Welcome Welcome everybody to the Head to Head Pinball Podcast. This is episode 110 and my name's Martin and with me... Joe the Mayor. Joe, Joe, Joe. Joe Buster. How you doing? Good, how are you? Yeah, I'm very good. I was thinking of something clever like that but I wasn't quick enough with it. Fair enough. So, we've got some things to follow up that we talked about last week And obviously the first one is Elvira because information is now being released. It's been officially launched by Stern. I did get to insert a little bit of first impressions of what I saw last week. But now we get to hear what... I know. Do you like that? But now we get to hear your impressions. But also want to go through now what we've seen because what I did say in my little insert last week was, yeah, it looks all right, but I'm kind of keen to see the game in motion to see how the features work. And Stern released a feature video. So thank you, Stern. They're obviously listening to the show, so thanks for that. We just make everything happen. So before we do go into the individual sort of elements that we saw in that video, Joe, what are your initial impressions? it is it looks after like you said seeing the video and seeing how things work I think it's much better than I originally thought it was going to be I mean I always thought the code wise is going to be as good as code can be because Lyman is a god that would have been a good segue for later but the seeing how things actually work because obviously a 2D down non-high definition, it's hard to figure out where things are and what things do. I think with the space, you're talking about, yeah, it's a fan layout, like a lot of games nowadays, but they do a lot with it, and there's a lot of neat toys in there, and it's going to be interesting. I think that there's plenty of, like you mentioned, there's plenty of inserts on that play field. Right, so I haven't now really had a good look And I did say that a lot of the shots are at the back The art looks good It looks kind of busy And it looks kind of exciting I tell you what though If this machine had art like Star Wars Oh my god People would have just gone absolutely nuts About this space in the middle of the playfield That's got nothing there But the art sort of kind of confuses you and makes you feel like it's a lot more busy than it is. Yeah, and there's a lot of written text on the play field, which is always good and welcome instead of just being tons of just color-changing arrows like one of your favorite games is. So this looks, on the surface, seems more user-friendly because, you know, like back in the day, you can actually look at the play field and read it and go, oh, that's where that is, instead of having to look at the DMD and stuff like that. And also, with this being a premium model, it's going to have, everything's going to be RGB, so it's obviously, that also gives Lyman a lot of freedom with what he can do with the rules and how he can mix that up. which when for some reason I started thinking about this when we were talking about Spider-Man which is really surprising that now that they don't on all their pros all do RGB because if you think of it really limits their flexibility or their ability to react to potentially fixing a game if only arrows can only do certain things that if you have the ability to change the arrows and make multiple colors, then you can start inserting rules a lot easier, where you can make it clear to the player if something is changing. Whereas if you have games where it's very static colors in places, it's very difficult to make a change to a game that wasn't necessarily meant to be there in the first place. So it makes it very hard to pivot in a direction that maybe you've realized after the fact that, oh, well, this would have been better this way, if that makes sense. It does make sense. Probably the only thing is I think that with this even having colour-changing RGBs, the inserts have got text on them, so you're locked into whatever those things are. It's really the arrows that do change colour, which in recent Sterns, their framework is it will be the colour of whatever you're doing. So if you started a green mode, the lights will be green. You know what I mean? So I still think you are locked in, but I think you're right. I think because it's only premium up, you don't have to think about the way the inserts are, because it's just one, really. Yeah, and the GI is not stinted between... Like, you go play Horde on a Pro Walking Dead, it's not even remotely close to the same experience as if you go play it on an upper level, because of the lighting, which makes a huge difference in that mode. And same thing with other things. So it's like, at least this, it's going to be a uniform package across the board, outside of some aesthetic, you know, super premium. I didn't actually look to see what's actually on the Super LE and stuff like that. But, I mean, generally, all the lighting and everything is going to be the same across all models. So at least you don't feel like you're missing out on something like that. Yeah, true. So, as I did mention in my little insert, you were right about the premium LE, and the top of the range isn't a super LE, it's a signature LE, is what they're calling it. So, I didn't say any other colour. It's going to have your signature. But, let's talk about the price. It really is, it really is what's caught the attention of most people, as expected. people are saying, yeah, but the price. Yeah, a lot of people are flipping out about that, or they're concerned. I don't get that. Like, these games are still cheaper than all Jersey Jack games, and they're in line with the same pricing as Batman's, and they're still cheaper than Beatles. So it's like the people are reacting as if we've never seen this before and as if this model hasn't worked in the past. So it's like, I don't understand where people are coming from. So if that's the case, then why isn't everyone, you know, seizing Jersey Jack's headquarters with torches? Your games are too expensive. Like, you know. Well, no, it's okay. It's the value proposition, value for money. So if you think about, I'll use Pirates, because Pirates is probably, for me, the best example to illustrate this, where you could charge whatever you want, because there is just so much in the machine. I think what people are saying with this is, okay, it looks like a standard Stern, but with a higher price. I mean, do you really think that with all the toys and various things in here, that this would be makeable at the standard? Like this would be normal growth? I agree, and it makes a lot more sense now that you see the video footage because you see all these different toys and mechs doing things which you know is just going to increase the bill of materials. Yeah, and obviously these have the upgraded light system, the upgraded sound system. I mean, there's a lot going on in this game. The people who are saying that, it's like, well, show me another, show me a pro that has this much stuff on it. That's the same reason, you know, Batman was like that. Jurassic Park? Jurassic Park doesn't have that many toys on it compared to this. Well, no, it doesn't, but it does seem to have more features. This is what people are saying. They're saying, I get all these things do different things, but ultimately the play field looks a bit bare, is really what the essence of what I'm hearing. But I mean, if that's the case, then Medieval Madness is bare. Sure, I get that. But yet that's considered one of the best toys ever made. I don't know. It seems like people turn themselves into knots to complain about things, even though you could probably point out, oh, what about your other beloved games that seem apparent. Well, no, it's different. Okay, sure. I see what we're doing here. But it's always going to be from the lens of other people who've got, you know, obviously a different view of it. I have, I'm trying to have as much of an independent view of this machine as possible. I'm not going to buy one. I don't think it's appealing enough for me. I want to play it. But really, again, I think what this is is about exclusivity, right? There's only 50 signature editions being made. There's 400 limited edition and we don't know how many premiums they'll probably just go until demand dries up so i think what you are getting the closest i think really is to batman yep i think the batman is more is more or less exactly the same thing it really is the same sort of model and i was having this conversation with somebody during the week and because i was saying oh i just don't know whether i want to go in on elvira because i just don't know whether it's any good and I was trying to do the comparison with Batman. And really, the main difference I sort of said was what you're paying for is exclusivity and nostalgia. And I would argue that there is significantly, just for me, it's only my opinion, but significantly more nostalgia in Batman than there is in Elvira. There's still a lot of nostalgia in Elvira. It's not ones and zeros. But what I'm saying is that Batman is this just iconic, It's been around a lot longer than Elvira and has, I think, wider appeal than the Elvira thing. Oh, definitely. And there's also, like, you know, obviously Elvira is more niche than Batman, which is more, like, mainstream. But also you have the fact that the Elvira's, you know, itch has been scratched multiple times. So it's not, whereas that Batman was the first time it's ever been done, you know. At least with that one, the license for that was expensive, which is why Kapow did it. Pretty much it seems like if the license is expensive, it's a Kapow title. So the fact that this is not Kapow makes me think that the license was not as expensive. I have no idea. I do know that Cassandra Peterson does request a lot of money when she appears at certain events, like Comic-Con and stuff like that. So I don't think that she's necessarily ridiculously cheap, but I think she's going to be cheaper than Batman. Yeah, that's more or less what I'm saying. It's not your Harry Potter, it's not your Batman or your Beatles, you know, it's the next tier down, which I'm sure, you know, this is why this is a studio game, also because it was designed by someone who's not there, so you can't really make it a cornerstone if it's not by one of your in-house designers currently, I would think. plate. Well, let's go through what you get, right? So for the Signature Edition, of which there's 50, you get the Signature Edition production, limited to 50 machines. Yeah, we know that. A serialised number plate. Okay. A Signature Edition Elvira-themed cabinet art featuring hyperchromed embossed surfaces and hand-drawn art by Greg Ferrez. That sounds good. A signed collectible trading card with cover and mounting. Okay. Here's one I love. A signed special edition certificate of authenticity that includes a swatch of fabric from Elvira's iconic red velvet sofa. I guess that means that sofa is no longer in existence. They literally just chopped it into 50 pieces and stuck it in a Ziploc bag and put a certificate in it. I smell a Papa edition coming soon with a carpet. And the last thing is, Signature Edition Metallic Horror Red Dripping Blood Sparkle Finish Laser Cut High Gloss Powder Coated Side Armor Lockdown Bar and Legs. Which is what the first pictures that I'm going through show off. It looks good. It looks good. That really is all about exclusivity. You get 50. You get things that you don't get in other machines. don't necessarily change the gameplay. I don't see anything in this that really does change it from each of the machines. It's really just about levels of exclusivity and how important that's going to make you feel. So the reason why I say that is because I believe the majority of people that are like, I don't get this, it doesn't make sense to me, are people that don't necessarily understand how having one of 50 machines can make you as a person feel that you've got something special that nobody else has. And that, people will pay for. Yep. Those people don't do a lot of Kickstarter either, I don't think. Yeah. Because it's a similar feeling with that too. Yeah, I mean, how many Batman supers were there? Were there 50 of those as well? Didn't they increase that to 80? I think there was supposed to be like 20 and then they increased it to 80, something like that. That's still pretty rare. Yeah, I think the only thing really missing compared to that model is this one doesn't have a ridiculous topper. Yeah, this also doesn't have, based on what I'm seeing from the feature matrix, doesn't have custom call-outs either. Oh, yeah. I think that I talked to Alignment about that when it came to putting in, having to get all those done, and that was a nightmare. so they probably didn't want to have to deal with that because they have to get them to do what their name is and then they have to put you can just tell by how long it took for that to actually exist in the game that took a very very long time but it would be probably easier with this one because Elvira is apparently very available and the fact that she's making custom video for this is pretty amazing I don't know how like they mentioned I don't think that's been done before so that's pretty cool yeah so anyway and then so for the next the 400 limited editions really what you're getting is exclusivity 400 machines and a number plate a limited edition exclusive a virus themed full colour high definition decal cabinet hand drawn artwork by Greg Perez yep ok certificate authenticity signed by Gary Stone thanks Gary and then a limited edition metal, horror red, dripping blood, laser cut, high gloss, power coated side armor, lockdown bar, and legs. Which is, you know, just kind of what the, that level of premium is. Or actually, it's kind of like what the old premiums used to be when they came with armor. Yep. But I mean, it's still, you still get a lot. But then now, now you've actually got the exclusive features for the signature edition and the limited edition is Designer's Autograph Collectible featuring signatures by the game design team. Signature limited edition illuminated Elvira themed mirror back glasses with stunning and distinctive high definition hand drawn art by Greg Fraz. The upgraded high definition speaker system with three channel amplifier. Now that, for Batman, that was only available on the Super LA. So that's now part of the LA as well. So that's good. Anti-reflection glass shaker motor and signature limited edition exclusive inside art blades by Greg Fress. Like that, for an LE, that's pretty packed. I mean, for, and I'm looking at, just because I've been cycling through the pictures and everything, I love what they decided to do with where the signatures are going to be on the game. On the apron, the design of that area is pretty cool. That's all I'm saying, people, is if you're scratching your head, it's going to be a bit of a cliche statement to make, but if you're scratching your head going, oh, I don't get this, it's probably not for you. It's not for you. It's not for you, and it's not what Stern are targeting. We believe there will be another Cornerstone game announced by the end of the year. I mean, we've got three more months for something to come out, so I'm going to predict something like December it would come out. Because people have also been saying, well, you're scratching my head. I don't understand. Why did they, you know, announced this straight after Jurassic Park. Halloween. That's why. Halloween. Cassandra Peters at Expo. That's why they're doing it. And they might have actually been planning to release the details in a couple of weeks' time, but it got leaked, so out it goes. I don't know. Different markets. I mean, Cornerstone and this are not necessarily at the same market. And, you know, I mean, Keith is his own market. No one who loves Keith Games or loves Jurassic Park is not going to get one now because of this. Like, it's just, they're separate, and it's fine. It's okay. There can be multiple markets, and you don't have to buy this game. I know, it's weird, but you don't have to buy it. And there's going to be plenty of them out there. So, yeah, you're hitting it really is you don't actually have to feel that these releases need to gain your approval. Okay, there you go. That's what it is. Stern will determine whether this is a success or not based on the number of units they believe they're going to sell, not whether individuals approve or disapprove of this game. But that's hard for us to understand. And, you know, I've spoken to a lot of people this week, and the general sentiment really is head-scratching. Don't get it. Don't understand the pricing. Don't understand the model. Don't understand why there's not a pro. Don't understand a lot of things. And my subtle response is that, you know what, it's actually okay to not know. Yeah, and that's on those people. Like, this has happened before. Like, was everyone doing the same exact thing when Batman came out? And if you did, did you not figure it out then? And then now when it happens again, you say, go, I've never seen this before. Well, we have. Everyone has, just because you just decided to forget it, or, you know, everything is, you know, what's in front of me right now, and I'm going to, you know, I don't know. This is starting to get old where every release is, unless it's Keith's, It's just, oh, well, I can't believe this, and why did they do this, and this isn't okay, and I like this, and I don't like this. It's like, can we just enjoy a launch? Like, well, we can. I get humans, though, and I get that humans need to voice their confusion, I guess is probably what I'll say. People are trying to resolve these things, and I said this a few episodes ago. So people are trying to understand, resolve in their mind whether they want it, whether they don't want it, and if they don't want it, why they don't want it. Okay? And that's what you find. The thing that frustrated me the most was, you know, when it was released, there was just all this sort of really aggressive upfront comment from people saying, oh, here come all the stern chills saying that they love this and they're just sheep. It's like, hang on. They're all the same sheep. You're all the trolls. People are allowed to like things. People are allowed to dislike things. That's okay. We are all okay to agree to disagree. I'm just trying to say I understand both sides. I'm not in on it, so I'm remaining to be relatively indifferent. But what I'm trying to do is because I do a podcast and we talk about this, it's just really engage with both sides just to understand both sides. But it's not ones and zeros. it's somewhere in between and it varies depending on each day, what video comes out what information comes out and what picture you just happen to look at it's not winners and losers here we all win, it's pinball, this is all great for pinball much like Batman, people flipped out about Batman and then what happened the game turned into this huge game that almost everybody loves now and everyone talks about how Lyman made the game amazing, it's like Well, the same thing's going to happen with this one. You might not like it now, but when you get your hands on it, and then you hear about all the other people who've played it, and now they're talking about how great it is, and all the, oh, Lyman did this, Lyman did that, and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, well, maybe this game... Until we all play it, this is all just noise. And all I care about is that I want this near me. I want to be able to play it. That's all I care about. I don't care who bought it, where it is, I will go to play it, and hopefully it'll be somewhere for me to go play. The only reason I have any ill feelings towards Beatles is because nobody around here bought one, so I can't play it. So my ill things about the game have nothing to do with the game itself. It's just the fact that because of the price, no one around here bought it, so then I can't enjoy it. So that's the only issues I have with games, and if nobody decides to buy this one, then that'll suck too, and I won't be able to enjoy it, which, you know, I want to go somewhere and put my money in it so that I can discover and try and, you know, figure out what this game is all about. So it's, I mean, it's all very confusing to me sometimes. So my last thing I'll say, before going on to some of the features that we saw in the video, is that, and this is Australia, I know. For those guys that don't know, I'm in Australia, which is the other side of the world. We're upside down. The more you know. And there you go. Batman 66 do not go less than what they were bought for, ever. They don't. They have increased in value. Absolutely increased in value. So for people that say, oh, no, this is $1,000 more, yeah, it's probably going to sell for $1,000 more. So, you know, I don't know. But I think that's the argument again where people are saying, Yeah, but it was Batman 66, which is a better, more appealing, nostalgic theme than Elvira. Well, this is also pinball where there's risks associated with buying and selling pinball machines. That's just the world we're in. Pirate of the Chorus. I just lost a significant amount of money on my Munsters, and I don't begrudge that. I just go, well, you know what? That's pinball. Some of them, you know, will go up in value. Some of them will go down. There's a chance every time you buy a machine. Yep, and I mean, if there's any sure things in pinball, it seems to be that whatever lineman touches either holds its value or goes up in value. Yeah, because it's all about last ability. Yep, and he makes games that last and are deep and are enjoyable and are balanced and are everything that you want in pinball. So, you know, there's so much in Batman that even if you're really good at pinball, you're not going to see everything that game has to offer for a while. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be the same thing with this thing. So that's what we expect. So let's talk about some of the things that we saw in the video. And I will go almost like chronological from what we saw when they sort of had the text come up. The first one, and a lot of this stuff is all the stuff that Joe had told me. Joe, you are right about so many things. The first one was that the left ramp has effectively a trunk that lifts up and the balls go into that trunk and get locked. It looks cool. Which is very... I mean, I don't necessarily remember seeing that in another game. Can you remember a game like that where something lifts, like a trapdoor like that, and it goes into it? So I think that it looks new to me. I don't know. I probably got to look at this closer. The only thing I kind of feel like there's a mech that's almost somewhat similar is Dirty Harry on the right-hand side. but not the canons really. Yeah, kind of something lifts up to, or maybe it's the other way, the shoe line. I can't remember. Nothing really as defined as this. This is really clean. Something lifts up, balls go in, bang, down it goes. It's a brilliant design. In its simplicity, in how much room it takes up, it's brilliant. and it doesn't take up a lot of room. It seems to function exactly how you would want it to. And it still holds physical locks. It's like, perfect. And it's literally in the same space that the targets are to light it. Like, perfect. Makes sense. Yep. Yeah. The next one I talked about is effectively the main multiball section, which is a drop target just to the left of the center ramp. That's where you lock balls and start different multi-balls. We'll know more about that later There's also, they said, ramps for unhappy scoring mode So, you know, I would say this is You know, what's that one on Metallica when you do the ramps? What's the name of it? Lady Justice Yeah, it's that one One thing that's annoying about them is that Out of everything on the play field The lettering on those inserts is tilted out of alignment with the rest of it, that makes me unhappy. I mean, it doesn't really matter, but when I was looking at it, I'm like, why is that like that? It's so weird. All the other trees are in line, and then you have these two that say unhappy that is crooked. I think that's just to mess with you. I know. It's properly named. Yep. So take that off. Well done. and so then we talked about the central ramp so it does start haunt modes apparently and then that raises up a lot like the the center ramp in Iron Maiden that lifts up and then has a scoop underneath it and it also kind of almost acts like the center ramp the center ramp area on the Hobbit it can go left or right yes that is correct there's a motorized diverter behind there which is cool the top of the house has got a motorized spinning attic, which kind of looks cool. I don't know what those four different things do. I know one of them's got a picture of Elvira on it, but I think they're kind of like, I don't know. I'm speculating. I think they're probably perks. I mean, people have probably spelled this stuff out. I just... Maybe they're super-amused or something. Yep. It looks cool, right? So, again, bill of materials. We're talking about all the cool features that are going to cost money. That's one of them. It's a big... It's a prince. That's a big house. Like, if you look at the size of that thing, it goes almost completely up to the class. It's a big toy. Yep. The crypt on the right-hand side. This was a cool mech because it raises and lowers If it raises up it then is a scoop If it then lowers it becomes a deadhead bash toy which is kind of cool. But what I liked about it was just how smooth the movement of it felt. It looked quite premium. It kind of looked like it doesn't raise or lower but spins. Yeah, kind of like a rotisserie or like a Rolodex type thing. or like one of the Ferris wheels on one of those. Ferris wheels, correct. So some of them are filled, some of them have a head, some of them have a gate, and then one of them has a hole that actually has one that goes through the mech. So it's probably like a big, you know, Price's right wheel in there. I'll tell you what it is. I'll tell you what it is. It's the rotisserie from Batman 66 up on its side. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, actually, think about it that way. One has locks, and one has targets. Ah, look at you. Oh, so clever. It's that backwards thinking you get down there. It really is. And that's why your toilets go backwards. Thank you. So the thing to note about that as well is that when you do get in the Scoop, it's then got, and I think all the other subways might go to this as well, it's got the Crypt Kicker. Now, oh, we've got to bring it up. because the kids will crack up. Well, I know. But it's more so that there is a, like a shoot on the right-hand side that shoots the ball back into play and shoots the ball down onto the play field. So what do you think people have been talking about with that? Oh, I have no idea. And they've made it be that, oh, my God, this is going to crater the shit out of my play field. Yeah. Yep, pretty much. and, you know, I'm not going to buy this until Stern have officially announced that they've fixed the problems with playfields. So that's really what happened. And, you know, I look at that and I go, yeah, fair enough. Considering the current sentiment, I can understand why people are worried about that kind of thing. But, you know, we've had those kinds of things for ages. Games have thrown balls all over the place. There's a Mylar sheet that goes there and it's fine. I mean, there's tons of games that just throw the ball seemingly a very... Here's an example. You know? Yeah. James Simmons had exactly the same thing. A much higher height. Correct. Yeah, or even, like, the toy box, when it comes out of there and then falls straight down onto the play field. Yeah, true. There's tons of things that does things like that. I think the difference with this one is if you look at the speed in which it comes out of that cryptic, it is very fast. Yeah, that's true. But, I mean, it's cool that it actually helped That kicker helps you lake the other multiball. Yep. I think, because that's what those satirists did. Because it hits the targets on the other side. Yeah, that's true. And the last thing we saw was the gargoyles that obviously pop up, which they are kind of like, what was on Scared Stiff? The critters? Yeah, the frogs. I can't remember. They're called something else. Anyway, whatever. So there you go. I'm pretty sure they're a frog. I think they are frogs, but they... They had different names. Yeah. So... True. The other one was the boogie people. Like, the boogie time was the other one. Oh, yes. And then this one, I think it was the... It's like a frog frenzy. But these go way higher. Like, they said, like, yeah, look how much those stupid frogs go up a half an inch. Hold my beer. Let's make this thing go up a foot. Exactly. Do you notice in the video, I assume this is going to be fixed, but do you notice that when the middle ramp lifted, it lifted the gargoyles with it? Yeah. Because it was hitting the wings? Leapers. Leapers, there you go. There you go. They're frogs, so it's nice if they're leapers. Yeah, fancy words for frogs. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I did notice that. And, yeah, hopefully they'll fix that. But I kind of looked at that and went, hmm, who approved the video without fixing that? But, I mean, but it's, like, one of those things that stands out that you notice, but, like, it doesn't matter. Like, if it lifts it or not, it doesn't change anything. I mean, like, another thing is, like, if you look at where the eye gargoyle is on the Barshtoy, it's, like, not straight. It's over to the side. So, like, that front plate is, like, pushed in towards the crypt thing, which I noticed. It's almost, like, just one of those things, like, it's a prototype. I'm not going to sit here and hold them and be like, well, you need to get your prototype shit together. Like, how dare you make this video? Because it doesn't matter. It's not going to be like that. And if it is, it still doesn't matter. Well, Joe, you only get one opportunity to make a first impression. I know, and people are canceling their pre-orders because they saw that Garga lift up a quarter inch. Dude, you have no idea how hard... I'm going to have to put Milo on that little bro's wing. It's going to be terrible. It's going to break my shit. Was that like a surfer dude? Yeah. Like, bruh? Bruh. It's going to break my shit, bruh. I love it. Have we done enough on Elvira for this week? We're not going to see these in Australia for six months, so I'm just going to have to play screenshots for a while. I mean, all I know is that Ms. Penn on her podcast was a huge fan of the cleavage on the back glass. Well, so, this is what I haven't seen so far. It's now released. We've got mega boobs on the back glass. Let's just put it out there. Elvira is out in style. To repeat both of them. So, I haven't really seen too much of a backlash regarding it. I mean, people are sort of saying, oh, well, you know, big boobs, not really necessary. But I don't know whether anybody really has formed a massive objection to it. I mean, she's not holding fruit, so. Yeah. That's true. So, anyway. There you go. So, Elvira. Can't wait. Can't wait to try it. So another thing that we talked about last week that we've now got a lot more information on is the Ghostbusters code. and we got to see the Deadflip stream and something else, Joe. Yes, and since Dwight is such an awesome dude, he let us have a little hand in some unofficial change notes for us to discuss. Correct, which is interesting because I think, based on the Deadflip video which I watched, and it was such a good session, Dwight is hilarious to watch. He's just so enthusiastic that he jumps ahead, and then he's like, oh shit, then that's right. No, I've got to stay back on track. I've got to get my notes. Because he knows that he's just going to get excited and go all over the place. So he's got to bring himself back into the logical order. It was so good to watch. I just love how much into code he is. Yeah, he's very passionate about it and loves what he's doing, which you can tell with his games whether or not you agree or not can be another issue. but he cares a lot and he puts a lot into these games. I thought it was, there are a couple of things that were funny is that when people tried to mention things, you'd be like, hey, hey, hey, we'll get to that. Stay on my program here. Know your role. Get back there. I have this checklist and God damn it, it's going in order. They're going to go through it. It was hilarious. And then also, the other thing I noticed is that even though, because it's funny because when I was watching it, like I immediately, he's always hitting the slings and stuff like that. And I turned to Leslie, I was like, they should just code out the ball save, I mean the ball search, so you don't have to do that anymore. And then literally five minutes later, he mentioned that they did do that. But I noticed that he kept on doing it anyway. Out of habit. Out of habit, yeah. But all the special code they put in there to be able to jump around the game to point out the different features without having to sit there and go through it all, I thought it was just so clever and really smart. We'll jump ahead a little bit, but I just want to make this point so I don't forget it. One of the things that they did with the special sort of features that they did, you know, the game adjustments that they could make, one of them was how many ghosts you start with, one of them was what mode you start with, and one of them was starting with the final wizard mode, which we'll get to. But I just want to say this, Dwight, if you're listening, have that as an option. because that right there creates a minigame for Ghostbusters. There it is. So thinking about some of the other games, and I'll use TNA as an example that, you know, has sort of speed runs and reactor runs, and you can set it to just, you know, complete one reactor and the game's over, and then you look at the scores. And I think that's what you could do. And also, I would like to have for the We're Ready to Believe You, like a timed Grand Champion. Like, you know, the Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings, where you kill the ring and it shows you the quickest time to do it. Anyway. Yeah, they could have that for both of them. Because both of them can be time-based. How fast you did it. So the summary, I said last week that I think people will be very pleased with this code change. And what has been the reaction from people? I mean, everything I've seen has been positive. I know that when people talk about it, I've talked to multiple people before the coat came out. I'm like, what do you think it's going to be? And I'm like, it's going to be great. Based on what the Game of Thrones update was, I think it's going to be great. And I went in fully expecting it to be pretty much everything that I was hoping for, and that's exactly what they delivered, and then some. So I haven't noticed a lot of negativity, but then again, I don't look for it. In fact, I kind of avoid it. No, I know. It has been, I would say, pretty much universally positive. What he did say was that he wanted to do this code a long time ago, but Star Wars took longer than expected. Then he had to do Munsters and the Game of Thrones, so he just didn't have time in his schedule to do it. But now it's done, and it was him and Tanyo Klyce and obviously Mike Vinikour playtesting it. They were the top men, as he sort of said. And I think what they've done is they've answered, I think, just about all the gripes that people had, except for one, which was the flipper gap. And, of course, he joked and said, yeah, there's code coming that makes the flipper gap smaller. He coded it smaller in the game. Yeah. So there you go. So let's talk about some of the main features that are in the new code revision coming up. So, checking out this nice readme. So, like, one of the main things that they did was they changed the way that ghosts and that middle area of the playfield work. So, like, this is affecting your super looper, your looping supers. Super loopers, nice. This is looping supers, PKE frenzy, and mass hysteria. And pretty much what they did is they made it so that, like, these modes can't be stacked with anything. so like super loopers I said it again I'm reading it too I think it's I think it's super loopers so yeah looping supers you can't stack it with anything and and all the ghosts that you collect will stop until you play the looping supers so like it'll light it and it'll sit there until you go get it yeah if you're in a mode you will have to finish that mode before looping supers will then be available. Yep. And that's, like, really important. It's great. I used to always get looping supers in multiball, and it's like, oh, damn it, there's too much going on for me to just be able to nail that ramp. So, well done. Yeah, I think that, like, this is a perfect example of what I think, like, you know, Wonka could use, where it, like, give these special moments their due and their time and their focus. So that, like, when you get these things, like, the game stops and you get to enjoy these. And then after that, you get to move on. And then, but, like, these cool features and these cool moments within the game, you get to fully enjoy what they're meant to cause. So I think it's really cool that they decided to do this. The only thing I noticed is that you still can't see how much a super is worth when you're looping it. Yeah. Like, super jack, super jack. And you're like, how much is this worth? I have no idea. I'll find out at the end. Like, one of the ones I played, I think it was Chris's collection. Like, I hit 27 supers, and I think it was worth, like, $150 million or something. Like, everything was, like, $2 or $3 million. I was like, that sucked. In the entire time, I had no idea what any of it was worth. So that, unfortunately, is not changing. But, I mean, I guess you don't really need to. So by this being its own thing, it's kind of you do it, and then you'll find out at the end how much it was worth. And supers was completely changed with how the supers work. So that also helps with that problem anyway. But for PKE Frenzy, the only thing it stacks with now is Mass Hysteria, which is cool. And I think you mentioned that the scoring in Frenzy was taken down a little. Because, I mean, I don't know if it's with your experience, but, like, the scores that can happen in Frenzy is pretty ridiculous. Sure, that's right. But isn't it that in PKA Frenzy, you've got to get that right ramp, which is a really difficult shot? True, but it doesn't need to be worth, like, a billion points, which I've hit once for a billion. Yeah, sure enough. Like, it can't be, it's not hard enough to justify, like, invalidating the rest of the game for that one couple things. But, yeah, so then the, and then pretty much that's the only thing that Mass Hysteria can stack with now. So when that happens, just like the other one, you're going to be able to sit there and enjoy that. Also, awesome thing about it is that when Hysteria ends, there's a ball save. There's a ball save now, isn't there, on Mass Hysteria? I'm sure of it. I don't think so, because when the, I've had it where the flippers go back to normal, I'm crossed, I lose the ball, and that's it. And he did mention that it was added. Okay. So I crossed him. And from my own experience, I remember being really angry that it auto-swaps right at the end, and then you lose your ball because you're not ready for it. And then I also added a lot of light effects. It makes it very clear when you switch flippers back and forth via the captive ball. And all the inserts change colors, and the lighting changes so that you know. And also, now you get paid for switching back and forth. Every time that you hit a couple jackpots, switch it, the jackpot value goes up $5 million. It's more valuable now. A maximum of $25 million, I think you said. Yeah, I think along those lines. well mode chaining probably the the next one whereas before if you finish the mode you'd go straight into the next mode um it's now i think the default is that it doesn't chain so that just means you've just got it the the modes are lit it just means you've now got to shoot it into whichever mode that you want so you you can change trees effectively or yeah well you can actually choose the tree that you want to keep going, as opposed to, let's say you're trying to get up to stay puffed on the right, and you do your final shot on the left ramp, it then starts the ramp mode. Yeah, and from personal experience, I've had a lot of aggravation from that exact thing, specifically on the premium, because I think there's not a single redeeming factor to the premium. Everything they added made the game worse. But one of them is the fact that when you, so like, in my case, so I was going for the left ramp. So, blah, blah, blah, what's going through there? Then you get to I had to relight my modes so you have to hit Slimer. So, I don't know if this happens all the time or just this specific time. So, I'm pounding Slimer. He goes away and I'm sitting there going, alright, my modes aren't lit. What am I supposed to do now? Oh, look in the goggles. Oh, look, it's Slimer. I guess I have to hit the right orbit. So, I hit the right orbit, lights my modes, immediately starts the right orbit mode. When I was on the very last mode of the left tree, I'm like, what the... That's one of those things that thankfully is gone, because it was like, oh, thanks, Slimer. That's so awesome. Now I can't actually continue my thing, because I had to shoot... For some reason, you're in the right orbit just because of these goggles. Yeah, well, that also works well now with looping supers and PK Fenty being independent, because you need to have that moment in between modes to be able to activate those. Yeah, and a moment to think and what should I do here? Should I switch trees or whatever? And the fact that now within modes, they have the fact that after you hit a shot, you can then hit the ghost target to spot you a shot, which is only available after you've hit a shot. So you can say, if you're in a mode that goes like, what is it, you got one where it swaps sides, you can hit the left ramp, and then instead of hitting something on the right side, you can hit the ghost target, it'll switch back to the left, and then you can hit the left again. It's available after every other. So you have to hit a shot, then you can hit the ghost, and then you can hit another shot, and then the ghost is lit again. Which, you know, obviously it's not advisable to do that, it's not safe, but for more casual players, they're going to probably get through a lot more modes now because of that. Well, and again, I'll go back to that PKE shot, because there is one mode, I think it's one of the right modes, where, you know, the four shots are lit and one of them is that right ramp, which people do find difficult. Well, now you've got the option of hitting the ghost target, which, yes, it's more dangerous, but it's also dangerous missing that right ramp shot as well. Yeah, the last mode in the left tree does that, where you have to hit all the shots and then you have to go to the gozer, which is equally as difficult. Well, there you go. So, yeah, that's good. Yeah, and then... So let's talk about the gear, right? The gear feature. So this is to do with multipliers. And I'm not really... I don't love multiply rules, so I don't really focus on them too much. I know that you could get the multipliers lit from Tobin, whatever it is. The Spirit Guide. Spirit Guide thing, whatever it is. The book of stuff. Yeah, that's right. Whereas now it's the gear feature, which is the three targets on the left-hand side. That's what's lighting your multipliers now, isn't it? Yeah, so what it used to be is you could loop the left ramp a ton, and it was kind of like the double feature type thing in Creature. So you could hit the ramp tons, build the gear value, build the gear value, and then when you decided to cash it out, you'd hit one of those three targets, collect that value, and then you could rebuild it and stuff like that. Similar to double feature on Creature or other games that have similar stuff. but yeah so now like the lighting your multipliers now when you do that same combo you can hit that the gear or you can hit the captive ball and it will advance your multiplier if you've gotten past the first set of three balls over there after you've lit your your storage facility which actually is going to work now because before I never thought that that did anything because I'd hit it a ton and nothing would happen Right, well just on that we're probably going to get to those three captive balls on the left, but the strategy for me was always start the game, get your skill shot and then just wail on that the three captive balls whilst you've got ball save to light your three storage facility locks I think it only does one now Yes, so before it was, all you hit before in the previous code, it's the same as it is in this one where you have to hit it once to light it, and then once more to light all your locks. Yeah, which, that's still the same. I'm still kind of fuzzy on, in the current code, I don't know how it happens, and I'm not even sure it does. I don't even, is it possible to get another storage facility? I've never seen it, and I've never seen anything that gives me an idea of how that's possible. I always thought that the rule was, once you get all the three bowls around, it actually lights all your storage facility locks. All three of them. I believe it's only two hits. In the current code I know you only hit it twice. Yeah, okay. But as far as after you've played your storage facility I've never seen that insert lid again. No, after you've done it once I don't think it does. So I don't know if it actually is possible to get a second one or maybe there's something you have to do or maybe you have to go through so many cycles of those three balls to somehow get back to it. I've never seen it done, so I don't even know if it's a thing or not. I don't know if it's, like, one of those things, like, in Iron Maiden, where you get this Voldemort once and then you're never going to get it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Next, I mean, they've revamped Safe Half Marshmallow to have different stages. And then probably the big one that we saw them go through quite a lot was, and we talked about it before, was, so we came, we saw, they revamped that. effectively what they're saying is it's actually easy to get there now. So. Yeah. Cause all the modes are easier in general and they've been, they've, they've added an extra ball in there for completing scenes that wasn't there before. So now you get more extra balls. They've also added, which is huge thing is that, which I don't think is in another game on purpose like this. Like you can get multiple ball saves on, you know, three switch rules like Congo or, you know, uh, but this one actually has two ball saves to try and help with entering the playfield problem. Because it's like, well, you can fly around and you never touch the ball, or go through the pop-up and you never touch the ball. So this is, like, I think the first time, certainly the first turn, where, like, you literally have two ball saves by default. And it can actually go up to five. Yeah, that's right. And they've also added a ball save to the left scoop as well. Oh, they did. That's awesome. Yeah, because out of all of them, that scoop is the weirdest. Like, the right one tends to, like, say, dead bounce to the right. That scoop I've seen almost go middle. I've seen it dribble out and hit the top of the sling and go left out lane. It's random. It's all over the place. It's random. The way I've seen it in tournaments in particular, at the start of the night, it will safely go to the right flipper, but by the end of the night, it's just starting to lose a bit of its power and starts going down the middle. Yeah, it's all over the place. I don't know, they added more variable speech to... Who got the dog? Yes, I read it. Which is cool. Thank you. I'm so sick of that. I know. Because for me, it's usually the first mode I get, so I've heard that so many times. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. But yeah, they actually added new... I heard a few new... I don't know if it's necessary because I haven't gotten to those places, but I heard a few new call-outs that I hadn't heard before. Yeah, he said there's a lot of speech. It's not new speech. It was already recorded, but it's now just been implemented into the game, which is cool. Yeah, and then the we are ready to believe you mode looks really cool. Oh, yes. Well, it's interesting because I think, you know, Dwight said a number of times, I think this could be one of the best wizard modes. He did say, you know, top 50, because I think he was just trying to be a bit humble about it. but it is freaking awesome. I love it. Effectively, you've got to try and capture 100 ghosts within 60 seconds, and by hitting the captive ball, you add time to the timer, the countdown, and you go through different levels, and I think every time you get to a level, it adds a ball. So you start at junior, then tech, apprentice, ghostbuster, demigod, lesser deity, and then once you've got the 100, you then go into a final bigger wizard node. Maybe a god? Maybe a god? And I don't want to say much more because even though we saw it in the video, some people might not want it to be a spoiler. So it's just a rule. I don't know whether I want to say more. It is freaking awesome. They never got there, so even a goat isn't a god. No, he's not. He's close. Very close. Yeah. The next added sort of change to it was the river of slime rules, which effectively, once you do, I think you get your right orbit, it lights the right scoop, and then it sort of splashes slime around. Yeah, and then now you can collect it now. There's one of those things, like, we were watching, and I was like, what? There's a river of slime? I'm like, yeah, there's always been a river of slime. She's like, what? I know, but nobody really cared about it. Yeah, because, I mean, how often are you hitting the right orbit when it's not lit? So it's like, and then also getting in the scoop. So at least now it seems like you can build it, and then you can, which, you know, it seems like that actually could almost be a strategy of if you can, like, I can picture, like, you know, Kaylee George or something doing something like, he can hit the right orbit, catch, transfer, right orbit, catch, transfer, and then you build up this huge value, and then you, boom, you light them all up, and then you do it again and relight them. Because he was one of the first ones who did the gear strategy of literally looping the left ramp a ton and then getting gears and then doing it and doing it because it was a safe, returnable strategy. So he's the one who comes up with all that kind of stuff. The other thing I'm going to add is the librarian mini-mode. This was cool. One of the best things about it is it's going to make the Scolari brothers be less confident. which is integrated. The important thing that you'll need to know is that you will only get the mini so it's the third Captable mini mode and you'll only get it if you've played one of the librarian modes. Correct. Which is cool to make you, you know, because it's like you can get in a super hyper-focus, I'm going the left ramp until I beat all those and then I'm going to go the right ramp or the right orbit until I beat all those. For this one I'm going to be like, alright, I'm going to get a couple modes and I'm going to make sure I go over and play one of the librarians so then when I'm missing and getting the captive ball, I'm going to get some rewards and get paid for it. So it's a really clever idea to do that. So I can't remember what the book captive ball used to do before, but obviously the first time you do it, it would like the Scolari Brothers, which everybody hates. And now what it does, when you get the Scolari Brothers down, it still likes the super up the ramp, except before it used to be one shot three times. Now it's three. Now it's three times one. Boom, boom. But yeah, so without the librarian, it now cycles through some sort of little mini features. The first one is Scolari Brothers. Then there's the pterodog hurry up. The librarian goes in there if you've already completed a librarian mode. Then it does pterodog hurry up, and then it does a goza hurry up, and then goes back to Scolari Brothers. so unless you're wailing on that captive ball, you're not going to see Scolari anywhere near as much as you used to. Hallelujah. Yeah. And also that librarian additional sort of mini mode is kind of cool It very simple in its execution but it sounds like fun And effectively what it is is you just bashing on that book captive ball and then once you've got it up to a value that you think, yep, that's enough, stick it back into the librarian's scoop, and that's how you end the mode. That's cool. Yeah, super simple, but satisfying. Yep. Kinetic satisfaction. I don't know what this is saying, but here's another feature as well, but they know that I just want to make note. So right now, if you have a shitty first ball and you're thinking, I want to go back to the start, if you hold in the start button, it will start a new game. Now they've got a new one, whereas if you hold the left flipper in and the start button, it will now reset the game to attract mode. Just stop it. Any place that involves children, you'll love that. Yep. So apparently Jurassic Park's got that as well. So it's just going to be the new norm now to have that feature. Yeah, that'll be like the tilt adjustment that you can change the, I can't think, the debounce seconds, milliseconds. Those will get pushed all of them. Also, I'm also seeing that you're going to be able to actually change the power of each flipper independently. Yeah, okay. and the auto plunger and all that other stuff. So that's cool. There's more interactive and options to do that kind of stuff. If you're having issues, you can also, you can... Oh, that's it for Devilman only. So to know. Well, maybe the enabled ball search will actually make it into the release. I don't think so. No, I don't think it will. And they also saying that they've revamped the free ball captive ball area. There's a lot that takes you. I don't get it. I mean, this is pretty much what we talked about, how the first one is going to be your storage facility, and then it goes into your multipliers, and then after that you can light your super jackpot over there. So pretty much there's four different things that that can be used for. It can be used to light your super jackpot. It can be used to light your play-filled multipliers. It can be used to light add-a-balls during multiball. You have to transfer all three. All of these you have to transfer three balls. And then, obviously, lighting for storage facilities. Although I still don't see any. I'd be curious to know if it is actually possible to do another storage facility. My guess is you'd have to cycle through all four of these. Yeah, probably all the way and back again. That's a lot of captive balls. Who is going to live that long? No. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah. Or you can actually... Another thing is that you can stack Super Snow up to three on the ramp at a time. So that's good. One of the other fixes, I don't know whether really everybody knows, but us pinball people with exploits in mind know the skill shot exploit, which is where if you plunge the ball, you know, let's say three quarters of the way up the shooter lane and then bring it back and then do a quick plunge, it will give you a skill shot. Apparently they fixed that. Thank God. And the other one that they've changed as well is that the video mode will not be available from a skill shot. Hallelujah. Yeah, replaced with tangos. I know. I will say I'm sorry, Dr. Curly Tech, that they've taken that away from you because this is how he usually wins most tournaments. When you've got such a brutal Ghostbusters and people's scores are in the 50 mils and you can just, in ball save, get it into that skill shot and get 70 mil, sometimes you can win the game. It's 60, I think is what it maxed out. Now it's maxing out at 80. So they've rebalanced it even more. And then also, even underneath these things, What is this thing right here? Shooting Slimer in the Ecto-Goggles to light modes will no longer start a scene on that shot. Oh! It will light all available ladders, and you can choose which one to pursue. Thank you! Thank you very much for that. The other thing they noted as well is that the Slimer toy isn't as intrusive as it used to be. It comes out, you do something, it then moves away. So thank you again for that. And if you don't need it anymore, it goes away. and you never have to hit the ghost target more than once. So like starting modes is one ghost, three slimers, move on with your life. Yep, correct. Which is huge. So that's that. What else? Yep, what have we got? No video mode, ready to believe you. Yep, are your guard, looping supers. This is my list, making sure they've checked it off. Ghost target spots, shots, yeah. Another great one. Slime, book mode, slumbering. They removed Skullary Brothers from the Pickle Pops. So you're not going to just get randomly effed from the Bomb Harpers. Like, oh, great, yay. The targets that you hit don't go down. You'll be there forever. Yeah. So, anyway. So that was Ghost Houses. I will say there was one other note that I kind of was watching the stream and I went, huh, did he actually just say that? So somebody had written on chat on the DeadFit stream, is there going to be a code revamp for Munsters? And Dwight said, no, there's no code planned at this time. So... It is what it is. It really is what it is. It sits in its own box and it's a unique experience. It can stay that way. Yeah, for sure. I think that's the game for all the people who don't need the deep experience Yep, exactly Sorry But speaking of streaming There was another stream This was Bowen Kerins was doing a stream And, you know, we could probably link the stream It was a lot of fun It was actually, he was doing Ali from Stern and right at the end, he made a comment, which was, I'm looking forward to Stern remaking this game in the next couple of years. Now, that could be wishful thinking, or is it that he knows that Stern are going to release Ali? And here's a couple of things about Ali from Stern Electronics back in the day. I can't remember what year it came out, but let's just say it was early 80s. But the art on the Stern Ali is atrocious. I've got to tell you, have a look at it, people. It is some of the worst art on the play field, is really what I'm focusing on. He's an avatar. That you will ever see. He's blue. I know. It's terrible. But take that aside. And I don't think Ali is considered one of the best Stern games. Certainly when Ron and Bruce from the Sam Tilt Podcast talk about Stern games, they don't really talk about Ali. It could be rules. But, and I haven't played it for a very, very long time, but I like the layout. I think it's actually a good layout to use if you're either going to, well, I wouldn't say, please don't remake an Ali because the art is terrible, unless you're going to redo the art. But I think it's a good canvas to re-theme it or something else. Rocky. Or Creed, I guess would be the... Which is the one, is it Rocky that's got the two sets of flippers down the bottom? Yes. Oh, it's terrible. It's a Gottlieb game. Oh, it's terrible. It's just not fun. I played that in Papa and just got confused. Yeah, I guess this is another, I mean, I don't know if it's true or not, if Bone's just messing around or trolling or whatever. But, I mean, again, much like I wouldn't have thought Sea Witch was the playfield you'd pick to throw out there, I wouldn't have thought that Ellie would be the one you'd pick either. Like, there's... I think there's other better layouts out there. Ellie's fun. But I wouldn't... I don't think I'd put it in the top five playfields. Yeah. It's alright. I'd be curious what they could modernize it with. It doesn't have as much potential as Sea Witch did, I don't think. I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? Let's talk about Suncoast Pinball. Who day? They're the company that has that really cool-looking game by Dirty Darny, right? Cool-looking game? Correct. Yes. So they're the ones that made Cosmic Carnival, which I played, you know, it was effectively a whitewood with art. This is how I'm going to describe it at TPF. This one has got the Donny Gillies (Dirty Donny) art, which looks spectacular. It kind of shot okay. It kind of just got okay. But it's been released. People have got them. And the biggest criticism that people are saying is that the rules are really quite ordinary. We've sort of been hearing and seeing information now that's saying that Suncoast may have filed for bankruptcy. Yeah. What do you know about this? I don't know. I mean, I've read that they're being sued by their landlord and, like, as the company's in two separate entities, but they're still connected. There's the arcade side and there's the pinball side. So, I mean, I don't know. Lawsuits don't tend to end well for pinball companies. No, they don't. So my understanding is that they were, so Suncoast Arcades were, you know, they would make those sort of main machines, like the big machines, like sometimes four-player, two-player machines, big arcades with sort of multiple games in it. That's what they had been doing for a while. And then they went, yeah, let's make a pinball machine and perhaps destroy their business. Yeah, I mean, pinball is very good at destroying a business. I mean, in hearing you say that, like, oh, you know, the rules weren't left a lot to be desired. I mean, of the boutique companies, which of them have ever put out, like, a rule set that you went, wow, that's really good. I mean, I'd say, obviously, Jersey Jack's not petite, but, I mean, the only thing that pops to my head is, yeah, Spooky, and I think of Alice Cooper. Yeah, Alice Cooper. All of their games that I go, wow, this is, like, this has exceptional rules. Yeah. So Spooky is, I would say, an anomaly only because I think they came in at a good time. When America's Most Haunted came out, it didn't necessarily have the most complicated or difficult rule set, but it was era-appropriate. Now, we expect that companies have better rule sets. So was that enough on Suncoast? Yeah, I never played it, so I don't really know anything about the game. So there you go. So speaking of something that's completely unrelated, I've really got no segue here, but it was literally seconds after we finished recording our last episode, you said to me in a message, Oh, damn. Wizard of Oz. Ruby Red, 75th at Disney's, is going to be back on the line. Yep. Because they won't make Pirates, but God damn it, we'll make a kajillion Wizard of Oz's. Yeah. You know, so, and the only other thing that we know, so apparently they might be, you know, ready to go this week. And, you know, I said, I've been to the Jersey Jack factory, so I know that they've got a main line and then they've got their small run line where they'll make about four to ten machines a day or maybe a week. I can't remember what it is, but it's obviously, it's about tenth the size of their main line. So they can do these things at the same time. So they are still doing Wonka on the main line and then they can do the ruby red on the small line. And the only thing we know is it will actually have the winged monkey. So it won't be in the new cabinet design and it won't be like the yellow but gray edition. Yeah, because I guess this just means that the rubies didn't sell out so they still have some. So now they've got more orders and now they're going to make more. I assume. Because those were specifically numbered. So you can't just be like, oh, we're going to make it. There was originally, what, 1,500 of those? Was that the number? I can't remember. I think it was. Well, I mean, for Ruby and Emerald, I think we're like 1,500 or something like that. Yeah, could have been. So, like, it means that, you know, there seems that The Wizard of Oz is the only game within their catalog that there seems to be this backlog of demand to justify making more of. And it's like, what needs to happen for them to make more pirates? I know it's just selfish of me and other, you know, pirates fans that just, there's so many more Wizard of Oz's out there than pirates. So it's like, I just wish that they're, I mean, obviously, there's obviously something behind the scenes that's preventing them from wanting to do that. Yeah, I would say, and that's what we don't know. I'm sort of, I would say, healthily sceptical about pirates, thinking that it's not being produced for some reason. Maybe it's not economically viable for them. or the amount of... I'm wildly speculating, so don't kill me, guys, and say that I'm now biased, which you did last time. There could be some mechanical reliability there that's just causing so much rework, and they're just going, you know what, let's just move this on because it's killing us, and we can't move forward with the likes of Wonka if we're constantly having to focus on the Southern Machine. Anyway, I'm just wildly speculating, but that's kind of an impression I get. yeah maybe I mean I haven't heard much about the game that got shipped having a ton of issues I mean the only issues I've seen which there's literally there's two in the pub in like the wild near in New Robert Englunds that I know of and one's really far away and then the other one's somewhat close like a little over an hour and I went there specifically to play it and it shot pretty well the issue is weak flippers of course, which was compounded worse because this was in a bowling alley, but the chest, I don't know what you call those, the fork ramp inside the chest was stuck up. So you combine that with a weak right flipper, and it's like, all right, well, you're never getting up into that chest, and you can't even loop around to the upper flipper. Can't loop around. Yeah, so it was like, ah, man, that sucked. But it was still fun to play. But that's not a complicated mech. It's been used on Junkyard and tons of other games before, so it's like, I don't know. I hope that's not it. I hope it's just some weird licensing thing that maybe will get resolved in the future. I'd love to see it again, because it really is a phenomenal game. And as we sort of mentioned last week, it's number five on the Pinsire Top 100. It's the best loved. In my opinion, it's the best shooting widebody that's ever been made. I would tend to agree with you on that Does not shoot like a white body No, it doesn't A huge compliment for a white body It's really good So, Dutch Pinball Dutch Pinball Do you desperately want an update on Dutch Pinball? Oh, do I? Oh my god I woke up this morning and I just went I don't want to talk about Dutch Pinball I really don't. But I got wind of this because I know somebody that's in on this. Effectively, what they're talking about is a recovery plan, how this company can actually survive as a business. And really, all they can do is they can sell new machines to make up enough money to fulfill the orders of people that have already paid. Fuck me. That's the sad stuff It sucks but it makes sense It makes sense So it's like Yeah I can see why this is needed It sucks that it's needed But you're in a really weird situation If you're one of the people who prepaid Because it very much seems Like if you pay this extra money You're going to get your game 100% and it's probably going to be soon Or you can roll the dice And hopefully get it later Well, and also the difference is, so if you, basically they're giving early adopters the opportunity to buy another one. They can buy a new made-to-sell machine for a lot more than they paid for their original game. Now, what this means is, you, you, this is what it means. Oh, wow. What it means is you can now fork over $12,500 and potentially get one of the new machines. And if there's enough of these that are sold, you will then at a later stage get your other machine that you prepaid years ago. And then you've got two machines and you can decide what to do. Really? I thought that it was that more or less you pay the difference. So if you prepaid $6,000, you pay the other $6,500 and you get the game now. I thought that that's what this was. That they were asking you to pay the difference so that you were paying the current price of the game. No, it says, when the time comes for your actual already paid for game to be made, you'll be informed that this game is ready to ship, at which point you have the option of having this game shipped to you at no extra cost, apart from shipping, or receiving a full refund on the game of the amount you already paid as an early achiever. This game, being an original early adopter game, will also come with chrome trim and rug, but not with the special extras that are higher retail price games. Ah, so you get refunded it back. Correct. In theory. So you can say, I want my money back, but I've now paid the more expensive one, or you can get it shipped at the original price, and you've got two machines, and you can do what you want with it. So really what it is, is risk. Because basically what they're saying is, that original game that you prepaid for is at risk. It was way underpriced. And it was probably way underpriced at the time. Well, it was way underpriced, but because they've now got to, all the money's gone, they probably had to pay IRA all the money to release everything. So they've got no money. The only way forward is for them to sell these new machines at a higher price with a higher margin to then build up cash reserves to be able to make good on the original games. That's the only way they can do it. I mean, what would you do if you were in this situation? Because, I mean, that's a toughie. That's like, it's like, do I just come to terms with I burnt six grand? Or do you double down, at least get a game, and hope that you get refunded? or you get another game, which then, if true, I mean, if you do get another game down the road for that $6,000, presumably then these games are going to be, if these are what these are selling for, that's presumably the worth of these games, so then you could sell that extra game to get your money back plus. So it's like you're gambling. You know what I'm saying? It's risk. It's all about gamble. So, if it was me, I would have written off the amount of money already that I'd put down. I would have said, you know what, cut my losses, I'm never getting it. So, if it was for me, I would have just said, you know what, I'm just going to bide my time. If you do make these games, then send me one. But that's me. For those people that love this theme and are just so desperate to get this machine, And if you've got the funds to be able to do it, then maybe get a new one and do something about it later. I don't know. It's hard to know. It's a tough one. Because it's like, at least then you're going to get it versus just being out six grand and having nothing to show for it. But we still don't know whether anybody's going to get their games. That's what I'm saying. They're presenting to the greater public and also their early adopters here is our business model moving forward to be able to survive. And basically it's putting all the risk on customers only. But I thought that, I mean, they've delivered a ton of games. Well, they've released the games that ARA had. But didn't they say that they then had parts to make like another hundred or so? Yeah, but that's their model now. They haven't made those hundred. They've still got to make them. Put them together. And they've got to make enough money from those. These are these new, ready, whatever they are, whatever they call them. That's what they're now. They now need to sell those at the $12,500 price to be able to get additional money to be able to make right with the original early adopters, early achievers. The made-to-sell games, that's them. Yeah. Which, I mean, they're more or less selling it. I mean, that's like kind of what the collector's editions of Jersey Jacks go. for, right? Sure. Pretty close to that, I think. And they are really limited, so I guess you're really treating it as... I mean, if you're a person buying these games, you're treating it as if it's an Ellie, or like a collector's edition. There's not going to be a lot of these, so I guess the price makes somewhat sense. That's all great, Joe. I get what you're saying. And you know what? If that plan pulled off and you got two big Lebowskis, and effectively you'd paid 20 grand for them, you know, 8 grand plus 12.5 US, right? Then you've got two big Lebelskis for 10K. It's not bad. It's a rare machine. And if you sold it, I think you'd get your money back. What I'm saying is, if this plan doesn't work, people don't get their machines. The early achievers don't get their machines. So it's not a guarantee. And I can't give people advice on what to do. I told you what I would do, because I think that that's also the less risky option. I've already written off my money. Just if I get a machine, I get a machine. I'm not going to put myself back into $12,500 of more risk of whether I'm going to get the machine or not. Just one split and twice shy. There you go. That's where I've set it. Done. Moved. Yeah, I was under the impression that that was one of the ones that they had, the finished games. Like you give us $12,500 right now and you get one of the games we have right now. I didn't realize that it was... I think they're the ones that have already gone out. Oh, those are all spoken for and gone. Yeah. I thought that this was talking about some of those games that they still had. Yeah, I guess if you're then hoping that this is all hoping that they get a facility and then they can put them all together, that's certainly a lot more dicey. It changes some things on my end. Because I thought that this was more of a guarantee versus, you know, hopes and dreams. Yeah. So, there you go Hopefully they figure it out Yeah, I hope so Shall we just completely move away From that dire discussion And do Joe tips the top 100 Oh, hell yeah Equally just as dire Depends on On what comes up Very true Based on what we've talked about today So this means that we're going to get Pirates? Sure. Ghostbusters. There we go. Ghostbusters. Okay. Is Google Lady back to normal or is she completely off? No, I don't think she is. I don't know. Let's have a look. Also, while I'm here, I'm noticing that the world is back to normality. Lord of the Rings, because of our episode, has jumped Pirates. I just noticed that Lord of the Rings is now back to 5. So, again, you've got 8.718 is Lord of the Rings and 8.704 704 is types of the cat brain. Yeah, so I'm looking at you, audience. Let's get that to four. Come on, Lord of the Rings to four. Let's make it happen. Yeah, there you go. Okay, here we go. Let's see if Google 80 is going to work this week. Hey, Google, pick a number between 1 and 100. 55. Oh, look at that. With a new noise, too. What is that sound effect? It sounds like she's picking something up and throwing it on the ground. I don't know what it is, but She's changed. Google, are you okay? Ah, I am the law. I think that's from Judge Dredd. I don't know. I have no idea. Yeah, I'm curious to know the rules of Judge Dredd, mainly because I fucking hate this game. Hate it. And it's primarily because of that fucking different gap. Thank you, John Trudeau. You're a fucking saint. But I also find the layout to be a bit clunky. There you go. Said it. It was very similar to Wonka. Yeah. There you go. Oh, what? Now I've got to go back here and do this. There we go. There you go. All right. Well, I mean, weirdly enough, I remember that when I first started playing pinball, I heard about this, what was it called, the Dead World mod that holds balls there. And it was like all this magic thing that, oh, it didn't work, didn't ship with the game, but they have these awesome modes. And then I think at some point I've never seen one without one now. Like every single game has one in there now. So, like, I don't even remember the last time I played one that didn't have that mod. Pretty excited. Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, on this game, it's got these weird big buttons that you can use to move your modes and to launch the ball. So, like, your left big button can cycle your modes, and then your right big button shoots the ball and plunges the ball. So it's very important to know that so that you're not thinking that, oh, I moved past it. I'll hit the right one so that I can move back. No. Here comes the ball, so better be ready. but what I tend to do is I don't have a picture of what the modes are I've zoomed in but I always start personally with safecracker I think that's right as my mode and what that mode is doing is the main multiball in the game is spelling judge in order to light your locks on the left ramp so you have to hit the drop towers in order or every time you get it into the subway ramp or the subway entrance, which is the hole behind the drop targets, it spots letters. So the reason why I start with the safecracker is that that mode, once you start it, which can be, I believe the first mode is started via the left ramp, and it cycles between left ramp and the sniper shot, vertical up kicker in the top right. so once you start that mode what that mode is is you put it in that subway and you get paid it's move your car pretty much and but while you're playing that mode you're also spotting your judge letters so hopefully if you play that mode well you drop out of it boom my locks are lit so that like my main thing every time I step up to a judge dread that my main goal And every time you hit that it throws it into the comes out the vertical up kicker on the left and feeds the left flipper, which normally you can catch, slow it down there so you can backhand it, or sometimes, very rarely, it's fast enough to go over to the other side and then you can shoot the subway from that side. But, so that's the first mode I start with. In order, I tend to play that one first, then I will play Sniper, which is the vertical, you're going to be hitting the vertical up kicker on the top right, locks in a big value, it's a hurry up, so the sooner you hit it, the more it's worth, so you hit that, and then you can hit it again for that value again, and that can be worth a lot of points, considering I think it would be like 15, 20 million, which in the grand scheme of the game, it's worth a lot of points. So that's the second mode I play. And then the third mode I tend to go for is Blackout, which is a two-ball multiball with 2x scoring. Everything in the game is 2x scoring. And pretty much, but there's no ball save on that, so that's very important to know. And the biggest points you can do in that mode for the most part is some Judge Dreads from the bottom right flipper, you can backhand up into the cross flipper, the cross ramp I guess it's considered the center ramp on the game and that's where you get your jackpot in that multiball pretty much if you can do that, that's what you should do in that but if the flippers aren't strong enough, what you tend to do is trap up on the left and then loop the left ramp as much as you can because you're just going to get double those points and like a lot of games from this era like Scared Stiff, where you can just keep looping that ramp and it keeps going up in value. So as long as you don't miss, it can be worth a lot of points, especially 2x. So after those, the other modes are just kind of, you can just play them in any order. I mean, Meltdown, you're shooting the captive balls on the right, which, you know, is pretty dangerous because that will fall down, hit. You get a double lane over there, but then you also, the way that the out lane is designed, it kind of comes up and over. So if you hit for the top of the sling, you're going to go out. so that's not that good. Tank Battle is decently fine. That's hitting the two orbits plus the side target. That's not the worst. That's pretty good. Impersonator, you don't want to play that mode. That's just pounding on drop targets in the middle, and they keep resetting, and I don't think that that counts towards fighting a multiball, so that's not that good. And Pursuit is just hitting ramps, so that one's fine too. But that's mainly what you're going to be doing for the modes. I don't think I'm missing any of the modes. In the main multiball, once you let your locks, you're going to be hitting the left ramp, hit the left ramp three times. If it's a normal one, you just keep looping it three times in a row, and you'll start your multiball. If it's got the dead world mod in there, it's going to lock balls on the spinny thingy, and then it's going to plunge a new ball, and you're just going to have to live through the plunge to deal with that and be able to get all three of your locks. And during the multiball, what you're going to be doing, you're going to hit the left ramp, and it's going to light a jackpot in the scoop behind the drop targets in the subway there. That's going to be a jackpot. I think if you do that, you have to do that, look at that, one, two, three, four times for each of the judges, and after you've done it four times, I believe it goes into another special part of the multiball, which I think I've only gotten to once, so I don't overly remember what you do when you get there, but it just gets more and more valuable. And then that's pretty much all that multiball is. if you play all the modes, you get into the wizard mode of the game, which again I haven't really seen. Ultimate Challenge, yeah. Yeah, which probably is like Demolition Time or something like that, where it's just, everything's lit. I mean, any of the stuff besides those two things really doesn't matter. What's funny is a lot of the times this game will always have a credit dot on it because it's nearly impossible to hit the air raid ramp, so the game thinks it's broken. It's like, you haven't hit this in 45 games. I was like, yeah, because you can't hit that thing. And all that does is it throws it into the kicker, and then you have to hit a button, and then it launches it out into danger and off with some drop targets and hope he doesn't kill you. So it's not even something you want to go for either. You can loop for more points, but it's looping on this is really hard, and it's going to be. and I don't outside of well I mean outside of just like I mentioned you can just loop the left ramp if you're really good at keep on hitting it you'll keep getting paid for that you can do there's crimes like you can put people in jail for crimes it's like the different the crime scene lamps which is like the big rectangle places they have bars on them which doesn't really matter well they're the ones I don't understand so that's the warning misdemeanor felony and classics felony how are they lit? How would I start it? What do you do? I think that they're... I think that they start lit, and then as you get them, it becomes harder to collect more. I think it's just one of those things that are just running. I'm not sure what potentially lights them. It just seems like they're always there, and you get them while the rest of the game is going. And they're not worth that much, but I guess I really haven't really looked into why I should care about them. It just happens. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They're just things that give you very little points, a couple million here and there, which in that game is not substantial at all. So it just hasn't been any of those things that has made me want to look into it. And then the only other thing is once you play your first multiball, your second multiball, each completion of Judge lights only one lock. So that's really the only other thing to consideration. It's really hard to get into a second multiball. Okay. So you've got the big four inserts in the middle with the judges of Fear, Something, Death, and Fire. What are they? Those are your jackpots in multiball. So once you hit the left ramp and then put it in the subway, you'll get awarded one of those judges. And then if you get all four of them, there's like a next stage in the multiball. I think I've gotten to it once. But, like, there's not a lot of these around in private collections, or even in the public, so really the only time I get to play this game was, you know, in the Intergalactic. And, of course, we're not doing any of that stuff on that one. With the sign on it that says, Upper Flipper doesn't work that good. Don't recommend using it. Okay. So, what do you think of the game? Do you like playing it? It's fine. I don't seek it out, but I'm not miserable while playing it. It's fine for what it is. I mean, it's not that great. It's not, of the wide bodies, I don't think it's anything special. Do you think it's better than X-Men? No. Not even close. Or Guns N' Roses? I might like it more than Guns N' Roses, just because I'm not a huge fan of that game. I'm just going on the pins for the top 100, and these are the games that are underneath Judge Dredd. So you've got X-Men is at 56, Guns N' Roses is at 57, Revenge for Mars, 58, Roadshow, 59, Pinball Magic, 60. Oh, definitely not. Pinball Magic's better than it. It's also saying that Houdini is better than it. Fathom is better than it. I do love Fathom. Getaway is better. No Good Gopers is at 51, which is better than Judge Dredd. I don't know about that. Good go. Yeah Wow Yeah Fathom is that high, huh? Fathom is Better than X-Men or Wow Yeah I guess For that type, I guess But Alien is 49 So it's better than Judge Dredd So is Big Bang Bar I don't think that's true either That game sucks There you go That was Judge Dredd Well There you go Interesting Thank you, Google Lady your new way of Kool-Aid manning the number. Okay. Here it comes, Kool-Aid. I just picture an animation of just, like, this number falling from the sky, and be like, 45. Boom. That's kind of what happened to my registry. So I don't know whether it's making me want to play the game anymore or less, but it's wanting me to at least play it with more knowledge that I've got. thought. Yeah, the biggest thing with the game is that it doesn't have strong flippers. Because that tends to be the biggest problem is that, like, you have, the left ramp is very long and steep. So if you, if it has weak flippers, it's really, really hard. Because if it rejects off that ramp, you're super fucked. You're about to get dunked. Like, there's, that 100% goes middle. Like, almost every single one I've played, if you reject off that ramp, you might as well walk away. Yeah. So it's like, if If that flipper is not strong enough, it really hampers the game. And a lot of times what happens is that the longer this gets played, the worse that gets. So you really need... The game needs to start with, like, two stronger flippers, so that when it gets down to its weakest point, it's still playable. So that's, like, whatever. If you have one of these games, you probably want to go up a coil, the strength, so that it settles in a place where it's still playable. There you go. All right. What's happened to your This Week in Pinball? This Week in Pinball. Oh, yeah. I had a critical hit. There's that tournament I forgot about. It went pretty good. It was as stressful as it always is. We had, I think, 20 people. Were you saying that it's a challenging comp to run? I think it is the hardest tournament to run, by far. as a tournament director. Why? The stuff that you have to keep track of, like, I mean, maybe you could do it so it's not true to the format, but I mean, like, to give you an idea of, like, how a round works. So you start off the round. Hopefully everyone has smartphones, or at least they can look at the TV. We have a TV setup that has the groups, so you get your groups up there. And then I have my iPad in front of me, and we're at a small table that has two dice trays on it, big dice trays with big dice on them. And thankfully I have my partner in crime with Pinmasters, Colin, who helped me out and looks like he's going to be helping me out going forward as a TD. And each of us call out a group, and we say what game it's on. We call out the four people. They come over, and we're both doing this at the same time. all four people come over, they roll the dice. Lowest, highest rolled value gets the pick position first. Pretty simple. If you roll a 20, you can change the game to an open game, and you get the pick position. So we've got to do that for all the groups. And then once that's over, we have to call out to see if anyone wants to play cards. You know, all the cards can mess that up in various different ways. They can throw people out of your group into another random group. So then we have, you choose the person in your group that you kick out, and then you choose the group that you want to swap them into, and then those guys come back, whoever rolls lowest gets swapped with that player. You know, if we're putting darkness on games, we have to go set up the darkness, blah, blah, blah. So then eventually we go, all right, is there no more cards getting ready? Okay, good. Then everyone goes and plays their games. So then during this whole period, now everyone's playing games that have goals on them. So if people hit those goals, they're coming to me saying, hey, I need a card. So, you know, I'm playing and doing TD stuff and spec balls and all that stuff. So then I grab a card for them, give them the card, or have to check if anyone in their group noticed that they got the card to make sure that obviously they're not just saying that. Thankfully, people are going to call in as well at the same time. So then if there's any, so then if people, there's three cards in the deck that have legendary status, which just means that there's not that many of them, and they're super powerful. So if anyone plays any of those in the groups, we have to announce it to everybody so that if anyone has a card that can cancel it, they have the opportunity to do so. So that's something that we have to do during the rounds, and then when the rounds are over, thankfully, which used to be where we had to enter all of the stuff in ourselves, thankfully, I realized that Match Play could enter, people can submit their own scores. so that's amazing and has helped a lot. So people submit their own scores and then we wait until everyone's done and then, you know, after their games they have an opportunity to play cards or try and add balls or try to replay their game, etc. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Dealing with darkness with whether or not because it covers the scores for the game so nobody people have the option if they're not sure if someone's up they can have us go over and check make sure that we can let them know who's playing. And then once that's all over, we do the whole process over again. And the first four hours, I think we start at like 10.30 and we go until like close to 3. And that's just one game matches like Pinberg style scoring, tiered to Swiss and we play through that. And then people are earning cards for all the games that have different goals on them. And then we take a break, go have some lunch, de-stress some. I did not make and then whoever comes back gets to make finals. I did not make finals again because for all those reasons of all the crap I have to deal with, it's hard to actually still play well, which I didn't. So, yeah, so then finals is more the same for the most part. The only difference is that the top qualifiers and groups get to pick games. Unless somebody rolls a 20, then they can change it, and you pay three games per round, and then you keep doing that, eliminating two, blah, blah, blah, until there is a champion. So it's just a lot of moving parts, And, you know, and to make sure it runs smoothly is hard, and I am a perfectionist about that. I'm very, I don't know what the word is, but I'm very, make sure that my events run well and that I try and think of all the things that could go wrong to plan ahead to see, to get it to run as smoothly as possible. So the stress of making sure that all my ducks are in a row and that we've pre-figured out all the things that could go wrong or streamlined as much as we can. And for the first time after this event, we sent out a survey to get what people thought about the event and all that stuff. So it's a minimal stress of wondering if people messed up your supplies, if they took cards and didn't return them, if they took their tens and didn't return them, or if they damaged them. So it's a whole thing. But it's really fun. but it's still it's really hard to run yeah for a TD it is for the people who run these things it's a lot of hard work it's a lot easier for the players for sure so last week after we spoke of Critical Hit and I mentioned that I had 15 cards 15 packs of cards I think I needed to accentuate the word had I've had 15 packs of cards I don't have them anymore I've given them out as prizes on this show and also prizes on my stream, the Melbourne Super Bowl League stream. So it's definitely worth signing up to my stream just to get freebies like that, guys. So I just don't have them. I've got one. Actually, I tell a lie. I've got two packs. You've asked for one, so I'm going to send you a pack because I'm just a nice guy. You know, people think I'm an arsehole. I'm a nice guy. I would take all of the packs that you have, honestly. I know. and then I've got one that I'm going to keep for myself because I wouldn't be able to play it as well so yeah, sounds like fun kind of Carl, make some more yeah, come on Carl, make some more please people have spoken what else happened? let's see what else happened I played League on Monday oh and I learned a valuable lesson that you should never not call for a ruling because you're being nice. Because it will bite you in the ass and it will cost you from having a perfect week. Because somebody played my extra ball and I was like, nah, it's fine. And the entire time he's like, I don't care. I don't even care. I'm not taking this seriously. And of course he came back and beat me on Ghostbusters and I'm like, this is what I get. This is what I get. I should have just got him DQ'd like I was supposed to do. But no, there goes my 40. This guy's finished last, guys. So, yeah, so that was fun. I got to play more time on Oktoberfest, which is, the game is still rather hard. It's hard to find the shots on that. Fun, but hard. Yeah, especially when it jacked up the flipper strength to shoot that ramp. it's really hard it's a very small place where that now is because it's so strong to actually hit that which seems as simple oh I just have to hit the left ramp easy right no no it's not but yeah I think that's all for Primal although I am playing in Stomp tomorrow 3 3 the search for Sulu I think don't kill me I think that's the right name yeah okay so it runs level 0 arcade yes correct that'd be fun I did see him do a bit of a walkthrough of his collection he has got a great collection of machines yeah it's pretty silly and I mean obviously he's heard our episode so I assume he's going to pull me aside and show me how to love Lethal Weapon 3 maybe I should just show up and just be like so Ron why does this game not suck yeah he'll just show me but I'm sure he's going to be busy although I think that Bruce is running it mostly. Oh, yeah, fair enough. But, yeah, and that's pretty much all that happened this week. I know that they also, today, came in the mail our, which you can appreciate, we got our nice set of X-Streams from Pinstadium, yep, because he sponsors Pinmasters, and we've been having some issues. We were originally given two sets with the idea, naively, I guess from our part, of thinking, okay, well, what we want to do is we want to show off your product, and we have a stream, so what we'll do is we'll install these pin stadiums on the games we want to stream the most, so then we can show off how amazing your product is. Come to find out, people don't want to install them on their games. So certainly if they're coming out, so we actually will only use it on one of the events. and so we reached out and I was like, hey, I noticed that they had this product and I know that you were using them and you said great things. So I was like, you know what? They are amazing. For my streaming particularly, well, you know, all my four machines at home, here we are, pin stadium show, all my four machines have got pin stadiums. In fact, my Munsters, which is about to go, has got two sets of pin stadiums because it's got the baby ones underneath and my Star Trek has got pin stadium fusions. So at home, streaming's fine, But when I go to other people's places, they don't have pin stadiums. So these X-Streams are just phenomenal because they just literally magnetize to the rails on the outside of the machine and just brighten the fuck out of these machines. Yeah, so we're looking for it, and then they run on, you can just plug them in. So our streamer, Mark, who's for Backflip Pinball, is looking into finding a way of maybe getting a battery pack so that they can easily be transported. No, it's Backhand. Backhand for Pinball. Backhand for Pinball. Yeah, for getting like a battery pack so that we can just pull them off and move them to the next game without having to be like, oh, we've got to plug this shit in and crawl over there and plug that in. Oh, but there's a person playing. So that'll be helpful. So we have our own set now, and it's a nice, beautiful carrying case, which is a really cool touch. Like a genetic case, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's freaking amazing. Scott is amazing. He's, like, so good. He's so nice. I know. I know. I know. Yeah, I mean, you're, like, the poster child, so nobody knows more than you. Well, nobody knows more than me because I've fucked up the installation on them that many times that I'm now an absolute expert. Yeah. He knows you personally. He knows your number. I just remember when we recorded at Pinberg. I remember when we were recording in your hotel room. You had one. I was like, oh, look at this. You got a little present from Scott. Yeah. Yeah. Be jealous. I am. I'm not anymore because now I'm just as good as you. Now you've got them. Ha ha. Boom. So let me tell you. There's only a couple of things that happened in my week this week. So first one is I got to do a factory tour of Haggis Pinball. And I got to play, I would still call it an early prototype of the Celts, their machine that's coming up. I am completely sworn to secrecy. I can't say much about it. What I will tell you is this. so Damien is the man behind Haggis Pinball and Greg the coder and the purpose of Haggis if those people have been following Haggis Pinball the purpose of Haggis Pinball was for for Damien to go on this journey the journey really is to learn how to make a pinball and I was asking him a couple of questions and he was showing me what he's done and all the equipment he's got. And I said, so before you did this, how much of this did you know? And he said, none. He knew nothing about how to make a pinball. So from that to the, effectively it was a whitewood that we flipped at TPF, to what I've seen today is nothing short of phenomenal. From what one person has been able to do to just learn how to do it. So that's what I'm going to say is that it has come so far since, you know, the inception of Haggis. I don't know. It might have been a year ago, maybe even more. And he will be bringing it to Expo. So check it out there and it will be at Flipout as well. So I got to talk to them. I got to give a lot of feedback on sort of rules and some other stuff to do with the machine itself. And I literally walked away and gave them a shitload of work to do. So I was happy about that. Anyway, it was fun. It was just fun to be able to speak to these guys so candidly about what it's been like to start and get so far. So it's very cool. I'll be the player at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You will. The other thing that I've been sort of talking to a lot of people about as well is that we are going to, we believe for 2020, we are going to be having the dollar fee for IFPA. And so we are, even though technically we are in the future, we're also in the past by about two years when it comes to introducing the dollar fee. And it's divided a lot of people. I think we're going through the same thing that the U.S. did, the same sort of objections that people have, the same sort of positivity that people have. You know, you've now had it for a couple of years. What's the ongoing sentiment that you have towards DollarGate? I don't know what you're talking about. We pay dollars? I don't even know. I don't think it's been thought about for years. but is it just one of those things that it's now costing a dollar and you just don't think about it anymore? no because it's realistically it comes out of the prize pool of the top players the elite players are paying for it so I haven't heard it really talked about in earnest for a while so it's a lot of outrage at the start and then it just simmers and goes away Okay, well We're in the storm We're in the storm of it right now So we'll see what Eventuates, so there you go And that's really Been my week, well except that I streamed Okay, I'll tell you what I streamed The last week Was I So a friend of mine, Eric He's got 40 machines An amazing collection, pretty much has got All of the AAA Ballywilliams titles, and what that means is, there's a lot of AAA titles that I just don't like. And I remember a few months ago, I said, you know what, I'm going to stream Adam's Family and Twilight Zone, because I dislike both games, and I just wanted to spend a few hours on them, just to see if that would somehow change my mind. And it kind of did. It kind of did, in that I kind of appreciated, well, I hated less on Twilight Zone, but I still can't stand Adam's Family. It's just not for me. It doesn't mean it's a bad game, guys. Don't Don't be offended by it. It just means that I don't like it. It's not for me. Send your emails to... Go to Joe Lemire. Anyway, so I decided to do that again with two machines that I just do not like. Now, don't kill me for saying this, guys, but these games I do not like. Indiana Jones, The Pinball Adventure and Star Trek Next Gen, right? I do not like them. And there's sort of a common theme three out of those four machines that I just talked about in that they're super pins. The wide-body Bally Williams, I don't like them. I really enjoyed them in the day. I don't like them now. So that's what I got to do. And the summary for me is that I've got more of an appreciation for Indiana Jones. This one played phenomenally well. And it's one of those games where you've got to have strong flippers. If you don't have strong flippers, you can't get it up that ramp. You can't hit the captive ball shot. you just can't do a lot of things. So having your flippers strong, having it balanced and aligned well is crucial. So I actually really enjoyed that. Could you hit the scoop? Yes, that was another thing. And you could hit it from the forehand and you could backhand it. It was very accessible. Some padding in there to slow it down. The two big problems that I gave is that scoop just never stays in there. and then the Path of Adventure just doesn't work right. Yeah. This one, once you got it onto the Path of Adventure, that all worked fine left and right, but it had some challenges where it wouldn't actually drop into the Path of Adventure. It would actually bypass it. So, yeah, anyway, that was fun. But the other one was Star Trek Nishijan. And I've got to say, I fucking still hate that game. Huh. I don't, I just don't, I just, And it makes no sense because I love Star Trek. I love Steve Ritchie. I love Flow Games. I should like that game. I just really don't. Hmm. Those are two, um...