Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. This week on the Pinball Show, Dennis and I launch our holiday giveaway where you can win a pinball topper or armor or how about a shooter rod or much, much more. We also discuss everything Evil Dead Pinball, from game launch to deep-diving our takes on the game's art, layout, mechs, code, call-outs, and features. We also provide you with Stern Pinball production updates, Jersey Jack Pinball's new Pinball XP system, Black Friday specials, and pinball market trends. Pinball Show Club members get exclusive content this week on behind-the-scenes of Spooky Pinball's Evil Dead game launch trailer and feature at production. And we answer a member question about pinball machine drink holders. Let's start this holiday season off right with episode 165 of The Pinball Show. Groovy. Pinball is a game of skills. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. Oh, the Carl Weathers outside is frightful. It's time for The Pinball Show. It's pinball with personality. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow It's the Pinball Show, everybody. It's 165. December is here. It's the holiday season. I won't sing. I will not sing, but I want to. Well, the people don't want you to. What's your favorite Christmas song? Oh, gosh. Well, I don't really have one, or else I'd have named it. But you do like Christmas. No. No. Music? No, not really. You stole it. I've told this before. So when I was in high school and college, I worked at a bank, and I got in a lot of extra hours during the holiday season, and we were always on the Christmas stage and after Thanksgiving, and so I just heard so much, and I heard the same ones over and over. That's wonderful. What is it? Mannheim Steamroller. So those don't have lyrics, but I like what they do, that kind of rock style Christmas music. Yeah. Okay. I remember back in the early 2000s, you'd go to the Best Buy's in the Circuit Cities, and they would try to showcase using that song their surround sound system. Yes. Maybe I got some late 90s Circuit City bias going on there. It could be. There's only one Christmas song that I just hate, and it's the one by John Lennon. I think I've talked about that here. It's just so drab and non-Christmassy. Oh, okay. I can't stand it. It's the worst. I change it every single time. I like the... That one? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I think so. You think I'm dreaming of a white Christmas? Yeah, I love that one. It ends in minor chords. It's weird. Yeah, I know. Can you get that whiny one coming in? Love it. Just love it. Also, what I do love, listener, is this last week really showcased me what's important to you as fans of the pinball show. I've received so many personalized messages from you all about my experience with a CPAP machine. people came from the woodworks. Is that a phrase, right? Or did they come from the wood? Came out of the woodwork. Out of the woodwork. I don't know. Were they, like, hiding under the piles of scrap lumber? I don't know what that... I'm sure it references something like a bug or a bird. They're lumberjacks with breathing issues. And they have the snores. So they all contact me. I've never felt so much excitement in these messages since. I'm a fellow CPAP person. I've got this machine. What setting is yours at? What type of mask do you have? How's your seal? Are you having good suction or bad suction? Like, you name it. People wanted to share their experience with CPAP and give me all kinds of tips on how to get. Hang in there, buddy. The first week sucks. The first month sucks. I have all this stuff. So I wanted to formally shout out. You know, we have a group now. Shout out to all my CPAPs. CPAPs. CPAPs. I don't think that works as well as you think it does. CPAPs. Come out of the woodwork entomology from the idea of insects crawling out from the inside of woodwork in a house. So there's your origin. CPAPs. Okay, not my CPAPs. Let's go with my apnea. Shout out to all my apnea out there. I love you all. We're breathing easy tonight without snoring, aren't we? So do you like your CPAP now? I hate it. We still gasp for air, usually about three or four. I gasp as if it ramps up and I can't breathe. I'm telling you, I'm getting heavy-winded just thinking about it right now. But my wife loves it. She says that I don't snore. It's basically like placing a pillow over your face. Yeah, well. And pushing gently but firmly down. That was going to be the resolution if the CPAP didn't work. Dennis, before we get started, we should definitely announce what's coming from the pinball show over the next two weeks. We're going to do a holiday giveaway. Give-a-ween? A gift. That's right. It's going to be give-a-ween. We're going to give prizes totaling the value over $2,500 worth of prizes. And super simple to be eligible to sign up for this give-a-ween. We're going with it. Give a ween. Give a ween. Holiday give a ween. It's bad. Okay. Well, it's super simple. Listen later in the show and then share this episode so other people can win some free stuff too. We're talking a $1,000 topper. We're talking armor, translight, shooter rods. Give the goodies sponsored by Flip N Out Pinball. We are givers here at the Pinball Show. Listen later on into the show to see how you can be eligible to win, share, support, follow us on the socials. All right, back to the show. Let's jump into some news, Dennis. It's all about pinball this week. It's pinball show. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Is it? Is it spooky to do anything? No. We got a big spooky show, but first, we'll start with the king. Stern Pinball. Production updates. The last couple of weeks, listener, they have been making and shipping Metallica remastered LE and premium model games. We received our LE. It's a beauty. Man, I'll slap that thing around the side of that metallic cabinet. Mmm. Love it. Premiums are rolling out. Those are juicy, too. Those are quite juice-alicious. And then this week they're going to be. None of these phrases are working today. She's so vicious. I still giggle. I thought of that one in the shower. She's so vicious. This week, Metallica Remastered Premiums are going to continue shipping, as well as transferring over to Star Wars Comic Pro and Premium model games. You know, I did a, well, this is Monday when people are listening, so Saturday. I did a live stream that I do on my Wristwatch channel, and I didn't respond to it because it came in right at the end when I was ending the live stream, but I saw someone in the chat post and say, Dennis, I need you to use your connections and get me a Metallica remastered LE. And I was like, I don't think my connections go that far. I think those are long gone. They're long gone. Everything can be had. I've told customers that that are coming out of the woodwork. They're like. Yes, like the insects that they're based on. They got a big old Paul Bunyan beard and a belly. And they say, rub my belly. And I do that. And then they're like, can I get a Metallica LE? I'm like, look, we can get you anything. But the ones for MSRP, they don't. They're gone. Anybody will give up their game if the price is right, won't they? Hell, I'd sell my personal one if the price is right. I did open one, though. I had to. You didn't have to. You say that every time. It is a ball buster of a game. Did we even talk about that last time? It's Metallica. It's the same hard as it always was. I don't care about what other podcasts are talking about posts over on the left. It was a hard game then. It's a hard game now. I don't think it's a hard game. I mean, I think... It's always been hard. I don't know. This ain't no ACDC, which is only hard if they set up the bell wrong so it SDTMs you. I don't know. I feel like Metallica's in the line of like an Elwynn game. It's not. No. It's a hard shooter, not an easy shooter. No. There's a reason why all the comp people for a long time would often, not every single one of them, but a lot of them would just Sparky all day because it was the safest thing to do. Yeah, it's kind of scary. Snake would reject on you. You could... Coming out of those inline drops could be death. If you didn't make it all the way up the ramp, death, especially the right one, I mean, death. What I found on – It's like Rohan up in this house. Well, we've heard on the LE so far, no issues really, thankfully. We've had some – people say the drop targets, inline drop targets, rejecting a little bit. But that goes with any new drop target, honestly, especially if you're going to hit one perpendicular like straight up. That sometimes happened on the originals too. Yeah. It's just, you know, they get a break in a little bit. Some people have been going half wrong on their spring hold'em so that the sensitivity is greater. So maybe do that. But overall, I'm telling you, with this upgraded power supply, whatever Stern did back whenever they came out with Stranger Things, the rerun of Stranger Things, was that last year or the year before? They redid something with their power supply and their mechanics, which is better. You don't get the flipper fade as you did before, but everything's just so much more powerful. This is the first era of Stern that people have had to, not the first era of Stern that people had to turn down their flippers, but a new era of Stern that people are like, oh, crap, we have to bump down our flipper power sometimes. So it's brutally fast right now. But I don't think it's too bad because there's so many multiballs built into Metallica that once you get rocking and rolling, you just feel like you're going to play forever. Sad but true. You see that? Yes. All right. And then December, the rest of December, listeners, remember that easy, whizzy run to close out the month of strangers. Yeah, baby's first. Baby's last run. Jurassic Park Pro. Jaws Pro. Jaws Premium. That was a shark. Well, you did the roar. So you did the higher. That's the shark. Hey, and Jaws the Revenge was shark roars. And it roars like a lion. That was like. And it's like, why is this shark roaring? Oh, so terrible. It was so terrible. It paid for Michael King's house, so I guess it's fine. Joel's Pro, Joel's Premium, and Black Knight Pro, and Beatles Gold. That's a lot of games to squeeze in a month. It is. But they're little easy-weasy baby runs. Pinball accessory updates. Oh, finally. John Wick accessories? No, we've seen Metallica remastered accessories. They announced them. They launched them. They showed them. They're supposed to start shipping sometime this month of December. All of them? Likely mid-December. The majority of everything. Yeah, but there was an allocation on toppers, I believe. Everybody's crapping on this topper. Did you see this topper? No, actually. I was so blinded by the Evil Dead topper, I have not noticed other toppers in November. That's fair, actually. Yeah, so they came out with the topper armor. Expression lighting on the inside of the game. And then shooter rod, interactive shooter rod, very much like Rust. Okay. It lights up. But what they also changed, the price has increased on all of those accessories. What a shock. Gouging. So, quickly, the pricing on the topper is $1,000. So, that didn't necessarily go up. A lot of toppers come in at $999 for a certain pinball. I remember when they weren't $999. Yeah, that's very true. This one is, I would say, more along the lines of a basic standard interactive topper. Like an Aces High topper, or what do you mean? Sure, sure. Aces High topper. You've got some molding. You've got interactive RGB and stuff. But you don't have any motor movement or anything like that. It's very Kiss-like where you get some lights. Godzilla-ish. I'm trying to think. They're standard, you know, Avengers, Jurassic Park, standard size. But people were upset because it's $1,000. Like, man, those are flasher caps that are up there. It is interactive with the game, the lighting. It is informative. Ray Day was telling us that the flasher lighting up there, the lighting will change colors based on progress that you can see. So that tells you something. Yeah, but this isn't like hard, fancy, expensive stuff. No. There's a wire that allows it to integrate. Look, don't get me wrong on the coding front, but, I mean, come on. Are we still saying that flasher caps and color-changing RGBs is $1,000? I'm saying they're informative. So information costs $1,000 if it's on top of a game Is what you're saying By definition But look Also, quote Through the power of Insider Connected Dennis players will be able to unlock An Justice for All song Straight from the start of gameplay In addition to rocking out to a special new An Justice for All multiball Huh? You get an extra song And an extra multiball mode That counts for something, doesn't it? It'll probably help push some people over the edge, yes. You'll see. And then, so we get that as a topper. But what we've seen an increase in is the expression lighting. Really? Expression lighting now $599. Oh, my gosh. Why? Because it's worth it. That's my argument. Zach, well, yeah, you sell them. Of course it's your argument. Well, sure. But as a player, that is a transformative addition to the game. But why such a big increase? I remember when they were selling them back in my day. They were selling them for like $400, $450, something like that. It might have been even cheaper than that in the Led Zeppelin days. I don't know. But I remember sourcing the materials to make those things. Remember they were backordered a long time. And so, yeah, but that was a lot of that pandemic supply chain stuff. It was, but it still bled into like there was a backorder on Foo Fighters expression lighting. So, yeah, I don't I get it. I get why there was an increase because if the squeeze isn't if the juice ain't worth the squeeze, you know, squeeze harder. I think this is here's what I think. I think Stern sees that the market does not have an appetite to see a game price increase, and so they're trying to up the margins on the accessories to make up for what they want to do, which is actually raise the pro-premium LE pricing. I think that that is a good explanation as well. And I'm fine with it because I won't buy any of this stuff. That's part of it. The shooter rod, $225. Now, we've seen a jump with Foo Fighters shooter rods. Yeah. That's crazy, crazy. The armor, $399. That's stiff. I've never been big on, like, I don't do any accessories, but I've never been all that big on the armor anyway. Yeah, so that's about a $100 accessory increase. So, yeah, at least we, I like that we have an announcement of accessories during pretty much the first production run of the game. I do like that. And that they're going to ship here in December. All positive things. We're still waiting for Venom accessories, John Wick accessories, and Uncanny X-Men accessories. Why are we still waiting for Venom? I don't know. It's so long ago. Oh, also, I found it interesting on this whole Metallica. I've got to bring this up. Why? It's what I do. I let people peek behind the curtains. Some call me Pinball's Oz. No one has ever called you that, ever. Eh. Yeah, no. I know they haven't. Did you go see Wicked or something? Why are you bringing up Oz? Well, it's just timely. You know, it's a buzzword right now. That's all. Is this bias against, because I'm in Kansas, is this like a stereotype thing you're doing on me? Are you going to watch Wicked? I think I'm going to go see it. I don't think so. I like a good musical. Why do they keep trying to make all the bad people good? It's revisionist. That's the thing, isn't it? There's the one with Angelina Jolie, right, where she was like the witch, but they were like, well, but she's misunderstood. Doug Maleficent. What they, maybe they did this before. Stern Pinball kind of frustrated me this last week. Hmm. Did they? Yes, they did. Why? So the phone starts dinging one random day, and I see, hey, can you give me that Metallica topper? And that's not, I hear that from time to time because people want to make sure, hey, I got my LE. I want to make sure I get a topper. Ding, got another one. And then usually when I start getting a pattern, I'm like, wait a minute. And I get on the Facebook and the YouTube and see that they launched a video. They launched these products, the new Metallica Remastered accessory products. They launched them. And I was like, shit. I go to my email. Maybe I missed something here. Just typically, if you're going to launch a brand-new product, you would inform your sales network who sells the product. I don't know. Maybe it's just manufacturing business 101. But I didn't get an email from them. I guess I missed something. I mean, so they launched a product without even telling their sales network. To be fair, this does happen with other companies. I'm not isolating them. I expect better from them. When Gary was in charge, this wouldn't have happened. Oh, not the Gary card. I don't believe. It was strange. I think that what it was, in my opinion, because information did come later, significantly later, I would say. Like more than a day later? Not more than a day. Hours later. I think maybe if you're going to sell a product direct, as Stern does with accessories, maybe having a head started in such a bad thing. Hmm. Do you think maybe that instead they were just saying, looking over and going, fuck you? I have no evidence to say they didn't. I'd like to think they didn't. But, yeah, I don't know. It's weird getting a jump start. I don't like being competitors with the people I distribute for. It's just weird. And that goes back to all the others. It does seem a little odd. The Jersey Jacks of the world, the spooky pinballs of the world that sell direct. It's just a slippery slope that I don't. But if they were to give us a heads up and say, hey, I just want to give you a heads up that we plan on launching a new product, but we would like to, you know, get some initial sales before opening it up to our sales network. Well, that's an awkward conversation. At least it's honesty. True. At least it's honesty. I always said that. My papa always told me that. If you're going to screw me, I don't know a good way to say it because my grandpa had a phrase, but it's not appropriate for this show. But, you know, if you're going to stick me, it's bad enough. At least let me know you're going to stick me. Right? Hmm. Si, papi. So, I don't know. It's just weird. It sucked. But we sold a lot of accessories, so it's all good. John Borg and Raymond Davidson visited the Loser Kids. They both had episodes. Shout out to our friends, the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast over there, Josh and Scott. So they had two different episodes interviewing John Borg and Raymond Davidson. Of those interviews, they talked about development time, the development of Metallica Remastered. They were both on that game. John Borg was talking, Dennis, about Metallica Remastered, the development time being just like a brand new Cornerstone game. Hmm. I like similar to probably a little less, but similar to that doesn't surprise me. But it seems like there are plenty of shortcuts there, right? Well, I mean, yeah, obviously, we've got the whole same layout. So like something's different. It wouldn't surprise me if they were given the same amount of time. Okay. But, you know, whether it took that. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, I don't know. I don't know. Because it gets a little weird because, for example, we know how they measure development time might be a little different in terms of the development of the layout. Because, for example, we know Keith Elwin has very publicly said in multiple interviews how many Whitewoods ahead he is. Oh, yeah. Like, is that counting? Do those games? They sure aren't counting all the clock is going on development. Like, they just count that and then pause it? Or is that part not even counted in the development cycle? It's just like, Lightwood is done. We start with that, and that's the start of the development time. It might be something like that. Yeah, and they're not logging in their time whenever they're working on the game. Because some of the designers may, you know, dick off and watch a bunch of YouTube videos about cats. Hmm. So, yeah. But, I mean, in proper, like, proper project management, all of this would be counted in some capacity. But I understand also that I work in places where they don't want to log all of this either. So I understand. Ray there was talking about his goal as the lead programmer for this project. His goal was just at first, just get the original Metallica game running on a Spike system. A logical place to start. So that was his number one goal. Borg ended up saying that Raymond Davidson indicated to him that coding the Metallica remastered from a SAM system to the Spike 2 operating system was, quote, like converting Spanish to English. Oh, that easy. That's right. I think there's AI that does that now. There is. There is. And there are also a lot of people that can readily go between those two languages. C-Papa? That was like the C-Papa translated. They had to bring in the new remastered game up to the standards of mechanics and materials that they're now using. John Borg talked about that on the interview. Such as the drop target banks being a little bit different. Yeah, so now they reject all the time. No, no, they're actually better. Some of the... Let me have my little digs. The metal guides are much more stout. Metalier. Yes. So he was talking about the increased standards that they put into their games compared to 20 years ago. Better quality now. Yes. All right. Except for coil stops. Are those an issue now? I don't know. Look, just let me have my digs. Sorry. Sorry. Most media gets more hits whenever they're entertaining rather than factual. So we'll swing with that. So what are you saying? Ray also talked about the band ended up, the Metallica band, they saw that Rush game, and they just wanted their game updated. So that was a big push. Oh, jealous. Well, when are they going to upgrade their music? Ouch. There's your dig. I actually don't have really a preference between. They looked at me like, how can we be like that? And Ray just looks and goes, be better. I'm the guy that likes fuel, so I don't care. Give me fuel and unforgiving I like all that stuff He also talks about animation sequencing priorities On Sam vs Spike What I mean by that You don't have to go listen to the episode listener But basically saying like on the Sam system There was certain limitations In prioritization of animation sequencing So if a jackpot sequence was being shown And then you hit a mode progress It would cancel it out Just because it had the sequence in that way Whereas on the spike system, you have more control over that. So if there is a priority to show the player a jackpot shot over that of a layer of a mode progress shot, they can have more control and display that longer. And, yeah, just for presentation's sake, it making more sense. And then away from the Metallica game a bit, John Borg talked about spending five to six months on a game that he was designing, and Stern ended up, quote, not procuring the license for. So he was working on something, and they didn't have the license, and then they didn't get the license. Or they had initial terms and agreement that changed over time, and maybe Stern wasn't okay with those changes. Okay. And they said, you know, the theme is no longer the theme. Look, let me give you my definition. I was going to say, like, this sounded a little bit like cart, you know, and horse, and the carts before the horse. Hence the expression, because that's not how the cart pulls the horse. Maybe, like, if you have a movie. Look, there's something with carts. Coming out of the woodwork, this horse is coming out. I'm going to use, like, let's just, a random example here. Like, I don't know, Indiana Jones is a franchise. And then maybe you hear that they're coming out with a new film. and you're like, maybe it's time to go back to this IP. And within the process of the IP, then the IP holder is like, you know what? We want to focus more on the Crystal Skull or whatever the new one. No one said that ever. The power of the finger. What was it? No way. What was it? Dial of Destiny. Dial of Destiny. Okay. The power of the finger. Sweet puppy. And then maybe that's what, something like that. It was just an example. That's not. And he also said that this particular IP or license, they, I don't know who they is, are trying to package it with another license. So throwing out examples again, maybe Disney. Maybe they were like, if you want this license, you've got to get this license too. We heard that with Jersey Jack. I think, what was it that, I think there was like some kind of licensing where like, if you want this, you're also going to have to take this kind of thing. So regardless. I don't remember that. John Borg. Or maybe something only you know. Yeah, I'm trying to think which one it was. I thought it was Toy Story. What do you mean? You want this, you have to do it. I mean, Toy Story was, that's the one where, according to, I think, a variety of the individuals, that, I don't know, because I've heard different stories, and I'm kind of trying to glue it all together, but the original plan was actually to base it on the trilogy, but they took so long in the development, when they came back to renegotiate the terms, the demand was it had to be focused on the fourth movie. Or when they had to re-up the license. Right, yeah. It was a re-up because it just took so long. It was in development hell, and it just took for so long for it to come out that they changed the terms in terms of the fact that they wanted it to be on the new movie, which didn't exist when Jersey Jack was actually first working on Toy Story. I wonder if that was the thing. Maybe it was like a Toy Story Avatar thing because Avatar is Disney now. I don't know. Yeah. Don't know. So Borg said not to worry. He's going to end up using some of the mechs and toys on a future game. so you know i think it was probably he was put on back to the future don't you dare and he was like i really don't want to work on this but he said he spent five or six months and then finally they were like you know what let's not get the license none of you are feeling it and barb was like thank you so much and the uh tower will be reused in another little lightning thing a little lightning thing a little clock tower everybody knows borg for that double outline with the metal that you You get borg. It gets out of the wire form, supposed to be safe, and then whips back around. Yeah, it's getting borg. I like that he tried to church it up, and he didn't know. He didn't really see it as an issue. He said the double end lane, why he uses the double end lane, he called it, quote, a catcher's mitt. Yeah. He said it gives you more opportunity, you know, to catch the ball. You get two lanes instead of one. So in theory, I guess I understand that design concept. But in application, it was a bit different. His games are like some of the hardest compared to every other modern designer. It ain't working the way he's claiming it does. Borgi, if you're listening, you don't listen to podcasts, but if you are, I'm okay with your analogy of it being a catcher's mitt. That would be, is that a simile? I don't know the difference. Metaphor? Shit. Whatever. I'll go with you on the catcher's mitt. However, the catcher's mitt you're referring to is one of the brand new catcher's mitts. You know, Dennis, like before you oil it and rubber band it and dirty it up, play a thousand innings on it. That's the catcher's mitt he's talking about. Because it's not friendly and doesn't catch balls very well. Right, right. That's what I was going to say. So this would be, if he's calling it a catcher's mitt, that's a metaphor. Okay. Similarly, as like or as. As a citizen. It's like a country. It is a simile. Flipping out pinballs, YouTube. Hey, I saw it past 5,000 subs. Oh, yeah, we did past 5,000 subs. Joel was really pushing it because he wanted to be better than my watch channel. That was his goal. I was like, Joel, you've been ahead of my watch channel for like eight months now. Joel is an ambitious and humble fellow. Well, he's very entertaining, and I'm very dry. I just get my digs in, and that's about it. Stay with the collection. That's actually doing very well. See? Yeah. Which you wouldn't think because, oh, my gosh, it's over 30 minutes. People want to see personalization on what you pick. I guess. Flip N Out Pinball did a YouTube gameplay of Metallica LE last couple of weeks now. So go check that out if you want to see what the beauty of Metallica LE is all about. And then we got new code. New code on all the games. How about that? Just all the games. Yeah. so update your new Stern code Dennis it the time of the show where we discuss and deep dive a brand new released pinball machine That pinball machine is Evil Dead created by Spooky Pinball Really? Yeah, the little Benton, Wisconsin company up north. Oh, wow. Well, I guess relative to where you live, but for me up north. This game was designed by Spooky Luke and Corwin (Bug) Emery, with emphasis on Luke this time around as the lead design. Code by Ben Heck, Corwin (Bug) Emery, and Hilton Jones. Art by Christopher Franchi. Music by Matt Countee Montgomery. Callouts, Bruce Campbell himself. Ash! Sculpts by Matt from Back Alley Creations. And the optional topper sculpt by Gary Tunicliff. From the Hellraiser fame. Yes, and other horror films. This game is coming out with just one model. Still calling it the collector's edition, but one model only. And, listener, that's because nobody really bought the other editions. See, Jersey Jack standard edition. I thought the Bloodsuckers did okay-ish on some of them. Not really. I mean, they didn't sell. It was like 20 to 1, if not worse. Yeah, it's just they didn't sell. This game is limited to 888 units. Wow. Okay. So I would call this a limited product. Absolutely. The price on this is under $10,000. By how much under $10,000? By a buck. Wow. By a buck. So tax isn't going to get you over that. Options for this game include not only the direct print butter cabinet, which is $1,499, but an optional interactive sculpted Cheryl Topper, which we will talk about in depth here soon. But that's coming in at $1,399. The game launch itself, let's discuss that. On Thursday, November 21st, we got a teaser and some additional art promotions for the game. So they announced what the title was going to be and gave you some eerie feelings as to the tone of the game itself. Also, later on Thursday, November 21st, we got an email error. What? I don't know. Did you hear about this a lot? I did not. So, Spooky Pinball, I think, had something scheduled to release, email-wise, to their customer base. Hey, orders are open. Here's Evil Dead. Here's some pictures, general, like, one, two pictures of it. And here's a description of the game with its features. Here's a description of the optional topper with a picture of the topper. Basically, the whole damn, they leaked themselves. Okay. And they misscheduled it, and it went out to the masses. The first experience that people had of this product was that. And then on Friday, because the plan was Friday, November 22nd, that's when orders were going to open up. You get the trailer. We got pictures that day. It was followed up by a featurette later that day, a topper trailer. There's a trailer just for toppers now. I love it. and then a Q&A stream that evening with Bug. Then Saturday, November 23rd, there was an extended cut featurette. And then they announced on social media that they already surpassed 500 machines sold. We also got a Cary Hardy interview with artist Christopher Franchi on Saturday. Then the following week, Tuesday, November 26th, we got a Cary Hardy interview with designers Bug and Luke, and we got the gameplay video from Bug himself. Two versions of that video, one without audio commentary, one with commentary. So that was kind of the game launch itself. Now, I was involved with the, I want to make this clear, I was involved with not the teaser. I did not do the teaser trailer. We did, myself straight out of the middle of studio stuff, we did the official trailer, sizzle reel for Spooky Pinball. We're contracted out to do that. And then we did the featurette video, the documentary interview thing. We did the topper trailer and the extended cut featurette. We also did some short form media there and stuff as well. We didn't take the official pictures, didn't do the teaser. There's something else we didn't do. But a lot of stuff went on behind the scenes. some limitations to the timeline of filming and editing, some interesting discussion on licensing, approvals, some limitations to asset usage or just resources in general to create some of these production pieces. And a lot of fun stuff went into it with my experienced dentist. And I would love to talk about that further. If people are interested, they can hop on as a club member of the pinball show, an official club member. You go to patreon.com slash the pinball show for this exclusive content, as well as a plethora, a cornucopia of other perks. That's this week. We're going to be covering that story. Oh, man. Wait until you hear about number three. Yes, I'm excited. So what was the reception of this game? Very positive. It was extremely positive. We know that for Spooky Pinball, probably, would you say it was their best reception to date? I mean. Initial reception. Yeah, you know, it's so hard. It's either this or Rick and Morty. Yeah, that's the thing. I'm kind of like, Rick and Morty was super. I mean, let me, I'm going to cop out. This is their best reception to a pure horror game. Okay. Well, Rick and Morty, we didn't really see anything. Everybody's reception was based on the theme. Right, right. Well, and a lot of, I mean, so that's where it's like none of this is about the gameplay, though, either. This is all about the theme, and more importantly, I think the theme integration. Yeah. So that, I'll give them that as well. is this has the – they've done some really interesting design stuff in the past, but I'd say this is their best received theme integration that they've ever had. Like this is the best integrated theme integration response I've seen since – I know it wasn't that long ago, but Labyrinth. Yeah, that's a good call. Also art, the best reception of art. I guess. The art's great, but Spooky usually has a really solid art package. I sometimes think it gets lost in the shuffle maybe because Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) is such a dominating force in the hobby. But, I mean, what was the last bad art package they had? That's true. Like, the play field of Rob Zombie wasn't the greatest. The sides of the cab and the translate were awesome, though. And everything else since then has been solid art, if not, like, I think I picked Spooky for my art layout of the year, you know, a couple years ago. Or Scooby-Doo, I should say. That was great art. Halloween great art. So, I mean, there's a lot. Yes, the art is very, very good. Some of this is I think there's a hunger for Christopher Franchi art in pinball, and we just haven't been getting very much of it lately. I think you're right. I mean, last year we had GTF again, another very good art package. And, yes, and Elton John again, another game which, when people pay attention to it, got praised. So it's tough for me to say that because, yeah, I think this art is great, and it really leads into the theme integration. But Spooky, they just don't have bad art packages. That's very true. So the reception, I think, overall was very good. We know that Looney Tunes' Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a good reception. It wasn't as strong. We know that Halloween was a good reception. Scooby-Doo was a really good reception. So all of that stuff has had good receptions. This one just feels a little different for some reason to me. Now, to be fair, maybe this is fair enough. I'm going to say, to be fair, Halloween and, in the case with Looney Tunes, those were split releases, though, where they were doing two different art packages and two different games at the same time with Ultraman and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So the focus was divided because of those splits. The Scooby analogy is a really good one to do. However, and I don't remember, didn't Scooby-Doo sold out really fast? And we ain't sold out here. Oh, Scooby-Doo. No, Scooby-Doo didn't sell out. Scooby-Doo still didn't sell out. No. Okay. No. But they were making twice as many. Halloween sold out. Halloween sold out. Yeah. But Scooby-Doo was like 1,900 and something. It was a lot of units. No, it was very amazing. It does seem, yeah. I mean, we aren't on that part yet, but them slimming down the count here was smart. I actually think they didn't slim it enough. And Scooby-Doo was made in, I mean, that was pandemic. Yes. That's why I thought it sold, because everything was selling out then. The nail on the head with the thing. But, you know, people were really excited about that. You know, I had that weird upper play field with the bookcase flipper and stuff. Like, here we don't have any of that weirdness, which I actually think is good because I think it's going to play better. I think so, too. Okay, as we jump into the art, we talked about Christopher Franchi. They've got him exclusive now, so we're going to see him on upcoming projects from Spooky Pinball. Your first reception, it sounded like a positive experience with the cabinet art, back glass art, play field art. Yeah. It's beautiful. One side of the cabinet is Evil Dead 1. That's the right side. Left side is Evil Dead 2. It's a really nice composition in the back glass to sum everything up. And then the play field itself, I just think he did an extraordinary job. This is the example. Remember we talked about on Uncanny X-Men where I'm like, I want like an enlarged figure somewhere. Yeah, you got Bruce right there at the left sling just staring at you. And it may be aesthetically the most beautiful mixture of line work, of color, of like the figure itself, the size of which he used as the bust. Like, it is a money shot whenever I filmed that lower third of the slide angle. Oh, fucking saturation. It was beautiful. That's a money shot art piece there. I also like, and of course, I get it. This isn't like a Marvel theme where it doesn't, but even John Wick had this, where this doesn't look like a bunch of, like, comic panels to give disparate art and define it. like, oh, well, I boarded it off, so this gets to look dramatically different than some other part. This all had to look integrated, and it does. And another thing where you can tell that Christopher Franchi has done a number of pinball machines before is that the art still has accommodated a great deal of information. Oh, yeah. Like shot information. It's well integrated with the inserts. Sometimes it seems like the inserts are asked to do a really heavy lift, and there's not very much descriptive text. And so I think here where you can really see that experience shining through is you get a lot of that, what you pointed out, like that fun, artistic flex down towards the flippers. But then as we move towards where the shots are, you see a lot more of the information actually being conveyed, a lot of words being used to explain what these things signify. So you're not having to go back and be like, okay, well, what is this? Oh, here are the inserts for the various multi-balls. and here are the, you know, there's an insert with texting that indicates this is going to be where the spinner is and when it's lit it's going to mean something. And I just, you know, like the extra ball shot's clearly identified over at the right orbit, so you know that's where it's at. You don't have to spend your whole time looking around for the yellow flashing light. Yeah, I like, he explained this on the extended cut of the featurette. He explained this as, and I like the term he used. He talked about artwork needing to market different shots. He said his artwork, his goal as a pinball artist is different than just being an artist because you've got to market the different shots is what you're talking about. It has to convey information in the artwork, not just textually, but also if you're going to hit the left shot into the woods, you should be drawn into art that messes into the woods into that shot, whether it's the plastic art, the play field art, or the surrounding decals on mechanisms, it should blend in and market different shots to tell the player exactly what to do. It also helps with theme integration as well. Yeah, I agree with him. And I think in a lot of other instances, we've seen requests that the RGB lighting do a lot of heavy lifting instead of having that in place. So true. So true. I do like, I think it was a really smart idea. If you can get an artist like a Franchi that can do everything, then it just feels cohesive. Thank you. It feels so cohesive because you've got him doing the play field, the plastics, the backboard, even the interior art blades, which he made like the walls of the inside of the cabin. Very smart. Apron art, cabinet. I mean, every piece of artwork he touched. So the cohesiveness is off the charts. It feels like singularly one world of that artist's perception of Evil Dead, and it feels really, really good. I even like, Franchi does this, and I don't want to point it out too much, but he does, he likes, and it fits this theme, because you get this whirling vortex of the intro of the films, and even throughout the film's subject, You get the swirling vortex. You get smoke. You get all of these, the circling, the book, the Necronomicon book. But it's almost like a swirling. It's perfect for Franchu to put his deep-cut tchotchkes. I just call them tchotchkes. Because he loves these films and IP so much that he knows individual things throughout the films that otherwise you wouldn't think of, but he can put them in there. like a picture of the laughing deer will be in there or the book in the bookcase that's Farewell to Arms. He can put that in there. But the swirling vortex really played well to his style of artwork. It's beautiful. Yeah. Another thing I will point out with what he's done here, which is a breath of fresh air for me, is it doesn't look like the entire art package had the saturation level turned all the way up to 11. Yeah, it's a lot of wood. Yeah, no, yeah, there's a lot of soft colors actually all throughout. It's sort of like you see the more saturated tones towards the flippers, and then as you move further back, actually, you'll notice it starts to, yeah, it starts to dissipate into more natural colors because of the wood and such. What he talked about though in the feature is one of my favorite parts of the feature, him talking about when you think about Evil Dead, the palette, the color palette, and the tone for the films is kind of boring. It's dull. It's old wood. It's cobwebs. It's dirt. It's dust. It's cellars. And you can't get rid of that. Like, you need to keep that. That's absolutely important to the IP. But you can accentuate around that with color, with shadowing colors. You have to bring fun into pinball, so you want to color it up. But he said it's very important that you don't get rid of any of what makes Evil Dead Evil Dead. I love that. I should have watched all of your features. I know. I watched the first part. Watch the extended cut. That's awfully less than 50 minutes. Well, it's nearly 20 minutes of unreleased footage. But it's released now. People are eating that stuff. People like it. I know. I know they do. They like to know how the stuff's made. I like the sausage, and it remains here. You like not knowing what's in sausage. I just want to taste the layout. Let's talk about the layout of this game. It's a wide body. We've got four flippers. More ramps may surprise people. I went and tried to count. I'm trying not to exaggerate, but just count main shots of this game, right? We are not going to call it a fan layout because it's not. It's going to underplay field, which just by default eliminates it from being a fan layout. The bottom third groovy flipper makes it. That's an argument to have. But regardless, if you're looking at main shots, main things that you can hit. I didn't even count drop targets individually. A bank of drop targets is one shot. The hand behind it, severed hand, is one shot. Left orbit is a shot, so on and so forth. I counted 17 main shots, not even including the lower play field. That's a lot of shots. It being a wide body. Because you have to count the pop-up dead-eye trolls, each being a shot. The seller being a shot. The lift ramp and the ramp both being a shot. That kind of 17 shot. There was a lot to shoot at on this game. It is a big old spread of a shot pattern layout with this wide body game. Doesn't look difficult to shoot. It's got double end lanes and such. I don't think it looks like a hard shooter at all. No. Well, the word I normally use when I say layout like this is safe, but I don't mean safe as in that it's going to necessarily be a long player. And, of course, setup makes a big deal. What I more mean in this instance is this was a very safe layout for Spooky to run with. Like this is not a polarizing layout. Yeah, most of your middle shots or most of your centered shots are middle or back of the play field. Side shots may come up a little bit closer, but that oftentimes is safer. So you've got a wide open area, which they did use for a lower play field in pop-up targets. So, yes, I would agree it is a safe-esque type of layout. And we sort of saw this move towards more traditional layout concepts with Texas Chainsaw and Looney Tunes. And I think it's the right decision for Spooky because, quite bluntly, I think their layout creation is one of their weakest company areas. I can see that. And so I think if you don't, I don't mean this to sound overly harsh, but if you don't really know what you're doing, it's better to get back to basics and look at what works. And these sort of, you know, I'll say fan-ish, these sort of fan-ish shots where they're more towards the back and reasonable placements that people are familiar with. show off where you can shine, which is your theme integration and all of that, and then just make sure the layout doesn't get in the way of it. I think with Scooby-Doo even, the layout was still getting in the way of the game, which had a lot of stuff people liked, but then they would play it, and that game played forever. And it was just, you know, I think this is smart for them. This is what they should do. As they get more experience, they can get creative again, But stuff like what Halloween did was just way too much of that. We wanted to know if we could. We didn't stop to think that we should. I think it's perfectly said. Yeah. And I like what they did with this is a very standard layout and a lot of things they pull back to. But there are some unique things. But still very standard. Like left orbit feels like, you know, like a Vuxhout or something. It's a 180 ramp that goes to pop bumper. So very unique, but still pretty standard. The right orbit can then feed left orbit, which I do like that overlapping design layout. It also has a back magnet that can feed a buck. But, again, very, very pretty standard layout type stuff. You get a shot up the gut monster bash-ish that can turn into an orbit shot. So we do have that with layout. Toys and mechs. There's a lot in this. This game's packed. Nobody can argue that. This game is loaded with mechs. Almost like Wizard of Oz-ish. I really think that. Hmm. I mean, it's got a lot, so I spent a while since I really thought about all of the mechs in Wizard of Oz. And they're not just mechs. They're sculpted mechs. Yeah. Substantial mechs. Well, that's what helps so much with the theme integration. Absolutely. The franchise art package is that this isn't a bunch of flat plastics. It's got, I mean, even just the little touches. But I think the main things that stand out to me about that are, obviously, the severed hand on the far left and the cabin in the upper right corner, back right corner. Those two pieces alone, they add quite a bit to making it feel like you're in the world of Evil Dead. Yeah, they are two iconic pieces from the franchise. You were talking about that cabin. That cabin has lighting features. It has a swinging porch swing that will stop the balls, and it's a locking ball mechanism back in the cabin. And it's substantial size, so it is like, hey, here's a main toy of this game. Same with that severed hand. We know it from the second film where he has to cut his own hand off, but the hand is demonized and it travels around and tries to kill him. That severed hand, very beautiful sculpt, and it's on this upgraded stepper motor, so it's going back and forth really, really fast, really slow. You're trying to hit it. That's awesome. And then the no-brainer was the cellar door with Cheryl popping up. But I like that it's this two-staged mechanism. It's like the attack from Mars drop bank that everybody loves. You hit those, and then if you hit them enough, then it lowers, and then you have a scoop behind it. Why don't we ever see that? There's a lot that can go wrong with it, I think. We'll see. Yeah, true. And then they play a little magic trick where you hit it into there, and it looks as if it's going down to the lower play field, and then you get a lower play field. People aesthetically like seeing a lower play field because it's fun to engage with different areas of a game and explore different areas. That's why they like Wizard of Oz. You can get two upper playfields. So you get a lower play field here, and it's a pretty fun little play field. You get loops and such, so it's pretty fun. But I think it was probably a thing, if I had to guess, where when you have Evil Dead, you have to put it in there. I mean, it seems like a decision driven by theme integration. That's like Shark Eat Ball thing. Like, if they didn't put a fruit seller in there. Why no Deadeye Eat Ball? Deadeye didn't need to eat ball. No. Yeah. Dead Eye does what it's supposed to do. Jump up, scare you. Speaking of, you've got two of them pop up, those bash toys. Mm-hmm. You've got, I like the whole shotgun thing. The whole boom switch. Oh, yeah, that's pretty clever. And, of course, over there you've got the anvil head, severed head. Yeah, you've got the severed head that spins around. But, like, Twilight Zone asked where two balls load into the shooter. But Twilight Zone didn't have two balls load into it, did it? Not that I remember. I thought it had, like, the Powerball side lane kind of thing. No, the Powerball just went back into the regular shooter lane. It just, you know, it would behave differently once you were in play because it wasn't magnetic. But I thought that was kind of cool. And, again, theme integration. Yeah, it's a double-barrel shotgun. You're going to have two bullets. You're not going to have one. So, yes. And then I love the, I thought a lot of pinball, pinball people will really like the shotgun shells because it's a crafting mechanism that is essentially, so I'm talking about mid-playfield to the left, listener, where when you hit the shotgun shell, it's molded, first off. It's not just a target, like a plastic. It's a molded shotgun shell. When you inject that in, you hit it in, it stays in for a little bit, or they can code it to where it stays in the whole time, and then it pops back out. Basically, they designed it, Luke designed it as a sideways drop target. He said the mechanism is very similar. It's basically a drop target to the side. You're right. No, I get it. Yeah, I see how that would allow the resets to work out. It's that kind of stuff that's just really smart to do. It doesn't take all this innovation and all this mechanics. No, it's just a different way to purpose something that fits your game. Very, very smart. And then, yeah, you said Linda switching the sculpted head. You got the apron tape player. Yep, and I was on a little try. I didn't notice that initially, but as I looked more, I was like, oh, that's actually kind of cool. When the multiball starts, the reel starts spinning. It's got a flasher under there. You've got the groovy flipper. It's a third flipper, but it replaces the right swing pop. What is it? Swing shot. Yeah, swing shot. It replaces that. I didn't notice it the first time I looked at the game because it's tucked away in that swing plastic. So it's kind of this hidden thing. I like that the featurette bug talks about, like, he went and took a shit or something and came back. Because they were having a hard time figuring out how, like, geometry-wise, that hand was not the easiest to hit when it was down low, when it roved down low. So they're trying to figure out how to design that. And then he came back from the bathroom, and Luke had, like, just pulled out the slingshot area and just put a flipper there. and he's like, it's a sling flipper and then Bug was like, okay. And they played it and it makes more sense geometrically because you can hit that big old hand a lot easier since it's a bit up further on the play field and clears that left slingshot. So it's functional too. I thought it was just going to be a cute little gimmick. Having said that, they did put it, Dennis, you know my thing. They put it on a separate flipper and I have to be consistent here because I have shit on Multimorphic over and over for putting different flippers on different buttons. To me, that's just not pinball. I think I get it. However, given where they placed it, people are so bad about it. I'll speak for myself. I'm so bad about stage flipping, for example, that that flipper is going to be flinging out every time I'm flipping the right flipper, and that's really going to disrupt, like, if you're getting ready to catch the ball on the right flipper when it comes out of that wire form, I mean, that other flipper is going to be up and in your way if you wanted to catch it on the lower flipper unless you're really good at staging, and people just aren't. I will concede to, based on the design and geometry of where they placed that additional flipper, sure. Yeah. It may make more sense. I hope that that choice was solely because of the geometric placement and not that they've decided, yeah, let's not have double-layered leaf switches. That's right. Stage flipping is what people expect. They didn't do it on the left. Did they? The lower flippers tied to the other left? The right flipper, yeah. Or, yeah, the left. Yeah, I think it's the left flipper. Okay. So, yeah, I think it was just they – I bet they tried it with one – this one, I'm going to make this stuff up. I bet they tried it with one button and they were just, like, screwing up their own. they're constantly flinging the ball into the groovy targets when they're trying to actually catch the ball down on the lower flipper to shoot a ramp, and they're like, this is not going to work. I did, so I like that they did program it to where you can go into the settings and put it on the right flipper. That's cool. Oh, okay. So you don't have to have it. I still can't figure out how to do it on multi-morphic, but that's a whole other conversation. Do you still have your P3? No. Oh, that might be why you can't figure it out. I did a video. You saw the video. Very clear. Okay, so the Groovy So I thought it was going to be gimmicky It's kind of fun to play with You're still expecting it to pop there And it doesn't Which kind of throws you You're like, I have to adjust that swing A dead sling for a deadite Oh, I see See, puppy It's interesting, though I don't like messing too much with the layout of that Italian bottom So I guess this is still an Italian bottom Well, I mean, yeah, because the Italian bottom actually isn't defined by the sling. It's just centered in lane. It's the ability to trap up. Yeah, it's the ability to have a lane feed to the flipper for a clean trap. I think the groovy flipper is cool how they stationed the wire forms to where you can hold the flipper up and it holds the ball. That's interesting. Yeah, and I know that this was probably in development at the same time. Yeah. It just feels straight up, took it from Jaws. That's what Bugs is like. He's like, I know we can't talk about it in the future, but that was the one thing that when they announced and showed Stern's Jaws, he was like, son of a bitch. Like, they're going to think I stole that now. Yeah, no, the development cycle had to start way too soon for it. But, yeah, people that don't think about it are going to be like, well, look, Spooky just was like, hey, this is an Elwynn thing. Let's do it. So they got that. We got a lift ramp with Scoop, so it's not just a right ramp, but it lifts up, and it's got Scoop under it. Very smart. Inline drop target bank A lot of people didn't see this But as you're going to lock balls into the cabin There is either one or two drop targets there That you have to hit down to clear that path first So there is an inline drop bank there Six drop target bank A spinner An orbit magnet This game's freaking load Rules and code I don't know yet I know there's eight modes Four from each Evil Dead film Whenever you do start the game, you can choose whether you want to start with Evil Dead or Evil Dead 2, Dead by Dawn, and then whatever move you want to start with. That's the modes that you're going to go through. Once you complete those, you'll probably get to a mini-wizard mode and then jump over to the other mode, a la Alien. Multiballs in this game, mini-wizard modes, wizard modes. I want to add, I don't know enough about the code and stuff yet, But I want to add that I do like the chances that they are taking already just announcing some of the stuff that they're doing, such as I'm going to call it Linda Trixie's. If you were to watch the feature, you would have you would have heard. I don't know about the Trixie's bug. Talk about deadites being tricky. If you've seen the Evil Dead film, listener, you'll know that swapping back and forth, like, it's so hard for Ass to chop, to kill his girlfriend because she's dead, but then she's not dead. She comes back and tries to, like, trick him, like, don't kill little old me. You know, I'm talking about this whenever she's like, don't kill me. Yeah, they do the whole, they put back on their human face. That's right. So, when that thing is spinning and it's trying to sweet talk you, it's going to tell you things like the ball save is on ash, but it's not. Like, even if it flashes and you drain, you're not going to save your ball. That's cool. It going to tell you hit the right ramp for a jackpot or to lock a ball It not going to work That taking chances And I know competitive players out there are going to fucking eat it up They're going to lap it up. They love that kind of trick. No, I love trick. I think, see, that's like unique programming. That's what pinball players want. That's why I play pinball. This is cool. This is more video game like. No RNG, predictability. That's what they want. Thank you. So I like that they're trying to lead you astray. I like that. Also, Bug talked about this insanity mode. In the film itself, on the second film, he's going crazy. And as he's progressing into further mania, he starts experiencing things within the cabin start interacting with him. Like the deer bust over the mantle starts laughing at him. The lamp will laugh. The bookcases are flapping back. Everything's laughing at him. And in this game, when you get to the insanity mode from the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead kind of thing, everything in the pinball machine will start going crazy too. The ramp flaps will flap up and down laughing at you. The hand will be laughing at you. Anything that can kind of move will be flapping up and down laughing at you. until you hit enough shots to calm it all down, power down mode kind of thing. Damn it, Dennis. That's exactly what I'm talking about when I'm talking about pinball moments. Now, we haven't seen it applied yet, so this is just no more than a theory, but conceptually speaking, that is aces for me as a pinball player. In the featurette, Ben Heck, also at the Extended Cut, he talks about his theory of programming and coding, and he likes staged modes, and I appreciate that as well, so that it's more storytelling within the mode, probably more linear, of course, but there are risk-rewards during each subset of these stages, but nonetheless there are completions based on stages of modes. I love that. Sound and call-outs, let's talk about that. They got the one and only Bruce Campbell to do the call-outs, and I thought to myself, well, nobody can complain now, But that's the one area that people are kind of mixed on. Have you seen this feedback yet? No. People are saying it's a little flat, his delivery of these lines. I mean, I hadn't seen other people's criticism, but when I heard the clips in the trailer and stuff, I was like, yeah. No, it reminded me back of Alice Cooper's flat delivery. I just, I don't know. It's real flat. It's real flat. It's Bruce Campbell. That's him. He's sarcastic. it doesn't read as sarcastic it reads as I'm reading lines and you didn't pay me very much oh they paid him a lot I'm just saying you don't honestly hear any inflection do you because I can't find it and I don't hear the sarcastic tone like I just said with you don't honestly Zach that's a sarcastic tone yeah but to answer your sarcastic question when I watch Evil Dead 1 and 2 yeah Yeah, that's what I get. It's not emotes. No, when he's going into madness in Evil Dead 2, he's emoting. He's not just like, I must be going mad. Look at these deadites. Groovy. Yeah, his groovy is not like, groovy! No, it's not. It's groovy. But the whole thing is like, he's very nonplussed about it. I thought he plays like the cool guy. Like, hey, what's up, babe? That kind of stuff. I didn't know he played that. I think he sounds like mildly just sort of confused at what he's doing. I don't know. And I don't think he sounds like, hey, yo, yeah. I mean, there's nothing. The good thing is. You don't even care about audio. Why are you acting like you care that his voice is in it? The good thing is probably just a poor job of the trailers. I think the good thing is that I've been able to painstakingly had to listen to every call out that has been recorded in this game. and there are a shit ton of them. The good news is these are some of the best scripted, dare I say, risque call-outs that I've ever heard in pinball. Hilarious call-outs. They're like Rick and Morty-esque. They've made me blush some of them. Man, who pissed in your Cheerios? Oh, wait, it was me. Hey, I keep that up. I'll make sure I'm your stepdad within a week. And she's back. God damn it, I need a sandwich. Don't go off all half-cocked, okay? Full-cocked. With your cock. Ah, good, I've been dying to get this off my chest. Girl, fuck yourself. Ah, eat boomstick, bitch. The Godfathers sucked. Long, boring, not enough boobies. I'm more of a roadhouse guy. Not the Jake version. fuck this book, fuck who wrote it, and fuck the evil demons it keeps putting in my life. That's a lot of fucks. So I think once people hear what all is in it, they'll change their tune. Remember I said that. Okay, what about the sound itself? I don't know. That's the one thing I'm like, I don't know. It's ooky, ooky, scary stuff. Whatever. I had a hard time when I was doing the trailer and stuff like that with just the background sounds and stuff. It's theme appropriate, but nothing stood out. Does Evil Dead really have a soundtrack? It's not an awkward soundtrack. It's not like they have a theme song that's recognizable or anything. No, no, no, no, no. The UI and animation. They did get a lot of film assets. That's a plus from both films. That's a cool thing. And then you get Bruce Campbell with audio. You get Bruce Campbell with video. Even their UI, I think it was smart for them to, if they didn't want to go into this, you know, JJP-esque type of, financially speaking, animation style, then they at least had Franchi do the animated Franchi's artwork. So at least you have the cohesiveness there. And then we need to talk about just the aesthetics of the standard that comes standard with this CE package on these games. What I want to point out is that I think a lot of people overlook and take for granted what you get in a package from Spooky Pinball in 2025 compared to what you get from other manufacturers. I really feel strongly about this. We just don't. This is a sub-$10,000 game. And, again, fair enough. But compare it. Let's do a comp here. Aesthetically speaking, metallic powder coat trim package. You get that on a lot of LEs from manufacturers. But they include the coin door, wire forms, apron, and speaker panel. I'm telling you right now, nobody else does that for coin door, speaker panel. Nobody does that. You get armor. You get that with Stern LEs. You get that. JAP doesn't even do that. So, etched armor. Magnetic art on speaker panel, apron, lockdown bar, coin door, et cetera. You get a screen-printed bag glass. You get a topper that comes free with all their games. Layered plastics, interactive RGB lighting, interior art blades already applied, speaker lighting, speaker panels, shaker motor, physical knocker, colored plastic protectors. For sub $10,000, nobody else is doing that. The closest you get, in my opinion, is barrels of fun. But you didn't get a topper. You got all Pretty much The just of all of that stuff too But And they were at 10-6 So I've got to offer Praise where praise is due You know for the pros and cons Of what people want to say about Spooky Pinball The one thing that I don't think people can say Is That they don't put value Into Their game I think they do probably better than anybody else And then let's talk about this topper This optional topper Dennis When you first seen it what were your thoughts It was cool That's it What do you want me to say Fucking groovy Is that not That's easily top three topper of all time All time To me it battles Black Knight If not beats it This may be the greatest topper ever made in my opinion Is there a better sculpted topper uh not that i can think of no is there a more theme integrated topper um mandalorian maybe because the hollow thing is used throughout the show and the head through the cellar it i mean they're like on par it's yeah it's a it's iconic it's an iconic part the most iconic piece of Yeah, it is perfection. It's damn good. All right, what about, sorry, everybody's going to get the topper, I would think, with this game. How do you not? Topper's a must. Even for the people without tall ceilings, they said they'll sell some kind of kit that you can, you know, tie it up somewhere else. Let's talk about initial sales of this game. Well, we know that after, what, a day or two, they announced they had over 500 sales. Yep. I would predict out of the 888, they're probably right around 700 sales at this point. That's pretty damn good. I was, they always ask, it's behind the curtains kind of thing, whenever we're up there filming and stuff, and just throughout the development, we're close enough to them, they'll ask our opinion about things like, what do you think sales-wise this is going to be, timing and theme and taking everything into account. do you think this will be a strong product, weak product, moderate product? And I'm always very transparent with them, and I tell them straight up not only what I think, but what they're going to experience because I think I'm pretty good at that. And I said I think sometimes they're too close to the themes because they're such fans of them. I told them that, in my opinion, Evil Dead, when it comes to choosing horror licenses, lends itself very, very well to pinball. So super well. But having said that, the theme in and of itself is not what I would call an A-tier theme in general. Is there a horror movie or show that you would say would be an A-tier? It would be very tough. Really, really tough. I don't think that there is one. Just because the genre itself is so... It's like a musical. It's polarizing. It's worse than a musical. It's like the, we've seen plenty of people because of their young kids and such, like they won't even want an Elvira game in because it's too risque. Horror is even worse because the tolerance for violence around children is even tighter than the tolerance around partial nudity. However, I think that horror works in pinball better than other industries as products, though, because of the demographic you're primarily selling to. I can kind of see that, I guess. I haven't really thought about how other industries might embrace her. I mean, I know there are people that, there's a whole horror art industry where people, you know, sculpts and figures and stuff. You know, there's like a Funko Pops for horror fans. So I don't know enough about that. This is smarter because it lends itself into fantasy as well. And any time you can blend fantasy into toys and such as pinball, it's always going to make more sense. I think something like this, to me, makes more sense definitely than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But I would argue maybe more than even Halloween. I disagree on that one. You have a more popular franchise with Halloween. More popular. It's the main differential. Yes. Absolutely. And there's no reason why, especially once you look past the very first Halloween, when they were like, oh, we've got to be like the other slashers and up the body count, that it cannot be intense like what we're trying to see here with Evil Dead. Pinball is supposed to be fast, fun, quirky. It's easier to interpret that with Evil Dead than it is the straight series Halloween. That's my argument. I mean, okay, but don't read too much into the speech. And we've seen plenty of music pins where everyone's like, I don't know if this music's going to work. It feels like it's too slow for fast pinball. That's true. and fine. That's true. So I would be a little cautious to lean too heavily into that. The bottom line, I think, is horror is always going to be a diminished popularity in pinball. We've seen it for decades and I think they've done pretty much the best that they could do with the hand that they chose to deal themselves. They've leaned into the theme integration. The feathered hand? Sure. They've leaned into the theme integration. So if you love horror, they've tried to make this a very difficult game to refuse. and what else could they do they can't broaden the number of people that will allow a horror game into their family's home while you limit yourself with the theme of not only horror but evil dead in and of itself you've got to check the other boxes and thankfully they checked toys and mechs they've checked art so those are the big ones we have to see when it comes to rules and code reliability we have to see I still think that they checked the box of call-outs and sound because they got Bruce Campbell, but people are going to have to experience more of that because you can only fit certain things into a trailer, and it makes no sense to use a call-out if they're shooting ramp. But people have to see that for themselves. But the aesthetics and overall package value of what you get, they check that box as well. But I told them, yeah, Evil Dead is good when it comes to the horror genre, but it's no Goonies. It's like, eh, but it's no Back to the Future. It's no Avengers. It's not that. Sales have been very, very good. Yeah, very, very good. So do you think they'll sell out? What's my timeline? Just ever? Sure, yeah, they'll sell out. There you go. Yeah, eventually. Will they sell out by summer of 2025? No. No, this is the window. You know, you tell me about how the tail falls way off. I think this is the window right now. The evidence is there on my argument. I mean, as other games come out, there's going to be less attention to this. So this is their time to strike. You sell the last 150 if that code shows up. That's it. I don't think the code's going to be good enough to move a bunch of units ultimately. Then I would say no, it does not sell out. And I might be wrong. My bigger, here's the thing, though, is I just, I have to, I feel I have to look at the track record. And so the thought's going to be, as they get to shows, that's going to be the next big show that it will be available at will be TPF. And so that's a good opportunity to try and move units. But by that point, if a number of people have these games, we're going to start knowing more about the reliability. And it's just been an area that they have struggled on for a long time. And there's a lot to break on this game. And I think a lot of people, if that circulates amongst the collector community, which are going to be the most likely to consider spooky, that could kill any additional growth in sales. You're absolutely correct. And what happens a lot of times with everyone besides Stern is, whenever people start playing it for the first time, that is their first impression of the code, and that will hold. It takes a lot to change the minds of that. Where on Stern, if you do that with John Wick, eight months later, once it's finally fleshed out and people start enjoying it and they're still doing Insider Connected, they're still building that game. They can still throw that game back on the line. So sales will still have a longer tail with the Stern game because it can redeem itself. whereas a Jersey Jack game or things like that, you've got one shot. And oftentimes, Spooky Pinball comes out with the game, and the first time you start playing it, the code is just not there, or it is glitchy. American Pinball does the same thing, and it's so hard to come back from that. So I would love to see it different. But at that point, sales fucking die, and they stay dead. Even if they are evil, they stay dead. Did they tell you what version the code currently is at? They did not. Okay. I didn't even, full honesty, I didn't even get to play this game very much during the filming stuff. So I couldn't even really tell you how it shoots. But we'll go into that on the Patreon thing. So that's Evil Dead. Evil Dead Pinball, I think, what a triumphant product for this company. I think it continues to point them in the right direction of where they're wanting to go. and with future things to look forward to. I think the big thing, my ending statement about this is this checks so many boxes. It makes people want a game even if they don't like the theme. That is a compliment that any creator should be looking for in an industry that's trying to sell products. So they've done impeccably well on so many of the things that they've created here with this Evil Dead. But, like, I couldn't praise them enough with how great some of this stuff is. What will break them is if this game breaks. It's going to come down to reliability, and it's going to come down to code. And both of those, if they're not strengthened and they're not strong, They will continue to have those notes about their company, their brand, and their products And we are seeing progress Scooby-Doo was a mess at times We've seen a lot of progress in Texas Chainsaw and Looney Tunes But in my opinion, not a big enough jump We need to see that jump Until they feel that jump, they're not going to sell out day one on stuff Unless they have just a huge steam and everything works out. But that's the thing that's going to keep them from, if they want to grow, that's the thing that's going to keep them from it. They've got to get that. And it's going to take a game or two to change that perception or to even halt that perception. So we'll see. Jersey Jack Pinball and the new Pinball XP system. They debuted this at IAAPA. You didn't go to IAAPA, did you? No, I've never been. I need to go. No, there's nothing there. There's roller coasters and carny food. Oh, okay. I'm going to go. So there was a link. Let's see here. Diverted River is a new company that partnered up with Jersey Jack to create and announce Pinball XP. XP, a groundbreaking new pinball experience developed in collaboration with Jersey Jack Pinball. So I'm on the Diverted River Technology website, and this is their press release. looking through this modern attraction perfectly suited for today's family entertainment centers. Yeah. That's all you need to read about it. This is not the answer that they should have been looking for. This is the Terre Haute, Indiana, right up the road from me. That's right. I know this individual, the CEO of this company. Okay, cool. Zach. Did he stand up at a wedding and, like, say? Zach Johnson. No, he's probably Zach from before and stuff. Oh, okay. Runs the Bank of Pinball. at the Bank of Pinball? Let me tell you why this is an issue. You already said it in the quote from the press release. Family entertainment centers should not be the focus of a Cadillac brand like Jersey Jack Pinball. They're too expensive to make a lot of broad-based... Like, them penetrating the operator market ain't happening with the abandonment of a standard edition. Like, they walked away from that. They need to focus on a home system that can compete with Insider Connected. But Jack, when they're He said he always wanted to do a ticket dispenser system in his games. And a ticket dispenser system does make sense for a family entertainment center sort of thing. But these things that are mentioned in this press release are stuff like, Pinball XP transforms our machines into a complete FTC attraction and includes digital tickets, progression systems, and spectacular presentation. The progression system thing, that's not going to be like leveling your turtles in Stern. I think the progression of the system is progression within the confines of the FEC that you're going and playing at so that there's an incentive for you to keep putting quarters in. The only problem is that this game isn't going to be at the FEC. You see where I'm coming? I know sometimes people do operate some Jersey Jacks, but you understand what I'm saying. It's a home market company. The $12,000 starting price point, and every operator under the sun, regardless of how often Jack will push back on them when they go and actually talk to them in person, will say that they're earning pretty much the same amount of money out of a Stern game that they earn out of a Jersey Jack, so why wouldn't they buy the cheaper game? The other thing is this. For our listeners who are confused as to what the hell we're even talking about. So they debuted this at IAP. It's a two-fold thing. First off, it's a kind of an internal operating system, this Pimple XP is, but it's also CreativeWorks is a company that's also working with them that sets up across FEC's family entertainment centers. They're operated across the country. They set up displays around some of these machineries. So what they had at iApple was five, I think five games, Jersey Jack games lined up. Each of them had a 65-inch display above it showing live play field action. Other key features of this include it's like a trust system that holds it all. Right. It's trying to make it so that it's the trust thing. It's like a turnkey. Right, right. Yeah. No, they've got it. Let me try and segregate the two things. the idea, like this thing that Diverted River has developed, it's not that it's not cool. It's a cool thing for an FEC. For an FEC, but you're saying it's not. Well, it doesn't solve anything. No FEC is going to pay. The rivers are like $100,000. Here are your size you wanted from me. Here are the size that you can clip out. Look, it doesn't solve anything about why JJP isn't an ideal product for an FEC. I mean, let's not forget that pinball maintenance is something that FECs don't want to do. They don't have techs on staff to work on pinball. It's hard enough to keep the crane games going. And so unlike an arcade game, which is pretty much fire and forget, pinball, as you know, as a distributor, takes a lot of work. Setting all of that aside, the biggest problem for JJP to penetrate the FEC space, in my completely non-professional amateur opinion, is the return on investment is not there versus other competing products. It's too expensive for how much money it makes per hour. Pinball is, it's sort of funny because it's an arcade game, but it's like, conceptually in the modern era, it's like the worst arcade game you could possibly think of. People get to play longer the better they do. In an ideal world, the games should go faster the better you're at. That's how most bar games are. The better you are at billiards, the faster the game goes. The better you are at darts, the faster the game goes. I believe that, not to cut you off, but I believe that pinball in the 21st century is a consumer home-based product. By and large, absolutely. And Stern's in the best position out of anyone with their very competitively priced Pro machines to penetrate operator and FEC spaces. And the FECs, they're not biting on the Stern stuff either. No, I think if you're wasting time focusing on FEC stuff, it's a happy accident if people are willing to. This pinball's not a coin-op game anymore, people. I'm sorry. It's because of the complexity of what is presented. It's presenting a physical video game. That's what it's doing. And there's a reason that FECs don't have full-blown fucking Skyrim video game systems because the environment is different. The goals are different. The entertainment goals are different in an FEC versus a home environment. You can break it down, Dennis, to that simplicity level. You can't ski ball. You roll a fucking ball into a hole and you get tickets. It's a finite end game. You get so many balls, that's it. Pinball is way too complex. Pinball is Skyrim. Like, you have to get through different levels and mastery. That happens at home. And it's just not as simple as billiards, even though it is physical. It is this very complex, why we all love it so much, it's a complex combination of physical and software-based. That's what it has evolved into, whether they want it to or not. Like, you're just not going to drive somebody's excitement well enough in two minutes in a public place. Like, what is the, I don't know. It just, you don't get the feedback. Like, Halo, Firestorm, Raven, or whatever it is, you've got big controller feedback, huge screens. You're, like, almost. Now it's immersive. It's immersive. You can't, not right now. Pinball is not going to be immediately immersive. And if it is, then you go to the cost versus the squeeze. It's like, okay, we did make an immersive thing. Look at the Wizard of Oz. Look, we did make this with the gods. That's fine. But it's more than two switches. And I'm exaggerating here. A skeet ball has got like ten switches. But, like, nobody wants to work on them. And it's a good point about the simplicity of the understanding. And that's where, well, I think, like, conceptually, it's a cool idea. Digital tickets added to pinball would make it more attractive in an NFC setting. But what's the ROI? Is the game timed? Is it still, like, people have to learn how to play pinball. It's there. Exactly. It's very easy to pick up how skee-ball works. Or pick up a gun and shoot the bad guys. Or throwing a little basketball through the hoop to get the tickets. FECs kind of divide into two areas. One, the smaller areas, those really immersive arcade games that maybe not even are giving tickets. It's just about that. There's holy crap. There's no way I'm going to have the Star Wars pod in my house, so I'm going to play it here. And then there's the bulk of the floor space, which is ticket redemption stuff. And it has to be stuff that plays quickly because the more people you get through it, the more money that's going into it. And the players have to feel like they have a reasonable chance of getting the tickets. And pinball's hard, especially for people that aren't familiar with it. It's a tough seller. So, yeah, concept-wise, reading this press release, this is a cool idea, but I don't see how in any way it really helps Jersey Jack Pinball make money. I think that I like their concept of the whole trust system display because you have to get out of people's minds, non-pinball people, when they see just the physical form, the silhouette of a pinball machine, their brain already goes to dated old game. It just does. So having any pinball machines, even if they're lined up beautifully with RGB lighting, It still makes people go, that's old. That's an old game. So you've got to jazz it up. All these FEC games are all packaged in a way that are trying to lure you in like a slot machine or like a casino machine. They're trying to pull you in. And pinball is just always going to be hard to do that. It's one of the biggest things that I think a lot of us who have been in pinball for even just a little while lose track of that a lot of the general public thinks is that pinball is random, totally random. Like there's no control whatsoever. And it's almost, it's happenstance that you get a few flips on the ball. Kind of like how it was like in the wood rail era where a lot of times the balls are house balls. They're never going to come down and touch the flipper. And that's not how it is now. But a lot of people, they just, they don't think it can be mastered. What little they think about pinball, whereas with pinball, they understand. If I figure out the right arc and the right motion with my hand and my arm, this ball will go where it needs to go. Other key features. So this is skill-based digital ticket awards. You get XP progression system with leaderboards, seamless integration with major cashless systems, full compatibility with the Diverted Rivers to COHA platform. That's interesting. Jackpot ticket opportunities for outstanding play. And they're selling this as a big old set of five games. Now, I'm going to play devil's advocate here really quick. What if I'm Jersey Jack Pimble? and none of this really cost me anything. Sure. If this diverted river comes to you or CreativeWorks and they say, hey, we want to run with this, would you be willing to partner with us to sell five of each of these machines to FECs at a discounted rate? We'll deal with the rest. We'll deal with the setup. We'll deal with the operating system. We'll deal with all that. It doesn't cost you guys a dime. It's just we want to partner with you to be that company. Yeah. Sure. Okay. I mean, if you're directly at that point, you're like, okay. So maybe that's it. Maybe they're like, we don't have the resources to make our own online connectivity, so maybe we can see what they can do with this. If they do well, then we can hire them on to do our integrated inter. Okay. Maybe. Maybe that works. The other stuff. Go ahead. I was just going to say, I just. No, that's fine. I just. Here's the problem that's a Jersey Jack specific problem. They abandoned Scorebit, which I understand them. I understand why you're doing it, but it did alienate some people. And we see the success in the home environment and in the location environment of Insider Connected. And everyone is asking, Jersey Jack, you present yourself like you're the number two pinball manufacturer in the world. Where is your thing like this? And we know people love Insider Connected, and this is so not in that direction. And maybe they're working on their version of an Insider Connected thing, but when you hear pinball XP, the first thing I thought was insider connected. I did too. Because I'm imagining my own at home progression, my own achievements. That's a good name. That's a good name. And yeah, it's an excellent name. And then I read this press release and I'm like, Oh, this is so clearly just for FECs. I lost all interest. I honestly annoyed that we talked about it for more than two minutes This is not the XP we looking for It be an interesting story to cover over 2025 We see how it goes No, we won't talk about this again. We may not. Earlier this episode, Dennis, we talked about some exclusive content that these individuals can hear as an official member of the Pinball Show. All you got to do is go to patreon.com slash the pinball show. So we talked about the behind the scenes with the evil dead, especially our time up there when I was filming. And we're going to add to that. We're going to give them more this week as well. We have part of the perks of being a member is at the Nordman level or the Screaming Goat Club level, you can ask a designated question to us, and we'll cover it. The Pinball Show will cover it. We are going to answer one of our club member questions today as part of this club membership. So you can go over there and listen, but I'll at least read the question because it's like a three-parter, but we'll answer them. But it's very interesting from Eric. This is something that I get asked a lot too, Dennis. He said, is it cool or not cool to have cup holders installed on your personal home pinball machines? And if it's cool, do you then install customized ones or just the generic ones? Also, what is your drink of preference while playing pinball? So three very good questions And I don't know about you my friend But I have a very strong opinion About cup holders on pinball machines Okay Well we'll get into that The suspense is killing me It is Number three will amaze you I do want to kind of know what your drink of preference is While playing pinball So we'll cover that all over on the exclusive content page. And become a member. Help us out. Let's talk about some Black Friday sales. Are you a big consumer of goods on Black Friday? I don't go out and buy on Black Friday, but I do try to between the Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday? Yes, Cyber Monday. Make all the purchases that I need for Christmas, all the ones that I can. Mostly because I want there to be plenty of time for the shipping, and I don't want to stress about making purchases. And as Zach knows, when we were getting ready to record and discussing the preliminary aspects that we do before we go live with the show, I was doing Black Friday purchases. We were during our production meeting. Yeah. Black Friday. A lot of sales in pinball that I had not seen in other years, which was nice to see, I guess. Like American Pinball, they had, well, they got pinwheeling, and they have all these deals always. So very similar to that. They did have a Black Friday sale. So nicely done, American Pinball. Flipping out pinball, not to show my own company, but we not only had deals, Dennis. We had some steals, some Black Friday steals, almost like they were stealing it from me. A number of things, art blades and shooter rods that were just fractions of what they were supposed to cost. I even had a deal on, like, Led Zeppelin. I've never seen it this low. We had a brand-new in-box Led Zeppelin Pros we were selling for $49.99. And free shipping. So, come on. I know a lot of people cover Black Friday and stuff. I didn't see any of the Flip N Out Pinball stuff on there. But, man, we had some deals. Which goes to show you, you've got to follow Flip N Out Pinball on social media to get some of those deal opportunities. We had a, what was it, like a Guns N' Roses and the Low Sixes. Just crazy deals. Jersey Jack, speaking of, we were just talking about XP. They had Black Friday specials. And they were having like $1,000 off of some of their current games. Elton John and Guns N' Roses, Toy Story, Godfather, $1,000 off? The only thing that I will say, because it was a good deal. I mean, come on, who doesn't want $1,000? The only problem with this kind of stuff is whenever you do set that standard, it is kind of hard to go back. Would you agree? Well, what do you mean? I mean, people are used to seeing a Black Friday sale. I paid $12,000 for a Godfather LE now when they had the taste of $11,000. An Elton John Platinum Edition. I think for those that... $11,000? I mean, at this point, how many people are going to buy a Godfather without a discount? Well, technically, we're not allowed to sell them low. I understand, but I'm just saying. There's plenty of things where, and it's not fair because it's a lower dollar thing, But it would be like, you know, if I needed more LEDs, it's like I know Comet's going to do a Black Friday sale, but do I want to wait or do I want the bulbs? That's the other thing you've got to be careful about. We were talking internally at Flip N Out Pinball about being careful with this because once you set that precedent, it is hard. And if somebody goes all in on Black Friday stuff, then people remember that, and they'll just wait for the next year to be ordering stuff. So you've got to be careful. So that's the only hesitancy I had with the Jersey Jack and the American Pinball and some of the game sales. The other thing was this. I don't know if people are aware, nor do they really give two shits, but when Jersey Jack did this $1,000 savings, who is those savings going to? Because I will say that for anything in inventory, because that's my job as a dealer, I'm supposed to inventory games for manufacturers. That's why I'm supposed to be held in high regard with my business partners that are manufactured, because I inventory their products. However, situations like this, you're actually punished for doing your job. That is, we weren't comped for any Black Friday specials. So when they took $1,000 off of my Elton John's in stock, that Elton John was, you know, I had to sell it $1,000 cheaper. I wouldn't comped $1,000. That was just out of my pocket. So they so kindly Voluntold us To just eat our margins For their promotion So You know again If you're going to stick me At least I get a heads up on getting stuck That's all Sometimes the company is just kind of frustrating And I'm being very transparent It's just kind of frustrating At least American Pinball When they do the pinwheel We need to, like, if I as a dealer show them proof that I sold a game during that, then they'll comp me whatever that was because they're the ones running the promotion kind of thing. But, so, that was tough. Now, we still could buy new products from them at $1,000 off, but it didn't take into effect what we were doing our jobs and getting punished, in my opinion, for it. How do you feel about it? Do you feel what I'm saying? No, it's, yeah, no, I understand that. It's, yeah, it should be, I mean, I see where the struggle is because the solution is to allow it to be an opt-in thing where it's like, hey, if you want to take advantage of this, you ain't getting, you know, one of two things. You do the American pinball approach where they'll compensate you or you see them say, you know what, we'll let you go to this price below what was agreed as minimum pricing. But that's up to you. And you're eating it if you do it. But we will allow it. but we're also going to compete against you and sell them direct too. Well, in that instance, maybe I not do that. Yeah. So, again, it's not – I just, at the end of the day, I like – I don't know, man. I'm just a good old Indiana boy. I just like when business arrangements are fair and they're taken into consideration, all partners involved. Is that too much? I mean, that's just the way I live life. Like the whole golden rule thing. As a, you know, here's the thing. That's not business, though. I know. As a consumer, I don't care. You don't care. I know. That's a you problem. Some people care about the gears, though, and the sausage. No, they don't. No, they do. They might be interested in knowing about them, but they don't care. Yeah. They don't care. They don't care. The slippery slopes of pinball. Speaking of deals and giveaways, they might care about this, Dennis. we here at the Pinball Show are announcing our holiday giveaway 2024. I'm supposed to cue music at that point. I don't know what I'm going to play. We've got one hell of a deal for you. How can you argue against free? People will find a way. We're going to do a huge giveaway Dennis for our listeners, our supporters, our fans of the Pinball Show with prizes totaling over $2,500. What the hell is doing that? What I mean See Papi on that We're going to be giving away the likes of a new Stern topper A $1000 Stern Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles topper A Mandalorian Translight How about Mandalorian Shooter Rods Avengers Interactive Shooter Rod Art Blades from our Avengers Infinity Quest A Beatles Banner Godfather Banner Jurassic Park Player Match Flipping Out T-Shirts And the coveted pinball show Decker D.D. That's a lot of stuff. And we have to declare that the Flip N Out Pinball is supplying me prizes. Yes. Sponsored by Flip N Out Pinball. Sponsoring the prizes. Not sponsored by Dennis. I don't have a din-din-din. Where is he? All you've got to do, there's some rules to this. It's super simple. If you want free stuff, just do this. First off, please just follow and subscribe to the Pinball Show on Facebook, Instagram, Patreon, and YouTube. Just follow and subscribe on those things. We would very much appreciate that. It's like a side note thing. And I said Patreon because people can follow us on Patreon as free club members, can't they, James? Yeah, the Patreon added that maybe a year ago? Yeah. I don't know. A lot of people do. I never, I mean, we don't usually talk about that because there's no money involved. But yeah, we've got hundreds of those people. So jump in there and become part of the club as a free member, if anything. So follow us on that. Also, just based on the sponsorship stuff, follow Flip N Out Pinball on all the socials, the Facebooks and YouTube and stuff, too. So here's what you're going to have to do. All you've got to do is record an audio segment and submit it to us at thepinballshowatgmail.com. See, that's it. And you get two options as to what you want to submit to us. Limit it to 30 seconds. Anything after 30 seconds is what you're going to pull. Yeah, that's not a choice. If it's over 30 seconds, it's deleted and you're not entered. You've got to be efficient. You can follow the rules. You've got to be efficient. So two options of what you can submit as an audio recording. And have fun with this, people. This is free stuff. This is all a celebration of pinball and us all being in an industry and a hobby collectively together having fun. Number one, you can submit to us an audio segment of you giving a 2025 pinball prediction. These are all subject to us playing them on a future episode. Important terms, though. Yes. So share the episode when it comes out because we will want to drop those in and then people can hear you. on the big screen. It's not the same screen. This is a radio thing. It's not really radio. It'll be fun to see if somebody's submitting their 2025 pinball prediction comes through. And if they do, maybe we give them a shout-out. And if you're wrong, then all your friends will remember and they'll touch you. It's very exciting. So you can do that. You can submit an audio segment of that and you'll be entered to win one of these random prizes. Or you can submit an audio segment that just simply answers this question. This is fun. If you were a Pinball Show Screaming Go Club member, what would you be and what sound would it make? Oh, then is that my good idea? Bumblebee. Yeah, Bumblebee. It can't be Bumblebee because it exists. Yeah, or it can't be a bomb kit. No. Jack the Watt. Yeah. Or the shaker. It's the most coveted option of all. Or it could be a red trimmer. We'll have to see. I hope not. So mean. May not make the show, but we'll have to see. So you can submit, if you were a Pinball Show Screamin' Goat Club member, what would you be and what sound would it make? Have fun with that. Or the other option is submit an audio segment of a 2025 Pinball Prediction. So submit those again to thepinballshow at gmail.com. You doing so will make you eligible to a random drawing of any one of those prizes. Just to make it clear, I think people probably understand, but the prize is random and the names will be randomly drawn. We're not going to judge which is the best call out or anything like that. Absolutely. So we're going to make it easy. We're going to make it fun. Follow us in all those places as well to help us out. And you know what? Just to be a pal, this isn't a requirement, but share this show so that other people are notified that they can be eligible for winning some cool prizes this holiday season. Again, this is the Pinball Show holiday giveaway. sponsored by Flip N Out Pinball. Prize totaling package over $2,500. This is great. It's going to be a lot of fun. We thought about calling this Massoween. We didn't. Give-a-ween. I think we should call it the Give-a-ween. Give-a-ween. Give-a-ween. Give-a-ween. Holiday Give-a-ween. That's definitely what this is. See, puppy. Screamy Goat Club, we're going to thank some people. We just talked about these wonderful. These have become idols In the pinball media world People know the Bobcat They know Rodney And we appreciate you Rodney Thank you so much for the continued support Bumblebee They know the likes of Bumblebee Bag on or off head Thank you Steve Steve I was in your neck of the woods Do you think Steve will ever do music For a pinball machine I don't know. I hope so. Maybe he has already. We don't even know it. Rob, I got to personally thank Rob. Remember during our last happy hour hangout, I was complimenting Rob? Yes, I remember. I should say that, Dennis. Two days later, Amazon delivers a package. And you know exactly what it was. It was hair product. Yes. That's a little inside thing for us Hangout members. But, yeah, so thank you, Rob, for that. You are our nicely manicured panther. The falcon. We got to thank Frankie, baby. Frankie, is it getting cold up there? Do falcons, they do okay in the winter, don't they? I think so. I think they do. I think their hate keeps them warm. Thank you so much, Dave, for the continued support. Shaker Motors, shake it up, baby. Shaker motors never get too cold because they're always moving. You think you got a hymn in Metallica? I think so. What about New Spooky Evil Dead? It comes with a shaker, so I was just wondering. Maybe next episode we'll talk about which one of these people got them a shaker. Fox, Joe Fox, we love you, Foxy. I thank you for your continued support. Back to you, too. Charlie. Charlie rang some bells. We need another pinball machine with a bell in it. Yeah, we do. Absolutely. I still don't know why people have not integrated bells. Did you see on that? We didn't even talk about this. Oh, my. Did you watch the Evil Dead gameplay videos? No. Oh. I've been screaming at those men over there. Why? For years to integrate a knocker into the code of games. Like, American Femal is the only people that kind of dabbled with that a little bit in the past. But, like, full-fledged. Go all in. It startles people. Oh, my God. So, when you're playing different modes, it's almost too grotesque. But, like, whenever they sever off, I don't know why we're saying this in the middle of Screaming Goat Club. I'm sorry, guys. But when they severed Linda's head and he's taking it to this bite in his hand and he's whacking it on the walls and stuff, They integrate the knocker every time it shows on the screen, whack, or when he's hitting it with a hammer and stuff. Oh, so cool. Nice job, Spooky. But we need bells in games. It would be so simple. I've talked to manufacturers. I'm like, why don't you integrate a little three-piece bell system or multi-bell system? Like, it's right there. It's so simple. They complain about, oh, it takes up cool space. Oh, God. It's called a sister board. A daughter board? Is it a sister or a daughter board? That's a question for your dad. What's the difference between a sister board and a daughter board? Also, thank you, William, the dude. I'll bet you caught $4,000. Wonderful woman. We're all very fond of her, very free-spirited. Brian can't watch, though. He has to be hungry. That's marvelous. I just got a big Lebowski. in on trade this last week of Flip N Out Pinball. And I thought I priced it kind of high, selfishly, because I wanted to keep it for a while. And damned if it didn't sell. Hmm. Guess I'll have to wait longer for another Lebowski to come down. Oh, well. William, enjoy your Evil Dead. Hop on over to Discord. That's part of the perks of being a member of the Pinball Show Club. I've done the research. daughter boards are boards that connect to the motherboard to expand functionality sister boards are less common and may refer to a similar or complementary board uh but is not directly connected in i'm gonna pretend like i know what you're talking about thanks for that research right so a board that is similar to another board but not connected to i've only ever heard daughter boards so i had to look up sister board because i wasn't familiar with that expression it's not used much, at least not in the U.S. The daughter boards are the boards that plug into the main board. They're like red-headed stuff sunboards. Nobody cares. You know what they do care about? Pinball! Marketplace! The Bobcat Techno Board! I like your style, dude. I was hoping we'd drop it because this episode's running long. Christmas edition! Running out this week is Evil Dead, how can it not? Sales are up, features are up, everything's beautiful on it. Okay. He's got a lot of features. He's got a hand. Sure, I know. This is so tiring. How many people do you think will put their sack on that hand, take a picture, and send it to a friend? I'm just asking. None. Plus or minus five? Zero. The line said it's five. I don't want to see a picture of a people. Do not send it to me. Do not send it to me. Oh, man. The things you can do. All right. It's there for dad. Spooky pinball. Congratulations, guys. You did what you set out to do. And objectively, you're trending up in a big way. We didn't even talk about timing of the release of that. Come on, baby. That timing was impeccable. They just carved out their little spot in a whole calendar year that nobody touches. That's brilliant. You're doing a lot right over there, Spooky Pinball. All streaming up this week is Metallica LEs. I'm still getting messages. Look, this is like the only product out right now that's not only retaining value, but increasing in value. On the secondary market, people are selling those at $16,000 to $18,000. That's significant. And guess what, people? That will come down. I guarantee you. So right now is about the height of what you're going to be able to sell one of those for. So if you're willing to buy one and you're patient, hold out. You'll save thousands of dollars if you hold out for a month or so after the new year. but if you've got money and you don't give a shit, YOLO buy that shit and play the hell out of it it is fun, all streaming up this week is a big one, it's Slash GNR Slash oh, okay you don't know where this is coming from, do you? I have no idea, I'm wondering did he like take some little drummer boy and play his rendition of the ballad no, no, no, no, no I still can't believe We didn't got to stop. Slash is turning up in a big way. He is a saint to me at this point. He is in the higher echelon of who I hold people in high regard in my life. Slash is everything. I'm a big Slash fan now, and it's because of this. People would be, I don't know if they'd be surprised or not, you cannot believe, listener, the lengths that some people in pinball will go, Pinball Media, to avoid crediting myself or my work for anything in this industry. It is comical. I wouldn't expect anybody to pay attention or even notice it. But the people who do it, they know who you are. I'm winking at you because I think it's cute, too. So it is hilarious the lengths that people go just to avoid even mentioning the existence of anything that I've done, which is awesome. That's fine and dainty because numbers don't lie. I don't want to report the fact. But when that happens, and then somebody like the rock and roll icon of our existence, Slash, chooses to share something that I've created on social media. Oh, dammit. I'm turning up as Slash. He's turning up in my heart, a little bit in my pants. He's probably never going to share something now again after hearing that. Thank you so much, Slash, for sharing. I think it was the Evil Dead Topper trailer, the reel. Shared it on TikTok. Shared it on Instagram. Shared it on X. Shared it everywhere. That thing has been viewed now over 100,000 times in the last day or so. Talk about exposure for a little company like Spooky Pinball. He has the ability to showcase to the world. wide exposure to how awesome this industry, this hobby is. Do you think he listens to this show? Absolutely. Really? Absolutely. He's probably a Din Din fan, but fuck it. Whatever. I don't think so. Thank you, Slash, for restoring my faith in people. Thank you so much. Hey, I thought about sharing it. You at least acknowledged, you know, that it existed. Jesus. Man. I gave it a like. People are so rough. Don't get me started. Training down this week, unfortunately, in Pimlamo. Can I say, man, slash thank you. Training up. Fuck. Love that guy. Unfortunately, training down this week. Foo Fighters LA. All right. Look, I don't want to report this. I just got two in on training. People love Foo Fighters. I like mine. I got mine. I like mine. One of the most unique funds. Is X-Men sabotaging its own predecessors? I can't even explain. My explanation for this is simply the following. When push comes to shove and you see a market, a secondary market that continues to solve and price-wise, the one thing you're going to see take a hit more than anything are those subpar themes. And it's just as simple as that. Because you can't argue with the layout of Foo Fighters, the artwork, the code. You can't argue with any of it. It is one of Stern's greatest. But the theme is maybe one of their least strong. Interesting. Were you also surprised when you heard the There Goes My Hero song and realized it wasn't actually about a sandwich? There goes my hero. Down with my tummy. I still don't know what hero is. A hero? Hero? Well, that's spelled different. That's G-Y-R-O. That's Greek. Hero sandwiches are not heroes. They're two different things. I don't know what you're talking about then. You don't know about a hero sandwich? No. You've never heard of a hero? Is it pastrami? No, no, no, no, no. I got to look up exactly so I say it right, but it's sort of like a deli sandwich. AI, which we always trust the robot, says, Hero sandwich is a large sandwich made with a long roll or a small loaf of bread split lengthwise and filled with meat, cheese, and soup. So think like Subway. Okay. It's a foot long. Yeah, but hero. No, hero sandwich. I thought you were saying gyro. All right. No, hero. I think it's from New York is where that terminology comes from. I'm not positive. But no, gyro. And that's because I actually called them gyros. But then when I lived in New York, there was a sign at one of the Greek places, and it actually just said, it's actually pronounced ye-ro. It helped me phonetically. Well, launch out then. And speaking of New York, that's a destination you can visit in a mode of Foo Fighters. That's true. I'm trying to wrap it here. And the Foo Fighters LE, they're going for about $10,000, so $3,000 under MSRP. Beautiful game. Fully loaded game. I hate that it's training down, but numbers don't lie. I can only report the vaccine. Also trending down this week is location pinball. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh. Business agreement. So we could go down with everything, but we're not. It's the holidays, Dennis. So I want to give more till the week this week. Bye, bye, bye. Courtesy of flipping out pinballs at T-Doll. You ever play that little Gottlieb Masters? Yeah. My brother-in-law actually really likes T-Doll. Not a bad game, actually. It's got a lot of charm. It's got a lot of charm. Fun to shoot. Pretty much beat it. All in one. Every time you play it. Five. That's pretty fun. Pretty fun. I'd like to see a rules overhaul now because it's charming. How long I got leaves. Could have been better if they'd had more time to work on the rules. Not that I want the email, but I just want to know how to shut that motor off in a track mode. That little, yeah, the little groundhog up there. Yeah, yeah. Or the gopher. I think he's a gopher. But he just, every minute, I'm like, well, no one of those motors don't work on anything. So we got it teed off. That thing was super clean. We had it for like $3,000. I'm marking it all the way down. Holiday special deal of the week, $2,399. What? That's ridiculous. I actually had $2,499, but I messed up, and I'm not going to edit it out. So I'll just keep it $2,399. Get the funk out of here. And as always, I'm just here to report the facts because numbers don't lie, neither do we. I'm Pinball Market Trance. Dennis, how can people catch you? If they want to email, they can at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com, and I will check that. Oh, my gosh. Maybe. And if you want to support us, all you've got to do is follow us on the pinball show. It's a holiday give-a-ween deal. Or no, what is it? Yeah, it's give-a-ween. Give-a-ween. The holiday give-a-ween. We're going to be giving a ween of over $2,500 worth of prizes. Remember, all you've got to do, you don't have to do anything crazy. Just submit an audio segment to us. giving us either your 2025 pinball prediction, it could be anything, or if you were a screaming goat club member of the pinball show, what would you be and what sound would it make? Submit that in. The deadline is, that's the trick to you. You've got to listen to the whole episode. 13th, December 13th. Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th. By Friday the 13th, December 13th, submit the pinball show at gmail.com. You can email us at the pinball show at gmail.com as well. All the socials, Facebook, do that. Do that. Help us out. We're giving a ween everything. Straight down the middle, we did the recent Evil Dead launch stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Worked my little dick in the dirt doing all of that stuff. Had a good time doing it. Never want to do it again. Sponsor plug. This is the time where I tell everybody that the sponsor of this show is proudly Flip N Out Pinball. When I buy my pinballs, then I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. From toppers to play TV, I've got it figured out. Flip N Out Pinball, out, out, out. When I think of pinball, I think Flip N Out Pinball. Flip N Out Pinball, out, out, out. When I buy, buy, buy, I buy from Flip N Out Pinball. Buy, buy, buy. Product showcase this week for Flip N Out Pinball and the Pinball Show is the Star Wars comic editions. We still have some spots left for the pro or premium. Yes. We also have spots left for Evil Dead pre-orders. Get yourself an Evil Dead pre-order and the topper pre-order. You're going to have to have it. Metallica Remastered Premiums, I shit you not, people, they're in stock and they're ready. Like, I can ship one today for you. And with flipping out pinball, it's free shipping right to your door. Who's going to argue any of that? Dennis said Bruce Campbell would argue it, but it would sound more like this. Groovy. The Beatles, Gold, and Black Knight Pro, pre-order them today because they're coming this month. If you want to get on the next list for JJP's next game, Stern Pinball's next game, Barrel's next game, I can't wait for that one. All you got to do is email me at Zach, Z-A-C-H-I-F-L-I-P, the letter N out to pinball.com. We've got avatars in stock. We've got Pulp Fictions. We've got Cactus Canons. We've got Jurassic Park Jaws, Godzillas, Foo Fighters, John Wicks, Avengers, Iron Maids. I don't know if we have any ledger up on pros left. Looney Tunes, Big Buck Hunters, Toppers, whatever. It's here. It's FlippinOutPinball.com. Thanks for your continued support, especially during the holiday season. Please keep us busy. Keep our small business running like a well-oiled machine. Out of the woodwork and into the frying pan. How's that go? Yeah, out of the woodwork. Flip N Out Pinball with Friends. Go give Joel a follow on Flip N Out Pinball's YouTube channel. He's been playing the Metallica L.E. And I don't know what to give him this week. We're kind of out of new releases. I can't get Evil Dead yet. What do I give him? Appa? Do I have him play Appa? Looney Tunes? Funhouse? Maybe he knows. I don't know. What to take from the main? And Dennis is going to teach you people something. Yep. Just always remember, folks. Groovy. Shoot the ramp. Watch out for the deadites. Give a ween. And always practice safe pinball. I was never good at goodbyes, so fuck off. I can't believe I can't sing anymore, even for a Christmas special. I guess we've heard no Christmas specials. You can always drop it in and post and we'll stop you. And then I'll mix in your reactions and sides that I've compiled over the last... We don't have any samples of meantime.