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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast May 2024 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·3h 31m·analyzed·Jun 5, 2024
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TL;DR

May 2024 recap: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland officially announced, John Wick revealed with gun controversy, Stern's media relations push, and remake plans confirmed.

Summary

Pinball Magazine and Pinball News editors Jonathan Justin and Martin Owen recap May 2024 industry news, featuring the official announcement of Dutch Pinball Exclusive's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Q3 2024, ~500 units), Stern Pinball's John Wick reveal (Pro $6,999–LE $12,999, 1,000 units), and confirmed remakes of Iron Maiden (July) and Metallica. Discussion covers licensing restrictions (gun imagery), pricing concerns, Stern's media relations tour to Chicago, and code updates across multiple titles.

Key Claims

  • Dutch Pinball Exclusive's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to launch Q3 2024 (July–September) with approximately 500-unit production run

    high confidence · Official DPX announcement; Jonathan and Martin discuss details and timeline

  • John Wick John Wick was supposed to be a week-long reveal but leaked early, dumping all materials at once

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin discuss the timing and leak

  • John Wick LE limited to 1,000 units at $12,999 MSRP; Pro $6,999, Premium $9,699

    high confidence · Official Stern pricing announced

  • No guns shown in John Wick static artwork (playfield, side art, backglass) due to licensor restriction; guns only visible on LCD

    high confidence · George Gomez conducted interviews explaining the restriction; confirmed by Jonathan and Martin

  • Stern flew North American pinball media and content creators to Chicago for factory tours and licensing education, but did not invite international media (confirmed by Zach Sharp)

    high confidence · Jonathan and Martin discuss exclusion and explanation; neither were invited

  • Iron Maiden remake confirmed for July 2024 by Australian distributor Amusement Works

    high confidence · Jonathan cites Facebook post from Amusement Works

  • Metallica is being reissued in updated form, possibly on Spike 3 platform with LCD, later in 2024

    medium confidence · Jonathan and Martin state belief/strong expectation; not officially confirmed

  • Rumor: Black and White Godzilla 70th Anniversary Edition scheduled for July manufacturing

    medium confidence · Jonathan describes as 'strong rumor'; not officially confirmed

  • Remake titles (Iron Maiden, etc.) will only be Pro and Premium models, not Limited Editions, to avoid customer backlash

    medium confidence · Jonathan and Martin discuss industry realization and strategy shift

Notable Quotes

  • “It was a black-and-white pencil line, or pen line, artwork by Zombie Yeti, Jeremy Packer.”

    Martin Owen @ ~12:00 — Identifies original Alice game artist (now at Stern); raises questions about new artwork for DPX version

  • “There went out the door when John Wick week... They do sort of splash all the key information about the game rather than have people guessing.”

    Jonathan Justin @ ~25:00 — Confirms early leak forced Stern to release all John Wick details simultaneously, disrupting planned reveal cadence

  • “It's not a free choice to be exposed to guns, while when you choose to play a game, then you did make that choice, and then it's okay to show them apparently.”

    Martin Owen @ ~32:00 — Explains licensor rationale for gun imagery restriction on static artwork vs. LCD screens

  • “George Gomez, Stern's vice president of game design, I believe his complete title is, rushed to do interviews with several podcasters to explain why there were no guns.”

    Jonathan Justin @ ~30:00 — Indicates Stern undertook rapid damage control regarding gun imagery controversy

  • “Where are all the toys in the game? There's really not very much in any of the models, as far as I can see.”

    Jonathan Justin @ ~40:00 — Criticism of John Wick's sparse toy/mechanical feature set across all three models

  • “If you go from the pro to the LE, you're adding, effectively, you're adding $6,000. For what?”

    Martin Owen @ ~55:00 — Highlights pricing tension between tiers and customer perception of value

  • “So Stern figured they needed to jump in to educate these people about what it takes to actually make a game and everything that goes on in the back.”

    Martin Owen @ ~65:00 — Interprets Stern's media relations push as strategic education to reduce criticism

  • “You can't promise people when they first buy the game it's a limited edition and then later come out with another limited edition which could be even more limited.”

Entities

Dutch Pinball Exclusive (DPX)companyAlice's Adventures in WonderlandgameJohn WickgameStern PinballcompanyMelvin WilliamspersonJeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti)person

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: John Wick gun imagery controversy triggered significant backlash; George Gomez rushed to conduct multiple podcast interviews explaining licensor rationale; hosts characterize as disproportionate media blowback given precedent (Bond, Indiana Jones, etc.)

    high · Jonathan and Martin note guns absent from static artwork but present on LCD; discuss gun plungers and precedent games; characterize gun removal as 'not a first' but 'remarkable'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: John Wick reveals disparity between Pro feature set and Premium/LE feature set; Pro has same playfield footprint but functions removed (drop target, toys, locks) creating visual reminders of what customer didn't pay for

    high · Jonathan criticizes plug-hole in drop-target lane on Pro as 'ugly' and 'constant reminder'; notes same playfield artwork/cutouts across tiers but mechanic removal

  • ?

    leak_detection: John Wick reveal leaked early, forcing Stern to dump all reveal materials (Pro/Premium/LE specs, pricing, features) at once rather than staggered 'John Wick Week' rollout

    high · Jonathan states materials 'instantly available' early; Stern responded by releasing everything together; contrast with planned staggered reveal (Pro first, LE next day)

  • $

    market_signal: Stern conducted North American-only factory media tour for John Wick reveal, including factory photography permissions, licensing education, BOM discussion; explicit exclusion of international media (UK/EU press)

    high · Jonathan notes neither he nor Martin invited; Zach Sharp confirmed domestic-only policy as unintentional but deliberate; hosts interpret as damage control and education for newer content creators

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.633

0:00
John Wick revealed Funhouse remake revealed Extended interview with David Fix of American Pinball Hi, my name is Jonathan Justin of Pinball Magazine I'm the editor over there I'm joined by Hi, I'm Martin Owen, I'm the editor of Pinball News and Jonathan and I are here to talk about all the exciting happenings in the pinball world throughout the month of May 2024. And as you've just heard, there's been some new games. Yeah, new games, but not the most exciting month. Let's be honest about that as well. There was not much other news, so we hope we can... Well, we had hopes that we could make a rather short pinball for you this time. and then we got the interview with David Fitts which is over an hour and a half long but it includes a lot of interesting details that maybe or are most likely new to you even if you listen to other podcasts and what have you because David really was very open and discussing or answering even and the more deeper questions that we were asking, if you want to call it that. Yeah, well, we'll get to that at the end of our roundup of the news from each of the pinball companies, because it's definitely worth listening to, to pull out all the details. As Jonathan says, there's a lot in there, and we do address all the rumours, and all the suggestions, and all the comments that people have been making about American Pinball, their future, and what the IPO, the parent company in India means for American Pinball, and their sales. Yeah, much, much more. But we'll come to that a bit later then. But before we go any further, we've just got this late breaking news to bring you a special announcement that's come from Dutch Pinball Exclusive and we kind of knew roughly what it was going to be about but it's absolute confirmation now from Dutch Pinball Exclusive that their very first game is going to be based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland the book by Lewis Carroll from 1865 now we Jonathan and I did discuss this I think a couple of months back, maybe in the March recap, where we said we thought it was going to be this, and we were speculating over whether or not it would be, or what assets, if any, would be carried over from the version that was created by John Papaduke for his Zidware company, which several people bought, either deposits or paid in full for the machine. Well, Melvin Brow Williams Who purchased all those assets from Zidware And also bought some from Turner Pimble, I believe Yes, that's correct Yeah, some of the assets related to The Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland And maybe Magic Girl as well I don't know whether that was introduced I think he bought the rights for all Deepwood IP Which included the Zidware IP that they got from John Popatewik at the time.

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland title chosen (not 'Alice in Wonderland') because latter is copyrighted to Disney; former based on 1865 public-domain book

    high confidence · Martin explains trademark distinction in detail

    • Jonathan Justin @ ~95:00 — Explains industry shift away from LE remakes due to collector backlash

  • “The playfield's been redesigned. Melvin says that it's been designed and engineered by him, and knowing John's designs from the past, it's highly unlikely that there was actually a playable version.”

    Martin Owen @ ~18:00 — Clarifies that original Zidware Alice was only cardboard prototype; DPX redesigning from scratch

  • “Neither you or I were invited... it was nothing intentional, but this was the first time they were doing something like this and they only invited domestic media.”

    Jonathan Justin (quoting Zach Sharp) @ ~62:00 — Confirms North American-only media tour; international press (UK/Europe) excluded

    • John Popadiuk
    person
    Elliot Eismanperson
    George Gomezperson
    Tim Sextonperson
    Ian McShaneperson
    Randy Martinezperson
    Charlie Bernanteperson
    Alex Eddyperson
    Brian Eddyperson
    Amusement Works (Australia)company
    Zidwarecompany
    Pinball Magazineorganization
    Pinball Newsorganization
    Zach Sharpperson
    Jonathan Justinperson
    Martin Owenperson
    Iron Maidengame
    Metallicagame
    Black Knight Sword of Ragegame
    Godzilla 70th Anniversary Editiongame

    personnel_signal: Elliot Eisman (10-year Stern mechanical engineer) leading first full playfield design on John Wick; underrepresented in promotional material vs. George Gomez and Tim Sexton; promotional push should increase

    high · Jonathan notes Elliot's absence from early John Wick press; only recently appeared in Stern of the Union video with Tim Sexton; hosts encourage higher public profile

  • $

    market_signal: Growing market concern about three-tier pricing (Pro/Premium/LE) with $6k spread (Pro to LE) and value perception erosion; customers questioning what they're getting for money

    high · Martin and Jonathan emphasize buyer fatigue post-Venom; John Wick pricing ($6,999/$9,699/$12,999) seen as exemplar of unsustainable model

  • ?

    announcement: Official announcement of Dutch Pinball Exclusive's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (500 units, Q3 2024) with teaser artwork and distributor registration model

    high · DPX posted official teaser with 'fall down the rabbit hole' Q3 2024 messaging; confirmation that Melvin Williams designed/engineered playfield from Zidware assets

  • ?

    product_strategy: Dutch Pinball Exclusive setting Q3 2024 (July–September) deadline for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland after history of Big Lebowski delays and Zidware failures

    medium · Martin expresses speculation-mode assumption that DPX will have machines pre-built and ready to ship immediately to avoid repeating Dutch Pinball/Zidware delays; Jonathan expects prototype at November Dutch Pinball Open or October Pinball Expo

  • ?

    product_concern: John Wick playfield criticized for sparse toy/mechanical features across all three models; Pro has drop-target plug-hole that looks 'ugly' and feels punitive; minimal differentiation in core playfield between tiers

    high · Jonathan catalogs absence of toys: no blood oath marker animation, no moving car, no opening weapons chest, no ball lock in Pro; notes same playfield cutouts/artwork across models

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Strong rumor of Black and White Godzilla 70th Anniversary Edition scheduled for July 2024 manufacturing; untranslated but fits pattern of Iron Maiden and Metallica remakes

    medium · Jonathan describes as 'strong rumor'; notes July manufacturing timeline aligns with Iron Maiden and other remakes; no official confirmation provided

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern shifting remake strategy to Pro/Premium only (no Limited Editions) for Iron Maiden, Metallica, Black Knight to avoid customer backlash from previous LE dilution

    medium · Jonathan and Martin discuss industry realization that LE promises broken by subsequent LE remakes; confirmed for Iron Maiden (July); expected for Metallica and Godzilla rumor

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Gun imagery removed from John Wick static artwork due to licensor restriction; rationale is that players make voluntary choice to engage with game content vs. passive exposure

    high · George Gomez conducted multiple podcast interviews explaining rationale; Jonathan and Martin confirm host Ian McShane and widespread discussion

    • 3:51
    But I don't think John worked on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland at Deep Root. Deep Root, no, I don't think so. At least we never heard anything about that. Yes, so today's announcement comes from Dutch Pinball Exclusive, which is the joint venture between Dutch Pinball and Melvin Brown Williams. It was a company that was set up between the two of them to do short run boutique games and it was widely speculated that Alice's Adventure or Alice in Wonderland would be the first game because assets for that already existed from the purchase by Melvin. Well, what we've got now is confirmation of that, but it's actually going to be called Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. And that name change is significant because Alice in Wonderland, the title is copyrighted to Disney from their 1951 movie of that name, whereas Alice's Adventure in Wonderland is the title of the 1865 book, as I said, which is now public domain, so anyone can use that. Now, the game which John originally designed was covered with the most amazing artwork. It was a black-and-white pencil line, or pen line, artwork by Zombie Yeti, Jeremy Packer. Now, part of this announcement, DPX, Dutch Pinball Exclusive, have put out a sort of teaser poster showing the title and some artwork and saying that they expect to, stay tuned for until Q3 of 2024 so that would be I guess from July August September of this year so not too long to wait we're in the end of Q2 right now so that's good but it's different artwork and seeing as Jeremy Packer's now working for Stern Pinball, it would be surprising if he did any work on a Dutch Pinball exclusive game. So I think we can expect to see different art. Or I think we can expect to see art coloured by someone else, but it might still be the Jeremy Packer artwork, although he can't add anything anymore because he's working for Stern.
    6:29
    That's possible, but that's assuming that there's no additional artwork pieces needed. No, the playfield's been redesigned. Melvin says that it's been designed and engineered by him, and knowing John's designs from the past, it's highly unlikely that there was actually a playable, well, there wasn't a playable version. There was only ever a cardboard game, and that would almost certainly need to be re-engineered in order to actually make it play. So that would probably require more or different plastics to be used throughout the game. You know, different slingshots, different cabinet, probably. Yeah, but keep in mind that Melvin bought the assets of Zitware in those locker units, which included a number of hard drives that contained every piece of artwork that was used on the game separately, in separate layers. So he could just still use it, scale it to whatever size he wants to. That's a good point. Yeah. So I would be surprised if we see another artist working on this game other than someone to color Jeremy Packers or Zombie Yeti's artwork. Well, of course, the title has changed as well. It's not Alice in Wonderland anymore, so somebody else would need to do the logo for the game. Right.
    8:00
    As well as cabinet art, I guess, and maybe bat box art. Yeah. Oh, well, we'll just have to see what they will come up with in top four months, I would say. Yeah, that's right. the poster says fall down the rabbit hole Q3 2024 so it's important to stress that given the unfortunate ending of Zidware and those people who have put their money into the Alice in Wonderland and other titles DPX are not taking any deposits or asking for any deposits or pre-order money at this stage and they ask that you contact their distributors to register your interest if you are interested in buying the Alice in the Adventure in Wonderland game. Now, their distributor network, well they don't even have a website at the moment, so it's hard to know where the distributor network is, but I would assume it would be the existing Dutch Pinball distributors. Probably, yeah. So if you go to the Dutch Pinball website and look at the list of distributors there, you can see who your nearest one is. Right, so I did talk to Barry earlier today.
    9:20
    He told me there would be a distributor briefing today, before the announcement. well, it's nice that you can reach out to your distributor if you're interested, but we don't know any pricing yet. So I'm not sure whether distributors already know. but pricing these days seems to be a hot topic so you could be interested in the game but if it's too expensive you might as well bail out after all.
    9:53
    Yes, indeed. And of course there may be different versions. I suspect there will probably only be one given it's going to be a short run.
    10:00
    We don't know how many machines they're going to produce but I think we said somewhere before that it's going to be something like 500. Yeah, I think the idea behind Dodge Primal Exclusive is that it will be short run productions with a maximum of 500 units. Right, good. Okay, I'm glad I remember correctly. So, well, I think it's worth registering your interest and then they can get some kind of idea of how much demand there might be for the game. Of course, as you say, price dependent, but if nobody contacts them, then they say, oh, there's no interest in this game. But if 2,000 people do, then they can price the game accordingly, such that they can sell 500 of them. Right. At a higher price. I understand that this teaser, if you want to call it like that, from Dutch Pinball, on the other hand, I'm not sure whether it's a good tool to measure interest if people still haven't seen the game. because once you see it, that might change your mind completely in a positive or a negative way. Yes, yes, true. So not sure how much the interest that distributors notice is actually worth in the sense that people still will decide once they see the finished product. Of course, but it might be good for just gauging whether there's a buzz around the idea of the game, or whether people have so many options now, or are all spent out, that they're not interested in buying more games at the moment, which is a different topic. But anyway, we're bringing more details, of course, about Alice's Adventure in Wonderland from Dutch Pinball Exclusive in future pincasts, and I'm sure we'll be covering their adventure on our respective pinball-magazine.com and pinballnews.com websites. Right, so one more note regarding the Alice's Adventure in Wonderland game. I expect, and this is just speculation on my end, but with the Dutch Pinball Open being held the first weekend of November, I think it's probably safe to say that there will be a working Alice Adventure in Wonderland machine, or maybe even multiple, at the event. I have no confirmation on that, but given the Q3 expectation in this teaser, I would say you might expect production to have started by then, and so we might see the game. I'm not sure what they're going to bring to Pinball Expo.
    13:02
    Dutch Pinball will be present, from what I understood, but I'm not sure whether they will be bringing any games, or probably Cointaker will. So you might see the game at Pinball Expo as well, if production has started by then. Yes. That's only the second or the third week of October, so...
    13:22
    Yeah, it's a month before DPO Expo. Almost. So that's three weeks, shall we say. But it's also worth remembering that when Barry and Melvin announced the formation of the Dutch Pinball Exclusive, they did have a picture of the two of them posing either side of a game which was taken at that time to be Alice in Wonderland. Yeah. Well, I'm sure they've done all the prototyping that they needed to do.
    13:52
    And now the question is how quickly can they get into production? but assuming ok let's while we usually stick to the facts let me put on the assumption mode for just a minute given the fact that Dutch Pinball has a history with announcing a game and then not being able to deliver for quite some time and we know the history of the Big Tobolski, I'm pretty sure the company will do a lot to prevent that from happening again. So my guess is, and mark my words, this is just a guess, once the game is announced, I expect them to have already a number of games built and ready to ship or even a distributor so they can ship immediately just to prevent a similar scenario like we've seen almost a decade ago.
    15:07
    Yes, not just from Dutch Involve but also from Zidware as well. So, yeah, it's got a checkered history but this is their big chance to break through and present a fully working game ready to go. Right, okay. So, speculation mode off.
    15:28
    Which brings us probably to the next topic. Actually, our first headline, and that is Stern Pinball Revealing John Wick. Which was supposed to be like John Wick Week, but they got the internet exploit. Very early on All the material was instantly available So There went Out the door when John Wick week Well I mean They did kind of trickle a few bits and pieces Out afterwards a few like podcasts And a few more videos Over the coming days But right at the start They do sort of Splash all the key information About the game Rather than have people guessing what the differences are between the different versions. They just announced it all.
    16:21
    They say on their schedule they're only going to announce the Pro or Premium originally and then wait for the LE to come out, details to come out the next day. But that's not what happens. It actually all comes out at once. Yes. Which is what you want, of course. So this is their second Cornerstone title of the year. Playfield Design is by Elliot Eisman, his first lead on Playfield Design, having worked with Steve Ritchie, of course. Yeah, he's already a mechanical engineer at Stern for the past 10 years, so he's not a newbie, although he's new to completely designing or designing a full game.
    17:04
    Yes, that's right. The art for the game is by Randy Martinez Who of course worked on other games for Stern Music is by Charlie Bernante Of Anthrax and Pantera fame So that's a nice gig Or a nice star to get playing on your game Software lead, Tim Sexton well known now in certain pinballers probably one of their top coders and software developers and he's the lead of the software team on that and one of the good things they had about the game another one of the good things they had about the game was they had the actor Ian McShane doing the voice call outs which is Ian McShane plays Winston who's the manager of the hotel in the movies and a key character within the series of four John Wick films.
    18:15
    And he has done call-outs in the past for the video game version of John Wick, so we're quite used to doing that. And it's great to hear him in the game. They weren't going to get John Wick himself, were they going to get Keenow doing the voices? I don't think. So having Shane doing it is a very good way of getting pinball-specific call-outs that aren't included in the movie. Right. Now, the pro model will cost you, or has an MSRP, I should say, of $6,999.
    19:00
    The premium, slightly more expensive, $9,699. And the LE, of course, is the most expensive model of the three, limited to 1,000 units. And that will cost you $13,000 minus one.
    19:20
    Yes. Which seems to be the high end now for limited edition games. Right. And, well, usually the stern reveals come with a little controversy in the form of leaks. This case, yes, there was a leak. But the controversy was more about no guns being shown in the static artwork of the game. being the playfield, the side art, and the back glass, and everything else that's standing in the way. Little plastics, yeah. Yeah. So, and apparently there was such a hot issue that George Gomez, Stern's vice president of game design, I believe his complete title is, rushed to do interviews with several podcasters to explain why there were no guns in the static artwork of the game. But there are plenty of guns shown on the LCD.
    20:36
    Yes. And the main reason was that it was a licensor restriction because apparently if people walk by a pinball machine, it's not a free choice to be exposed to guns, while when you choose to play a game, then you did make that choice, and then it's okay to show them apparently. But apparently if a five-year-old walks past a game, they might get hurt or damaged or emotionally crippled or what have you.
    21:12
    Yes. Yeah, so nothing like walking past any of those like Time Crisis or other gun games, or even Jurassic Park or any of those games where they actually have physical guns. For crying out loud, we have had multiple pinball machines that had a gun plunger. Yeah, that's right. Jersey Harry, Jurassic Park. Indiana Jones. Yeah. Yeah, we can go through them all. But games like Lethal Weapon. Well, all the James Bond films are all James Bond games. Of course, they're always holding guns on the back glass as well. So it doesn't make any sense. But, you know, it's a licensure restriction and assistance by them. And if they're not willing to budge on it, then what can you do? You either go with it and design the game, well, continue with the game and change the artwork that you may have had, or you abandon the whole thing.
    22:14
    Well, they already did that earlier this year with one game. They couldn't have forced to do it twice, I suppose.
    22:20
    Yes, that's right. Well, I guess that was due to cost issues rather than not being able to show one particular thing on the game. Right. We had this in the past, didn't we, with Big Lebowski, for instance. Yeah. There's an original gun on the playfield near John... what's his name? Walter, anyway. The Walter character in the game.
    22:48
    Yeah, that had to be removed, that's true. It's not a first, and in this case it's rather remarkable, let's call it that. So anyway, enough about all the drama. What can you tell us about the game?
    23:08
    Well, the first thing I thought when I saw it was, where are all the toys in the game? There's really not very much in any of the models, as far as I can see. The pro is incredibly stripped down. For the premium LE there is a slide-out car toy Which is both a bash toy and can block and lock the ball behind it There is a blood oath marker toy Which is just like a coin Which is above the playfield Non-interactive, it just opens up to reveal a couple of lit fingerprints inside There's a weapons chest on the right hand side which can open up if it's hit enough times to allow a shot into an up-kicker, which is otherwise blocked by the chest.
    24:07
    But that's about it. There is a three-ball lock, physical lock, in the Premium and Elite. The Pro doesn't have the animating blood oath marker, doesn't have the moving car, doesn't have the opening weapons chest, doesn't have the ball lock, and there is also a drop target, a controllable drop target in one of the lanes, which isn't in the Pro either. So there's really not a lot in that Pro.
    24:39
    Not that there's a lot in the Premium or Rally. So they're obviously trying to steer you towards the higher end if you want to get the toys. the Pro and I mentioned this before it seems to it uses the same playfield cutouts I should say as the, and artwork as the premium and LE even to the point where there isn't a drop target in one of the lanes in the Pro they've just put a plug in where the hole for the drop target would be, which looks to me pretty ugly and as a constant reminder of what you're not getting. I don't think that's a very good idea, but I guess it says they're having to have different versions of the playfield produced for the Pro and the Premium slash LE versions.
    25:37
    As we said, the lack of guns in the game was a very negative reaction from everybody. That's one of the things that everybody should focus on straight away, which is not really a big deal I think for a lot of people but for others it was kind of indicative or suggestive I should say of CERN trying to appease the anti-gun lobby trying to make the game more internationally acceptable and as it turned out it was one of those things So, all of it costs over nothing, and as you said, there are plenty of guns shown in the video assets on the LCD screen. Right. Now, yesterday, when we were recording the David Fitz interview, we were talking off the record, so to speak. You had an interesting theory about why there were no guns shown. Is that something that you would like to repeat over here? Or are you like, no, no, let's stick to the facts and not spray any rumours around? Yeah, I think we'll stick to the facts for now.
    26:52
    It's just shooting the breeze, as they say, about various ideas. So let's not get into that too much.
    27:01
    I think one of the other problems I think Stern had with the launch of this game is, well, first of all, there is a big markup from the pro to the premium to the LE. You know, if you go from the pro to the LE, you're adding, effectively, you're adding $6,000.
    27:21
    For what? Well, exactly, for what? Yeah. And even going from the pro to the premium, you're adding $2,800. And then going from the premium to the LE, you're adding another $2,300.
    27:43
    So there's an awful lot of dollars between those different levels of game. And I think buyers are starting to get a bit tired of these high prices and asking what they're getting for their money.
    27:55
    And so Stern, obviously, as you said, through George Gomez and others, have been doing a lot of promotional activity around this game in particular. Damage control is what I call it. but yes, okay. Yeah, that's a reasonable description, I think, because I think they, after Venom, wasn't a great seller for them. They needed to have something a little more successful,
    28:22
    and I think they were hoping that John Wick was going to be it, but somehow I doubt it. It's interesting, though, because with Elliot being the lead designer on this, and he expected him to be sort of out front talking about his game, but it seemed to be George Gomez and Tim Sexton who were doing all the explanation of how the game was created and all the features that were in it, and hardly seen anything of Elliot, and only today, I think, when the Stern of the Union newsletter came out, that I actually saw a video with Elliot and Tim Sexton talking about the game together. So I think they should be promoting him quite a bit more. I think maybe he's a bit shy and doesn't want to be in the spotlight just yet, but I think he can be proud of his first design. Oh, yeah. And I'm sure it'll be the first of many. So it'll be good to get his face out there and well known. and so his name and his likeness is an asset to the company. Right. Now, obviously, this reveal caused a little bit of a storm in a cup of tea, if you want to call it, compared to war in the Ukraine and what have you. It's a lot of fuss about nothing, But, interestingly, it seems that CERN pulled out a lot of effort, I would say, to polish their image with a lot of pinball media and other internet influencers, if you wish. as they flew in quite a bunch of pinball media representatives and content makers, influencers and what have you, to Chicago, gave them a tour in the factory, which was far bigger than the usual factory tour that you get at Pinball Expo.
    30:48
    They were not only getting the factory tour, but also licensing was explained to them, how that works, and bill of materials, and all that kind of stuff.
    31:02
    And interestingly, neither you or I were invited. No, I don't think any non-North American media was there. That was the explanation I got from Zach Sharp. He said it was nothing intentional, but this was the first time they were doing something like this and they only invited domestic media, so to speak. But obviously, to me it comes across as Stern doing more damage control and educating pinball content creators, if you want to call them that, who quickly form an opinion on a game they haven't played yet, but also have no clue what goes on behind the scenes. So Stern figured they needed to jump in to educate these people about what it takes for 2-2-2 to actually make a game and everything that goes on in the back. so having said that several content creators were very open about touring the factory and wrote several articles about it and not surprisingly I suppose but from what I understand we did not have to be there because there was nothing told that we didn't know already no indeed and you made a good point when we were talking about this off mic but quite many of the people that are making these reports and these podcasts and these videos haven't actually been in pinball for that many years and maybe don't have the grounding and the basic knowledge of what goes into making a game that we kind of take for granted. I think with you and I having been doing this for so long. So you can kind of see why Stern would want to go back to pinball 101 and this is what it takes to make a game and this is what it takes to work with a licensor and these are the costs and these are the restrictions and yada, yada, yada. Yeah, long story short, be nice to us. Yeah, you're making a lot of assumptions and they're quite often not correct.
    33:31
    So, yeah, it's time for a little education, I suppose. which you can see makes sense to them. It wouldn't have cost them a huge amount. They paid for flights for these people to go and for a hotel room and for drinks and things. Yeah, pizza and all the usual hospitality stuff. Right. And it means that people stopped beating them up for various reasons or maybe cut back on the beating up Stern for things which are maybe not their fault, some of which will be their fault, but if they think more kindly of Stern then that's not a bad way to spend their money I guess. No, so I can see why they did it. From their perspective I can even see why they would decided like, no, we don't need to invite Martin or Jonathan because what are we going to tell them that they don't already know? Yeah. And they're just hammering us with tough questions that we don't want to answer.
    34:45
    Yeah. That's true. Yes. So, well, I mean, when the John Wick game came out, there were plenty of people lashing the company for various reasons.
    34:57
    So, yeah, it made sense for them to tackle it here and now and as I said they need to have some positive feedback or positive reaction to some of their games and not everybody feeling so native about the company I think they were after prices and lack of features and lack of guns that was kind of I think the pardon the pun that was like the trigger for a lot of people to really lay into them for things which may or may not be their responsibility. So yeah, that's what they did, and as you said, what we've seen, they didn't see anything other than what we've seen and know already, with the exception that they were allowed to take pictures throughout the factory, well not throughout the factory, through much of the factory, for use in their reports, and of course during the Pinball Expo factory taking of pictures is banned. Right. At least last year it was. Maybe this year it won't be, but oh well. Yeah.
    36:05
    Anyway, but there's more news from Stern Pinball and it's not about pleasing the media this time. No, actually this is related to Alex Eddy, who is the son of pinball designer Brian Eddy who was recently appointed as customer sales manager to expand the rapidly growing North American dealer market quote unquote yeah so I knew that Alex or Brian's son was involved with Stern and I'm not sure whether this is a new hire, because I think he was already working there, but he just moved up to a different position. That's right. I think it's promotion for him, and I don't know whether... I think it's the creation of a new role. I don't think he's taking over from anybody else in that position, which would make sense if they think that Stern's dealer channel in North America is growing, whether that means that they're going to appoint more dealers or whether it's more about improving relations with their existing dealers. Right.
    37:29
    Yeah. Well, anyway, congratulations to Alex for making a promotion or landing a new job. Yeah, a new role at the company.
    37:39
    Now, we've announced, well, we'll be talking about the announcement of a new game, But Stern are also going back and remaking some of their earlier titles, we believe Right Although they haven't officially announced it But I think it's pretty much well known in the hobby and in the industry that they are going to And one such announcement was confirmed by an Australian distributorship called Amusement Works W-O-R-X who mentioned on the Facebook page that Stern is going to be remaking Iron Maiden in July. Right, which is interesting in the sense that earlier we got word from Tilt Amusements that they are doing another run of Black Knight Sword of Rage. Yeah. And there's also a strong rumor going around that there will be a black and white Godzilla 70th Anniversary Edition coming up, which is most likely also scheduled to be manufactured in July. So it looks like they are rerunning a bunch of games to keep the line going, so to speak. Yeah, and we also believe that later in the year they're going to be reissuing Metallica in an updated version, and that will be in one of their full games. So again, a throwback to an earlier design. We don't believe the playfield design is going to change significantly, but it will be updated to the full Spike, probably Spike 3, actually, It could be the first game to appear on Spike 3. Right, which means we'll have even more Insider connected action and upgraded noteboards and what have you. Of course, the LCD, which the original Metallica didn't have, it was a DMD, so content-wise it's going to be interesting to see what they will be adding to the game. Yeah, whether it be any new music Or different music, including this time around Any more recent Tracks But anyway So for now We have it confirmed That Iron Maiden is going to be made Next month, in July And with all these Remakes, they are After the backlash before From various Limited edition remakes these are only going to be pros or premiums that will be remade, not limited editions. So I think the industry as a whole is coming to the realization that you can't promise people when they first buy the game it's a limited edition and then later come out with another limited edition which could be even more limited and really hack all those people who thought they had the exclusive top-end model and discover that something later comes out which is higher end. So, yeah, pros and premiums on the remakes. Of course, the Metallica game, that comes out. If that comes out, then... If that's a Cornerstone title, then it might have three models.
    41:14
    Yeah, true. Well, it'll certainly be seen as an upgrade to the original game, simply because it's got a newer board set and an LCD and better graphics on it, and presumably better assets than the original game. Right. So, yeah, but we're digressing. For now, we only know about Iron Maiden as having been confirmed.
    41:41
    Right. Now, of course, Stone is also busy updating game code for their games, and Martin has a list of games that received an update the past couple of weeks. Fortunately, not too many of them. Only three this time around. Jaws is still on the way to version 1. At the moment it's on version 0.90.
    42:07
    That came out on the 23rd of May, which added a Jaws multiball part 3, mini wizard mode, some character combos, some new secret skill shots, changed some of the rules and something you're going to be seeing or hearing a lot of is they've added a ton of new achievements for those who care about such things to the Insider Connected system. They've added 49 new achievements.
    42:35
    So if you're into collecting all the achievements on Jaws, your task has just got an awful lot harder. John Wick, only the Pro has been updated so far because I don't know if that's the only game that they've actually produced so far that would kind of make sense uh and yes only a small update on that 0.81 came out on the 21st uh a whole bunch of bug fixes and some game rule changes and improvements so they're still bringing that up to up to speed i'd say um added some new spinner rules and some new high score tables but there's a lot more to come on john wick when uh when that uh when the premium and LEs hit the line.
    43:15
    Well, I suppose they had produced some, haven't they, of the LEs? I don't know about the previous. James Bond 007 actually had an update as well on the 30th, right at the end of the month, to version 1.02, which added 20 new achievements and added a new Swiper Ball feature, which allows the player to unlock any balls that are locked for Bird 1 multiball for use in a different multiball. So you can press, when it's available, you can press the action button on the lock bar when it lights up in the appropriate colour, and it will release those balls and they'll be added to your existing multi-ball. So doing that, though, has a sort of payback in that it then makes starting Bird 1 multi-ball and locking the balls on it harder than it would otherwise be. I also changed some of the award values, rules and some bug fixes as you would expect and that's the code update news from Stern Pinball for May right and that concludes our coverage for Stern Pinball for the month of May but let's move on to Italy where Pedretti Gaming finally announced the long time rumoured remake of Funhaus.
    44:38
    Yes, indeed. Last month I think we had the tease for it, and it was fully announced this month that Funhaus remake would be available in two versions. A classic edition which was priced just under $7,500 US and a midnight limited edition which was priced $1 under $10,000 and is limited to 750 units.
    45:06
    The Classic Edition lives up to its name. It looks just like the artwork on it, at least looks exactly like the original Funhouse game. It has the original Williams artwork on the cabinet, back glass, back box, playfield, and playfield plastics.
    45:27
    The Limited Edition has the Brian Allen art package Brian of Flyland Design who we previously announced would be working on the Funhouse game. That is only available on the limited edition so if you're a fan of Brian's work and you want to have that then you have to get the Midnight limited edition which is as we said limited to 750 units but both of them have the new display. They don't have the alphanumeric display of the original. They have a 21.5-inch LCD in place of the alphanumerics, and they also have the 4-inch LCD in place of the mystery mirror, which we first saw in Rudy's Nightmare, the 2.0 kit from Pedretti. So that is standard on both versions. There are other differences as well The Classic Edition comes with the original game code And what they call a version 1.5 Which is like an enhanced version of the original game code The Limited Edition comes with both those And also the version 2.0 code Now I'm not clear whether that's the Rudy's Nightmare code or I think it probably is but that is included with the limited edition and is available as an upgrade which you can purchase for the standard edition or the classic edition if you want to add that there are multiple other differences of course between the two with the various trim levels and things like that but it's basically $2,500 difference between the classic and the limited versions. Interestingly, both have an auto launcher and a ball saver added, which is something that was missing on the Williams version. The auto launcher is needed for the enhanced 1.5 version of the code and for the 2.0 version of the code, so it can start multi ball without you having to manually plunge the additional balls which was always a something which sort of held back the the potential of adding more and more multi balls into no three and four ball multi walls into the game if you've got to auto launch every every ball because um if you're sorry you've got to manually launch every ball because why would you basically you don't one ball and then you leave the others sitting in the shoes are they? No. Ready to add whatever you want. So anyway, yes, so that was Pedretti Gaming, or otherwise known as Pedretti Pinball, their launch, and this is going to be made by the Euro Pinball company that they formed as a joint venture with Pinball Brothers. Right. So that was made in Italy and shipped from there around the world. Right. And I noticed, or actually it was pointed out to me, that the Euro Pinball Corp. or corporation has a new website, which is europinball.net, which interestingly, it does say that they make, that they are building Alien, Queen and Funhouse games, but the main page only shows the Pedretti games.
    49:16
    The website, interestingly, was made by Rudiger Backman, who is the former marketing and PR manager of Pinball Brothers. So, of course, he had a connection there already. He left Pinball Brothers just before the release or the review of ABBA. Yeah. He indicated that he's working on several projects within the pinball industry, and this must have been one of them.
    49:51
    Yes. To me, it looks like there's still quite a lot of work to be added to that website, including as you mentioned you'd hope to have the details of the Pinball Brothers games on there as well but I think there were a few pages on there which looked incomplete, let me put it that way so I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more but check out europinball.net and see for yourself Right that concludes our coverage for Pedretti Gaming or whatever you want to call it. Next up on my list is American Pimple, which we will keep rather short, I suppose, because we will have the interview with David Fix later on. So either we do that now. Do we do American Pimple now or do we just do it? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Well, American Pimple offered a Memorial Day sale or a pre-Memorial Day sale. which lasted for two weeks offering a discount of $500 of all their titles,
    51:05
    which I believe had to be manufactured within that period or at least bought from American Pinball within that period. And it's probably not the last time we will have seen a promotion like that.
    51:26
    but of course who knows when of course Black Friday comes to mind you might maybe expect but don't quote me on that no we have no idea other than I don't see why they wouldn't be running such a promotion more often it's a little bit of a double edged sword in that it's great if you buy the game during that period but if you want to buy a game outside that period then you're effectively paying $500 more than you potentially need to particularly if you buy it today and then tomorrow they announce hey, from today you can get $500 off all our games you're not going to be very happy, are you? if you didn't know it was coming up so we'll see how popular that is and how frequently they run that deal but for now it was We consider it a one-off for now, until it's proven otherwise as a Memorial Day two-weeker, as you said. Right, okay. Then there is Aura lighting available for Barry O Barbecue Challenge priced at Now I not exactly familiar with what Aura lighting is do you know I think it a bit like the Pinstadium lights in that they are controllable they add extra playfield lighting and are synced into the game code and it's not as comprehensive as some of the lighting kits from, say, CERN or JJP, but it's still quite impressive, and I think the $150 price point would pretty much make it a no-brainer. And this is, as you said, it's Vettel and Alfa Barrios Barbecue Challenge Classic version, so if that's the one you bought they say it would be available as an upgrade and there it is, $150 and it will be available for other titles as well coming up in the not too distant future not necessarily all of them but some of the more recent ones I think is probably fair to say now American Pinball also had a booth at the Illinois GameCon which was held recently in Bloomington where they were promoting their Galactic Tank Force game. Right. I'm assuming that's Bloomington, Illinois. It is, yeah. That's right. Interesting because it used to be the home of Gene Cunningham and Illinois Pinball. Yeah. Illinois Pinball. Those are three words. Right. Yes.
    54:22
    Yep, well known for that. Going back into pinball recent history. Yep. and of course there's rumours and we're not saying whether rumours are true all we can say is the fact is that there are rumours about the upcoming game that's being designed by Ryan McQuaid who we know from his Sonic the Hedgehog homebrew game that got him hired at American Pinball there's a strong rumor that his game which is a licensed game will be themed around Cuphead which is a video game and I believe it could also have been a cartoon yes, it is, an animation yes so it's not a theme that where the name rang a bell to me but The artwork is very appealing and easy on the eyes, a bit comic book style, and it looked like fun. So I'm very curious if it is that, what they can do with it. So David Six in the interview will address the work that's being done currently on the upcoming license title and when we are hopefully going to see that. and another title rumour for further down the road the licence again that apparently Stern pinball didn't get but the rumour now has it that American pinball was able to get this licence and that's He-Man and the Masters of the Universe not sure I'm very excited about that but then again maybe other people are yes Well, from reading online forums and discussion, it looks like a lot of people do have fond memories of He-Man and Masters of the Universe, and would like to see it made, and are happy that someone will have picked it up. We don't know whether it's American Pinball, whether they do have that as their game after next, or not. But that was the rumour, and more than that we can't really say. Right. So I'm just wondering, if American Pinball has that license, who would design that game? Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, good question.
    57:07
    So, oh well. Anyway, there's also new code. Martin, I leave that to you. Well, there's not an awful lot of code, because of course they don't make that many titles, So Barry O's Barbecue Challenge, their current title, had a version, came out on the 21st of May, so that was a version of the 24-05-21.
    57:35
    Adds a whole bunch of additional call-outs from the announcer, from Mr. Roo. Adds various new lighting shows and sound effects and shaker motor effects as well, improved combo notifications, a whole bunch of UI improvements as well across the game,
    58:03
    some changes to skill shot, and a whole bunch of fixes to scoring and on-screen displays. So more than that, I don't think we need to get into the minutiae of exactly what changed. But I will point out that we're talking about code updates. In the last Pincast, where we look back on the month of April, I pointed out how the release notes for the recent updates to their games that were normally on their website were missing. And American people got in touch after that to let us know that they were moving all their notes and their software updates onto a new hosting server,
    58:54
    and that those notes will be available soon. And I'm happy to say they're absolutely right. And if you go onto their American-Pinball.com and look at the software updates, there are release notes available for all the most recent ones now. So thank you from American, and thank you for listening and getting that fixed. Right. No pun intended. And do stick around for the interview with David Fix at the end of our podcast. I do say at the end, but then again, it's an hour and a half or something like that, so don't go all the way to the end.
    59:31
    Yeah, it's probably longer than us. So, exactly. Anyway, moving on to Multimorphic in Round Rock, Texas. there's a new P3 third party game, I'd say, called Blood Bank Billiards, that sounds rather creepy, which is programmed I would say by Ian Harrower who also created the Birdwatcher add-on game and this is a Bloodbank Billiards is as the name suggests a pool game for the drained module which was created by Nick Baldrige who we know for his for amusement only podcast and collaboration with Brian Clayton yeah exactly yes going on carnival right so and this I'm not sure whether the block bank billions is a tribute to EM style games I know that the module originally by the drain module by Nicholas is yeah so So anyway, it has simulated score reels,
    61:00
    very low scoring, quite simple game rules. So I think that's the... And the artwork is of an EM style as well. So I think that's fair. It only has a single set of digital score reel for the scoring. And kind of like, you know, Wonelli and variants of that, It changes the score between players. It can be multiplayer, but the score will spin round to the next player in turn, to their score. So, yeah, that's the vibe that you get from this game. Blood Bank Billiards. Looks very nice.
    61:44
    It's available from the Multimorphic store. You download it to your P3. Obviously, you need to have the Drain module installed in order to play it. and it's a as it's a software only game it's available for a mere $199 wow so almost a no brainer if you have if you've got Drained and if you haven't got Drained a very good reason to go and get it so you can play both Drained and Blood Bank Billiards on it right and who knows what else might be coming in the future yes absolutely right yeah that's the beauty of the P3 right ok now slightly related to Multimorphic is news from Scott Denise who is the designer of Final Resistance and not only that he's also the music producer for the music soundtrack of that game and that music has now finally been released as full songs on Bandcamp and also Spotify and other streaming services So if you're into the electronic music that Scott Denise is producing, then this is definitely highly recommended.
    63:02
    Yes, and interesting that the artwork for this album, as it was, has been created by somebody else who works in the pinball industry. one known as the Johnny Crap who worked in collaboration with North Star Pinball to create album artwork for Fire and Resistance album so it's definitely worth checking out on Bandcamp and also from the Denise Designs website as well and there might be physical copies in the future and it could either be vinyl or just like with the total nuclear annihilation soundtrack, a cassette tape. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
    63:53
    So it could also be a CD or anything. Yeah. So if you want to check it out directly on Scott's website, it's danisidesigns.com So that's where you'll find all the details of it. Thank you for that. And then we have a whole bunch of companies with little to no news, which doesn't mean that they're not doing anything, but many of them are in the process of basically building a game that's currently in production and there's no new game announced yet, so just a little bit of small news. So for Spooky Pinball, for example, just a bunch of code updates for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes. Yep, that's right.
    64:48
    Looney Tunes has had some new features added, some extra display animations, and a few rule changes. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre update was very minor, just a couple of changes to the flipper coil power settings. That's it. That's very minor, yes. Yeah.
    65:04
    That's basically all the news we have from Spooky Pinball. I think they also released a new merch, but if we have to get into that, then we could be here all day. Yeah, exactly.
    65:15
    Jersey Jack Pinball, obviously still building Elton John. No shocking news or things that would make you turn your head or whatever, but they did revive the Jersey Jack Pinball podcast, which is hosted by Ken Cromwell, our good friend. And in his latest episode, which came out halfway through May, he had interviews with Jack Guarnieri about licensing,
    65:49
    which is, I suppose, with the licensing show in Las Vegas going on, appropriate to discuss licensing around that time. And he also talked to Bill Grubb, the lead programmer of Elton John. and Elton John pinball designer Steve Ritchie. Yeah. Talked to him about the game.
    66:16
    So I think it's about an hour long and it's definitely worth to check it out. So make sure that you look up Jersey Jack Pinball on your social media and find the link to that podcast. Yeah, interesting you've mentioned about the licensing show taking place in Las Vegas. I think quite a few companies have been referencing their attendance at that show, and they're looking for future titles for their games, one of which is our next company, Barrels of Fun, based in Houston in Texas. They also posted on Facebook showing pictures from the licensing show saying, any particular licenses you think we should be going after. So getting some social media
    67:10
    feedback and involvement. And I thought they got Smurfs. And then the cartoon version, not the 3D animated movies, but the classic cartoons. Yeah, that's right. We all just hope that's the case but uh it may have been snapped up by one of the one of the bigger companies of course you know being such a an obvious uh pinball title um so the barrels of fun did a live uh factory tour on facebook live on the 15th of may it is also available to watch back on youtube if you want to if you search for barrels of fun on youtube you will be able to watch that whole thing, which was very nicely shot and had a very good explanation and a tour around the factory, or most of the factory, anyway. At that time they said they'd manufactured 222 Labyrinth games and had orders for about between 700 and 750.
    68:12
    They had a maximum of, what was it, 1100? Yes. Yeah, but they are expecting to finish all their current Labyrinth game orders by the end of 2024. Unless, of course, all of a sudden they sell a 400 more, then it will take a little bit longer. Yeah.
    68:32
    But so I guess that means we can be looking forward to their second game announcement, which they are working on already. So it's not like they're waiting to get something for the licensing show. They already know what that second game is and other games too.
    68:51
    And we look forward to the announcement of that towards the end of the year. It makes no sense for them to announce it while they're still promoting Labyrinth. Right. And what a great game it is. It is, yeah.
    69:05
    I mentioned about the production of Labyrinth, their factory. Production was actually temporarily stopped when there was a tornado which passed about a mile away from the factory in Houston. Is that a reason to stop? Well, it is because they lost all the power to the factory. Okay, that makes sense. As a result of that, along with, of course, all the damage to buildings that were more directly in the path, they didn't suffer any damage to their building directly and or any of their staff, thankfully. So, as soon as the power was back on, they were able to get on with it. I think it was basically almost a day and maybe a day and a little bit, while the factory was out of power, but also the staff had to go and deal with issues at home too as a result of the tornado. That's one of the dangers of being in the tornado belt, I suppose. Yeah. Now, one thing they also announced was that in addition to the Facebook Live factory tour, if you are going to the Houston Arcade Expo show, which is also obviously in Houston and it's being held in October one week I believe before Pinball Expo in Chicago then you will be able to get on a factory tour of the Bowser Fun Factory for yourself and see exactly what they're doing so that's a I think that's the first non-Pinball Expo factory tour that's been available at any pinball show Apart from, I would say, Highway Pimple, which is one in the UK. The UK Pimple show was held at the factory. I did a tour there. But I can't think of any others. You'll probably be able to correct me if I'm wrong on that. No, I'm thinking you're right. Anyway, that rounds it up for Barrels of Fun. of fun. Good to see them giving such transparency in their factory and also how many games they sold and so on. So thank you, David, for that. Moving on to Sweden, Pitbull Brothers, of not too much news to report. They did release a tutorial video for their upcoming game ABBA, detailing the game's objectives and how to achieve them. It was a video with a lot of explanatory text, not all written in perfect English as well. And from what I understood is, if you wanted to read it all you had to pause the video because it was so much to explain, which raises the question with me, if you have to explain so much about the game, what your objectives are and what you need to be doing, is that a good thing? I mean, pinball is supposed to be an escape and yes, you can bang a ball around but obviously it would be nice to understand easily what you should be doing. It should be difficult to achieve but it should not be like rocket science to understand like oh I have to get this and then I get that and I have to get that, that and that and if I do that and the bloom rises then I might be able to get to that mode and no yeah, you're right I think underneath it all the rules are simpler than they appear initially but they've kind of put this story overlay on top of them It's about collecting the souls of the band members and you think that means nothing to me in pinball terms. No. I need to go to light this and light that and I do it by... It also means nothing to the average ABBA fan I believe and I don't think it was ever ABBA's objective to become immortalized or whatever. I mean, you just had a bunch of very successful musicians who were, well, grateful for the success that they had, but they probably, in their heyday, never thought about being immortalized or whatever. I think that's the voyage side of things, isn't it? The stage show. Yeah, yeah. So it's taken things to a new level, and that's kind of what this game is about. I think rather than the original, very simplistic, as you say, bunch of musicians writing some amazingly catchy and enjoyable songs and producing some great performances.
    74:16
    Anyway, for the majority of the public, I would say, keep it simple. And it's up to Pimple Brothers to do with that, whatever they want. I did check with Daniel Jensen, CEO of Pinball Brothers, whether there was any other news. And he came back to me and he said they are preparing to start the production of ABBA and they expect the first machines could be still shipped out in June, which is the month that we're currently in. So, not sure exactly when, but within 30 days the first ABBA games should be appearing either with customers or on location. Yeah, that's good. I think they originally hoped to hit the June mark for the first games to be shipped. So it's good that they've made that, that they've achieved it. Congratulations to Pinball Brothers. Look forward to seeing how the production game has turned out. Right. Yeah. Right. Okay, so... Let's move on to the other side of the world, pretty much, and Taiwan, where we find Home Pin. Right. Of course, we know they've been working on a number of titles. Most recently, The Blues Brothers was announced, following their This Is Final Tap and Thunderbirds. And we haven't heard much more news about The Blues Brothers yet, and there's a certain amount of, I should say, incredulity about the open-source nature of that, and whether that's ever going to really become a thing, whether the community is out there to make an open-source version of code for that game. But anyway, that's to come because there's some more basic news, I'd say, from the company. Yeah, well, obviously, the factory has a Facebook page and they're also on Instagram with the same information. So this is the news that we got this month is more in the category of factory-related news, but still worth mentioning, I suppose. And that is that HomePin has opened a new wood factory very close to their existing HomePin factory. and they are making their pinball cabinets in-house again but this time not in the same building because they learned the lesson that if you do woodwork in a place you will find that wood chips and sawdust everywhere that's right that's not something that you want in a factory so they They ordered a new full sheet size CNC machine which should be delivered in the next couple of weeks. So for the moment they are having wood parts CNC cut outside by a third party and assembling them themselves. but it will come back all in-house again within a couple of weeks, which will allow them to have more control over the production and quality of their cabinets and other wood elements in the game. Hmm. Well, it certainly sounds like they're gearing up to produce lots of machines.
    78:07
    So that's a good thing. I guess they can all see medium to large numbers of sales of their titles. We haven't seen anywhere much yet, but maybe we wouldn't. Maybe they come over to this side of the world.
    78:31
    Well, that depends which side you're referring to if you're talking... Well, it's in Europe or even North America. I haven't seen Spinal Tap or Thunderbirds, or seen a few of them, but hardly any.
    78:49
    It's not like a really mass-produced game. Then again, try finding, I don't know, a Godfather or any spooky game on location in Europe, and that's also very tough to do. so true but then again there's plenty of those in North America right we haven't seen many home pin games over there yeah so but not sure whether the market is there is in Taiwan or Australia for that matter of course Australia being a huge country oh well we'll see how Mike is doing with his company and hopefully he will sell hundreds, if not thousands of games.
    79:40
    And, you know... I'll make full use of this new woodworking facility that he's got. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's talk about North America. Let's go back there and talk about some of the companies based in the US, starting first of all with Turner Pinball. and they have released an instructional video or a demonstrational video of the repeatable ramp on their Ninja Eclipse game they made a big fuss of that to me it looked very much like the Star Trek Stern Star Trek side ramp where you just keep making it from the upper flipper it reminded me a little bit of Doctor Who but it's yeah true from the other side Yeah Shooting from the upper left But I think they're also at One of the pinball shows Weren't they? I think I'm trying to remember Whether it was Pintastic We may have covered that before But they are They are gearing up And taking orders for Ninja Eclipse I believe Right now And if I'm not mistaken You can still be One of the first 100 to buy a Ninja Eclipse limited edition game. Yeah, after which the price is meant to go up, as I understand it. If you don't get into that first 100. Anyway, so staying in North America,
    81:16
    Chicago Gaming. Some news from them, I understand. Yeah, not directly from them, but actually from Mr. Pimble Australia all the way at the other end of the world, if you want to call it that, who announced a new run of Medieval Madness will happen in 2024, which is this year. So at some point, Medieval Madness is likely to be taken back into production at Chicago Gaming. Currently they're busy building Pulp Fiction alongside other arcade business and cabinet stuff and what have you that they usually do. And it's also interesting to note that Chicago Gaming will be one of the four companies where you can do a factory tour during the upcoming Pinball Expo, the 14th anniversary edition that is. and the Chicago Gaming Tour is scheduled for Tuesday, October 15th. Wow, so... Alongside with the Galloping Ghost Arcade, which is in the area. Right, yes, that's right, in Brookfield. Yeah, so, I don't know if it's the Galloping Ghost Video Arcade, Arcade or the Pinball Arcade. I'm guessing it's the video side. I'm completely clueless here. I just copied it from the Pinball Expo website, but we get there in a little bit in the other news section. Okay, well we'll wait for that then. Yeah, but that's basically all the news I have to report on Chicago Gaming. Well let's hope that Medieval Madness run is a little more timely than their existing customers who were waiting for their Cactus Canyon remake games Right and obviously Pulp Friction took a long time to finally get into production as well, so I don't know whether Medieval Madness run coming up later this year will actually happen and this year will be held over to next year Well, with Chicago Gaming, you never know. No, exactly. Right, okay. So, moving on to, let's get that, Hexapinball over in France, producing their Space Hunt game, of course, and they are looking to recruit a machine assembler to help them build those games. Just one? Well, apparently, as part of our development, we are recruiting an assembler to work in our workshop in Matayac near Bordeaux your mission will be to assemble your mission, it's like the pinball game mission will be to assemble our pinball machines by assembling the different pieces, so you definitely need an assembler proficiency in electronics and tin welding would be a plus but if you haven't got that we'll train you in the techniques necessary and if you want to be considered for that send your resume and a cover letter to recruitment at hexadaskpeople.com interestingly French spelling of recruitment but I'm sure if you check out if you're in the area then you'll know how to spell recruitment in French so there you go I think it's mandatory that you speak French too well you're assembling stuff So does it matter? Yeah. So basically it will be pre-assembly of assemblies to go into the game. That's what I... Yes, sounds like it. Yeah. So, okay. Oh, well, since we're hopping all over the planet... Yeah, why not? ...Hager Spinball in Australia. Now, we still have no idea what their current status is regarding the announcement of a couple of months ago where they basically said that they need more funds to simplify production. Yeah, to restructure their finances. Yes. Yeah.
    85:46
    But where many believed, oh, this could be the end, maybe there's a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel as a, here we go again, Mr. Pimple Australia, showed photos of four new in-box Phantom Mermaid, well, boxes, I'm assuming the games are in there, apparently arriving recently at Mr. Pimple Australia.
    86:16
    So hopefully that indicates that they're still producing games or building games and shipping them out, getting some money coming in and continuing their operation? Well, I'm not sure they're getting any money coming in because these are fathom games. So I don't know whether they were paid for in full originally or whether they are invoicing people for them as they produce them. But I don't understand it. They are, Damien and Co., they are actually producing games, but just very, very slowly. and they're not dead yet well no but they're still working on Fathom Games they haven't moved on to the Centaurs yet which is meant to be their current title Fathom is their previous although we have seen a few Centaurs at various shows we have at shows yeah but yeah exactly at the very start but they did look great so we really hope they do pull through fingers crossed for Haggis Also in Australia, some news from a company, relatively new company, or at least new to producing more than just a few games, and that's Vector Pinball.
    87:34
    They're 8-Ball Fury games. 8 Wolf Fury, yep, we saw that, and they announced a while ago that they are taking that into production, and at least are willing to produce as many as there are orders of those, other than them just being custom games made in 2s or 3s, which is what they have been doing previously with their customized titles. But some news from them, anyway. Well, the news, well, I'm not even sure whether it is news, but I did notice that they are now on Facebook. And I'm not sure whether they have been for a lot longer, but I just noticed that they are. And I tried looking them up. I couldn't find them before. So that's why I mentioned it. Okay. But it looks like their first post was on March 25th. So, yes, they have not been there for very long. No, so if you want to keep up with what's going on from Vector Pinball, probably a good place to look is on Facebook and search for Vector Pinball on there and follow them on that platform. Right, so other news then. Oh, let's hop back to the US then. And Cardona Pinball, who we've covered several times in the past, They make a 2.0 kit for No Good Gophers and for Black Rose. Right, yeah. They had a booth at the EmanTown show with both titles, and that's all the news. Okay. Well, I hope that won't muffle them, and that people got to play those Battles for the Green and Blood and Bones. Right. Skull and Bone. Blood and Bone? Okay. Skull and Bone? I can't remember. Skull and Bones. Scotland Bows, look at Scotland Bows, yeah. Okay, so, here's some companies then, well, we haven't got any news. Yeah, well, Dutch Pinball, I did reach out to CEO Barry Dreesen,
    89:40
    I will be talking to him tomorrow, we have a call scheduled, but he already informed me there is no news to report regarding the past month, which is rather odd, because we're still waiting for news from Dutch Pinball Exclusive Exclusive, that's it, yeah regarding their first title and that news was actually already promised to be like last month, but oh well you know how it goes with new collaborations, everything needs to find a place before the machine starts working like an old machine, so to speak Okay, so no news from Dutch Pinball. No news that we could see from Pinball Adventures, either in Canada, about their Elements game. Or the Pony Factory. Or any of the other dozen games that they have.
    90:39
    Okay. No news at all from Spain, from Biktronic, SGR Pinball, or Quetzal Pinball. Right. No news either from Circus Maximus. If they even still exist. Right, yeah. and that brings us to the other news section yeah a little bit of something to look out for over the next week the court case the deep root saga rolls on and the court case of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC versus Robert Mueller over misuse of investment funds that, well, alleged misuse of investment funds, I should say, is scheduled to begin on the 10th of June. So, at the time of recording, it's going to be about five days' time. So, are we done? If that's... Well, we are. It's already published.
    91:45
    If you're interested in how that case goes, and assuming that it's not delayed any further, as court cases often are, then we should start to hear some of the details of the charges and the evidence and the defense from both sides in that case, basically in a week's time. Right, okay. Well, I'm sure you'll be reporting on that in our upcoming pin cast at the beginning of June. July. July, sorry, yeah.
    92:24
    Looking back at you. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, other news. We both attended the Texas Pimple Festival earlier in March, and there were several seminars which were recorded and are now available on the Texas Pinball YouTube channel. So if you want to hear what the several seminars at the show were like and what information was shared there, then head over to YouTube, Texas Pinball, and treat yourself to some very interesting seminars, I would say. Indeed, very good, yes. from many of the larger big mall manufacturers.
    93:09
    Also, here's from ColourDMD. Yes, remember them? Still going, still cranking out colour displays and updates for their library of supported games. And they just announced that their 126th title has been made available, and that is Viper Night Driving. So, not the most popular of titles in terms of sales, but I'm sure they've done a wonderful job, all their colourists have done a wonderful job on that. And I think that just leaves one more Sega title for them to colourise. I'm not quite sure which one it is.
    93:54
    Neither am I, but oh well. So, whichever one it is, that will be the next one to do, I'm sure. and they'll have all the Sega titles as well as all the Barry and Williams and I don't know whether they've done I think they've done some other manufacturers as well but I can't remember exactly which one so I won't tell you all about it yeah okay anyway so are you familiar with Rockberg hmm name sounds familiar tell me more Well, Rob Berg is the founder of Pinball Expo. Oh, that will work. Yeah, which is running its 40th edition this year in October. He's also the owner of the Past Pines Arcade in Ohio. Yeah, Girard. Yeah, right, exactly. And he was recognized and awarded by the Guinness World Records for having the largest pinball collection in the world. Wow. That's quite an achievement. Right. And Rob was celebrating the one-year anniversary of the pastime arcade. and during that weekend he received the commemorative plaque when the record was confirmed already back in February of this year. Rob had 1,041 pinball machines in his collection, which is considered to be the biggest collection in the world. If you have more than 1,041 pinball machines in your collection, then I suggest you send an email to the Guinness World Records organization.
    95:55
    Now, as I mentioned, Rob Berg is the organizer of Pinball Expo. We don't have a seminar scheduled for the October event for this year, But we do have a schedule, or at least a current schedule, for the four factory tours that will take place during Pimble Expo. And as I mentioned earlier, Chicago Gaming will be on Tuesday, October 15th, together with the Galopping Ghost Arcade. on Wednesday October 16th it will be American Pinball Factory Tour plus Anterium and Logan Arcade and then on Thursday October 17th there will be a Jersey Jack Pinball Factory Tour and seminars as well and then finally Friday October 18th Stern Pinball Factory Tour and seminars as well and the event hall will be open from 10am which is probably during the factory tour already until midnight and then on Saturday there is also seminars, autograph session and there will be live music as well during Pimble Expo I understand there is going to be a stage in the main hall the show floor And on Saturday the event hall closes at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. So anyway, that's the news currently regarding Pinball Expo. You and I are both looking forward to attending if the flight rates are anywhere reasonable.
    97:55
    Yes, that's right. So far I understand you have had no luck in finding an affordable flight. No. Flight prices are a bit weird. They tend to fluctuate wildly at the moment, so you never quite know. And because I've got to take a lot of equipment over with me for this, I need to take a suitcase.
    98:18
    And adding that also, of course, adds to the cost of a flight. so it means you can't go economy light you have to actually go either for fair economy or pay to take a suitcase over and back which adds to the cost but hey, I'm sure it will work out and I'm looking forward to being over there although I suspect I'm going to have to miss some of those tours a bit right simply because we're going to be doing seminar coverage, certainly doing the Stern one on Friday that will be running concurrently with the seminars running at the same time as the Stern Factory Tour taking place so we'll have to be there for that and Jersey Jack Pinball one I think, probably be alright but might miss that as well because we'll be setting up for the seminars that will probably start at like 1 o'clock oh well maybe we should talk to Rob Burke about the seminar schedule maybe spread them out a little bit more over including the Wednesday as well and then have the factory tours in the morning and the seminars in the afternoon and maybe evening so we get to see something at least yeah I suspect knowing Rob he's going to pack as much into it as he possibly can and make it like wall-to-wall seminars, wall-to-wall factory tours and wall-to-wall event hall open to play games. So I suspect it's not going to be very conducive for us to, or at least for me to get away from the seminar room. And with your help, I think we'll be doing a lot of covering of events there, along with all our reports. and interviews, of course, for this Pimcast and elsewhere. Right. So, anyway. Speaking of interviews.
    100:32
    Yes. Good. Oh, very good. Yes. We still have our interview that we did with David Figgs, also involved in the Pimble Expo organization, by the way, but also known as the vice president of American Pimble. He reached out because he wanted to address a number of rumors that have been going around about the company. The company becoming a public held company or whatever you call it. And the weather sales of Barry O's Barbecue Challenge have not been that great. so far. He's addressing all that and a lot more. So let's listen to what David had to say. Yes, indeed. So right now we're joined by David Fix, the Vice President of American Pinball. Welcome, David. Hey, Jonathan. Hello, Martin. Good evening. David, good to see you and to hear from you. Good to see you both and hear from you. So it's an audio podcast, but we actually have visuals. But we try to keep it so that people without the visual can understand what we're talking about as well. Well, we have the visuals on this time because we actually decided to put clothes on, Jonathan. So we were okay to have the visuals. Usually you're doing something else. Yes, it's a special occasion. Yeah, we had over to OnlyFans later on.
    102:14
    Good one. Need to make some money somehow. So, anyway, thank you for joining us, David. I've got a lot of stuff to talk about on this particular interview. We've talked many times in the past. And, well, I suppose, where should we start? Do you want to start with... So much rumour is going around about American Bimbo. Oh, my God. Yes. So let's start there. And I suppose we're going to really start with the upcoming IPO of your parent company, Aimtron, and what that means as far as American Pinball goes. And you may, I guess, at some point, get some investors in the company who will, I don't know, maybe want to change the direction in which the company goes, or maybe they'll be very happy with the way it's been running so far. So what can you tell us about that, and what are the rumors you would like to address? Well, we can start right with the IPO. So understand that we've been, Amtron has been trying to do this for the last year and a half, and they're excited that they've been putting all the ducks in a row and getting everything set. And this is for Amtron India, right? This is the Indian branch of Amtron. That is the branch that is going to be part of the IPO. that is the thing. So there's Ametron Corporate, which is here in the U.S., Ametron Systems, which is in the U.S., American Pinball, which is in the U.S., and then two divisions of Ametron, which is in India. So this is really good for the entire company because this is giving more financial stability to the entire, the whole picture, right? So Imtran India is going to have a stable group now because it's going to have its own IPO.
    104:12
    So just to explain for those who don't understand what an IPO is, it's an initial public offering. It means basically they're issuing shares and putting the company,
    104:26
    creating company stock which investors can invest in and it means that it will no longer be a privately held company. but it will be a publicly held one, as will the shares listed on the Indian Stock Exchange, which could be bought and sold, as any other shares or stocks are. I'm not overly familiar with the rulings around IPOs in India, but certainly in America and over here in the UK,
    104:56
    it's an opportunity for the company to raise capital and give themselves a strong financial foothold. But also it often leads to changes in management of the company or maybe a refocusing of the management and the direction in which the company is going to go because those investors who buy into it will have their own opinions about how the company has been performing in the past and how they want to see it perform in the future because a lot of those will want to get a positive return on their investment and make sure the company makes good profits and maybe dividends we don know whether the company will be paying those but what it does mean is that the Indian branch of the company which is the one that's doing the IPO that I assume is the like the parent company of the whole Ametron Corporation, is that right? It's not really apparent. It's a division of it, yes.
    106:03
    I'm just wondering why, as part of this listing, they had to then detail the financials of American Pinball if American Pinball is not part of Indian Ametron. Correct. It's part of Ametron Corporate, which is kind of a little confusing. But yes, it's all under the same umbrella. but they put it all in there because as this company is growing, the idea is that there will be other sections of this company going to IPO down the road.
    106:43
    And we lost David. Yeah, I thought that was just my feed that froze, but I guess it's not. Nope. okay what did you do Martin oh we were almost there I can hear you David but you're all of a sudden like do you want to join this meeting and I'm like I didn't do anything I didn't touch him oh your camera froze again and you were muted for like a minute okay Well I was like off Completely Okay Well we can carry on I think without the video at the moment Right okay so Kill video Yeah okay Let me turn mine off for a minute Okay Oh yeah It's a bit shaky Okay let's go with the audio on All right, I'll shut my video off.
    107:52
    Okay. Okay, so if we can pick up from there. So one of the key things that came out of this IPO and the documentation that was issued with it was that the financials for, basic financials for American Pimple for the past few years were included in that, which detailed the revenue and the profit and loss situation for the company for the past, I think it was four half years, I believe. Yes. I thought it was two years, but it might be more. Yes, four half years. Yes. That's right. Yes. So as part of that, it kind of showed that the company was doing really well up until a certain point, making good profits. And then in the last half year, um it ended up making a loss overall so is there anything you can tell us about the what why that would be and what that means for the financials for the company
    108:58
    so so you know i'm going to say that um you know okay pinball companies are very much like roller co co roller coasters they go up and they go down and uh you know the whole market's been on an absolute upward swing, and you can actually see that. And it's true. And that's the tough thing about pinball companies. I mean, they go up and they go down. We try to steady them out as best we can. And we do that a lot here with American, with other projects that we've picked up and helping other companies. So, you know, you will see that for the good part of 2023, American Pinball did a very nice job. 2022 again was decent it's definitely an upward climb we went back to 2020 you'd see it really really really low and then 21 we were gaining and 22 gaining and 23 it kind of leveled off 24 it's okay it could be a better but we're also going through what some people call a little of a it's an election year in the U.S., so there's, you know, people are a little hesitant in buying stuff. So there's a bunch of little things that are going on here.
    110:19
    And let me address something, too. You've got to understand something. When we started in 2020, or when I came on board in December of 2020,
    110:27
    we had just released Hot Wheels, what, eight months earlier, right? That was in March of 2020. Hot Wheels was released. COVID hit, like, within three weeks. That was American Pinball's first, you know, license.
    110:47
    And when I started, Mukesh kind of said to me, he basically said, we need to, you know, we need to recoup the license first before we go and get another license. so that kind of put us on a little bit of a back foot you know kind of because we couldn't just go out and get a really cool license and do a really nice pinball but you know we did see a ton of potential with Legends of Valhalla with Riot so we did that we picked them up that's what we made the deal with Scott and Frank thank you Frank's going to do it. Why do you always forget my name?
    111:32
    But, yeah, no, we picked up that it was Scott and Frank, and we ran with it. We did a nice little job. We brought it to market. We basically, in fact,
    111:44
    I kind of inherited Legends of Valhalla a little bit, and then when I joined, Scott was excited because I already know Scott from Expo and Rivals of Olympus and all that other stuff, so he was excited to do this. So we did that. And it's a very underrated game when we say that. Yes, yes. It's a great tournament game. Very deep. People who play it find it very exciting. And it's a good little playing game. I like it.
    112:17
    You know, so after we started, we had that. And then, of course, we had a very small staff here. We brought on Zofia, we brought Dennis in, Dennis was the first one, then we brought Zofia, then we brought Jack in, and we brought, you know, a bunch of other people that, you know, we continue to strive at, right, to make a game. and Dennis had a game in the back of his mind that he had designed, which needed an awful lot. It just had a generic tank theme to it. But it was enough that the American pinball team was able to say, okay, we don't have money for a license, but we can pick up this game from Dennis, which is really cool. Then we went, like, say, okay, what were the best non-licensed games in the history of pinball? And we think of, you know, Williams' Attack from Mars and Revenge from Mars was also quite successful. And those were all B-campy movies. And we also think about one of the folklore games that, you know, many people talk about all this time is Big Bang Bar, which is also another kind of campy, spacey, you know, outpost kind of game. So we kind of as a team said, well, why don't we call it Galactic? Why don't we stick it out on the moon? And it's funny because Dennis writes these short stories. I think you guys probably have known this before, that some pinball designers write little stories about the premise of their game. Dennis wrote a story about a game he wanted to do, and I said, why don't we just take that and put it to Tank Force,
    114:04
    which at that time was called Tank Patrol. And he was like, well, I never thought of that. That would be a great idea. So Jack Hager and Josh Kugler and a bunch of other people and myself, we started just throwing ideas, having, you know, let's do this, let's do that. Jack had a cast of like eight characters to join Galactic Tank Force, right? And then cost and budget came in, and we whittled that down to ten characters, right? And then we put an ensemble of employees that work here to fill out the rest of the characters that we were going to have in there. But understand, we didn't have the kind of cash. Now, granted, Legends was selling good, and so was when we brought Galactic out. That started selling pretty well to the point that Mukesh said, okay, let's go get you another license. So that's what we did. We went and started going for another license. But getting a license, developing a game, bringing it to market takes time. So by that time, before Galactic came out, we had already brought on Barry Osler. And Barry was working on a game, and he came up with a theme, which was, again, generic. We needed to do generic because we didn't have the license yet. and we kind of talked to him about the license a little bit, or not the license, but the theme a little bit, and it morphed from what it was, and it morphed into Berrio's Barbecue Challenge, which is a very big slice of Americana, which is like, you know, barbecue festivals and whatnot. So if you think about it, in the history of pinball, you know, if we look back, you had games like, you know, roller coaster like Cyclone and Comet and other things that were hugely popular in American culture. So, you know, during the 80s and 90s, people were going to amusement parks and riding on roller coasters and or people were going fishing or, you know, you know, thus fishtails, you know, summer holidays. And, you know, there was a lot of stuff that if you look at it, And theme-wise, what could be used? So the idea of doing barbecue where you're going to a festival where you have all these, you know, characters there and they're cooking their different stuff and, you know, creating a rule set with really, really strong rules. I mean, this has got some, you know, tournament-worthy rules where, you know, I'm watching Steve Bowden. He took the reins by the horn on this. And so, it always came out pretty quick. You know, it was there. And we helped, you know, we lost Barry in the middle just right before we launched Galactic Tank Force. So, you have to have, as a company, things set up in the right order. And, you know, you have to set it up so that these are the games that are coming out.
    117:18
    And our next game, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it is a licensed game. and it's got cool mechs in it and a lot of it and we're excited about it um and you know the team is a small team so we all jumped in we helped finish fury's game burio's barbecue challenge and uh the rules on that game are immensely really deep uh you know some people look at the game and go, oh, that's a simple game. Yeah, but can you do in one ball one billion points? You know, there's a lot that you can do with that game. And if you know what you're doing right in tournament play, and it's not an easy game, right? It looks easy, and looks can be deceiving. And Berrios does prove that to be the case. And it has comedic efforts, right? It has the fun. It has, you know, different people in there, different characters, just kind of like the slice of Williams. I find it interesting, my good friend, our good friend, Martin Lloyd from S&S Billiards, he's now our service tech. He has all our games. And he goes, you're capturing something that pinball's been missing, right? It has that essence and that world under glass, and he's like, I get locked into it. And he says he loves it. He loves all our games so far. So, you know, he's really excited, and we're excited to have him on, taking phone calls and answering questions for all our customers around the world.
    118:55
    Right, sure. But given all that, getting back to the financials, which is going to be the focus of anybody investing in this IPO, they're going to look at that and go, okay, so great, great growth from 21 to 22, 23. You know, you're making good profits. You have good sales, sales of, what, two and a quarter million dollars in the second half of, sorry, first half of 23. and the second half of 23 it all collapsed and the sales basically were about 15% of what they had been in the previous quarter. So why and how would an investor think that it's worthwhile keeping American Pinball going as a financial concern?
    119:56
    Where are they going to see the growth in the market over the next year, two years? Well, you know, we continue to see the growth. Listen, when you look at it back in 21, you had almost no growth, right? So there is a settling of the market. Now, remember, we designed the growth for American, and this is the total driving force for American has always been to get to two games a year. so whatever that's going to be, right? So we're looking at this because, you know, I heard somebody refer this to like, you know, you've got to have a catalog. And I have said this before that you have to have a catalog in your arsenal, right? So, you know, Barry O's game came out. It's doing okay. Is it a walk in the park? I mean, is it a landslide, you know, stale, you know, fiending out? No. I didn't think it was going to be. It has a lot of necks in it. It's a good playing game. But it's not like, you know, the barn burner that, you know, would be a licensed game, right? If I called it something else, right, which was a licensed game, it probably would have been a total hit, right? But it isn't. And I'm also facing a very strong opposition. You know, you have Jaws that came to the market. you have ABBA and you also have a Funhouse remake and you have Princess Bride not only saying that but you also have Looney Tunes and you have Pulp Fiction which is just now getting released to the public over the last few months so yeah that whole storm that we hit back in March of 23 was like seven games being released, but some of those games are just now, you know, one of the games is now Sistine the Let It Day, right? So it's hurt. Now, you know, we continue to strive forward. We all have missteps, but we continue to move forward with it. And, you know, the finalization of this year will look very good, especially with our next licensed game that we're bringing out, and we're excited about that. I mean, you know, people who are looking for IPO, you've got to remember, this is not going to be controlled by, you know, Amtron. India is a separate entity, right? So this gives me more focus to focus on American. And we also have a new board system that we released with Barry O's Barbecue Challenge, board system which was backwards compatible, which took a lot of time and effort from us that, you know, yes, it's all new code if you want to run it in the Hot Wheels, but you can put it in the Hot Wheels, right? And we're making Hot Wheels right now. We're making Hot Wheels, Burritos, Barbecue Challenge. We just finished a run of Houdini's, which, you know, everybody goes, why are you making Houdini's? Because I'm still selling them. We made a run of Houdini's. I have one left in the building. I have to make a run of Hot Wheels because I only have one left in the building, and I have orders for them. And are those with the new board system, or are they with the original? Some are with the new board system. Some of them are original.
    123:28
    Like, I believe the Houdini still have the original board system for now because we haven't had the team put the new code on it and had it work efficiently out in the locations. Remember, we test everything. So like the game at Incerium in Chicago here, we'd probably have the new board system with the new code on it, and if it's not working correctly, we'll pull it out, put the new board system in, we keep going back and forth, we do our alpha testing and our beta testing, so we ensure our longevity. Now, with that, most of the people who look at the company go, Well, they have a catalog, maybe a small catalog, because you can't go back that far. I mean, yes, you can make Houdini. You can make Legends. You can make Galactic. And Galactic, actually, here's one thing that I'm very happy about. We've sold a ton of Galactic in the last few months after we released the new code update. You know, we had the new code at Texas. We had it at Midwest Gaming Classic. We need a couple little more changes, then we release it to the public. And now people of the public are calling up and saying, hey, I want a galactic tank force. Hey, I want another galactic tank force. So we're happy about that. We're moving those. Right. Like, it's an interesting time. I'm just saying that, you know, hey, do I have a crystal ball and I can see everything into the future? No. But I can make my calculated guess because this is a company. And, you know, we're moving along. Okay. So allow me to jump in here on a few things that you touched on and also what Martin touched on. If we're looking at the numbers, Martin indicated that the first half of 2023 was a very good half year, and the second half of that year was less. Yes. Now, you did release Galactic Tank Force at Texas Pinball Festival 2023. So, I don't know whether there's a peak at the launch of a game, that all your distributors are buying a game, so there's a peak in your financial stimulus, so to speak. And after that, everybody's waiting for their game, so they're not ordering new games.
    125:55
    So, can you... You hit it right on the head, Jonathan. Most of the people who put their orders in, they put them in ahead of time. They order them. It takes us some time to get them out. And then by the time we get around to releasing some stuff, when we're starting to fill more orders or sales come in, it might slow up. And I will tell you, guys, remember, there was a new company who jumped on the market in September of 2023, made a big announcement, was there at Expo, showed off that beautiful game, and that was barrels of fun. You know, Labyrinth came out. So, yeah, remember, every time a new company comes on the market or a new game comes on the market, it's going to play Habit. Trust me, it's not just me. It's all the other companies see this, you know. We all see that, you know, hey, you know, John Wick's here, okay. You know, it's like the Media Hog, right? It's, you know, 28, 34, you know, 48, whatever it is right now, I think, is how many content creators can do something on John Wick, right? So you have John Wick in every aspect of the market. And I've played the game. And, you know, it's a certain game. I like it. It plays pretty good. Would I buy a pro? No, I would definitely buy the one with the more mechs in it. But, you know, for the most part, John Wick doesn't fit into my wheelhouse of what I like as games. So, you know, but it's still, it's a new game in the market. So every time a new game comes to the market, just imagine there's a little shake-up. Yeah, but that's something you can anticipate. Because you know that Stern is coming out with usually three Cornerstone games and possibly some sort of a Vault Edition. so that's four games a year.
    127:50
    Correct. And Spooky is coming out with probably two new titles with a dual playfield, so to speak, so same playfield, different themes. Well, I would check on that, because I think Looney Tunes and Chainsaw was their last one they did. Right. I'll check with Bug and them, because I think from now on they're only going to do one uno title. I could be wrong, but I think I remember talking to him about that. And listen, guys, we have conversations internally, right? We all talk to each other. Right. Just, you know, like I've talked to Bug and... No, I get that. But so you know what the competition is sort of doing, or you know what's coming up. And in your situation, you're working on, let's say, a barbecue challenge, which is a non-licensed game. So you're already competing against several licenses that have a big following, or at least people might be earlier tempted to go to that. and still I get that you're moving ahead with such a non-licensed game but you know already what your competition is going to be so it's going to be harder to get that game to get it positioned properly in the market and get production to the right numbers. Or am I wrong here? No, you're right. You're right. It's tough. But also what else is tough, and I'll just say this to you, is when you have content creators jumping on board and giving their two cents before they've actually ever played the game. Sure. And you know what? You can look back at some content creators who have played, you know, even the newest Stern game, right? After they played it, they're saying something different, right? So, you know, it goes back to the statement, like I like to say all the time, is play the game. Tell me what you think about the game after you've played it. Now, granted, Spirio's Barbecue Challenge was a new board system, okay? think about a new board system from Gottlieb or from Stern or Williams. Is it the full-fledged, unbelievable game? Is it totally there? Normally, it's kind of a quick game, a game that's going to be strong. Now, granted, barbecue has some deep, deep rules and some amazing things. Bowden really shined on that. And I'm going to tell you, Steve really was in Dennis' office just about every other day going, that shot's not working. This isn't working. We need to tweak this. This doesn't feel right. This needs just a little bit. And he said that he would be doing this with, of course, Barry if Barry was here.
    131:10
    Barry and him had worked at Texas at Deep Root. And that's the kind of arrangement and situation that they had there. So, you know, I laugh because I hear some people say that some of my people have no passion. I beg to differ. I mean, Ryan McQuade, Steve Bowden, Casey Butler, you know, some of these people, I have to kick out of the office at 9, 10 o'clock at night after I got done with some overseas calls and basically say, hey, guys, you got to go home, you know. But you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't, we want you to leave, but you can't stay here. You know, it's one of those things. We've got to get you to keep moving.
    131:54
    And they're passionate about it, and they're working hard. And trust me, the iterations that Barry Osser's game has gone through and the code that has transpired is amazing. You know, I love the gameplay now. It's rivaling some of my favorite games because I can walk up to it and I can, you know, it can be pushed right in your place. You think you're going to do good. Oh, this is a simple game. And then you have the bash locks, which are absolutely cool. And, you know, again, it depends on your content creators. I ran into the problem with some content creators right off the bat who never played the game, who basically called it Hot Wheels, which it wasn't. They were like, oh, it's a re-theme of Hot Wheels. No, it isn't. Everything is completely different. They said, well, it's this. No, it's not that either. So, you know, it's kind of funny.
    132:57
    Play the game. The operations of the game, the game out in location, people playing it, has been great. People who play Barry O's Barbecue Challenge absolutely love it. You know, they're coming to me and going, that game plays a lot different than I thought it was going to play. That actually is fun to play. And I'm like, okay.
    133:20
    So, the obvious question is then, how do you get it out to more people? If it's, sales are not exactly going gangbusters, as you said. Right. How do you persuade people? to do this? Is it shows? Do you take it to different types of shows? Do you take it to outdoor shows? Do you take it to barbecue cook-offs?
    133:48
    You're not a big company. You haven't got a big marketing spend to attend all these things. So how do you get the best bang for your buck? So what I do is I lean on my distributors, Martin. So I have a distributor out in California who contacts us, and he's got his big barbecue thing that he's going to do this. Now I could fly us out. We could do all this other stuff. But he's like, here, just send me a couple games. Let's do this. Let me contact the location that's doing the barbecue. Okay, we can do some advertising. We can do this for you. Okay, great. I have another distributor, right? They're like, well, we can get this to a content creator, I'm going to sell it to this guy he's in Germany and he's going to focus on the game and he likes the game he's amazed by this and he wants to put it out there okay let's get you a game let's make this happen right remember it's the strength you know you and Jonathan are strong together and you get a lot done and if you had a strong team behind you you'd get more done Well, American, the first couple of years, we were building really strong relationships with, you know, Tommy from Nitro, good friend of mine, known him for many years, build strong relations with him. Tommy right now, I'm so excited for him. He's opening Nitro Pinball all across Canada. So very shortly, you're going to have Nitro Pinballs in every major city across Canada. It's going to be huge. You know, you have other people and we're there to support him. We already sent him games. He's excited about this. So we have that. We have other people like other markets that haven't been tapped into. We're talking to a huge place in Mexico, okay, who has 48 locations all up and down in Mexico.
    135:54
    They're good friends. and they're already talking about bringing the Hot Wheels in to test. They love the idea of barbecue. They've played it in Vegas. They want to talk about bringing that in. So there's different markets you can strive. One of the cool things is we didn't really talk about this much, but we also brought Ron Lindgren in. Ron was from Polycade. He was one of the guys who was a sales rep over there at Polycade and has worked within the coin op industry I've known around for a long time. So we brought him in, and he's immediately going after tons and tons of markets, right? He's knocking on doors, shaking hands, and making deals. Where he needs help, I help him, and I give him direction where he needs direction. But I let him go and do the sales, right? Like I said, we're a small company. We don't have a lot. I have Steve Cummings with sales still. He's still working here. But he's been, you know, he got into the trenches with all the home distributors, and he's doing it. I need somebody to continue to strive outside the market. So we are building a lot of things. And, you know, there's shows that we can do. Like, you know, you said certain shows are coming up. Well, I'm excited to, you know, let everybody know that I will be at the Pinball UK Festival this coming August. so I'm flying over to England and I'll buy you a pint Martin and I will let you David and I'm sure I will buy you one back as well and we very much look forward to seeing you in Daventry in August and I know Phil's very excited about that and you can do a talk over there yes I'm willing to do a talk over there I haven't heard from your guys but, you know, I'd love to sit around and talk about barbecue or any of the games, Galactic Tank Force. I think also, here's the thing, there are a lot of markets that haven't seen the games, right? There's been a lot of publicity on a lot of other games that can get overshadowed quickly, but we just have to, you know, we're focusing on really pushing it. And listen, right now in the U.S., we are just kicking off our summer, spring season, where there's a lot of barbecue festivals, a lot of barbecue stuff going on. In fact, last weekend, Ron was down at a barbecue festival, right? So he took the games down there. People were like, oh my goodness, this is amazing. This is great. You know, they were just, you know. Yeah. I mean, if I may, you were talking about the cyclical nature of sales in regard to not just your own product launches, but other companies' launches. But of course, one of the constants across all this is you have to pay the staff. Their pay is not cyclical. It's a constant, along with many other constant outgoings. And you had to make some tough choices over the past few months as regards who continues to work or be part of the American Pinball team. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, sure. I can talk about that. So, you know, we keep bringing out stuff, and we are open with the team, and we bring them in. And, yes, we had to lay off a few people. And, you know, it's funny. Somebody was saying that we had to lay off somebody else, and it wasn't really a layoff on that person. That was from our service department. That was just a little replacement. But there were people like Dennis who, you know, Dennis, he's not a young guy. He kind of came to us and he was like, you know, I could be doing better by, you know, being home a little bit more and, you know, being this, that, and the other thing. And we kicked it around a couple times. And then we said, hey, this is what we want to do. We want to lay you off. We want to put you on a contract basis. We want to build your game. It's not the hot priority now. It's not shelved. It's either there's other little things that can be done. Let's talk about this and have a contract made up. and we'll contract base this and it's well open. You can come and do what we need to do and let's do this. But we've got to kind of lay you off from the day-to-day. And we did that with a couple other people.
    140:27
    Our next game is heavily got content already, so we had to lay off some of the art department because most of the assets are coming in. You know, we're all going through a point right now where, you know, it gets tight. And we've got to be adults, and we're all family. Yes, we love them dearly. It breaks our heart to lay people off, but we have to do it, right? And it's for the better of the company. Now, are we done? No. We're still moving games. We're still trying to do it. have we had all the positive things that we could do?
    141:12
    No. There are always many other ways to make this a lot better and to go at it, right? But a sad time is that sometimes it's out of my control and it's the ownership that wants to go in a certain direction, you know, like the whole licensing. That's why I brought it up earlier that, you know, listen, I walked in the door, and I'm not going to pull any punches about this, but there were two licenses that I really wanted us to get. And Spooky got one of them because we couldn't pick up Looney Tunes.
    141:49
    And, you know, we were like, well, we can do that, but we can't do it. And then the next one we were about ready to pull the trigger on and we were waiting on it, waiting on it, and we held up a little too long was, of course, you know, Sonic pinball. So we kind of paused, and then when we came back to the table, we're ready, somebody else sniped it on us. So, you know, hey, it happens. We went out and got another license because we were ready, and we did. And then we firmed up another license after that, and we firmed up a couple more licenses. So, you know, it takes time. You know, companies don't start off immediately. Look, Data East, which is now Big Stern Pinball, the first five machines that they did were not even licenses, right? And it was the first five, six years before they got going into that realm where they kicked it off. I mean, they did games like Laser Ward, Torpedo Alley, and Secret Service, and let me think, Time Machine. Time Machine, yeah. Yeah, and there's a bunch more in there. Well, Checkpoint is sort of a license. Checkpoint, but that was, yeah.
    143:14
    Yeah, and there were other games that they had done. Phantom of the Opera was not a licensed theme. It was kind of like Houdini's, right?
    143:27
    So it takes time for a company, what do they call it? Public domain. It takes time for a company to get its legs, right? And trust me, when I walked through the door back in December of 20, we had, in the office, we had three people, four people actually.
    143:50
    One was Josh Googler and we had Mitesh Pidva who is my wiring and electrical guy. We have another guy who was the office manager and we had Joe Schober who was the other software guy. That's it.
    144:13
    And I walked in, well we shouldn't say that because we had Joe Balser standing here for like a week and I met him, had a couple conversations with him, didn't have much to say to him, you know we talked about it and Mukesh said well he's on his way out and you know and then a week later I was in the meeting with that so I was like okay, well this is the way we're going and then you know you can't, and when you have four people in the office when you start a company up, it's like you're starting from day one. And you already had a license with Hot Wheels and it's not moving because of COVID and things are holding up and it's like, okay, we got to get moving forward, guys. We got to get things, put rubber on the road. And one of the quickest things we said was we could sit here and spend 14 months or a year and a half of our life getting another game, and that's hustling, out after October, out after Hot Wheels, which would have been probably March of 22. We could have had a game. March of 22. And what we ended up doing was October of 21 we had Legends of Valhalla. Because as a small team, we pulled a lot in in 10 months. we literally had the game piping and done and caught everybody off guard because they didn't think we're going to have it that quick uh great little team uh most of them are all still here that were there at that time and uh we focused heavily right um like you know some people you know people say oh you got to sell x amount well you know over a period of time we will sell x amount. We have a back catalog to do that.
    146:13
    But, you know, I'm amazed to this day. Houdini came out in 2017, right? I'm amazed when people walk up and say, I have never seen this game. And they're still, and they play it, and it's been out for all those years and they absolutely fall in love with the game.
    146:33
    So, as marketing, we have to continue focusing on marketing, right? We continue to show it to the masses. You know, my biggest fear is that, you know, 20 years from now, somebody will come up to me and go, I just saw and played this game called Galactic Tank Force and it's amazing. I'm like, yeah, well, that was 20 years ago.
    146:53
    Well, that still happens to some Williams titles. I mean, there's people walking up playing Medieval Madness for the first time right now and they're totally amazed with it. and rightfully so, I might, I might add. And, Mark, and Jonathan, think you're absolutely right with that so let me just back up here um when i got into pinball collecting i had found medieval madness in 2002 and i was like wow this this is an amazing game when did this come out how did i miss this and meanwhile the company was already gone and the funny thing was is in 2002 is when i heard of this thing called pinball 2000 i'm like what's that i haven't seen that either and I missed that whole that whole market right um it depends on what level you are in deep in collecting right because I bought my first game back in uh 96 but you know you're buying first game that doesn't mean you're an avid collector you're you're you're trolling the forums you're going to all these pinball shows it's not that at all you got something in your basement you're enjoying having a game and you know you're done right one and done but unfortunately they're like laced potato chips you just can't have one, they just tend to be like troubles in Star Trek and multiply themselves they're not as light as potato chips but they're much more heavier than that yes, they're not light, light potato chips they're just like yeah, no, I get that so, now briefly getting back to the IPO So with Ametron being an Indian company and the shares being put out in India, India is not exactly, as we know, a huge pinball market. Correct. So how big is the danger of Indian shareholders deciding on the fate of American pinball? And that might not be that good because they're not even familiar with what pinball is. I'm going to say it's relatively low.
    149:16
    Relatively low. And I'm going to share this with you too. one of the driving forces is for aim trying to be on the IPO is that India was named the next coming electronic booming market right next to China right India was the next China it's this untapped market it's huge for technology it is just growing and understand that pinball as we all know it is an older thing but it is still one of the most complicated most intricate um systems in the world right you're talking about a machine for amusement that has a half mile of wiring not a mile of wiring half mile now um circuit boards sensors switches coils knobs all those You open that up and you look at it and you go, wow.
    150:17
    I open up a cell phone and go, wow, but that's a telephone, right? Or it has a video camera which can now, you know, do video calls, which, you know, back in, you know, early 80s and early 70s, we all saw that in 2001, the Space Odyssey, that Ma Bell was connecting you to do a voice call with your family back on Earth, right? So now we've gotten to that point now where we can do video calling. I can do Skype with you guys. But technically, technology is growing so fast, and India has become this gigantic market that, you know, they see the pinball machine still as this impressive machine. We take it to shows all the time. We take it to a lot of Amtron shows, and a lot of manufacturers, the circuit boards, the so forth, look at it and go, you build this? This is amazing. This is cool. This is exciting. But sorry to rain on your parade, but yes, it's an incredible piece of technology, but if nobody in India is playing it, then it's not much use for a shareholder to keep pumping money into it. Right, but you've got to understand something. The people who do play it over in India are the wealthy people who have them and they are over in India. We have ship games from here to India and we have them in locations, not people's homes. We don't have them out in locations in the street because it's not available. But people who do see them and are part of them are huge. Now we are also right now working on exporting them into China. We've been working on that for a little bit too so that's also you remember this is this is a very expensive machine right you know what's the machine cost where you are Jonathan if I take it an American machine sell it to you in euros it's gotta be what $1000 plus something like that I'm not entirely sure because I'm not in the market to buy new machines of any brands at the moment so So, but as you cover the market, you look at it and go, wow, that costs X, right? You know, it's like, wow, that costs a lot. And I think that's also why we brought Berrio's Barbecue Challenge in.
    152:46
    When we hit the market, we were trying to be lower, but unfortunately there's costs, there's all this other stuff. So bringing a game in the market that's fully featured, all the mechs in it, everything, Yes, it's not licensed, but it's got more mechs in it than some of my other competitors.
    153:06
    $6,999.95, right? Right. So that's... You have a very competitive pricing on that game. I absolutely give you that. But if I may play Devil's Advocate... You always do, so why are you asking permission? Well, trying to lean into it a little bit. I mean, so you knew or you know what the market is like with the licensing and so on. Now, I get the sentiment with Barry Osler passing and how well you knew him and for how long and so on. but in all fairness Berrio was maybe the best barbecue chef in his own yard but not outside of that he was not a big YouTube chef posting videos of what he did on his barbecue and very well known of that so if you're trying to tap into the barbecue market the first thing I think people are going to Berrio's barbecue channel who the hell is Berrio? absolutely and I'm not trying to Jonathan who is Aunt Jemima I have no idea but you love her maple syrup right I wouldn't know because I don't think I use that much maple syrup that brand is not available over here so that unfortunately that missed the mark sorry But I understand that Beriot is a relatively known name in the pinball scene, but outside of that, and especially with the barbecue theme,
    155:04
    would the game be better off being a generic barbecue game without the attachment of Beriot to it? Well, the idea in this is that it's still a generic barbecue game. You just have your character, right?
    155:22
    Fishtail has the big fish, right? I mean, yeah, I guess that's a little bit more generic than it could have just been a barbecue challenge. But here's one thing that we should just... There is an elephant in the room that I feel like anybody's ever covered. And I should cover it at least once, and we can do it here in this podcast. But Barry O's game was also developed as a white-label game for American Pinball.
    155:48
    And what that means is that it's going to be Barry O's Barbecue Challenge, is what we sell it. But that game can be changed over very much like the game, I can't think of it, Woe Nelly. Okay? It came out as Pabst Blue Ribbon. It reclaimed. And so forth. So the game was designed as a white label, so it could be renamed. It's a fun-playing game. It could literally at some point be Jack Daniels, right? It's Tennessee Whiskey. It could be another, you know, big-name company that wants it for trade shows and publicity. We have already been talking to quite a few companies about that being a white-label game, okay? And we're in negotiations of that being morphed into a white label game. So there are options that are available, but we designed that game also on the premise to be a white label game.
    156:53
    So Burials was the game that we're going to name it, we're going to bring it out, but at some point that could be, I don't know, insert your favorite rock band.
    157:04
    Change off all the artwork, put all the music in of the rock band, have the stuff going on, the fireworks show, you know, all that stuff be in the name. You need to change all video as well. Oh, absolutely. We already know that. Right. So, okay.
    157:24
    But we also made that as a white label. So we have an alternative generic version of sounds, you know, that would fit in. We can put music. We have a great AV engine in here. We can run. Listen, we ran all 22 tracks of Two Steps from Hell, which we had the permission and the licensing for Legends of Valhalla, and we had a beautiful audio system in there showing that whole system off. So, you know, we can do stuff, and that's what we wanted to do is have something that wasn't so theme-heavy such as like Valhalla with a big giant chip in it. So, I mean, how do you have a big giant chip when you trying to sell I guess I could go for Captain Crunch right Or some kind of cereal with a strip in it But you know it one of those things Barry always really lends itself nicely to be a white label and that's kind of like what we had in mind when Barry designed it, was to be a white label, but also to be, for Steve and Barry right from the get-go, is to be thematically heavy as barbecue, right? This is where you guys are going to go. This is going to write up the rules. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. So are you going to see Berio's Barbecue as some rock band or some other cool promotional thing? Yes, you will see that down in the future. But right now, it's Berio's Barbecue Challenge. Right. Okay. Sticking with that subject for just a moment, since it's, well, even sticking with the barbecue theme, right now sales aren't through the roof but would you consider sort of adding a license to the game in the sense that you could team up with one of the popular barbecue TV shows or YouTube channels add their name to the title make it I don't know whatever names barbecue challenge would that improve sales? Would that help? Oh yeah.
    159:41
    Oh yeah, it probably would. And we are already in negotiations with stuff. So, just have to wait and see. Okay. Because I'm just curious, like, okay, you've got a great game.
    159:54
    The market is not immediately picking up on it. It could very well be a game that you'll be building for the next 10 years. as a slow burner, so to speak, which is no pun intended, but well. We're slow cooking it. Yeah, exactly.
    160:15
    So I'm just trying to think along, like, what can you do? And given that not many people might be ticked off by the name Barry O, but they might be interested if it's something else's barbecue challenge. Absolutely. Well, Jonathan, here's the cool thing. You and I both know that stuff that has small numbers or short runs or stuff like that become highly collectible down the road and really gain, you know, their money, right? So let's just say, for instance, okay, let's say a month or two or three months from now we stop making videos and it becomes who knows some you know some huge tv show personality um game right and we start making those now all of a sudden the original run of various barbecue challenge uh which was a cool game has a very short run and let's say it who knows what the numbers were right but it's a short number right much shorter than some and then you know You paid $69.95 and give it four or five years from now, I have the limited version of that game, okay? That game now is selling for $15.95 because it's that rare game. Somebody wants it. And you know that the collector's market does that, right? I mean, look, Big Bang Bar came out. they did 189 remakes of Big Bang Bar. They sold them at $5,000 a piece. Non-licensed, fun game, cool game kind of thing. They're selling now, if you can buy a Big Bang Bar for less than $30,000, you're doing great. I can sell mine.
    162:19
    Do you have one? I have one. Have you ever had anybody ask you to sell it and give you a price tag? I've kept my mouth shut about having one.
    162:30
    Hey, everybody, Jonathan now has a Big Bang Bar for sale. Make sure you talk to him at every show. Throw him tons of money.
    162:38
    Well, yeah, tons of money is always good. You've now set the bar at $30,000. Well, I mean, Rob Burke's got a Big Bang Bar, which is a gold edition, and I think $30,000 gets it loosed out of his basement kind of thing. Of course, he'll hear this, and then he'll raise it by 10.
    162:59
    But there again, remember, they only made 198 of those, right? There's only 200 of those made. The limited is limited, right? And this is kind of the theory that I had. And remember, I'm a collector, and I think some of my other manufacturers get it wrong. Limited number is a limited number, right? It's got to be a small number. It's got to be hittable. It makes you want it, and then if you have it, that's great. But I'm looking at, you know, I'm looking at games, and I'm saying to myself, okay, I have, you know, a limited game. I paid my money, and then I'm excited because I have this limited edition. As a manufacturer, I think, me personally, I would never want to release a new limited version of a game that I have because then that makes my other limited game not worth as much. And I think that's horrible.
    164:06
    So limiting it to a point that I have a game, I'm putting this out in location, this is what I want to do.
    164:16
    Once it's done with the limit, that's it. I'm not going back and do a secret, probational, you know, limited version of this game, okay, and kill my market. I want you as a collector to enjoy it and have it. So that's kind of where I am. But you wouldn't be averse to doing an unlimited rerun of a different version of the game?
    164:39
    You mean a classic version or just a standard version of the game? No. Yeah, like a standard, but slightly different. like a 50th anniversary or something, or a 25th anniversary or something, that's not necessarily limited, but is unique in some way. Well, I mean, yeah, you think Houdini's got, what, 100 years of Houdini's coming up or something like that, I think.
    165:05
    Right, yeah, okay. 100 years. Centenary edition. Yeah, right. but you know there again I feel for the people who have the original Houdini's you know would I do that to them no but maybe I would give them some kind of incentive like give them first chance at buying this if they want it right give them a discount because they have one of the original Houdini's I mean loyalty is is key right I mean I want my customers to be loyal to me and I would probably really push off on doing a 100th anniversary special edition Houdini because listen, we've had Houdini out since 2017. You can buy a classic version of it now. It's not, you know, whatever. And people, you know, enjoy it.
    165:56
    So, I mean, like Legends of Ahala Limited, you know, that's, you know, when there are a few of those left, when they're gone, they're gone. and I'm not going back and doing a special edition of that. It's limited. It's a short one and it's there. Same thing with Galactic Tank Force Signature. That was limited.
    166:18
    And Very Oldest Game. That also was limited. So limit means it has a limit. You're a collector. You bought it. You cashed in on it. I'm not going to kill you for the super secret limited edition number three. It's like, well, how limited is the first limited? Well, it is because it's got oil on it and it's special, but now it's different. So it's a slippery slope. You've got to be careful. Right. But one of the things you talked about earlier was the importance of having a catalog of a brand or a product that you can offer. Of course, once you start adding in license titles into that, you have to consider how long the license is going to last for and how long you'll be able to remake that title. I mean, your only one at the moment is Hot Wheels. So if you wanted to go back and remake Hot Wheels, you'd have to have an active license for that available, in existence at the time.
    167:22
    Do you have a license for Hot Wheels at the moment, and how long are you going to be keeping that for? We do. We have the extension on the license already. We'll have it for the next two years.
    167:34
    So, and we're still building our classics, and we're still building the other ones. It's a good game. Locations love it.
    167:43
    You know, my good friend Dan Lewson up in Minnesota with the Midwest Gaming Classic, he has a Hot Wheels on location. Absolutely stellar game. He loves it. He says it's his cash cow. He's going up there every two weeks to empty the thing, and he's like, this is an amazing machine. He already bought other machines of ours to put them in locations because he knows that it's making money very well and collectors have loved the machine. They love the Hot Wheels. We just now brought out Aura Lighting, which we had a little fiasco last week, but it's already on location at Interium and we're going to be streaming it again this week with the, you know, we found the problem with the game, so we're excited about that.
    168:40
    Something as stupid as a screw being put in over a ground wire that was grounding out something, so as soon as that switch turned on, it made sense to the computer. So, you know, little things do happen. It's a lot of mechanical stuff that goes on. We can find it. We go through it. We get it all fixed up. So, we do an awful lot, but Aura Lighting is now available for Hot Wheels, it's available for BBQ, and it's also available for, you know, Galactic Tank Force comes with it all the time. the idea on that is that it's a cool lighting system that can make Hot Wheels look really nice and if you check in the YouTube channels on the Aura Lighting or the stream that we're doing on this you're going to see how beautiful the game looks right and I'm not really going at it like breaking the bank right Aura Lighting came out we're charging $149 yeah you basically we show you we send you the harness the kit you put it in you plug it in and you're off to the races and it's interactive with the game we already did all the coding and so forth so you don't have to sit there and change everything and say oh why didn't it change why is it just the blue period it's all interactive right and it's I'm not breaking the bank you're getting a really cool lighting system that's going in your game for $149 I mean, crying out loud. Now, speaking of sort of upgrading the hardware of your game, the last time we visited you, which was around Pimble Expo last year,
    170:32
    you showed us a prototype of a hardware change that might possibly make it to the Hot Wheels game. Is there any news on that? No news at this time, but stay tuned. It's coming.
    170:50
    We have had it for prototyping. We have had it. It's finalized. That kind of falls in line with us having the Hot Wheels license for the next couple of years. So just stay tuned. We've got some exciting things that are going to come out with Hot Wheels down the road. Aura Lighting was one of them. We do have some other stuff that, you know, I know you guys have covered because I have people calling me every once in a while. I read on Pinball Magazine or I read in Pinball News about a change coming to, you know, the Houdinis or to this game. Has that happened yet? And I'm like, no, it hasn't. We're just finishing up that run. If you want one, you can do that. but you know there again we you know we're trying to make things limited for people and who knows Hot Wheels we're going to have it for a little time and we're excited about some of the cool things and yes you did get to see some secrets Jonathan thank you for keeping them as quiet as possible I know it's killing you we'll spoil it after you're off the air yeah after you yeah Yeah. But there are other things. You saw other things that we're working on. Some stuff, code-wise, that hasn't really been, let's see, flushed out enough.
    172:14
    With some of those other surprises that you saw, too. So we've got to make sure the code is 100% part of that when we release it. Right? We want to make sure it's cool. Right. I get that. I'm just wondering because we're just reporters at this point, and sometimes it's difficult to understand if you see something in a prototype stage a certain day, you figure like, hey, we're six or nine months later.
    172:50
    This should be out there by now, right? or sometimes it takes longer apparently, but that's beyond the scope of what we can see or even imagine with all the stuff going on. And I completely understand it.
    173:07
    But I'm still curious like, okay, when are we going to see some of the stuff that we did see and that we think could be very exciting to the game and might boost your sales as well. So, hence why I'm asking.
    173:25
    No, no, absolutely. I understand 100% why you're asking, and it makes sense, right? But there's also, as the team, we've also sat down and said, well, if we do this and do that, would this be kind of cool to bring it all out at the same time? And people are like, yes, that might be a bigger reveal, right?
    173:45
    Listen, the aura lighting was, you know, people have now been going crazy. They're like, are you going to do this for Legends of Valhalla? Are you going to do it for Hot Wheel, for Houdini? Are you going to do it for Oktoberfest? You know, we will see, right?
    174:02
    There's nothing off the table. We continue to look at our back catalog, but also looking forward, right? So it depends on the bandwidth of the team if we can bring something out. Yes, we saw a prototype on one part, but there's two other things that we wanted to put together that we think would make it really look really cool all together. So, you know, there's still development time in that tour.
    174:27
    Now, you mentioned your catalog a number of times. Obviously, you're also working ahead. You mentioned you have a licensed game coming up following Berrio's barbecue challenge. Yes. there are rumors going around about the licenses which American Pinball may or may not have. Would you like to clarify those rumors?
    175:00
    Not at this time, but yes, we do have licenses. The problem is you've got to be in the rumor mill, you know it all, but time will tell, right? We do have a cool game coming out next, which is a license. I don't want to give it away. But, you know, listen.
    175:21
    All right, I will say this. The next two licenses that we are working on, which makes me very happy to say this,
    175:33
    we are working hand-in-hand with the creative team of that license. so that means every week that team that licensed team the team that has the original thing is meeting with us and we every week we are going through new things different things changing the things how we perceive it and it's not just american pinball it's not just a small of the group that's going to go, okay, this is our vision of this. No. This is the vision of the entire licensor and us as the licensee. We're bringing together a dynamic vision that will not disappoint any of the fans. If you are a fan of this next license or the next licenses that we're bringing out, you are going to absolutely love these games to the point that, you know, one of the licenses, I don't know if I should get into this, this is gray, but one of the licenses, I'm just going to say, had Christopher Franchiart in it, okay? Chris is a good friend. He does amazing artwork. And, you know, he is definitely knocking it out of the park on one of the next licenses.
    177:06
    And then, you know, but to have that creative team from that company also that Franchi's working with, it's just, you know, he's beside himself. He's like, I'm getting to work with some amazing people, you know, who are literally telling him some of the entities and working on that. So it's really fun to be able to say this is what we're coming up with. And I want to point out something. This is the first time that this team is going to give you a license thing.
    177:44
    Okay? So think about it. We did some great things with Galactic Tank Force. We added, you know, a ton of mechanisms to Dennis' game. You know, Dennis' game, when it came in, Tank Force or Tank Patrol had some elements of it, right? Some of the basics. And then we redefined it. We added this. We added that. And then Dennis was like, good Lord, stop adding all this stuff to it. But we added a ton of it. Then we added all the content, right?
    178:11
    This is going to be the first time we're bringing you to the world an American pinball team that's passionate about their license. and we're not going to hold short on giving you probably one of the best things for a license. And understand that I know some people who absolutely have been crying on podcasts saying, why are Americans going to have that license? And I'm like, wait and see, because you're going to love it, because we are going to give you everything but the kitchen sink. and even then I might throw the kitchen sink in it. And you're going to go, this is amazing.
    178:54
    Because, you know, when you have a license, you can go for it and do it. When you don't have a license, you've got to hold back a little bit and kind of see where you fit and, you know, play that budget and do that. You know, just to have the licensor to be with you and to walk hand in hand into a game, it just blows my mind. And I love every minute of this. When you're working that closely with a licensor, though, and they are that involved in the creation of the game,
    179:29
    there must be quite a lot of education both ways, but certainly you have to educate them as to what works in pinball and what doesn't. They might think, oh, it would be great to be able to do this or have this mechanism, and then you have to tell them, well, yes, but this has got to interact with the ball and therefore it's got to be able to do this. You can't just sit there and do nothing. You know, you have to involve it in the storyline.
    179:57
    All the kind of things that we as pinball people take for granted in a pinball game, but those who don't know how a pinball game or the elements that go into it, how they all need to fit together. Has that been something that you've been working with them on, and it's been, I guess, like a two-way experience. They've been educating you about the license and the universe and the characters from that, and you have to educate them about the pinball side of things. Absolutely. It's a two-way street. And I'll tell you that the next license we got, and kind of lucky, Martin, they're big pinball pins. They're huge pinball pins. so for them to go we love this game we love that game we love the intricacies of this kind of a game okay it's not like I can't just go and show them like okay here's a plain board with nothing this is going to be your next game and they'd be like oh that looks gorgeous no they're going to say no we want more mechs we want this we want interaction we want cool stuff that's happening. And that's what we're sharing with them. And they're coming up with ideas. We came up with an idea of the game. They were like, oh, that's so cool. Can you do this with it? And it's like, yeah, we can do that. And if we change this a little this way, we change that a little this way, we can create a cool mech that's going to be here. This is going to be great. And they as a team have been fully saturated into this license that's coming. And I'm going to tell you, I've had some of the great players come around, play this game. They love shooting it. They're like, it's a great shooter. It plays phenomenal.
    181:53
    Every time they come in, they're like, can we see where you are? Can we play it? There are certain distributors who have been very, let's say, privileged who have been here and have played it. Of course, they're under NDA and so forth, and they're like, this shoot's amazing. I don't know. Did you guys get to shoot it? I almost want to say you two got to shoot it a little bit. I didn't. Maybe Mark did. I don't think so. No. You did get to shoot Barry's before it was there, didn't you? Barry's and a future Dennis game. Yes, and then you didn't get to shoot this one. But this one would be, you know, if you guys get over here more than once every year, you might. well I hear there's a new trend where pinball companies invite pinball media oh yes I don't have that deep of pockets my friend remember if I'm hanging certain people off I don't have pockets to invite Jonathan all the way over for a content creator but I can definitely give my time to Jonathan and Martin and jump on a podcast you know shoot the pinball stories with my friends and talk about the possibilities of this. Right. I have one more question and then I think we should probably round it up unless Martin has more. So speak for yourself, Jonathan. I love that you're very passionate about the upcoming game, the license game, and that you're basically putting everything in it, including the kitchen sink.
    183:41
    Is there a point where you're like, hold on, we got to keep the focus on it has to be fun, we don't have to put in everything, because the average Joe has to understand it. Yes, we can make the rules a phone book thick to get to a wizard mode that only three people in the world will ever see. But do you still keep the focus on if you get the first quarter, you still have to pull those people in and make sure that they put in the second quarter and the third quarter and so on.
    184:19
    Because I sort of got the feeling with, and again, playing devil's advocate, with Berrios that there was a lot of input from the team like, oh, we can put this in and this in and this in, and it overcomplicates the whole thing, and it takes away the fun.
    184:37
    No, no. Actually, Barry Owens is, it's not, most people who play it, you know, like, so I'll just say, and the way you get, and this is me being smart here, Jonathan, the way you get more quarters put in is you charge people more for it, so they have to put two quarters in it, or three quarters, or a dollar, or four quarters into it. So that's how you get the first quarter, the second quarter, the third quarter. But, no, Barry O's, let's talk about that for a second. Cool little game, a fun little shooter, great rule sets.
    185:11
    I will tell you, once people understand how it plays, people who see how it rules, see how the feel is, automatically go, I get it. And they, you know, so I want to tell you, I was at Interium. I was just, you know, I just updated the game.
    185:32
    A person who I casually met played John Wick against. He came over and he says, so tell me a little bit about this game. And, you know, I played it. I don't understand it. I, you know, this, that, and the other thing. So I kind of gave him the basic rule set, just the basic, right? And we played a game together. before I left he was playing it three or four more times because he kind of got addicted he understood the game he kind of understood it and you're correct you gotta be careful not to give people that phone book thick rule set because like you said three people might get to the super duper wizard mode but somebody who gets to play a game like Galactic videos or even Legends of Valhalla you get to experience something new each time. As you experience it, you find new enjoyment. It gains on you. It doesn't bottom out. You don't play the game and go, is that it? Okay, I shot this ramp. I shot that ramp. I hit this toy. I did this. I put it in this. Oh, I got this. And, okay, I got this. I got 50 million points. Okay, cool. Now I'm going to hit this ramp again, and I'm going to put it up in the pop bumper there, and it's kind of fun, and it's just, okay, it comes down.
    187:01
    A barrier to OZ is very much risk and reward. You have your player screen. Do you want to press your luck? Do you want to lose that? Once people learn that, then there's an edge to the game. right there's a little bit of a game edge um you know sometimes i think some of the greatest games that we remember and martin you can help me with this but like i want to say t2 right i think t2 is getting to the multi-ball right you want to get you want to you want to get the the thing locked you want to sweep the cannon you want to fire it just get to that thing and then you want to lock it again, and you want to get it easy to do, hard to do over and over and over again. Once you've mastered it. If you're on the 10, difficult to master, yes. Yes. So that's the kind of thing we want to make, and trust me, we want the game to be very presentable to the public. People walk up to it, and they're like, wow, this is amazing. And they put their first dollar in it. They have an experience, somewhat comedic, if it's Galactic Tank Force, somewhat, you know, like battling everybody with Legends of Pahala. You feel like you're battling the Black Knight a little bit. You feel like you're having fun with Berrios. You're going to the barbecue challenge, and man, if I would have just dropped these two shots, I could have had, you know, quadruple my points. I could have, instead of getting $3 million on the barbecue challenge, I could have been walking away with $25 million. And, you know, Steve Bowden was playing Galactic, not Galactic, but Berrio's Barbecue, and he's taunting the machine to pay him, right? He goes, pay me, pay me, pay me, and he hits the final shot, right? He's got his multipliers on the play field up. He's got all the stars that are needed for the finalization of the cook-off. He hits one shot, and then the game goes nuts and gives them 400 million points.
    189:21
    And it counts it up. Here's 100 million, 200 million, 300 million, 400 million. And you're just sitting there, and you're watching him. And it's like, okay, he goes from a million points to 2.4 billion points in a matter of a few minutes, right? And people are like, how did you do that, right? Right, but the average Joe is not that good of a pinball player. But the best thing is when you see the average Joe, if he learns that, right? And this is my point. The young guy I was showing, well, somewhat young, he has the same kind of mustache as I do.
    189:58
    Nice, very handsome gentleman. But I showed him, I said, this is what you need to catch. So his first time through, he got 3 million, but the next time he got the other, the three points, and he's like, oh, this is what I do. And then he got 50 million points. And he's like, oh, if I would have done this and this, I could have got 100 million points.
    190:21
    Bell's things went off in the head, and he immediately got it, right? And he's kind of like an average player, right? I get it other average players as they discover the game go wow there's some stuff there understand that I'm sure that very shortly when we get close to the final version for code and this is kind of me we've shared this Hot Wheels Legends of Valhalla those games are coded to a point which they are approved for tournament. Galactic Tank Force hasn't gotten that approval yet for tournament. People can run tournaments on it. People have run into problems with it. We kind of say, don't use it for a tournament, because you're probably going to run into some problems with it. Once the code is finalized, and we're happy with it, and we're saying, yeah, it's tournament ready, then you can run tournaments on it. I think Very Always Barbecue Challenge is one of those games that will probably get coded for a tournament probably before Galactic will. Galactic is so, you know, Galactic is so huge, guys. It's the biggest thing that, you know, it's crazy the amount of content and mechanisms and everything in Galactic. And, yes, we had missteps, right? We failed. We failed miserably. We had a bracket that bent. We didn't catch it right away. We were like, well, how in the hell is that? You know, listen, this led to me having a lot of arguments with the manufacturer of that bracket to the point that I'm not even using that manufacturer anymore because it's kind of like, how could you let something like this get through? How can you change something and think that I wasn't going to catch it when it's such an intricate part, right? And now we have the fix in on that. It's good. People are enjoying the game. We also had another little code bug that we found, which when we had it at Texas, the bug was kind of repaired. And then it topped itself up a little at Midwest Gaming Classic, a little different version. And so we've nailed it down. Now the game is playing quite reliably.
    192:41
    And understand to get it to the point that I want it to be reliable for a tournament is the long-term goal. now I have people like Steve Bowden and other tournament players who I will say play this game, do you see this done do you think this is tournament ready and when they say no I still hold back on allowing it to be ready for tournament so you know there is that aspect of it ok if Jonathan's out I've got a couple of questions which we could probably wrap this up with The first one was you're rhapsodizing just now about your upcoming game. When might we get to see that revealed? And as part of that, you are doing, I believe you're doing a factory tour as part of this year's Pinball Expo, the 40th anniversary show.
    193:37
    Will that game be in production at that time? Time will tell. I'm not making any promises that the game will be ready by Expo. But here's the other thing. I'm not going to rush to cook the bake, right? If for some reason the game isn't ready, the game isn't ready. I don't want to push something out to the market that isn't, you know, 100% on the mark. But know this, that the team does know that sometime this fall, we will have another game. Are we shooting for Expo?
    194:13
    I would say yes. Is it going to be rated by Expo? I don't know. Right now, we are currently working on it furiously. It's all hands on the boat, all hands on deck. We're all working on it quite well. It's coming together beautifully. It's shooting nicely. So are we excited? Absolutely. Are we giving it all? Sure. If it's not ready for Expo, it won't be there. Now, for the factory tour, yes. We're going to have a factory tour on Wednesday. We're super excited about having the public here. We already talked it over with Rob Burke. Depending on the time frame, I think it's going to be Wednesday afternoon.
    194:53
    We even went as far as even having a food truck here on location. So when you come in, if you're on the bus and you're going somewhere else, there will be a food truck. You can grab some food from us here. You can walk around, see the production, the plants, to see how people are producing the games. You know, we're going to break it down into small groups. We're going to show you the whole production line. You know, Jonathan and Martin, you've been very fortunate, I will say, and always welcome to be able to come into American Pinball to see everything going on. You know, you know that this is not a small factory. I've kind of given you VIP status. You walk in, you sign the books, you walk through, You get to see some of the new stuff, the stuff that hasn't been released yet.
    195:42
    You know, it's kind of a fun thing that you guys have had that privilege. We appreciate it, by the way. I know you do. Of course. And listen, I appreciate all the kind stuff and the stuff you've done. And listen, I've supported you guys at the Texas show, give you a ton of news. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We appreciate that also. and I know everybody at the Texas show and whatever you guys do when you give away stuff, appreciate it. So, you know, and it's just a better image for American Pinball. You know, listen, the aura lighting, I kind of want to go back to this for a minute. I could have charged easily $300, $400, $500 for it, but at the end of the day, I don't see that. I see it as a $149 add-on. it's going to you know, are we going to make bank on it? No. But are we making some money on it? Sure. But at the end of the day it's an exciting thing. Barry O's Barbecue Challenge $6,995 We are priced very fairly in the market you can have some fun with it the game is a great little shooter people who have played it love it you know, people who our big Barry O fans love it because it pays great tribute to him. And it will be there. So, the factory tour may have Barry O's on the production line. It might have a Hot Wheels on the production. It might even have a Houdini or even a Galactic Tank Force. Now that the new code is selling quite well.
    197:19
    I do hope you have a barbecue food truck available. You could have a barbecue food truck there. the final question I wanted to ask you was sorry to go back to this IPO thing but one of the key things I think it wraps it all up nicely I think I'll give you a chance to maybe give a little reassurance to our listeners because when the company started it was Deval who was in charge of it and since then Mikesh is kind of as Aintron has kind of taken it under his wing I think the concern that people might be having now is that with the company going public maybe Mikesh won't be the one making the decisions won't be the one calling the shots any longer and his patronage, his support for American Pinball may not be there any longer because if he's not the one running Aintron, if it's now run by a board of investors, they might look at American Pinball in a different light.
    198:41
    And is that something which concerns you and is that something which people who are pinball fans need to be concerned about in the future that maybe American Pinball, its future is a little less certain as a result of this IPO.
    199:00
    So I wanted to say, I would say no. You shouldn't be concerned because here's the other thing. McHash is yes. If you know McHash, he's always been 100% in on everything he does. He doesn't pull punches. He is a workhorse, very much like myself. In fact, sometimes I send him e-mails. He sends me e-mails 3 o'clock in the morning, 1 o'clock in the morning, 6 o'clock. I mean, there's no time. He may be over in India, and he's told me many times, David, if you need to talk to me, I don't care if you wake me up, call me. I'll be part of that.
    199:41
    His company going into the IPO doesn't mean that he's walking away. Okay, so now he's still going to be the major stockholder of that. he will have a board that he will deal with and the understand that the history of American pinball was let's just put it this way 75 percent of American pinball when it started was owned by Mukesh Vasani 25 percent was owned by Davul Vasani okay and at some point Mukesh came to me and said he needed to no longer be the silent partner. He wanted to help himself with this, and he bought out the 25% of Dowell. I'm just using these. These are not hard numbers, but I'm just giving you a for instance, okay? Yeah. And then he brought me in, and he's been happy with my work and has been happy with, as you can see, with some numbers that was generated from this IPO, that numbers have been increasingly going up. He understands there may be some stalls and that the next item will be coming out and you're only as good as your next game. And if you have a bad catalog, which I keep explaining to him, it kind of surprises us. It helps us. And listen, my other companies have a bad catalog too. I know that some of the other companies I deal with, they have stuff that they're going to deal with and bring out surprises too, because maybe their game isn't doing so good. But, you know, We all go through it. We're going through a very unique time here in the U.S. It's an election year. It's going to be kind of an interesting topsy-turvy here in the U.S., I think. And, you know, people are being careful what they pay. Listen, you go into, and now I'm going to sound like Gary Stern here. It's going to be hilarious. You go into a McDonald's and you walk away with $12 for a burger. What? I said go and do the voice you're going to walk in and you're not going to be cheap anymore it's like a three legged stool you know your distributor your home market you got this and we're the manufacturer ok that's my Gary Stern thank you I'm not going for an academy award on that at all but you know we are in that market right now that money's tight and people are, you know, you can't go into McDonald's and get a $5 meal. Well, allegedly you're going to be able to do that shortly again. The price of gas, right? The price of gas has gone up quite well. So families and people are hesitant in buying stuff. And listen, they want to buy, they're going to put their money where they want to put it, right? And my point is that very low is getting out into locations. I understand I have none in France and none in Germany yet, right, because I'm facing this import thing. Last year, I'm not going to go into great details, but I sold containers of Galactic into Germany.
    202:54
    Okay, that's plural. Also into France. Also into Austria. Also into Australia. so there are things that go out, right? Barry O's hasn't been able to get into those markets yet and to some of them who have seen it in that market are absolutely loving it, right? I mean, that German person over there who's doing the streaming on it loves the game, right? I know Phil from Pinball Heaven already got his Barry O's shipped into the UK, okay? So he's going to be for the Pinball UK show. We'll have one of every American pinball machine there. And my hat's off to all the guys at the Pinball UK show.
    203:44
    You know, they're great supporters. I'm happy to be there. I'm happy to share stories with them. You know, it'd be great to see, you know, I was in England. What was that, Martin? Was it 2010 with you?
    204:00
    2011? When was I over there? we we met up my memory of it now yeah i remember it had to be about 2010 2011 i want to say i was over there for two weeks i wasn't in the pinball industry at the time i was a collector you and i knew each other we we went to a friend's house we had a pinball and poker party ah yes okay i remember now yes yes yes and definitely was about that time and i remember we played pinball we played poker and it was around the time right after a game from Stern called World Poker Tour had come out and you guys were learning poker because the game designer was over at a friend's house and he's like, I've got to learn how to play poker so I can make this game. So that was kind of the craziness of that. So I'm kind of excited to see what the pinball scene is like in the UK since 2010. that tour when I was there I think I found one pinball machine in a bar and it was believe it or not it was a Wheel of Fortune oh that's still there it probably is I found a Wheel of Fortune in a bar or a pub that you guys call it over there and I played it and it was funny because the family I know was like they took me to this bar and they were like oh we didn't know there was a pinball here David, you must be excited. I'm like, I am. So I went over and played the game.
    205:33
    And it was Dennis' game. So it was kind of fun. But to come back to you on the IPO, to wrap this up for you, Martin, I have full faith in this company. Mukesh still is fully vested with us.
    205:51
    He's excited about getting this IPO for India on there. understand you have to learn India metrics, what locks are, what creeds are, and all that other stuff, so you understand the numbers and how it works. But I see, you know, with Mukesh and Normal and the rest of the team, we're very excited about the future of American pinball. We're excited about the next game.
    206:20
    Yes, there are certain times of years, especially when the summer months come, that we may have to lay a few people off. We have a small turndown on the economy. Certain things happen, but we know how much we're surviving to get to the next step, right? So we're excited. It looks very positive. And, you know, naysayers have been saying for the last four years that David Fix is dead and American Pinball is dead and it's falling apart and it's this, that, and the other thing. and somewhere on my tombstone would be my death has been overly exaggerated and I'm still alive.
    207:01
    But for the most part, we continue to do what we do. We make pinball machines. We're enjoying having it. We're making it for the people, the fans, who love it. Play the machine.
    207:15
    Don't go, and all I have to say is if you're a pinball fan, and I tell you, one of the great guys that I love is one of your mates over there in England. Who's the guy there in UK that does your streams, Martin? Is it Nat Gonzo, is it? Yeah, I think so. He did the, he was like, I played Galactic Tank Force for the first time and mind you, I was like, you know, okay, this will be fun. You know, that kind of thing. And then he goes, I really love it. And he called me here at the office And, you know, he was like, David, this is a great machine. I mean, you know, again, experience pinball for yourself for the first time. Go play the game. You know, it kind of reminds me of, and I hate to use this analogy, but, you know, some of the cult classic movies of all time that are some of the people's best movies that they love. go read the original reviews of it. And they tell you it's the worst movie ever. And yet it's the biggest cult classic and people love that movie and so forth. So all I have to say is it's pinball. Experience it yourself, enjoy it, and make your own decisions. You can read reviews, but at the end of the day, it's you who have to enjoy the game. And people who've played Galactic Tank Force have fallen in love with it. People who've played Hot Wheels people, Legends of Valhalla even you guys have talked about Legends of Valhalla being such a sleeper of a game you know, it's been very underrated, absolutely very underrated yeah, it gives us a bigger audience yeah, but you know just play it, enjoy it that's all I have to say about that okay, thank you very much I think you have David, thank you and many more so thank you very much for joining us in this special interview. David Fix, Executive Vice President of American Pinball. Well, there we are. Hopefully you found that interesting. There's an awful lot of things he addressed there. I don't think we need to recap them all. So we just say thank you for being open and candid with us during that interview and not making any topics sort of off the table, as it were, that we couldn't talk about. So, I mean, there's always the only thing that you can never not talk about is upcoming titles from a pinball company. But other than that, I think everything that we wanted to ask you got good answers. Right. So, thank you, David. Yeah. And it wraps it up for this episode I think it does, yeah We'll be back at the start of July With our next Pincast Looking back at all the excitement And the events in the world Throughout the equally exciting month of June Which we're currently in right now At least for the rest of the month So until then I'm sure we both wish you A fantastic rest of the month And we look forward to joining you again next month for the latest regular edition of our Pinball Industry News Pincast. So from me, Martin Eyre of Pinball News, and from me, Jonathan Gilson, our editor of Pinball Magazine, we look forward to seeing you next month. So until then, bye-bye. Bye.