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Episode 52 - 2017 Year-End Review

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 2m·held·Jan 1, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

2017 pinball year-end review focusing on Stern's output and community tournament organization.

Summary

This is a 2017 year-end review podcast from Eclectic Gamers covering video games and pinball. Hosts Tony and Dennis discuss their gaming habits, personal stories (including a small claims court case), organize a community pinball tournament with 16 machines, and review Stern's 2017 output (Aerosmith, Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy, AC/DC Vault Edition). They assess game quality, code updates, and speculate on future releases including possible Black Knight trilogy game.

Key Claims

  • Stern had three tentpole games in 2017: Aerosmith, Star Wars, and Guardians of the Galaxy, plus AC/DC Vault Edition

    high confidence · Dennis discussing Stern's 2017 lineup in year-end review section

  • Star Wars received significant code updates that improved gameplay substantially from initial release

    high confidence · Both Tony and Dennis discuss Star Wars reaching 'final code status' and being 'far better' than initial versions

  • Steve Ritchie next game is rumored to be unlicensed and possibly his last

    medium confidence · Dennis: 'the rumor mill is that his next game is unlicensed and that his next game is his last'

  • Stern was possibly planning to announce Guardians of the Galaxy at Expo but didn't, possibly due to competition from Jersey Jack's Pirates announcement

    medium confidence · Dennis speculates: 'Some people think they didn't because Jersey Jack was announcing Pirates, and they didn't want the competition'

  • Aerosmith felt the most complete and polished of Stern's 2017 releases

    high confidence · Both hosts express preference for Aerosmith over other 2017 Stern releases

Notable Quotes

  • “I think Aerosmith is my favorite Stern game this year. I think it's the one that feels the most done.”

    Tony @ ~59:00 — Direct assessment of 2017 Stern game quality, establishing Aerosmith as standout title

  • “It is a far better game than what we initially saw. It's like Walking Dead. Walking Dead will never be a top ten game on Pinside in a large part because a lot of people rated it before it got its code.”

    Tony @ ~62:00 — Critical observation about code quality's impact on game reputation and community ratings

  • “the rumor mill is that his next game is unlicensed and that his next game is his last”

    Dennis @ ~64:00 — Industry rumor about Steve Ritchie's future retirement and unlicensed game plans

  • “I've not played either of these in any format, so I'm not going to vote on it. I'll skip it.”

    Tony @ ~48:00 — Demonstrates tournament voting methodology and transparency about experience levels

  • “You don't get to cheat me. I don't care if it costs me hundreds of dollars. I'll drag you back in and crush your credit rating and bleed you out until I get what I'm owed.”

    Dennis @ ~25:00 — Personal story about litigation philosophy; Dennis advocates legal recourse for scams and disputes

Entities

Stern PinballcompanySteve RitchiepersonJersey Jack PinballcompanyStar Wars (Stern 2017)gameAerosmithgameGuardians of the GalaxygameAC/DC Vault EditiongameWalking Deadgame

Signals

  • ?

    code_update: Star Wars and Walking Dead both received substantial code improvements that transformed community perception and playability, but negative early ratings permanently damaged their Pinside rankings

    high · Tony: 'It is a far better game than what we initially saw...Walking Dead will never be a top ten game on Pinside in a large part because a lot of people rated it before it got its code'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern returned to normal production after 2016 delays, executing full-year release schedule with three tentpole games and vault edition

    high · Dennis: 'they had their three tentpole games, Aerosmith, Star Wars, Guardians. They had a new vault edition, ACDC. So they had the whole announcement gambit that seemed to run pretty much on schedule'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Industry rumors suggest Steve Ritchie's next game will be unlicensed and potentially his final design before retirement

    medium · Dennis: 'the rumor mill is that his next game is unlicensed and that his next game is his last...supposedly what the other, all the other podcasts, they're saying that it will be a third, it will seal off a trilogy of Black Knight'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Possible strategic delay of Guardians announcement to avoid competition with Jersey Jack Pirates announcement, though hosts believe technical readiness more likely explanation

    medium · Dennis: 'Some people think they didn't because Jersey Jack was announcing Pirates...Others thought it just wasn't ready yet'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Star Wars has non-standard layout compared to other games and designers, not in top tier of Steve Ritchie designs despite improvements

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.368

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 31st, and this is episode 52. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. We're going to wrap the year up. That's right. It's the 2017 year-end review, Tony. I know. We put it in right at the right time. I mean, it's the actual last day of the year. That's pretty good. We'll wipe it. We didn't have to do anything fancy to make it work out that way. No, no. And we're live in person again. Yes. Not live to the audience because we don't do that. Yeah, no, we don't do that. This is a podcast. This isn't radio. But so it's been two weeks since our prior episode, and we'll go ahead and do our intro. What's been going on?
0:57
I have an addiction. Yes It's terrible I have all of these beautiful games From Christmas and from before You know, Breath of the Wild, beautiful game Lots of fun You spoke highly of it last episode I also picked up off this theme sale The Long Dark, which is a survival horror game Yeah, I've heard of that Should be playing some more of that I've got a couple other things in my thing I should be playing I picked up another one of those spreadsheet-y... Not in space. No, no, this one's not spreadsheets in space. This one is spreadsheets in 1900 naval policy. So, basically, I play the head of a major nation naval setup from 1900 to 1925. It's called Rule the Waves. And it is very much The graphics could full on I could see these graphics on an old 46 I mean it is It looks like just old Windows 3.1 panels that are up In front of you That you work with I can't Something about this style of game I spent like Three hours the other day just staring And tweaking a ship to get it just right And decided I'm going to wait a couple more months to see what new technology I get and just erased it and kept going. So, I don't know. I don't know what it is about this style of game, this 4X. This isn't even a 4X, really. This just this type of game, like Aurora 4X, or Rule the Waves, or this type of game, man, there's something about them that just really gets their hooks in me. I haven't played a lot of Breath of the Wild like I have. I mean, I've played some, but not as much as I should because I've been sitting here staring, going, hmm, I wonder if this would be better if I went to 5 inch guns instead of 4 inch guns I was just thinking while you were describing that and your comparison to Aurora I don't think we've ever defined 4X on the podcast and I don't know if all the listeners know what that means that's a valid point, a 4X game is expand, explore exterminate, and something else that I And Excel. I don't remember what the fourth one is. Basically, it's like Civilization Games. Right. Or a lot of the RTS style. Right. It's a strategy format. Yeah. I just thought about that. I was like, you know, historically it wasn't a term I ever used. What is it now? It's Explore, Expand, Exterminate is the last one. Exchange. I don't think it's Exchange. Exclaim. Excelsior.
Tron
game
Pinsideorganization
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Ballycompany
Gottliebcompany
Williamscompany

medium · Tony: 'I think it's got an interesting layout. I don't think Star Wars feels like a lot of other games from a layout perspective, but it's a game I still don't really understand'

  • $

    market_signal: AC/DC Vault Edition selected as smart vault choice; Walking Dead and Tron also discussed as potential vault candidates

    high · Dennis: 'I think ACDC vaulted was probably their best choice for something to vault right now'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Hosts discuss music pinball games as category; Aerosmith unexpected success despite not being music-focused enthusiasts

    medium · Tony: 'I'm not a huge Aerosmith guy. I'm not a music pen guy...But I have to say, out of all of this, I have to say Aerosmith was my favorite hit'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community-organized pinball tournament with 16 machines (down from 20 submissions with duplicates and top-200 exclusions), using random seeding

    high · Dennis organized 'Shane Tournament' with listener-submitted games; 20 proposals yielded 18 unique, down to 16 after top-200 filtering

    • 3:52
    I'm right. My lexicon is getting limited. Yeah, it's Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. Exploit. Well, that makes it sound very negative. Yeah.
    4:03
    Okay. Because the term was coined by Alan Emrich in his September 1993 review of Master of Orion, the original Master of Orion. You played a lot of Mewtwo. I played a ton of Mewtwo. Yes. I did not play those games.
    4:22
    Well, so, you know, actually, and maybe it'll highlight when we do a plan for our next episode, because we'll be just shy of our one-year anniversary then, to do our analytics. But I remember going and seeing, and people would go back and listen to the, or new people, I don't know who, would go and listen to the Spreadsheets in Space episode that was titled that. And that always just stood out to me because it's an older episode from earlier this year. but it apparently had legs. So I guess there may be this whole 4X with a spreadsheet segment. It could be. I don't know. It is a definite. You're a little cult. It could be. This game, I mean, it has no graphics. I mean, its graphics are just simple as can be. But for some reason, I'm just up there and tweak your budget and tweak how you deal with other nations and the like. Now, the interesting thing is it does let you use a top-down map view to do the combat. So you are doing combat. Right, right. But, yeah, I don't know.
    5:32
    All these beautiful games in this dark thing holds me. That's about all I've played game-wise of any form. But you got new games for Christmas.
    5:42
    Yes. You made it sound like you did. The long dart. Okay. Just what you bought on the Steam sale. Yeah. Okay. No, I got a backpack for Christmas. Oh.
    5:55
    What's a nice backpack, though? What's not... I got more than that. I got... I actually... I lied to you. I did get a game for Christmas. I got Rocket League on the Switch. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've been playing a little bit more of that, but not as much. I actually... Well, I got three games for Christmas. So I got Plants vs. Zombies, Garden Warfare 2. I think that's the game. Plants vs. Zombies. Yeah, Zombies. Well, they're kind of cutesy zombies. I played the first one. My sister and brother-in-law played it, especially my sister. It's a third-person shooter, and she really likes to play it. So I've had it on my list for a while, but I prefer the first-person style, so it's not been a priority game. I got that, I got Quantum Break and I got South Park Fractured Butthole Quantum Break? Wasn't that it was the big summer game last year that has the movies it's got Littlefinger yeah, that's what I was thinking, so those are my three Christmas games that reviewed horribly it reviewed okay I think by the people who did Alan Wake was a good game and I don't think it will end up topping Island Wake, but it is what it is. The movie stuff is a little lowball, a little low rent feeling.
    7:19
    And then Steam Sale I did buy, I think it was season five of the Pinball Arcade. I always wait for them to at least be half off. And that was, I think, the one season that was half off that I didn't yet have. And Papers, Please. Oh, I've played papers, please. It ain't got no graphics either. No, no, no. But it's a really interesting game. Yeah. So those are the games I bought. Now, I haven't, I've been off for almost two weeks now. Normally I take off the time between Christmas and New Year's, and we do, we have our, we gave up other holidays, so we have all the eves off of the, of like New Year's Eve and stuff, so usually that just takes three days, but I took three more days on top of that. So, I have been, and this time I was like, it's time to catch up. I have had too many games sitting in a pile, especially post-birthday. You know, I still had Seven Days to Die from the prior year. And it's just like, so I'm going to tear through stuff. That was the plan. Now, I started Seven Days to Die, and I put it away because it sucked. Holy crap. I played it less than 10 minutes, and it made me want to puke. It's so ugly. It's such an obvious PC port, and it feels clunky, like they didn't even try to make the menus friendly to a controller. So, and I'm not going to go into the details on any of these games. I'll save them for the next episode. I just want to highlight, I want you to know how hard I've been working while you've been playing with your spreadsheet on a ship, a regular ship instead of a spaceship. I have finished Wolfenstein 2, which, you know, I've been working on for a month or so. I started and finished the campaign in Halo Wars 2, the RTS game. I started and finished South Park's Stick of Truth because I got a free code with Fractured But Whole oh you never played Stick of Truth no I had not so I won that and I started and finished Resident Evil 7's campaign I started and finished all of the story missions and Clash vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 which is what I just finished before you came over I have started Quantum Break but I have not finished it yet and I have started Papers Please's story mode, but I'm only maybe five or six days into it. Wow. You've been busy. Yes. We will cover those on a future episode because we are going to be too busy doing a year-end review to really talk about the well, what's been us a six-day review? I don't normally put in this aggressively on games.
    9:52
    The only other thing I thought I'd note before we go ahead and go into the pinball segment is and I've never covered this on the podcast, but you, of course, are aware of this. This happened just a few months before we started, but my deck was rotting out on the house. So there was someone we had gone to high school with that I knew who was running a deck slash fence building company. And long story short, I hired him to do the deck. I paid him most of the project money, and he accomplished very little effort, just left all tools in my yard and quit communicating with me. So that was just over two years ago. And what has been noteworthy is I have started to receive my money back. It's way too soon to say that it's all entirely settled. However, in late October, I finally had realized, because he quit communicating with me, what happened was I, and this is why I advocate, and this why I'm bringing it up now. This is why I've always advocated to people who have lost money on PINs to consider legal avenues if you really, you know, want your money, or at least some of your money, or at least to send a message. So, you know, this was unacceptable. I had paid, oh, he'd gotten just under three grand from me. He'd done some work, so I didn't want it all back, but I needed some of it back, most of it back. So, in October of 2015, I took him to small claims court. He didn't show up, so I had a default judgment of, oh, I don't remember, about $2,100 is probably $2,150 or so, I think, is the amount I was awarded, plus court costs.
    11:33
    And I tried to get his assets, but then he moved, and I didn't have any – I had no information. His business was him. There was nothing – there was no wages I was aware of, so it's sort of like you're out of luck. Yeah. And then I learned that he, I finally, he kind of resurfaced in social media. So I was able to find out, oh, here's where you work now. I'll serve you at work because I needed this asset form. He showed up for the asset form. He apologized and said, I want you to garnish my wages because I owe everybody money, and it's the only way you're going to be on a payment schedule. It's like, okay, that's what we'll do then. So that garnishment process I thought would start in November. It did not. However, it has since started since our last episode, and one of the payments was sent certified mail, and it was kind of delayed by the post office, so I didn't – I basically had three – I'm getting a check a week now. Yeah. So I've had three payments. At this rate, they're on average what I've seen between them. They'll probably get me paid off in about a year would be my guess. So then you're getting a new pinball machine. Well, this isn't enough for a new pinball machine. Hold on. New news. I'll have to. I'll get something. But you see, but the. It's a down payment on the TNA. That's what it is. It could be. But the. But anyway, it's been. Yeah, it's been interesting. So, well, while the money's coming in, I've frozen doing anything else. But there was. I mean, the court. It wasn't just the court. The court fees are like a hundred and some dollars. Yeah. There was one percent a month interest for noncompliance.
    13:12
    So he doesn't owe me twenty one hundred anymore. He owes me twenty eight hundred. and I've been very transparent about it. This is how much it is and this is how much was your interest and this is how much were your court fees. And I didn't charge him the court fees on the garnishment. It was just everything up until that point. So hopefully he doesn't change jobs so I don't have to refile all this stuff. But he has been communicating with me and once that's paid, you know, assuming it gets paid off, then I consider it settled. But you don't not finish decks for me. Maybe that's the moral. do what you're going to do or I gave him all sorts of options give me the materials and I'll write it all off because I could use the lumber, the plans were good I ended up hiring someone else using his design and finished the deck which I liked the new deck it ended up costing yeah, it ended up costing more than any deck ever should but anyway, that's way enough of an intro But that's probably why I was just thinking, why do I always sort of come across as semi-litigious when it comes to this pinball stuff in particular? And I was like, that's because that's what I do. If you get screwed, that's what the legal system is for, is to take them in, even if it's a small amount. And in Kansas, like, I don't know what the threshold of small claims is, 4 or 6K or so, something in that neighborhood. And so it's like, and it's a pain. Yeah. And that's why it's such a, I mean, because when I wasn't getting the stuff back from the employer, it's like, then that's on the employer. I'm like, why have they not, they had 14 days. They didn't respond in 14 days. After 40 days, I would be allowed to then try and transfer the debt to them and say, you didn't comply. You don't care. It's your burden now. Which kind of would have been nice, but every time. That would have been hilarious. I would have to show back up to court for every single step. And it's so exhausting. But on the flip side, it's like, no. You don't get to cheat. You don't get to cheat me. I don't care if it costs me hundreds of dollars. I'll drag you back in and crush your credit rating and bleed you out until I get what I'm owed. I'll spend more money than I'm owed just to make sure you know. I would have. I was mad enough. I would have. I was. I'm not saying that that's the right answer. But in this case, it was pretty easy because, again, the court fees were under $200 total all in so far. And this was an amount, you know, 10 times that. Yeah. So it made sense for me. vengeance is mine, sayeth the dentist. Well, I'm not trying to be vindictive. I'm very sympathetic. He had his reasons. Life happens.
    15:49
    I'm sure he is in a lot of debt to a lot of people. But I'm starting to finally see something. It only took two years.
    15:57
    Speaking of something that did not remotely take two years, let's go ahead and do our, before we do our year-end review, we're in the pinball segment now. Let's do our Shane Tournament round one. We've been talking about it for almost a month. Almost. We've been, I mean, between behind the scenes talking about it, the actual surface has been since November. Yes, yes. We had a listener suggested this concept, and it was a really, I thought it was a really keen idea. It just took us a while to hammer out how we were going to, now it makes me think of Commander Keen, another game with no good graphics, but fun. so I closed off a few days ago the write-in submission process we had 20 games that were proposed now two of those were duplicates we had two different people suggest Raven to us and two different people suggest Hardbody to us so that brings the count down to 18 however we had two people who didn't follow the rules and they suggested games that are too popular Avatar and Stern's Indiana Jones are in the top 200 people, so we can't use them in the tournament. As much as we might, they're too good. We want to. I knew Avatar was in the top 200. I do confess I was a bit surprised that Stern Indiana was, but it was.
    17:15
    So we're going to have a 16 machine bank to go through. I used random.org to match them up, So they're not seeded based off of where they were ranked on Pennside or anything. Just a couple other highlights before we walk through the games and our picks on them, like we like to do. We did have one EM that is in the competition. EMs were allowed as long as they weren't in the top 100 on Pennside. And that EM was one we talked about very, very briefly when Nick was here guest hosting. And that's Valley's infamous El Toro. El Toro, or as you might remember me calling it, El Boro. because that is what it's, not El Burro, which would be a donkey, or is that a mule? I don't know.
    18:01
    And, sorry, you know, I had two years of Spanish, and I still can't. I'm just terrible with it. And then there was one game that it didn't have enough votes on Pennside to be ranked, and so it's not in the top 200, so we got to be in, and that is one of the street-level games that Premier did, Vegas. It's a John Norris game. Vegas, baby. That's right. So, with our 16 games that are in the tournament, here is what the first round is. And we'll just go through it one by one.
    18:30
    First matchup is Hardbody. 87 game from Valley is up against the Valley Game Show, which is Valley Williams 1990. I've not played either. Okay.
    18:42
    403 Club has Valley Game Show right now. I knew because I remember seeing that comment come in that they haven't, but I haven't been to 403 in a while. It's been a couple months since it arrived, yeah. I've not played Hard Body.
    18:57
    It's one of those that I think is kind of known for its back glass, which in a lot of ways people will see it and they'll assume that it's a golly.
    19:05
    Because they did a photo translate. Yeah. However, I will go ahead and vote on this one anyway, because I actually have enjoyed Bally Game Show now that I've had a chance to play it. It feels very full. The shots, they're not the best, but they're enjoyable. It's got a fun little sound setup. Ding, ding. Yeah. So very game show-y is how it comes across. All right, next matchup, WWE WrestleMania, the Stern 2015 game. And that's up against Rescue 911, which was a high production, dollar production effort by Gottlieb in 94,
    19:43
    which I think I maybe have played once. I don't know if I've played it or not But man, I have a hard time finding something as terrible as WWE Yeah, and that's kind of my thinking I still remember, I can still in my mind Hear the groans of whoever was randomly assigned WWE for tournament at 403 Because when I first started doing tournaments at 403 WWE was there, and no one liked it Including me I didn't like it, and here's the thing though I don't think I ever lost on it No I lost a lot on it I do remember In specifics That game for whatever reason I won that game I think Probably not every time it came up In tournament play but enough For it to be memorable You just mastered the upper play field That was your secret I don't know if you can really master that thing You must have because you kept winning But Rescue 911's got a helicopter on it. Oh, well, they're right there. Helicopter. Yeah. Now, next one or two I definitely have played. South Park, a Sega 99 game, versus Raven, Gottlieb 86. Yep. I've played both of those.
    21:04
    I actually lean Raven on this. Oh, I do too. It's not even a lean. I will go and say Raven. I just, South Park, I remember the first time I stepped up to it, and it just kept going. Yeah. I just kept going and going and going and going and shooting the toilet over and over and over, and that was all there was to it. Yeah. Raven is ugly. It sounds are laughable, but the layout was, at least it let me shoot different stuff. And the other thing with South Park is the continually repeating call-outs actually get super, super annoying. really quick. I have not been on it long enough to just appreciate it. There is a bar and grill that has it just a couple blocks from my house.
    21:51
    Sitting there eating breakfast in the morning while somebody's playing on it can get annoying after a while. Now, I have heard if you have a route, that is a game you want because people will drop quarters into it. I can understand that. But, no, for in my home, No, I would rather have Raven.
    22:11
    All right, next one. Genie, the Gottlieb 79 game versus Time Fantasy, Williams 83. The only Williams game in this, incidentally. I've not played Time Fantasy. I think I played Genie in Texas. It sounds familiar. Well, Genie's in Pinball Arcade also. Oh, I could have played it in Pinball Arcade too. I've definitely played it a lot virtually. It has been at some shows.
    22:37
    Because I know it and I don't actually hate it, it is a wide body. I think the entire left half is stupid. Well, because it's just more of that waterfall nonsense, you know, where it's just a bunch of in lanes. Oh, look, you can't have any lane change, so you have to somehow get the ball. People will probably tell them, oh, but it's a nudger's game. It's a nudger's game. No, it's a no one's game. But I like the right half, and that's something. and without having any experience on Time Fantasy, you know, it is what it is. Yeah, no, makes sense. Next matchup, Genesis, Gottlieb 86 versus Roller Coaster Tycoon, Stern 2002. I saw Roller Coaster Tycoon at Mass Street Soda when I went up to Mass a couple weeks ago. I did not play it because I had no quarters because I'd only had two quarters to go into the parking meter in front because I was going in because they're a specialty soda shop. I was going in to buy some sodas. So I didn't have any quarters with me to play it. But I saw it. It looks terrible.
    23:46
    I've played it in Texas. Have you? I've played more than one. And here's the thing. I think I mentioned this once, one of the times Don was guest hosting. Because I think this is a game that Don, an underappreciated game that Don liked. Yeah. When we did that way back in 2016. But I've never played one that worked right. They've all been broken. Genesis, I've never played in person. I have played it virtually. I have it on my cab.
    24:15
    It's sort of, Genesis is most commonly compared to is a poor man's bride of pin bop. I think you actually have to shoot for more stuff on Genesis, though, honestly. It's like a worse sound package, worse art design, and better rules. But nobody's kicked out a $12,000 Version of it, upgrade version Of it yet No, not yet We're going to have a lot of fun in the year end But I'm going to go Genesis on this Also the rollercoaster tycoon Troll doll You want to talk about annoying repetitive The little trolls that Girls stuck on the ends of their erasers They're back No, yes There was this brand new Trolls movie I thought those were like a different breed of troll It's the same bloody thing. Okay, well.
    24:59
    Anyway, I guess Robocop 2 and Haikun is back. That was last year. It never made sense why there was a troll. It's based on a video game that didn't have troll in it. I know, because I liked the video game. It was a good video game. All right, next up. Big Buck Hunter Pro, Stern 2010, versus El Toro, Bally 72. I've not played either of these in any format, so I'm not going to vote on it. I'll skip it. All right, next up. Dolly Parton, Bally 79, versus Silver Slugger, Gottlieb 1990.
    25:29
    Well, this one's easy for me. If I've played Dolly, I've played it once. Silver Slugger is a much better game than it gets credit for. It's only not liked because it's not known. Yeah. It is ranked. They made it up of them that apparently Penn Slugger is actually able to muster itself to rank it. But come on, it's got three spinners.
    25:51
    I like Silver Slugger. It's fine. I think that's where I would go to, but just because I don't think I've ever played Dolly Parton. At the same time, why is there a Dolly Parton pinball machine?
    26:02
    She was, I mean, it was 79. Oh, that's true. It was 79. This was like back around when Ted Nugent got his own machine. Yeah. That was laser. Elton John had a machine.
    26:13
    Yeah, that was just the thing back then, I guess. Yep, that's what she did. Last matchup. Sharky shootout, Stern 2000 game versus Vegas, which mentioned earlier was a premier 1990. I'll be honest, I'm amazed Sharky's is on this list. I'm amazed Sharky's wasn't knocked out due to rankings. Yeah, Sharky's, unfortunately on this computer I don't have the spreadsheet with me. I did write down what the pin side ranks were. I think Sharky's is sitting around 230 or so when I gave the numbers. So it's a little too low to have been disqualified. Not a lot of votes on it. again, it's one of those games, I mean, I think Stern only made 800 of them, so some of that is going to be lack of exposure. Could be. I mean, what is up against Vegas wasn't even ranked. And that's the second most produced street-level game that Gottlieb did was Vegas. But for me, it's easy. Sharky's a good game. I love it. The Vegas layout looks interesting to me. I haven't played it. But it was never intriguing enough to be like hoops where I'd be like, I'd be interested in owning it. Yeah. And I was interested enough in Sharky's because it's borrowing from the best, April Deluxe.
    27:24
    So anyway, those are the matchups. We'll have a link in the show notes to let you guys go and cast the vote in round one, and we'll run that for about two weeks like usual, and then we'll move on to round two.
    27:36
    Okay, Tony. We're ready for Pinball's 2017 year-end review. I thought the best way would probably be just to sort of go down by manufacturer because that's sort of how we define the hobby, broadly speaking. Yeah, I can see that. And then afterwards, if there's anything else before we move into the video games outside of those manufacturers, we can hit on that stuff. That makes perfect sense to me. All right, well, let's start with the big dog. That's Stern. I would describe it as this was a return to what Stern has often advertised as their ideal, pure, production-full year. last year, there were a lot of delays. Some of it, it was probably a mix of Ghostbusters was so red hot as a property in terms of demand, coupled with all the Playfield clear coat issues. It seemed like everything, the schedule, the production schedule was all behind. And there was also that whole LCD thing where it seems like they shifted production schedules around it so Batman dropped with it. Yeah, with very alpha code.
    28:47
    2016 was a little weird. 2017, though, they had their three tentpole games, Aerosmith, Star Wars, Guardians. They had a new vault edition, ACDC. So they had the whole announcement gambit that seemed to run pretty much on schedule. The only thing I know of is some people felt that Guardians should have and probably was planned to be announced at Expo and wasn't. Yeah. Some people think they didn't because Jersey Jack was announcing Pirates, and they didn't want the competition. Others thought it just wasn't ready yet, and they needed to have the next two or three weeks to finish that off before they. I lean that way because I don't really think the competition thing would worry them as much.
    29:29
    So I guess just some thoughts on the games. What do you think of Aerosmith? I think with the balance that I have not played Guardians of the Galaxy yet, Aerosmith is my favorite Stern game this year. I think it's the one that feels the most done. It is the oldest, but I thought it felt the most done out of the box. Yeah, the first one I played felt solid. I mean, at the launch party, it felt solid. I was disappointed I didn't get to go to the Guardians launch party, and I haven't really had a chance to play Guardians yet. But I have to say, out of all of this, I have to say Aerosmith was my favorite hit. For me, I was surprised I liked it as much as I liked it. Yeah, because I'm not a huge Aerosmith guy. I'm not a music pen guy. No, I'm not. I mean, the ACDC vault is solid to me because ACDC is probably my favorite music pen that Skirn has put out. But I'm not a big music guy. I mean, I know it, but I don't care enough, and the music pens don't mean that much to me. Right.
    30:35
    Broadly I agree with all that So makes sense then you think ACDC vaulted Yeah I think ACDC vaulted was probably their best choice for something to vault right now Yeah. I would not be surprised to see Walking Dead vaulted. I wouldn't given some of the announcement stuff. It's just Walking Dead only just, I mean, they were still making them earlier this year. I know. Well, that's why, I mean, next year, I wouldn't be surprised to even see it as early as next year. From the collector standpoint, Tron is the obvious. I think Walking Dead's the better game.
    31:13
    I agree. I actually don't like the gameplay on Tron that much. Yeah. I mean, if I want a hard Borg layout, I'd rather have Iron Man, which they already evolved into. Yes. So, I don't love Tron, but a lot of people do, and they didn't make a whole ton of them. and I don't think it's that hard of a license to get. No, I don't think so.
    31:35
    Star Wars. Thoughts on Star Wars? The biggest disappointment for a lot of people. It was a disappointment. I've only played a game, maybe two, on the new 1.0 rules. They're better. I've played two games on it. Yeah, it's pretty much universally, I would say, agreed that now that it's reached final code status, It is a far better game than what we initially saw.
    32:05
    It's like Walking Dead. Walking Dead will never be a top ten game on Pinside in a large part because a lot of people rated it before it got its code. Right. And it had, apparently, I never played it on bad code, but it had bad code where people didn't think it was a fun game. Where it didn't make sense to do certain shots. and then it got remastered, revised, and added depth, and it turned into a great game.
    32:33
    I think it's got an interesting layout. I don't think Star Wars feels like a lot of other games from a layout perspective, but it's a game I still don't really understand, and it's not at the top of my list of Steve Ritchie designs. So, the rumor mill is that his next game is unlicensed and that his next game is his last.
    32:59
    Hmm. And if you want to know what you mean by unlicensed, supposedly what the other, all the other podcasts, they're saying that it will be a third, it will seal off a trilogy of Black Knight. but I, you know, whether Stern bought the license from Black Knight to do, I mean, that's, I like Black Knight, Black Knight 2000, but I don't know. I, you know, I don't know if he's really retiring after that. He's old enough to. Yeah. He wants, you know. It could be high speed three.
    33:36
    That was the second most popular guess. High speed three, the super getaway again. I like those high-speed games. I would prefer a third in the high-speed series than I would Black Knight. Yeah. Because Black Knight is going to have an upper play field, and I'm going to hate it. So give me a turbo ramp instead.
    34:00
    Okay, and Guardians, you haven't played yet. I haven't played yet. Of these games, I like the layout on Guardians the best. I don't have enough time in on it to really form a lot of an opinion. I think it looks really good. It sounds really good. Its beta code feels less beta-y than Star Wars did. Star Wars beta code was alpha. Yeah. But, you know, Guardians is still pre-full release, too. Which, I mean, this is the weirdness with Stern Pinball, where it seems like they're on the seesaw of, okay, now they're doing really good court support. Now they're doing really bad court support. I mean, the end of the year here has been a lot of high praise because Batman 66 has come legions of or I should say leagues, leagues in distance and legions of fans are excited and say, oh, just like we knew we had trust in it and it's great.
    34:57
    And then... Where's the kiss code? Yeah, and then where's the kiss code? And why did oh, Star Wars was looking great now but why was it so bare bones when it was released? You know, So that's that walk that they've had. And there were the issues with cabinets falling apart. That kind of plagued the Aerosmith run. In fact, the one at 403 has been replaced or got a replacement in because the cabinet was splitting. And then there were more clear-code issues, not on Aerosmith, but on Star Wars. And it's like, I don't know. I think a lot of those issues are probably a supply line type issue. But unfortunately, it makes the company look bad. I understand. And on the code-to-game thing, I almost wonder if they don't have enough solid coders to keep up with their gaming needs. I've wondered that as well. Because it seems like the coders they do have are being stretched thin to work on a whole bunch of projects to the point where this game is mechanically finished, we haven't even started the code on it type stuff. Right. And to my knowledge, Stern has three primary programmers at this point. I don't know if they have additional support staff. There's Lyman Sheets, who's done things like, he's been, his year has been spent supposedly almost entirely on the Batman 66 code, though he would have been responsible most likely for that massive update to Walking Dead as well. Then there's Lonnie Ropp, I know he did the Aerosmith code. And then there's Dwight Sullivan, who did the code on, I don't know if he did the Star Wars code. I'm guessing he did. Sullivan and somebody else. I looked at Star Wars just the other, just earlier. Yeah, he did Ghostbusters as well, I think.
    36:41
    He's the one who likes to use the flashers a lot. So that's your clue. So anyway, yeah, maybe they just need some more coders. I don't know. They probably don't want to pay them, though. There's always that.
    36:57
    It's just a question of keeping up with that schedule. And that doesn't count if the animation assets and such are what are taking up all the time now that they've gone LCD. but I think that's sort of a different department. Let's see, Pinside's showing Dwight Sullivan and Weiss and Ching. Okay. That's probably... I'm guessing Sullivan is the lead. Yeah. The other guy's been on Game of Thrones and Kiss and WWE. Okay, so they have subordinate programmers. Makes sense. You need some code slangers.
    37:30
    Oh, so he's been there a while. Brooks and Dunn for Gottlieb. That never was released. No. Oh, yeah. Galadriel. What should we do? Brooks and Don. Let's do Brooks and Don. That's the ACDC of our generation.
    37:47
    Okay, so I think that's it for Stern. Obviously, they've had a very full year. Let's talk a little bit about Chicago Gaming. We were at Texas Pinball Festival where they revealed and allowed the public to play the Attack from Mars remakes. I enjoyed it so much. That game has gone over very well. I think it felt a lot better for them than the medieval release, which felt like there were a bunch of issues.
    38:20
    Yeah. I mean, I remember with the medieval release, there were a lot of delays. Right. And that was when they had to rely on Stern's assembly line to work in getting medievals rolling. And now they're building them themselves. but it's been good and that topper was awesome and the new screens they put together those high def screens that feature I think is what is going over I was going to say so well but I want to rephrase it a little I think that is sometimes what makes some people say I'd rather have the remake because a color dnd isn't going to match that ColorDV is just colorizing the same quality of dots. This is, yeah, it's high def or higher res. It's better. It looks better. It looks nice. The only thing that there really was for them was there was flipper gate, where there was some accusations that there was a delay, an intermittent or a variable delay, on when you'd push the flipper button and when it would flip. and someone, part of this was a high-level competitive player, made this accusation. And then, because they were so high-ranked, everyone believed him. Then someone did some science and measured the readings and said, look, there is more of a delay here than on the originals. And then it came out about a week, I think, after that analysis that he didn't hook the equipment up right. And in reality, the delays were identical to the original. And Flippergate went away. Well, there. So I have a hard time believing something being proven false and it just goes away. I think, right, right. Well, in terms of, it wasn't an electrical processing difference with the button. My guess is a lot of these AFMs are shot, for lack of a better word. And so I believe it when someone says it feels different. Yeah. A new one feels like it flips differently. Some of that's just going to have to do with the condition of the coil to the condition of the parts and how well restored your original AFM you were playing was. I mean, that can do it. My flippers on Silver Slugger feel a lot different now that I rebuilt them. Yeah. And I didn't change the coils. It's just the other half a dozen pieces that are involved, from the end of stroke switch all the way to the bats themselves. It's just, anyway, I think it was more along those lines. than a technical issue, which is good, because that could have put people off from buying.
    40:59
    Recently, there was an announcement, not what games are going to be next, but currently Chicago Gaming, they have indicated, as we had heard before, back actually when we were talking with Jack Danger in 2016, Cactus Canyon is planned, so is Theater of Magic, so is Monster Bash, and Big Bang Bar, which is a Capcom game. Well, I care about one of those, so... Theater, huh? Yeah, no.
    41:33
    I like Cactus Canyon a lot. Well, I'm going to assume if and when they make Cactus Canyon, they're going to finish the code because Williams never did. Well, yeah. And if they're not going to license Cactus Canyon continued and use that software package, they'll probably come up with their own. Most of these make sense to me because of the low productions. Theater is a bit surprising. I thought there were enough out there, but I guess the sale prices. I mean, a lot of people have been responding, what about Addams Family? They make 20,000 of them. Do we need more? I don't think so. I mean, they are high priced, but they're not high. I mean, you can get an Addams Family for less than what one of these will be new. The thing was, it was like buy an original or buy a new in box one of these. That's what they've been doing so far. Yeah. But, I mean, Chicago Gaming, I think, has got it set best out of anyone, because all they're doing is remaking old stuff that you already know what's set. Oh, if I had the money, I would go out and buy a new in-box remake of AFM right now. Sure. And, honestly, I would not say no to one of the remake Medieval Madnesses, either. Yeah. I mean, I love both those games. They're established games. They're redoing their dots, but they're not having up until Cactus Canyon, we're assuming, but they don't have to reprogram anything. They don't have to pay for a designer to do the layout. They're not creating anything new from a gameplay perspective. It's all about using the modern technology to translate the old games over, and these were low enough production, and they've got the arrangement with Planetary Pinball to be able to do these Williams licenses. So it's a pretty good game. Yep. Jersey Jack. Obviously, the big thing was the Dialed In. I'm very happy for Jersey Jack with Dialed In because, A, Dialed In is a solid game. And more importantly to me, Dialed In is a game that Jersey Jack talked about and it came out within a decent amount of time instead of being something being talked about and then just sitting in the dark for four years. Right. I think Dialed In will be the, it's the turning point. It's where people say you finally delivered on a game within a reasonable time frame. You didn't miss all your estimates. You said what you were going to do, and you executed on it. I think it also helps that it has been their best game. Easily. I know it's not their best-selling game, but it is their best-playing game by far. Yep. It's a lot of fun. I've enjoyed it. We still have one on location here at 403. and I put in money in it, whereas I avoided Hobbit. I wouldn't give it my money unless I had to play it. If I had to play the tournament, it's the only time I'd play Hobbit. Right. I wouldn't practice it for tournaments because what's there to practice? It's a fan layout with no outlanes, so I don't need to practice. It's baby's first pinball. So The other big thing of course has been The announcement of Pirates of the Caribbean It's not out yet They've got their prototypes that people have been getting a chance to play We have not had a chance to play a prototype Thoughts on the concept or the layout We've gone over the concept Of course but it's year end review I think the big thing with Pirates will be, can they get the same kind of turnaround that they did on Dialed In, where it's like, where they go from announcement to games in people's homes in a decent amount of time, or are they going to trip and fumble after having one solid run? Right, right. Yeah. This will be, I mean, this is the, do they have the staying power? Right. If they get this, if they get pirates out, if they get Pirates pushed in 18, and even more importantly, if they can get Pirates out in 18, make an announcement in 18, and drop the new announcement game in 19, and they can make themselves a solid one-a-year player, I think they're good. They don't have to pull Stern's four games a year or three games in a vault edition a year or whatever Stern's doing. But if they can be a solid one good game a year player, I think they're good I think so as well and I think they're in a good position to do that the only risk and I don't think it's really a big risk with pirates because the demonstration the reveal and the comments that have come from those who got to play the prototypes have been pretty positive of the gameplay on it is if they make a spinger I don't know if Jersey Jack survives a bad game, I don't know if they're in that position yet I don't think they are in that position yet So, and I think the issue with, I've also, I could see them as a one-year player. I think it looks like that's what they're positioning for.
    46:40
    I, you know, I don't know about, I still, I'm not a big fan of this strategy. And maybe it's still, it's good for them. I just, to me, it doesn't make a lot of sense to still be in this position of, let's announce the game and then it still be over half a year before we build it. I mean, that's better than being four years late or three years late, of course. Of course. If they get it out when they say they're going to get it out, I don't think it looks bad like that. But to me, it undercuts their dialed-in sales. I think dialed-in will go down as their least sold game. While being their best game. While being their best game, I think dialed-in looks – well, I know how dialed-in plays. I don't think Pirates looks like a better playing game. It looks very full-featured. but, and kudos to them for taking a brand new designer and basically giving him an unlimited budget and saying, here, go and make us something. Make us our Twilight Zone. Yeah. But the guy who made Twilight Zone is who did Dialed In and it's one of his best flowing games ever. And I'm skeptical that Pirates is going to play that well, but I think it could play better than Woz, and it has to play better than Hobbit. Right. So, we'll see. I think they're in a good position. I just, I don't know. I still think that some of their, I think there's too much lag still. There is too much lag, but if they can only rock a game a year, can they pull the hole only announce a month or two before the game is actually hitting the streets? Sure. I mean, to me, yes. It's just, you know, you go to Expo and you say, at TPF, we're announcing what the actual game will be. So come to our thing at TPF, and in April those games are going out.
    48:26
    I mean, that's what Stern does. Well, let's be fair. That's what Stern does. That's what Stern officially does. No company has that many leaks that cover that much stuff about what the next game is going to be in six or eight months where those leaks are not intentionally placed out there. Well, in response to that, Jersey Jack can continue to have all their leaks. Toy Story. And they're already doing that. I mean, they're already leaking like a sieve as well. So let's just get the official announcement structure a little. Once you officially, because people kept thinking, well, pirates may not have been a surprise. People have kept thinking Toy Story is the next one. Yes, but they've been thinking Toy Story is the next one for a while. Yes, because purportedly, my understanding is a former Jersey Jack employee left and just, like, blew all this out to everyone because they were so disgruntled. And that's where all of this information has been. Now, maybe they have their own, like, leak department as well. I don't know. But, yeah, I just think it's a little odd. It's not the worst thing in the world. But it's just, I mean, spooky isn't pre, I mean, well, they kind of are. It's weird. Yeah. Let's go into spooky as our next one. They really only had two games this year. One was that contract commission game, Jetsons. Which was horrible. I only played it once. I found it dull, but I get what it's going for. It looks great. Yeah, it looks fine. Except the dots. But, I mean, it's a nostalgia game. It wasn't theirs. Like I said, it was contract. But it's a nostalgia game designed for bringing in for non-hardcore players. Mm-hmm. It's like Training Wheels. Sure. It's a Training Wheels game. Sure. It's just too expensive for being Training Wheels. Yes. I mean, they sort of... The Jetsons should have been a The Pen. That's what it should have been. Yeah.
    50:30
    I mean, given what the goal was. So let's talk Total Nuclear Annihilation instead. Best game of the year. And once again, something Spooky's putting out that's not a Spooky game. Spooky didn't have a Spooky game come out this year. No. They were still wrapping up building Rob Zombie's, and they had these contract gigs of Domino's, which they were still doing all the way up through Texas, which I have not played, and Jetsons. I played the Domino's at Texas.
    50:59
    It was okay. It was better than Jetsons. I wish I had tried it. I actually kind of liked the look of that one's layout. It was better than Jetsons. Yeah. Jetsons' layout looked dull. But the... And I played it, and it was. this has bought them time for their Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle because now their line's busy and they didn't need another contract gig and I mean since we've played the Whitewood I mean aside from Dominos which I have not played I know Total Nuclear Annihilation is their best playing produced game ever because Scott Denise is a better designer than, I don't know who got the credits on all the other games, but Denise's design works. Yeah. I just think it works better. But last I've heard, which was maybe a week or so ago, I think they're around on sales the 260 mark.
    51:58
    So a lot of people are talking about how this will be Spooky's best-selling game. I agree that it will be, but I think that is a milestone something that doesn't mean a lot when you're busy setting limits on all your other production. So, to me, it doesn't mean a lot to say, hey, we passed Rob Zombie in sales. Yeah, well, you said Rob Zombie was $300. So, let's not... I'm not saying Spooky's blowing their own horn on this, but for the community, if it passes Rob Zombie, I don't think Rob Zombie would have sold much more than $300 back in the day. I don't either, but I'm still standing by this since this was year-end review. I made a prediction that I don't think Total Nuclear Annihilation gets halfway to a street-level game. And I arbitrarily kind of gave that number, that would be 400 units, and I still don't think it makes 400. I think it's too expensive for what people see when they look at it. Charlie, who runs Spooky Pinball, has been very upfront about just how expensive it is to make Total Nuclear Annihilation. They've shown people what's under the playfield. get it, but on the flip side,
    53:07
    there's just a lot of people that if that game doesn't have ramps, they don't care. And so there are a lot of people that won't consider it. And given you don't see toys,
    53:17
    you thought Tie Fighter on a stick was boring. This has no toys. You have to just like the gameplay. I think the gameplay is very, very strong.
    53:27
    But it's... But is it $6,000 strong? For a lot of people, it's It's not, unfortunately. But, I mean, it's really cool. I think it's really cool that they took someone's vision and executed it as near as possible to what he wanted. And I understand their pricing is what it has to be. I'm not smashing them for that. I mean, I, like everybody, had hopes that the price would be lower. But we all understand the truth of how things work. in. But another example where I'm using on the numbers, I mean, a lot of people think as more and more of them get out in the wild, more and more people want to buy it. That's true, but there's a limit to all of that. And here is one of my juxtapositions as to why I'm still fairly confident that this isn't going to fly off the shelves. Project Pinball Charity, their drawings, they have a T&A drawing. It's still not even at 40% sold. And it's cheaper than buying in on a premium from Stern, which they already cycled through one. They've already cycled through a couple pros since this announcement. It's not moving tickets.
    54:35
    The charity drawings are with collectors of the community. They're the ones who want machines and care. It's not selling tickets.
    54:46
    I think that's because it's got niche appeal. Even if it's a great player, a lot of people aren't good enough to play it. It's too hard. They're too scrub. You just have to accept it. I think it's very smart. I think it makes Spooky look really good. The reports coming in on it have been very positive. I think it's the most exciting game to come out this year. So, I'm glad it got made. Even if I can't justify buying one, I'm glad it's there. It's nice to see something like this. And I hope it inspires some other manufacturers that can do some better economies of scale to consider concepts that aren't just, here are your two ramps, and here's your bash toy. Right. Go forth and smash. And also consider stuff that's not just, hey, it's from your in-house guy. Yeah, yeah.
    55:40
    Though, this definitely, if Scott ever wants to become an in-house guy, you know, Spooky should. Yeah. Without bringing him on. I mean, that would say they probably don't need a permanent, like, 40-hour-a-week designer, but maybe this solidifies the relationship where he starts doing a real spooky game on the rotation. You know, it's like him and Ben Hack, and if Charlie's doing, you know, that gives him three. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. That'd be pretty cool. All right. Highway pinball. Hopefully, we won't have to talk about this anymore after 2018 because they'll finally close the doors and go away. So, you still think, you're still standing by that they're going to close the doors and go away? Yeah, I don't think. I think they've been through too much. I don't see a viable path. But they've just shipped LEs. Alien LE version has at least gone to some European. Yes. Congratulations. At least one has gone out. Congratulations to that guy. You got your LE. Everybody else is still in the dark. And everybody else who paid their money however many years ago are still waiting for machines that they're not getting. because somebody else who paid money last week gets the machine first. Yeah.
    56:56
    I, despite my, I was going to say my devil's advocate. I agree with you. I think Highway is dead man walking.
    57:04
    They, I still lean towards what I have been thinking for a while. I could see them weathering the alien thing. I could see them getting through it so that everyone gets their alien pen. And then I think it's done. Yeah. No, I don't think they're, as we will talk about in a little bit, I'm not looking at them as Dutch, like they're just going to close up. I think they'll finish their alien run. I just don't think they're going to come out of aliens in a position to go for a new pen. Right. And I, while I get it and the sense of trying, I think they're trying to project confidence by announcing, oh, well, we've got Barry Osler working on two games. He's an established designer, of course.
    57:50
    And his games may be good. He's been a great designer. But I don't think that projects the confidence that they're hoping for. They may have plans to continue on long term, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. And I think the biggest one is, you know, it's interesting to me about how much of this hobby doesn't talk about pricing and how that impacts what people think. But their takeover also coincided with a massive price spike on their gains. Yep. And I'm not sure that at their new higher price point that they're competitive, especially because they're saddled with this system that Andrew Highway developed. and I'm not sure that if they had to do it all over again that they would, that they'd restrict themselves to only being wide-body in that ugly cabinet with this drop-in, drop-out compatibility using these systems. The reports, while they're shipping aliens, and that's great, the reports coming in on the forums of people getting them, they're not good.
    58:58
    They're talking up the game with this whole sunk cost thing we talk about. or the sunk cost fallacy is definitely, you see it in play. And some people might actually think that that thing shoots well. It doesn't, but they might think it. And some people might believe it is really well coded. I think it is. I think the code's good. But I don't think that the design is in any way a top game. But just from my experience playing it. However, everyone is having issues out of box. And I'm not talking like, oh, this stand-up target is out of position. We're talking the alien tongue that's supposed to catch the magnet isn't retracting properly. There's electromagnetic interference resulting in crazy rainbow vomit going on with the RGBs because the strength of the coil power at the flippers is disrupting them because they weren't properly insulated. It's all sorts of just weird stuff. Crashes and all because of the PC-based architecture. It's just, it's like there's no quality control because there's no money. Well, yeah. There's no money. They've got to get them out. And most of the stuff is minor. I don't want to imply that these are flaws that are just devastating and stopping people from playing the game. But when people who just want a game to plug and play are looking for stuff in their game room, all these owners are even saying, well, you know, if you're someone who doesn't want to work on games, you shouldn't buy an Alien. That is not a good message when you're trying to save a company. No, it's not. And all the announcements of planned games that you've got contracted with Barry Osler for, it's been going to offset that you also have had to acknowledge that you don't have enough money to refund everyone who still wants a refund. Right. After all this time. And even the people who aren't being refunded, the people who want to stay in, they're not getting their games until you get other people's games out. Right. That's, no. Right. It's just, yeah. So I agree. I don't see how they get through 2018. I don't think they should try. I don't think so either. I think they need to. I think I will be in shock if they rule out an announcement for another game, like a solid announcement of like a title and stuff. Well, it's supposed to happen at Texas. It is. They'll be there. Well, I'm in shock then. That the plan I believe is that Barry is supposedly working on a license and I believe an unlicensed game And I think the licensed one is supposed to be announced next And the rumor mill, because you know all our leaks, the rumor mill is that it's Queen. That's a music pen. Wow. We actually had that conversation at our music pen talk thing we did a while back. Yep. It's a good choice. It's a really good choice. Yeah, but anyway. So, yeah. So we both think, we're still, folks, we're still standing by that Highway's Done.
    61:53
    Let's talk about the other H-Name pinball manufacturer, Henkin. That's the Chinese manufacturer. Well, Australia, there's an Australian who owns it, but he's manufacturing in China. Thunderbirds Argo is the game. Yep. We have probably spoken less about Henkin and Thunderbirds than pretty much any other game. Probably because we just don't have the touchstone for Thunderbirds. I don't care about Thunderbirds at all. I've seen the show, and I still don't care. Yeah. It's just one of those things that it has nothing for me.
    62:29
    And the other thing I do think is I think the concept, if you can keep the quality control high enough of doing manufacturer in China, is not a necessarily terrible concept with this ever-increasing price problem. Because as long as you can keep the quality control at least to match the level that are coming out of not highway, but the other pin companies, with the lower production cost of production in China, I think it will let you slide in and form a place up as the lower price. So even if you don't have as much stuff, you can slide in and have that going for you. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I think the only issue that we're seeing is, one, what you've touched on. Thunderbirds don't mean a lot to a lot of people. But, again, it's an Australian. They're not a big enough pinball market target. I agree that it's not a good run. Again, this is our armchair quarterbacking, which they, I'm sure, have no absolute care about. But for our listeners, this is not – I don't want to say that you shouldn't – I don't want to suggest that you should just go in and think, I'm going to do pinball and I need to cater to Americans. No. But if you're establishing a pinball company, it probably would behoove you to cater to Americans. because just in terms of persons, I mean, Australia may have a higher per capita interest in pinball, but in terms of raw body counts of who buy pinball machines, we're the largest market. So you need to cater. And it could have been as simple as securing the ability to reskin that as Team America. Yeah. World Police. I mean, I'm thinking that, of course, because of the puppets. So you could have re-skinned it. Right. I mean, you could re-skin. Yeah. Sure. Well, I've talked in the past where I, re-skinning was something that happened all the time back in the 60s and 70s. And nowadays, I don't actually have a problem with the thought of re-skinning games. No. And what was the last time it happened? I think it's the Shrek from Family Guy. Yeah, probably. And, but license matters. I mean, you want to double total nuclear annihilation sales, licensed it. Should have licensed it. Yeah. It would have sold more. They would have. But, you know, that's... So there's always a segment of the community that screams for unlicensed pins, but they don't buy enough to that extent. So they matter. No. Yeah, really, they don't. If they did, Dialed In would be selling a lot more. Right. But that's why I'm so confident, even though it's such a better player, it doesn't have that... There's no touchstone to it like Wizard of Oz has, or even Hobbit. Hobbit wasn't even a good movie. It's still a better choice from a licensing point. It is, very much so. The other thing, though, in the case of Thunderbirds is when it was shown at one of the Australian pinball expos, the response was not good. Was it not? No. That it looks cheap and it plays terrible. Now, it's being tweaked. I keep hitting the table. It's being tweaked now. The company took that feedback and Hankin has been making modifications to it. I don't know how much they can change, though. I mean, one of the things was it was seen to have a worse flipper gap than Ghostbusters. Wow. Just, it was, it's not, I don't think it's going to do, I think it will sell. I think it will sell in Australia. I don't think it will sell great because I don't, my sense is that the people don't think it's a great machine. Now, I think Hankin survives because their business model is mostly driving income by making, I think, arcade games. So they've got a whole other side that's not doing pinball. So it's set up in a way that the company itself, I think, is fine, be they stay in pinball or not. That's how they've been able to go for this many years without putting the machine out. They're not relying on it. So from that perspective, I think the company has been very, very smart. I just don't think that this game has got legs.
    66:45
    Even if they, I don't know, we'll see what their tweaks can do. I'm very skeptical they can. I mean, they're going to go back and say we're going to make some adjustments. That doesn't sound like a redesign, and that's the impression I got from a lot of people that were just too polite to say much because there's this kinship with the fellow Australian. They don't want to be rude. They don't want to hurt his feelings, but, you know, it's like, but behind his back. More than willing to say that this game is a dog. So it's like, okay, well, I don't know if you're doing him any favors if you're not going to be transparent about it, but it is what it is. Speaking of transparent and China, let's talk Dutch pinball, which has the big thing has been, of course, it's all about Big Lebowski. And now it will be made in China, they say, rather than in the Netherlands.
    67:32
    Tony, what are your thoughts? It's been a rough year for Dutch, dating really all the way back to Texas Pinball Festival, where they announced Bright of Pinbot 3.0, which is perhaps the fastest pull, take down, wipe away, memory cleanse that I have ever seen in the pinball hobby. I think it was less than a month That might be the fastest I've seen in anything Where they just turned around I don't recall that Well, and I'm trying to I should have gone back to our old notes Because that was Originally a plan I think they had planned to make 30 In honor of the 30th anniversary But as of TPF I think they announced That they were going to do 120 of them And it was, what, 12,000? 12,000, yeah And it's like, what a bad idea. The whole, let's spend a little time, and I guess anyone affiliated with Dutch Pinball, no offense, this is nothing personal, but holy cow, what were y'all thinking? This was a turd from the word go.
    68:45
    What a, nothing, it was ugly, first of all. It was ugly. It reminded me of some high schooler 3D animation attempt attempt. You took this you have first off, why would you ever do anything with Bride of Pinbot again? You did Bride of Pinbot 2.0. Move on. I think anybody who cared about Bride of Pinbot went with your 2.0 and that's it. They don't care about anything else. Which, from all accounts, improved the gameplay. It didn't make it a great game, but it made it a better game, rather than a one-trick pony. And I've said back around that time, as I recall, in my review of the year here, that given their struggles with Big Lebowski, I thought their strategy should have been to do more kits. If you can't sell because there's not enough demand, more Bride of Pinbot kits. Then develop a kit for another broken game. Yep. That would be solid. Fix something else. There are plenty out there that had a lot of sales that have kind of janky roles, and you can stick in a new screen, give it an LCD, and give it a new rules slate, and people will buy it. They showed that with Bride of Pinball. Yes. Bride of Pinball 2.0 was their whole entry into, trust us, we know pinball.
    70:10
    Apparently, they just know Bride of Pinball. Apparently. If that's your big bailout, which, and, you know, I think they were about a year and a half to two years too late on the, oh yeah, pinball collectors are really stupid and will throw insane amounts of money at anything. Because that price point was stupid. For an uglier version of Ride of Pinball. A game that doesn't sell remotely close to $12,000, $10,000, $8,000, or $5,000. It doesn't. It's not a new game and it doesn't command new prices in any condition. It doesn't. If you were to have a HEP fully restored beyond new in-box good, you still wouldn't get your money back, which you had to pay to do it, on a bride. It's not worth it. This was not creature. Yeah. It's not. It's Bride of Pinbon. I'm sorry. It's just, it's Bride of Pinbon. It's not that great. The best thing about it is the art, and then when you change Python's art, you slap his body in the ground in the face.
    71:15
    Zombie slap. He's spinning. I hooked up to generators. So, okay. So that at Texas was ridiculous.
    71:26
    Obviously, there's a whole issue with their Dutch manufacturer, so they've moved to the China thing. They just had an announcement a week or two ago. They do a newsletter from time to time. And in that, they're explaining how they had two engineering samples made. They showed them at, I think, the Dutch pinball open. supposedly they played fine and now they're working on samples 3, 4, and 5 trying to get the Chinese team up to snuff on how to do all the construction and everything and then after that they'll be ready to go into production except two things one, they still won't commit to a time frame on when they'll actually be ready to produce finalized versions I think this is concerning because you should be able to estimate this at this stage The second thing is they also, in the newsletter, talk about their plans for European marketing because, just like we know through, admittedly very transparently, on Highway's part at this point, they have to find more people willing to now buy Big Lebowski's from them to try and backfund all these early achievers who have pre-order money in. I don't see how they can. And unlike with Highway, I don't think there really will be much in the way of additional production. I think this one's done. Yeah. I think the only way that we're going to see more Lebowskis come out is when a strike team goes in and rips those 40 that are locked away out in a daring heist. I'll give you a what if scenario here's how I can see more Lebowski's Dutch Pinball declares bankruptcy the IP and assets are purchased by another pinball manufacturer that decides to go ahead and make them, the people who pre-ordered are still out with the bankruptcy they get pennies on the dollar as creditors, that takes care of them, they're out, they don't have a stake anymore and then a company he could go ahead and produce them that you know can make machines. But who would... Honestly, the only one I think would possibly even consider it would be Spooky. And it'd only be if the IP was super cheap, and it'd probably be done because they felt bad about people getting screwed over by Dutch. That would be it. No, Stern wouldn't do it. They're like, why? We have our own designers, our own developers, and we make our own games. We don't need that. We don't need that product to fulfill anything. And I think Jersey Jack's in the same boat. Right. So there's no, some people think, some people are convinced no matter what it will happen because everything's developed and done already. No, you have to have the will to manufacture it. Right. And think you're going to sell enough. And the thing is, is that while the IP may be timeless, the machine is looking more and more dated every year that goes by because that's old news. Everyone knows about Big Lebowski. I thought it looked really cool when I first saw it. I couldn't care less anymore. The only saving grace it has is that, unlike Alien, Big Lebowski, broadly speaking, has praise for its gameplay and how it shoots. Yeah. When it works. And it always has been a bit janky on the working side of things as well. So I think they're more done than Highway. Oh, no, Dust is completely done. They're super duper done. They are going through the motions Yes, dead man walking Been using that phrase a lot lately Alright This was not a real manufacturer But I wanted to touch briefly on Skit B Because we saw a lot of Legal happenings regarding the Predator Nothing Too exciting There were some really juicy recordings out there Some pretty interesting scenarios the, excuse me, it's been pretty quiet since October then. The trustee has successfully settled with some people who received monies, probably for working on the project and then not reporting it on taxes or anything.
    75:43
    The only real big score that I am aware of is there is a settlement in regards to a house, but it's in a floodplain. So even that is only on the order of somewhere in the $20,000 to $30,000 range. But, you know, depending on how bad the attorney fees are, this sounds like a case where creditors, I think, in the end will get something. It will be a far cry from what they put into it. But I think for most of them, it's about justice at this stage, not their money back. Kind of getting back to my whole deck discussion at the start of the episode. And so I completely understand that motivation.
    76:18
    And we'll continue to monitor it. But there's just not been a whole lot of news that's really worth going back over. So we only have a couple more entities to talk about Let's talk about the last established manufacturer Established in quotations American Pinball I wanted They've done two things One was way back at the start of the year That was when all the news about the Magic Girls And they They built the Magic Girls Or built the parts for the Magic Girls I'm confused I still don't know who assembled Magic Girls I don't know If J-Bone manually assembled them all I mean, because that's what it sounded, some of the stuff that it sounded like, sounded like J-pop was in there using their area, but he was doing it all himself.
    77:02
    Right. The way it always sounded to me. Yeah, and given how it plays, that wouldn't surprise me. And then Houdini, which their finalized concept of Houdini, the non-J-pop version, was we were in that seminar that was announced at Texas at the start of the year. And I was really impressed because they got prototypes out. They have issues with the prototypes. Understandable. I don't blame them for something they kicked out that fast. I never got a chance to play it because the lines were long, and I wanted to play other things. Right. Well, the main things were they said that they were going to ship games by the end of the year, and the first game left the factory yesterday. So they kept that. Whether or not it was just one, I don't know. They poured everything into getting one game shift, and the rest will start going out later in January. Right, right. Well, and the big thing that was the concern at the time, which could explain and probably does explain a great deal of the delay, because it was a big deal to a lot of people that they came up with the game in three months. Yeah. It's like, we had to throw away J-Pop's design, and we had to do Balster's design. It took three months, so look at that short turnaround, which didn't impress me because Gottlieb Premier built an entire company on that model in the end. They went on for years doing games with six to 12-week design cycles. Well, six would be very rare, but three months was very common for them.
    78:35
    But they had to build their factory. Right. They had to build the factory up. So, in theory, they shouldn't be that delayed in the future.
    78:45
    I've not played Houdini. because the lines were bad and I haven't been anywhere else since Texas where there was a prototype available. Broadly speaking, the response rate has been positive. I mean, if I'm to use my ranking setup, I would say most people seem to indicate that it plays better than Alien does by quite a bit. Probably about on par with Big Lebowski, not dialed in good.
    79:14
    That gives you a little range in these non-stern companies and how its response rate is. Pretty jam-packed.
    79:23
    The theme is an unlicensed theme. Houdini is a known entity. He's too old to have copyright issues. So that's the strategy there. He's not protected by the mouse. He's not protected and the company has indicated that they would be happy if they sold a thousand units. Do you think they sell a thousand Houdinis? No. I don't either. The one thing really going forward is Magic and Pinball go hand in hand. I don't know why. I don't either. So there will be a segment that will buy it, but it's a $7,000 price point for... Yeah, I don't think they'll sell $1,000. I don't either. I think they'll sell. I mean, I'll even just...
    80:09
    $300 to $500 wouldn't surprise me. Okay. I think that's probably on the hopeful end. I actually, I was very against American from the beginning, and I'm to the point where because of their stuff last year and when they dropped J-Pop, when they realized just what they'd gotten into and how quickly they turned around getting the new game design and this and that, I'm not going to say I like them because I don't know anything about it yet, but I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful somebody can take that pit that they dug for themselves and climb themselves, pull themselves up out of that pit. That would just be such a, I don't want to say inspirational, but such an impressive story to have started yourself so far down in the dirt because you were an idiot and you didn't even do the slightest bit of research and to claw yourself out of that hole and pull yourself back up into something that could put out a game and then another game, and then that would be impressive to me. I've been impressed with how I mean we called back at Year in Review 2016 that American Pinball was the company we thought would be gone we thought Dutch would be as well and we didn't think Highway, we thought Highway was okay so you know we were very wrong about that, they've done an impressive job rehabilitating for this, for podcasts for all that we'll report on it, commentate on it like we would any other company I won't consider purchasing an American Pinball product until I have a full transparent accounting of what they were thinking with J-Pop. They'll probably never do it. They have no obligation to do it. However, that is what I demand. I want to know why they changed their mind on him. I want to know why they thought it was a good idea in the first place. I want a real explanation of what they were thinking. because to me, while they have hired and surrounded themselves by a lot of really enthusiastic pinball people, I still think that this company was formed to cash grab while the hobby was hot. I don't think there's any passion behind the company's formation. And if there is, they haven't really indicated.
    82:20
    Where's the interview that explains that? Right. You know, was there a passion for manufacturing? I don't care if the passion is there or not. I want to know why they got into pinball then. I'm still of the opinion that it was, pinball's big right now. We've got this stuff we can do something with. Well, I like this pinball machine. Who designed it? Okay.
    82:44
    And I honestly think it was that level of scala. But the curiosity in me wants to know. I want to know. And it's easy for me to say because here are the two, because it would be unlikely for me to be able to buy full transparency. It would be very unlikely for me, even if I liked the company, instead of being fairly indifferent, to buy a machine that they're too expensive.
    83:10
    So they've gone in with Houdini at a $7,000 price point. That's pretty high. I mean, they're thinking they're in some rarefied air. That's more than spooky. It's more than stirred. Obviously, I'm comparing it on the low-end models. It's a pretty jam-packed machine. I'm not saying it's not worth it to a lot of the collectors, but for an unlicensed theme, you're asking for a lot. I mean, that's the issue that Dialed In ran in, and Dialed In's $8,000. And, I mean, if you're in that amount, I'm going to tell you, save $1,000 more and get Dialed In. Right, and I would do the same thing. Because it's a great game. I mean, if I had $7,000, I'd save up whatever extra I needed to, and I would get an AFM or a Dialed In.
    83:51
    Right, and the AFMRs, you can get the, you know, you can... The base model. The classic one is like $6,500. Right. So you can get the mid-tier, I think, for the 7. Right. And that would be what, I mean, that's just one of those things. They're in a crowded, they didn't go low on price. And they didn't go all in Jersey Jack Pirates. We put the whole kitchen sink in the game. So they're in a really crowded price space. Yeah. And I'm not sure, last I heard, the company's plan has been to not do licenses. They want to do the Houdini strategy. Take something that is known, so people throw out things like Alice in Wonderland or something. I'm like, could we quit having ideas that J-Pop had pencils and paper on? Yeah, please. But that's one I've heard people mention. You know, taking these things and then doing something so it'd be like, oh, it's a license in the sense you know it, but you didn't have to pay any licensing fees. That'll get you by for a little while, but, I mean, how many pins are there? 20,000 leagues under the sea. Right. How many jewels burn and Greek gods and fairy tales are we going to tolerate?
    85:01
    Here's the thing. If they were putting them out at Stern Pro prices, a lot. But they're not. That's the problem. They're not even putting them out at spooky prices.
    85:13
    I think if they were putting them out at Stern Pro prices, they would be doing a lot better. or they would do a lot better overall for staying unlicensed and just, you know, going with the old... No, I agree with you. I mean, that's part of the... In our talks throughout the year, if a company were to come in and want to undercut on the Stern Pros, one of the things that might need to be sacrificed, though I wouldn't sacrifice it, would be the license. I'd sacrifice something else. I'd sacrifice code depth instead.
    85:42
    Go for the shallower game instead of the... Yeah, yeah. But the whole idea on the lower price one is you want the operators to buy it. Right. And you don't care what happens to the used market. And the thing is, is that for an operator, an operator wants the license. Yeah. The code depth is less important for an operator than licenses. But for on-location pinball, you don't need a game deeper than Attack from Mars. You don't need a game deeper than Sharky's. For at home, you don't need a game deeper than Attack from Mars. No, you really don't. It's the greatest game ever made. You just keep playing. It's not, you don't have, they don't all have to be Lord of the Rings. or Pirates and its 125 modes and 20 characters. It doesn't need to be that. That's what that company wants to position itself as. And I wouldn't make a new one to try and compete with what Jack wants. That's their space. Let them play in their space. That's their space. There's plenty of sand in the sandbox. The issue with Houdini is I don't think... Well, it's pretty jam-packed. They don't have the license thing going for them. and it's just too high above Stern Pro price and too not Jersey Jack quality, you know. I don't want to say it's a bad quality game. We don't know yet. Right. We'll see how it is. But anyway, it's an interesting thing. We'll see. But I think they'll get through 2018. Oh yeah. I think it'll do well enough. Last entity to talk about in pinball is Deep Root. Oh yeah. That's right. It's kind of But obviously... Deep Root, who is like the new American Pinball. Yeah, I mean, it's hard not to feel that way because of their involvement with J-Pop and talking about making Zidware customers whole. I mean, that was what American Pinball was saying in 2016.
    87:27
    That's what the whole Magic Girl thing was. We're assuming J-Pop is being paid in product to satisfy Zidware customers. They get a designer. Was Deep Root announced? we are bringing J-Pop on as a designer, but they want to, in some capacity, basically, it seems, manufacture the Zidware games. Right. So, and there's all, as we talked about in the episode where we covered This Week in Pinball's interview with Deep Root and their head, Robert Muller, the discussion also briefly mentioned that they had some legal proposal stuff on people They signed an agreement to not pursue legal action on Zidware, and that gave them credit towards various games from Deep Root, which is planning a release in 2019.
    88:21
    And there hasn't really been anything since then. They mentioned that there would be the five days of Deep Root. I'm sure that won't happen until the end of 2018 or 2019. Yeah, I would expect the latter half of 2018, but we don't really have any good time frames.
    88:37
    You know, we were both deeply skeptical that this is a good idea, this being Deep Root bringing J-Pop on. I remain deeply skeptical that this is in any way a smart business maneuver. Yeah. They indicated in their interview with This Week in Pinball that part of the issue was most of the other established designers already had contracts or were employees of various companies, but as we've seen with Eric Munier, who's doing Pirates of the Caribbean for Jersey Jack, or Scott Tenisi with Total Nuclear Annihilation and Spooky, you don't need to use an established designer per se. You just need somebody with the ability and the knowledge without necessarily being one of the old school designers. Sure, sure.
    89:26
    Or you can try and hire one away. I mean, I don't know how they're doing it. They said they had discussions with them, so I believe that with other designers. It's just, I don't know.
    89:38
    The J-pop name is so toxic. I just don't see the value because most of your sales, I know your motto is, what, a pinball in every home, a home for every pinball. But realistically speaking up front, It's going to be the pinball collectors that are most likely to purchase the games unless these are extremely low cost. And American Pinball already proved that J-Pop is poison fruit. Right, right. So I'm very, I mean, I think Deep Root's got money behind it.
    90:10
    A Deep Root pinball is a subsidiary of a variety of other roots of the Deep Root. And so there's a lot of financial money backing this through investment plans and such. So I think they can endure as long as they want. It's just I don't know what they're doing. I don't understand.
    90:33
    I assume that it's because there's an actual interest in pinball here because it doesn't fit the rest of the portfolio. But it's the only thing that makes sense Is that it is Someone that they actually have interest In it I mean there's no way that they could be Thinking that well I don't know Maybe they are thinking that pinball resurgence Is big enough that people want to It's the time to dive in and try and Make your buck and walk away but I don't know It requires a much deeper Amount of involvement Than throwing somebody into the video game Alright Well, I think that's enough of our year-end review on the pinball side of things, so let's go ahead and hop over into video games. Video games! There have been a lot of video games, because there are always a lot of video games out every year. I thought maybe we should go ahead and start with the major manufacturers on the console side, though. and starting primarily with Nintendo, which I'd say probably by almost any account imaginable had the best year of the big three, primarily for a reason that you are intimately familiar with, the Switch. Yes. The Switch has definitely been Nintendo's comeback.
    91:52
    I know there were articles out earlier in the month showing the Switch has already hit 10 million sales, and that doesn even include all of the Christmas purchasing So they are well on their way to outselling the total number of Wii U sales They on their way to outselling that in the first year. Yeah. Because the Wii U only had like 13.5 million sales in the first year. Total, up to like today. Right, right. Yeah. Right. And so, I mean, Switch, it's been, they've just done a lot of things better. Without rehashing everything that went wrong with Wii U, the system has found, as Nintendo did with the Wii itself, they found a market that isn't being met by anyone else. They're walking that console-slash-portable line that Sony and Microsoft stay out of entirely. They launched with a solid game and have had solid games since then and have announced solid games based off of their past pedigrees. So people are very confident about the titles. They've also focused on getting third-party developers, which was something that they've been lacking since Wii, and they, on their announcement for Switch, really, really emphasized how many outside developers were working on things. Now, granted, some of that stuff is just like, okay, well, Skyrim has to be on this because Skyrim's on everything. I played Skyrim on my watch the other day. But they really were, at least, there's stuff to play. So people don't feel like, oh, the problem in the Wii and the Wii U era was always for a console gamer. Okay, so I've got a Nintendo and I now I have to have a PlayStation or an Xbox. I have something to play third-party games. And while that isn't 100% solved with this, it's better. This year I could actually see people saying, my only gaming platform is a Switch and I can be okay for a while. and not have to have a PC or have another console.
    93:57
    And there's been, I don't actually have the numbers. I should have written them down when I originally read the article or, you know, saved the article page. But I saw an interesting poll that had been put out about people who use the Switch and how they use it. And what's interesting is I know there was a lot of talk when the Switch first came out that, well, it's only going to be used as a docked thing. The mobile, the portability of it is just a trick. It's something that people see, but they're just going to use it docked all the time. Or people are like, oh, yeah, you can put it to your TV, but why would you? You'll just use it mobile all the time. And the truth of the matter is the vast majority of users use it both ways pretty consistently.
    94:44
    The numbers of, I'm just trying to remember off the top of my head, something like 18% of users have only ever used it docked, and a similar percentage have only ever used it mobile, and then everybody else uses both. So, I mean, that's... Yeah, it's fit a demand that no one else had realized was there. And so it's obviously done very well for them, and I think it will continue to do very well for them as they continue to fill out the library. Yeah, it was so smart, though, to launch with Breath of the Wild. It was, because Breath of the Wild is an amazing game. I mean, I'm nowhere near beating it yet, and that game is beautiful and fun.
    95:31
    I'm not even a huge Zelda person, and that game is beautiful and fun. So, Nintendo have done very, very well.
    95:39
    Microsoft. It's more of a mixed bag for Microsoft. Hardware-wise, the big announcement was just a little while ago, With the Xbox One X, the reviews of that console itself have been very, very good.
    95:57
    Unsurprising, it's got more power than anything else, which I think is the first time Microsoft has ever been at the top of the power and performance charts. Not only they could get at the top of the, you know, games charts. And that's the downside for Microsoft is that some might say, some very sympathetic to Microsoft might say, they have a perception problem with a lack of games. I think that's too mild. There was a problem with a lack of games this year. Now, it's not that there aren't games on the console, because most of the third-party stuff comes out on everything powerful enough to run it. So that's true. I mean, like, you never have to worry about, if you're a Call of Duty fan, if you have a PC or a Sony or a Microsoft. It's going to be there. Right, it's going to be there. So it's not that there weren't a lot of games, But there weren't a lot of unique games. And that's still counting. I understand that Microsoft is doing this thing now where they want things to be on Windows PC and the console. It makes sense for them financially to do it that way. It does. And that's fine. I'm counting those games, like Halo Wars 2. They, it's just, they had, this was, there was no banner. There was no banner game this year. There was no mainline Halo. There was no mainline Gears of War. And here's the problem. Those are the only two things that come to my mind When you say Microsoft They need to fill out the stable But their racing game that I can't remember the name of Forza Motorsport 7 Came out The thing is there's always a Forza every year Because Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport They're different developers but they share assets And they alternate So that's a given So we don't get to count that The big one that was supposed to be the Xbox One X Launch title Crackdown 3 got pushed back Which is probably good Because Crackdown 3's self-stated art I don't think looks going to look great Any better Of note Forza's a better demonstration But Halo or Gears would have been A good demonstration as well So it seemed like the hardware Wasn't synced with a good game To really showcase it Well and I think a lot of that comes from The simple fact that In my opinion the hardware was something that was in process, not necessarily for what it became. I think it very much was a, we are getting destroyed, we need something. Well, here, this is another project we're working on. Let's just take all this stuff and boom, and then throw it out there. I did hear an interview with one of the lead developers of the console, and they actually, They indicated they were working on the Xbox One X as a concept to be developed before they even released the original Xbox One. It takes that long for them to do their cycle. They'd already decided they were going to do an intermediary upgrade. Really? And their decision, obviously, was not in any way influenced by the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro, which they had no idea about and came out about a year before theirs did. Both companies arrived at that idea that this was how it was going to be now. So, but I think that They decided to market the emphasis on that And I think that was smart I think it was smart to emphasize the power To try and get hardcore gamers that went with Playstations to buy it anyway To maybe, maybe buy Call of Duty on it For the performance edge or whatever That they want They need the unique games They need more developers in their pocket That's what they need Sony has done this Nintendo is Nintendo and all their franchises they control with an iron fist. Microsoft, this is always a problem that can be solved, but they just need to solve it. And I think Phil Spencer, who heads Xbox Gaming, I think he's planning to do it. I just think he couldn't do it immediately and he's sort of stuck. But the problem where the perception got even worse were things like the crackdown delay, the canceling of Scalebound back at the beginning of the year. But that sort of stuff hurt, even though your few console exclusives like Cuphead did great, were showcases. Right, but Cuphead was a console exclusive. It was also on PC. Well, everything that Microsoft does now is console exclusive. Right. They want the PC people to play their games. They'd rather sell more games than keep it just on the console. Makes sense. Because they're going to make you have Windows to play the game. Right. So that's their solution there. But they didn't have something that was kind of out of left field, like Horizon Zero Dawn for the PS4. Right, right.
    100:39
    So that's been Microsoft. So Sony, I thought, Sony last year, to me, kind of felt like, well, they had a bunch of game announcements, but none of them came out in 2016. 2017, they had some really good, really popular games. I'm thinking the new Persona game. You mentioned Horizon, Nier, Automata. Very good game. Another big one that were all console exclusive to Sony.
    101:09
    The problem I think Sony has had this year, and there hasn't been much of one because they're sitting at the top of the charts. They have more consoles sold, current gen, than any other manufacturer. You could combine Switch sales and Xbox all-flavor sales and still not reach the PS4 plus PS4 Pro sales. Yeah. But here's the thing. I felt so bad for Sony, especially when watching the video game awards, when they had so many good games, almost all at the start of early in the year, and Nintendo beats them on everything. It's like, you finally had such good games that stood out so well, except, sorry, you know Mario, you know Breath of the Wild. So it's like, their best games didn't match Nintendo's best games on brand new hardware. So it's funny like that. But I think that's just a timing thing It's not that those were bad games or anything It's just that it steals all the oxygen In the discussion I fully expect that those games will continue to have Well, Horizon will probably get a sequel The other games are in a series of games And will undoubtedly continue to have More and more games I think Sony has been trying to Kind of position itself with those games As A single player experience Sort of console they've really on their exclusives banked on that kind of like how I feel Bethesda sort of banks on the single player experience and I like that because there's been this fear based off of all these decisions like with EA and the cancelled Star Wars game that so many of the large non-manufacturers but publishers want multiplayer They think they have to multiplayer it. Which, moving from Sony, let's go ahead and just hop over into the Loot Crate scandals. You did a lot of, I'll say, reporting on our podcast on the Loot Crate scenarios and the blowback that we've been seeing, especially in the second half of the year. It's been pretty bad, yeah. And it's also been very pervasive that there have been a lot of games, Some of which, like Star Wars Battlefront 2 Which took tremendous hits in I don't know if it hurt their overall sales or not But I heard EA's stock price fell quite a bit It did When that was going on And then there are other games Well, not enough to be a problem I mean, it fell, but it's not like the bottom fell Right, right It will recover And then there are other games where While their sales still met expectations Like Shadow of War And Assassin's Creed Origins they still got some of the taint on them. Yeah, they got some bad press. From the loot crate, yeah. So, do you think that reviewing this year, and especially these last few months and the sheer amount of blowback on Reddit and various video game forums,
    104:08
    do you think we see changes? No. Okay. No, not at all. I think there's too many people who just pay money and don't care. They don't listen to the hype. They don't listen to the news. They don't listen to any of that. All they know is they're sitting here playing and it's like, I want this pretty make-a-make-a-dress-up Darth Vader. And he's got a lightsaber that hits three times harder. Okay, fine. Whatever. Here's my $10. I've got $10. Or more likely than not, I have this money that I got from mom and dad. Here's mom and dad's money. We'll just buy whatever. It's just like I read an article the other day about a guy who was playing Final Fantasy Brave Frontier, which is the Final Fantasy game on the phone.
    105:01
    And it is very much like any of those other mobile experience games where you spend money on it and you do this and that. Dude dropped $13,000.
    105:11
    Wow. The game's only been out a year. he dropped 13 grand on it a year and now in his case he's like well yeah this kind of ended my marriage but they talk to other people who drop that much or more and they're like I want to spend my money when I want to spend my money on it I've got the money to spend this doesn't hurt me in any way so all of these games have whales that will dump huge money on it and I think that's going to be a situation that's not going to change. I don't think the outrage is going to be enough to stop it. It may make some minor changes to how it's done, but I think overall, you're still going to see it in as just a slightly adjusted form, but loot crates aren't going away. Not even in mainline games. Right. I agree with you. I think they're here to stay. I think they make way too much money to disappear. I do think on mainline games, or I'll just define this as games where you had to buy the game. I do think that there will probably be an increased sensitivity on the part of developers to not get branded with the pay-to-win branding, because you already bought the game. So I think those will probably see more shifts to keeping things very cosmetic and not about giving you the 3X lightsaber. Instead of just letting you have the purple lightsaber. But what I could see happening is those companies also taking and going, well, hey, here's our newest blank game from Call of Trash Compactor 4 is coming out. And we're dropping it for a $40 price point.
    107:02
    And then they've got the loots to make it up. and that right there would cancel out anything because everybody wouldn't care they'd buy it because it's $20 cheaper than what it would have been at a normal price drop that's interesting I could see it but I think they would want analytics to show that it's actually they'd sell so many more copies that it's the whole will the tax cuts make us money in the long run will the shady $20 result in an increased percentage-wise in number of sales that you actually end up making more money. I'm not sure if it would. I don't know. We've been at 60 for so long now. That's the thing. We're at 60, but that's why they're adding all these sales things in is because they really want them to be at 80. Yes. Because if they had kept up with inflation, it wouldn't be 60. Right. But that's why I think if they go down to 40, I don't know. whatever new crates they put in, like the 3X lightsaber crate, I don't know that they sell enough of those with the new perks to offset, well, let's just do cosmetic crates and keep it at 60. Yeah, I don't know. Because there's so many people who buy the game who won't buy crates. Like, I've never bought a crate in Overwatch. I grind my crates like a man. I can't even say that. I dropped $15 on crates once.
    108:27
    I had to make sure I got my Mike Junkenstein. Yeah, I get pretty. Sure, sure. And so I get it, but there are probably a lot of people who are like me who just have never bothered to buy the crate, even though we play the game. And so you want to squeeze me for as much money as you can. You got to get that. For me, you got to get it on the disc. Right. You got to get me on the disc. But then, I mean, this model's been working out pretty well for other, like Rockstar. Sure. Rockstar, after what happened when GTA V became GTA Online,
    109:03
    they flat out said that they're not ever putting out another game like the old ones. Everything's going to be fully online all the time. The new Red Dead's going to be. Yep. I mean, that's going to be, it makes them too much money from little extra stuff they can sell. I play Mobile games that Are that live and die on the Whale Concept and I don't put any or very Little money into any of them And this is something that started even back in the day Back when I was buying stuff for war gaming games But It's definitely never Going away Yeah I agree So here we are at the end of the year disappointing games. What do you think? It gets hard for me because I didn't play a lot of games that came out in 2017. I didn't play any games that came out in 2017 that were really disappointing. Right, right. The most disappointing, let me start with the game I played this year that was the most disappointing to me was a 2016 game called Dishonored 2. I thought one, it was crashing constantly. I talked about it then. I can't believe a console game was that buggy with that many crashes. I hadn't seen that many bugs since Battlefield 4, which was a buggy mess. Another stain on EA. Which is too bad because the game itself was fun. Dishonored 2 was like that, but not fun. It was... I thought the mechanics were stiff. There were people who thought that was a game of the year in 2016. I did not see it. I think it was an aesthetic thing. People really like the aesthetics. And I thought the aesthetics of Dishonored 2 were way better than the first Dishonored, which really I found off-putting. But I enjoyed the gameplay in the first Dishonored. I did not like the gameplay very much in the second. It was a total slog for me.
    110:58
    And then in terms of disappointing games in 2017, one, I had no interest in buying, but just noticing feedback from people who were excited, Destiny 2.
    111:07
    What... I've heard torn things on Destiny 2, but most of it has been bad. Yeah. No, I hear it's a tight shooter. The mechanics are good. Bungie knows how to make the gameplay mechanics of moving your character and fighting fun. However, my understanding is the PvP is not nearly as good as it was in the first game. It's whoever lands the first shot wins. That's the PvP now. And they have been so slow to develop raid content and it was so quick. Common complaint of MMOs. but it was so quick to get through all the story stuff and then their very first DLC raid stuff they put out wasn't good or at least the first event wasn't good so there's been a lot of really negative feedback that this, it's like they didn't learn anything from the first Destiny they made things that were great worse and they didn't fix all the things that were bad so overall well I'm sure from a bottom line standpoint it has been very good for Bungie, I can't, based off of everything I've seen, there was so much hype for this game, I just don't think it can be labeled as anything other than a disappointment. Probably the biggest disappointment of the year, aside from Mass Effect Andromeda. I was going to put Mass Effect Andromeda. I wondered if you would.
    112:28
    I've not played it either. I've not played it either, but they killed Mass Effect. Yes. Mass Effect Andromeda was so bad and set a whole bunch of stuff up for sequels, but everything about it went so bad that they literally were just like, what Mass Effect as they're pulling the knife across the throat and hiding the body in the shadows? We didn't put out a Mass Effect game this year. I don't know what you're talking about. There's no more Mass Effect games coming out.
    112:58
    And EA again, and while it may not have been Montreal's fault for a lot of the issues that they ran into, like being required to use the Frostbite 3 engine, and that's why the clay faces are clay-facey, and they had a lot of trouble with getting that to work with an RPG and all that. So I don't want to throw the developers fully under the bus, though I do think, unlike some entities have claimed, I do think there's some developer culpability here. I don't like to say, let's just blame the filthy publisher, but I will blame EA for their nasty habit of, the moment there's a bad game, they just close the studio. Yeah. And that's what they did here. That's exactly what they did. Dead. Killed you off. Kill them off. They killed us. There are games out there that have, well, like we see in pinball. There are games out there that aren't that great, but once they've had some time to get some code revisions in, they're fine. Man, EA doesn't even – nope, dead. Or it'd be like if a designer has a bad game, he's not allowed to make a pinball game again? I don't know if it was Charlie or who, but just because I don't like Rob Zombie doesn't mean I don't want them to have the opportunity to do another game from a development standpoint. Not every game is going to be gold. And the desire for every game to be gold is the reason we're at Call of Duty 437, World War II again. Yes.
    114:22
    And why once a certain series, they locked themselves into a niche. That's why we're at Assassin's Creed. oh my god, we've caught up almost to modern times. Let's go back even farther than we were originally.
    114:36
    Yeah. To the origins. Origins. So, how about top games? Top games. Now, I have played several games that were new this year. I'm torn. And this is me.
    114:54
    So, I'm going to separate this into two sections, my top game. Oh, wow. my game that I think is the prettiest and that I think is probably has the, definitely has the best story and is the most engaging to people who aren't crazy like I am any guesses? Horizon which beat out Bryson for everything. It was at the Game Awards. So I should have beat out my dad. So yeah, Breath of the Wild. I just forgot because it was so new. It was last episode you were really talking about.
    115:38
    I've been loving this game. Well, it makes sense. I've only heard good things. But because of my craziness, the other game that just came out this year that I've spent... I'd have to look on Steam. I know I'm up over 100 hours on it already.
    115:55
    Maybe coming up on 200 by now. Cold Waters. Yep. Old school Cold War era submarine combat? Yeah, I can't. That's a game that I will pick up and start playing randomly just for, it is my, I don't want to say it's my light level game, but it is something that doesn't require me to be too buried into. For me, it's super relaxing. where like Breath of the Wild you're doing stuff, you're trying to remember stuff you're running on your quest and you're paying attention I say paying attention like I'm not paying attention when I play Cold Waters but it's a different type of attention it requires a different level of you're thinking differently and Cold Waters is a game I'm not really wrapped up into it I'll play some Cold Waters and if I screw something up oh well, I'll start another one it's just kind of for me Cold Waters would be more like dropping quarters into a pinball machine, oh, I had a bad game. Where you're much more invested in like Breath of the Wild or like when Fallout came out and you were playing Fallout or playing the Skyrim or Witcher, which, oh no, I need to play it. I haven't actually even started it, but I bought it at the last sale.
    117:16
    It's a good game. I've heard that. Everyone says it's a good game, but I've still not started it because now I'm playing Breath of the Wild, but I'd say those are my two. Breath of the Wild for looks, story and all that in cold waters because cold waters can be simultaneously really, really relaxing and super tense in a way that just flows. You know, when you're dodging attacks by enemy surface ships and submarines and this and that, it can be fun or it can be super tense and it can be insane. And it's a game that's got those moments where sometimes you'll slip out of something. You just want to jump out of the chair and cheer. and be like, yeah, did you see that? Nobody saw that. Nobody cares.
    118:00
    Sad. Okay. Well, that makes sense for you, definitely. Okay. Well, I have played a few now, especially these last few weeks or a few days. That were 2017. My number one highlight pick will be Wolfenstein II, the new Colossus. Yeah. It's such a worthy successor to the first game. The story, it's good. It's so well written. despite how crazy it is. And I know I've mentioned how crazy it started to get. It got way worse. I've heard that it gets way worse. Oh, my gosh. It gets so ridiculous. But it's, you know, and they have, like, even humorous moments, but they also play it so serious at times. And it works really well. The dialogue and the interaction between the characters is so solid. That's why I put it up there. It's a blast to play. The mechanics still feel good, just like they did on the first one. and it puts you in a lot of different scenarios. It's got a lot of interesting challenges. There's a lot of meat there for it being single player. Yeah. If you want, there's a lot of things you can work on. The other game, though, I want to throw out there, also a single player experience, is Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. I heard really good things about it. It is the scariest Resident Evil game I have ever played. Did you make sure to only play it at night? Not at the very end, but I played the first year. act. The first act is the worst, and I played it at night, and I did stop once, and I was like, okay, that's enough. We're going to stop right now. I actually, I think I limited myself to screaming out loud two or three times, but I just, oh, those cheap jump scares.
    119:45
    It's so creepy. And I'm not an old school Resident Evil player. The oldest one I played is Code Veronica. And I have not finished that one. I've played four, five, six... The co-op one we played, was that six? We did five.
    120:02
    Four is where they did the transition to being the much more mobile, more action-oriented survival horror. Some people think they weren't survival horrors anymore. They also required extreme ammo management and stuff until you unlock all the overpowered stuff to go get through all the difficulties. This, though, first person perspective, extremely limiting, so you still got all the survival horror mechanics. There's a lot of evasion that's required, especially early on. The story's good, the dialogue's good, and it's actually scary. It just, and so, it ticks all those boxes. I kept thinking it was over, and it wasn't over. There's more and more. You still got crazy boss fights. that can be hard to figure out. And there's a lot between the lines if you go and you investigate and read the reports and letters on desks and stuff to learn what's going on faster than what the story's telling you. To try and understand exactly what all this is. Because in a lot of ways, if it didn't say Resident Evil, you might not think that it's a Resident Evil game at all. Not until really the end where they throw in some cameos of some known characters. Wesker! No, not Wesker. Too bad. I knew he didn't die when we jumped from the volcano? Yeah. A lot of people hated Resident Evil 5. I really enjoyed it. It's a really good co-op. That was the first co-op. And it's really good. That was back when we actually had the ability to play through games co-op. Because we had time. We had time. And the like. But anyway, so just not, it's a little too, the gameplay, it's a survival horror type. It's a little more, to me it's more enjoyable to go and shoot and stuff in Wolfenstein. But, oh gosh It's so rare for Capcom To get it right anymore But they did with this, they really did Well that's it, we made it through our year end review Yay! And we'll probably talk about our Start of our second year of podcasting Here when we Next episode of the episode after Start of the third year actually The second year We'll probably do it on the next one I think But I also, I'll talk all about these games that I didn't touch on. I didn't talk about Halo Wars or anything. And I'd go a little bit more into Resident Evil as well. But anyway, that's pretty much it. You can always reach out to the show, facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast or you can send us an email, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. We're on Twitter and Instagram at eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll see everyone in two weeks. So, goodbye! Bye! I'll probably be at War with Russia again.