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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast August 2025 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 3m·analyzed·Sep 3, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

August 2025 pinball recap: Star Wars announcement, licensing gaps, code updates, tariff fallout.

Summary

Pinball Magazine and Pinball News editors Jonathan Houston and Martin Obe recap August 2025 industry news, discussing the announcement of Stern's new Star Wars: Fall of the Empire game, regional licensing restrictions preventing European/MENA sales, multiple code updates across games (Dungeons & Dragons, Uncanny X-Men, John Wick, King Kong), Multimorphic's free Elemental minigame, tariff impacts on Dutch Pinball and Pinball Brothers' Predator production, and various manufacturer updates.

Key Claims

  • Fall of the Empire will not be offered to Europe, Middle East and Africa markets due to licensing issues

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin citing Stern website; first time this regional licensing restriction has occurred in pinball

  • Godzilla recently surpassed Data East Star Wars (10,400 units) to become the best-selling Stern game ever

    medium confidence · Jonathan mentions this as recent record-breaking; Martin expresses surprise AC/DC didn't surpass it

  • Dungeons & Dragons received three major updates in August (0.93, 0.94, 0.95) including trinket power-up system

    high confidence · Martin provides detailed version numbers and feature descriptions; 0.95 released on September 2

  • Pinball Brothers Predator production ending December 31, 2025 with only 150 units remaining

    high confidence · Daniel Jensen confirmed to both editors; related to Euro Pinball Corporation production schedule constraints

  • Dutch Pinball tariff increase (10% to 15%, then settled with 5% split) will be shared between distributors rather than passed to customers

    high confidence · Agreement between Cointaker, Dutch Pinball, Great American Pinball, and Pinball Traders

Notable Quotes

  • “Another new Star Wars announced. Another? Another new P3 minigame. Another?”

    Jonathan Houston @ Opening — Sets satirical tone about industry saturation of Star Wars and P3 minigame announcements

  • “Well, no actual new games, well, no new machines, shall we say, were announced or produced in this month.”

    Martin Obe @ Early segment — Clarifies that despite discussion, no new machines were produced, only games announced

  • “Stern is already offering the Stern High Performance Power Supply Upgrade Kit for $299.99 on their website... then it's the same situation. Basically, you order a bunch of power supplies, you change them out, and the game is good to go for Europe.”

    Martin Obe @ Mid-segment — Points out that regional lockout via power supply is circumventable, undermining licensing restrictions

  • “It was originally set at 10% and then it went up to 15% and the extra is being swallowed by Dutch and Cointaker, Great American Pinball and pinball traders between them.”

    Martin Obe @ Tariff discussion — Clarifies tariff absorption strategy protecting end consumers

  • “They only have, at the time, slots in production for this year for about 150 Predator machines.”

    Martin Obe @ Pinball Brothers discussion — Reveals production bottleneck forcing early end to Predator manufacturing

Entities

Jonathan HoustonpersonMartin ObepersonStar Wars: Fall of the EmpiregameJohn BorgpersonRoger SharppersonStern PinballcompanyMultimorphiccompanyDutch Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Tariff uncertainty creating pricing volatility; Dutch Pinball distributors absorbing extra costs; cross-border sales may shift due to regional licensing

    high · Extended discussion of tariff allocation; court ruling questioned emergency tariff application but likely won't eliminate tariffs entirely

  • ?

    community_signal: Steady stream of code updates across Stern portfolio (D&D, X-Men, John Wick, King Kong) demonstrating ongoing developer commitment

    high · Three versions of D&D in August alone; major rules rework for John Wick; new modes added to King Kong

  • ?

    product_concern: Predator production severely constrained (150 units available for remainder of year) despite being announced only two months prior

    high · Daniel Jensen explanation: Euro Pinball Corporation production slots only accommodate ~150 machines; full production ending Dec 31, 2025

  • ?

    event_signal: Stern hosting media day at factory September 10, 2025 for Fall of the Empire early hands-on experience

    high · Invitations sent; Jonathan received invite but unable to attend; full game reveal planned shortly after media day

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Pinball Brothers clearing Predator and Alien licenses by year-end; both former Fox titles now Disney-owned

    high · Both games' production ending simultaneously Dec 31, 2025; Daniel Jensen indicated need to clear licenses for next year's title

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.369

0:00
Another new Star Wars announced. Another? Another new P3 minigame. Another? Another edition of What's Cooking With? Another?
0:22
Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston. I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine, and I'm joined by... He's joined by another one who's me, Martin Obe. And I'm the editor of the Pimble News. That's right. I can sense a trend here, yes. And anyway, Jonathan and I are here to bring you another... Another episode. Another edition of the Pimble Industry News Pincast. This time we're looking back at all the excitement in the pinball world that took place in the month of August 2025. Another month of August. Well, not another 2025. thankfully. Well, no actual new games, well, no new machines, shall we say, were announced or produced in this month. But, as you heard in the headlines, we do have some new games to talk about and some interesting factors associated with them as well, which we will also be raising in our edition of What's Cooking With? Where? We are joined with a special guest, as always, as suggested by Mr. Jack Guarnieri two months ago. We will be talking to the man who saved pinball, Roger Sharp. Yes, who will bring you his very special, very rich recipe for turkey stuffing, with Thanksgiving coming up in the U.S. not before too long. and we'll also be talking about his new clothing range as well, where he is actually the subject of the artwork on those clothing items. And also we'll be talking about our first story tonight, and he'll bring you his perspective on the new Star Wars game that's been announced by Stern Pinball. So let's get straight on with it. Yes. Fall of the Empire Star Wars Another new Star Wars game Yeah Just what we're all We've all been waiting for Yes I was going to try and count But yeah You're right I've lost count Star Wars Fall of the Empire John Borg design That much we do know Stern Seem to be Sort of fairly lax In announcing it In that they've Told us what it is With a teaser of the logo, they haven't done what they normally do, which is follow that up a day or so later with more information and a proper video and they're going to do that over the next few days but we don't know when exactly and they're not telling us. So it'll be revealed when it's revealed. Right. Well, we do know there will be a special day for media people to visit the Scurron Factory on September 10th Mm-hmm. Yep. Did you get your invite? I got my invite. I didn't get my plane ticket. Ah, right, yes. It did say RSVP, and I went to RSVP to say I couldn't make it, and there isn't the option to not make it. There's only the option to say, yes, you are coming.
Pinball Brothers
company
Daniel Jensenperson
Dungeons & Dragonsgame
Uncanny X-Mengame
John Wickgame
King Konggame
Electric Playgroundscompany
Predatorgame
Aliengame
Data East Star Warsgame
Deadpoolgame
Euro Pinball Corporationcompany
Cointakercompany
Spike 3product

licensing_signal: Fall of the Empire unavailable in EMEA regions due to Disney licensing splitting into regional markets rather than global licenses

high · Stern website confirmation; first known instance of regional exclusion in pinball; discussed as potential trend shift in Disney licensing practices

  • $

    market_signal: Godzilla surpassed Data East Star Wars (10,400 units) as best-selling Stern game, suggesting strong commercial performance of recent multi-tier release strategy

    medium · Jonathan states record was 'recently broken'; multiple editions (Pro/Premium/LE/Anniversary) contributed to sales volume

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball Brothers absorbing tariffs ($11,995 includes 15% tariff) to maintain price competitiveness

    high · Predator pricing confirmed to include international shipping and tariffs; limited to 150 units due to production constraints

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball Brothers forced to end Predator/Alien production by December 31, 2025 due to Euro Pinball Corporation scheduling constraints

    high · Daniel Jensen confirmed production window only accommodates ~150 Predator units for remainder of year

  • ?

    product_strategy: Electric Playgrounds producing custom King Kong topper with 400+ LEDs and customizable LCD video content

    high · 100-unit limited run; $749 standard/$799 LE; custom video capability via SD card; Pinside forum discussion for asset sourcing

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic Portal production on schedule, starting end of summer 2025; 26 minigames now available for P3 platform

    high · Multimorphic update confirmed Portal starting production 'in a couple of weeks' from early September

  • ?

    technology_signal: Regional hardware lockouts via power supply frequency detection may be ineffective; Stern selling upgrade kits ($299.99) that would circumvent restrictions

    medium · Martin notes power supply swap enables cross-border compatibility; Stern actively selling 'High Performance Power Supply Upgrade Kit' that bypasses regional checks

    • 3:41
    So I didn't RSVP, unfortunately. But there we go. Yes, it's Wednesday the 10th of September, as you said, for what they call an early hands-on experience, which is the usual sort of factory tour, get a chance to play the game, lunch and dinner with Stern, chance to talk to some of the design team and interview them. Right. So I did put in a request to talk to the design team, and similar to previous launches, I was told, yes, that should be possible, and then never heard anything again. Yep. now it was more like it should be possible but probably not on the 10th because it's a busy day so either before that or after, we'll have to see well before is fine yeah before will be fine, yeah sure give us some time to prepare some content well is 10th launch day though, 10th is the media day but I think last time they actually announced and revealed the game a few days before yeah which is actually odd because you think media would get the chance to play the game up front so they can prepare their articles and when you launch, then internet is overflown with all the articles that the media you invited have written in the meantime or video or podcast, name it, whatever you, will be published. But, so, I'm not completely understanding how that operates within the time. the Stern thinking process, so to speak. No. Well, there's a couple of other issues which we don't really know any much about either and why it's been done this way. What we do know is that, according to the Stern website now, although there's just a little bit to the game on their website, it does say it's a standard cornerstone pricing scheme. So that's 6999 for the Pro, 9699 for the Premium, and 12999 for the LE. So we have those three versions as usual. Nothing, no super air leads or character additions or anything like that. However, and this is the kind of the elephant in the room we haven't spoken about yet, the game will apparently not be offered to the Europe, Middle East and Africa markets due to licensing issues.
    6:08
    This is the first time I can remember that happening in, well, at all, in pinball licenses. not to say it hasn't but and it's very odd because it wasn't the case with previous Star Wars licenses no, you either think that Stern decided it wasn't financially worthwhile paying the extra to cover those regions or before those regions were not separated out from the license and it was just a global license as most things used to be but perhaps Disney are now licensing things in a different way and this is a topic which I said earlier we will explore a little more when we talk to Roger Sharp the guru when it comes to licensing and he can give us his perspective about how unusual this is and whether it's a prevailing trend within the licensing business or not but stay tuned for that I'll have that coming up a little bit later but anyway so it does mean that those of us in Europe the Middle East or Africa will not be receiving this Star Wars Fall of the Empire game at launch. And maybe not at all, if there isn't the perceived demand for it, which is enough to cause Stern to negotiate a license with Disney for it. Now, there's something else to keep in mind.
    7:38
    This will be the first Spike 3 Cornerstone game, not the very first Spike 3 machine, that was the Star Wars Home Plus game, which Costco is currently selling.
    7:53
    But since this is a Spike 3 game, Stern used to have some way to prevent games destined for, for example, the US market, ending up in Europe by making sure they don't work on a 50 hertz cycle where it is 60 hertz in the US. Yes.
    8:20
    As we're not that familiar with Spike 3 yet, you might think it's easy to export a game from the US to Europe, which is true. But we don't know how easy or difficult it will be to actually make sure that it's working unless you have a power supply running 110 volts on 60 hertz in Europe, for example, or Africa or the Middle East. Yes, from what I've heard, it's not that difficult to do, and you can just swap out the power supply that's in the American games for a European version, and it'll then work. I mean, I'd be surprised if that's still in the system I'm not saying it's not, but pretty much everything that goes into the Stern game now is DC It has that big switching power supply which supplies pretty much everything and it all comes out of there at DC and if they want to do some kind of detection of what frequency it's coming in at whether it's 50 Hz or 60 Hz that would have to be done before that or unless they have some means of checking for ripple on the DC, we're getting a bit technical at that point so yeah, as you say it will be interesting to see whether that's something which Stern had deliberately built in in order to try and prevent cross-border sales like that, or transatlantic sales, or whether that's something which they've kind of accepted as not worth the effort because Stern's market has changed a lot over the years and they used to be very rigid about their distributorship and selling outside your region the area in which you're allowed to market your game and these days they don't seem to care about that so much and everybody sells everywhere so maybe this is just an extension of that that they say well if you can do that I mean, let's not bother putting any development into checking for 50 or 60 hertz. Right. So, well, if there's none of that going on, then I can see for CERN why it would make sense for them to say, like, okay, you know what, if Europe and Asia or Europe and Middle East and Africa cost extra, we're not paying that. And sure enough, somebody will be smart enough to upload a container full of games and send it to Europe. And I'm sure they will find new customers in Europe with a European distributor that's willing to offer games. Yeah, absolutely. Or is destined for the American market. I should add, though, countering the argument I was just making about whether it's worth spending money to do the 50 to 60 hertz check. One reason they might choose to do that is if it helps them with licensing. Because if they can prove to the licensor, you know, OK, we didn't buy the European license for this game, and we put this check into our games to make sure that the games don't go to Europe or won't work in Europe, so they won't be sold that way, then they can at least say that to them and indicate they've done their best effort to comply with the license deals. What people do after that, they only have a certain amount of control over.
    12:06
    Anyway, so that's Star Wars, but all of the others. But adding on to what you're saying, Yes. Stern is already offering the Stern High Performance Power Supply Upgrade Kit for $299.99 on their website. Right. As soon as they are offering the same kit for European games, then it's the same situation. Basically, you order a bunch of power supplies, you change them out, and the game is good to go for Europe.
    12:45
    Yeah, quite possibly. I don't know what's so special about this power supply. It's quieter than the Spike 2, and presumably has higher power capability than the Spike 2 version. The Spike 3 seems an awful lot of power. I know it's something which is sold by Stern through their distributorship or directly from them and designed for their games. But, you know, $300 buys you an awful lot of power supply if that's all it is.
    13:21
    You know, if you go to any of these power supply companies, you know, any electronics company like RS Components or Mouser or anything like that, you can get incredibly powerful power supplies for, you know, $150, half the price of that. But I suppose it comes with a warranty and it's designed specifically for their game. So there is that.
    13:46
    But, yeah, apart from the noise, I suppose, I don't know what else a Spike 3 power supply would benefit you if you have a Spike 2 game.
    14:01
    Well, what I understand is mostly for the noise. I mean, the power supply you have is already powerful enough to have your game working as it should be working. Yeah, I suppose if you're adding on quite a few mods onto it, then that could increase the power draw, and you might want to have a more powerful supply. Okay, anyway, getting back to the news of August. Yes, that's right. Yes. So what else have we been hearing from Stern this month? Well, they've been pushing Deadpool sales before it's vaulted. These games are almost completely sold out. There's less than, well, they didn't say there's less than 500 of them, but I mean, I'm trying to make a bit fun of the situation, but we don't know how many they have in stock, and it could be 500 or 1,000 or God knows how many. Or how many of their distributors have been in stock. Oh, yeah. Well, that's another thing to keep in mind. I mean, what Stern does not have in stock doesn't mean it's not available on the market.
    15:16
    And there's been a Jack Danger live stream of Star Wars with John Borg. Wow. Yeah, but then the Data East Star Wars from 1992, I think that was. the very first one with the Death Star actually later than that yeah it's a fun video to watch John does review one of the figurines which is in the new game which is Jabba the Hutt and did we already mention that the Star Wars game is designed around the, what is it called, episode 4, 5, 6, which is the first three movies. Yeah, that's right. And what I understood, Jabba the Hutt was only mentioned in the first movie, episode 4, but they then started making appearances in the third one, if I'm correctly informed. So, anyway, that will be in the game.
    16:23
    More interestingly, I think, apparently the Data East Star Wars game was the most successful Data East game but also the most successful Stern game ever selling 10,400 units at the time but apparently that record was recently broken by Godzilla I was under the impression that ACDC was actually a huge seller for Stern in its various forms. So I'm actually surprised that did not surpass the 10,400 mark, if you want to call it that. But it could also be that even if it did,
    17:13
    ACDC being a Steve Ritchie game, and Stern don't want to blow on Steve Ritchie's now that he's working with a competitor for a firm.
    17:28
    Yeah. Well, I think hats off to John Borg because, just to interject there, because obviously Godzilla, there's been, you know, there's a pro, premium, limited edition, an anniversary edition as well. So there's been at least four different models of that game. Whereas John Borg's Star Wars game, there's just the one. And which is sold, you know, 10,400. So, that's how popular it was. And it was everywhere when it came out. Yeah, and even more to John Borg's credit, it turned out to be a huge earner for operators. Yeah, it was. Back in the day. You know, when games actually went into public locations where people could play pinball, instead of just game rooms and basements and man caves and what have you. Oh, well. Anyway, we already mentioned the Spike 3 power supply, which can be ordered on... So I won't dive into that any further, but it's available in the Stern webshop, which is shop.sternpinball.com, and then you'll find it easily enough.
    18:50
    There is a Gary's Garage sale on Stern merchandise currently running. There is. Savings are mostly 10%, but some go up to 30%. Yeah, that's just from my trial and error, because you don't know what the saving is on any of these items until you put it in the basket and then go to the checkout. and then you see how much it's been reduced by. Because on the actual shop, it doesn't say there's any discount on them. So you put it in at the full price, go to the checkout and see what the saving is. So there may be things which have greater than 30%, but I think 30% is the maximum that I saw when I kept putting things in the basket and going to the checkout and taking them out.
    19:37
    It gets quite boring doing that after a while, so I apologise if there are some mega bargains there which I haven't spotted yet. Yeah, well, maybe all the signs indicating how much the discount is were sold out first.
    19:52
    Yes, very good. Yeah, or they're now 30% taller. I miss them. Yes. Could all be the case. Then our favorite subjects when it comes to, well, any manufacturer, I would say. Are there any code updates? Are there? Code? Yeah. Hang on, is there? Yes, yes, yes, there is. Yes, there's quite a lot, actually. But it's been a really busy month for Dungeons & Dragons. When I say month, it's a little over a month. The most recent update actually came today, and we're recording this on the 2nd of September. So August was a very busy month, with versions 0.93 and 0.94 coming out, and 0.95 came out today. So I won't go through all the details of them, because there's quite a lot. But one of the key things that they added in the version 0.93 on the 14th of August was a thing called trinkets, which are kind of like power-ups, which you can buy using the gold that you pick up during the game. You can buy up to 12 of these trinkets, and they get stored with your profile if you are logged in on Insider Connected. And they are carried over, I should say, between games. each one of them sort of gives you extra features, makes you more invincible, suffer less or inflict more damage on your opponents, or increase multipliers and jackpot bases and that kind of thing. So lots of those.
    21:23
    The 0.94 version, which came out on the 28th of August, so not that long ago, just had a few more changes and allowed you to delete some of the trinkets if you didn't want to keep them, because you're only allowed to have 12, and once you got the 12 previously, you couldn't add any more. But now you can go in and you can delete them from your saved profile and add some new ones instead. And the most recent one today was pretty much just full of inside of a connected achievement, 15 new ones, for those of you who care about that kind of thing. The Uncanny X-Men got a nice Days of Future Code Evolved update on the 27th of August, which added new Sentinel multiball rules, new Save the City multiball rules, new Rescue the Innocent rules, lots of rules have been changed and quite a large list of bug fixes in the game as well 0.93 for that one at the moment John Wick, getting some love at last version 0.97 came out on the 21st of August it added a long list of changes to many of the game rules two minutes of this here but quite a large reworking of how the game plays so from what people who played it said it seems to make things a lot clearer on what you have to do and gives you more feedback when you do make the required shots and everyone seemed to be very happy with it and in the way it's going. But it's still 0.97, it's not finished yet. But interesting to see that they've basically gone and reworked that game quite considerably, which seemed to be something that was required of it because I think people who own the game like the layout, but they thought that the code was always a little unclear as to what the hell was going on. And now it's improved. And finally, and we'll come back to this in a minute, because we have more news from Stern on this game. King Kong. That got an update on the 13th of August. The big Apple update, which adds two new New York modes, called Manhattan Rampage and Window Shopping. There were also quite a few rule changes, tweaks to scoring, new graphics, an insert lighting, lots of new sound effects and call-outs, and added some extra shaker motor uses. And so Dungeons & Dragons, Uncanny X-Men, and King Kong all got updates in August. So if you own any of those games, congratulations. Hope you're enjoying the new code.
    24:03
    Right. So, and as you just mentioned, there's more news regarding King Kong, although it's not directly from Stern.
    24:10
    But the Electric Playgrounds have announced a King Kong topper, manufactured and produced by themselves. and in this case it's on the way you look at it, on the right side it's a bunch of stacked plastics in the shapes of the New York skyline with King Kong climbing the Empire State Building and on the left there is a display which features an LCD screen which has six animated versions of King Kong from various movies rotating.
    24:59
    Personally, to me, only six animations. I would get bored with that very quickly, but it could enhance your game, of course.
    25:11
    There's over 400 LEDs in it, and they do make nice poppers. So if you're looking for a topper for your King Kong game, then you better be quick because I believe it's only $100 in total.
    25:34
    Pricing starts at $749, and you can reserve one with a $100 deposit. there is an LE version available which costs $50 more which has some mirroring effects added to it and well I haven't seen it in person so I'm not sure how to describe it any better but please visit teppinball.com for Images And a lot more details On this King Kong topper that they are Currently offering Yeah indeed and just to I guess Add some context You mentioned about it being six Videos Or little clips which can be Cycled through I think the idea is that you create your own Because they are not licensed to use any of the movie assets. I think each one of those sections, each one of those clips is designed to be dedicated to one of the King Kong movies from the past. And if you are able to add your own video or obtain, shall we say, video clips from those movies, then you can make your own videos and put them onto the SD card that comes with the game. And the topper will play them in order, or at the appropriate time.
    27:13
    Now, there is a, as I understand it, there's a discussion thread on Pinside where people can share their ideas and talk, and I'm not sure if they actually can share any of the assets, but maybe they can give you clues as to exactly where you can get those if you want to put them into your topper. So I think there's a certain amount of customization, which is almost going back to the open source idea of Blues Brothers again, where you make your own content for it. Yes. Anyway, it's only going to be 100 of them. It's going to be quite a niche product, and I don't imagine any of the licensors of those movies need to overly worry about getting licensing fees for those. But anyway, nice work. Yeah, there's no actual movement on it as far as I can see. it's just lighting effects and the video screen which is done as a big billboard on the left hand side it looks beautiful, great lighting interesting to see in person which I guess we will when we get to Expo in October yes, ok so then Multimorphic from Round Rock in Texas they announced Elemental a new free minigame for the P3 pinball platform.
    28:39
    Basically it works over the monitor section with the walls and the scoops. So it works with any playing field module installed.
    28:49
    And Elemental makes it the 26th game which is available for the P3 platform. And the game is free. So if you own a P3 pinball machine,
    29:08
    then you basically got a new game on your game for free, if you do that. And it comes from Multimorphic themselves, rather than coming from a third party, which is where most of the recent minigames have come from. So, nice to see Multimorphic still making new games and giving them away for free as well. Yeah. Excellent. And I do think there was a, I do recall an update from Multimorphic in August, which basically said they would be starting building Portal in a couple of weeks, which would be right about now, I'd say. Yeah, on schedule, I think. It's still the end of the summer, they said. That's what they originally planned. Yeah. And they said they're still on schedule for that. So, yeah, that should be coming out fairly soon. Right. Yeah. Okay. Right.
    30:05
    Yeah, so that's, well, for no particular reason other than they happen to be listed next in our running order of companies to deal with, let's go to your side of the pond and talk about what's going on at Dutch Pinball and Dutch Pinball Exclusive, because I guess one of the ongoing sagas of recent months and all the year has been all about tariffs for sales into the US. Right. And although EU imports to the US have had a 15% tariff settled on, US buyers of Dutch pinball exclusive games i As Adventures in Wonderland will have their tariff apparently fixed at 10 So there been rumours and some customers have been complaining they shouldn't be paying any more and saying that Dutch Pinball, all their distributors, should swallow the tariffs, which is a nice idea but quite unrealistic. but we'll see how other companies take that on later. Meanwhile, Cointaker, who are the US distributor, Uber distributor,
    31:19
    said it's been decided that between Dutch Pinball exclusive, Cointaker, Great American Pinball and Pinball Traders, the other distributors of Dutch Pinball games in the US, that the extra 5% tariff that was settled on in the end will be split between all of them, i.e. the customers won't have to pay that. So, it was originally set at 10% and then it went up to 15% and the extra is being swallowed by Dutch and Cointaker, Great American Pinball and pinball traders between them. So, it gives a bit of certainty and nobody's going to have to pay any extra than was already announced. well it will be interesting in the news a couple of days ago some court in America ruled that some of these tariffs are unconstitutional or illegal or whatever didn't pay too much attention but I'm curious what will happen let's say there will be a court ruling and these terrorists are all deemed illegal. In the meantime, you bought your game, you paid extra. How do you get your money back? And how do the contributors get their money back? I can add a little bit of context to that. Somebody has been following this quite closely.
    32:50
    The terrorists that were imposed in the first place were done as emergency national security measures. it was announced, that's what the President said the national emergency we need to impose these tariffs and the court has decided that there isn't a national emergency and those powers shouldn't have been used that way however, that's not to say there aren't other powers which can be used to impose the same tariffs so I don't think they're going to go away simply because the method in which they were employed or applied, let's say, was incorrect. So if they say, OK, you can't use the national emergency while the tariffs are off, there'll be another method to apply exactly the same tariffs. So I don't think they're going to go away. And, of course, in the meantime, anything that's been agreed as part of a trade deal is no longer, you know, isn't covered by this. So, for instance, the UK has done a trade deal with the US for a 10% tariff.
    33:57
    So even if they took away all the emergency tariffs, that 10% is not going to go away because it's part of a separate trade deal. Right. Yeah, and of course there have been other trade deals with other countries or other areas. I don't know whether Europe has actually done a, agreed a trade deal, or whether it's just, you know, they've settled, they've decided to not escalate it any further. Right. I would not be able to give you the right answer at this moment right well anyway I don't suppose those tariffs are going to go away and that's the Dutch pinball and their distributors take on what they're going to do about it right okay so it will be interesting to see how tariffs will affect pinball productions from outside the US in the future of course I mean you have to come up with a very good game to sell many units in the American market I assume yes, well it's not just machines of course there's also parts and add-ons and mods and other pinball related items, one of which you know, those very impressive mechanical clocks, which like miniature bat boxes of games which have been made they're made in Canada and shipped into the US so there's a whole story there about what they're going to do or what they've announced that they're going to do about dealing with those tariffs but anyway we may come to that at another time well yeah while we're on this subject and I'm skipping the next company and moving on to Pinball Brothers because interestingly enough Pinball Brothers have announced that their new Predator game can be ordered directly from Pinball Brothers USA in Dubois, Pennsylvania for $11,995 US dollars which will include any tariffs and international shipping costs shipping from Pimble Brothers USA is still charged if you don't collect it in person and with the whole terrorist situation in mind the fact that there is a Pimble Brothers USA subdivision would that make it for Pimble Brothers easier to not have to pay these terrorists because they're an American company and they happen to order games that are actually manufactured in Italy. But it's still an American company and they're just importing their goods to sell in America. It doesn't make any difference. It's the same situation for a company like Cointaker. You know, they are... The games come in from the manufacturer outside the US. As soon as they hit US borders, customs and tariffs are due on that even if they're selling it to another division of themselves within the company so it doesn't help them in that it wasn't really confusing thinking out loud wondering anyway the initial announcement from Pinball Brothers was a bit confusing because it said the price includes international shipping and taxes didn't mention anything about tariffs but I think you and I both contacted them to find out what that actually meant and confirmed with them that it includes the 15% tariff but doesn't include the 6% sales tax that Pennsylvania residents have to pay for purchases from Pinball USA because they're based in that state. Anyone out of state doesn't pay it, officially. well unofficially I think officially they're meant to declare it but unofficially nobody does so it doesn't include sales tax it does include international shipping and tariffs but not domestic shipping right yes and then to the surprise of many we already knew that Predator was going to be a limited run I think 880 units something like that and Pimple Brothers announced in the same post about the terrorists that we just discussed that only 150 Predator units remain available and once they're gone that's it production will end on the 31st of December for both Predator and Alien and especially this part is where we both reached out to Daniel Jensen and asking for some clarification, because it's rather odd that you would announce a title two months ago and then can only manufacture it for the remaining of the year.
    39:28
    Yes, indeed. Which means a very short production cycle. So, well, tell me what did Daniel tell you? Well, basically the same you told me, which was that they, because they manufacture through Euro Pimble Corporation, which they are part owners, they have to fit into that company's production schedule. And they only have, at the time, slots in production for this year for about 150 Predator machines. and what was surprising was that they said that, as Hugh says, production of that's going to end on 31st December, which presumably means that's the end of the license, but not only for Predator, but also for Alien, both of which were former Fox titles and now Disney again, like everybody.
    40:28
    So it doesn't look like they're going to make any more. and says they're going to talk about clearing their licenses so they can get ready for the production of their next title next year. Right. Which seems, you know, to me it sounds odd, but I think European people are very busy running at full capacity. I think they have a full schedule. They don't intend to expand that. They seem very happy with the size and the capabilities that they have. but their manufacturing schedule is laid out for the rest of this year, and that only includes 150 Predator games, and then that's it. Yeah, and, okay, so I reached out to Daniel asking for a clarification, and I'll quote, unquote, what he responded to me.
    41:20
    He said, it's getting crowded in the production, and since we have a limited capacity, we have calculated we can sell another 150, or even less now, I think 130, 240-ish spots less of Predator. We're just being careful not to sell something we can't deliver. That seems, I would say, clever thinking. I mean, if you have orders for games that you can't manufacture after a certain date,
    41:53
    That's not good for your position in the market, I would say. I also asked him to comment on some speculation that arose from their social media posts about 150 units remaining,
    42:15
    where it was suggested that this could possibly be a fire sale aimed at injecting cash into the business to bridge the gap to the next title.
    42:27
    Here's what Daniel had to say about that. I really don't know what to say. People seem to lead a lot into every message. The facts are pretty simple. We wanted to tell potential customers that we only have a certain number of games left and that the sales will stop at the end of the year. however it looks like the game will be sold out a lot earlier than that that's all so I don't think anybody has to worry about the financial well-being of Pinball Brothers at the moment it seems they are doing fine whether that's on their own titles or in partnership with Pedrecci and the European Ball Corporation so So, well, that's what Daniel had to say.
    43:20
    And I tend to stick with the facts. That's the explanation that we got. So don't read more into it than is being said. Of course, some companies tend to make you believe all sorts of stuff. But in this case, I tend to go with what I just quoted from Daniel Jensen himself. Okay. Well, I would say that it does seem to me odd to cap your new title at such a low value so soon. But we don't know the background to that and how long it's taken them to get to the point where they can manufacture, how long their license is, what the cost for renewing it would be. There's a lot of variables in this, and I'm sure they understand what works for their business and are acting accordingly. but it does mean that we should be getting news about the next Pimble Brothers title towards the end of this year.
    44:16
    Yeah, probably. We'll be making it the start of next year. Well, we know at least there's a new Padretti title, a remake title coming up, which will feature artwork by Brian Allen. there was an interview by Loser Kid Pimbal, I believe with Brian Allen of Flyland Design which Pedretti actually shared on their social media hinting at the next Pedretti remake game will be I skipped through the interview I didn't completely see it but I could not discover any section where it was actually stated that the next Padretti title, what it would be I may have missed it but it's a great teaser anyway but still I'm in a fortunate position of actually knowing what the next one is going to be but I'm not allowed to say anything about it so I'll leave it at that ok so now comes the time where I can ask Martin this is where you mute the microphone so ok well what I can say is the title rumoured the most is Tales of the Arabian Nights but also Theatre of Magic is being rumoured that's all that I know and we'll see whether it's either one of these games or something completely different. We will indeed, and we won't have to wait too long for that, I don't think, either.
    46:06
    But we might have a little bit more about that in... Well, we could skip to Pedretti now, I guess. Right, sure. We've just been talking about them because they have been sort of teasing what their next remake game will be and been asking people online and social media to guess what it will be. and also been telling some of them that their guesses aren't correct.
    46:31
    Or at least suggesting that they aren't correct, put it that way. But they haven't actually commented on any, I haven't seen anybody actually have a comment to their guess saying anything positive about how accurate they might be. Right. So other than to say, no, it's not that, or You'll Be Lucky or something like that.
    46:56
    In the meantime, they've been showing lots of pictures from their European ball court factory featuring loads and loads of Funhouse remake games which they seem to be producing in large quantities. Yeah. Both classic and limited edition. I got the feeling they're almost building more Funhouse games than originally were built.
    47:17
    Well, that's a good question, yeah. Perhaps that'll be a new record as well. but yeah limited of course as you were talking about earlier featuring Brian artwork yes well on the limited edition or whatever special edition midnight edition whatever you call it so the and on that point there has been some new code for Funhaus yes version 1.37 came out on the 13th of August not huge changes few bug fixes there's a bug with the ball saver as well on the original and the enhanced original, the 1.0 and the 1.5 versions of the code. Version 2.0 gets a little bit more because it's got sound and animation sync improvements so what happens on the display and the sound effects that go on with it are much more in sync than they used to be and that's in there's also LED brightness fixes as well there's some oddities going on there and various other RAM and NB RAM fixes, things are getting corrupted and other bug fixes so if you have a Funhaus remake, make sure you're running the latest version 1.37 and everything should be peachy right that's it, no more fun progression at this particular moment, so we can hop back if you want and go back to our list and carry on in the order in which we were originally going to do it, which is to go with Spooky Pinball next and news about their very popular, very successful and very fun Evil Dead game.
    49:08
    They have some new code for that as well. Two brand new modes and apparently they're packed with blood, guts and groovy chaos. Well, of course.
    49:23
    Yeah, I don't know these modes. I haven't seen them, but I'm sure there are videos out there which will demonstrate them to you. One called Destroy the Book and the other one called Kitchen Fight,
    49:35
    which is interesting because you are only allowed to play with one hand as your other hand has a knife through it, I believe, in the movie. so down to one good arm anyway and as the severed hand scurries across the kitchen you have to play with your one good one which is a bit like the mode in Dune where you have to play with one hand as well and keep your hand on the action button in the pain box but one-handed pinball seems to be all the rage at the moment Now they are Currently building 24-25 games a week Or 100 a month I guess Yeah Well it used to be more But with Evil Dead being such a fat game With so many more Mechanisms in it It takes them a little bit more time to To build these games So well that's what you have with complex games and I think they crossed the 500 games mark last month as well so which means that they're I think they're doing only 888 games or something like that so well as the end of the year is approaching so is the end of the production it will be curious to see when Spooky will announce their next title I'm pretty sure they're not going to wait until the production of Evil Dead is completely finished because they will want to continue the production line so to speak you have to keep the line moving but it's probably going to be November or December I'd say Yeah, probably not expo time just doing the calculations when the game was announced and the fact that we saw it at the Texas show it does work out to me if they're cross making the 500 or have just made the 500th game, that is about 100 a month, which obviously leaves 388 games yet to build from that point so that is three months and a couple of weeks which I guess takes you through September, October, November and halfway through December so just in time for the end of the year the holiday season and there'll be some breaks for public holidays as well but yeah, it's the end of the year, you're going to hit the target I think, which is always to finish all the games this year so congratulations to Spooky and yeah, we certainly look forward to seeing what the follow-up to Evil Dead is going to be because they've got quite something to follow, haven't they? Yes, absolutely. A surprisingly fun game for a movie that absolutely is not of any interest to me. Yep, or wasn't anyway to me either. Okay, well that was on Spooky so we can move on or move a little bit further south now to Bowser Fun. In Texas. in Texas, in Houston yep I think it's called Houston like my last name it's a railway station in London no, I'm not there, I'm not in Houston yes, so they were represented at the recent UK Pinfest show by Retro Arcade Specialists who had both Labyrinth and a brand new Minty Dune, which arrived just before the show and was actually unboxed on the floor of the show during set up time, so they had no idea how it worked, what it was like and it worked flawlessly as I can see proved very popular with fans won over a lot of fans I suppose I should say pinball fans that is who were sort of maybe not so keen on the title, once they got to play it they really won over so I think it was a very positive reception and well done in getting that game there just in time for the start of the show, any delays in customs or shipping we could easily have missed the whole of the show but it just got there right on the day they opened pretty much so that was good, speaking of which of course there's new code of course for in this case for both Labyrinth and Dune there was a version which came out that didn't add very much to either of those games Dune got more, of course being a newer game but only a few bug fixes and some mild behavioural changes and added a new lifetime games counter to both of those titles which doesn't reset which is something you kind of take for granted I suppose and assume it's in there but it never was, and now it is. So from lifetime games from the moment where the software is updated, I suppose. But there have been two new versions of Dune software in addition to that. We came out on the 13th and the 1st of August.
    55:15
    There's had a new mini wizard mode and lots more new call-outs and lighting effects and bug fixes and a new... actually two now mini wizard modes have been added along with a whole bunch of more callouts from Tara Strong and David Kay who apparently do the voices and quite a few tweets for some of the features as well and there were quite a lot of bugs a lot of bugs, a relative number of bugs in there and a lot of them have been fixed, so nice to see this new code coming out right and that rounds it up for Barrels of Fun but yeah very good to see that June is now available in the UK as well and that it proves to be such a popular title at the UK Pinfest show which you will be talking about a lot more later on I suppose a little bit more but yeah we'll come back to that later in the meantime Jersey Jack Pinball yes they've been very busy promoting Harry Potter of course on all their social media and unsurprisingly as it's their current title and seems to be doing very very well for them the game was featured on the front cover of August's Replay magazine which is a magazine for the coin-op industry published in America Yes indeed, yep Inside there's an article about the making of the Harry Potter game as you might expect which is actually available to read on, I think certainly on their Facebook page but on others as well so worth having a read about that I think you may even be able to read it on the replay magazine website Ah, right, ok very good either way wherever you get it, it's worth a read we did happen to know on their Facebook page actually still got the Cain Cromwell's email address as their Facebook contact so doesn't seem right so emails to that address I don't know whether they've been picked up by somebody else or bouncing but they might want to have a little tweak on that. Ken's going crazy. Stop emailing me. Yeah. Yes. Because we were mentioning earlier about how when we had Jack Guarneri on our What's Cooking With segment, he recommended that our next guest should be Roger Sharp, of course. Yes. and that seems to be a particularly good way of leading into this month's What's Cooking With? Roger Sharpe. Yes, Roger. So I'll hand over to you to do the introductions. Thanks.
    58:29
    And stick with us because while this is a very interesting segment which we already pre-recorded, we still have news coming up from American Pinball, Turner Pinball, Chicago Gaming, and some more companies and other news as well. So stick around. But first, what's cooking with Roger Sharp?
    58:52
    Well, good day to both you, Martin, as well as Hugh Johnson. Thank you. What's cooking? Well, I guess one of my more notorious and well-known and favorite recipes would be my Thanksgiving turkey stuffing. I have done which has been modified from my mother's recipe but did you want me to actually go through all of the steps stages and ingredients I think so yeah how else should our listeners be able to replicate it there you go well alright there's going to be two different preparations happening simultaneously So let me start with what I will call... You know we're men. Two different things simultaneously that doesn't usually work well.
    59:49
    Well, I think of it as the left hand and the right hand. So anyway, the first part is, and it's a little bit longer, is something that we would affectionately call the soup. And the soup is effectively three cups of water. I usually do about a head of celery, a large onion, about six cloves of garlic, all minced, chopped up, a nice healthy bunch of carrots, all cut nicely into small pieces, a nice bunch of fresh dill, a nice fresh bunch of parsley.
    60:35
    And that goes into a pot, along with, if you are actually doing real turkey stuffing, the neck and the heart of the turkey, the gizzards, basically, that you take out from the center. And all of that goes into the pot on a medium heat. And that's going to be boiling and cooking for probably about an hour and a half or so. You want the meat to get tender because you're going to take it off the bones and shred it. While that is going on at the top part of the stove, in the oven, I tend to believe and like what I do when it comes to actually the breading for something. Yes. I don't buy it in its prepackaged. I toast bread And the bread that I toast happens to be Pepperidge Farm sandwich bread It has a great consistency a nice texture and that will go into the broiler basically to get a nice little tan on it I do three loaves of bread. Wow. In a large frying pan, while the bread is being done, again, this is my third hand, my third arm, in a, I'll call it a saute pan, basically, large frying pan. Yep. I take another head of celery. I take three onions. I prefer white, but yellow is okay. I take another head of parsley. I take basically it's kind of like a package of fresh mushrooms I use button mushrooms and slice all of those up. This is not for the faint of heart. I also put in two sticks of unsalted butter I do another five or six cloves of garlic, all pressed, and I saute all of that together in the pan.
    62:54
    When that becomes all done and soft and nice, and the soup is done, I have my three loaves of bread. I have three large mixing bowls, so each bowl collects one loaf of bread, all kind of ripped into pieces.
    63:15
    Into each of those bowls goes another stick of butter. So we now have, effectively, what has been five sticks of butter, but that's just a start.
    63:28
    Typically, toward the end, it's going to be about two pounds of butter that go into everything. And then I take the liquid from, in quotes, the soup, as well as the vegetables, as well as the now shredded pieces of turkey and I combine those equally into each of the three bowls.
    63:54
    And that becomes effectively my stuffing. Wow. And how much bowls do you need for one turkey? I used to do, alright, when the boys were still living in the house, I used to do about eight loaves of bread and the reason for it is that I used to not only serve actually stuff the turkey I'd have a separate we'll call it a corningware baking dish with more spillover if you will of stuffing that could be done as part of the side dish and then I would proportion out enough containers to freeze the stuffing so that it could be had over the course of the year just as a separate little treat. So that's the starting point. And again, with basic onion powder, garlic powder, parsley flakes, more dill, more seasoning. I do not do oregano, but I'd leave basil.
    65:06
    Mrs. Dash has some seasonings that I do use that's no salt added that I like. It's onion, garlic. And I think that that is kind of what my recipe is. So how many people would that serve? How many servings would you get from that then?
    65:28
    From what I just shared? Yes. Right. So from what I just shared with you, that would be enough for four people. you want to cut it down last year I did two loaves right well for Ellen and myself last year that we did separately I just did two loaves of bread and basically we had about one loaf for ourselves and again part of that soup I also use to make gravy for the turkey so nothing is really wasted and the vegetables kind of all are just there. I mean, it's not overly filthy, I'd like to think, although it really is.
    66:12
    And I basically froze the balance of it. So I think you can scale accordingly, but really, the three cups of water is kind of negligible because much of it is going to boil down anyway. And as for the bread, you know, if you do one loaf or two loaves, you can scale that also but we're really not looking at well I don't think of it as looking at all that much but to your point I think just take a look and if it's just for you and a special someone or you know a couple of friends I think you can kind of divvy things out accordingly great well thank you very much for sharing what's cooking with Roger's shop but yeah great to hear from you Well, thank you and happy Thanksgiving to you all, to everyone. Yeah, indeed, and to you too. Yes, while you're here, can we pick your brains on a typical issue or two? We might as well start with the rather extraordinary, amazing range of Rogers Sharp branded apparel, which has been developed in association with DeviantPay. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came to happen?
    67:35
    Literally out of the blue, Colin reached out via an email. We had an exchange, and I thought it was as crazy as Colin, almost last year or so, approaching me about doing an action figure.
    67:53
    So we kind of discussed things and where I was comfortable and what I was willing to allow. And we reached a contracting agreement, and lo and behold, I guess now it is officially launched with the first product line.
    68:13
    Dare I say that there's actually going to be more because there will be. And we'll see if there are enough individuals out there who are desirous of having something related to Roger Sharp. I mean, you're the master of licensing. I mean, how does it feel to be the subject of the licensor rather than the licensor?
    68:38
    Well, that does raise an interesting question, so thanks for asking. It's somewhat strange. It's humbling in some ways, in all honesty. I know that the pinball art project that was undertaken was effectively just the game plan visuals and some of that admittedly making it into T-shirts as a silhouette from Sharpshooter and elsewhere. So I suppose that I am not totally unaware of the sensation, but for it to kind of take hold in this particular fashion, no pun intended, with Paul is, again, it's somewhat similar to the movie. It's an out-of-body experience. So we will see. I know that Paul actually sent me a note letting me know that here's a copy of the invoice for the very first order. So I know that somebody out there has already ordered two T-shirts. It's the same thing that happened with Colin when I guess he sold out the limited edition action figures in a matter of a few hours, and I wound up getting some e-mails and text messages from people saying, hi, I got one.
    70:08
    And it's like, okay, well, so I will sit back and surprise. Yeah, sit back and watch the money roll in, as they say. I suppose. And at least people will now be warm and comfortable in whatever they're... And fashionable. ...in whatever their desires are really. Yes. Good.
    70:27
    Yes, I know Jonathan wanted to ask you a question related to a topic we were talking about a little earlier in this podcast. Yes. This month's PINcast. Well, I'll pass over to him. Yes. Thank you, Martin. you may have heard by now that CERN is releasing a new Star Wars game, The Fall of the Empire and interestingly enough it looks like that will be a game destined only for the US domestic market and Australia because apparently that game will not be available in Europe Middle East and Africa due to licensing restrictions.
    71:14
    Now, you're very well familiar with the licensing process when it comes to pinball titles and other stuff. Were you aware of this situation, or can you relate to it in some way?
    71:31
    I wasn't aware of the specific situation. I was aware because I saw a little tidbit the other day that they had made a teaser announcement that they were doing yet another Star Wars game. So that was something that was a surprise. I admittedly don't stay really on top of all that is happening in the community. I apologize for that. It's just something that's not necessarily top of mind. in regard to answering the question about limitations on territories or anything else to that matter. It's not unusual. I think that sometimes, and not necessarily in this particular instance for the example I'm going to give, because I'm sure that this is not the reason, but sometimes it's a question of where the trademarks and copyrights are held and in what category. And in some instances that I've had in the past with particular projects, the rights holder, the licensor, whether it was an agency or a studio, did not necessarily cover that particular category for licensing. so in order to protect your trademarks and what have you have to go about actually ensuring that you are somewhere legally in control of those rights whether it is the imagery of a particular talent within the context of a particular property, TV or movie or a band and their songs and wherever they have the rights so sometimes you run into those particular instances whereas there's a carve out.
    73:20
    Oh, you know what? You cannot have this product in the Pacific Rim. We're not covered. Okay, well, let me go back and make a determination as to whether or not that is a significant enough marketplace for us. In some cases, it's also a question of whatever the application might be.
    73:46
    and in that application, what is your projections on a percentage or per unit basis for how many of these particular items will be sold into these particular territories?
    74:03
    And sometimes when the numbers are negligible, the rights holder will say, well, you know what, we're going to do a carve-out and you can't get the rights to Bulgaria because you're only going to be selling one product in that particular country or region.
    74:21
    And in regard to Star Wars, which is probably more to the point that you're curious about, whether or not there is anything having to do with the current economic climate in the world, tariff-wise, restrictions, boundaries that have been placed by the current administration, and I'm not taking a stance politically or otherwise, although I would love to, but I won't, that may have become a barrier for Star Wars, I think everybody knows, is now controlled, or Lucas is now controlled by Disney. Yes, right. Disney may have some specific issues where, look, yes, you can do this, but only here. My understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong because you're closer to it,
    75:19
    my understanding is that because of the logo and some of the speculation, that this new game is going to be based on what we always think of as the first episodes, but effectively we're episode four, five, and six. Four, five, and six, yes. So is that true? Yes. As you understand it, yes. I haven't seen the game, so yes. All right. If that's true, then there may be some limitation of rights that were either granted by Lucas during the takeover or by Disney itself, having to do with the movies that go back into 1977 and the like. Although, if memory serves, I think we did have likeness rights of characters in the previous Star Wars game that Steve Ritchie designed for Stern. So, my belief is that that probably is not the reason, necessarily, but that what I posed previously might well be. And or if there is some protection in place by Disney in regards to now saying look we want to hold back because we have some other things that we want to do and or, this is another and or if the proposal included and again this is something that was also mentioned from what I saw briefly. If there's going to be a spin-off story to the original 4, 5, and 6 that did not appear on screen, were you going to take these characters to, I'll call it a side adventure?
    77:06
    Those rights might not have been made available because it wasn't within the entire story arc of those three movies. are you following what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if that made sense, but I think that there are ways to take licenses that have a border, if you will, a finite story structure, and in some cases you can elaborate on it, if allowed, and in others you may not be able to. There might even be another scenario thinkable and forgive me for sitting in the speculation seat so to speak no please speculate away because you both are much closer to it than I am and I'm always fascinated by whatever is transpiring in the marketplace because I am still somewhat involved this is something I hope you can comment on because there is a question in the end but I think it was about a year ago, or at least a couple of months, that apparently John Bork had designed the new Indiana Jones games, which is also Lucasfilm, belonging to Disney now. And eventually, when Stern went after the license, it turned out to be too expensive, and that game never went into production. given that this is Star Wars also Lucasfilm Disney would it make much of a difference for a company like Stern if they would negotiate the license for Star Wars for this new game and Disney comes with a specific amount for in terms of royalties and you have to pay for X amount of games or whatever that Stern would come back and say what if we don't take Europe Africa and Middle East how much would it be then?
    79:18
    That it becomes more affordable for a company like Stern to say you know what, we're just going to focus on America, Australia and a couple of other territories, South America if you will.
    79:30
    Would that be a reasonable thought or am I completely way out of line here? No, I mean, not at all. In fact, I've actually done agreements on other projects that specifically were for what we'll call North America and nowhere else. So, to your point, I think that that would probably be a great assumption that would be somewhat high up on the list as to why the decision was made, number one, to want to do Star Wars.
    80:09
    And, you know, that that was appealing, and that was something where the company determined, we want to do this, we have this great design or this great concept, this great whatever, and we are willing to forsake X amount of our business in order to scale whatever the financials are ultimately going to be.
    80:33
    Yes, just to add to that and support what you've just suggested, I know Stern, as part of their messaging to the distributors who weren't going to get the game,
    80:48
    asked that they gather levels of interest such that they could return to the licence or potentially return to the licence if there was enough interest, i.e. enough orders for the game so that they could maybe negotiate an extension of that license to cover the Europe, Middle East and Africa markets. So it sounds to me as if it's not an issue with not being able to use those rights in those markets, simply that they were too expensive. you make an incredibly good point because I've also been party to something very very similar on a number of occasions over the past few decades where it was a situation of going back in through distributors and let's face it Stern is strong enough understands the marketplace of where they want to be and where they are preeminent to be able to go back to distributors and gather together an interest and be able to go back potentially, this is all again speculation, be able to go back and say, look, it appears that we can do I'll use a round number, a thousand more games in this particular part of the world.
    82:12
    Can we now negotiate an addendum to our current agreement to open up that part of the world based on this preliminary forecast. Yeah.
    82:28
    You need to crush the numbers and see whether it works for them and for Disney, too. Yeah, I think, and again, I mean, what emerges from my curiosity, if nothing else, at least specific only to this project, is doing the numbers and crunching them and determining where would this particular IP fall in the desirability by territory, global region, and if we're going to get, and again, this is just throwing out numbers. If 80% of our business is North America and 20% is elsewhere, well, then it doesn't make sense to pay 100% of the dollars for effectively only 80% of the marketplace, or 60%, or 50%, whatever those percentages might be, versus looking at other projects and saying 100% for 100% of the globe, even if we don't tap into each and every region, each and every country equally, at least it makes business sense. And just one final question on that. Is this something which is marketing by geographic region, Is this something which has always been in licensing as long as you've been working in it, or is it something which you feel is becoming more fragmented now, becoming more sort of focusing on making the most of their assets in individual areas rather than just treating the world as a whole?
    84:23
    It's interesting that you ask it because I'm dealing with that frightfully on a regular basis these days. in years past and in years past I'm going back to probably around 1989, 1990 before most people were born it was through one central department yeah that has evolved over the years not only with studios but with other agents and agencies and the like and basically project and property rights, if you will, and some of it is by category. Apparel, soft goods, food items, electronics, and such may be divvied out. I can speak without being specific that I am working with a major U.S. studio slash company where their principal person overseeing this category is based out of the UK.
    85:32
    Okay, well, that's great. I have another where some of it is predicated on where the potential licensee is based.
    85:45
    So if they are based, let's say, in the Netherlands, well then they're going to be dealing with a European office for a studio many of the consolidated activities by and this principally tends to be the studios if you will the Warner Brothers of the World, Universal's, Paramount well Paramount now being a little bit of everything, MGMS have offices around the world And you wind up needing to actually prorate out financials for each of those different offices. So in some cases, in years past, it was a question of getting the approval from the core office for some of their satellites to say, are those rights available or have you negotiated and effectively sold them to someone else?
    86:50
    So suddenly there is that carve-out where you don't have South America, or you do, or you don't have the Pacific Rim, or you do. So it has become much more fragmented, to effectively get to the gist of your question with an answer. it's not as straightforward as it used to be I think that licensing in general forgetting about pinball as a category or anything else has become so much more ubiquitous that it has changed the landscape as a result and for coin opera amusement games or pinball specifically we tend to fall victim to that where it's not just a single individual on the other side of the call being the decision maker they need to round up everybody else and that everybody else may be from different divisions within the corporation because of how things are now being done with new theme parks that are opening up new derivative uses of IP and other disparate projects and products. So that overlap isn't as simple and as clean and as precise as it once was. Thank you for taking time to explain potential situations that may be applicable to the Star Wars game that we were discussing earlier. and Jonathan has any more questions for you well I do have one I know it's on everybody's mind everybody well most of our listeners probably have seen the movie the man who saved pinball a great movie great story is there going to be a sequel maybe say pinball again yeah right I think that I only have one life to live. And to follow up on that last great scene with Dennis,
    89:13
    no, I highly, it's highly unlikely that there will be a sequel. I do know that there's some new film projects that are on the horizon and coming, new documentaries where if people can't get enough of me, yes, I will be on screen doing whatever I do. But no, no other fictionalized works in any way, shape or form. And I'm actually heading out with Ellen next month. MPI is celebrating an anniversary in L.A., some gala event, and I'll get a chance to meet up again with Meredith and Austin. I'll ask them the question if they're done with their current project that they're working on, would they want to revisit me, or, more importantly, is there some type of director's cut that we can put together to really kind of elaborate on the story. So that's about as far as we can go with any of that.
    90:21
    Okay. Well, and just remember where you heard it first, straight from Roger Sharp himself. There you go. I hate to disappoint everybody. I know that there's enough individuals out there that are curious as to will there ever be a DVD or anything else. I do believe that there are DVDs available. I know that they're still looking at, and this is MPI, Moving Picture Institute. they're still looking at distribution in Europe. I believe and again both of you are closer to it, that there either was or is going to be a showing at a movie theater in Germany of the film and I think that we're also looking at having the film be viewable at BIF in France next month. Yes. I know that Philo has reached out to me for next spring, I guess May, somewhere close to Hanover. Hopefully the movie will be available for viewing there. So, you know, again, one never knows.
    91:36
    Well, you better start practicing your French and German then. I suppose. After that, I have to share with you.
    91:45
    Hopefully you'll indulge me. I would be very, very curious if there was ever a dubbed-in version of the movie to see what voice they would have, be it Parlez-vous in Francais or Je parle en espagnol or anything else for that matter. So we'll see.
    92:08
    It's all in good fun. Okay well if you in any of the European countries or wherever over the world and you are aware of an overdubbed version of that movie where Roger and all the other characters in the movie are speaking the language of a specific territory, not being English, please do let us know.
    92:33
    I will, and likewise, again, both of you stay so close to the pulse of what's happening in the world. If you hear about it before I do, Please let me know. We will be sure to let you know. Yes. If anybody lets us know, we'll let you know for sure. Well, again, gentlemen, thanks for indulging me, and hopefully I've given something to whet one's appetite when it comes to a recipe, and more importantly, stay well, travel safe, and look forward to seeing you in Schaumburg in a matter of just weeks, I guess. Yes. Thank you very much for joining us this month, Roger, and also not just for your residency, but for your detailed insight into the marketing business and how the Defiance Global clothing range came around. So thanks for spending some time with us. Thank you. Be well, my friends. Fine. Thanks for that, Roger. Yes, and very kind of him. And the only thing we forgot to ask Roger, but I'll reach out to him, who would he suggest that we talk to next month?
    93:46
    Good point. Yeah. Well, it'll be a surprise for all of us then to find out who is doing our next What's Cooking with. Right. And then, as I promised you, we move on with the remaining companies that we haven't discussed yet. starting with American Pinball. And surprise, surprise, they have another sale. This time, a Labor Day sale with a price reduction on the barbecue, very old barbecue game, the Classic Edition, Galactic Tank Force Deluxe, and Signature Edition, Hot Wheels Classic, Legends of Valhalla Classic, and the Houdini Classic, plus 25% off parts, sales, and merchandise, I believe, as well. So, I didn't mention all the pricing yet, but if you go to American Pimble's Facebook page or Instagram, there's images there displaying all the pricing. Yes, unfortunately, it all finished yesterday. Ah.
    95:04
    Okay, well, we were discussing what happened in August, so if you want to see what you missed out on, or what you might be able to benefit from, given that American Pinball is known for frequent sales like these, and we do have, I don't want to get ahead of the calendar, but Black Friday is coming up, Cyber Monday is coming up, well, Thanksgiving is coming up. All those festive days celebrated in America are coming up. Halloween is coming up, so Tuesday is coming up as well. Yeah, Friday as well. Yeah, well, there you go. We've reasoned enough for another discount. so anyway what was interesting was that this time around the prices had dropped a little from the previous sale on the 4th of July for instance they had the Collective Tank Force signature at £7,999 and some people were saying well bring it down to £7,000 and I'm in well it dropped just over $200 in the Labour Day sales it's £7,780 and the Legends of Valhalla Classic as well was 5,280 down from 5,495 so another $215 lower makes you wonder how low they're going to go with these prices I don't understand it, this is all stock they're not building any more games which makes me wonder how much stock do they have and how come they haven't sold it yet yeah even with all these sale prices exactly yeah is there a is there going to be a threshold at which a whole bunch of people decide okay the price has dropped low enough I'm in and then will it be a big rush on them I'd say $8,000 on a galactic tank for a signature is already a bargain yes I think it is coming from $14,000 what have you. 995, yeah.
    97:23
    It's 7780 in the most recent sale. The next one might be lower still. Right. You have to wonder if they're not selling at that price. How low do they have to go? Right.
    97:38
    Was Galactic Tank Force well received at the UK Pinfest? It certainly was. It was on the island. I got a chance to play it and had great fun. and the best part of it was that I was well down going into the very last ball and managed to pull it back completely and won the game by quite a margin. So that's a good show. Still got enough luck playing pinball. And yes, it was very popular. Because it was on the end of the aisle, it had the tank tracks on the side and they're all illuminated, and it really was very inducing for people to just walk up to it and play it. And even though we were playing what I thought was going to be the last game of the day,
    98:29
    just as they were announcing the show hall was closing, there were still people waiting to play it, and they didn't mind playing after us and saying, well, if we get kicked out, we get kicked out, but I want to play this game. So that's a good sign, I think. and I wish I had one at that price. But, of course, in the UK, there are quite a bit more. But, hey, that's just imports and taxes and all that kind of stuff that we pay over there. Maybe you can fit one in your end luggage from Expo. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, maybe over the course of the next five years, I can bring it back in pieces and build it up again. Yeah. Right. There was some more news, which is sort of related to American Pimple, or Antron, their parent company.
    99:22
    At the same address as where American Pimple and Antron are located, is now also a company called Orbit Games, which is not a very uncommon name. I mean, there's like dozens of companies called Orbit Games.
    99:46
    But the company on Facebook, I forgot his name, but some guy named Steve, I believe, mentioned how he regretted seeing American Pinball going away. but apparently as they responded American People is one of our brands it's not going anywhere which is a bit confusing because we've already announced that they had this company called Funds Up Manufacturing which is a contract manufacturer for other companies designs as far as we know nobody is using but ok Yeah, Orbit Games links to FunzUp manufacturing, so that's still a thing apparently. And FunzUp's webpage says it's powered by Orbit Games. So that's not confusing. And it also lists American Pimble as one of the brands, along with several other brands of product. so I'm guessing that Orbit Games is a game design company that has their games manufactured or would have their games manufactured by Funds Up Manufacturing along with American Pinball Games if they ever go back into production and various other companies' games or various other brands, I should say, of game but I don't know. It doesn't look good for American Pinball themselves. There's plenty of speculation that they've ditched their next title. Cuphead.
    101:32
    Yeah, which I think we can confirm was Cuphead. I can. Which is a shame, really, because that game was well in development and was just needed, well, I don't want to say just needed manufacturing, because I don't know where the code got to with it, but a lot of people had high hopes for that. I don't think it would ever have been a saviour game for American Bimble. I don't think Cuphead is that well a known licence, but it's a very rich licence and came with plenty of assets for Ryan and his team to use in the game. And they did. but looks like we won't see American Pinball making it, which is a real shame or indeed all big games or manufacturing or any other of that family of companies Right, so that makes me wonder like, okay, Ryan designed that game, would he be able to take his design as they are, while they're American Pinball does own it because it was designed on their time would he be able to take his design somewhere else?
    102:51
    Probably have to be licensed from whatever entity American Pinball is at the time. If that's allowed under the licensing agreement they have with Cuphead owners. Right. They may not be allowed to support it. What Ryan could do is start a fundraiser to get Cuphead into production just basically get American Pimble as a contract manufacturer to build the game they were supposed to build in the first place.
    103:28
    Yes, assuming that the license is still in place and hasn't been annulled. Well, from what I understand the license store in this case was very enthusiastic about Oh, sure they were. Yeah. It might be less so after all the Well, they might still be very cooperative in getting the game manufactured in some way or form. Oh, well, anyway. That's it for American Pinball for August.
    104:02
    In many ways. Yes. Then moving on, well, Turner Pinball in, again, Texas San Antonio this time. They will begin shipping the first eight production games of Merlin's Arcade this week.
    104:22
    Following that, they expect to produce four to six games per week after that. The current game code for Merlin's Arcade, that the games that are shipping are carrying, is 0.81.
    104:41
    which already includes a lot more than when, well, you and I played it at Texas Pimble Festival in March.
    104:52
    Yes, I think it was version 0.4 or something at that time, wasn't it? Yes. So, Kerry Hardy, he visited three pimble manufacturers in Texas, and he posted videos on his channel of him visiting them. And when visiting Turner Pinball, Chris Turner indicated that there are code updates in the works for Ninja Eclipse, their previous game. Oh, yeah.
    105:25
    That code update will still be installable through USB, but in the future, updates will be able to be installed through Wi-Fi.
    105:37
    Okay, makes sense. Yeah, and what's also interesting, and there's quite a big explanation on it by Chris Turner in that video by Kerry Hardy, highly recommended, is that Merlix Arcade features a patent-pending updated pop bumper design, which contains several improvements, reducing install time during the building process. And the other improvements are at the bottom of the pop bumper is a metal plate, I would say, probably a spring steel. The skirt of the pop bumper is also made of spring steel, and together with that base plate of metal,
    106:35
    when the ball rolls onto the plate, even if, well, by the slightest touch of the metal skirt, the pop bumper is already activated, which makes it far more reliable than the spoon mechanism, which is still in place, which is currently in use for, I'd say, probably almost 100 years now. So that spoon mechanism is still in place as well, but this way the ball is sensed in a different way and immediately the pop-up reactivates. So I'm very curious to see how that will result. I expect it to result in more pop bumper action on Merlin's arcade. And I'd love to take a new look at the game at Pinball Expo next month.
    107:37
    Yeah, I wonder if that's something which has been added recently. I do remember it having a reasonable amount of pop bumper action when we played it. but it wasn't something which leapt out at me and went, wow, that's really sensitive up there. Which, of course, is the other thing. You want to make sure that there's no fake detection, no false signals, so it ends up firing when the ball isn't actually there. Yes. But it'll be interesting to see that. Yes, definitely want to play that game.
    108:10
    And it is sobering thought to think that it's actually next month, Pinball Expert. Yes. so we're only looking at six, seven weeks I think, until then which is a frightening thought considering how much work I have to put in before it starts in order to do all the streaming, all the recording and the seminars and that kind of stuff and the coverage of it as well but on the subject of Pimple Expert, it was something I was going to add later the schedule of events for this year's show or at least a preliminary schedule of events is now on the Pinball Expo website so if you want to see who is currently scheduled to be talking during the seminars what the opening hours are, what the factory when the factory tour is and it's just the one scheduled so far this year head over to pinballexpo.com and have a look on the schedule of events from the drop down at the top and it'll bring up the full current, this thing, there are a few gaps in there which is to be arranged but it's looking like an interesting show I have to say there's plenty going on and some very interesting talks and of course all the regulars are going to be there there's a big swathe of stern pinball talks talking about their most recent games looks like Dwight and his team are back for the Let's Make a Deal Saturday night quiz always fun and of course the big autograph session as well on Saturday lunchtime will be in the same place as it usually is so why aren't you there? that's the question it's going to be a great show and we will both be there yes we will then moving on to are moving back to our list of manufacturers and the news to report from them. Chicago Gaming,
    110:20
    Medieval Madness, the Merlin's edition, are in production and the company expects them to be delivering them from September, which is this month, until February of 2026.
    110:39
    And this will all be domestic games. International production games will not happen until later in 2026.
    110:51
    The company received several questions about whether they will be running toppers separately for people to add to a game that doesn't have a topper yet.
    111:06
    Definitely not this year, but maybe in the future. The Merlin editions come with the topper. Yes, but if I have an original medieval man, for example, and you want to put the topper on, no guarantees, but you might be able to buy one at some point in 2026 or later on. So it's definitely something that they are considering. The Cactus Canyon remake upgrade, which includes the saloon doors and some other extra features, is also in production at the moment. that means that production of Pulp Fiction has currently stopped but there are games in stock and ready to ship if you're interested in one and the same goes for Cat's Canyon the SE and SE Plus models so that's about it for Chicago Gaming for now Okay, well it's nice to get some news from Chicago and positive news at that, so let's look forward to seeing those games arriving at buyers' houses Right and yeah, okay, so going from Chicago Gaming to something a smaller company in every sense because you talk about Wonderland Amusements you may remember doing Alice Goes to Wonderland as their first title. Now, you may remember that they did a Kickstarter and that was a massive hit, fully subscribed in, I don't know, two minutes or something, then hugely vastly oversubscribed. But then that closed. And obviously there were some great deals for early backers. Well, interestingly enough, they are taking on new backers now at a price point of $899, which is a $50 discount off the eventual final price of the game. You can still get in on Alice Goes to Wonderland from Wonderland Amusement. Remember, that's the 80% scale game. You can scale down a little bit more and it's more simple, but it's not that simple a game. And that's available until the 15th of September. so basically two weeks time if you missed out the first time you can still get in on it, now normally they do monthly video updates on their Kickstarter page and on their social media as well there wasn't one actually in August which is a little bit disappointing because they had previously said that there was some new code they wanted to show off in July and they didn't do that until they show it next month well that wasn't shown in August either and previously they've shown some of the production parts that they will be using in the games as well, just individually, and we're going to show them on a game. But we haven't seen that yet, so looking forward to their next video update, which hopefully won't be too far away, because they've got a lot to show and they are also saying of course they're going to be back at Pinwall Expo, where they launched all this pretty much last year, just by showing the cabinets. That's all they had to show at that time, and the title. and this time they're going to be there and they said they'll be there with complete games for people to play. So let's see how that goes again. Not far away. Right. Okay. So, and that rounds it up for Wonderland Amusements. Then we have Hexapimble in France who are happy to report that Madpimble and Pimble Store in the US are new Hexapimble distributors and they will be bringing multiple space hunt machines to Pimble Expo in October.
    115:16
    Yeah, excellent, because last year I think, well there was a space hunt there, but I think that was Rob Burke's personal machine. Yes, in the Pinsout booth. Yes, that's right. And now they're going to have multiple machines and they have two distributors. Yes, good news from them. And as we mentioned before, they are working on their second title as well. Yes.
    115:41
    So we look forward to that, and we hope to get a chance to sit down with Hexer Pinball at Pinball Expo and talk about their current game and future games and the expansion of the company. Yeah, and else we might do that during the Dutch Pinball Expo, which is in November, where they also will be making a present. so yeah they I assume they'll be doing a seminar they're doing a seminar in an expo as well Thursday evening currently scheduled Thursday evening 6.30 I think right ok so then the last company that we have some news to report from and then there's a long list of companies with no news so and I'm referring to Hoping in Taiwan they're making a small run of the Blues Brothers. They showed photos of 10 cabinets and 10 super lane dividers. So, they're probably making 10 games.
    116:54
    That would be my guess. Yeah. That's what they want you to think. Yeah. Yeah, I get the feeling that they're it's not a mass produced game yet which is a pity because I had a lot of fun playing it so was there one at the UK Pinfest show last week? there was indeed a Blues Brothers game bought by Retro RK Specialists yeah along with a long line of other manufacturers and recent titles as well including the Funhouse remake we were talking about earlier. Right. And Dune.
    117:38
    I'm going to put them on the spot and try and remember what other ones. Oh, you had ABBA there as well. Oh, yeah. Well, it must have been a party then. It was. It was the place to be and to check out all the new games. Right. Anyway, as we're talking about that, if you want to see exactly what they had there, then head over to the Pinball News site and check out our report from that show. and you can see pictures of all the games for yourself. Yeah, pinballnews.com, that is. So, go on. Yeah, and then there's this list of no-news companies. We'll quickly run through them. Rams Pinball from the US, Vector Pinball in Australia, Bitronic from Spain, Cardona Pinball from the US, STR Pinball from Spain, and the Quetzal pinball from Spain. Although I do know that Quetzal is working on a new game design.
    118:39
    Yeah. Well, I think it's probably done it by now. Yeah. Remains to be seen who will be making it. So, but if there's any news on that, we'll let you know as soon as we're allowed to share it with you. yep okay and then we have the other news section yeah well actually most of this we've already covered yes because one of the things about the UK Pinfest show which was held on the 22nd to 24th of August which was a great success I won't go into too much more detail about it other than to say that the 2026 dates are in the report and in the Pinball News diary. So if you want to check out that and start making plans for it, then, as you said, head over to pinballnews.com and read our UK Pinfest report with nearly 200 pictures and videos and all the usual. I was thinking of having it over there now, but 200 pictures. Well, yeah, I know.
    119:49
    You've only got to read it. I have to write it. As we mentioned about Pinball Expo schedule is online now we've already spoken about what Roger Sharpe's been doing with his Defiant Pinball range which brought out a whole new line of t-shirt designs and Roger's told us there's more to come. Right. So we look forward to seeing what he's doing there. And you found a nice bit of pinball coverage in a YouTube video. Yeah, it's called Always Another Game. It's a sort of I actually completely forgot about what it was. I watched it like three weeks ago and I have no idea what it was about, but if you just look on go on YouTube and look for Always Another Game, I think it's like a four-minute reportage or whatever you want to call it a report. That's the proper word.
    120:55
    But I completely forgot the angle that it's about. But, oh well, it was very nicely done, so do check it out. Always another game on YouTube. On YouTube. And sorry for being a little fake, it's very late over here, and I really need to get to bed.
    121:18
    Right. Well, I won't hold you up too much longer. I think that's kind of wrapped it up for all the news from the pinball world in August. Unless you can think of anything else that we need to cover and we haven't. We haven't missed anything else out from our list of things we need to do. No? Good. Okay. Well, in that case, we'll be back at the start of October. Can you imagine that? October. With our next pincast, looking back at all the events in the pinball world and the pinball industry throughout this current month of September. Which will... So? We will see a new Star Wars game, of course.
    121:55
    We will. Well, we won't. Yeah. Well, okay, so we're waiting for the reveal of Star Wars Fall of the Empire. And remember, it's almost every month there is a new Star Wars game, but... every month there is a new Pinball Industry News pin card yes indeed so that's and there's also every month there's another American Pinball sale exactly yes so anyway a couple of things you can count on in life that's right and we like to be one of those things so until then from me Martin Ayer of Pinball News and me Jonathan Euston of Pinball Magazine we hope you have very stupendous September, and we look forward to joining you again next month for another new edition of the Pinball Industry News Fincast. Another?
    122:55
    Oh, well, bye for now. Bye.