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Ep 48: Sorcery

Final Round Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 31m·analyzed·Dec 23, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Jerry Kurtz discusses P3 platform value, customer loyalty model, 14-game library, and flipper upgrade kit.

Summary

Jerry Kurtz of Multimorphic discusses the P3 platform's design philosophy, market positioning, and recent developments including the flipper upgrade kit. The conversation covers the value proposition of downloadable content on P3 versus Cactus Canyon Remake, the evolving game library now at 14 titles, and Multimorphic's commitment to customer loyalty and long-term machine support. Jerry defends the P3's integration of digital screens as authentic pinball while acknowledging initial community skepticism.

Key Claims

  • Multimorphic has released 14 games in their game library over five years

    high confidence · Jerry Kurtz stated: 'over the course of these five years, we now have 14 games in our game library'

  • New P3 games cost under $3,000, compared to $6,000-$15,000 for traditional pinball machines

    high confidence · Jerry: 'we come up with a game for $2,500 or $2,750 or likely our licensed game that we're coming out with soon that we've started talking about will be a little higher to cover the cost of the license. But we're talking about under $3,000 for a game, and everybody else is selling games for $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, $10,000, $12,000, $15,000.'

  • Multimorphic announced the P3 the same week COVID shut everything down, the week before TPF

    high confidence · Jerry: 'We announced it basically the same week COVID shut everything down. It was the week before TPF, which is where we were going to launch.'

  • Jerry Kurtz is developing a new licensed game for the P3 platform

    high confidence · Jerry: 'likely our licensed game that we're coming out with soon that we've started talking about will be a little higher to cover the cost of the license'

  • Ranger in the Ruins (a third-party game by Nick Baldridge) costs $149-$150 and all money goes to the developer

    high confidence · Jerry: 'Ranger in the Ruins, by the way, is developed by a third party, Nick Baldridge... It is $149 $150 essentially to add on this entire new game... But most of the money goes to Nick'

  • Multimorphic released a flipper upgrade kit to address flipper feel concerns on the P3

    high confidence · Jerry: 'What we've done is we've come out with a flipper upgrade kit that includes a couple of small circuit boards that get put near the flippers so the circuit boards can sense the position of the flippers, feed that information back to software, and our software now can ensure that you've got full strength flips no matter where the ball hits it on the bat.'

  • Sorcerer's Apprentice is Multimorphic's latest game and Jerry Kurtz wrote the logic and game rules

    high confidence · Jerry: 'Sorcerers. Sorcerers Apprentice is our latest. I wrote, did all the code for, not all the code, I did the logic, the game rules'

Notable Quotes

  • “It really comes down to value. You need to decide if there's enough value in the product that you're getting for the price somebody's charging for it.”

    Jerry Kurtz@ 3:14 — Core philosophy on downloadable content pricing and value proposition

  • “If you want that traditional experience, there's plenty of options. We're the only ones giving you that different experience.”

    Jerry Kurtz@ 12:48 — Multimorphic's positioning as a differentiator in the market

  • “We're the only pinball company in the industry that's... we're incentivized... we want to make sure our customers have working, playing, feature-rich machines forever”

    Jerry Kurtz@ 18:56 — Describes Multimorphic's unique customer loyalty business model

  • “Slow growth is a lot easier to manage and it's a lot easier to build the strength of a company that way than trying to go really fast, really quickly.”

    Jerry Kurtz@ 17:22 — Explains Multimorphic's deliberate growth strategy

  • “I guess we should take it as a badge of honor that we're now part of the pinball community... people are trashing us and praising us at the same time”

    Jerry Kurtz@ 23:57 — Reflects on polarized community reception to P3 platform

  • “The people that think Cannon Lagoon is the best, generally speaking, are non-traditional pinball people... They're non-pinball people. It's just fun.”

    Jerry Kurtz@ 24:13 — Explains divided audience appeal across player demographics

Entities

Jerry KurtzpersonBJ WilsonpersonNick BaldridgepersonJackson GpersonMultimorphiccompanyChicago Gaming CompanycompanySterncompanyFinal Round Pinball PodcastorganizationMultimorphic P3productSorcerer's Apprenticegame

Signals

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic pursuing game library growth to 14 titles and emphasizing customer loyalty through continuous support and downloadable content

    high · Jerry: 'over the course of these five years, we now have 14 games in our game library' and 'we're the only pinball company in the industry that's... incentivized... we want to make sure our customers have working, playing, feature-rich machines forever'

  • $

    market_signal: P3 games priced at $2,500-$3,000 (or under) versus traditional pinball at $6,000-$15,000, positioning modular platform as value alternative

    high · Jerry: 'we come up with a game for $2,500 or $2,750... under $3,000 for a game, and everybody else is selling games for $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, $10,000, $12,000, $15,000'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Flipper upgrade kit released to address longstanding community concern about flipper feel on P3 platform

    high · Jerry announced flipper upgrade kit with circuit boards to provide full-strength flips and eliminate flipper feel concerns

  • ?

    product_launch: Sorcerer's Apprentice latest P3 game designed by Jerry Kurtz with BJ Wilson on graphics

    high · Jerry: 'Sorcerers Apprentice is our latest. I wrote... the logic, the game rules... I had help from BJ Wilson... He did all of the graphical programming'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: BJ Wilson based in New Zealand providing graphical programming for Multimorphic games

    high · Jerry: 'I had help from BJ Wilson, who's in New Zealand... He did all of the graphical programming'

Topics

P3 Platform Design and Digital IntegrationprimaryDownloadable Content and Game Pricing ModelsprimaryCustomer Loyalty and Long-term Machine SupportprimaryMultimorphic Game Library and ReleasesprimaryCommunity Perception and Authenticity of Digital PinballprimaryThird-party Game Development on P3secondaryFlipper Technology and Hardware ImprovementssecondaryTournament Play and P3 Acceptancesecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.78)— Jerry Kurtz speaks confidently about Multimorphic's strategy and defends the P3 platform against criticism. The conversation is collaborative and respectful. Some acknowledgment of market challenges, but framed as manageable and part of building strength. Polarized community reception acknowledged with humor.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.274

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round.
0:59
great. How are you? Really good, man. And it's a weird thing because we are talking to each other for the first time. I've talked about you a lot over the years. I've talked about your products a lot over the years. It's just weird that right now, after all this time, we finally get to talk. Well, it's funny for me too, because I hear your voice. I've heard it for years. I used to listen to Head to Head and I've seen you do streams and stuff. You sound like you sound, which is a good thing, I guess. Yeah, that's good.
1:29
But yeah, nice to talk to you in person. Yeah, awesome. It's good, and Jerry, you know, we're both big fans of Multimorphic and the uniqueness that it is, and we were talking a couple of episodes ago with Jesse J about downloadable content, and Marty brought up a good point that, you know, the platform of what, say, Cactus Canyon is doing with the Josh and Lyman code is kind of there in a way with Multimorphic, and I said, well, yes and no. And I thought, well, why don't we talk to Jerry and find out exactly what he thinks.
2:01
So to refresh those that didn't hear it, I am personally not a fan of the idea that you pay this big money for Cactus Canyon remake. It's got Bionic Bark. It's got a wizard mode. It's got all these things, but that's not good enough. We're going to sell you on top of that another additional code. And my argument was that could be great code and everything. I just think it should have been included in the price and i didn't like the idea i didn't like the model of that so you heard that wondered what you thought and my argument was well hang on that's the same model i believe

  • BJ Wilson (in New Zealand) did graphical programming for Sorcerer's Apprentice

    high confidence · Jerry: 'I had help from BJ Wilson, who's in New Zealand... He did all of the graphical programming.'

    • Lexi Lightspeed
    game
    Heistgame
    Cannon Lagoongame
    Cosmic Heart Racinggame
    Ranger in the Ruinsgame
    Shoot and Scootgame
    Cactus Canyon Remakegame
    Todd McCullochperson
    Ian Harrowerperson
    Steven Silverperson
    Shaneperson
  • ?

    community_signal: P3 platform achieving mainstream pinball community acceptance evidenced by inclusion in major tournaments and polarized reception typical of established pinball games

    high · Jerry discussing Bat City Open 2017 where Lexi Lightspeed was tournament game, and noting polarized reception ('best' vs 'worst') as sign of community arrival

  • ?

    business_signal: Multimorphic deliberately pursuing slow, managed growth to ensure company strength and customer support quality

    high · Jerry: 'Slow growth is a lot easier to manage and it's a lot easier to build the strength of a company that way... if we were trying to sell a thousand machines a year, there's no way we would have been able to do it. We would have died.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jerry defending P3's digital screen integration as authentic pinball, comparing pixel grid to traditional lights and emphasizing physical ball/flipper mechanics

    high · Jerry: 'We have two million RGB lit rollover targets because every pixel is essentially a light... We're still flipping a physical ball... people who say it's not a real pinball experience are really just looking for an excuse'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Multimorphic working on licensed game for P3 platform with higher price point to cover licensing costs

    medium · Jerry: 'our licensed game that we're coming out with soon that we've started talking about will be a little higher to cover the cost of the license. But we're talking about under $3,000'

  • ?

    content_signal: Third-party game development on P3 platform with Nick Baldridge's Ranger in the Ruins as example; Multimorphic taking small percentage, majority going to developer

    high · Jerry: 'Ranger in the Ruins, by the way, is developed by a third party, Nick Baldridge... $149 $150 essentially to add on this entire new game... most of the money goes to Nick'

  • ?

    product_strategy: System Core generic artwork package released to allow players to swap between themed machines without changing cabinet appearance

    high · Jerry discussing System Core artwork by Jackson G as solution for players with multiple game modules to maintain unified cabinet aesthetic

  • ?

    competitive_signal: P3 games increasingly adopted in competitive tournament play, with Lexi Lightspeed used in major tournaments since 2017

    medium · Host mentioning selection of Lexi Lightspeed in Bat City Open tournament in 2017, noting other players' skepticism about unconventional choice

    • 2:34
    and jerry you can correct me if i'm wrong it's the same model that multimorphic does and we accept it so where are we in this are you team jeff or are you team marty okay can i be politically correct and say I'm team both of you? No, you can't. No, not on this show. No. There are aspects of both of your arguments that I completely agree with. My whole deal is we designed a system, a platform as a platform, as a thing that you buy this system, the P3 machine,
    3:04
    and then you can add games to it just like you do with a PlayStation or a Nintendo or anything like that that's designed for additional content. It really comes down to value. You need to decide if there's enough value in the product that you're getting for the price somebody's charging for it. And if you think you're getting enough value, then you're going to be happy to pay for additional content. And if you don't think you're getting enough value, then you're going to be upset that they want more money for additional features. So it sounds to me like Jeff feels like the value he would get for the purchase price of a CCR, a Cactus Canyon remake,
    3:41
    for the price of that, it should include all of the stuff they've been working on. as opposed to buying a P3, he's going to know going into it that it comes with a full game. It comes with a game like Heist, and then he can choose to pay a couple hundred bucks for an add-on minigames, or he can choose to pay a couple thousand bucks for an additional playfield, and that's additional value that he knows coming in is going to be well worth paying for. So he could buy a Cactus Canyon remake and choose to get the downloadable new code if he wanted to. So then it just depends on whether or not he believes the purchase price of that base model is too high or is good enough for what he's getting.
    4:18
    And I think we all agree that the idea of if you held something back so that you had to purchase this additional thing, that's not cool. Yeah, that's just rude. Yeah, for sure. I think the market will dictate because if it doesn't sell, if poor Josh and poor Lyman don't get any money because no one buys their code, then the market has told everybody that's a shit decision. And we also said we strongly believe Lyman and Josh should be paid for their work. Absolutely. I personally just wish it was included.
    4:48
    Yeah, it's more of a business decision than a personnel or a staffing decision. So we had CCR, Cosmic Car Racing. not to be confused with CC little R which is Cactus Canyon do you get to hold CCR like you should tell Chicago Gaming hey you can't use CCR so I laugh when I see it online because people are using a little R for the remake and we have of course Cactus or Cosmic Heart Racing with a big R so I think I'm okay with it well hold on Jerry we've got John Fogerty on the phone
    5:19
    CCR he's got dibs on that over all of you so you're all out of luck We trademarked it for pinball use only. No, just kidding. We didn't trademark it. It's a funny discussion. But it's fun to see all the popular discussions and people being really excited about CCR, regardless of whether it's ours or somebody else's. But we did things like, so we came out with the platform, and then we had this Cosmic Kart Racing game, and we added a full new set of rules, what we call career mode, an entirely new gaming experience, and we gave it to people for free
    5:50
    because we felt like the people who paid for the game would enjoy this additional content. We did things like adding Bluetooth and USB stuff for free. We added player profiles for free. We added Trits Connect for free. So we do a lot of add-on platform features that are free. We may or may not come out with games in the future that are add-on games for free. Some of our third-party developers have. And then, of course, what you just said is right. When you build a game with lots of graphical content or lots of programming needs or lots of resources that you wouldn't otherwise have on your staff or you can't justify paying for without a purchase price of a product, then there's really no choice.
    6:30
    You have to do it. I'll tell you, each new game, whether it's Heist or whatever you're coming up with, each time you come up with a new game, the multi-morphic platform and actual unit just becomes more and more valuable. You're getting a bigger bang for the buck the more titles you have. Well, I laugh every time we come up with a game because we come up with a game for $2,500 or $2,750 or likely our licensed game that we're coming out with soon that we've started talking about will be a little higher to cover the cost of the license. But we're talking about under $3,000 for a game,
    7:01
    and everybody else is selling games for $6,000, $7,000, $8,000, $10,000, $12,000, $15,000. So I laugh when people try to compare Heist to something else because people pay under $3,000 for Heist, and I'm going to pay under $3,000, certainly not over it, for something new that's coming as well. Just allow me, if you can, just to do the very quick history lesson to come up to today because, again, as a commentator on pinball, I was one of the people from the start that went, do you know what, I really like this,
    7:31
    because a friend of mine, Shane, hi, Shane, he played a really, really early version of it, came back and said, this is great, it is the future of pinball, but the big but was the flippers feel just a little bit weird but you fix you fix that i know you fix that because you change that but all along the way people have been saying it's pinball but is it too removed from pinball and so i want us to go we've skipped five years to today how do you
    8:01
    how do you talk to people that still feel that way and are there things that you've done along the way to address that sentiment. Okay, so just to bring all the listeners up to speed, the P3 is a platform machine that has a digital display in the lower half of the playfield with interactive capabilities. So the physical pinball, the ball you flip around with the flippers and roll around towards the toys and objects and bumpers and ramps and things on the playfield, it can also interact with virtual targets on the screen.
    8:32
    So the presence of that screen is an interesting point of conversation for people because some people say that if you have an interactive video screen in anything, that turns it into a video game. No, it's not true. It's wrong. It's flat out wrong. We're still flipping a physical ball. When I explain to people, I say we took this painted piece of wood that has blinking lights, And in some cases it has rollover targets, star rollovers or other rollovers. It's certainly got switches on traditional machines.
    9:03
    And all we did is we took a traditional painted play field and we turned it into a surface. And this is kind of a silly description, but it's pretty accurate. We have two million RGB lit rollover targets because every pixel is essentially a light. other games continue to add more and more light and they're trying to get closer and closer and closer to a video display the appearance down there so that they can give you more information while you're playing well we have an lcd down there so we already have that and then we add
    9:33
    the ball and the interaction and all that stuff but you're still playing physical pinball of course we all know that you have real flippers real balls real ramps loops targets all those things so i think people who say it's not a real pinball experience are really just looking for an excuse they're looking for a reason to to not commit to it or not give it a chance and unfortunately the community still has a lot of people that are very strictly traditional pinball people and they refuse to give anything new a chance i'll tell you what i thought when i first played lexi light speed first thing was this feels like pinball absolutely it's the physical part of pinball
    10:09
    not for a second did i think this is a video game and i was even playing that one and i know it's got another title but it's the asteroids one right like that is a video game no no it's not it is a freaking pinball game it is pure pinball but you just happen to be aiming for things that are on a video screen so i i'm one of the people that played it for the first time i streamed it as you know and i just went okay this is pinball it feels good it flips good i think the only
    10:42
    criticism I had of it at the time was I was expecting more of a, you get into multi-ball and then there's jackpot and somebody yells out jackpot. I think the main difference with Lexi Lightspeed was the modes were incredibly fleshed out and it was you getting through the story and getting through the mode that was more important rather than getting a jackpot call out. So it's an interesting point because since we have that LCD in the play field, in the playing experience.
    11:12
    It allows us to use it to tell the story. So a lot of our games do immerse you more into the story that you're playing and we drive home the playing mechanic by showing you why you're shooting specific shots. You're hitting this one to help fix the engine or you're hitting this one to move to the next room in the warehouse or whatever. We do have immersive modes in the game where you're literally seeing different stuff on the play field. So you go into the warehouse or you go into
    11:42
    somebody's house or you go into the bar scene. But we also do, and Lexi, there are real traditional style of multiballs with real jackpots and jackpot call-outs and all those things. I think the fact that we have the immersive modes brings you from a traditional pinball playing experience into this story-based thing and you're reacting more to the story rather than to the visceral, physical pinball experience. I mean, Agent Multi ball in Lexi has, you hit a shot, you get jackpots. If you hit a triple jackpot, it goes, bam, bam,
    12:13
    bam, triple jackpot. It does all those things like a traditional game will do. It's just, we also have modes that immerse you into a different scene entirely. I was going to agree with you. It's actually the immersive side of it that I actually really enjoyed. And this was the whole thing where people were sort of saying, oh, you know, it's moved too far away from pinball. Well, why not? Why not do something different that gives you a new experience? Because if you want a traditional pinball experience, like real traditional, well,
    12:43
    then there's so many options. This tries to give you a new pinball experience, and it does successfully. Yeah, that's what I say as well. If you want that traditional experience, there's plenty of options. We're the only ones giving you that different experience. And oh, by the way, you can get a fully traditional experience on this thing as well. Maybe you'd say Lexi is semi-traditional, or maybe a future game will be entirely traditional without moving playfield artwork, but it's a platform again, and once you buy into the platform, there's any number of playing experiences we're going to deliver.
    13:14
    I thoroughly enjoyed playing Heist. Finally got to play it at Chicago Expo. I saw you there, Jerry. I was playing with Todd McCulloch, and you were kind of explaining how the game goes. I kind of knew what to do because, again, you're looking down. The playfield tells you what to do. The shots are easily laid out. But I think you were telling me kind of maybe some advanced things. And I know Todd and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I imagine so did most people that played it probably for the first time as well at Expo. Expo was the first show we've been to since announcing the game a year and a half ago.
    13:49
    Wow. Because we announced it basically the same week COVID shut everything down. It was the week before TPF, which is where we were going to launch. And, yes, it does seem like a game. The P3 in general is a machine where people need to touch it and feel it and play games on it before they really understand, to Marty's point earlier about it being physical pinball. They really need to experience the fact that it is physical pinball before they really give it a chance. Heist is a game that the majority of people who play it love it. The reactions we get are great. Our biggest salespeople are our customers because they have people over to their house.
    14:22
    Someone comes over and plays it, and then usually, well, not usually necessarily, but a lot of times they wind up coming home and buying the machine. You mentioned salespeople. You have to buy directly from you, correct? No, you don't. We have some distributors. We're actually trying to grow our distribution at least worldwide. But yeah, you can buy it from us directly or you can buy it through a distributor. Does that help to have the distributor connection? I know maybe you save a dollar or two from the end user if you buy it direct. I don't know. Maybe, you know, because distributors have to get paid as well.
    14:52
    I don't really know how it works. I'm asking out of pure ignorance. So, theoretically, buying from a distributor or a traditional machine from a distributor could help you because the distributor should be the one helping you through setup issues where they may come over and install it for you, set up the machine, walk you through it, show you how to maintain it. The P3 is so new and so different that distributors don't really know it as well as they would a traditional machine. So we still, we, Multimorphic, I field support calls, our engineering staff supports or fields support calls,
    15:27
    and we generally talk to all of the customers directly. So a customer is going to get pretty much the same experience, whether they buy it from a distributor or us directly. They're just going to call us and say, hey, I don't know how to do this. How do I raise the volume or how do I do these things? And we just walk up through it. So then looking at the journey that you've had with the P3 platform, are you happy with the market share that you've been able to get with the platform? Direct answer is no, but it's probably been a good thing.
    16:00
    And what I mean by that is, no, of course, you announce a new game or a new system or a new whatever, and you want the community to fully adopt it, to buy into it, to basically to fund the rest of the life of your company. And we've had to scratch and claw and crawl before we walked, before we run. We're still fighting the fight, honestly, to get people to give this thing a chance. But the reason I said that's a good thing is there's two reasons for it. One is if you're not fighting to make your company successful,
    16:30
    you're probably not putting as much passion into it that it needs. And I can tell you from experience that we have a team of people that are literally busting at the seams with enthusiasm and they bring the past to this thing. They want to make this thing successful. I want to make this thing successful. We pour everything we can into our games. But also, if you start a company and go from zero to 100 super quickly, then you've probably got too many problems to deal with. I mean, we've seen supply chain issues. We've had to learn how to assemble these things,
    17:02
    how to deal with customer support issues, how to get our suppliers to supply products when we need them in the timeframes when we need them and do them with the quality that we need. And if there are issues, we have to fight with them and get them resolved. And do they ship new ones and do those new ones take three or four more months to get in? And if we were trying to sell a thousand machines a year, there's no way we would have been able to do it. We would have died. So slow growth is a lot easier to manage and it's a lot easier to build the strength of a company that way than trying to go really fast, really quickly.
    17:33
    And slow growth. That's a nice progression too. As we mentioned, as the new titles come out, it just gets more and more easier to sell those to existing members. New people are fascinated. Okay, I've now got six, seven games to choose from all these different modules. And boy, that's going to cost a lot less than buying six or seven machines, let's say. And you did start out slow. In fact, I remember the first time you and I met, this is years ago, 2017. It was at the Bat City Open in Austin, Texas. and you had a bunch of games there.
    18:04
    And even Lexi was in the tournament. And this was back then the equivalent of a Stern Pro Circuit event. So a big, big, big tournament. And I was a bus driver, which means I had done well in the tournament. I know, shocker. Get over it, Marty. I got to pick the games that I was going to compete in. And the first game I picked after playing in competition for the first time ever was Lexi Lightspeed. I really enjoyed it. And the other guys were looking at me like, really? not because it was a bad game it was just like you don't know it i'm like yeah but i like the feel i know the shots i and that was exciting to see that in a tournament and look where we are now
    18:38
    almost five years later yes it's been a long road for sure and but we've made a ton of progress but one thing well another point i wanted to make about the fact that we're a platform and a little bit different in the slow growth we are a company that we might be the only pinball company in the industry that's, I call it customer loyalty, but what I mean by that is we're incentivized. We want to make sure our customers have working, playing, feature-rich machines forever because we come out
    19:10
    with new games periodically. Over the course of these five years, we now have 14 games in our game library, but we want to keep their machines running. We don't want them to sell their machine to free up space and funds for their next game. We want to make sure they continue to have the best experience possible. So I think we're the only company in the industry that encourages you and helps you keep your game running for a long time. And we do that because of this growth, because we're coming out with games, because we want to come out with more and more content, because we want third parties developing games, because we simply want people with P3s to remain
    19:46
    loyal customers forever. Okay, here's an interesting question for you. 14 games, A couple of questions. What's your favorite game? What's your guilty pleasure? And what's your favorite party game? Oh, boy. Favorite game? I don't... We're talking pinball party games. I just want to clarify. Not that one. Although that is a good one. Oh, boy. I had some stories back in the college days. Anyway, pinball. Favorite game's tough. I won't use the Gary Stern line that my latest is the favorite.
    20:16
    Take that, Steven Silver. I'm just kidding. I do love Heist. Heist is not our latest. Well, that's right. Sorcerers. Sorcerers Apprentice is our latest. I wrote, did all the code for, not all the code, I did the logic, the game rules, and then I had help from BJ Wilson, who's in New Zealand, Marty. He did all of the graphical programming. And then we had an artist help us with some of it. But I feel very much attached to that game. I feel like that game is, more so than any other game,
    20:47
    that game's kind of my baby. Lexi is the game that got us started. It was something that I spent a ton of time thinking through the right way to deliver an experience on this platform. I love Heist. Heist is also a great game. Steven and the team did a fantastic job on it. I would say that those are my two favorites. To pick one is tough. I won't do it, but both are fantastic games. Both give you traditional gaming experiences. Both have great toys, right? Lexi has an eight ball physical Yeah, that's true.
    21:18
    Hey, Marty, he won't pick between the two. Every week I make Marty pick between two things. One lives, one dies. Jerry, you're lucky you're not the host here. That's the great thing about this. Someone buys a new P3 for Heist and they can just add Lexi to it and enjoy both forever. Fantastic. Okay, so you won't pick that. What's your guilty pleasure game? I love shoot and scoot, honestly. Shoot and scoot is a game that all you're doing, this is a mini game that works with any of our play fields it's a game that all you're doing is you're shooting for
    21:49
    basically geographic positions on the play field if you shoot all the way to the left no matter what the feature is on the play field you shoot to the left and your character on the screen moves to the left if you shoot to the right your character moves to the right you shoot to the middle obviously it stays in the middle so there's five lanes that you can shoot for and you're literally navigating your character through I call it a maze or it's a road where you're moving and avoiding obstacles and collecting things. It's just a simple, fun game that I love to play.
    22:22
    I don't know why. It's just a fun little game. Cannon Lagoon is my guilty pleasure. Is that the pirate one? Yeah. That's mine too. Whenever I go to Ian Harrower's house, and I probably would play Heist a lot, but I always play that game. We went to Expo one year, and I was watching. This was the first year we had Lexi and Cannon Lagoon. We had them together. and I stood behind a guy who played it for about 10 minutes. I was of course watching him play to see his experience to see if the machine was running properly since it was so early in the game He turned around after he was done and he said don bother playing this It the worst game I ever played
    22:57
    And then we went to TPF the next year, and I had literally three people walk up to me at our booth and say, Cannon Lagoon is the best pinball game I've ever played. I'm like, what? It's the best? So I don't understand either side of that because it's clearly not a terrible experience, and it's obviously not a traditional pinball experience that most people would say is the best ever. But it's funny to see complete the both ends of that argument. It's hilarious. As a side note, so I guess our Kels machine,
    23:28
    the first real international showing of a production machine, had exactly the same thing. We had these people going, it is the best game, and then there's other people saying, it is the worst game. Nothing in between. It's either the best or the worst. Welcome to pinball. We all know that everyone's got wildly differing opinions on pretty much everything, on art, on rules, on depth, on place of layouts, all those things. It's just best and worst is so extreme. How do people say that? Yeah, I don't know. But, yeah, I kind of – I guess we should take it as a badge of honor that we're now part of the pinball community.
    24:02
    We're now accepted because people are trashing us and praising us at the same time, and it's confusing the hell out of us. So, yay, we've arrived. Yeah, what do you do? What do you react to? You just listen. You take it in, and you respect people's opinions. and there are reasons. The people that think it's the best, the people that think Cannon Lagoon is the best, generally speaking, are non-traditional pinball people. They're non-pinball people, I mean. It's just fun. Yeah, they like just hitting the start button, doing a fun little thing for a few minutes, enjoying the experience, and then moving on. So what's the party game, Jerry? Party game, we actually did this at Houston. People loaded up Ranger in the Ruins,
    24:38
    and in default mode, Ranger in the Ruins, by the way, is developed by a third party, Nick Baldridge. It's a fantastic little unique roguelike playing experience on the P3 The default And how much is it? It is $149 $150 essentially to add on this entire new game So that's it, $149 Yep And all that money goes to Nick We take a fee to process the game and to handle the web store and all that stuff A percentage, a small percentage But most of the money goes to Nick
    25:09
    and we encourage people to develop games for the system. But this game is, in the default settings, is a one-ball game. It's a roguelike experience. You don't know really what's happening. You're supposed to figure it out as you go. We basically racked up a bunch of games for people. We'd hit the start button, somebody would play it. We were all playing one-ball games trying to get the high score, and it was about two hours of random people walking in, playing it, tournament players coming by and playing it, and everyone just shooting for this high score. It was a whole lot of fun, and it's a great party game. Awesome. A couple of times you mentioned art. I'm a big fan of the different packages you can do,
    25:45
    what you can do on that big screen. I love pinball games where you never have to look up. That is multimorphic to a T. Talk about the system core artwork option. Yes, that was something we came out with very recently. People buy the P3 and they usually choose which game they want in the system. They always choose which game they want in the system and they can choose which artwork package they want on it as well. So if you buy a P3 today and choose Heist, and you want the Heist playfield with the Heist artwork,
    26:15
    it looks like Heist. It looks like a single-themed machine all based on this Heist game. And then you switch over to a Lexi Lightspeed playfield or Cannon Lagoon or Cosmic Heart Racing playfields, and the game inside the cabinet is a different experience, and some people don't want the outside of their cabinet to still show Heist. So their option is they can swap out the artwork every time they swap the game, which doesn't take long. They're magnets. It only takes a few seconds, but it's still a logistical process. Or we wanted to come out with what we call a generic artwork package that is a cool, high-tech-looking, colorful, dynamic kind of thing that people could put on their cabinet, make it look like a gaming system or make it look like a really cool machine that isn't tied specifically to a game.
    27:04
    So System Core was an interesting challenge. We actually talked to three or four artists and said, hey, make us some cabinet artwork that looks high-tech, that kind of has, I don't know, an Iron Man or a Transformer or a kind of Power Core-related kind of vibe to it. And we got an artist, Jackson G, who – Jackson G actually was the same artist who did our second versions of Lexi Lightspeed and Cosmic Heart Racing artwork. and he just delivered this really cool, this kind of looks Transformer-ish
    27:37
    or you're looking inside of a technical car engine kind of thing and it's just this really neat artwork that people can buy. It's only a couple hundred bucks. Go into our store, we'll ship you this tube full of artwork and then you can stick it on the side of your cabinet. And now when people have Heist in there, Alexi Lightspeed or Cosmic Heart Racing, the game on the outside just looks like a cool gaming system and the game on the inside is entirely themed. So, Jerry, we recently saw news about a flipper upgrade kit. Okay, what's going on there? Okay, so Marty said earlier in the discussion that his friend played the P3
    28:13
    and thought the flippers felt a little weird or a little off. And while most people who own a P3, they will tell you that just like any machine, the P3 flippers feel a little different, but they're perfectly functional. They are able to hit the shots. you're able to aim, you're able to do all the normal things, but because they're floating over the surface of the screen, you can't drill holes through a screen to mount your flippers. They feel a little different, they look a little different, they are a little different, and we've always wanted to end that conversation entirely. We don't want people to come up to the machine and say,
    28:50
    hey, I want to try this thing out, but the flippers look and feel weird. We don't want that to be a conversation. We don't want people to say, hey, I love the new game that's coming out, but I'm worried that the flippers aren't going to be good enough. Well, they were good enough before, and now they're even better. What we've done is we've come out with a flipper upgrade kit that includes a couple of small circuit boards that get put near the flippers so the circuit boards can sense the position of the flippers, feed that information back to software, and our software now can ensure that you've got full strength flips
    29:23
    no matter where the ball hits it on the bat. And it can basically allow you to tune the strength of your flippers so that your playing experience is exactly what you want it to be. That is awesome. Awesome because it's kind of what I had felt was just not the same sort of consistency that I would have had on other machines when you're flipping depending on where it is on the actual flipper itself. So if you've addressed that, then there's no more arguments. Yeah, there were actually two parts of it.
    29:53
    One was that the flips, when a ball would be on the tip of the flipper, that's the most force coming down on the flipper bat. Therefore, the flipper bat has to flip harder to give you the same reaction that it would if the ball were higher up on the bat. So we have absolutely addressed that. And the other thing we addressed is it used to be pretty easy for a ball to ricochet off of a target and come careening back down the play field and knock down a raised flipper. And that, too, is entirely addressed.
    30:23
    So I personally believe that the P3 flippers now are, if not the best, then they're right up there with the best flippers in the industry. Before, I certainly wouldn't have called them bad, but they were average flippers. Now they are the best. And so if people want to upgrade, what do they do? Yeah, so right now we're running a pre-order. We're waiting on the parts to come in from our vendors. We expect to start shipping them early next year, but it's a pre-order kit. I think the price was $40 or $45. Just to cover the cost of materials, we don't really want to make a profit.
    30:54
    We just want to get people playing with the best flipper experience possible. So put in the pre-order now or wait. It doesn't really matter to us. And then early next year, we'll start shipping out these kits. And will all new Multimorphic machines have this kit in it? Yes, every single machine that we've started making. So that's the thing. We got in a set of parts before. We're holding onto those for our current manufacturing builds, and then we're taking pre-orders for the upgrade kits that existing customers can use to install their machines. So like everyone else, you had said something about, you know, we're just waiting for some supplies.
    31:28
    Yeah, I guess that would really affect everybody, yourself included. It's pretty bad right now, isn't it? Yeah, the supply chain is a difficult challenge. It's not impossible. We've made a lot of changes in who we talk to and how we talk to them and when we order and how much money we pay up front to ensure stuff comes in when we need it. The biggest challenge is just the time frames are changing because what used to take three to four weeks to ship from an overseas vendor now takes three or four months, so we have to plan a lot earlier or delay shipments.
    32:01
    we would have loved to have shipped the flipper upgrade kits already we were hoping they'd be in by now but uh the good news is once people get them it's it's a quick 15 20 minute install and they'll have them up and running um new games our our new game we've not so much teased it but we've mentioned that we're working on a new game that's going to be licensed and we were honestly hoping to already have announced it and already started shipping it but supply chain being what it is today it's it's a little bit delayed it's going to take a little bit longer but parts are on the and we're excited to get things in and get things going.
    32:32
    Is that new game being developed internally, or is it like a third-party person that's actually developing it for you? The one we're hinting at that is a licensed theme, that's entirely a Multimorphic project. Now, there are a lot of other projects. There's a handful of projects that third parties are developing, and there are also additional internal projects that we're developing, but the licensed game is Multimorphic's first internally developed licensed game. Was this always the goal because it wasn't with Lexi, it wasn't with Heist? Now licensing it.
    33:02
    You hear people say it's got to be licensed. I disagree, actually, to be quite honest. If a game is a good game, it doesn't matter what the license is. I guess you want a license because maybe there's a built-in fan base. Maybe it's attractive at an arcade. What made you decide, okay, got to go license? So the pros and cons have been discussed about licenses everywhere. it's pretty clear that you come out with a big well-known license and you're getting good sales right out of the chute rather than having to show people that this is a good layout this is a good
    33:37
    story this is great artwork a great sound pack is you have to teach people that the game is good instead of coming out with a licensed game where people are like i don't even care if the play feels good i don't even care if the rules are good and by the way what we've developed all those things are absolutely fantastic. But people might buy the game or sign up for the game regardless just because they love the theme. Sorry, I just had something. It's a good code. It's a good code. So we didn't necessarily plan to
    34:08
    do licenses or not do licenses specifically, but it's clear that licenses are what sell games in this industry. And the reason we haven't done it yet is simply that they cost money right you go for a big name movie license and you're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars if you want a rock band you're paying either a lot of money for a well-known one or still a little bit of money for an unknown one and everything costs money you have to pay for people to do the voices usually the actors or the the artist or the
    34:43
    whoever's involved in the IP. You have to pay for their time, basically. You have to pay upfront guarantees. You have to pay royalties per game. And as a startup over the last few years, we simply never had the budgets to do that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You get paid for voicing stuff? What, what, what? If you're well-known and famous, if you're a movie star, then you get paid very well for that stuff. You said rock bands can be expensive. Marty, list your top 10 electronic music bands
    35:15
    because they're probably looking for a buck and you've got fans like Marty out there. Go ahead, Marty. Depeche Mode. Okay, that's a good one. Thank you very much. I'll just rest my case there. I'll leave it at that. Well, we did say that Scott Denise is doing audio for our next game. Yeah? Okay. I don't know what that means, but you can decide what it means relative to a rock band. Okay. Rock craft work. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks. Love it. Well done. You can take my money. Yeah, no kidding.
    35:46
    So one thing obviously you've talked about is that people are making games for the P3 platform. We're obviously talking about Nick Baldridge's game and others, obviously. So what you're saying to me is people can make games on your platform, anyone. But you've also got the P-Rock platform as well where people can do homebrew games. My question, which hopefully covers both, is if somebody wanted to dip their toe in and design a pinball game, which direction would you steer them in?
    36:19
    Okay, it's a good question. It's one I don't get a lot, but I like talking about it. Marty, where'd you get the question? It really depends on how much they want to dip their toes in or where their skills are or where they need help. The P3 machine is an entire machine. It's there. It's got cabinet and play fields and back box and the control system is in there. It's got the flippers and the walls and scoops and the ball trough and all those things are already in there.
    36:52
    If somebody just wants to experiment with an existing machine, write a cool game, they can do that on the P3, and it's their quickest path to success. A similar option is to take an existing machine that they have that might be a Williams machine or a Stern machine from the 90s, like a White Star or a Sam-based machine. They can pull out the CPU board from that machine. They can stick in a P-Rock, and then they can write custom rules for that game. And that's honestly how we got started. I developed the P-Rock board.
    37:24
    Jeez, it was 12 years ago, 2009, the first version of the P-Rock. I demoed it inside of a Judge Dredd machine. I pulled out the CPU board. I put it in the P-Rock. I wrote some custom rules. I called it JD, the abbreviation for Judge Dredd. It was basically a 2.0 rule set, and that started a whole community of custom pinball developers. But so people can develop games for the P3 because that's a machine that exists, they can re-theme an existing game with the P-Rock,
    37:55
    and that's fairly easy because those machines exist. Or if they really want to go off the deep end, and a lot of people are doing this now, then you can go fully custom. And fully custom means what you think it means, building your own everything, your own play field, your own mechs on the play field, doing your own software, your own artwork, you're doing all those things. So it's quite a bigger project. We said you were at Expo, and I'm sure you've seen it at other shows as well, but that homebrew community has certainly benefited from P-Rock,
    38:26
    and it's amazing what has come out of this. You have to be impressed. It's a community. In 2010, 2011, there were no options for custom machine building. To build a machine, you would have to design your own hardware, your own everything. And then we came out with the P-Rock. we developed a software framework for it and what that means is people can build their game rules on top of our framework not have to do all the boring
    38:57
    management and logistical stuff that software has to do but they can just go in and put their game rules and their game content into it and that's kind of what got things rolling actually Dutch Pinball, Dutch Pinball didn't exist before the P-Rock came out they did the Bride of Pinball 2.0 project and obviously then they kind of switched into full machine manufacturing with the big lebowski but so many people have our community now we have a with a pinball development community online there has 350 members i believe these are all
    39:28
    people who at least have an interest in building their own pinball game and some that have i'm very aware of that community so yeah even kelps is a game that's built on the p-rock damien contacted me a couple years ago. I don't know if he had the goal originally to do fully manufactured and build a company around it, but he started a couple years ago, got a P-Rock or got a P3 Rock, which is a newer version of our boards, and built a whole game himself.
    40:00
    Yeah. Well, once he hired Marty, he was like, okay, we've got to go into full production here. I mean, we've got the cachet of Marty Robbins. Yeah, for sure. Marty, did you do the rules? I mean, did you program it for Kelts, or are you just working on the new one? He's in charge of stickers. The Marty stickers that you see when you get the games. That's him. That is true. So Greg Silby is the coder who's come up with the rule set for Kelts. I've given him a lot of ideas, and he has incorporated a lot of my suggestions into his rules,
    40:33
    but it's still predominantly his framework. Okay. Very cool. Yeah. But, yeah, I get messages from Damien all the time. I'm looking for more boards or wondering what the status of our current boards are. Yes, I know. So it's kind of where I'm leading as well is what is the future of that side of the business with all your boards? Are you happy where they are or will there be sort of a new version of them or any sort of evolution of the board set?
    41:04
    So as I generally do with my designs, I make them so they're upgradable. and we've been able to upgrade the P-Rock. We came up with a new version which is called the P3 Rock, which is actually the boards that Kelt is using that most custom games are using these days. They're firmware upgradable. We can add features to them. We can make more features available to software. But, yeah, there might be some new fancy mech or something that someone develops that isn't controllable
    41:35
    by a standard set of coil drivers or motor drivers or pulse width modulated LED or servo drivers. It's possible something comes out, but our system is modular. So anything that we would need to support in the future, not anything, but most things that we need to support in the future, we can just add a daughter board or basically like a Stern style note board. We can add that to the system and help people get going. So I don't know. We might have a second generation or a new generation board set in the future, But honestly, the P3 Rock with our driver boards, our switch boards, our LED driver boards,
    42:07
    I still think it's the most feature-rich control system in the industry. It still is what we want it to be. Well, Multimorphic, the games are fun to play. Your company has done so well. Like you say, the slow build, but it is a continued build, and it just keeps growing as new games come out. We look forward to the license title. I know you've got big fans not only certainly there in Texas and the States, but all over the world too. When I was in Germany, by the way, in October. Stefan Riedler, we were talking about distributors. He has RS Pinball.
    42:38
    Huge fan of Multimorphic, and he brought Heist there, and I think Cosmic Kart Racing, in fact. Yeah, fantastic. Stefan's a great guy. He is our European distributor at the moment, and he has been a longtime supporter. Great guy. And, yeah, if you're in Europe and want a P3 or want to try a P3, definitely call Stefan. And lastly, we're going to cut this out. So what is the next game? We'll cut it out. Don't you worry about it. Oh, in that case, it is. Jerry, where'd he go? Jerry, Jerry. It's one that's going to surprise a lot of people.
    43:09
    That's all I'll say. But we are incredibly excited about it. And I think it's going to be, I was going to say bigger than people expect. I don't know if that's possible. You're sounding really excited by it. So that's all I want to hear. Let me just say that some of our development staff are super fans of the theme. Like, it's their dream theme. Okay. Are we talking something visual like a movie or TV show versus something musical? We are talking about a theme that would be on a pinball game.
    43:41
    No, no, no. I mean, I can talk about it. Obviously, I'm not going to give any real hints, but it's something that everyone knows, no one hates, and a lot of people really love it. I am so looking forward to My Little Pony. This is going to be a lot of fun. Jerry? I'm really disappointed. it, I was hoping it would be Nickelback, but you said no one hates it. My Little Coney vs. Smurfs is the joke. Nice, nice. Thanks very much for joining us. All the best in the holidays. Have a
    44:12
    happy new year. We look forward to the new title and continued success for you, Jerry. Thank you, guys. I appreciate the time. Thank you for your enthusiasm and for giving me a chance to talk more about it. You guys have great holidays as well. There you go. That was Jerry from Multimorphic. But Jeff, what didn't we learn? If he had some hires, it would be nice to mention that. Or perhaps we recorded this three days before he announced Paul and Karen's and Colin McAlpine are going to be helping out, which is great news. It's obviously great news.
    44:43
    And first of all, it's great that Bowen gets to stay in the pinball industry as a coder because obviously he was a bit spooky and then something happened. Colin was a surprise for me. I mean, it shouldn't be. He is the rules guy. We know, right? He's got rules for everything, strategies for everything. He is the rules guy. So that makes a lot of sense, but I just didn't see that coming. Well, he's in Austin right there where Multimorphic is. That makes it a lot easier, certainly, more so than Bowen.
    45:14
    But Bowen would probably do everything remotely. Colin's actually helped out with Jerry in the past. So this isn't new for him. It's more of a formal position in that sense. And again, kind of from a consulting point of view, you're right about him knowing rules. one thing that was very exciting that Jerry talked about was that new flipper kit and Colin's already tried it out and he said it's night and day so we're going to see that in the wild soon and I was fine with the way it was before you know how people do post pass on traditional pinball machines if we going to call it call it Stearns and Jersey Jacks and it that quick flip to transfer it over to the other flipper You can really do that on a multi
    45:50
    but there's something, it's really bizarre how to do a post-pass. And I think it was Stephen Bowden who showed me, or maybe Ian Harrower who has a multi-morphic game. You actually do it before it gets cradled up. So you do it a few seconds before. It has the same reaction as a post-pass. and it works like a charm. But again, I just like all the options that are there. If you could think of one title you would like to see, and I know you're with Haggis, but if you could think of one title you would like to see using that multi-morphic platform,
    46:21
    I've got one. What do you think? Pick anything. That is such a hard question because that's almost like saying, you know, what are your dream themes? I don't know because I really haven't given thought into what would utilize that giant screen. so i don't i don't really have an answer to that so what do you think great insight marty that's why we pay you the big bucks here on final round appreciate that and uh yeah thanks for putting that in the show notes so i could think about it beforehand show notes what the hell are those honestly we haven't had those since what episode five six i know i know i know it's more when are
    46:55
    we talking yeah okay let's just do it what do we get we'll see hit record and let's see what happens they'll eat this shit up anyway we know how it works anyway okay i had one and it's based on the fact that I think when you play an actual pinball machine, whether it be Stern, whether it be Jersey Jack, American, whomever, Haggis, and it comes to video modes, there's a bit of a groan factor, like, oh, video mode, because a lot of them are hit and misses. A lot of them are exciting, but for the most part, I would say they're not a big part of pinball. Whereas Multimorphic, video modes should be the big part of it, and it's right there on the screen. And I
    47:30
    can't think of a better game that would be perfect for Multimorphic with those, you know, those kind of brick drops and everything else than squid game come on i i know it's maybe too early but how much fun where do you make a living out of killing people how fun would this be by living does that mean like earning money by killing people that's debatable uh yeah yeah i don't see it but if you see it that's what's important all right let's go back to craftwork how does
    48:03
    craftwork work on multi-morphic so this is the whole thing right i would totally go craftwork but i'm thinking because you've got that big screen and there's so many things you could do with it it's not like i could just riff off the top of my head go oh well it's the song numbers and you've got to shoot numbers and you've got to get numbers in a row and that's numbers that's one of your favorite craftwork songs obviously it's huge it's it's top 23 for me i would say when i right yep yeah by the way thanks for sending me that holly johnson we're big frankie goes to
    48:34
    hollywood fans here yeah we are so marty sent me this clip of holly johnson from 2021 you know obviously he's aged since the relaxed days but he's singing power of love and he posted on my facebook page holy cow he can still sing oh my god and and i mean that song was pretty moving anyway but just all the emotions watching it just getting chills just oh he can still sing it perfectly and it's such a shame that i know okay we're going to talk about anything this episode
    49:05
    guys holly johnson uh has on record saying he will never get back with frankie goes to hollywood and they but i come here with some like vh1 series tried to get them all together and they kind of got together only to talk holly refused to perform with him so he never will but it was good to have him individually sing that song and belt it out i might have said this once or twice maybe on this podcast maybe a previous one maybe just you and i do you know that was the first dance for ann and
    49:37
    i for our wedding the power of love i did know that you did tell me well there you go oh yeah we're big frankie fans that's why we picked it at the start of uh yep start of the show well anyway thanks very much for jay congratulations to bowen and to colin we look forward to hearing from those guys uh probably in the near future and whether it's this podcast or somewhere else um but it is exciting and uh best of luck to multimorphic we're big fans of that so other than that what have you done in the last couple of weeks jeez i've worked lots um other than that went to uh hashman and
    50:11
    Danger Ray's Christmas party. It's an annual thing that we go to, and the who's who of pinball in Melbourne was there, and that was fantastic. I've got to say, how do I say this? When people join pinball companies, there's that conversation that goes along the lines of that they don't play pinball as much because I know people say, oh, do you get sick of it? I play so much pinball now, more pinball than I've ever played because as you know every single game that goes from haggis
    50:46
    gets dialed in by me and only goes out when it has my little sticker of approval I love it so I play a lot a lot of pinball so I really didn't play much I played sorcerer because I hadn't played that for for many many many years and time fantasy because you know it's got the acid snail and it's just fun. But there was this whole row of Stern games. There was Guns N' Roses, Jersey Jack. I just really didn't feel like playing pinball. And obviously there was lots of people there
    51:20
    to talk to. But the other thing I just really want to talk about is I want to talk about Mandalorian because a couple of weeks ago, we streamed Black Knight at Hashman and Dangerous and that was fun. And Mandalorian was next to it and I hadn't played Mandalorian. So it's for the first time so i plunged the ball had a flip the ball drained and i walked away no ball save no no i mean i drained my first ball like i played it flipped it a bit and the ball drained and i just walked away and i just wasn't sure whether it was because i was uninspired by it or whether i was
    51:55
    just a pinball i've had enough pinball i don't need any more so but what i what i did really appreciate after i did go back later and play it is really cool shot geometry on that some really funky ways that brian eddie has used shot trajectory and also how different shots can have diverters to do different things it's kind of cool i enjoy it i think the callouts are great i think visually what randy martinez did is spectacular and uh i i do think it's a step up
    52:27
    from stranger things i don't think stranger things is terrible but i do like it more than that I like the code. I like the options. I think the code will only get better. There was a joke at Chicago Expo. They were calling it Centerlorian because the center ramp shot was kind of the be-all and everything. You get your Razorcrest multiball there. You get your Razorcrest hurry-ups there. A lot of points are there, certainly in competition, but that's changing a little bit, and there's certainly a lot more strategy than just doing that, but it's a pretty fun game.
    52:57
    I love that they've got all the assets. it to me kicks the shit out of the last star wars game that they put out in uh you know the steve ritchie game i much much prefer mandalorian but you should say that because i actually played uh star trek at james and star trek i always said that and i had always got those confused star wars played star wars at james and jackie's you know james and jackie my friends and they had rented Ryan's Star Wars and they're really enjoying it.
    53:27
    And so I had a game. I just went, I even sent a message to Ryan saying, I really just don't like the game at all. At all. Yeah, it does nothing for me. It's, there are rare misses in pinball and I don't think it's a terrible game by any means. It's just, with everything else we've seen in the last five years, it's not one of the go-to machines for me personally and it sounds like for you too. Yeah, I just, I find it frustrating and I find that a lot of the shots you feel ripped off.
    53:59
    You know what I mean? Like this is the whole thing I've been talking to people at the party last night about why I'm so pedantic when I dial in the machines at Haggis. Because what I don't want is for people to feel that they've done something and not get rewarded for it or to drain or do something that just seems unfair. I want people to feel that if something bad happened, it was because of them, not because of the game. And I think that's what Star Wars does.
    54:29
    Right off from the plunge, it's danger. The right outline, it just seems to go. The return from the right scoop is just danger. It just feels a little bit unfair. Unfair. That's a good way to categorize it. You haven't seen Godzilla yet, have you? I know they're in Australia. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the distributor here, AMD, has had someone, has taken them to shows and on some locations. But no, I think we're going to get Godzillas in January. That's pretty good. The early consensus is that it is spectacular.
    55:03
    Everything about it is wonderful. Code only makes it better as we see the updates. I'm watching more and more streams. I've played quite a bit of it. And there's one common thing that's kind of driving me nuts about that game. It is the write-out lane. which is, it's certainly savable like any other pinball machine, but the difficulty is that pop bumper that's right above the in-lane. And I thought I heard that there was going to be a shat shot from the left to the right in-lane that may go up and hit the pop. Well, if you're hitting that pop, you're going to be in some trouble because it will find that right out-lane.
    55:35
    And the thing that bothers me the most about that out-lane is the kind of orbit shot, if you will, that goes behind the pop, behind Mechagodzilla, behind the scoop. It's a curve. And if it comes through there at a slow speed, kiss your ball goodbye because it's going in the out lane. It's going to hit the top of the slings and find the out lane. It's a tough save, and I've tried it a lot. And if you're going to see it in tournaments, it's going to be a tighter tilt, which will make it more tough to give it any kind of nudge to save it out of there.
    56:06
    So it's the one thing that's a little frustrating I'm finding. Yeah, I honestly can't wait to play it. Do you know I still haven't even played Led Zeppelin? No. Well, Led Zeppelin's not going to grab you anyway. Like, wow, I have never seen this before. Well, no, you say that, but, you know, I was playing Black Knight, as I said, streamed it a couple of weeks ago, and I've really not enjoyed that game that much. But I kind of enjoyed just the simplistic fan layout,
    56:38
    the Steve Ritchie flow. So it kind of just works. So I am kind of keen to play Led Zeppelin. I just want stupid Richie fun. I'll tell you, I was playing Black Knight a week ago at a tournament I didn't win. I thought I'd point that out because it does happen once in a while. And Black Knight was there. And I love that that game kicks the shit out of you. And that sounds sick and morbid, but I love the challenge of it. You're never going to play for a long, long time, especially on a pro.
    57:08
    but the adrenaline's going to be there. You're going to take some chances with the flail. You're going to maybe try to hit things on the fly that you should have probably maybe cradled up. It's just a fun, fast game and that's what I like about it. There are a lot of games where, okay, they've got flow but there's a lot of stop action and they're long, long players. You can never say that about Black Knight. So it's something I really like. I like that game a lot. And it comes back to what I was saying about Star Wars. Star Wars feels unfair. Black Knight, it's a pretty brutal game.
    57:38
    But you lose your ball if you miss your shot. It doesn't feel like the game is doing something unfair. Even that flail, which can just knock it straight back. You know, that's you. You choose to hit that. You know, there's that centre war hurry up, which Dave Hashman was going, you know, you've got to get the jackpot. I'm like, no, avoid that. Avoid that. It might be worth a lot of points, but it's worth no points if you drain straight off it. So just ignore it. So I think you can play Black Knight without the game being unfair.
    58:09
    As we had Jerry on, we were talking about his multi-morphic game with three buttons on each side. And you can disable that if you just want one to happen or maybe two. You have those options. That's the one thing I wish was on that Black Knight game because I cannot stand the action button being the Magna Save so far away from your flipper. I mean if you've played that game a hundred times and you've tried to save the ball a hundred times you're a hero if you've done it ten because it's just so hard to do you have to guess
    58:40
    okay it hit that sling I think it's about to go over there I'm gonna that's the only time I hit it no as soon as you say I think it's gonna go out you're already too late it's gone out yeah it's that fast well if you're just tuning in to final round and I don't know why you would be mid show but if you just you know kind of scrubbed in and you're wondering why we're talking about Black Knight, a game that's years old. Well, that's what we do here on Final Round. It's called content. It's called we're getting ready for Christmas. And is there a last-minute gift you possibly could need?
    59:11
    What would be perfect this time of year? Find out with our sponsor of the week. It's the end of the year. Are you looking forward to 2022? Yes and no. I have big plans for next year, but right now I've just got so much last-minute shopping to do for Christmas. Don't worry. Final round has just what you need, now more than ever Phew, that's great Now I can go back to planning my 2022 I've got to book my Indisc trip, there's Texas Pinball Festival So what's this gift idea, Marty? Travel insurance
    59:41
    You may be planning to go here and there But thanks to Ian, there may be a different agenda thrust upon you Oh no, really? I've already booked a bunch of these trips and pinball shows I just registered and bought my hotel for District 82 in April Again, two words, travel insurance I'm not worried. My money is safe. Consider it booked. It's like putting down a deposit with deep... Oh, shit. Play it safe this holiday season. Plan ahead and limit your risks. This sound advice is from one half of the Final Round Pinball podcast.
    60:12
    Did they have insurance for your former Kickstarter donations, Marty? Touche. So, speaking of Christmas or the holiday season, whatever you like to call it that doesn't offend you, in the new year, right, We've got games that are coming out in the new year, right? And I'm pretty sure that Rush is going to be the next game by Stern. And it's so funny how any photo, any photo that Stern makes,
    60:42
    people just look for everything. And there was a photo, I can't remember which game it was, but right next to this game, you could just see the top of the side art of some game. just maybe two centimeters, maybe one centimeter, not even. And somebody got that and superimposed that with the logo for Rush. And it's like, well, there you go. Rush is the next game. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is not because, oh, cool, Rush, that new game, whatever, Foo Fighters, whatever,
    61:13
    is I know you are a fan of Rush. I have spoken to so many people in Australia. Nobody knows of Rush in Australia. So I just want to understand why this machine is going to exist. Over to you, Jeff. Well, if it does, then I'd have to think it is going to happen. And the reason I say that is because at Expo, when John Borg did his seminar, he came out to Rush and he exited to Rush.
    61:46
    I mean, that wasn't coincidental. They're not even being subtle anymore. Yeah, and you're right about that. Rush logo from their 1974 debut album that was on the side cabinet. You know, there are secrets that certainly happen. Mandalorian, we didn't see coming. That was a nice surprise. Godzilla, we knew was coming. But this one, yeah, I think we know, or we think, we assume it's coming, so we'll have to see. But why is it a big deal? It's a big deal as any license is. There's a built-in fan base. You name any music pin that they've come out with, every music pin that's
    62:19
    come out has had at least a 30-year head start, if not 40 years. Metallica is about to celebrate their 40th anniversary. So certainly ACDC, certainly Zeppelin and Iron Maiden has been around forever. Rush is the same. They debuted in 74. So that's a huge fan base. You're right about the Australia thing. I don't know many people in Australia that are big Rush heads, and there probably are some, but massive in Europe, massive certainly in Canada. I was surprised that it was as big as it is in the States because I always, growing up,
    62:50
    thought it was just a Canadian thing. And that's just not the case because it's a unique style. There are not many bands like Rush, so maybe the fan base feels like they're our band. And yeah, maybe they're not in the mainstream, but they're ours. It's pretty loyal. Their tours have sold out for years and years and years. I see it being huge for Stern. And in fact, I'm going to tell you something. The first time I ever met Jersey Jack himself was in Vancouver and this was at the time Dialed In came out. So it was at the Vancouver flip out. How many years ago was that for? And I was wearing a Rush shirt and just as I'm getting ready to
    63:25
    record Pinball Profile, Jack said to me, you know, they reached out to us and they wanted to make a pinball machine and we were excited. It just didn't fit our model right now because of how much we turn out. So the fact that Rush came to Jersey Jack and wanted to do that gives me the idea, and if it is with Stern, that they're going to go, here are all the assets. One of the greatest things about Guns N' Roses with Jersey Jack, they have everything in there. If you like Guns N' Roses, they didn't miss a beat.
    63:55
    Every song you can imagine is in there. The light show, the video assets. I think this is Stern's turn to do the same with Rush. Okay, I just think for Canadian bands, I think more popular in my mind would be either a Glass Tiger, Pimple Machine, or even Martha and the Muffins pinball, I think would be. You're a funny guy. What are all the other famous Canadian band? Loverboy, Working for the Weekend. Hit it.
    64:26
    Oh, my God. Turn Me Loose. It's just one of the best songs ever. Chris Farley doing a Chippendales dance to Working for the Weekend. Oh, give it to me. Yep. Name another Canadian band. There's one that they've been on our show a few times. Ed Robertson, Barenaked Ladies, they've got 30 plus years of hits. Guys, I'm sorry this has turned into the final round music podcast, but I'm just going to say we're not sorry at all. But the other day on my release radar on Spotify, a new Barenaked Ladies song was on it.
    65:04
    And I'm just looking up now, landed on my head. Oh, my God. They can do some really good pop songs. just it was one of it's just it's so not my genre of music at all but for some reason I can't help but like it and just smile and just think happy thoughts it's like they just put you into a good mood well thank you for asking me what I did in the last two weeks asshole I actually went and we haven't finished oh go ahead we haven't finished I was just saying
    65:34
    bare naked ladies that happened in the last fortnight what about your fortnight Jeff I hope I remember to edit that out ah fuck it there'll be none of that. Anne and I went and saw Bare Naked Ladies on Thursday night. They were doing this hometown for the holidays, kind of a residency, if you will. They played kind of four nights a week in Toronto. And, God, were they fun. And, it breaks my heart because that show, right after it, they had to cancel the remaining six shows because of, thanks Ian,
    66:05
    this fucking very, this virus. Do you reckon And Ian, by now, is going, okay, guys, the joke was funny second, third time it was starting to get a bit thin. But now you're up to the 2030th time, including your Facebook post. Do you think he's possibly a bit sick of it? No. Wait till he sees the gift we're sending him. And we haven't forgotten. And you know the one you said was, no, we can't do that? Fuck that. We're doing that. We're doing it. Okay, good. Ian, you'll see it. We'll post it later.
    66:35
    Anyway, back to Barenaked Ladies having to cancel. God, that sucked because, listen, are Ed and the band, are they fine? Sure. Yeah, they've been successful for years and all that stuff. But the one thing I always forget, and Ed and others have pointed this out to me, is it's not just about the guys in the band. It's about the crew and their livelihoods. And that's the part that really hurts with all these concerts just not happening. I mean, people making their livelihoods. We've seen it in several different industries and professions where people have been hurt
    67:06
    over the last couple of years due to Ian. And it's just, it sucks. But we did get to see them and my God, their fun life. So good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tell you the other thing that suffers in this that we don't talk about, but particularly in Australia, because what you've got to remember is a lot of bands don't come to Australia, not just because we're a shit country, but because it's expensive to bring everything over. And because we're not a large population, it's not like you can do a concert with 50,000 people. They're smaller venues, so financially it's not all that great for bands
    67:40
    and any artist to come over to Australia. So what happens is a lot of Australians fly overseas just to see a band. It happens all the time. And there are people that fly overseas to see a band, and when they get there, the concert's cancelled. Oh, that didn't happen to you, did it? No, it hasn't happened to me. But that's what I'm thinking. There probably would have been people going to these concerts that would have been driving five hours to go and see Barenaked Ladies.
    68:11
    So, you know, there's consequences to this, Ian, is what we're saying. Yeah. But we're not allowed to talk about it. This is the show before Christmas. And I've been teasing you that I have a gift for you. Okay. Actually, we're going to do this live. I'm going to send a call to you right now on Facebook. It that picture of your penis again I got literally it a new one I put I got mistletoe on it you love it i now run out of space on my phone because of all the pictures all right i really doing this
    68:42
    live i'm facebooking you live it's a video picture because you haven't seen my new acquisition or reduction oh is this your new haircut don't say it like that it's a big deal you jackass but now you can see my fuck covered hair what did you fall you you look like shit I do look like shit because I wasn't expecting anybody to be able to see me. You look like the shit they cut off my head and threw on the floor and you said, I'll take that and threw it on top of your lid. Yep, yep. When you're my age, you'll take any hair.
    69:14
    Okay, so you actually have cut your hair short. Back to the way it was. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, you kept saying I had to act my age or whatever the hell you said. Age appropriate. Isn't that what you said? Can you see that? Pouring rain? It's shitting down. I think that the gods are going, that's the reaction to that new haircut. Okay, cool. There. Enough Facebook. I just thought I'd give you a... That's not the gift. You've cut your hair. That's great. Still got a lot to work on. That involves plastic surgery.
    69:45
    That's not happening. Apparently the nose and ears keep growing. Yep, they do. Anyway, I do have a gift for you. Okay. It's been a tough year for a lot of people. I can think of eight, in fact, and I'm going to name these eight people. Keith Elwin, Colin McAlpine, Stuart Thornton, Bruce Nightingale, Josh Sharp, Scott Larson, Rob Burke, and Raymond Davidson. I know. Stop. What happened with these eight people?
    70:16
    I was thinking, why are all these people being grouped together? Oh, okay. Yes. So this is not fair, guys, because we've even had somebody write into us this week saying, you know, why does Marty like killing people so much? I don't. Jeff forces me into this situation. I have no choice. I am an unwilling participant here, guys. So, yes, I have either killed them. No, I don't think I've actually directly killed them. I've left them to die or I've caused them to assumed die.
    70:50
    Die. With a big shit-eating grin and a huge boner. You love doing this. Yeah, of course. Why not? Well, here's my gift to you. I told you they died. They didn't. They were sent to a purgatory. They are alive and well. It's a Christmas miracle, but they're still in limbo. We're going to bring one of them back right now. The others will, in fact, die. But you, Marty, will get to save one of them and kill seven again, I guess, is another bad way of looking at it.
    71:20
    It doesn't matter. The point is, Marty, it's time for our Christmas 8 miracle. Okay. The scenario will be the same for the first round, and I just have to think what it's going to be. Sadly, oxygen is at a premium. You have only enough oxygen for one person to survive. Marty, you pick who gets that oxygen tank. In round one, we've got, coming out of purgatory, Stuart Thornton versus Rob
    71:50
    Burke. Who gets the oxygen? Stuart Thornton Do I need to give a reason or is it just because, you know, it might ruin the whole premise of this Well, I'm curious, why is it because you work with Stu and you killed him once before and you want to give him a little bit of redemption and why do you hate Rob Burke? There are a lot of questions here I don't hate Rob Burke I just obviously don't want him to survive I mean, they're very different things here but here's the thing like I have killed obviously a lot of people and there's really not been that
    72:24
    many people that have reacted to it people are sort of like oh well you killed me I got to hear about my destruction of stew constantly at work so I don't want to do it again stew you gotta buy well done you're on to round two these two battled it out I think it was four years ago on the grand stage of Pinberg. Josh Sharp, as you can imagine, came in second, losing to Colin McAlpine. We're going to pit those two against each other once again.
    72:55
    Oxygen, one of them. Who gets it? Hmm. That's not so easy, that one, because normally I would go, oh, you know what, I like this person and I hate that person. Are you implying you don't like either? No, I actually like both. Thank you very much, Jeff, for trying to twist that around. But I'm just trying to think I mean look they've both got families So that's going to be devastating For them Obviously Colin's just got a new job But he hasn't really started
    73:27
    So it's not like they're going to miss Something because it hasn't really started Can I put one thing out there Sure As Colin is about to do things with Multimorphic And we know Josh is doing things with Cactus Canyon Is Colin going to charge for extra code. Okay, well, there you go. You've changed. Oh, did I change it? You've sold it to me. Josh gets the oxygen. What? To fucking piss you off, cunt. All right, fine.
    73:58
    FYI, feedback from last episode was apparently the amount of times I called you a cunt. It was three times. That's not a lot. It's a lot more outside of the podcast. Yeah, just, you know, it's fine. It's just a word for God's sakes. Do you know why that word doesn't bother me? And I'll tell you why. If you're offended by that word, you should be offended when someone calls you a dick or an asshole. It's the same thing. There's no difference. So live with it. This time, it sticks on the show. There were a couple of podcasters that saw their demise. Luckily, they have co-hosts that can keep their show alive, but maybe they will be reunited.
    74:33
    We'll see. Bruce Nightingale and Scott Larson. Okay, so this is where it was difficult, particularly with the Loser Kid one, because they're both just the loveliest people and they're just generous people, just caring people, just good people. I mean, I just felt at the time that having air conditioning running, up and running, I just felt that was more important than saving lives, just at the time.
    75:06
    But now when you've got those two together and when I still remember Bruce's dislike of, I think, the system 80, whatever they are, Gottliebs, which is just my favorite era of pinball. I just know. So this time Scott is getting the redemption. Very nice. Well done, Scott. That'll make everyone happy. And check out their Christmas episode on Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. Scott, you've got a one in four chance now of surviving Marty's death list.
    75:36
    He really doesn't. But keep going. These two have been, at one point in their careers, number one players in the world. They're both employees of Stern. Keith Elwin, the first person you easily crushed. I didn't even mention death. You said, I'll kill him. That wasn't even an option. That's what started this whole game. In fact, you said, you didn't even say any names. I'm like, well, if it's Keith Elwin, he goes. I think that was kind of how it went. So is that going to be the same when he goes up against Raymond Davidson?
    76:06
    Who gets the oxygen? It's so funny. It's so funny because I get flashbacks to my first in-disc, and both of them fresh airing me. Oh, they both shunned you? Oh, yeah, gotcha. Do you want to kill them both? You know what? Can I? It's your Christmas, Marty. if you want the both dead well there you go nobody survives from keith and randy
    76:37
    moral of the story everybody be fucking nice to me he holds a grudge he doesn't forget i remember so we're down to three and if you're wondering we never killed kate martin by the way she uh was put on exile island yes that's right never to be proven a death we haven't found the body yes And also she reached out to me and we did speak So you know all is forgiven She didn't die Did she talk to you after she talked to Ryan C
    77:08
    Ooh burn Oh Hey Marty is Ryan there Oh Yeah sorry I guess I can talk to you then Okay we've got three people here Between Stu Thornton Who works at Haggis Josh Sharp from Raw Thrills I'm just trying to see how many majors he's won It says none here Oh, okay, that's a surprise Scott Larson of Loser Kid Three family men
    77:39
    Three people you know very well Only one is going to survive In a death game of musical chairs Death chairs There are only two chairs Stu, Josh, and Scott And you have the opportunity to trip one of them Before the song ends So that they can't get in the chair who are you tripping out of these three stew thornton josh sharp scott larson who isn't going to get their fair chance to sit on that chair and have a chance do you know what i not bothered
    78:12
    really of for any of them if i'm really honest but you're we've already had it we've already had a double elimination we can't have a triple elimination we we call that the indisc snub round yeah yeah yeah do you know what i think that of all those three i think josh has had a good life i think he's achieved many things obviously not a major but i don't think he really cares about that anymore but you know he's successful at raw thrills he's been successful the ifpa he's been
    78:43
    really successful being the son of someone famous so i am the brother of someone famous So I think he's had enough And I don't think he's going to survive Not much more upside if we're being honest Really, there's not much else you're going to get there I think with the other two There's further potential for new events or new successes I think he's pretty much peaked a long time ago, Josh has So long, Josh You didn't even make it to two
    79:13
    I'm very disappointed But you're gone This time death sticks This time it sticks Yeah yeah well that whole josh number two thing that's your gag not mine so you know i didn't want to do by the way how many times have you heard other podcasters or anybody saying that thing stuck all right i hammered that thing home so much that now everyone does it i love it do they though what do you mean do they well you asked me the question have i heard other podcast i've never heard any other podcast say that before i think you stop and just say i've never heard any other
    79:45
    podcast period like you'd all listen that was what was implied that was the whole joke that i was making back me okay we've got scott larson we've got stew thornton and they are on the set of a new alec baldwin film i don't need to say anything else who walks away That's just the worst. Oh, my God.
    80:18
    Special place in hell. All right. So, on one hand, you've got a person who is just, you know, the salt of the earth, actually saving lives. Like, honestly, saving lives in, obviously, the medical profession. and travels, as we know, yearly to Guatemala to help children with hair lips. Just an amazing guy, right? Just, honestly, Scott is freaking amazing. And let's look at Stu's accolades. He's bought you two cheeseburgers at Macca's.
    80:51
    So there's what you've got on both sides. No, no. He also bought me a bottle of Four Pillars gin. So, but what I was actually going to say was you've got Scott who does all these noble, amazing, just beautiful things. And then you've got Stu, on the other hand, who, by the way, yesterday won the Vic State Championship. Wow. So he is the Vic State Champion. He gets the big belt this week. But besides that, you've also got Stu on the other side who will be the person making my Fathom game.
    81:23
    So I've got somebody that's saving lives on one hand. I've got somebody that's making me a pinball machine on the other hand. I'm pretty sure we know where this is going to go. And well done, Stu. Thank you. Moral of the story, if you ever meet Marty, for the love of God, kiss his fucking feet. Well, you know what? We're podcasters. We're narcissists. We need the love. We need the attention. That's all we do it for. You said Stu won the Vic Championship.
    81:53
    That's pretty cool. Yeah, it is. Congratulations in Pinsonati. And look at old Haggis and Kelts winning best in show. Well, best modern game. I don't know whether that's best in show, but let's call it that. But obviously really, really pleased about it. We sent a game. I mean, Zach Mennie's spoken about it on the pinball show, but he reached out to us and said, you know, Pinsonade is coming up. Do you want to get us a game? And that was two weeks before the show. So we actually built a game and shipped it over to him. And you know what?
    82:24
    It's a new game that people are playing for the first time. So it really is our first showing of Kelts, the production game. Like we still had the prototype when we went to Expo. So we just didn't know what people's reaction was going to be. And I've got to tell you, I would say it's polarizing. People love it. People don't get it. There's no in-between. And this is what I'll say to those people because obviously I read the comments and I see what people say about it. But I don't get personally offended by it because I didn't design the game. So I'm okay with it.
    82:55
    Just don't back up my rules on Fathom. Anyway, the point of it is a lot of people have been saying, oh, I don't get the point of the upper section of the play field. You've got to play the game. You've got to get into the modes. You've got to do things in the game, either a highland game or a clan battle. Once you do that, it makes sense. There's a diverter up the top via the right orbit that gets you into that section, and then it makes sense. The whole game has been designed to play the whole game,
    83:27
    and there's diverters, et cetera, to be able to make that happen. So that's what I just say to people. It's hard for people to understand that in a show when you play it for the first time because it's a fast and snappy game. I will tell you it's fast and snappy, and some people say it's a bit brutal, but it's meant to be that sort of old-school, fast, snappy, solid-state-style layout. but the rules are what makes the game really come to life and you can't really enjoy that at a show when you only get to play one game or whatever i have no vested interest in my comments
    84:00
    that i'm about to say but i will say this two expos ago i played it for the first time i thoroughly enjoyed it it was better than i thought it was going to be then in january in 2020 at Haggis in Melbourne, the old location. I flipped it with that new play field. I also had fun. So I wasn't even getting deep into this. When you talk about the rules make it better, I already had fun without getting deep into it. So I'm looking forward to seeing these more and more on location. And thanks to Zach Minney for bringing it to Pinsonati.
    84:30
    And I think he's also a distributor for Haggis. That is correct. Yep, that is absolutely correct. So flipping out pinball, everybody. Good stuff. I will say this is the last time you hear us together this calendar year, but I have a feeling you're definitely going to hear from me on Pinball Profile. The top ten most intriguing is coming up, Marty. Oh, who will it be? Oh, will it not be me again? Oh, awesome. Now, if I put you in, people are going to say that whiny bastard forced you into putting you in. Yeah, I don't care what people say about it. Just put me in.
    85:01
    Okay. So the top nine most intriguing people will be coming out with a special inclusion. And we will be hearing from you again probably this week. Tell us what's going on. Well, you know, peer pressure I've caved in. Everybody has just been begging and begging. Just all the fan has been wanting us to record a head-to-head Christmas special. So that's what we're going to do. Now, I just want to set the scene, guys. Everyone loved last year's Christmas episode.
    85:33
    It was just a, oh, fucking spare of the moment, let's just do it for shits and giggles. now there's pressure for us to do it again i'm just gonna just say it could be shit we haven't recorded it ryan's got some show notes i'm not i just want to just record some shit so if it's good great it was my idea if it's shit it was ryan's show notes that caused that to happen so i don't know we're doing it for fun people keep wanting us you keep wanting to hear bloody head to head for some reason so let's do it why do you think we bring on ryan at least every two months because
    86:04
    People just don't want to come on our show. We've got to fill it somehow. That's not true. We've got some great guests coming up. I know our next three guests. I can tell you. I know the next two because you literally just told me before we started recording. It's going to be fun. We mentioned it a little bit in our Jerry interview that we're going to be talking about some tournaments and maybe some not criticisms. If it is a criticism, it's constructive. Some suggestions. One thing to make each tournament better. and I say that to you Marty because as you're getting ready to do the rules for Fathom 2.0
    86:35
    you're going to see all the comments and are you the type of person who is going to want the person who writes those comments and suggestions are you going to want them dead are you going to take their criticism and say you know what that's not a bad idea let me tinker a little bit and in the next code update maybe we'll do a variation of that where is Marty going to be? I would love for people to give suggestions but you know it's like it's like again the comments on kels where people go ah played it it's shit okay why what in particular what was it about it that you didn't
    87:07
    like because just saying something shit you can't do anything with that you can't improve you can't learn you can't evolve from just didn't like it okay well that says to me that's just a personal thing it just doesn't gel with you and i get that but i'd love to know why why don't you like my rules and what do you think you could do to to improve it because i just want people to have the best experience and we've been playtesting it all week and greg's been doing some code updates and oh fuck it looks good it really does it just does i'm very excited and i know a lot of customers
    87:41
    will be too that's going to be a lot of fun and you're right about those criticisms you need to offer some advice or give details why because i think if we go way back to early head-to-head days when Iron Maiden came out, I think Ryan was reading some Pinside reviews. I hate Iron Maiden music. One out of ten. Which meant nothing. That doesn't tell you anything about the pinball machine. I think that's how Pinside PD got created. Probably. Yeah, it's just like that. I tell you what, I would respond to anybody
    88:11
    that messages me direct about code. Okay. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Whatever you're celebrating. Thank you for listening to us for another year. We will be back very soon. Some big, big guests in January. And we appreciate all the feedback. It does mean a lot to us. Even if I don't know where to send you to give us that feedback. Well, before that as well, don't forget the most important event in the calendar of 2022. What's that going to be, Jeff? I have no idea. Just the best award show
    88:46
    in pinball uh which one are we gonna do it okay you know how you were talking about head-to-head and the pressure like we did it on a whim last year and now you feel i know there is no pressure on doing fucking head-to-head christmas show when you guys are just going to be doing the reach rounds is i know a big deal so it was such a high bar set last year it's gonna be hard to hard to even meet it, let alone beat the X-Men. I don't do anything unless I can do something better.
    89:16
    And if I can't do it better right now, the answer is it's not happening. It's certainly not happening in January. That's 100% going to happen. It's not happening in January. If it does happen, maybe down the road. Why? We've already got the Pinball Industry Awards in January. We've got the Twippies in March. Do we need another award show? We'll see. No, we were just doing it for shits and giggles to take in the piss. And also, it was an extraordinary amount of work, particularly for Jeff. Well, there were a lot of people involved, and that was a lot of favors asked.
    89:48
    Let's just put it that way. So if you want to see what I believe is some of my finest production work and everybody that was involved, every single person that offered content, you want to hear a good group come together, that was a lot of fun. And that's certainly available on all podcasts. But right now, it's not even on the radar. You're so busy at work, too. Let's be honest. I've been busy at work. My son's in college, so I'm helping out there. I've got a lot more voice projects I've been doing now. So whatever.
    90:19
    It's get over it. But those all require a lot of production. You know what? Just be thankful. We're getting old is what we're hearing. We are both getting really old. We don't have a paywall. We come together every couple weeks, give you a free show, give you a little bit of entertainment. what more do you want well okay well then if people paid us five thousand dollars would you do the reach around fucking bet i would so just put it out there guys incentive there yep just put it out there by the way all the money we did raise last time was to cover the cost of
    90:49
    creating the reach arounds shipping them all that kind of good stuff so yeah anyway didn't make a not a fucking penny anyway no and you know what we would never ask people money to listen to this show or to do whatever. So just enjoy the content guys and support our sponsors. That's it. Where do people reach us? They can email us at final ramping ball at gmail.com on Instagram. It's final round people podcast on Twitter. It's at final round pin and just look up final round pinball on Facebook. All the best to you and your family,
    91:20
    buddy. Yeah. You too. Give my love to Ann and everybody out there. We love you and we will speak to you again soon.