Welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I'm your host Kaneda. I'm not feeling 100% which is why you're not getting the cadence of shows this week. But trust me, I'm on the road to recovery and I still want to get an episode up tonight because here's why. I'm heading to Chicago tomorrow for work. I'm going to be there Thursday and Friday. I know there's so much pinball in Chicago. There are people who listen to this show who live there. There are arcades there, but I'm going to be occupied with work, so I don't think I'm going to be able to steal some time and go to one of those great Logan arcades in Chicago. What are we going to talk about on this episode of Canada's Pinball Podcast? Well, look, I'm seeing on Naps Arcade something I've been saying for a while now, that American Pinball is in trouble. And now we're hearing a rumor that Mukesh, the owner of Ametron, which is basically like the company that's been bankrolling this failed pinball venture called American Pinball all these years, they're looking for someone to potentially buy American Pinball. So we're going to talk about that. Like, who actually would want to buy this company? And did we see a red flag this week in which the company is now selling the lunchbox and thermos to Galactic Tank Force, which was supposed to be an exclusive item that only those like $17,500 signature edition people were supposed to get that game. So we'll talk about that. We heard some news about Jersey Jack and how many games they have in development. I don't know about the rest of you, right? But with all of these pinball companies right now, what is in development even really mean? I mean, In every company out there, if you're manufacturing a pinball machine, I'm sure at any given period in time, you probably have two to three games in development. Remember when Robert Mueller was like, we got 18 games in development over at Deep Root? The only thing that really matters in pinball, in life, in any job you have, it's how you execute. and to this day the company that still executes the best and executes the most efficiently and actually makes new pinball machines every few months is no other than stern pinball everybody else is really chasing after stern and so we're going to talk a little bit about what's next over at stern pinball jaws hype is it going to remain as high as it's been over the last few weeks are we going to see people start to cool down on that title before they even get it i don't think So I think Jaws is going to do just fine. I can't wait for more people to get the game. I can't wait for more people to get their hands on the game. You know, I got an interesting email. A few people sent me this. If you look at the Translight artwork on Jaws Premium, and then you go on Amazon, there's like a Jaws sweatshirt that's like exactly the same kind of image, where it's a first-person perspective of someone on a boat being attacked by Jaws, machete and all. Did a cheap sweatshirt on Amazon. inspire the artistic direction of the Jaws Premium Translite. Now, for those of you out there, I must say, I still prefer the Pro and the Ellie Translite. The iconic Jaws movie poster image just looks much better and I think ties the game together. It just works really well on that Jaws pinball machine. I think everyone's starting to calm down a little bit. There's been a lot of debate around this game and nobody's really played the game. I think in the end, this is going to be a game that sells very well for Stern Pinball? Is it going to sell as well as Godzilla? You know, I don't think it's going to sell as well as Godzilla did. And simply because everybody, Godzilla was a lot cheaper. You know, Godzilla was $10,500 for the LE. And when you charge $13,000 for a game, you're not going to sell as many. You know, all the premiums are more expensive. Everything's gone up in price. So I think we're going to see great sales for Jaws. I think it's going to outsell James Bond. I think it's going to outsell Foo Fighters. It's easily going to outsell Venom, which, by the way, did you see this? Venom is now ranked as the number two greatest game of all time on the Pinside Top 100. It was as of like a day ago. So I'm not sure if everybody caught wind of that and now is going to march in there and make sure we knock that pinball machine all the way down until like the top 30, because there's no way Venom is the number two greatest pinball machine of all time. All right, so let's start off with American Pinball here right now. Who in their right mind would want to buy American Pinball? Think about it. They do make a quality game. Their relationship with Ametron is very beneficial to that company. Remember, Ametron, I believe Ametron supplies the chips that go into those games. But what would that partnership look like? If you bought American Pinball, would you also be acquiring the actual equipment and everything needed to make the games? Would you be able to just get the keys from David Fix and march in there and start your own pinball manufacturing? Would you be located on Ametron facilities or would you just be buying the company Now if you just buying the company American Pinball and its equipment but you have to move it somewhere else why would you ever wanna do that right They've spent all these years setting up the manufacturing, setting up the line. They've got employees over there who know how to make a pinball machine. So yeah, you wouldn't wanna just buy the IP, and the reason why you wouldn't wanna just buy the brand, American Pinball, the brand is not worth anything. So I think if it is for sale, I would have to assume you would be able to get the keys to the building, all the equipment, and all the employees. I don't know, right? In all the years I've been covering pinball, I haven't seen anybody buy an existing pinball company. Historically, we've seen pinball companies close their doors. We saw that with Bally Williams, with Gottlieb. We saw Sega and Data East merged into Stern Pinball, but we haven't seen anybody buy a pinball company other then. The only thing we witnessed was the Abbas family came in and took over Jersey Jack Pinball. Now, when the Abbas family acquired JJP, they basically took over the company, moved in their people, but they still allowed Jack to be there in New Jersey. They were still making games in the same factory. So I'm thinking that's what they might be looking for. And I just don't think the numbers add up right now. Because imagine if you're thinking about buying American Pinball And you asked to see how many games have they sold over the years. I can't imagine this company has been very profitable. I also can't imagine this company has games in its lineup and has like exclusive deals with IP partners that are going to be successful in pinball. Like it'd be one thing if this company had Sonic the Hedgehog or if they had Back to the Future or if they had something that people really wanted in development that was going to be a hit right around the corner. But then it begs the question, if they had a hit game right around the corner, then why would Mukesh want to be selling this company? What I heard a while ago was this. They had to sell all the tank forces or it was game over for American pinball. Now that I see this rumor today, it's starting to make me believe that all of what I've been hearing over the last few months has been true. That Mukesh gave David Fix a period of time in which he needed to sell all of those tank forces and he did not. That is why we are seeing stuff like the lunchboxes are for sale. Think about it. They probably ordered 200 lunchboxes and thermoses to make 200 signature editions of that game. Now, how many of those do you think they actually made? Probably less than 30. I bet only 20 signature editions of that game were sold and even made. Remember, they were $17,500. Who in their right mind would order that version of the game when it doesn't really have anything worth it over the regular LE tank version of the game? So I don't think anybody's going to buy this company as I've been predicting. I think we're going to see a few pinball companies close their doors in 2024. There's just too many companies out there. The games are really expensive. And it's like now or never. You either have a hit game right now or unless you have a billionaire backer, it's going to be really tough to keep the lights on. And even with all of the money that Ametron's been funneling into American Pinball, I just knew it was going to be a matter of time, just a matter of time before Mukesh got fed up with losing money. Because nobody rich, nobody successful wants to lose money on a venture like pinball. And didn't you always get the sense with American Pinball too, like Mukesh and Dabble and the original people who started this company, they're not really pinball fans. Like, you know what I'm saying? They don't really know this industry very well. They don't really know pinball very well. They always kept hiring people to figure it out. And remember, karma people, the first person that American Pinball hired to figure out its pinball operations was no other than John Papadiuk Jr. and they lost $350,000 or more building those broken Magic Girls. So I think it could be game over for American Pinball. Is it going to be game over for Haggis sometime in 2024? I'm in that thread. And remember, they said they were going to build all of the Fathoms by the end of the year, and they have not. And now the rumor is they might be asking for full payment on Centaur soon when they have not fulfilled all of the orders on Fathom. I used to beat this dead horse a lot. I'm not going to do it. I still feel like this is another company that has to be operating on fumes. And I think, again, this year is going to be a brutal year for these companies. You got to have your line moving. You got to have a game that people want. And you got to have like your next two to three titles, especially when you're a small boutique company. You can't afford to have any misses. You can't afford to have any duds. Like if Spooky Pinball came out with Ultraman today. Remember when they came out with Ultraman, it was still during that COVID period and we were buying up everything. But if they came out with a game like Ultraman today, it wouldn't sell Now Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre I think are going to do just fine I actually think Looney Tunes is going to end up outselling Texas Chainsaw Massacre And we see though You know, I'm not seeing, like, sellouts anymore across the board. So it's getting a lot more competitive. And every day I follow this hobby, and I see, like, another pinball company. I saw this on Naps Arcade, too. There might be another pinball company making more basic games coming out from Australia. And I just don't get it. I really don't get it. Do we need more pinball or do we just need fewer greater games that justify the prices of these pinball machines? There's a lot happening in 2024 in pinball. You can tell, you can feel it. There's going to be a lot of pressure on everybody to somehow figure this out, to somehow figure out a way to get people to buy these new games. There's just so many new games coming out in 2024. Let's real quickly go through every manufacturer and what games we think they have coming out. I'll try to remember every single manufacturer. So for Stern Pinball, we've got Jaws and then after Jaws, the rumored games are stuff like maybe there's another version of Metallica. Maybe it is Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe it will be Pokemon and John Wick and I think the other title we've heard is maybe it's Journey. We also know that Stern Pinball might be remaking DMD games. So we might get a remake of a game like Kiss or something else with a DMD screen. You would think it would be Ghostbusters, but I just don't get the sense they're going to rerun Ghostbusters or a game like Tron anytime soon. So Stern's going to have another three to four games that come out this year. We're going to get two more Cornerstones. And then I do think we're going to see like two more like remakes come out or vault editions come out or anniversary editions come out sometime in 2024. That's just Stern Pinball. So for Jersey Jack, we are absolutely going to see another game. Elton John production can't be flying off the shelves. And so we'll probably see Jersey Jack's next game sometime in late summer. I expect it to be something like The Matrix or Harry Potter. I think those are the two frontrunners. And we shall see that. We also learned that Jersey Jack is working on Steve Ritchie's next game. I mean, that's not a surprise. I mean, he's been done with Elton John. probably for a while. Eric Minier must be well into his next game after Godfather. And then we know we're going to get Mark Seiden's first title from Jersey Jack. I think that's going to be an exciting period in Jersey Jack history. A new designer from JJP. A new designer to the world of commercial pinball. Remember, Mark only made that Metroid game that was a homebrew game. We've never seen what he can do, and we've never been able to buy one of his games. And you know me. I like Fresh Blood in pinball because I think Fresh Blood tries to make a name for themselves. All of these like older curmudgeon-y designers, give me new blood. Give me new people that want to make a name for themselves. So we got that from Jersey Jack. We know Pulp Fiction should be coming out. We also got news on Pulp Fiction, which is not good news for everybody out there. Well, it's good news if you want to save your money for a while. So I'm hearing they're going to build 500 standard editions first, and then they're going to get to the LEs sometime in the summertime. This whole thing is a joke. CGC did it to us again. And so now we know they're going to need all of 2024 to make the Pulp Fictions. How can we even get excited about what's next from Chicago Gaming Company? I really do not understand why this company revealed so early. They do it every time. It's like they know there's going to be a year and a half delay between reveal and manufacturing. And I guess we just have to accept that. Spooky Pinball, we know what their two titles are this year. I think this is going to be the year of Looney Tunes. And will Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre be the entire year over at Spooky? I think it's going to be most of the year. And then I could see them revealing Ben Heck's Evil Dead game. I think it's Evil Dead. And I think we might see that sometime in the winter. We do know Spooky loves to reveal a game sometime in December. So they're sort of on that like one game every year. And I do think they're going to get to a point now with Spooky where we're going to see two new titles a year. And it's not going to be two new titles using the same design. I think we're going to get two separate designed games from Spooky. So I think we're going to see Ben Heck's Evil Dead sometime this year. We know we're going to get the Princess Bride from Multimorphic. That should be coming out soon. I expect Jerry to show that game for Texas Pinball Festival in March. So another P3 multimorphic platform game. Is it enough to entice you to go in on the platform? I saw someone trying to sell like Heist, Weird Al, and all the other modular games the person bought. You know, that person is easily well over $20,000 invested in that platform and they can't even get $13,000 for the package deal. So really something to think about. You know, if you buy a Multimorphic, you got to kind of want to keep it forever or you're just going to get hosed on the secondhand value. Who else we miss? An American Pinball. It looks like they about to either sell the company I don think we going to see another game from American Pinball Even though David Fix just went on a show and said hey we making games all the way up to 2026 Then why are there rumors that they're looking for somebody to buy the company? If we do see new games from them, the rumors are we're going to see a Barry O game, which I hear is a single level food truck game. Then we're going to get Whitewater 2 from Dennis Nordman. And then we're going to get Cuphead from Ryan McQuaid. We know that the third game is a licensed theme and it is based on a video game property. So again, none of that really excites anybody. The only really exciting thing in that mix seems to be Whitewater 2. But again, when? None of that feels like it's anytime soon. Who else we missing in pinball, right? It's a lot of companies right there. We've got the Pinball Brothers. We almost forgot about them. They're still making Alien. They're making Queen. and they are going to release with Pedretti Gaming two remakes of Bally Williams classic games. We're hearing stuff like Twilight Zone. Is it Fishtails? Is it Dracula? We shall see. I think we're going to see the first one sometime in March. So in just a couple months. Isn't it crazy? March is like six weeks away. But we're going to get two more Bally Williams remakes. Now the big controversy with these is going to be Pedretti Gaming does not make a game as good as Chicago Gaming Company. And so I think we're going to have a real debate on whether or not the quality will be to the standards of these iconic classic games. And if they make a version of those games that's not built as well as Bally Williams or as CGC, I don't know who's going to want those, you know, if that's the case. Could just make the originals go up in value. All right, who am I missing on this list? Barrels of Fun. I always forget about Barrels of Fun. We know that Labyrinth is not flying out the door with these guys. We also know that they're most likely going to get to another title maybe by the end of the year. I don't know if they're going to make all 1,100 versions of Labyrinth in one year. We shall see. Again, I just don't see games flying out the door with this company. So I think they're going to need possibly the whole year to fulfill the orders they do get. Then we got Dutch Pinball with the Alice in Wonderland coming out sometime this summer. And then we've got Back to the Future at the end of the year. You could ask them a million times to their face. Are you making Alice in Wonderland and Back to the Future and just watch Barry smile? All right, we got Haggis Pinball needs to make those Centaur games. As I said, they might be in jeopardy of closing their doors if they don't get a lot of orders for that game. We've got Home Pin and Spinal Tap. Nobody really cares about that game. I don't even know how those guys stay in business. Who else we got? Is Turner Pinball going to bring their Ninja Eclipse to market? Then we've got Pinball Adventures with Elements. And are we going to throw that Puny Factory off the roof of Todd Tuckey's building? I saw that our friend Donald won his credit card battle against Pinball Adventures. And he's been given a refund. And he was not told that he had to send the game back to Pinball Adventures. Now, if that's the case, Donald, what's stopping us from shipping that game to Todd Tuckey? And let's launch that mofo off the roof of that building. So as you can see right now, I'm looking at like 13, 14 pinball companies out there in the pinball space. That is just insanity. When pinball was at its most popular, we only had like four to five companies. Now we've got like 15 companies. And I think it's going to be a brutal battleground in 2024. I really do. And I also am a little bit worried. I'm worried that Stern has to sell so many games a week. Imagine if they make 600 games a week. That means you have to find 600 new buyers every single week willing to spend this much money. 600 buyers that can free up that much space. And yeah, if you have a hit theme, it's going to work. But what happens when you have your next Venom? What happens when it's Dungeons and Dragons, right? Is Pokemon going to be a theme that people really want? Will that cross over into the pinball buying demographic? We shall see, everybody. But it's going to be interesting. It's going to be really interesting. I think the next month is all going to be about Jaws, and hopefully some Pulp Fictions are going out the door, even if it's just the standard edition. It's also funny, like, why is the standard edition being made first? Why aren't they making the LE first? The play field is exactly the same. Maybe it's the topper. They can't get the parts made for the topper. I don't know what it is. Everybody, thank you so much. I wanted to just get this quick show up for everybody to have some Canadian Spinball Podcast to listen to in the middle of the week as I'm traveling. but we'll be back with a lot more shows and I'm going to get there. I'm only at like 60%. I need to get back to feeling 100% but everybody, thank you so much for the support. It means so much to me and I can't wait to do the next episode in just a few days. Later.