I can't stand to fly. I'm not that naive. I'm just out to find the better part of me. Welcome, everybody, to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. Did I drink too much coffee on my last show? I sort of enjoyed it. I sort of enjoyed just dropping what's going on in this hobby. Happy Tuesday morning, everybody. What is going on in Pinball this week? Congratulations to the five Beetlejuice spot winners. No, nobody who won a game is now selling another game. I saw that in the chat. False information. It spreads like wildfire in the modern world. Canada has seen some stuff on one of the biggest, most upcoming games of the year. Doc Brown, Marty McFly, I'm going to give you a little bit of information that nobody else knows. So take it everywhere. Take it to Pinside. Take it to Jason Knapp. Take it to Kerry Hardy. But you have not heard this information anywhere. Once again, he's doing it. He's giving you the price of admission. But the big question on everybody's mind right now, not everybody's mind, but most people's minds, and I'm sorry if I talk about this a lot because I own the damn machine. Am I not allowed to talk about Pokemon, but it's bigger than Pokemon. Where is the code? Those four words. Where is the code? Now, it is not the Pokemon people that are suffering the most. There are some of our friends that bought a Walking Dead remastered. That game, as of today, as of May 5th, the Walking Dead remastered has been out for six months. The code on a game that is a remastered game. They didn't even have to fully code a game. It is Lyman's masterpiece. They simply had to port it over, make some new dots. And what is the issue? What is the holdup? It's not even like they're inserting show clips or anything intricate like that. The game is still basically on a buggy, broken code after six months. Okay, so we've got that. Would it surprise you to know that in just like 10 days, Pokemon Pinball will have been revealed to the world for four months. Transformers is coming out at the end of May. And so here we are again in the same scenario we've been in many, many times. Where is the code? Now, if you're Stern Pinball, let's play devil's advocate. Why do you care? You have all of these people that bought all of these games before even playing a single game. You've got all of these dealers and distros placing orders, selling customers unfinished products. It's been this way since I've been in pinball, but it feels like it's getting worse. Do you buy a Jersey Jack game and does it come with such early code? Now, of course, Jersey Jack can focus on one game a year. Same with Spooky. Same with a lot of companies. You know, this is the problem with Stern Pinball wanting to make three cornerstone games a year, also do a couple remastered or remakes. So you've got like five to six games a year Stern Pinball is going to put on the line. And whenever it's a new game, it feels like they're willing to accept people's money on a game that is still very, very early on. And the problem that creates for a lot of the owners is not just the weight. You also watch these games lose like a ton of value because people just think the game isn't good. And of course it's not good. It's like watching a movie without the special effects put in. It's very barren, like the foundation is there, but the actual experience of playing it gets really old really fast. I am shocked on a George Gomez game where the guy runs the company on a game that's been out for four months. There hasn't been a single code update like you don't have like maybe just the Jigglypuff mode. Just put something else in it. Get from point. What is it? Point eight one or point eight four up to point eight two or point eight five. Can they just give us something else So what everybody is expecting now because this is what happens the more time that goes on The more people expect a major code update because it been a third of a year since the game came out So do you think we're going to get a massive Pokemon code update before Transformers comes out? Or do you think we're going to get Transformers, which I think is going to come with more code on day one than Pokemon has and it will have been out for almost five, six months? I think Transformers is going to have more in it. It creates a dilemma and a quagmire, but only for the owners. And this is a pinball pandemic, if you will. Is it not our fault when you think about it that we rush and buy these games so early? Maybe 15 years ago, it wasn't such a big deal waiting for the code because the games were so cheap. But the problem now is you spend all this money on these games and I've been saying it by the time they are code complete, your game might lose like three to five thousand dollars depending on the popularity of the game. And the problem with Stern and buying Sterns and collecting Sterns is we move on to the next shiny new game. So in about a month, everyone's going to move on to Transformers. And then four months from then, it's going to be Keith Elwin's fallout. And the cycle goes on and on and on. And unfortunately, what's happening is a scenario like this. Just imagine a world, ladies and gentlemen, in which every single movie, when it's released, goes into the theaters with none of the special effects put in. You're not able to see and enjoy the film the way it is supposed to be enjoyed. And I don't care what anybody says. This is an entertainment product. I want to enjoy it to its fullest on day one. I know we're forced to wait, but when you spend $13,000 plus shipping plus this, I spent $14,200 on a toy that after a few months is still incomplete. That may still be incomplete a year from now. But guess what? They didn't make me buy it. They didn't put a gun to my head. I bought it. So what we're doing as a community is empowering this cycle of contempt in which all of these Stern movies slash pinball machines are put into theaters without the special effects. And what happens, right? Over time, what is the byproduct of that? It's no longer good enough that like a year later, people on pin side consider the game to now be good. What's happening is over time, everyone's just getting tired of buying early, getting burned financially. And by the time the game matures, you could have got one for thousands less than if you just waited. So I am disappointed. I don't care what the licensor approval timeline is. Then don't release the game. That's my thing. Don't release these products so unfinished. Why should we have to do this? Why should we have to absorb your issues with your timelines and your manufacturing schedule and your approval timelines and your relationship issues with the license holder? Why should we have to? Name me another consumer product in the world where you would ever spend this much money and absorb this level of incompleteness. And so, yeah, now that I own a Stern, I understand a lot of your pain. I didn't understand that with Guns N' Roses. The game was finished when I unboxed mine. The game was pretty much finished when it shipped. When Sonic the Hedgehog ships in just a couple of months, it is coming out, I believe, June 21st. I think that is Sonic's birthday. June 21st, the world will see Sonic the Hedgehog. That is just a little over a month from now. When that game gets revealed, it is going to be pretty much done. There might be a few polishing things, a few things with the internet connectivity to the game, but it's going to be done. We're not going to be waiting forever to see if the game matures. Harry Potter was pretty much done on day one. They just adjusted some of the sound elements and made some of the movie clips come through a little bit better. But for the most part, the game was done. They're not going to make you pay $15,000 and only have a half-baked item. But this is Stern. I mean, if you want this many games a year, this is what you'll put up with. And look, history has shown that we will put up with this, that we will just keep doing it. So I do hope the code arrives first and foremost for my friends with The Walking Dead. I do hope the people who own a D who have been waiting over a year for that topper get their topper How is it that a Pokemon topper will be completed before a D topper The issue is simply this Stern clearly cuts bait on games that didn do great which makes the Pokemon wait even more concerning because we know they want to do it So, yeah, it probably is the license holder and the approvals that are going to be a nightmare for people that own this game. The other thing that I've noticed with Stern, and I hear this from people all the time, I feel like Stern is this company with incredible talent and the talent is divided all over the place. And unfortunately, some of their greatest talent gets applied to games that nobody truly wants. So, for example, I keep hearing that Ray Day's Star Wars code is amazing, and I've heard it from a lot of people, and I bet it is. But how many of you out there want to plunk down the money on this uninspired layout and this uninspired game? And for everything that you could make a Star Wars game, I'm sorry, but this last Star Wars game is really, really, really, really misses the mark. And nothing about it pulls me in or makes me want to own one. That being said, I'll happily play one. I'll play one on location. I'll play one at a show. I'll play one at a friend's house. But the fact that Ray Day's amazing talents are applied to Star Wars, he should be applying those talents to Pokemon. Come on. Look at the job that Ray Day did with Metallica remastered, right? He crushed it. Metallica remastered, Ray Day crushed it. And look at what's happening with The Walking Dead remastered. What? It's an absolute disaster. So the level of inconsistency at Stern is really concerning. And I wish one day they would just put everything together. Imagine this. Imagine if Stern was like, you know what? We're just going to make one game this year and it's going to be like a banger. Like, let's just say like die hard. We're going to take all of our money, all of our talents, all of our design expertise, our coding expertise. We're going to make one game so damn good that the line is never going to stop going. We think we can beat. This would be a great goal. We think we can beat the single year sales record for a game or the total sales record. We think we can make a game that would sell more than the Adams family. So let's say it's like 22,000 units. If we take all of our resources, all of our efforts, put all of our money towards getting all of the assets, we're going to make the greatest pinball machine of all time. And that is why the line is going to be moving all year long. That's not their approach. It's a shotgun approach. Let's just keep throwing games at the wall. And if just one or two sticks a year, we're good. Our whole goal is just to keep the line moving. It regardless if the game's done, it regardless if the theme is something people want, it regardless if we even have the staff that can apply time to make sure this game gets updates on a frequent basis. That's the model. It's just keep the line going. All right. So speaking of keeping the line going, sometimes when a game is on the line, you have to look down at it and say, hey, should that be going to a customer like this? We talk about quality control a lot and I will say, imagine you're in charge of pinball quality control on a game. When was the last time you walked around a pinball machine that you own and looked at every single post, every single screw, every single piece of plastic? So I want to say before I talk about this, it is hard when you've got a lot of games coming off the line or you've been staring at the same damn game for months. It is hard to catch everything. But this man who received a brand new Dune machine was like, hey, guys, is this normal? And by his left ramp, there were two screws that were not flush with the play field. They were sticking up a good like centimeter or two. And you can see the threading in the screws. And he's like, is this normal? It looks like the ball might hit these screws. Shouldn't they be flush with the play field? And of course, like everything should be screwed flush with the play field. You shouldn't see any threading of any screws or posts. And so everyone was like, no, that's not normal. Screw it in. He goes to screw these two screws down and they won't budge. They won't move. They're in as far as they can go. And he doesn't want to strip the screws. And so, yeah, now he's in this place where people are chiming in being like, OK, now all you got to do is drill holes in your playfield and make the hole bigger. And he like I not doing that And of course he shouldn do that He should open up a ticket Now barrels may eventually guide him through how to maybe make those holes a little bit bigger I don know if it requires a drill or not but yeah it unfortunate And look I want to give every company the benefit of the doubt Obviously, not every single Doom machine is going out like this. The other part of pinball manufacturing that is always really difficult, and this is why these companies struggle, it's hard to find consistent help to make these games. It is a very high skilled labor job that pays very little money. When you combine those two things and a lot of these companies that are on the boutique level, some of them use temp workers. And these are people that aren't skilled in making pinball machines. They're just taking a job to stand on a line at a pinball company making very little money, like minimum kind of wage jobs, like $20, $30 an hour. To build a $12,000 product. And so, yeah, like they're not making these things with the kind of intent and skill level that you might expect for the amount of money these things cost. You know, even though these games might cost as much as a Rolex, you're not getting that level of manufacturing detail and consistency that you would with some other luxury toys that cost this much money. Not to mention everything underneath a playfield, every wire, every solder, every coil, everything's got to be attached properly. And a lot of stuff can happen that might not be caught before a game leaves the factory. So my whole thing is this. If you have an issue, sure, share it with the community. But you know what I always say? Call up the company. They will help you. I have never met a pinball company that when you have an issue like this, they won't help you. And if they don't help you, then the next call should be to Kaneda because I will make sure they will take care of the issue. I will broadcast the issue until you have a solve that is to your liking. All right, everybody. OK, so let's do a real quick what's coming up soon. So we've got Transformers announced in May, made in June. We've got Sonic the Hedgehog revealed to the world June 21st on the line, basically going to be going out to consumers, I think, in July. So that's really exciting. I think we're also going to get back to the future announced to the world, not revealed to the world, announced to the world around that time. And I think they're going to do that because I think Barry's going to want to start to get some deposits in. Now, I don't think it's going to take your money. I think he's going to take deposits from his dealer network, which is not vast, but I think he just wants to start getting some people locked in. Will he stay true and give the first spots to those Alice owners? How many Alice's were there? Like 500. So apparently those people are first in line. Here's the thing. I think you're going to hear some stuff about Back to the Future, and I think you're going to hear it here first. And I know a lot of you are saying to yourself, well, man, Kaneda, I give you $5 a month. I give you $10 a month. I give you $30 a month. Some of you give $100 a month. Some of you contribute $100 every week. Guys like Ozzy, $100 every YouTube week. Ozzy's there, $100 paying for Brenda's sake. Some of you guys out there, Sad Boy, $50, Frank Mack, always with the generous offerings on social media. And right now, what I'm going to do, I'm not screaming like a lunatic. Some of you don't like the Coffee Ranch show. I enjoy it. I'll do what I want to do when I want to do it. And so all of a sudden now you're like, well, what's he about to do? Well, I'm about to do the reason why you're here. I'm about to give you something nobody's ever given you. I'm about to give you an exclusive that's really exciting that you can now run wild with. And you didn't hear this anywhere else. And you didn't expect this. And you didn't see this coming. Kind of like when I said that Keith Elwin was working on a fourth version of James Bond and everybody called me crazy. So I'm here to tell you right now that a game coming out this year that's very exciting that I can't wait to see it. This game is going to look different than you ever expected it to look. Christopher Franchi is on the art package. We know that he's going to crush it. But that's not the thing. What if I told you and what if we put two and two together? What if the answer was staring us in the face all along? What if you had a game called Back to the Future and you had all the assets from all the movies? How are you going to deliver that to the pinball world? Were you going to do a little dot matrix thing like the big Lebowski? No. And then also you got Jean-Paul DeWin. And working on this game for you. Okay, Jean-Paul DeWin, maybe the greatest digital code visual artist in the history of pinball that makes some of the greatest displays ever. Are you going to make them work on a tiny little screen? No. So let's put two and two together. What if I told you that Dutch Pinball's Back to the Future with Jean-Paul DeWin doing all of the animations on this game? And what if I told you with 100% certainty that this game is going to look exactly like a Jersey Jack Pinball platform game? What if I told you for the $5 a month you spend, you know you should double it right now, that Dutch Pinball's Back to the Future will be delivered to the world with a 27-inch screen that will look exactly like a Jersey Jack game. What if I told you this is happening? What if I told you I love each and every one of you, thank you so much for your subscription and for your support. Take it to everywhere and say a prayer for my mother who has to have a biopsy this week because they found something else on one of her scans and it's heartbreaking. And what if I told you that yeah these pinball machines and this pinball news is irrelevant to what really matters The most important thing is each other and family and friends and our health and our happiness Canada out