his help.
You said it twice. Just say it once more. Come on. It It's fine. Beetlej juice. There's other parts in the game where in order to start the mode, you have to speak too or you can hit the action button. But I kind of find it's unique. There's a couple things built in there that are uh just quirky things. Like if you say Franchie, it goes or it screams or something. So, I don't know. There's some funny stuff in there and I'm sure they're going to find other ways to use that. Like I said, the only beef I have when it comes to the audio package is they just got to put some call outs in there. If they can get some solid call outs in there, I think it will help guide you through the game a bit better. Spooky does a really good job with the audio system they put into their pinball machines. So, they have a decent amplifier, a really big subwoofer, and uh the backbox speakers are the only things that I'm like eh on. like they don't have the best range of sound. I upgrade those um with the pinwoer 5 and a/4 in speakers. They actually fit just fine. Uh pretty easy upgrade. You'll just find that the the backbox audio will just sound a lot better. It it's not that it doesn't sound good, but I'm super anal with audio. So, it's a very minor gripe, but if it's something where you you're used to having the best of the best when it comes to the audio system, you could probably pick up uh some pinwoer 5 and a/4 in speakers and throw them in there. pretty easy modification. You'll probably be a little bit happier with it if you're if you're anal like me about audio. But overall, the audio package definitely a solid thumbs up. There's a couple of audio level inconsistency things in there that I just wanted to talk about just real fast. Uh when the bonus screen comes on and it's counting up your bonus, it's like ridiculously loud. Like like holy crap. I I think they could bring that down. I don't know why it's so loud, but it's it's a very different volume level than everything else. That's really the only thing that I could pull out as something that I hope they fix. That'd be an easy thing to fix in code. But overall, I I do like the audio package outside of those couple little things. All right, it's that time. It's time for final thoughts on Beetlejuice by Spooky Pinball. So, what do I think? First off, these guys in Benton, Wisconsin are absolutely insane. I mean, the way that they can integrate a movie moment into a pinball experience is just really good. They're just exceptional at that. If you can play the deo mode and not smile on your face and not be super excited about what you just experienced, I'm not sure. Like maybe you were born without a fun chip. And I can't help you with that. And neither can Spooky. For the 99% of us, you're going to walk away from this being like, "Wow, I love Beetlejuice. I love pinball." And they just married the two together in a great way. But it wasn't all rainbows and lollipops for me at first. So, I think I got so sucked into the hype of this game that my expectations were through the roof. I mean, think about it. You start reading forums and threads and imagine the pressure Spooky Pinball felt after Evil Dead was such a crazy success. And that game is amazing. Evil Dead is one that even though I know we're not supposed to say things are bolted to the floor, it's pretty well bolted to the floor. But they just had the perfect, it was the perfect storm. It was everything. the callouts, the gameplay, the theme integration, it's all there. The cabinet art, it's all beautiful. They came close to that with Beetlejuice, but I know there's going to be some that are like Beetlejuice more than Evil Dead, but I think for me, I just let the hype take over a bit. Now, I don't want you to take that as I don't think this is a great game. I really do. It's really fun. I'm having a blast with it, but my initial experience was kind of interesting. I didn't love it at first. It took me a little time to warm up to it. And that's just the honest truth. I stepped into the room. I was tired. I wasn't playing well. And honestly, I was like, "Oh my god, did I just spend all this money on this game?" And it's not one I'm going to love. I walked away from it. I came back with a fresh set of eyes and it really started to open up for me. It wasn't really until my friend Rudy came over where we started to understand the code together and I was really starting to find the shots that I started to get into a flow and went, "Okay, I like this. I really do." But it took me some time. And it may take you some time, too. Or you might be like my buddy Rudy and be an who their first game is always awesome, which I wanted to punch him in the face, but hey, for me, it's usually a warm-up period, but for him, he just comes in and like blows up your game on the first game. But the funny thing about that, he's he gets progressively worse. So that's where I feel better about myself cuz then I start beating him. But that's that's a whole other side conversation. Just watch our Ralph and Rudy streams on Retro Ralph Live and you can hear and see all about that. So I think overall Spooky did a really good job here. The layout, you get into some flow. It's not Elwin level flow, but I think Spooky is still trying to figure out how to push the limits and be even more creative with their design. So for a company of the age that they're at, I think they're doing a really good job because here's the thing, they continue to get better. And that's the thing and I think everyone over there is really passionate about pinball and they want to keep pushing themselves and it's very clear that they keep doing that. So I'm excited to be able to support them any way that I can and and root for them on the sidelines because when you have a passionate group of people building anything, you want to root for them. And the game is it's them. It's them. It's the passion they have for pinball coming out in this experience that they created for all of us to enjoy. So, if you were one of the lucky ones to happen to get this Beetlejuice game, you're probably going to have a really fun time and enjoy it. If you missed out, what I would suggest to you is if you like these themes Spooky's coming out with, then you better start talking to your distributors and getting on lists early because the hype is real. They keep on building on the momentum of the prior game. And so I got to think the next game is going to be just like this one and it's going to be really hard to get. And at the company size they are, they can only make one game a year and they want to continue to make additional games. So if you missed out, I'm sorry. I feel bad that you missed out, but maybe you'll get in on the next one. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video. Keep in mind these are still my initial thoughts. This code is still in its early days. So, if you're one of the later run people, then you're going to probably see multiple code revisions and be lucky that you get access to that when the game ships to your location. But right now, there's probably less than 50 of them out there in the world as of March 2026. I'm really enjoying it. I hope you enjoyed it, too, if you happen to get one. If you like the video, give me a thumbs up. Consider subscribing to the channel. I want to hear from you. What do you think about this game? What do you think about Beetlejuice? And that's it for now, guys. We will see you on the flip side.