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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast December 2025 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 21m·analyzed·Jan 5, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

December recap covers Stern accessories, game teases, Dune pause, and industry updates.

Summary

Jonathan Euston and Martin Eyre recap December 2025 and early January 2026 pinball industry developments, covering Stern's new accessory releases across four titles, speculation about an unannounced CES game reveal (Pokemon or Transformers rumored), Godzilla on Spike 3 speculation, Barrels of Fun's Dune production pause after 500+ units sold with new mirrored backglass and sandworm topper, Spooky's Evil Dead European shipment and new Dead Bar lighting accessory, and Multimorphic's service education video series.

Key Claims

  • Stern has released new accessories for Uncanny X-Men, Star Wars Fall of the Empire, Walking Dead Remastered, and Jaws 50th Anniversary

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin detail specific topper prices ($1,500 for animated, $1,000-$1,100 for non-animated, $2,000 for displays) and availability across four titles

  • X-Men topper features a rotating three-sided billboard with RGB lighting for $1,500

    high confidence · Direct description of animated X-Men topper design and pricing

  • Stern distributors' briefing was postponed, potentially delaying new game announcement past CES

    high confidence · Hosts discuss postponed briefing and speculation that game reveal may be delayed to end of month

  • Godzilla is 'about to become Stern's best selling title ever'

    medium confidence · Martin states this was learned 'last year' but provides no specific sourcing; speculation about potential Spike 3 version

  • Barrels of Fun paused Dune production after 500+ units sold, accepting orders until December 31st with February build/March shipment

    high confidence · Jonathan details production pause, order cutoff, and timeline

  • Dune sold over 500 units as a 'sleeper title'

    high confidence · Martin describes game as 'turned out to be a bit of a sleeper title' with growing popularity

  • Dune animated topper features wriggling sandworm and orbiting moons with parallax effect, priced at $1,675

    high confidence · Jonathan provides detailed mechanical description and pricing; $875 deposit required; order window closes January 9

  • All overseas Evil Dead games have shipped to European distributor RS Pinball; remaining run expected complete by end of January

    high confidence · Jonathan confirms container shipment and production timeline

  • Spooky released Dead Bar RGB lighting strip for $94 with 150 units ready to ship; sold out immediately but available to order

Notable Quotes

  • “I still remember the days when you could buy entirely used games for $1,500. Ah, well, yes. You could buy brand new ones for that price. Going back even further. A year ago, yes.”

    Jonathan and Martin @ Early in accessories discussion — Reflects community concern about accessory pricing inflation; sets tone for criticism of current market economics

  • “Accessories are a major part of the sales for the company now... Forget the game, we're just going to do accessories.”

    Martin @ Accessories roundup — Commentary on Stern's shift toward accessory revenue as core business model

  • “I think $1,500 seems to be the price for anything that's got any animatronics in it. If it's got a display in it, it probably goes up to $2,000. If it hasn't got either of those, it's probably $1,000.”

    Jonathan @ Early accessories analysis — Identifies clear accessory pricing tier structure

  • “Well, yeah, you just get the head. I think it might be a little ambitious to put the entire thing on top of your game.”

    Martin @ Star Wars C-3PO topper discussion — Humorous commentary on topper design scope limitations

  • “So, yeah, we need something new, Stern. Come on.”

    Martin @ CES game announcement speculation — Expresses frustration at lack of new Stern game teasers for January events

  • “It turned out to be a bit of a sleeper title, if you don't mind me saying it... more and more people are actually warming up to the game.”

    Martin @ Dune discussion — Identifies Dune's market trajectory as successful despite initial reception concerns

  • “Very nice of you to hold these sweepstakes in US for US residents only but how about you start your term here in Amsterdam with such a sweepstake”

    Jonathan @ Stern European office discussion — Proposes direct appeal to John B. Angelia for European giveaway to launch Amsterdam office

  • “I did not see that coming. No, no.”

Entities

Jonathan EustonpersonMartin EyrepersonStern PinballcompanyBarrels of FuncompanySpooky PinballcompanyMultimorphiccompanyJack DangerpersonGeorge GomezpersonSteve Ritchie

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern established new European office in Amsterdam under John B. Angelia; hosts propose Europe-only giveaway to mark regional launch

    high · 'Establishment of their new European office in Amsterdam' with proposal to host 'Europe-only sweepstake'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern continuing Beat That Score community challenge with achievement badges throughout December/January and Ask Jack Danger Q&A video sessions as casual engagement strategy

    high · Hosts describe 'Beat That Score Challenge' and 'Ask Jack Anything' sessions with selective vetting of questions

  • $

    market_signal: Dune mirrored backglass alternative ($299) introduced by original artist Jonathan Bergeron as aftermarket accessory with on-demand production and no order cutoff; indicates successful accessory ecosystem around single game

    high · 'Created by Jonathan Bergeron... orders opened on 17th of December... no specific cut-off date... produced on demand'

  • $

    market_signal: Accessory pricing escalation continues with toppers reaching $1,675 (Dune sandworm); hosts express nostalgia for sub-$1,500 game purchases, indicating market perception of unsustainable pricing trajectory

    high · 'I still remember the days when you could buy entirely used games for $1,500... You could buy brand new ones for that price. Going back even further. A year ago, yes.'

  • ?

    announcement: Barrels of Fun paused Dune production after 500+ units; orders closed December 31; production may resume if demand materializes

    high · 'Production pause... sold over 500 units... will not be taking any new orders for June... unless there is a significant demand'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.424

0:00
Loads of new accessories Happy 15th birthday to JJP Romantitles for 2026 Hi, my name is Jonathan Euston, I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine I'd like to wish you a very happy new year And I'm joined by... Ah, yes. I'm Martin Eyre. I'm the editor of Pinball News. And Jonathan and I are here right at the start of, well, almost right at the start of 2026, to look back at all the exciting events that took place through the last month of 2025. That's the month of December.
0:41
And the first couple of days of 2026 in January. Because we got a few updates and we were a little bit later than usual bringing this to you. But, you know, it's... Well, we have life too, you know, so... Yeah, it's been the holiday season, so New Year celebrations and all that kind of stuff, and we weren't just sobered up enough to actually come and do this. So, as Jonathan said, a very happy New Year to you. Hope 2026 is good for you so far, and it's going to be a great year. We've got a lot coming up, and we've got a lot to cover in this December 2025 pin cast. Right, so let's start with... Well, the biggest pinball company currently on the planet, Stern Pinball. Yep. We said in our first headline, lots of new accessories coming out for games, not just from Stern, but Stern are leading the charge there with new accessories for four of their titles, actually. The Uncanny X-Men. That's had a new billboard topper. I think that was leaked a little while ago, and then the picture was quickly removed.
1:54
It didn't get the greatest response, I think, when it was first leaked. People were saying, is that it? You know, just a sort of rotating billboard type thing. But, yeah, apparently that is what it is with suitable lighting effects, and that's available now for basically $1,500.
2:15
Then along with that... Yeah, sorry, I'm a little late. What? Yeah. Yeah, it's the... I think it's going to have to be very minimal.

high confidence · Martin provides product details and immediate sellout status

  • Total Nuclear Annihilation received version 1.6.0 update with rule changes and now has dedicated TNApinball.com website

    high confidence · Martin notes December 12 release and website transition from Dinesi Designs branding

    • Jonathan @ Total Nuclear Annihilation update reveal — Expresses surprise at unexpected TNA code update announcement

  • “Either it's going to be Pokemon, designed by Jack Danger, and finished by George Gomez, or it's going to be Transformers, based on the cartoons of Transformers.”

    Martin @ CES game speculation — Presents two primary rumored titles for upcoming Stern announcement

  • “It's not limited or anything... It's also very likely to be integrated in upcoming titles.”

    Martin @ Dead Bar discussion — Indicates Dead Bar may become standard feature across future Spooky releases

    • person
    John B. Angeliaperson
    Nick Baldridgeperson
    Johnny Crap / Jonathan Bergeronperson
    Scott Dinesiperson
    RS Pinballcompany
    Dunegame
    Evil Deadgame
    Uncanny X-Mengame
    Star Wars Fall of the Empiregame
    Walking Dead Remasteredgame
    Jaws 50th Anniversarygame
    King Kong Myth of Terror Islandgame
    Godzillagame
    CES (Consumer Electronics Show)event
    EAG Expoevent
    Spike 3product
  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern distributors' briefing postponed; no social media teasers released for CES; game announcement may be delayed past CES/EAG to end of month

    high · Hosts note postponed briefing, lack of traditional teaser posts, and speculation that announcement could slip to end of January

  • ?

    product_strategy: Spooky Pinball released Dead Bar RGB lighting strip ($94) to address dark upper left playfield area in Evil Dead; immediate sellout indicates market demand for aftermarket lighting solutions

    high · 'Upper left area of the playfield turned out to be quite dark... 150 ready to ship, sold out immediately'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic launched Pinball Service 101 educational video series covering P3 platform maintenance; initial video compares flipper assemblies to WPC standards; series planned for multiple topics

    high · First video released on YouTube featuring Nick Baldridge explaining P3 flipper mechanics and tools; hosts note additional content coming to support section

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Two unannounced Stern games rumored for CES reveal: Pokemon (designed by Jack Danger, finished by George Gomez) or Transformers (animated series version)

    medium · 'Several rumors going around, either it's going to be Pokemon, designed by Jack Danger, and finished by George Gomez, or it's going to be Transformers, based on the cartoons of Transformers'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Dune game market perception improved from lukewarm launch to successful 'sleeper title' with 500+ units sold; demonstrates delayed community warmth toward game

    high · 'Turned out to be a bit of a sleeper title... more and more people are actually warming up to the game'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern accessory business model shift evident: separate tier pricing ($1,000-$2,000 per topper), pre-order production windows, and integration into multiple game platforms suggests accessories becoming core revenue stream

    high · 'Accessories are a major part of the sales for the company now... they might as well make them for themselves and sell them at a premium price'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Spike 3 backward compatibility with Spike 2 games enabling new features (HDMI audio output on Star Wars 2017); speculation about future Godzilla Spike 3 variant

    high · Star Wars 2017 code update added HDMI audio output support via Spike 3 controller; hosts discuss potential Godzilla Spike 3 remaster

    • 2:28
    I think... I wouldn't call $1,500 very minimal. No, I was going to finish that sentence and say it has to be a very minimal topper to go below the $1,000 mark. And we'll see one later which actually does achieve that, which doesn't have any animation. But this has a rotating billboard that has, I think, three sides to it, so it can show you three different things, and has, obviously, RGB lighting all over the place that ties into the modes.
    2:56
    So, yeah, $1,500 for that. I still remember the days when you could buy entirely used games for $1,500.
    3:06
    Ah, well, yes. You could buy brand new ones for that price. Going back even further. A year ago, yes.
    3:16
    That's not where we are now. So, yeah, $1,500, I think. I think $1,500 seems to be the price for anything that's got any animatronics in it. If it's got a display in it, it probably goes up to $2,000. If it hasn't got either of those, it's probably $1,000. So, we'll see whether that holds true when we look at some of the other toppers that have come up for other games. But anyway, included with the topper, you can also get an illuminated mutant scanner shooter knob, although you can't at the moment because it's not actually available. just yet, but it's coming soon. $200 for that.
    3:51
    Yeah, SideArmor. You're going to sound like a grumpy old man at this rate. I remember back in the day.
    4:02
    Back in my day, we didn't have pinball stoppers. Yeah, it came with the game. SideArmor is $270. Up $100 and speaker expression lighting system 200. All that's available or if it's not available now, it will be shortly for the uncanny X-Men. Right, okay. Star Wars Fall of the Empire gets its own topper as well, which has an animated C-3PO head to it.
    4:35
    I mean, for that kind of money, you expect the entire 3CPO. Yeah. Well, yeah, you just get the head. I think it might be a little ambitious to put the entire thing on top of your game, but it does come with custom speech and a top-of-exclusive mode. And as I was saying, because it's animatronic but has no display, it's $1,500.
    5:00
    But interestingly, it is also compatible with the previous Star Wars game, the Steve Ritchie game. Right. From 20, when was it, 15, 17, something like that? Yeah, whatever. Yeah, 2017, I think.
    5:14
    Yeah, so it can be fitted to that game as well, if you wanted to spend another $1,500 on that game. Also comes with special, say, also available are Shooter Knob,
    5:30
    which is the Stormtrooper, which is $170. Side Armour, same price as with Uncanny X-Men, $270. Art Blades, same price, $100. cabinet expression lighting system is available for $600 speaker expression lighting system hasn't been announced as a price yet but we probably guess it's going to be the same as it is for uncanny x-men which is $200 we'll see when that comes out without wishing to make this into too much of a list walking dead remastered also has a whole bunch of accessories it has a governor's fish tank topper, that's the one with the floating heads in it. Not animated.
    6:14
    Yeah, no animation on that, so that comes in at $1,000. Not even light animation? Oh yeah, it's lighting animation, but no motors driving anything in it. So that's $1,000. I was saying non-animated, $1,000. Animated, $1,500. And displays, $2,000.
    6:34
    Side armour, expression lighting system, cabinet lighting system, art blades, all the same price as we've been talking about earlier. and expression lighting system for the speakers also coming in, but not available yet. You forgot the zombie head, should I not?
    6:51
    Did I? Oh, well, that'll be me then, zombie head. Yes, same, actually not the same price as the Stormtrooper one, it's actually more expensive, $200 for that one. Right. Well, it's a zombie head, so... It is, it is, yes. They're obviously different to Stormtrooper, you've actually got to model the face.
    7:10
    And the final one was Jaws, 50th anniversary. Remember that one that came out? It had all the red trim on it as well. There's a topper, a 50th anniversary topper just for that one, which has the same red trim as the cabinet does, but it has a unique 50th anniversary plaque plonked in the middle of it as well. Yeah. Yes. Doesn't the price look dead great? No, this is priced at $1,100. so $100 more than the non-50th anniversary edition. Again, it doesn't have any animation to it, so it's basically a $1,000 topper with an extra $100 for the plaque.
    7:52
    It was only available to pre-order until the end of December, so if you haven't ordered it by now, then you won't be able to.
    8:03
    And shipping is planned for March, so they've got a couple of months to build the thing yeah it's not to say that distributors won't have them in stock but they are using a new pre-order model for this so you have to pre-order them and then they only make as many as they pre-ordered so I guess it's possible that distributors pre-ordered some as well just for regular sales so we'll have to see but yeah if you didn't order it for yourself, then it's too late for that. So, there we are. Those are the new accessories which have been announced by Stern for those four titles. Yeah, usually we talk about new games and stuff like that, and accessories we don't give a crap about. Well, you say that, but I'm starting to get the message now that accessories are a major part of the sales for the company now. Well, the new business model. Yeah. Forget the game, we're just going to do accessories. Yeah, certainly don't want to leave that money on the table for other companies to make accessories for the games. They might as well make them for themselves and sell them at a premium price.
    9:20
    Oh, yeah. Yeah, talk of next games, eh? Exactly. That was the bridge I was trying to make. Go on then, cross that bridge. Well, it's January, And January usually means that Stern is by now already teasing a new game. And then we get to see it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I believe that is. Followed by the EAG Expo Show in London, which is a week later.
    9:56
    That's right. yeah, so, and apparently, well, first of all, the next title, several rumors going around, either it's going to be Pokemon, designed by Jack Danger, and finished by George Gomez, or it's going to be Transformers, based on the cartoons of Transformers. John Bolt, you say? Probably, yeah, but, well, apparently Stern had scheduled for today a distributor briefing which got I suppose the right word is postponed so distributors have, as far as we know right now, not had their usual briefing about the upcoming game that's going to be revealed in the next couple of days and it could indicate that we may not get to see either Pokemon or Transformers or whatever it turns out to be until the end of the month which would be a pity of course having two big shows for either consumers or for as in Europe the trade yeah To show off that game Yeah Well I have seen A notice saying that there was Going to be a press briefing On the CERN stand At CES CERN normally have a Separate room don't they in a hotel nearby Where they demo some of their Games Now they said that That was scheduled to take place Today almost at the time that we're recording this, or in a few hours' time anyway, and now we could say that we delayed this Pincast recording specifically to get in the latest news about it, but that would be a lie. So we don't know whether we're... So we don't know if we're just missing the announcement or whether it's, as you said, it's not going to be done.
    12:15
    Well, to tie in with what I mentioned earlier, usually Sphere has started teasing the new title by now and so far they haven't. No, not even just the title, which is what they normally do. Just do it all the same coming soon or some variation of that phrase tied into the theme. But no, we haven't seen anything and traditionally they would have done that on the Thursday or the Friday before, which would have been the second on the Friday. Probably wouldn't do it on New Year's Day. but on the second one.
    12:50
    Timing of New Year's Day and everything like that this year is a bit... Yeah. Didn't work out well, but, yeah, you could have done something on the second, and then they could have done their distributed briefing either today or on the Monday, and then launched a game on the Tuesday. But who knows what will happen this week. Yeah, exactly. So keep your eyes on Stern's social media feeds to see if the new game is indeed announced or even just teased.
    13:26
    Because if it doesn't turn up at CES or EAG, then EAG is going to be a fairly muted affair, I think, without having any new Stern releases, because we're not getting Star Wars, Fall of the Empire in Europe either. So the most recent game would be, what, King Kong? For us, yes. Yeah. Well, which would hardly be new.
    13:50
    So, yeah, we need something new, Stern. Come on. Yeah. Oh, well. Anyway, as we have discussed in previous PINCAS, Stern last year finally switched to their new operating system called Spike 3. And there's some interesting speculation going on. we also learned last year that Godzilla is about to become Stern's best selling title ever and it's still in production now that Spike 3 is already introduced and so on some people are wondering could we see Godzilla running on Spike 3 meaning that you get the new cabinet with the larger display and the new speakers and so on. Everything else should be easy to fit in that cabinet, but it could be an interesting situation. And what would that mean for the market? Because then you have a lot of Godzilla games on Spike 2, and the new ones look even better. Yeah, well obviously they're back-to-back compatible Spike 3 back to Spike 2 games In theory Should work well On the other hand they may just be using up Old stock of Spike 2 systems And cabinets And will preserve The Spike 3 upgrade option For a Godzilla remastered At some point Further down the line Right Although So, having said that, all the remasters so far have been of dot matrix games, which Godzilla isn't. Well, at some point they're going to run out of the Spike 2 board sets and what have you.
    15:52
    If they're still running Godzilla, they're basically forced to go with Spike 3. And then the question is, are they going with the smaller displays or the old speaker panel or the new one? Well I did say that You can plug a Spike 3 into a Spike 2 game So you wouldn't necessarily need to Upgrade anything else Just to use a Spike 3 board In it You'd still have the smaller display The lower resolution And it would still work perfectly well with Spike 3 But anyway It's all speculation so we don't know about that But it would be nice to see Godzilla Well we actually don't know What the animation Or the graphics resolution is Stored at within the game. I may not be able to take advantage of the full HD display because it might only be 720p. Anyway.
    16:43
    Anyway, I figured I'd mention that. Good, yeah. Well, along with all that, Stern have been continuing with their Beat That Score Challenge all the way through December and Christmas and New Year for those who care about collecting achievement badges or even appearing on some of them yourself with your own score. we don't partake of that, so it's no interest to us. But there are plenty of people who do seem to enjoy collecting those achievement badges and posting their scores and sending them to Stern and getting their picture on their social media feed. So, anyway, if that was you, good luck. It's not us.
    17:30
    And the other thing... We'll keep starting without them anyway, so... Yes. The other thing I've been doing is I've been plugging in their Ask Jack Anything question and answer sessions. That's Jack Danger, of course, where questions are selected. That would be really interesting if it would be Jack Ranieri.
    17:48
    I thought I should clarify exactly which Jack we're talking about here, just in case that came up. Well, just as a little tease, we have our own Ask Jack Anything session later on. Yeah, and then we're talking about Jack Wanyeri.
    18:06
    So stay tuned for that. But now getting back to the Ask Jack Danger anything sessions. Yeah, quite interesting, I think, to watch those. Obviously, the questions are vetted and the answers are limited to or constrained by what Stern wants to reveal of their upcoming plans or indeed their recent developments. But there's still some interesting details there, so I'd recommend checking those videos out as and when they are released. It's a nice, slightly more casual approach to social media that fits in well with Jack's style. So that's something to watch out for. Okay.
    18:50
    And then there is a... Well... So there was a sweepstake, I think it's called, for a free Dungeons & Dragons game and the winner of this US only draw was announced as Matthew from Washington.
    19:13
    And we do not know whether that's DC or States. And like I said, it was a US only draw, so in Europe,
    19:23
    tough luck for us. Well, I was thinking, wouldn't it be a really good idea for Stern to celebrate to mark the establishment of their new European office in Amsterdam if they did a Europe-only, for the sake, where they can give away a new 50 hertz pinball machine to European stone pinball fans. Okay, so here's a thought, because I really like this idea. Now, with the EAG Expo coming up, I'm pretty sure that the head of Stern's European office John B. Angelia will be present at the EAG show and walking around and knowing that there is quite a few well listeners of our show attending EAG Expo as well I would suggest to if you see John walking around walk up to him give him a nice compliment and then suggest like very nice of you to hold these sweepstakes in US for US residents only but how about you start your term here in Amsterdam with such a sweepstake and if enough people would ask and walk up to John who knows what might happen yeah good idea we should all bombard him with request for a Europe-only free machine giveaway,
    20:58
    which would be a great way to launch the New Stern European office. And of course, if they want to do that for Australia, we brought that as well.
    21:07
    Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I understand that there are potential issues with doing cross-country sweepstakes. Different countries have different laws about tax and whether you're allowed to give away a machine and all that, but Ah, well, if it's on the internet, it's fine. Yeah, well, I'm sure, you know, with a trans-European office set up, they will be able to get across all those different rules and regulations for each country and make sure it works. Now, basically, if you win, then if there's any tax due, then it's down to you to pay it. But the machines sitting here in our Amsterdam office, come and get it.
    21:53
    Something like that. Yeah. We don't have to cross all the T's and dot all the I's for them. Oh. Well, okay. We won't then. Okay. Well, in which case we'll just wrap up our stern roundup with some of your most exciting new code.
    22:15
    Oh, God. Which I know you love. Yeah. Well, have you got your pillow ready? Well, I took a power nap before recording this, so make it quick. Okay, quick. King Kong, Myth of Terror Island. Two updates.
    22:31
    Version 0.9 and 0.91. The first one was just a few adjustments for the animatronic topper. The second one was a new Spider Queen three-ball, multi-ball, mini-wizard mode.
    22:46
    Then we had Star Wars, Fall of the Empire. current title version 0.88 but not in Europe of course that had support for the new C-3PO Topper which we talked about earlier and added the Topper exclusive Escape Bespin mode which added some new school shot rewards, voice calls as well and added the DJ Mixer so you can play the game's music tracks out in track mode. Walking Dead remastered, version 0.8, more voice calls and sound effects, more display effects, more light shows, all the usual, and a bit of a rebound to some of the sounds. Here's what we were talking about earlier, Star Wars 2017, Steve Ritchie version. That had a new code update to support the Fall of the Empire topper.
    23:40
    So that's a couple of modern game features which weren't in that version of the game, and interestingly includes a feature available where if you plug a Spike 3 controller in, as we were talking about earlier, it enables audio to come out on the HDMI output, which wasn't possible before because it wasn't HDMI.
    24:02
    So remember Spike 3 boards are supposedly back-to-the-compatible with Spike 2 games, so if you do that, then this is a new bonus feature in that you can get the audio out over the HDMI from that board. And finally, Uncanny X-Men version 0.96. just improved control for that new topper we were talking about plus a few bug fixes and rule changes and that's it for the code from Stern Bimble for this month wake up John, it's your turn ah, is it, is it, is it right, yeah I was just scrolling through the list of companies that we're going to but whether we should move things around but no, let's stick with barrels of fun in Houston, Texas they sent out a couple of messages basically announcing that they will be pausing the production of Dune it sold over 500 units so far and you could order a game either as a distributor or a direct customer until the 31st of December and those games are expected to be built around February, ship in March something like that and basically they will not be taking any new orders for June that is unless there is a significant demand in which they might reopen orders so basically this means well, turned out to be a bit of a sleeper title, if you don't mind me saying it or calling it that.
    25:50
    So, not the biggest seller at the start of the when the game was reviewed, but it turns out more and more people are actually warming up to the game. And well, your last chance for now to order the game has just been passed. But still, if demand is there and the license is still active, they might go back to produce some more. And of course, distributors probably hold stock of the game as well. So there probably are games out there if you wanted to buy one without having to pre-order it. Right, yes. And then you don't have to wait for it either. No, and talking of Dune, as you were, there is now a new alternative mirrored back glass for the game.
    26:47
    Yes, it's a great sense word. Yeah, created by Jonathan Bergeron, a.k.a. Johnny Crap, who did the original Dune art, as well as the Labyrinth art package. It's priced at $299, which seems pretty reasonable to me for a nice mirrored glass. Orders opened on the 17th of December There's no specific cut-off date for these As they will be produced on demand So if you want to get either an alternative or replacement Or have a spare Or have some piece of wall art $299 from Bowser Fund or their distributors Is how you can get it And as I say, it doesn't look like there's a cut-off date so you can take your time deciding if you want to get one or not. But nice to see. I mean, I prefer the original, personally, but I guess there was demand for an alternative package, a more generic, less actor-centric design. And as you said, it's based around the sandworm itself, which is obviously a big part of the game. And as we will see, it's actually the sandworm is, not only a big playfield feature and now potentially a big back glass feature in the new animated dune topper which has just been announced it has an animatronic wriggling sandworm on it which is one of the animated things. There are also two moons which are mounted on a disc on arms at the back which orbit the planet and at different speeds so you get that sort of parallax effect as well it's a very nice looking piece of mechanical engineering up there this is priced at $1675 so back in $1,500 price range again for animated toppers if you want to order one you have to put down an $875 deposit and the order window for these, because there is a limited time you can order it closes on the 9th of January so if you want to get one of these toppers you have to do it quickly because they'll be built to order delivery is scheduled for these in August so quite some time yeah, I guess they're going to take a while to build and I suppose they're going to ship them all at once rather than do it in dribs and drabs according to when you ordered the game, ordered the Top Rushes though.
    29:36
    No actual video of the Top Roots is actually available or wasn't when I did the checking earlier. There are computer simulations that show you how the mechanical worm device operates.
    29:52
    Not quite sure. it looks as visually impressive as it should be, given everything that's gone into it, but maybe you have to see it in person and view it from the position of standing in front of the game. But basically it's a sandworm behind a dune, or sand dunes, I should say, and as it wriggles, bits of it appear above the dunes. In the meantime, you've got the, as I say, the two moons orbiting the planet in the background. So, yeah, looks nice. I'd like to see some real video, the real thing especially if Amazon's going to order one and you've only got until the 9th of January to do it well, if they have until August to ship them, then they also have time to maybe improve it a little bit oh well, yeah, the window's closed on the 9th of January for ordering it yeah, but it doesn't mean they can technically upgrade it oh no definitely anyway, if you want to have a look at any of that stuff go to the Barrels of Fun website shop, which is on their website, which is collectfun, K-O-L-L-E-C-T-F-U-N, dot com.
    31:02
    I don't know why it's not barrelsoffunpinball.com, but it's not. It's collectfun. And then you can see pictures of the design of it and some computer simulations of how it works.
    31:15
    Right. Okay. And then runs it up for Barrels of Fun in Houston, Texas. Moving up north, a little bit further north than Chicago, actually, we find Spooky Pinball in Benton, Wisconsin. Wisconsin, yes. Yes.
    31:37
    So, and, well, good news if you ordered an Evil Dead game and your base in Europe because all overseas Evil Dead games have shipped, at least the ones to Europe, they're on their way to RS Pinball in Austria, who is their main distributor for Europe, I would say. Yeah, but certainly the last batch went out to RS Pinball. I think the ones that are going to Australia and other overseas territories are also shipped as well. But, yeah, certainly the pictures I saw were of a container of games going to Stefan at RS Pinball. Yeah, right. Okay.
    32:27
    So, and, well, the rest of the remaining run is expected to be completed by the end of January, which is, well, this month, basically. And I assume those are all domestic games. Yeah, that's right. Then they'll be able to gear up and get started on Beetlejuice, I suppose. Yes. And then Spooky Pimble introduced a new, I would call it, well, not so much an accessory, but more like an add-on to your game. Although it could be seen as an accessory as well. They call it the Dead Bar Which basically is an RGV lighting strip Which is mounted at the top Of the backboard Of your playfield And that's priced At 94 US dollars Very reasonable Yeah, very reasonable Indeed and basically that is interactive with the light show of the game but the main purpose is because the upper left area of the playfield turned out to be quite dark and this brings in a little bit of extra light so it's not that dark anymore although the theme itself is pretty dark that's true, yeah it looks nice and nicely integrated into the game as well And for 94 bucks, it seems like a no-brainer, really, if you've got that game. Well, they had 150 ready to ship, and they sold out immediately. But you can order it, and they will be available. Yeah. It's not limited or anything. And it's also very likely to be integrated in upcoming titles.
    34:30
    Ah, okay. All right. So they think it could be an add-on feature in future games, then. Yes. So they add extra playfield lighting. Okay.
    34:43
    Well, talking of that, then, we could get on to the... Hold on. If Fuku would be really smart, they would basically start selling these to be added on to other manufacturers' games.
    34:56
    Oh. Well, they have to be supported in the software, I suppose. Well I'm sure they can find Their way around that Yes I'm sure they could Yeah But I'm sure they have enough Enough To deal with Building their own games Yeah okay Or We just wait and see How long it takes Until other People Manufacturers Start picking up on this as well I thought you were going to say if they really smart they start shipping their games without any GI lighting at all and then have it all available as an add-on later.
    35:27
    No, no. No, don't give people ideas. Anyway, yes, we're talking about the Dead Bar RGB lighting strip. Well, that ties us neatly into the new code section from Slinky Pinball, of which there are actually three different games this month, or the month of December, I should say. One very exciting one, I would say. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll come to that. But carry on with what we were just talking about. Evil Dead. Yes, that gets a, on the 19th of December, it got an update which includes settings for this dead bar. So you can then control how it operates. and also comes with a bunch of bug fixes for the game. Scooby-Doo also gets an update. That got out on the 1st of December, that was.
    36:19
    Added a player option to control the number of side quests required to start Snow Ghost, plus a few bug fixes and a couple of optimizations. And finally, and I'm guessing this is the one that you were referring to, Jonathan, as being particularly exciting, Total Nuclear Annihilation. I did not see that coming. No, no. Version 1.6.0, released on December 12th. Quite a few rule changes and settings, along with several bug fixes. Details are on the new TNApinball.com website, along with more details of the game and its history. So, no longer Scott... well, it's probably still a website run by Scott Dinesi, but no longer is Dinesi Designs. No, as a dedicated website for TNA Pinball. Well, that could be interesting What else is coming? Yeah, quite right, yes Yeah I still have to install it on my own game Which I haven't played in a while, I have to admit So, good reason to Actually update it and start playing it again Absolutely So that's the new code from Spooky Pinball And Scott D'Alessi And that finishes Our Spooky Pinball round-up For the month of December, 2025 so let's move back down south again and head to Multimorphic in Round Rock in Texas now they have released the first of a promised new series of Pinball Service 101 videos relating to the P3 pinball platform this is released on YouTube and I think it's going to be on their website as well but I couldn't find it when I tried to find it So in the first video, we get Nick Baldridge, who has technical support responsibilities for Multimorphic, as well as being a hugely talented game designer, mechanical genius, and podcaster, of course, as well. He goes through the flipper assemblies on the P3 pinball platform, comparing them to a WPC flipper mech, which we're all familiar with, but people tend to be a lot more familiar with that as it's used on not just Williams games, but other games as well. Comparing and contrasting, explaining the tools you need to service them, how the operation of them compares, things like the end of stroke switches and the coils, how easy it is or difficult it is to replace things like the flipper bushings and so on. as I said it's available the video says it's available at the end on the Multimorphic website in the support section I couldn't find them there but certainly on YouTube is where you can get them for the moment interestingly in the support section you do need to be registered there in order to log into it fortunately I do have a login for it thanks to Jerry and the team at Multimorphic but there's a lot of useful information there for game owners, but in the meantime, yeah, go to YouTube, check on Multimorphic, search for Pinball Service 101 videos. In the meantime, if you are going to the Multimorphic website, there are lots and lots of videos there explaining various aspects of the P3 and telling you how to do basic tasks on it, which are slightly different to the way you might do them on a more traditional pinball game.
    39:56
    Okay, talking of Nick, Nick is, as we mentioned before, probably about four or five months ago, we mentioned about he has a new game in development called Steelbound, which is for the P3 pinball platform, of course.
    40:13
    There was no scheduled release date for it, but there was an announcement that the game is coming. well apparently it's progressing well and almost ready for alpha testing, I'm sending out to alpha testers to get their feedback and on various different aspects of the game and that may of course influence how it turns out and of course the time scale as well, if everybody says it's brilliant and works perfectly then I guess we'll see it sooner rather than later, in the meantime if you want to get any more details of that go to steelboundpinball.com where there is a website that gives you details of the game, and where you will eventually be able to see when the game is available to download for the P3.
    41:01
    Right. And last but not least, for multimodal, that is, there's a video by portal artist Brad Albright showing some of the hidden or less visible elements of the portal art package. including artwork inside some of the mechanisms and certain hidden elements.
    41:25
    You can find that video on the Multimorphic Facebook page and probably YouTube as well. Yes, absolutely. I think that wraps it up for Multimorphic for the month of December.
    41:39
    Yes, and then, well, why not stick to where I'm from, the Netherlands, where we have Dutch pinball. who have some updated news regarding the production of Elphys Adventures in Wonderland. And there was an email sent to customers of the game to give them a little update.
    42:09
    Currently, they're a little over halfway through production, which is limited to 500 units. around the 17th they were at the 275 mark leaving 225 games left to be built and well they are expecting to round up the production of the game around May of this year, 2026 followed to start the production of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland as earlier announced To start in June Right And That's the Most interesting information From that email That came out, although I do have to say Apparently the Topper production For a Alice game Continues to be a Pain in, well, you can figure out What A pain in the razzle Yes, something like that for Dutch Pinball, but I'm sure they're working on it. The email also, and this is specifically for customers, also information for those who are considering to cancel their order for the Alice game, and what consequences that might have and how that works and everything. But if you're a customer, then you receive that email. And if you're not, then why would you care?
    43:48
    Well, I suppose it's interesting to see how they are honoring the commitment that if they didn't complete the shipment of all the Alice games by the end of the year, they would offer refunds on what was basically a non-refundable deposit. So they are doing that. They said that, basically to summarize, it said that refund requests will be processed through January and payments made in February for those who choose to bail on their pre-order.
    44:21
    So that was the upshot of that. But for those who stayed in the game, they are rewarded on this 24th of December with some new code, version 1.0 for Alice's Adventure. Yeah, I know, nice little Christmas present, eh?
    44:39
    And it added a little feature where you can play the wizard mode through the test menu. Now, this wizard mode normally takes a long time to get through, or get to, I should say. So it's not something that would normally be easy to start, or indeed something you can play very often. So because of that fact, and the way that the game works, It said this option may only be used twice per hour due to the long play duration on the MPF. I don't know what the MPF is. I suppose it's the... The magic playfield. Yeah. And the magnet core heating cooling cycle. Using it more than twice per hour creates a log entry on the hard drive and any resulting damage to magnets or playfield due to overheating is then at the owner's risk. So this option is just present to give everybody the possibility to experience this mode. In real gameplay, it's impossible to play this mode more than twice per hour, given how long it takes to actually get to it. So that overheating is not an issue in real life. So they've added this feature, but use it with care and don't abuse it, I think is the gist of that message. I assume the wizard mode is a timed mode In the sense that If you would be playing it once per hour But you're really good at it Then you might still overheat If it's not a timed mode Yeah, it could be Or it could be that it has different stages It uses different aspects of the playfield In different ways So the first bit might be much more Heavier on the magnet Than the second stage, for instance Which maybe moves the action elsewhere but we don't know but anyway, it's a new feature in version 1.0 of the code as is the Midnight Madness feature which was in before but was incomplete before it is now complete and there are also some rule changes to the way that some of the features work and some additional difficulty adjustments and a couple of bug fixes which weren't gone into in any details but they've now been squished and eaten. So hopefully that's the end of those. And that was the new code for Alice in Wonderland version 1.0, which came out on 24th December, as we said, just in time for Christmas. But there was also the promise of another software update in the first quarter of 2026, so sometime January, February, March, which is apparently already in the works. and schedules are, for instance, a mini playfield multiple lock mode and the ability to replay unfinished main modes. So, they sound like good additions to have in the game and so you shouldn't have to wait too much longer for that new update to come out in the first quarter. So, good luck if you've got that game and if you haven't, then I'm sure you'll be looking forward to it all the more. right ok so then some short news from Planetary Pinball Supply who have been sending off original playfield drawings from old Bally and Williams games and most of them were available in the $250 to $750 price range I did see some announcement, but I'm not sure whether these were sold through an auction house or whether they were on eBay or something like that. No, I think you had to buy them from Planetary Pinball directly, I believe, but they didn't seem to have a, well, contact us if you want it type message. So I don't quite know how they sold them and what the process was for picking who gets which one, or even knowing what's left. either, but there just seemed to be a lot of drawings going and some very interesting ones, even some that they didn't even know what they were themselves. I saw one which turned out to be a topper for a slot machine that Williams had made.
    49:03
    Others, some playfield drawings are very detailed with loads of mechanical devices on it and others are a lot more simpler and maybe earlier sketches. But, you know, all part of pinball's history And I'm sure they've all been scanned Before being sold off But if you got your hands on One or more of those, congratulations They've got nice pieces of memorabilia To have, especially if you own the game Right Now, moving on then Yes How about we go to our Well, we have a special interview We could ask Jack anything as I mentioned before. Of course, we are talking about Jack Guarnieri.
    49:53
    First, let's discuss the news from December, and then let's head over to Jack. Yes, there's a huge amount of news from the company. They've been busy promoting their recent titles, mainly Avatar and Harry Potter, of course. But amongst all that, they also ran another sweepstake for a free game, just as Stern did. In this case, it was a Guns N' Roses limited edition. And again, limited to United States residents only. Oh, it's time for an answer demo for Joe's reject paper. That would be nice, yes.
    50:35
    Entries closed on the 1st of December. I think we actually trailed that last month, so we had a chance to enter the winner. was Jennifer W. from Harrisonville, Missouri.
    50:50
    So congratulations to Jennifer. Yeah, right. Who gets a nice new Guns N' Roses limited edition game for free.
    51:01
    So, yeah, not a bad offer. But, of course, this tied in, if you like, although it wasn't trailed as such, tithing with the 15th anniversary of the announcement of Jersey Jack Pinball. The founding of the company, so to speak. Yeah, although the company had been in development before that. It was actually publicly announced on the, I think, 1st of January, wasn't it? 2011.
    51:29
    Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, on the Spooky Pinball podcast. Absolutely right, yeah. Yes, because Charlie was doing the... Who knew they would become competitors? Yeah, I was doing the cabinets for... I was printing the cabinets for Jersey Jack Pinball at that point.
    51:46
    Not that there was anything designed yet regarding cabinets or whatever, but it was indeed January 1st, 2011, that Jack Wannieri on the Spooky Pinball Podcast announced starting Jersey Jack Pinball. So basically this is a 15th birthday, anniversary, whatever you call it. So we talked to Jack to congratulate him. And that turned out to be quite a lengthy conversation, but still very interesting. So we'll be back in an hour or so. And have fun with our talk with Jack, where we could ask Jack anything. Hey, guys. Happy New Year. So we're here to congratulate you on your 15th anniversary, then, Jack, of announcing your company. Yeah. I mean, is that amazing? It was just yesterday, and it's 15 years past, so that's kind of crazy.
    52:53
    Yeah. And they said, start a pinball company. You'll have fun. And they said it wouldn't work. Right. Well, it worked. And so you say it's like yesterday and it's been 15 years, but does it feel like 15 years or does it feel like 45? Well, no, it doesn't feel like 45, certainly. 15 years is a pretty good amount of time to get a company organized and do what we've done. And I think what we did was we empowered a lot of other people to follow us to build Humboldt machines, too. well you may not always get the recognition but I think you blew new life into the entire industry well you know I hear a lot of things and it's very humbling and flattering but my intent was just to make great games you know I didn't know what would happen but in the beginning when we first started ordering parts I knew what would happen I told a story a couple weeks ago we were talking about parts for games and before I built Wizard of Oz there were no wide body lockdown bars. You had to search on eBay maybe they were 150 bucks if you could find a halfway decent lockdown bar. But a part like that my vendor said well the tool is 20 grand, you don't have to pay for the tool, you're a new company. So he kept the tool and he called everybody around the world and he turned my 1,000 piece order into 2,000 pieces. What a guy. So, you know, those are the kind of things that happened. You know, we couldn't get any kind of parts years ago. There were no 3D printers or anything like that. Yeah, scratch them and take them off games.
    54:37
    Once you start a pinball company, you get people involved. Some vendors, they went from being 50% or 60% of their business was pinball down to 5% or 10% because there was no pinball going on. And now you have mod makers and people making toppers that are sending their kids to college and everything like that.
    54:56
    Yeah. So what was the biggest surprise that you found when you started to build Wizard of Oz? The thing that you really weren't expecting to be a problem that was. I'm not sure we have that long, but go on. Yeah. Just one.
    55:16
    You were there, Martin. I was. You know, everything was a problem. There really was nothing that was a problem. The only thing that went easy was selling the game.
    55:29
    That was the easiest part of it was selling the game. People bought a game from us that didn't exist, from a factory that didn't exist.
    55:36
    And, you know, it was just an amazing thing to think about. In hindsight, we crowdfunded the company before there was crowdfunding. And it was crazy to do that. I don't think I would do that again. but you know I was very fortunate and very lucky a lot of people just had faith and trust and confidence and it worked out but when you started with the Wizard of Oz I think the initial price was six and a half thousand so it was a ton of money it was at the time yeah but now of course next to nothing and of course you couldn't make it for that Well, you could sell it, but you couldn't make it for that price these days.
    56:23
    You couldn't make it for that price those days. But it was a little late to find that out. You already jumped out of the plane and you didn't have a parachute. What are you going to do about it? Well, that's true. Yes. So what do you think of prices now? Do you think they are fair for the quality of the product that's being put out there now? or obviously the price now is more than double what it was 15 years ago, but then the price of many things is double what it was 15 years ago. Well, in the Jersey Jack game, I believe you're getting value for your money because you're getting a complete game. We ship the game code complete.
    57:03
    We stuff the game with as much stuff as you can put into it. Technologically, we keep changing and adding new technology, new things to every game that we do, and you get a complete game. You get a topper, you get everything is in the game.
    57:21
    With other companies, they're on different tracks. They do different things, and you have to value what the price is based on what you're getting on each different manufacturer. You know, everybody has their own way of doing business, and they have their own margins they need to make.
    57:37
    And, you know, but overall, the market dictates the price itself. If something's too expensive, it's going to get knocked down. If something is underpriced, it's going to go up. Or, you know, the supply and demand. It's just simple supply and demand. And, you know, I look at games from 20 years ago, like Monopoly, and I look at a game from today that is similar to that, and I don't think it's worth it because you didn't show me the difference. You know, what we did with Harry Potter, and the price difference is if you go to the arcade edition, which is $99.99, and then you go to the Wizard Edition, which is $12,000, you can see where the difference in the money is. You can actually see it. But some companies, you know, you go $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 difference,
    58:29
    and there's, you know, $50 worth of toys taken out of it and some colored molding, and to me it's not worth it. You know, to the customers, I respect them. they're the ones that decide with their wallets and they think it's worth it that's great, God bless them So how do you think the market has, I mean when you first created the game there was the one version of the Wizard of Oz there's obviously been other versions since but they've all been pretty much of the same ilk how do you think the sort of market segmentation has happened as regards, you know as you said You've now got an arcade version of Harry Potter, a wizard version, and you've got the collector edition of that. So that's something of a change over the past 15 years from having just the one version. Is that because you're trying to broaden the market to appeal to all those types of buyers? Or is it the case that one single model... isn't enough these days? Well, we have a standard edition Wizard of Oz. We sold very few of them. People wanted the full featured game with all the beautiful trim and everything like that. Today, a lot of people told me that they wanted a game that was around $10,000, especially my operator friends. On the other side of my life, commercial, you know, with arcade games and stuff like that, not just home games. So all the operator friends of mine said they wanted a game that was $10,000 was a sweet spot. So I went $99.99 and we took out the things that really don't matter if I'm an operator. If I'm operating the game, it doesn't matter if I have Invisiglass. It doesn't matter if I have a Shaker motor, hot blades, black molding instead of powder coating with color shifts, a topper, lighting around the monitor, glass instead of a trans light. No, none of that mattered. And we sold close to 1,000 of those games so far. So in my mind, that's 1,000 games less than I would have sold because they were, you know, I believe they were all sold, most of all of them were sold based on price.
    61:01
    And, you know, the fact that all the play fields are the same, remember. That's important too. All the play fields, we didn't take any fun out of the game. Taking a $40 mechanism out or a drop target or a ramp or something like that, it's ridiculous. Just ridiculous. What are you saving? You know, it's not a difference. And, you know, I think we proved that to ourselves anyway.
    61:27
    So, you're talking about a thousand arcade editions alone, and then there's the other models adding on top of that.
    61:36
    Yep. You have the Wizard Edition and the Collector Edition. Right. Okay. So that basically means you'll be building those games for a long, long time.
    61:49
    Yeah, we'll be building them in a few more months, I would say. And then we'll swing into our next game.
    61:56
    So, is the Arcade Edition model something which is here to stay, do you think? Yes. Good. Okay. Yes. Could you define a few more months?
    62:14
    Sometimes, I don't know, what am I going to tell you? It's spring, fall, winter. It's going to keep going. You know, every day we get orders for games, which is a blessing, and we thank everybody. And believe it or not, there are still a lot of people that have not played Harry Potter. I go play the locations that get the game And there are all kinds of people in there And people in the industry And they haven't seen the game or played the game So it's got a lot of ground to cover yet Well there's a perfectly Logical explanation for that At least the way I Experienced it myself The couple of shows where I have Actually gone to Where a Harry Potter game was present Or multiple The line was basically too long for me to wait in line to play the game. So I have played the game, but I was lucky to get it at that arcade in...
    63:12
    Next to Pinball Expo, Schomburg. Ontario. Exactly. Thank you. I was able to play it there when there was no line, because during shows, the line is just too long to be standing there and, well, I have other things to do. Right, right, right. So that explains for probably a lot of people are like, well, I want to play the game, but the line is too long, so let's play something else.
    63:38
    I agree. We have to do better with getting games out on location, and I believe one of the things that will make it better is the price of the game because our competitors have captured a lot of footprint, in locations around the country and probably around the world. And we really haven't because our company was based out of pinballsales.com, which sold games to the home. So maybe 90% of our games go to the home. Other people will tell you 70% of their games go here and 30% go there.
    64:12
    If you talk to the same people at the same company, years ago they told you the same numbers were opposite. So you don't know which is true. the landscape changed in the meantime well the landscape changed so you changed with it I guess but you know we were selling games to the home before people even knew games were going to the home I mean years ago when I sold Stern Games Doug Duber from Chicago Gaming would call me up and say where are all these games going I'm building cabins for all these games where are they going they're going to the home and it was like shocking to them to believe that people in the home actually wanted to buy games yeah to me it's been always been quite surprising to see how the industry sort of did not catch up or catch that because at least from what I could tell even late 80s early 90s I knew plenty of people looking for pinball machines to buy it was difficult to get them because we had no internet at the time and so you need to be familiar with an operator that would be willing to sell a game, and many operators in those days rather trashed the game to make sure that you kept playing on location instead of playing in your own.
    65:28
    Well, when I was an operator, there was a newspaper called Bylines, and I guess it was like eBay. It was a newspaper published in Long Island. It's called Old New York City, Five Boroughs, Long Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and I would put an ad in there, a game for sale, and I would list the games, and I would do it year-round. And I would sell Asteroids and Space Invaders and Pac-Mans and all kinds of games like that, and pinball machines too. So typically the operators at that point, they might sell games during Christmas time, and then when January 4th comes around and the phone rings and something's broken, they don't answer the phone because they don't want to go home. They don't want to send their workers to a home to fix a game because then the worker has extra income from somewhere else and maybe they're going to take parts from the shop to fix the game at somebody's home, yada, yada. So it was always like, well, you get the taillight guarantee. And that is when the taillight pulls out of the driveway, the guarantee is over.
    66:28
    Right. Yeah, I had the same thing when I first bought a pinball from a distributor. They were very reluctant to sell it to me as a homeowner and they were very, very insistent that you're buying it sold as seen. So if anything goes wrong after this, it's on you to sort it out, which was fine for me because I was an electronics engineer anyway, so I can fix most of these things unless it's severely mechanical.
    66:55
    But it was quite reluctant. They were very reluctant to actually sell to a home owner simply because they didn't want that come back, as you just said. Right. And today, really, you know, you really have to have a network of service people to repair things because everything can break, right? Brand new or used, whatever. Anything can really happen on a pinball machine. And the typical service call today is just walk into somebody's house in, you know, anywhere in the Northeast United States, it's $250 to $350. And that's just hello to the door. you know a customer of mine from years ago had an arcade legends game that crashed the ultimate arcade and it needs a new motherboard and nobody has the board and i found somebody for him in arizona and he bought the board for 215 bucks in the meantime he had service guys to his house he spent nine hundred dollars and they did nothing they made three visits and for nine hundred dollars without repairing it. So, you know, like everything else, you have to navigate. You know, if you're getting a dishwasher fixed or you're getting an air conditioning unit fixed, you have to navigate through different people and recommendations from the good people that still repair games. And we have to teach more people to repair games too because there are more and more games. There are more games today than there were 10 years ago probably in basements and homes and things like that. More maintenance workers as well. Yeah, there's less people servicing them. So really the service part of the business is still extremely important. Yeah, it kind of worries me a bit with these, when they start selling pool games or home games, probably more of a case, through sort of standard retail outlets like Costco and Best Buy and places like that. Now, who's going to be doing the servicing on them when they,
    68:48
    because they will have issues, every pinball, as you always say. If it's not broke, it's not pinball. but pinballs will have issues things will break if I're in a steel ball heavy steel ball of plastic pieces and they will break but who's where's the repair network to deal with that kind of thing well it probably won't be robots from Tesla I don't think well the thing with things like Costco is if something breaks you take it back but I don't know whether that's going to work if you're selling pinball machines through that outlet I don't know I mean it's probably a good thing. It's an entry drug, as they say, for people to buy pinball machines. But the good thing is some people that bought those games, I got them as customers. So thank you, thank you, thank you for making people know that there are pinball machines out there because there are all kinds of pinball machines. And today a buyer or collector has a lot of different choices of what they want to get.
    69:49
    Absolutely. And as you said at the start of this, I think we can thank you in large degree for showing that it was possible to start a pinball company and sell games to particularly home buyers. But as long as you engage with them in the way that you did when you started, I remember all the various teases that you were doing of, here's a bit of a plastic, here's a bit of artwork, here's a bit of the play field, which went on for many months until you were actually able to reveal The Wizard of Oz in its full glory and that was kind of like what people do to a degree with social media these days but I don think anybody could string it out quite the length that you did when you started Well you know thank you
    70:45
    Well, it was good because, you know, it got people enthused, because this was new back then. Having a new company bringing out pinball machines was such an unheard of thing for so many years. We used to have been more companies closing, not opening. So once you announced you were opening, you generated a huge amount of goodwill and managed to carry that through to the launch of the first game. Right. I made stars out of people too, really. I celebrated different people that worked for the company. and we, you know, we had them in little grass things and we built the celebrity of a lot of different people in the industry because when I was an operator, I didn't know who designed games. What did I know? Was it Pat Lawler's game or Steve Rich's game? I had no clue. It was a game. If the cash box filled up, I was happy with it. If the cash box didn't fill up, I got rid of it. You know, it wasn't like, oh, I got to buy the next Steve Rich's game. You know, today, people are name conscious. They're like, who designed that game? Who did this? Who did that? You know, so a lot of that stuff, we celebrated those people because they deserved it. You know, the people that do software, the people that draw lines and circles, the people that think of the idea, the people that do all the artwork, the people that do animation and all that stuff. Now there's an award for the best screw put into a game.
    72:19
    Did you win? You know, listen, I wanted to make playable artwork in the beginning, too. I wanted to make sure that the side of the cabinet, the bolts didn't go through somebody's face.
    72:30
    You know, and the screws all matched and the hardware matched and all kinds of little things. There were no wires really showing. And we've continued to do that kind of stuff, which, you know, is costly and time-consuming and painstaking, but very, very beautiful at the end. If you look at a game like Avatar, it's just magnificent. Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, Harry Potter, all the games. They're just in a lineup together. I've seen a couple of lineups together at people's homes. And at Expo, there was one. And I looked at all of them together, and it's just beautiful. Beautiful. You mentioned those titles.
    73:09
    And also, you mentioned earlier you'll be building games for many months to come. Are there any titles now for which the license has expired, which you work for, or recent games probably, and worth covering? I think some of the older ones we already know about. But any recent titles that you won't be remaking because they are no longer current titles?
    73:35
    I don't see us remaking anything right now. You know, like I said before, the windshield is a lot bigger than the Rivian there, That's the direction we're going. So I still feel that way. You know, if I called up, if we called up all our distributors and said, hey, we're going to make Wizard of Oz again, how many do you want? You know, I'm pretty sure we would come back off the phone, you know, with more than a thousand games.
    74:02
    Pirates, you know, I said, we're not making pirates. We're not making pirates. You know, I get calls every day for The Hobbit. You know, people, can you find me a Hobbit? The last Hobbit I saw was like 14 grand.
    74:15
    So it's funny. When something's available, maybe you don't want it. But when it's not available, all of a sudden everybody wants it. Well, that's sort of like not being able to play Harry Potter on the show because the line is too long. And then you miss out on the game because you never got to play it. And by the time you finally got to play it, you realize, oh, it's no longer in production, but I really want one. well that's that happened with games at the show too they were low production numbers and they sold out and people didn't even get to play it to know if they wanted it or not but they heard all their friends got it so they want to get it too um it's the fear of missing out sometimes but you know if it's a good game you didn't miss out you'll you'll get it you may have to pay more for it at some point um some games just lose value right away and some games maintain their value and go up and it's based on how many people like it and how many people don't like it, I guess. Do you keep a track of which distributors have which of your machines in stock? So if somebody rang you up and said, I want to get an Elton John collector edition, then you say, okay, this distributor here has one. Yeah, we do. We maintain channel checks. Jen gets on the phone with distributors and other people in the company get on the phone and they ask them to do a channel check, how many of this, how many of that how many do you have yesterday somebody texted me and they wanted a collector edition Guns N' Roses and I know a distributor that has two of them so I'm directly that person to that distributor now what the price will be I don't know, it's not going to be it probably won't be the price we sold it for probably more than that. But, you know, there's always somebody hanging on to something. One of my distributors, I was at his place a couple months ago, he showed me two brand-new Wizard of Oz Emerald City Limited Edition games in a box. Wow. Yeah. And he had three or four pirate games, too, in a box. So there's games out there. I mean, you've got to hunt them down. One of my customers in Arizona sent me a video of him opening a brand-new Hobbit game, you know, a Samaritan Edition. like about a month ago. He says, Jack, it took me a little bit of time, it took me a lot of money, but I got the game. You know, because you call this one, you call that one, you call the other one, and eventually they lead you to the treasure.
    76:47
    Right. I was just wondering whether there was a shortcut to that process where they can ring you up and say, I want this game, who's got it for sale? And then you can tell them.
    76:57
    I try to do that as best I can. You know, sometimes the big distributors have a lot of it, equipment. They have a lot of stock. Mike at Automated has a lot of stock and a few other guys around the world have a lot of stock. But they have a lot of stock of different manufacturers as well. And then they just stick something away for a long time. You know, somebody must have figured, hey, this is a guy, Jersey Jack's first game. I'm going to put a couple of them away. Maybe they'll go out of business in a few years when the game will be worth a lot of money. Who knows? Who knows what people do it, you know?
    77:31
    Right. So, now the company is now in existence for 15 years congratulations where do you see the company going in the next 15 years or is that impossible to predict I think if we keep doing what we're doing we'll be fine and what that is is making fun games that our customer base loves to play and to buy and to enjoy and I think as long as we keep doing that and keep the customer first as our first focus of anything, I think we'll be okay. I think if we get greedy or we lose sight of the reason why the company was started or we have people just interested in, you know, being on a schedule to release a game, we have to release a game every Texas Pinball Festival or every Expo or every, you know, you don't get a good product. What happens with these things, unfortunately, they take their own timeline. You have a time when something's supposed to be done, and the development process is so iterative and so involved, you know, that sometimes you can't just say it's done right now. You know, the apple pie, I want to have apple pie, but it's not done yet. So we still need to finish the details on it.
    78:53
    Why would you want to make a good game when you can make a great game if it took you another couple of months to finish it off to make everything shoot the right way and play the right way and all the software is done and everything like that. Why would you do it? Because you have to do it. You have to do it.
    79:08
    We're not in that space. We don't have to do it. We've got to keep everybody busy and working and everything, but we need to make good games. And I don't want to make 500 or something. I don't want to make – and there's nothing wrong with making 500 or something. Don't get me wrong. But I'm not in a position where I just want to make 500 or something. I want to make 5,000 or something. Sure. but this kind of brings me on to something which I've noticed elsewhere in the industry is that I get the feeling that we are getting to a point where we're running out of good licenses for games. Now you obviously decided that you're going to license all your games as well but I've seen quite a lot of people going back to revisit previous licenses I mean, to be fair, you've done it yourself. With Guns N' Roses, it's a license which has been used before.
    80:03
    With Avatar, it's a license that's been used before, but you've obviously brought it up to date in both cases. But we're not really seeing the new titles, the new licenses coming out. And I'll ask you in a minute about fragmentation of markets as well as licenses, which I've also seen recently. But do you think we're kind of not getting the new, like, Star Wars, the new Indiana Jones level of licenses of themes coming out now, which we used to have in the 80s and 90s and the Back to the Futures and all that kind of stuff? Where's the modern version of those?
    80:46
    Well, some of them are yet to be exposed as licensed for a pinball machine. you know I get calls all the time and emails from people all the time I have this great license making it's a pinball machine and I'm like I don't think that makes a pinball machine because we need a product that we can sell worldwide you know I might say a title to somebody in Australia and they say what is that mate I don't know what that is mate what is that and it's very popular in America but it's not popular there that's why we haven't seen a baseball themed game since 1990 with Silver Slugger because if I made a baseball game I'd probably sell it in the U.S., but I probably wouldn't be able to sell it in Europe or anywhere else. No, not at all. Nobody plays baseball. You know, they were able to do that years ago, Gottlieb was, because it was a pinball machine and people just played anything at that time. You know, they were playing anything. You could make a game about just about anything.
    81:36
    You know, you have more competition today in the licensing arena. You know, when I go to talk to a license company, a studio or something like that, people that I know they'll tell me, well, somebody called me a few weeks ago and told me, so-and-so is here to look at XYZ. Yeah? Are you interested in XYZ? Not really. No, I don't think so. So one of my competitors went to go to visit a company and get a license. And maybe nobody else was interested. So they tried to start a horse race with two people and three people, you know, to get the bidding up to get it further up. but again, a really great license with a really bad game is still a really bad game. Underlying factor of the game has to be it's fun to shoot and it's not a brick fest and you can have a good time playing it and be rewarded and feel great playing it. It makes you smile. A game like Elton John. There's a theme that we said we need another Elton John game. We need Elton John. I don't really like Elton John that much, but the people that played it all bought it because it's a great game.
    82:48
    Yeah. I think what you'll see is you'll see more licenses on the fringes and you'll see more makeovers. I mean, look, I did Pirates, and Pirates was done before too. So for a guy who started a company saying we're going to do original or we're not going to do things over again, and when Slash calls you a few times and twists your arm, you can say, okay, I think I'm going to do Guns N' Roses. We can do it over again. We can bring it up to date. or with Avatar, you know. So. Right. Now, on that subject, with a slight twist, I suppose, from what I understood,
    83:25
    Guns N' Roses is a great example of Flash calling you and wanting a new Guns N' Roses game. But from what I understood is the past couple of games coming from Jersey Jackpinball basically the designers have been assigned to a specific license to turn it into a game.
    83:51
    Not necessarily a theme that they were very enthusiastic about in the first place. How does that work? Is it like, design this game and maybe that one, and then you get to choose a license of your own? Because I can imagine that if someone is really passionate about a certain license and has to design a game about it,
    84:14
    there's a lot more passion going into the game than somebody reluctantly accepting, not saying that was the case, but just to draw the image here, designing a game that, okay, and then maybe after that I get to do that game that I really want to do. well I call it like having a vegan chef work in a steakhouse so if somebody is on the design team especially the lead designer pinball designer if that person doesn't like the theme you're not going to get a good game I'm sorry you're not going to have their hearts not going to be into it they're just going to phone it in and it's not always possible to line up all the stars and say, you want this license? I'm going to go get that license for you and deliver it back to you, and you're going to be happy.
    85:15
    It's happened sometimes in the games we've done. And some games we've done, you know, we said to the designer, this is the next license up. Yeah, but couldn't I get XYZ? Yeah, maybe, but not right now. The timing isn't good right now, so we need you to do this. Okay, well, you know, I mean, we haven't had to say to anybody, do this or there's a door. We haven't gotten that dramatic yet. We haven't got that dramatic yet.
    85:42
    But, you know, it's widely known that different designers like different themes. They like what they like, but sometimes it's not always possible to make it happen.
    85:55
    Right. Okay. Yeah, well, I was going to ask you about licenses as well. about, which is something we saw with another company's recent release, is that they were not able to license it globally because the licensor didn't think there was enough demand to make it worth their while to sell that product in a certain geographic region. Is that something that you have experienced or been aware of in recent times when you were investigating potential licenses for future games? it all comes down to money, okay? If you pay, you get. If you don't pay, you don't get. If you don't pay, you don't get the full use of the song. You get 15 seconds. If you don't pay, you don't get songs. You know, I haven't found a song that I wanted for anything yet that I was told, no, I can't get it, and didn't come up with a certain amount of money where somebody said, yes, you can have it.
    86:57
    So, you know, in some of the licensed companies, they have the world the world's divided up in regions as we know with all these licensed companies and they have different profit centers and they don't want to participate in making money okay uh pinball is not it's not like halloween costumes which is like one of the number one categories for licenses believe it or not you know pinball is a problematic category to license because of the iterative process involved if you license a t-shirt or a lunchbox like i've always said, you give a couple of samples and they say no, yes, no, yes, and you're done. You're going to make your T-shirts and your lunchboxes, you're finished. But the pinball machine, you have to have meetings and meetings and meetings every week, twice a week sometimes, and you're submitting things for approval. They're coming back with comments. We don't like his eyebrows, his eyes are this color, and his cheek has a blush on it or whatever it is. and the more people that look at it on the other end, the worse it is because everybody's got an opinion and everybody wants to be part of it. And good thing we haven't had any instances where people get into gameplay and geometry and game design philosophy and rules and all kinds of stuff like that. But it's close. It's close.
    88:21
    You know, there are really great companies to deal with. What's going on right now in that space is that there's a lot of consolidation. You see Pan Am out buying companies and trying to buy Warner Brothers and Netflix involved, and MGM is owned by Amazon. So you're dealing with a different corporate structure. And people that I know and build relationships with, I build relationships all through the company. at the very top, in the middle, and at the bottom. Because you never know when somebody from the top is going to the bottom and from the bottom is going to the top. And I've seen it.
    89:02
    And I've had different things that, I'll be honest with you, different things sometimes that weren't approved. I called somebody in the company and I told them my problem and all of a sudden it got approved.
    89:16
    So it pays to know somebody. So this consolidation seems to be something that's going to increase We've seen this recently with things like Fox Becoming part of Disney And Disney have been swarming up whole swathes of different companies And getting all their IP as well Does that help you when you're trying to negotiate Or deal with a company without a license if it's the same company that you dealt with? Because you were talking about with Warner, you had a good relationship with Warner right from Wizard of Oz onwards. But now if they get taken over by another company, is that going to make things harder for you or potentially easier if they're swallowed up by a company in which you've already had dealings? You know, I don't know the answer. I would hope to believe it would be easier, but because I believe that, it'll probably be harder.
    90:17
    You know, nothing, there's not much that gets easier than what I do. I'll really be honest with you.
    90:24
    It gets more difficult. So the thing I've been able to win on was just showing our product to the licensor or the people that own the IP behind the licensor. And they wanted Jersey Jack to make their games. And people would come to me and say, you know, we have this license and the only company we want to have it make it is Jersey Jack. And so I'm flattered, but, you know, it's not something we would do. It's not something that's going to be viable as a product to make thousands of. You know, if I went to a licensor and I said, hey, we're only going to make a thousand of these, the licensor would probably say to me, I don't want you to do it because you're limiting their.
    91:06
    Say that again. Good old Alexa. Hey, disco music. Alexa just got unplugged in fact she just got unplugged you know you don't realize it but there's always somebody listening to you know I'll talk to this podcast but you know if you told the licensor that you were limiting something my first reaction is that the licensor would say why are you limiting that you're limiting my ability to make revenue because if you said you were giving somebody I don't know, pick any number you want $10 a game and you guarantee $10,000 for the license, that's a thousand games and they made their minimum guarantee they don't want to make the minimum guarantee they want to make a lot of money over the minimum guarantee is just getting in the door so I would think that licensor, if you did something like that licensor would say something like what do we need these people for? if we licensed somebody else, maybe they made $2,000 games and we made $20,000 instead of $10,000 so selling yourself short probably has some consequences at some point I think especially if you're doing the iterative process that you were describing earlier, the back and forth with them and taking up a considerable amount of their time and a considerable amount of your time in order to produce this game and then you're only going to do a thousand of them you know, that's certainly not worth their while that's right and that's why the price of pinball licenses has gone up you know, not just because this competition, but because they realize that it's a process that takes a long time to do. And a lot of companies want to do it. They don't mind the time, but you have legal people involved, you have staff people involved, you have management people involved, and they're all engaged with this product. They're all excited about the product, but they're spending a lot of time, you know, reviewing things and commenting on things. Well you end up using a huge amount of their assets In your games now Compared to what a much simpler Game would have been from the 90s or 2000 You would have only had Some voice calls A bit of music and some artwork And that would have been it Now you've got to use video, you've got to use music You've got to use loads of voice calls Preferably custom ones as well And it's a lot more involved And it obviously takes a lot more time to get that all cleared through the license store. Yeah. And then when you ask Elton John to do voice calls.
    93:41
    Yes, I've heard the recording. Yes. You know, you go on a little bit. You go, I got all of this stuff now. Let me get some more. You know, there's no end to it. And the people that work for Jersey Jack Pinball, they have no limit on anything. They want more. There's no end to what they want. and you know you try to supply it because I believe the more assets we get the better game we can make but the longer it takes too you know if we added an extra song or two to a game you have all the modes the light shows the choreography and everything that goes into it it's a big production it went from a high school play to a Broadway production when I did Wizard of Oz it took it to a whole different level right and the never the market has never been the same since then so yeah I think that's a good thing. Yeah. So to bring us back to where we started then with the 15th anniversary or birthday of your announcement of the company, just on that point, when you actually went public with your plans on the 1st of January 2011,
    94:57
    where was the company at that point? How much advanced work have you done before you were actually willing to go public and announce what your plans were? Well, I spent a good part of 2010 trying to figure out if this was something that I wanted to do.
    95:17
    And there were a lot of people that were encouraging me to do it. Start a pinball company. It'll be fun. Okay.
    95:25
    That sounds good. Take money from customers' deposits. That'll work out. You know, that'll be fun. You know, it was just an idea. It really was an idea. There was no structure to anything yet. There was no building rented. There were no people working for a company. It wasn't like we were going to have a game in a week or two. You know, I was kind of blinded with rose-colored glasses because I believed it would be easier. I knew it would be hard, but I didn't think it would be that hard. And, you know, and I guess when you get into it, you don't know. When the water's cold, you jump in and the water's cold. Come on in, the water's cold. Well, the water was cold, but I warmed up to it pretty quickly.
    96:14
    You have to, when you're an entrepreneurial thinker and you want to do something, in an industry that, let's face it, I was in the industry 36 years at the time, so I knew what it was. I mean, I was on the floor of the factory at Stern at 10 o'clock at night with Gary, picking up screws, throwing them into bins to save pennies. So I knew what it was, you know, but when you see it from a distance, watching the train on the track is different than getting hit by the train on the track. You know, you're in a whole different thing altogether. And once I got into it, failure was not an option. You know, the only way I would lose is if I quit. And I wasn't going to lose, and I wasn't going to quit. And, you know, we had a lot of people cheering us on. And then there were a few miserable people along the road that were trying to dig holes for us to fall into.
    97:05
    And that's life. That's what it would be. It would be the same if I opened a can opener company or something like that. And I was competing against somebody that had a big can opener company.
    97:16
    You know, competition is what really made this market. Having one company do anything is not healthy for a market. And, you know, I was told that there wasn't enough business for two companies, that both companies would be out of business. And I didn't believe that. I believed that we would make a new market and make a new customer base and expand the existing customer base. And that's what happened. I was glad that I saw the side of it that was the positive side of it. And 15 years on, how do you see the market now?
    97:51
    Well, the market right now is all mixed up. Because distributors have too many games in stock that they can't sell. And something's going to happen with that. You know, what could possibly happen? You know, could the game prices go down on these games that are less desirable to own?
    98:11
    Maybe. You know, my distributors aren't stuffed up with Jersey Jack games. There's very few of our games out in the field that are in people's stock right now. and I think through this year hopefully the economy will get a little bit better interest rates will come down a little bit tax laws change, maybe people will get some good refunds and they'll be in the mood to go buy a pinball machine but it's going to be difficult for some of the other companies to stay in there because if you're building something that's not as good as a used game that's in the market right now don't build it, don't build a game that's not the best thing that you could possibly make that could compete in the marketplace today.
    98:53
    It's a hard thing for me to say because I encourage everybody. I wish everybody the best. I don't wish anybody anything bad or that they have trouble with their business. I want them to all do great. So everybody has to find their own lane, their own customer base. Some people like this kind of game. Some people like that kind of game.
    99:12
    And I think there's enough out there. As long as we keep continuing to expand the base of players, we'll be fine. And at Expo, when I ask people to put their hand up if it's the first show or the first time, a lot of hands went up. So a lot of new people coming into the hobby. So it's good. I think it's going to be good. You know, be positive about pinball. Spread the good word of it.
    99:36
    You know, have those parties, those launch parties, open houses. Have events where you can teach other people, invite other people to come and play your games. And that's how you expand it. You know, people that I sell games to, and they might be in the middle of nowhere, and they don't know how to fix a game, I get them a local pinball club or a local pinball bar or venue that has games, and I say, go meet the people there. Go to league night. Go introduce yourself. You'll have 50 new friends overnight. And if you have a problem with your game, 49 of them know how to fix it. Just get some beers, and they'll open your game up, and they'll be playing the game at your house, and you'll have fun. and your ball community. Well, thanks very much, Jack, for taking time out to speak to us on this 15th anniversary of the announcement of Jersey Jack Pinball. And, yeah, some interesting details coming out of there. As always, we always enjoy talking to Jack and having a particular reason to do it this month was extra special. So, again, congratulations to him and everybody who's been involved with the development of the games over the years. Yes. And we'll be touching on Jersey Jack pinball later on a little bit as we go over the rumoured expected games for 2026. How exciting. I can hardly wait. Stay tuned for that. Okay. In the meantime, we talked about code earlier in quite some depth. Well, our latest update from Pinball Brothers includes new code for their Predator pinball game, version 0.95, which came out just before the end of the year, the 30th of December, so a nice new year gift. Adds some full loot multiball, which is qualified by collecting the binoculars, knife, ramp, badge and torch and an ambush reward for completing the top drop targets. Quite a few other features and rule changes of course, including the knocker sound effect. Not a real opera, a sound effect. And the rebalancing of various sounds and music within the game.
    101:52
    It says the version 0.95 only comes with the staged flippers activated. Remember staged flippers are where you can half press the flippers and activate the main yeah, the upper flippers. No, the main flippers. And then press it fully and activate the upper. So you can hold the ball on the main flippers while operating the upper ones separately.
    102:18
    But the Spurs 0.5 only comes with the stage flippers activated. It says, if you don't have stage flippers, please contact support to have stage flippers sorted before updating. So I guess that's something which was added later in the Predator production. So, yep, sounds like a nice feature to have anyway. But yeah, Predator 0.95, getting close to being fully feature complete. Not too far now. Right. Yes. Well, and then it's, well, from Pimble Brothers, it's a small step to Pedretti Gaming. They are, well, working together rather close.
    103:00
    Well, Pedretti in Europe, Pimble Corp, is really the Predator game. well Pedretti Gaming sent out a sort of a press release although it wasn't I mean if it would be a press release I know, well, oh well, never mind they sent out a notification that they teamed up with Arterio Games a long term collaboration agreement for the development of software and video content for Pedretti's upcoming pinball titles. Now, you might wonder,
    103:43
    Ethereo Games, where have I heard that before? Or who have you heard that before? Yes. Well, yeah, well, that's the other thing. I had never heard of it before. But the main man running Ethereo Games is Sam Zare. And that is a familiar name. He used to work at Capcom.
    104:09
    Capcom. He's credited for programming on Pinball Magic, I believe. And I'm not sure how long he worked for Capcom. Two years, I think. It was 1994 to 1996.
    104:24
    Right. Okay. So, and that ties in with another rumor, possibly, which we will get to later on. but so basically Sam Zare is going to be writing code for upcoming Projecti games that's basically what it comes down to yeah he's got a lot of history in coin op, he works for Konami Midway, incredible technologies and play mechanics as well prior to founding his own company in 2006, Arterio Games.
    105:06
    Which, yeah, the announcement from Pedretti said, everyone will be familiar with Arterio Games, and I thought, are they? So, anyway, we did some research and found out some background, and, yeah, it looks like a good fit for the company. obviously they as we announced recently Podretti are using the fast hardware system as indeed are Pinball Brothers now going forward and previously the software, well certainly much of the software for Podretti Games had come from Team Pinball based in South Wales but I know that they were looking to change over to a software designers and I think Team Pinball had a desire to continue carrying on beyond the games that they were already contracted for.
    106:05
    But yes, it is interesting that Sam did work for Capcom, which could be useful, as you said. We'll talk about that a little bit later.
    106:17
    Yes. And that's all the news we have from Pedretti Pinball. Indeed. So let's go to American Pinball in Streamwood. Yeah.
    106:30
    They have revealed a new company logo, but we don't know whether it's actually something they've done for the holiday season or whether it is ongoing. but there has a new logo with the tagline Play the Adventure under American Pinball wording.
    106:51
    Yeah, it's not an interesting logo. It seems to have, like, colours, red, white and blue through the pinball part, but it also kind of looks a bit like the Dutch flag to me. And I see other people have commented on that as well.
    107:09
    It was interesting that... Indeed it does. Yeah On Facebook they said Our team is excited for the new year With many announcements coming soon So lots of exclamation marks there So it must be good And it was interesting as well That they also published a video Well Ron Linderman From American Pinball Who seems to be kind of running the show there Pretty much at the moment He recorded a video looked like it was recorded at home, but it's basically said, you know, wishing everybody a happy new year and happy holidays and looking forward to 2026 with lots of big announcements coming. So, we look forward to those as well. He did say he's going to be going on to some podcasts this year, so we look forward to interviewing Ron a little bit later in 2026. He also said they would be attending quite a few Pinball shows, including Texas Pinball Festival in March. So, hopefully, we will be there as well, and we can find out what those announcements are going to be. Yeah, although they were at Pinball Expo as well, and didn't have any new pinball-related announcements, although Orbit Games had some new titles there,
    108:34
    which is their parent company, it seems. But it does seem a little bit confusing still About exactly what the structure is What they're planning to do And basically what games they're working on If any at the moment But we hope to clarify that And maybe we can get Ron on And we can bring you that clarification Right, so well But it's going to take a while But okay, alright So anyway So, well, you did comment on that new logo With the flippers being in a rather odd position Yeah, well, that's something which they put on top of their Facebook banner I don't think it's necessarily their logo But it seemed to be incorporating their new logo With some rather strange shaped flippers They didn't look tapered and appeared to have pivots at the wrong end But, hey, I don't read too much into that. I guess it was probably a bit of a rush job. But I had noticed that, I think it was yesterday when I was going through their website, they still had their old American Pinball logo as their company logo next to all their posts. Today, when I had a look, it changed to the new logo, which they play the adventure with. So maybe it's more of a long-term thing. So people are still working on things. Well, somebody's working on something, yes. Indeed. Yeah, they changed that over. Oh, wow. Okay, so, well, that wraps it up for American Pinball. We hope to see a new game from them, as they announced earlier on that there would be a new game from them this year, and it would not be Cuphead. So, we're very curious to find out more about that. But we'll see. The year is just very fresh. Yes, and we're looking back at December and just the first couple of days of it as well. So, there's a lot in store For 2026 So do we have any news from Finishing off with American Pinball Turner Pinball Do we have any news from them? Not a lot, been a pretty quiet period for them Still working on their Mullins Arcade game Or building those But they've been streaming their games Every Thursday On their website And social media channels Took a pause For Christmas and New Year But starting again on Thursday the 8th of January, so every Thursday, check out Turnipinball if you want to see both Merlin's Arcade and Ninja Eclipse games, and get some insights into the best ways to play those.
    111:17
    Right, okay. So then we have Chicago Gaming. Yeah, basically looking forward to what they plan to do in 2026. Now, of course, they are somewhat known for having dates that slip when it comes to fulfilling orders and pre-orders. But at the moment, orders have been taken for upgrades coming in 2026, in the third quarter. So that's the start of the second half of the year. So that is for the medieval badness remakes. The King of Pain Topper, remember that? That's a beautifully muddled king with the trolls on either side. That's now available for pre-order for $999.
    112:08
    Again, hitting the $1,000 price for static toppers, because they don't move, but there's lighting effects on it.
    112:17
    And if you have an LMR, Medieval Madness Remake, kit that doesn't have the RGB lighting in it, You can purchase that kit for $500 for, again, third quarter 2026 delivery at the moment. Right. So that does lead me to mentioning that apparently Chicago Gaming is listening to demand from potential customers asking to start selling the King of Pain shop or something. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And, well, it makes a lot of sense, as Stern has been showing for many years, that if people are clamoring for toppers for their games, it would be daft not to fulfill that demand.
    113:06
    It's actually where you can charge $1,000 for it. Right. And I also understand we might be getting more Medieval Madness Merlin editions in the second quarter of 2026. Yeah, that's right. in the April, May, June period. So more Millie and Maddox Merlins, as you said. So good news if you were hoping to buy one of those and missed out so far.
    113:34
    Right. And there's a little bit more news on possibly the upcoming game from Chicago Gaming later on. So stay tuned for that. Okay, so moving over to Wonderland Amusement. who remember doing their 80% size Alice game themselves called Alice Goes to Wonderland.
    113:58
    Oh, are you typing something? Yeah, I am. I can hear it. I'm typing so loud. Yes. It must be exciting. I look forward to reading it when it eventually comes out. Yeah, so Alice Goes to Wonderland game was available briefly at the start of December for a $200 discount off the full price, which is $1,199. No, $1,100. Yeah.
    114:31
    Is that right? $1,199. Yeah. Now, $1,199. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, so it was available for $200 less than that, anyway, at the start of December. So basically for a thousand Yes, $999 total That offer was finished on the 5th of December So whether it will be repeated anymore, we don't know But there was a certain amount of talk That was the price they originally wanted to hit When they launched the game That was a $1,000 price tag maximum but then due to increases and tariffs and things like that the full price is now 200 more than that but in honouring that initial price they reduced it back down to 9.99 at the start of December but maybe they'll do that again, maybe they won't either way that offer has ended so keep an eye out on Wonderland Amusements to see if they offer it again right and then there's a bunch of companies that we do not have that much to report on or indeed anything so we're going to do this really quick, Hexa Pimble in France, no news no Hexa Pimble in Australia also, no news Homepin in Taiwan well this is rather disappointing but I was really hoping to hear from them but no news and their latest game, Blues Brothers, you might think they would be working on something new in the meantime. But, well, like I said, no news from them so far. So they could be working on something, but we don't know what it is. That's right. Also, no news from Pinball Adventures in Canada. It was a year ago that Andrew posted that the playfield and cabinet for elements just needed a few more tweaks before it's ready to play and the code is 100% done. but since then, nothing well I guess a few more tweets is a relative as you call it yeah some tweets take longer than others but yes, we already reported that we're going to be taking a lot more this is Pinball Adventures, we're taking a lot more relaxed attitude to releasing games and well, true to their word, nothing this month again nothing last year well no quite elsewhere well Rams Pinball we haven't actually heard anything from them since Pinball at the Beach last year but who knows they might be back in February at the event so looking forward to that for their vacation Road Trip yeah and then no news from Bitronic and even worse they're not listed to be appearing at EAG Expo either no and we already know that Pinball Heaven are not going to be there and I don't think Retro Arcade Specialists are there either so it might be a bit thin on the old pinball ground for this year's show, but hey, we'll see. We'll both be there, won't we? We will, yes. Well, that depends.
    118:15
    Snowfall has basically delayed a lot of in- and outgoing flights from the Netherlands to the rest of Europe, so if it continues to snow, and the forecasts say that at least for another week, that might put things in jeopardy a little bit for me, but for now I'm still expecting to be there Yes, we're looking forward to seeing you in London but carrying on with our no news section Yes, Cardona Pimble Yeah, sorry too quick, but I know the same games for SDR Pimble in Spain and Quetzal Pimble in Spain, although I do know they're working on something really, really cool. Yeah, but again These things seem to take so long, don't they?
    119:03
    Yeah. And this brings us to the... Other news section. Yeah. Oh, you already mentioned the EAT Expo this month. Yep. Which is the 13th to the 15th of January, I think. Something like that. That week, anyway. Yes, that's right. Yeah, the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Yep.
    119:27
    I will be there on the Wednesday. I think you're going to be on the Wednesday as well or plan to be if flights permitting and snow permitting so we will see what we can bring back from that show certainly in the past we've had a good opportunity to sit down with Stone Pimble in their conference room. Well I'm definitely aiming to sit down with John Buscellia if he's available and not being haunted by everybody asking him to give away a free pinball machine. Perhaps we should have signs printed up that people can hold around the stern stand and, you know, pinball switch lake for Europe. Now! Please, please. What do we want? Be nice, be nice. When do we want it?
    120:16
    We've been marching in the corridors. Yes, that's right. So anyway, yes, as you say, we've probably covered the EAG Expo look-ahead for this month. but there is some more news of rumoured pinball titles that are coming up which we have been talking about yes indeed and the first one is the news is coming from France but it's regarding a new company based in Switzerland apparently close to the French border because they're planning to operate from both Switzerland and France. But this new company called World Pinball is apparently building or designing a Resident Evil pinball machine for the 30th anniversary of the game. The video game. The video game, yes.
    121:21
    No. And production apparently is limited to 300 units only. And well, there's not a lot to mention. There's no pictures yet. All we know is there will be four slippers in the game, five magnets and four metal ramps.
    121:45
    It was discussed on a French podcast by this guy, Paris Pimble, which is Guillaume Faux, but it was all in French, so I quickly skipped that.
    122:07
    So, yeah, and there were rumours that they were teaming up with another pinball company, but that's apparently not the case. Do you know more about that? Well, the initial announcement, or initial report from Paris Pinball Addict, thank you for that did say they were going to be building the game in France in Bordeaux and then immediately you think oh hang on who do we know who's in Bordeaux in France building pinball games well that's going to be Hexapinball but apparently it's not them and they are setting up their own premises both in Switzerland as you said and in Chalons de Saône in France and the final plant could be anywhere basically so we don't know that they are the game is supposed to be announced in March but they're because of the license with Resident Evil they're having to wait until they get the license or approval before they can actually announce anything officially so this is just a little tease and if you're interested in a Resident Evil game, then you shouldn't have to wait too much longer before you can find out details of it. But as you said, only 300 machines in total. So a lot. Yes. So a lot. Yeah, there's a special website, I think, from the top of my head, residentevilpinball.com Thank you.
    123:40
    And, but that's, other than a, well, there's not much on there. I couldn't find anything that would teach me more about the game other than that it has to do with the 30th anniversary of the game. Okay. Oh, well. Well, that's probably more than a rumour. It sounds like work is underway on that game, but we do have some, to be able to report, some rumours that are circulating on other companies' future titles. I'll pass it on to you.
    124:22
    Yeah, well, just for the record, as everybody knows, we're usually not discussing rumors, but the fact is, these are rumors, and since it's the beginning of the year, I figured it would be nice to make a little list of what is rumored that we might be seeing this year. and well we all know a lot of times these rumours actually do come true yeah but interesting to come back at the end of the year and see which ones actually did materialise into real games oh we should have done that this year for 2025 we'll start the tradition now right okay well so for Stern Pernbol as mentioned earlier Pokemon is rumoured a Jack Danger design finished by George Gomez, as well as Transformers by John Bork, based on the cartoons of the game. And Keith Elwin is supposed to be working on Fallout.
    125:27
    And we might as well... Yes. And we might also see a remastered game which is heavily rumoured to be ACDC.
    125:37
    That could be interesting. That would be in line with Metallica and Walking Dead. Yes, and Elvira. Was it Elvira? No. Oh, yeah. Never mind. So, for Jersey Jack, rumoured is Sonic the Hedgehog, which would be a Steve Ritchie design. Personally, I'm not sure what to think of that, because I'm not sure how Steve Ritchie feels about Sonic the Hedgehog.
    126:09
    Yeah, yeah. And I do know Or I have been told That Jersey Jack did get the license For Sonic the Hedgehog But none of the designers At the time at Jersey Jack Would be interested Or were interested in designing a game For that as That was of course Ryan McQuade A game that got him hired at American Pinball And they were very close with Ryan McQuade So I'm not sure what to think of that Rumor on the other hand Well sometimes you have to do the game You're told to do Instead of the game you might be interested in As we heard from Jack about their future plans But it is interesting to see The sort of Drift towards Maybe away from Music games more towards video game themed games. We talked about Pokemon and Fallout with Stern.
    127:16
    Jersey Jack doing a similar. Resident Evil. Resident Evil, yeah, absolutely right, yeah. Jersey Jack was doing a Sonic game. That would tie in with that. And there's more in our room of this. Well, in our room of this, next on my list is Chicago Gaming slash Play Mechanics, who are rumored to be working on a Halo-themed pinball machine.
    127:43
    And that would be a Mark Ritchie design with some former... Well, Mark Ritchie already did Pulp Fiction, of course, but I guess it's safe to say that Josh Sharp would be involved in some way. and I hear that Tim Sexton is working over there, who's a former coder for Stern Pinball, so it would make sense to have him involved as well Indeed, yeah Okay, so that's a number from them Yes, and then for Spooky Pinball, well, so this is interesting because we all know that Spooky is the, well I wouldn't say they're a one game company but they do usually one game a year, and that takes up the production for the rest of the year.
    128:37
    But I got four titles rumoured to be coming from Spooky Pinball. Being Goonies, Gremlins, Motorhead, which we've already seen a... Yeah, that was Dave Peck's design. Yes. And there is Donner's working on it. Yeah, Donner is working on it. Yeah.
    128:57
    And South Park. Yeah. which could be interesting. Yeah, it would be nice to get an updated South Park game.
    129:07
    Right. From what I hear, South Park is a, even the old Sega game from 98, is still a great earner of location for many operators. I think it is, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So, and then we have, of course, Pedrecci Gaming, who, well, they already sort of revealed their Ligabua game, based around the Italian rock band, which is more of a title for Italy only, I suppose. Although Ligabue is touring Europe and doing sold-out shows in the Netherlands as well, so it's not a completely unknown name. Okay. But I don't think it will lead to many games being exported outside of Italy. No. And other rumoured titles are Tales of the Arabian Knights, Theory of Magic, and Big Bang Bar, which would tie in with Sam Zare from formerly Capcom, working now with Pedretti Gamer. Yeah. But then again, it could be that they need him for entirely different things, and just his expertise, not so much his expertise working at Capcom. And for Dutch Pinball Well we know that DPX is coming up with Retro Atomic Zombie Eventually And for Dutch Pinball itself Their second title Has been rumoured To be Back to the Future Yeah for a long long time Yes So hopefully We'll get to see that somewhere this year Although we don't know yet how big the production of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland is going to be, but that might take up the rest of 2026. Yes, I think Melvin said originally that they were planning to, or Dutch Pinball were planning to reveal Back to the Future or whatever their second title is at Pinball Expo this year. Right. Right, okay. That doesn't mean production is starting right now. No, it doesn't, no. I'm sure they must have had enough time to work on prototypes that they can bring sample games that they can bring to help promote the game and launch it right we also discussed Hexa Pinball they already announced the three musketeers and they're hoping to bring working prototypes to the Texas Pinball Festival show that's right so So, yeah, which they already said is not based on any films or cartoons of the theme. They're creating all their own content for that.
    131:59
    Yes. And last but not least, apparently, there are two new US-based companies expected to announce their first games as well somewhere this year. So, quite a long list. And if you're talking about overkill in the pinball market. Yes, I was on the line.
    132:25
    Yeah, I'd be interested to see whether the market is as big as that list of upcoming titles. Yes, it's quite a difficult market to launch into, I'd have thought now. Not because there's one dominant company like there was when Jack started up, as he was saying. I was going to say, it's not like 15 years ago. No, it was the exact opposite. Now, so many companies in there, it's always hard to get your voice heard if you launch a new title.
    132:54
    Yeah. So, well, that's the list I made so far of upcoming titles. I may have missed one or two companies. Like I said I know that Quetzal Is working on A new game Not necessarily To be produced by Bitronic No We're still waiting For Bitronic To actually ramp up Production for Tokyo Perfect Drift Yeah We've seen lots of Machines An awful lot of Cabinets And machines in production We just don't know Where they've all gone We haven't seen them Well maybe They never left the country Yeah Well, it'd be nice if they actually did make them, and they're out there somewhere.
    133:44
    So not in the list is, of course, Pimple Adventures, who are working on Elements. Well, we don't know if they're working on Elements. Well, they're sleeping on Elements. Yeah, they had worked on it, but yeah. What's going to happen with that, we don't know. And as you said, we don't know what Homepin are working on either.
    134:05
    No, we don't. we know the fact that people in Australia are working on several new things. We mentioned in our previous one of the... Yeah, that's coming, but I yet have to see those games leave the Australian territory, so to speak, and cross over to Europe or America.
    134:32
    Yeah, I think they've basically been been, up until Wilson Space, have been Australian themed titles based on Holden Cars, which isn't a brand outside Australia, and a particular racing driver who's unknown outside Australia.
    134:54
    Yeah, Abel Fury. Of course, nobody plays pool outside of Australia. Yeah, alright. Fair enough. Good point. Okay, well I think that rounds up our list of rumoured titles coming up in 2026 And we will revisit this at this time next year And see exactly how true or false those rumours turned out to be And if they're false, don't blame us, we're only reporting what's been rumoured We're not creating any rumours of our own Although, maybe we should No, no we shouldn't Okay, so other news You may remember we've spoken in the past about the annual dispatch publication from Ryan Claytor and his Elephant Eater Comics brand. Well, those all got sent out. And the next item from Ryan is a new storage box to store the first and future editions of annual dispatch publications. There's going to be an annual event, believe it or not, given the title. So this box should be able to store multiple copies of this year's, or last year's, this year's and future years' editions of Annual Dispatch. He's been showing some of the progress and development he's been doing on his website and on social media. The box isn't available just yet, but should be available soon, through the Elephant Eater Comics website. at elephanteater.com So if you bought your annual dispatch publication, which is like a tabloid size paper, and are looking for somewhere to store it, keep it safe, outside in addition to the protective cover that it comes in, you should soon be able to get a box for it.
    136:47
    Okay. Interesting. And then... Other news. Well, yeah, other news. Back to France. our friends from Pinsand have launched their Eli how do you pronounce it? I don't know, Elio Dot?
    137:08
    I'm guessing a replacement dot matrix display with orange LEDs with a high refresh rate to eliminate flicker on video cameras so clever so if you're streaming your old dot matrix is display games, then this might be interesting for you to make sure that you get the right animations on camera. Yes, and I've got that roll bar running through it and all animations are torn.
    137:38
    It's still the original 128x32 dot matrix resolution. It uses individual LEDs, so it's not like the Color DMD where it can smooth that using an LCD screen. These are actual LED dots. It's priced at £159.95 UK pounds, but that's all I could get because it's one of those websites that automatically converts your local currency and you can't see the price in other countries. Even if you use a VPN, it didn't seem to work. So I wanted to see what the original price was. It was US dollars.
    138:15
    There was a 10% discount that was available at the launch. I think it was only for the first 20 units I think it's expired. But anyway, interesting new product from Pinsound with a replacement DMD display in just an orange. No other colours currently available.
    138:33
    Okay. And that's it, I think, from our other news section, unless Jonathan is typing in any new ones right now. I'm trying to look up the Pinsound website.
    138:48
    Can't find it. Oh, dear. Okay Hopefully it's still out there And it's just your connection But yeah I'm sure it'll be available And we will expect to see them Probably at the Texas Fimble Festival If not Not too late Oh yeah It's always Always nice To catch up with With Nicholas Yeah Even if it's only for just 20 minutes Yes Well I'm sure we'll probably end up Going out for Some barbecue somewhere Not with Nicholas Oh no That's true No And that has more to do with his eating diet, or preferences, whatever you want to call it. Yes.
    139:30
    And I'm definitely eating barbecue. Or at least the meat of bologna. Yes. Assuming you make it to Texas, of course. Yeah, true. Ooh, heartache.
    139:43
    Barbecue. I thought that was no longer the place to go to. Yeah, well, we've seen it Okay, right Anyway Moving on I think we've pretty much covered all the news in the pinball industry In December 2025 And the first couple of days And we had a great interview with Jack Yes, big thanks to Jack for helping celebrate his 15th anniversary Of the announcement of his company and we always enjoy talking to Jack and always good fun and we have a great time. So, anyway, we'll be back then at the start of February 2026 in a whole month's time with our very next Pincast looking back at all the events in the pinball industry throughout this month of January. So, including EAG Expo. Including any news that comes out of there and who knows, we may have a special interview from that or two. You never know. So, until then, from me, Martin Ayer of Pinball News.
    140:51
    And me, Jonathan Houston of Pinball Magazine. We wish you more J's, a joyous January, and look forward to joining you again starting next month for the next edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast. So, bye for now. Bye-bye.