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Episode 92 - Zombie TBLs

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 41m·analyzed·Jul 15, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Dutch Pinball settles lawsuit but early backers likely won't recover investment as promised.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss Dutch Pinball latest newsletter update regarding a major lawsuit settlement with ARA, significant personal tragedy involving co-founder Yop's terminal cancer diagnosis, and the company's plan to resume production. The hosts analyze the implications for early achievers (pre-orderers) who paid $8,500, noting they were excluded from the 40 refurbished machines now priced at $12,500 and sold through Cointaker and Nitro Pinball. Both hosts express deep skepticism about Dutch Pinball viability and the likelihood that early customers will receive their games at the promised price point.

Key Claims

  • Dutch Pinball settled their lawsuit with ARA and agreed to pay ARA in exchange for receiving all Dutch Pinball-related machines and parts stored in ARA's warehouse

    high confidence · Official Dutch Pinball newsletter update read by Dennis, directly quoting Barry's statement about settlement agreement

  • Yop, Dutch Pinball co-founder/associate, has terminal metastatic cancer with no treatment options available

    high confidence · Official Dutch Pinball newsletter: 'the judge ruled in favor of Ara...multiple metastases, and the doctors indicated there was nothing they can do at this point'

  • Early Achievers (pre-orderers who paid $8,500 directly to Dutch Pinball) were not given right of first refusal on the 40 machines recovered from ARA

    high confidence · Dennis's analysis citing Cointaker clarification: 'the early achievers were not given a right to rebuy out of this 40 unless they happen to also have a deposit'

  • The 40 recovered machines are now priced at $12,500 through Cointaker and Nitro Pinball

    high confidence · Dennis citing Cointaker post: 'The cost for the games, of which there are 40...is now $12,500. They are sold already.'

  • Dutch Pinball intends to deliver machines to early achievers while simultaneously selling new machines to generate liquidity to avoid bankruptcy

    high confidence · Official newsletter: 'The only way to get things moving again is to deliver early achiever games parallel to selling new games to customers'

  • Dennis and Tony have been among the earliest voices predicting Dutch Pinball's path toward failure

    medium confidence · Dennis: 'I think we were some of the earliest voices noting that this company is not on a path of survival...we've been pretty accurate on this one'

  • Early Achievers originally paid $8,500 but are unlikely to receive machines at that price point given current financial circumstances

    high confidence · Dennis's opinion: 'Barry is presenting this still pie-in-the-sky notion that everyone who pre-ordered is still going to get their game for the $8,500 that they paid. This is not going to happen. I don't believe.'

Notable Quotes

  • “Following this awful news, Yap and I discussed what we would do with Dutch Pinball and his involvement as an associate. We decided that it would be in Yap's best interest to step away from the company to avoid a complicated situation in the future.”

    Barry (Dutch Pinball, via newsletter read by Dennis) @ ~25:00 — Official explanation for Yop's departure from the company amid terminal cancer diagnosis; indicates preventative legal structuring

  • “I contacted the person directly involved without attorneys and after a long discussion and some negotiations we have for the first time in years reached an agreement.”

    Barry (Dutch Pinball, via newsletter) @ ~27:30 — Claims breakthrough in legal dispute by negotiating directly; marks significant shift in litigation strategy

  • “Because I'm not sure they have the information on who all is an early achiever. And it's not really on them to ask for that information. And the reason why I'm noting all of that is because Barry is presenting this still pie-in-the-sky notion that everyone who pre-ordered is still going to get their game for the $8,500 that they paid. This is not going to happen.”

    Dennis @ ~50:00 — Explicit rejection of company's financial promises to original investors; frames situation as false hope

  • “Like we've always said, like I've always said, Dutch is done and the early adopters are getting f***ed again, continuously.”

    Tony @ ~45:00 — Direct statement of core position on Dutch Pinball's trajectory and treatment of early investors

  • “they're getting the machines done from random Joe China company that has never made a pinball machine before. And who knows what kind of quality is going to be rolling out of the factories.”

    Tony @ ~47:00 — Expresses concern about manufacturing quality from unfamiliar factory (likely Zytec reference)

  • “I don't know if Zytec will even deal with them because they aborted working with Zytec once the lawsuit came from Aura. And so Zytec might be a bit pissed that they did all this prototyping and probably didn't get paid for it.”

    Dennis @ ~52:00 — Identifies potential additional complication: manufacturer relationship damage and unpaid prototyping work

Entities

Dutch PinballcompanyBarrypersonYoppersonARAcompanyCointakercompanyNitro PinballcompanyZyteccompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Dennis characterizes current trajectory as 'false hope' that will damage customers more emotionally than bankruptcy; advocates for transparent closure rather than prolonged zombie operation

    medium · Dennis: 'I think this is false hope, and it strings people along, and I think it damages them more emotionally later than it would...the best thing...for Dutch is to declare bankruptcy and close'

  • ?

    business_signal: Dutch Pinball's settlement requires payment to ARA while simultaneously relying on selling new machines to generate liquidity; early achievers deprioritized in favor of distributor inventory to fund company operations

    high · Newsletter states 'The only way to get things moving again is to deliver early achiever games parallel to selling new games' but 40 recovered machines sold through Cointaker/Nitro at higher price; early achievers not given right of first refusal

  • ?

    community_signal: Early achievers vs. later investors conflict crystallized by distribution of recovered inventory; early supporters systematically disadvantaged compared to new customers entering through distributors

    high · Tony: 'Like we've always said...Dutch is done and the early adopters are getting f***ed again, continuously...These machines that they paid for didn't go to them'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinside forum reaction reflects deep skepticism and callousness toward Yop's diagnosis; at least one post questioning cancer's legitimacy; community fractured on Dutch Pinball credibility

    medium · Dennis: 'there were not many, maybe just one that I really remember distinctly where someone essentially said, I don't care. You don't have to care, but...I don't even believe he has cancer'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.305

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, July 14th. This is episode 92. I am Tony. I am Dennis. Hi, Dennis. Oh, we didn't even plan that. No, we don't. We've known each other too long. Too long. So people ask me all the time, what does Tony do? Does he really just work all the time? And I say, yes, he does. But what's happened since the last episode?
0:46
I think. I know I've talked about it with you. I might have talked about it on the podcast. I don't remember. but I had picked up a little end table at a garage sale that matched an old antique leather top table that I had. And I used to combine that with a new lamp my wife got me for Father's Day and the Lazy Boy that I got from you to create a little reading nook. Okay. And that's been there. I'm pretty sure I've talked about it. I'm not positive. I don't remember. It's been a long time. I don't think you did on air. Yeah, I can't remember. I talked to so many people about stuff. Yeah. There was a problem with my reading nook. There's two problems with my reading nook. One of the problems I have fixed is my reading nook took what was my pinball space. Right, but you don't currently have a pinball, so that's not a crisis. It's not a crisis. The other problem was it turned out that my 32-inch TV, where my 32-inch TV was setting, wasn't big enough for where my reading nook was for me to sit in the Lazy Boy and actually play games on the TV. Right, you wouldn't be able to read any of the menus. Because I couldn't read anything. I couldn't tell the UI or any of that stuff. So I did last weekend the only thing that was the possible answer for a problem like that. I went out and bought a 50-inch 4K TV and put it on my desk instead of the 32-inch. So now I can see and do everything fine because, I mean, that's a decent upgrade in television. from a 32-inch 1080 to a 50-inch 4K. Yeah, that's a pretty big upgrade.
2:23
And you know how many games I've played on it? Probably zero. Tetris. Well, but now you can see each individual line of the block. You're probably much more accurate with this degree of sight depth. Yes, I'm so much better at Tetris. That would be my thinking. But yeah, no, I've played Tetris on it so far. And I did what I almost always do when I set up something like that and try it out for the first time. I watched The Martian. Oh.

  • “I think this is false hope, and it strings people along, and I think it damages them more emotionally later than it would. It's the rip the Band-Aid off, don't slowly peel it, and we'll get to experience every little hair coming up with it sort of thing.”

    Dennis @ ~55:00 — Advocates for company bankruptcy over prolonged false hope; characterizes current approach as harmful to customers

    • Big Lebowski
    game
    Dennisperson
    Tonyperson
    Mr68person
    $

    market_signal: Dutch Pinball framing as victim of circumstances (Yop's cancer, ARA lawsuit) while maintaining forward-looking messaging about production; hosts interpret as deflection from accountability for early business decisions and lies

    medium · Dennis: 'we've been some of the earliest voices noting that this company is not on a path of survival...from the get-go when we learned that they lied about the PCB board issues'

  • $

    market_signal: Distributor-controlled inventory (Cointaker/Nitro holding 40 machines) has priority over direct pre-orders; manufacturer-distributor relationship dynamic favors cash flow over customer commitment

    high · Dennis: 'the early achievers were not given a right to rebuy out of this 40 unless they happen to also have a deposit on what would have been another gain'

  • ?

    community_signal: Barry's decision to bypass legal counsel and negotiate directly with ARA suggests either desperation or recognition that legal process is untenable; tone-shift toward informal resolution

    medium · Newsletter: 'I contacted the person directly involved without attorneys and after a long discussion and some negotiations we have for the first time in years reached an agreement'

  • $

    market_signal: Recovered machines now priced at $12,500 (40% increase from original $8,500 early achiever price); price increase shifts burden onto later investors while early backers face extended wait with no price guarantee

    high · Cointaker clarification: 'The cost for the games, of which there are 40...is now $12,500. They are sold already'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Big Lebowski production remains indefinite; company promises 'very positive' calculations but cannot provide timeline; settlement with ARA is precondition to any production

    high · Newsletter: 'At this point, I can't give the exact planning yet, but as soon as I do, I will communicate this'

  • ?

    product_concern: Manufacturing quality concerns regarding Zytec factory's capability; Zytec previously abandoned Dutch Pinball prototyping due to lawsuit; relationship status unclear; potential delivery of inferior product compared to original ARA machines

    medium · Dennis: 'I don't know if Zytec will even deal with them...Zytec might be a bit pissed that they did all this prototyping and probably didn't get paid for it'

    • 2:47
    And... It's nice. Nice. HDR? Yeah. I figured at this point. Yes. It's pretty prolific at this stage. Yeah. And they're affordable now. Yeah, it's not like Bob's brand TV. It's a Vizio. I mean... That might be what mine was. I don't remember. Whatever mine was, it was a Christmas gift, whatever was on sale. Yeah. I mean, I'm not able to go to like a Sony or a Samsung. That's just crazy. I mean, that's like pinball machine money there. But it's good. It was on sale. I got a real good price on it, so I was pretty happy with that. The other thing is it's work-related, but it's going to sound like stuff people have heard before, except for it's me this time instead of you.
    3:30
    And it's not nearly as off-putting bad to a start. We had a superintendent retire where, with your situation, it was a non-continuance of a contract. Right. And I was asked to take over as the interim superintendent until they can hire a superintendent. So I am now officially, as of tomorrow morning, the interim superintendent. Cool. Congratulations. Thank you. Hopefully I'll be able to remove the interim. Hopefully. After the interview processes are over. But we're running it. It's running for about a month. Okay. Yeah, that's pretty standard. Yeah, we've got a closing date. There's a closing date at the beginning of August for the position. So I should know by the end of August, one way or the other. So, yay. Yeah. Now I get to do even more work because I still have to do my old job. Yeah, being an interim is actually probably just about the worst thing. I can't remember the last time I was so stressed as I was when I was interim. Now that actually learning this new job but not as interim was easier than being interim. And I knew what to do as interim because I knew that place inside and out. But it was just still doing the old job on top of it was very – and they were not quick. So they did not just like, oh, we're going to get this job listed and we're going to have it open for a month. My last day of work was when they finally contracted with an entity to go about and do a hiring. They still don't have their new person in place. They have them picked. They start September. So it's been, what, nine months? it wasn't like October or November last year? They formally voted to not renew the executive director's contract in mid-October. Yeah. They put me in as interim in mid-November because they wanted to just pay him and not have him work anymore after that point. They were running out his contract, basically. And then I took the job that I now have. I accepted it in mid-February because they still hadn't started a search and I didn't know if I was going to get it or not. And it's mid-July and they still haven't started the person. Right, right, because, well, they tried to hire someone, and then that person, they couldn't come to an agreement on the contract, so then they had to go to their second pick, who didn't have high demands other than they needed, like, over a month still with their current employer, or wanted over a month. So I think technically they're starting right at the end of August to get the insurance kicked in, but really it's of September 1. Right. So, yeah, it's been and they've known since August or September that they weren't going to renew the prior person. It's been about a year since they knew and they just drug their feet. It was it was not ideal. Yeah. But this happens with volunteer boards. I mean, yeah, I can. My new volunteer board is much, much more enjoyable to work for. At least the executive committee. They're engaged. So it makes my life easier. And thank you for listening to the podcast. Yes. Thank you for listening to the podcast, everyone. A few of them know I do podcasts because sometimes I give a presentation and my personality or how I present in personality, they go, why do you do it like the way you do it? And I say, podcasting is why I do it this way.
    6:47
    Podcasting. This is like, I know what the people want. Unlike Zach Minney, I know what they really want. They want whatever I'm serving them, except when they don't. And then they write in and they tell me, I don't like what you did, Dennis. And I go, okay, that's good to know. I get that too so there's my exciting news yes that's pretty exciting see it wasn't all work it wasn't all work I do work I have to admit I put a lot of time into work I have to let you know because well I'll touch on it here in a moment during my intro but so yesterday I went to a pinball party an area Jeff C hosted he called it his random gravity arcade party I wasn't able to attend because of my work. Yeah. Jeff, he's known in the community. They might not know that they know him in the community, but he's done some color DMD colorizations, I believe multiple. So a lot of people – I'm throwing my notepad everywhere. So a lot of people have seen his work, but I'd only ever been to his house once before years ago to consider a trade. I had a game that he was thinking about getting, and he had a game that I was thinking about getting. And so he had me come to take a look at the game at that point. So his lineup was significantly different than then.
    8:09
    He's got a lot of very high-end pins. So he works on them and makes them look really, really nice. So there wasn't a single pin there that I would look at and go, that's a player's condition pin. It's not all send them out to high-end pins and have them redone. He does them. Yeah. But you've got the, you know, so he has the A-list Williams games. He has some of the most popular EMs, things like that. And so I got to play Guns N' Roses, the non-Jersey Jack version, because he had it. He has a room which was like the, I almost thought it was the non-Williams room, but it was actually a mix of like Daddy East games and some of the maybe less popular Williams stuff. He had a Jackbot, so I finally got to. You got to play Jackbot. Yeah, I can't remember. I think I've played it before. I thought we played one as a group at Texas like the first year. I got a little bit more time. He had a Capcom Flipper football, which is the weird soccer game. So that was really cool. One of the things that you would have found cool was one of the area players, Mark M, came up to me and said to let you know that he went and bought an air fryer because of what you said on the last episode. And he should be happy with it. And he loves it. It's amazing. It's one of his best buys he's ever done. Okay. Just in case you're listening, Mark, just to let you know, I learned that 390 degrees for three and a half minutes, perfect English muffin pizzas. Put a little pizza sauce on half of an English muffin, your toppings, cheese, put it in there, three and a half minutes. It comes out perfect every time. There you go. Okay. He probably will listen. Air fryer cooking. He was looking for more Air Fryer pinball podcasts. Yes. I said I would let you know. Maybe the Eclectic Air Fryer podcast. Maybe that's the next one we need to look into.
    10:05
    Let's see. Game-wise, I played not a whole lot of, and I streamed both of these. Don of Gaming on 10, he recommended there was a game that was, at least for a little while, free on Steam called Kabounce. It's a pinball parkour game. I would describe it as Rocket League pinball. Okay, well that doesn't sound horrible. So I tried that out. Did you yell parkour? I did not, and that's probably why I only barely won. And mostly because of my teammate. But it was... I don't know if it's a good thing for streaming. Probably, because Rocket League is a good thing for streaming. I don't know if it's a good thing for me mentally, streaming.
    10:42
    Because I did it for a while, and I needed to go to something lower key. You had to go vent the rage. Yeah, and then there was another game that I saw that Steve Bowden had shared on Fun With Bonus called Demon's Tilt, which is a cross between pinball and a shmup. And it's still an early access game, which I don't normally do, but it was on sale during the Steam Summer Sale, like a 20% off. It's like $12. It's just one table, but it had multiple levels, and you're like fighting these demons, hence the name Demon's Tilt, and you kill one, and a new one can appear, and there are attacks that you maybe don't want to shoot your ball into because then it will kill the ball momentum. and it's got like 12 or 15 flippers or something, and it's just amazing. Yeah, it's weird. And that's a lot of fun. Actually, it's crazy, but that's been a lot of fun. And then the only other thing in terms of introduction that I would say is another fun with bonus share from a couple weeks ago, though I think the video is a couple months old. There's a YouTube channel called ALUX, and it's where billionaires, Tony, go to get their ideas, if you didn't know. I didn't because obviously I try not to drop myself down to the billionaire level. It's a little low for me. I understand. But it was shared so that people who were familiar with pinball could go and appreciate the top 10 most expensive pinball machines in the world. Which I watched the video and I was not impressed. When Avatar is your number 10 game on your list, maybe you didn't do enough research.
    12:18
    I'm just saying. Maybe they had a version where they actually had James Cameron come in. They didn't even say, like, Ellie, new in box. They didn't say any of that.
    12:34
    Number nine, Attack from Mars remake, which they then listed for more than it costs to get an Attack from Mars remake. So, again, they didn't say new in box. They had an instance where they said new in box. So that's why I'm qualifying that they're not even clarifying. You could definitely get a used one for less than they listed. They didn't say if it was, I think maybe they did say it was the LE model, but still, it's like, even at the price they listed, it wouldn't be a top 10 expensive pin. Right. So anyway, so it was a mess. So on the Facebook thread that Steve had created, I made a very, I thought, reasonably polite post saying that it was the worst pinball video I had ever seen.
    13:20
    Politely. Yeah. Well, basically how I just described it. You're like, no offense intended, but. No, I don't qualify it like that. I mean, this is like this video. I think I said this video is terrible. It makes the WatchMojo top 10 pinball machines video look like it's worthy of a Pulitzer. I think that's basically what I said. But I didn't say that I didn't call the person who created it names or anything. Someone replied to it. I'm assuming the creator. I'm assuming because I don't know. It's more fun. Sometimes now I find that when I open my mouth and I, you know, it's always just like talking into a microphone. And then I forget sometimes that people are listening who might actually care about what I'm talking about or, in this case, type about. And he basically said, well, why don't you do your own video if you're so cool? That was the tone I read in it. And I said that I wasn't cool enough, so I wasn't going to do it. So that I'm not a liar, let me clarify. What I meant was I wasn't going to actually do a properly researched video of the true top 10 most expensive games. I don't even know where I would start. And I don't think I would enjoy the project. But what I will do is I will take your hard work and then just make a parody of it and make fun of it because it was so bad. So that's what I did instead. So on our The Eclectic Gamers Podcast YouTube channel, one can go and experience the top 10 possibly most expensive pinball machines, of which I have redubbed the video that Alux provided. I've also shortened it significantly because I built it around how long I spoke.
    14:59
    I think I use a combination of four to five different accents throughout because I have no consistency with it versus Alux's text-to-speech, which was very consistent and very odd. to listen to.
    15:12
    So anyway, that's out there. There will be a link to both videos in the show notes. There's a link off of our YouTube video to the A-Lux video so people can go back. I'm not trying to steal their clicks. My video is very different.
    15:25
    It's better. I don't know if I'd say better, but it sure ain't worse, I'll tell you that. I also, though this is under my YouTube page, but it's been shared in the Kansas City Facebook group. I had Artie from who owns the 403 Club, which we talk about a lot because it's a major pinball destination here in Kansas City. He after he saw the my Alux parody video, he said he wanted a commercial for the 403 Club. So I did a 30 second commercial spot as a joke. But then he shared that out. So that's out and around, too. So I have a link in the show notes to that, too. People want to see it.
    16:04
    A little bit of a redo of one of the accents. A little bit of a monster truck channeled there at the end. You know, like you do. So that's what I've been doing over the last couple of weeks.
    16:15
    And I saw on Facebook the other day somebody had your face on a T-shirt. Oh, I wasn't going to talk about that. Yeah, that I believe is known as Chris the Pinter, who comes into our Twitch channel. You remember our Twitch channel, don't you, Tony? Yeah. Yes, our Twitch channel. He comes into the Twitch channel from time to time. He is, he's called Chris the Pinter because he was at, he's the guy who was at Texas Dresses Willy Wonka. You remember him? I remember him, yeah. Yeah, we had no idea who that guy was. We're like, who's this guy walking around as Willy Wonka?
    16:50
    And so the Pinball Nerds podcast, he was functioning as their intern at one point. I'm air quoting, intern at one point. So he was going by Chris the Pinter because he was the world's best Pinter was the idea. So anyway, he apparently is a listener of the This Week in Pinball podcast. And as you know, because I know you listen, Zach Minney, who is the host of that show, has been threatening for quite a while to do a Market Trends t-shirt with my face on it. Which I keep telling him, I'm not giving you permission to use my face on a t-shirt. One, because I don't really want to see my face on a t-shirt. And two, I don't like Market Trends, so I sure don't want to be shown that I'm trending up Market Trends. No, no. I'm not going to trend up that made-up segment. And so anyway, some people have been creating joke example shirt images for a while and putting them on This Week in Pinball's Facebook or in the pin side thread and all of that. And so apparently Chris made his own, I think with Sharpies, and took a picture of me sneering. It was a very, very not so good picture of me. Not really any of them are good, but that one was exceptionally good. It was such a sneer. Normally I smirk, but apparently I found one where I just flat out was sneering. It looked like I had palsy on half my face.
    18:16
    I've been walking around Southern Fried Game Room Expo, which has been going on the last few days, with it on.
    18:24
    I saw it was shared on Emoto Arcade, so I guess if you want to see it, I'm not encouraging this sort of thing. I had a few people reach out to me and say they were so glad I was such a good sport about it. Like, I could do anything if I wanted to. What am I going to do, fly out to Georgia and take a shirt off this Ryan Reynolds lookalike wannabe? That's what someone said. His face looks like Ryan Reynolds. That would be hilarious. You could get the whole thing going like the Ryan Reynolds huge jacked man rivalry thing that they've got where they're always playing stuff up and this and that. It'd be hilarious. Yeah, I don't think I need a nemesis. Not a pin turn, that's one. But anyway. So, yeah, so people are wondering. Yeah, that's what that's all referencing. It's just yet another inside baseball joke within the podcasting world, basically. So thanks for bringing that up. I'm so glad to talk about it, Tony. I figured you would be.
    19:21
    So we're going to move on to happier news. Happier for me, less happy for everyone else involved in pinball. and by that I mean we're going to start with a Dutch pinball update.
    19:34
    It's the favorite pinball player beater people. That's an interesting way to express it. So let's start with the information as we know it currently. So I'm going to thank Mr68, that's his handle on Pinside, for sharing this information. I do have a link to this specific post in the show notes. I believe this came out as a newsletter update from Dutch Pinball to those that are on their newsletter. I don't know if it's just their early achievers, which is what they call their pre-orderers, or if it's a broader group. It doesn't really matter. It's going to be a bit of a lengthy thing, but I'm going to go ahead and read it out.
    20:15
    It's been a while since our last update. This is Dutch. This is me in my Dutch voice, for which I apologize. There have been a lot of things going on. I will try and address everything in this update below. First of all, I'd like to address the health of my colleague and dear friend, Yop. As you all know, last year, Yop was diagnosed with, treated for, and then cured of cancer. Unfortunately, a couple of months ago, a new scan showed the disease was back. The new scan showed multiple metastases, and the doctors indicated there was nothing they can do at this point. I won't go into all the details, but you will understand I was and still am devastated by this news. I can't really describe how much this sucks. Following this awful news, Yap and I discussed what we would do with Dutch Pinball and his involvement as an associate. We decided that it would be in Yap's best interest to step away from the company to avoid a complicated situation in the future. The paperwork for this was taken care of last month, and now Yap is no longer officially involved with Dutch Pinball. I know you are all waiting to hear the verdict of the court case with Ara. Unfortunately, the judge ruled in favor of Ara. Now, I can go on and on with the details, why the judge decided this and how much this sucks, etc. But right now, this is what it is. And besides going into appeal against this ruling, we can't do anything about it. I have discussed all the details with my attorney and the time it would take to go into appeal. He told me it could easily take another year. Waiting another year after all this time is really too much for me right now. After all things that have happened and also the terrible news about Yop made me decide to try something else to figure out this debacle. So once again, I've tried to come up with a solution to settle things with Aura and finally get this over with. I contacted the person directly involved without attorneys and after a long discussion and some negotiations we have for the first time in years reached an agreement.
    22:07
    As you will all agree, this is great news. But there are still some things to take care of before we are completely out of the woods. The settlement we agreed upon means that we have to pay off ARA, and in return we will receive everything Dutch Pinball related that ARA has stored in their warehouse. A number of finished and unfinished games, and the complete inventory of parts. Besides that, the court case will be voided, and this means there will be no more legal issues to prevent us from continuing our business and start building games again. First, the Big Lebowski Pinball, of course, and hopefully many more beautiful games in the future. One of the most important things to make Dutch Pinball a viable business again is liquidity. The only way to get things moving again is to deliver early achiever games parallel to selling new games to customers. I know this means you still have to wait a bit longer, but it also means that, against all odds, you will receive your game. Along with my accountants, I am working on a prognosis slash forecast how long it will take to do this, and our first calculations are very positive. At this point, I can't give the exact planning yet, but as soon as I do, I will communicate this. I understand this is not the most ideal solution for EAs, but otherwise Dutch Pinball would most certainly go bankrupt, which would inevitably have resulted in nobody getting a game. Well, I didn't trip over that as much as I feared, but I am a professional reader. So, Tony, that is the update that comes, according to Mr. 68, from Dutch Pinball. Additional minor, well, short things to say, but additional details that can be helpful to understand. Cointaker weighed into this thread. The cost for the games, of which there are 40, 35 of which are Cointakers, five of which go to Nitro Pinball for the Canadian market, is now $12,500. They are sold already. and I believe the people who had deposits with Cointaker and Nitro got first dibs on that quantity. So for those that don't know, early achievers were paid in full directly to Dutch Pinball, I believe in all instances. $8,500 was the price for them. After that was set and they were selling spots, Cointaker and Nitro were, at least on the Cointaker side for the US, it was $10,000 to get in on a big Lebowski, $1,000 refundable deposit. Those deposits never went to Dutch Pinball and you could get the money back anytime you wanted. Cointaker held the money and I believe Nitro did the same. So those people who had deposits were given right of first refusal with the understanding that now the game is another $2,500 on top of what the original quote was based off of this. So the early achievers were not given a right to rebuy out of this 40 unless they happen to also have a deposit on what would have been another gain. So just some clarification regarding that. So now it's discussion time. What are your thoughts? Because I need a drink because I just read like five paragraphs worth of information that was condensed into two. And you did it beautifully. Not perfectly, but closely.
    25:17
    First off let go with what I think is probably the absolute most important thing out of the whole thing is Yop and what he dealing with and his family dealing with because it's hard to deal with stuff like that. And best of thoughts and hopes. We know how it goes.
    25:39
    Yeah, I mean, based off of this, he phrased it. Yeah, based on it's just English isn't the first language. So Yop has terminal cancer. That's what he's saying. Yeah, that's what it is. I mean, I just didn't want to just ignore that. No, and there were, of course, fitting your stereotype of Pennside, there were not many, maybe just one that I really remember distinctly where someone essentially said, I don't care.
    26:09
    You don't have to care, but the way they were, they were, I don't care. I don't even believe he has cancer.
    26:17
    That doesn't surprise me off the inside. And it's like, okay, let's set that aside. I know you and I, I'd say especially you, have been very, very forthright in constantly pointing out that Dutch Pinball is a lying company that lives off of lies. I don't see a point in lying about this. So let's set that aside. This makes no sense for a lie like that. It's tragic. And we can segregate that tragedy from the rest of this. Why? Because we're going to talk about the future of the company now. And clearly, Yop is no longer affiliated with the company, ostensibly because of the cancer, which I think is true. Yeah. I think that they decided so that there wasn't an ownership issue after Yop dies that they handled the paperwork now. That's my read off of how he phrased it. Yeah, that's how it felt to me, too. But Barry's still involved, and so there's still a Dutch pinball on paper. On paper. So moving past the cancer discussion elements, what are your thoughts about this, the lawsuit and the plan? Do you have your notepad? I do. Oh, okay. Okay. Here's what it amounts to. Like we've always said, like I've always said, Dutch is done and the early adopters are getting f***ed again, continuously. because these machines didn't go to them. These machines that they paid for didn't go to them. They weren't even given the option to pay extra to get these machines. These machines all went to Cointaker and Nitro.
    27:52
    So, yay for all of those people who came in later, the people who actually propped the company up in the beginning, got f***ed by the company once again. There's no way around it. And if they do, and that is a huge bloody F, If they do ever get their machines, instead of it being the Aura machines and the early production machines from a company that is more set up into it, they're getting the machines done from random Joe China company that has never made a pinball machine before. And who knows what kind of quality is going to be rolling out of the factories. So not only are they looking at not getting what they originally paid for, but they're looking at getting something that has a very large chance of not being in the same quality zone of what they had originally paid for. Unless they've changed factories again. I know they keep changing factories, last time I heard, and I've not followed because as far as I'm concerned, anybody still involved with Dutch is just in a horrible place. They're, I mean, anyone who still has faith in this company, I've got a bunch of stuff I want to sell you. Like, seriously. I've got great ideas.
    29:14
    Why don't we talk? yeah and well i mean it's been a while since we really talked about dutch pinball so i think it's probably helpful to go back and touch on this i'm not a huge fan of doing the i told you so thing but so far i feel like everything we've called on dutch pinball has basically come to fruition we've been pretty accurate on this one we're not always accurate we've been pretty accurate on this one. I think we were some of the earliest voices noting that this company is not on a path of survival. No.
    29:51
    Really, from the get-go when we learned that they lied about the PCB board issues to buy time because they were in conflict with Aura.
    30:00
    And basically, I agree with the sentiments you have made. I don't know because people have had trouble with some of the Aura builds, whether or not... I'm not going to speculate whether the Zytec build would be worse than the Aura builds. I don't know. I also don't know if Zytec will even deal with them because they aborted working with Zytec once the lawsuit came from Aura. And so Zytec might be a bit pissed that they did all this prototyping and probably didn't get paid for it. Because there's no money. Probably thought that they were going to get paid once the game started to be built sort of thing. So here's my takeaway. And I understand because of how this is being presented and done. I don't blame Cointaker or Nitro for not selling to the early achievers first. Because I'm not sure they have the information on who all is an early achiever. And it's not really on them to ask for that information. And the reason why I'm noting all of that is because Barry is presenting this still pie-in-the-sky notion that everyone who pre-ordered is still going to get their game for the $8,500 that they paid. This is not going to happen. I don't believe. Do I see a possible path to it? I do. But statistically speaking, it's such an arduous path that this is where, and I think it comes across as a little toxic, and I don't mean it to be, where I think the best thing, just like before, for Dutch is to declare bankruptcy and close. Because I think this is false hope, and it strings people along, and I think it damages them more emotionally later than it would. It's the rip the Band-Aid off, don't slowly peel it, and we'll get to experience every little hair coming up with it sort of thing. Let me draw for you the golden path, the perfect trail, what I believe is the absolute best thing that can come out of this. they get enough money to start production from a new factory of a few new pens just enough to turn out enough to be able to pay for the pens required to make whole the early adopters and then they collapse bankrupt with no money after having sold a couple extra pens and filled in their early adopters. That's the literal best hope. I think, I like, I hope, I'm going to go with I hope. I hope that this dream that Dutch Pinball can exist beyond this and continue to be something is just him spouting what he thinks people want to hear to guarantee that he can get enough to maybe not make himself out to be a complete and utter failure who thrived on the backs of the people who believed him, stomped on them, destroyed them, s*** on their graves, and then walked away with whatever he could hold on his own. I like to believe that he doesn't actually think that he's going to go ahead and have something come out of this. And he's just trying to keep hope up long enough so he can make things right and then close the company. The reality, I don't know. Maybe he does believe that. Maybe he does think that there's something going forward. But the truth of the matter is this is a DOA company. It's done. The best he could hope to do is to make people all right. But I think they're all screwed. I think every single one of them is. I think they are as well. And here's why. And you clearly denoted that your example was a best-case scenario, a difficult best-case scenario. Here's why I don't think it will happen. Now, let me touch on real quick. Do I think that Barry buys into that? I think he still thinks, I think he still wants Dutch Pinball to exist as a pinball manufacturer. I don't think, it could be gamesmanship to try and get an investor just to finish off the big Lebowski run. But all their decision making, like when Barry and Yop, they had a chance. Before the lawsuit, Aura went to them and the production was stopped. And the negotiation offer was Aura wanted 51% of Dutch Pinball. And they said no.
    34:33
    And that's still that arrogance that they think that this is their company. This ain't their company anymore. It is on paper. But what I'm saying, they don't know how to run a company. Now it's just Barry. Barry doesn't know how to run this company. I think that's just repeatedly demonstrably proven. And here's where I think, here's where the hurdles are for any of this happening. $12,500.
    34:57
    People are excited because these units are being available for sale. This was inevitable. Either Dutch was going to win, somehow, the lawsuit, and they'd have the pins available to sell because they'd get them from ARA, or Dutch collapses and ARA would have been able to, like at a bankruptcy auction or something, sell off the 40. Those 40 pins were going to hit the market. No matter what. Yeah, in my view, there was like some long – there was probably some possible scenarios where based off of license, universal and expired license that I don't think it would have blocked it in a bankruptcy scenario, just liquidating assets. But I don't know exactly how it would square with – again, Dutch law, I don't know. Right. So all of this. But bottom line is I always assumed those 40 were going out to people eventually. Yeah. I don't know if it was by ARA or it was by Dutch, but they were going out. So this is not good news. This is, in my view, inevitable. This was an inevitability that those would be available and also, unsurprisingly, just sold, not given to the people who already bought. Again, not quite as inevitable, but expected. Expected. It's what I expected. ARA winning the lawsuit. Expected. Yep. They initiated it. Did you learn what the actual terms of the lawsuit were? Since they lost. Yeah. So we don't know what the penalties that Dutch is trying to. I did spend about 90 minutes trying to find. And FYI, I did write an email to ARA asking for a copy of the verdict. I have not heard back. And I probably won't. I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't expect. They're not obligated to give it to me. But I figured it's a public document. but it's very difficult to search Dutch legal websites. They have a lot of stuff in English. I'm using translators, translation tools.
    36:52
    It's an old-school dentist move. I did try and find it myself. I could not do it. Barry did not provide it, has not provided it. Did you ask Barry for it? No, no, because any time I've ever asked Barry for anything, I either don't hear back or I'm told no. and I think there's a reason why he didn't share it. I think there's a reason why he also said I could go on and on about how the judge ruled. And in a way, I don't care because I do believe Barry on this. They lost. Yeah. So here's why I found it so amusing that he's painted this deal that he reached outside of the attorneys with Ara as this big win. It's not a win because Ara has him by the balls. They've already got a verdict. So here's how I think, and I think most people who have discussed this on, say, Pennside and such, are at the same conclusion. It's the obvious conclusion. Ara has struck an arrangement with Barry that they think will give them a better likelihood of getting their money than what the judge has given them. My guess would be the judge says, you all can do whatever you want with all the stuff left over, including the games. but wouldn't it be easier to use Dutch pinball to sell those 40 games? Then Aura try and figure out how to do it. Because Dutch already has the arrangement with Nitro, has the arrangement with Cointaker. There's already a list of interested parties. There are already deposits down for a lot of those. So why not? Aura wants the money. They don't care about it. They're not into pinball. They're not going to build it anymore. So they just want this crap out of their warehouse, and they want to get paid. The speculation is Aura wasn't paid for the prior games they shipped.
    38:42
    And that's when they pushed the hold button because Dutch quit letting the cash flow. It wasn't they didn't have the money for the next 40. There is a suspicion that Aura is, and that's where we want to see the lawsuit, that Aura says they weren't fully paid for the prior pins.
    38:57
    So let's do some math. 40 units. It's been confirmed. It's 40 built units. $12,500. That is a half a million dollars. I don't think Barry's keeping any of this. I think that's what he owes Aura. I think this half a million is just to cover the 40 pins plus whatever was owed outstanding from the prior runs and the work that they have. Where Barry sees his win here is the lawsuit goes away, but he gets to keep all the other stuff. The play fields that are done, the boards that are done the bits and pieces the odds and ends the parts of the unfinished games so there's stuff that he could go to in his mind go to a new contract manufacturer and say here look you don't even have to order all this stuff on a new bill of material I've got leftovers so we can start building some more pens to sell for profit to Dutch I don't think maybe there's a portion of the money maybe he doesn't owe a half million US dollars to Ara I think it's close because why else did the pin price have to go up another $2,500 yeah I would have to just to cover it yeah so even if let's say I'm wrong though and let's say that the $2,500 is what Dutch is doing that's just $100,000 like the $2,500 add-on is to give Dutch some money to work with and the rest the original $10,000 the $400,000 is for Aura. Right. It's still only $100,000. This is nothing for a manufacturer. What's he going to do with it? So what he stressed in his, well, I can't say stress, but what he noted in his write-up was that the issue is liquidity. And I agree. But let's remember, he couldn't find an investor before the Aura lawsuit. When he was working with Zytec, there was no investor. There was no bailout. Remember there was that weird Chicago or Seattle 7 advert where there was this just total amateur hour. Like the Pindigo thing and all that. Yeah, they did like a GoFundMe. And Dutch then sold – like they still had a prototype game that they were trying to sell, which they probably did sell. I don't remember for what, $15,000 or whatever. And they were selling trans lights and stuff. And it was just like it reeked of a bake sale. It's just like you know it's bad when you're to the bake sale. Yeah. And you're supposed to be a professional manufacturing company. So that's the thing. So Barry is presenting this as a win that he has a deal that isn't the lawsuit. But because Ara holds all the cards because they have the judgment, they get everything they want. This is in no way a worse deal for Ara than what the – whatever the arrangement is, it's definitely something Barry and Yap were never going to agree to before the litigation because they were completely unwilling to cooperate with anything that Aura offered then. And that would have been when Aura didn't have a verdict yet. Indiegogo. That was what I was trying to run in my head. That was the idea I had in my head was Indiegogo. I know that was the wrong word. So here is where, getting back to your optimistic outlook, here is how I think this proceeds. Pins go for sale, they have. 40 pins sell out, they have. They are successfully shipped.
    42:28
    And this is all that like DHL is confirming pickup before the money gets sent and all of that. Coin takers laid out how they're handling the money side of things because they're not- Nobody trusts Dutch. Right. No one trusts Dutch. They may lie because they have before. I think that money goes and essentially is just a pay off Aura and get the rest of the stuff out of their warehouse. Aura is no longer involved. Dutch is sitting there with basically zero money in the bank, a pile of parts and unfinished pieces of games with no investor. Now, normally in the optimist view, you then go step three is question mark, question mark, question mark, and step four is profit. In this case, I think step three is done. There is no step four. Because Barry presenting that not having the, his angle here is that the lawsuit no longer holding, they'll be able to void the verdict essentially because they'll have reached an agreement better from both parties perspective than enforcing the judgment. Barry seems to think that that means he'll be able to find an investor. But he couldn't find an investor before there was a lawsuit. So what's changed other than he has even less money than he used to? I don't know. I don't think any investor is going to want to touch him with a 10-foot pole. Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. And because of that, I don't see a path forward for the EAs to get their games, much less Dutch Pinball actually going on and building new different games beyond Big Lebowski. This scenario, this Ponzi scheme-esque approach of build to... I mean, he didn't even give the ratio. What is it? How many new games would have to be sold before they could give one EA buyer their game? Is it 2-1? Is it 3-1? At 12-5? If they actually start back up production, if that somehow got to that, they ain't selling that game at 12-5. People are only buying at 12-5 now because they think what I think. This company's dead. And these are going to be the last of the games. There are going to be fewer big Lebowskis than there are aliens. So they're going to get in at 12,500 because they think they're going to be able to flip it for profit. That's why people are buying right now. And I don't blame them for it. No. But if the production line, like if they go back to Zytec and that Chinese contract manufacturer says, okay, yeah, we'll deal with you. It's like maybe that 100,000 pays off for their prior work or whatever, if he indeed is making a little bit of money at this point.
    44:58
    I still just, whatever rate he's going to have to move those games at, I just don't see it over 10. It's not worth it, especially given the QA, the quality assurance on it, because there have been a number of problems with the Aura-built ones. Right. So given that it's not the best-built pinball machine, even though a lot of people love how it plays, you just have to, it's a different scenario. I mean, 12.5, that's CE money from Jersey Jack, their most overpriced model. That's thousands ahead of Spooky, American Pinball, you know, companies that know what they're doing. At least to the degree that you don't feel like you're going to get screwed. So, I mean, it's just like, and their build qualities are almost assuredly better on both cases. so given all of that I think they're done but they're acting like they're not and the EAs you put them in that weird emotional position where they have to almost cheer Dutch Pinball on and hope people are going to want to buy more Big Lebowskis the license is assuredly expired now, three year license or by the end of the year I would think it would be based off of when they started production if that's how the license arrangement was is Universal going to sign off on another one another run some people are throwing out ideas like go to Chicago Gaming and have them build the game. They should just sell the design to another pinball manufacturer.
    46:28
    Okay, here's the problem. The design isn't worth enough to do 40 free EA games. No. It's not worth that amount of money. Is 40 the number of EA left that haven't gotten their games? No. I don't know how many are still outstanding I don't remember I know it's been said but I just can't remember it even if it was 40 though it's like you're saying that having the design and everything is worth $400,000 or whatever, it's not it's not, plus if they were to sell the game, it doesn't come with a license you would have to go to Universal and get like Spooky or CGC And again, if they were really interested, why didn't they do it before now when Dutch still had some moxie? I just it doesn't it doesn't fit. I don't see because here's the thing. If Dutch can't make the early achievers whole, the early achievers, even though legally they have no right to do it. There's precedence now because of deep root that they're going to want whoever would do the build to give them a free game. because Deep Root went, as you know, Tony, and they hired John Papaduke and they offered terms for people to settle the Zidware situation, those who pre-ordered Zidware games. And in exchange, they could get a monetary recompensation or a game from Deep Root. And that stuff's all legal and signed and everything. And I'm sure Deep Root did that to help alleviate some of that bad blood that people felt about Deep Root coming and hiring John Papaduke. But why would just a contract manufacturer, even if it's an established pinball one, want to do that? And if it was an established pinball manufacturer, the demand for it would be higher.
    48:22
    People aren't going to call Zytec up and say, you should give me a free game because I got cheated by Dutch. You chuck that thing over to Chicago Gaming, though, there will be demands.
    48:32
    It's a loser move. There is no company that should do this. No pinball company should take the Big Lebowski. Not as designed. Do a new version of it, and you have to rehash. I think it's just kind of like the third rail at this point. It's something you should just dodge. I think it's just going to burn anybody who gets even close to it.
    48:59
    Looking at, from the numbers I'm seeing online, it's looking like 300 originally. Okay. Okay, so yeah, 300. and I believe with the 40 it would have been about 90 built. So I guess 50. 50-ish that actually got... It's not good. It's not even a quarter.
    49:23
    So yeah, no, that's... I'm going to be honest and here's what I think is the most likely thing to happen. Not the golden path forward but I think the reality is to happen. Is either like you said R is paid off he'll talk a big game and then vanish or the extra $2,500 was to create like you said the money to go forward and he'll pocket it and vanish or the third option is he'll take the parts and he'll take everything that is left in the unfinished games to assemble as many games as can be assembled without Now, any new orders or any new anything, sell them for $12.50 and vanish.
    50:15
    I will admit, I would be shocked if any of the early achievers remaining ever get a game. Not from Dutch. Not unless they buy it separately. Right, right. No, I agree. I don't see a path to them getting the game. And I guess just so, so it's, why do I want them to, why did I want them to declare bankruptcy? Because I wanted them to a long time ago. And this is why, so people understand. There was a point where this no longer became tenable in any practical sense By declaring bankruptcy and liquidating what they had Dutch Pinball could have at least given pennies on the dollar back, I'm hoping, to all of their creditors, including those that had pre-ordered the games. That is a better scenario than getting nothing. And so that's why I was a fan of that approach. The problem is Dutch for a long time was at least talking the game that they still had money. They didn't have enough money to give everyone their games, but they had enough money to pursue things with Zytec. As time has gone by, they were continuing to draw salaries. They've confirmed that. And there were other expenses. They probably were paying Zytec something would be my guess. You would assume so. Why would a company talk to them otherwise? Exactly. And so given all of that, it's my belief that the problem now is there's virtually nothing in the piggy bank to get out of a bankruptcy. Now, you sell these games. Let's assume all the money went to Aura, and you have all this other stuff.
    51:50
    It's just not going to fetch a lot. There's more to liquidate now than maybe there was two months ago, but… It's not worth anything. Not really. Your best bet at this point is finding the weird people, not the weird people, the people who have the money to buy the parts just to have replacements to keep stuff going. Yeah.
    52:14
    What's the word I'm looking for? The people with a big enough love and a big enough desire to drop the money required to have parts to make sure it keeps going. Well, the alien pinball owners, they work together a lot to arrange for 3D printing replacement. They source the parts and they share stuff. So I can see something like that manifesting. But those parts won't command much, even from that group, because there's no competitor. No one else will buy them. Right.
    52:42
    So if you have to liquidate and auction them off, yeah, that stuff's not going to go for a lot. And there's only 90 of them. Exactly. There's not a huge amount of demand. And plus, a lot of those parts are probably generic, like stuff you can get from Marco or Pinball Live posts and stuff. Right. Surely they didn't reinvent everything. So I don't see this as good news, other than there'll be 40 more Big Lebowskis out there. That was inevitable. We were just waiting. We were just waiting for R to win.
    53:12
    And I'd love to know the details of the lawsuit, but this is what would make sense to me based off of what he said. and I don't really see him I don't see a path forward because Barry is not worth investing in he's just not that's where it comes down to the it would make more sense for him to try and sell the Big Lebowski to another entity to make it but it also doesn't make sense for anyone to buy it there are a lot of people who are just because they love the theme so much or maybe as well love the gameplay who just think like well it's a slam dunk I mean this is just going to print cash for any company. It's like, no. This is a has-been game that's been out too long. There's no wonder about this anymore. Almost any other manufacturer would have to redesign the cabinet at the very least because they're not going to build it like this. Mm-hmm. And here's the thing. I love the Big Lebowski as a theme and this and that. I think Alien was a better theme.
    54:13
    I'm not saying that I think Alien Alien's a better game because it's not, but I think Alien's a better theme.
    54:20
    And, yeah, there's lots of things that... People are deluding themselves if they think that if you could just get this up and for sale, it would sell enough to solve all these problems. It's just not. It's not. It's like how some... Remember the hype train on Munsters? And look at it now.
    54:38
    I'm sure it did okay for Stern. Yeah, I'm sure it was fine. But all of that wonder went away pretty quick. And Big Lebowski's wonder was five years ago. And remember, I mean, it's the same thing with Pirates of the Caribbean. Greatest game ever. I heard it constantly. Greatest game ever. It wasn't good enough to stay on the line for more than like 37 minutes. Well, but now everyone wants it. So now it's the greatest game ever still because of the can't have. can't-haviness.
    55:14
    I think that gets back on the line eventually. I still think it. I think maybe at 12.5. Maybe. That's a Yellow Brick Road edition.
    55:21
    The Yellow Brick Road edition. Well, they'll give it a better name than that. The Golden Tooth edition.
    55:29
    The one everyone says is Black Pearl. The Black Pearl edition. So, let's move on. Speaking of Jersey Jack, let's move on to a Jersey Jack news topic. Guns N' Roses pinball. It's been confirmed. Not by Jersey Jack Pinball, but by Slash of Guns N' Roses. Oh, so somebody we can actually trust to not be lying to us. Yeah. Okay. Welcome to the jungle. Welcome. So, yes. Welcome to the jungle. Apparently, and I do have a link in the show notes to this, but in an interview with San Francisco Weekly, Slash did confirm that a new pinball machine is coming out.
    56:03
    The rumor already said that Guns N' Roses was one of the two licenses that Jersey Jack has. The two remaining licenses that we haven't seen that have been said to be JJP licenses are that and Toy Story.
    56:16
    So based off of this statement, to let you know, the rumor goes even further that Jack of Jersey Jack Pinball has continued to insist that they're putting out a second game at the end of this year. The rumor mill is that it is not Toy Story, even though the Toy Story movie is now out. It's Guns N' Roses. Well, based upon how the Toy Story movie's been doing from everything I've heard, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Really? I've not looked into it at all.
    56:44
    I had one person tell me that it was wonderful, touching. Then that's one more person who's told you it was wonderful than the eight people I've talked to who said it ruined Toy Story and it's just dead. Oh, okay. Well, it was Zach Minney who told me this, so you know how his tastes are. Yeah, okay, that explains it Thoughts on Guns N' Roses Penball? It'll be fine, I guess Whatever, it's a music pen Here's the thing, here's what I expect From a music pen In this day and age of music pens Is it dad rock? Does it have good music? That's all a music pen is And Guns N' Roses It's dad rock, they've got good songs As long as they just don't Totally mess everything up and it has halfway decent playability, there's a certain segment that's going to be all over it. And then you combine the fact that we're looking at JJP. So there's going to be another segment who's already guaranteed can tell you right now it's the greatest music pin ever made. It could literally be two flippers and a single pop bumper, but it's the greatest music pin ever made because JJP made it. And it's only going to cost you $10,000 unless you want the really good one. And that one's going to cost you $15,000 unless you want the really, really good one. And that one won't ever be put on the line until you get it. Okay. Well, that's an interesting take, Tony. Possibly harsh, possibly. But so let me ask you a few other questions related to that. Now, what do you think the reaction though would be if they do Guns N' Roses like they did Wonka, where there's a standard edition, is not... The Wonka Standard Edition was a thousand less than the Pirate Standard Edition. And also, the game, even in the non-standard edition, is seen as more stripped down than the historic JJP games. Hobbit, Woz, and Pirates, and Dial In, are seen as loaded JJP games. And some people, even though a lot of people like Wonka, they do say that it feels like it's the most stripped-down, stern-style JJP ever. for the standard edition. Or did they say that about the main edition? No, even the main edition, because there's a view, I don't know if it's accurate or not, but there is a view from some that there are fewer mechs. It looks less wondrous than, because the only thing that was really missing on the standard edition, besides having a decent art package, was the Wonkavator. Yeah. Okay, so there's like a one mech difference. That's where the sternification reference is, where JJP had...
    59:26
    I love that word. Well, because... It's the sternification. Right. Well, because the whole thing was a lot of people who are really big supporters of Jersey Jack, one of the things they really liked about it is no matter what the model you had, there were no gameplay differences. But Wonka broke that rule. It's apparently not a rule anymore. I know. It's a surprise that they said something that they don't actually stick with. Wow. But... JJP lied.
    59:50
    Yeah, basically. I mean, this is more of a... I'm sure the view of the business, now that there are investors, has changed. So I wouldn't attribute it as a lie specifically. In fact, from an interview I heard with Jack, of Jersey Jack Pinball, he did not like this change, but he was convinced that they needed to do it. Because the investors were like, if you don't do this, the money goes away. I don't know if they were that blatant or if it was his team telling him, look, you need to...
    60:17
    Wonka is clearly making a play for getting more operators to buy the games. 8,500 is a tall ask for an operator because even if the game earns like 20% more, it's still a better deal to buy a Stern Pro because of the depreciation and the sale difference and how that works. It's like most of the time when I read the threads about people talking about who operate, who post on Pinside, the JJP pins can be near the top, but it's like Stern Star Wars Pro makes you as much money and it's thousands less. So you would have to be pretty, if you're doing it just from a business decision, you'd have to be pretty stupid not to buy the cheaper one. Right, and also you've got to look at it. You're going to have a lot bigger, no matter what people think, you're going to have a lot bigger draw for people to play Star Wars, even if it's a bad game, or Guardians of the Galaxy, or Deadpool than you're going to have for the nostalgia of Wonka. I do think that's true. From the themes that JJP has taken, I do think Wonka is probably their strongest one. Strongest since Wizard of Oz.
    61:25
    That's not saying a lot, though. I know. And that's where Guns N' Roses is quite a bit. Now, that's another thing I want to ask, though. What do you think about them pulling a copy of Stern and doing a music pin? Because they haven't done one before. They've always done these very family-themed pins, and Guns N' Roses is not what I think of as a, they're not exactly edgy, but they're not a family theme.
    61:50
    I think in all honesty, especially if they do a cheaper standard edition, it might be their best seller. Hmm. Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, as a band, I like Guns N' Roses. Right, but the thing is, so many of their pins, other than The Hobbit, when it was originally announced, is all nostalgia heavy. Yeah. I mean But doesn't Stern rely on a lot of that too? I mean obviously not exclusively Because Guardians isn't nostalgia heavy Deadpool isn't nostalgia heavy But all their rock bands are Right but I mean that's All music bands are nostalgia I mean they're all dad rock They're all sold to 50 They're all aimed at the people in that 70s and 80s That's a good point A range of people who grew up with that music So I mean Don't get me wrong that's 90% of what I listen to is dad rock. That's why I like so many of the music pens because it's aimed squarely at me.
    62:50
    People who, I mean, cause I grew up in the eighties. That was my, my, that was a lot of my go-to stuff. That's what my dad listened to. That's what I listened to back then. So, I mean, it's definitely aimed squarely at me and that's why I like so many of them.
    63:05
    But Stern hasn't exactly, I mean, Wizard of Oz let's be 100% honest the game's fun I enjoy the game there's no giant screaming fanboy thing thinking we needed a Wizard of Oz thing when Wizard of Oz came out because nobody's really cared about the Wizard of Oz since I don't know the 50's ok I'm not going to dispute that then they came out with Hobbit right in the middle announced when the Hobbit movies were coming out. It eventually came out. The problem is those movies weren't great. Yeah, but they made their decision before we knew that. In their defense, we didn't know. But that was at least a modern-ish look. Yeah, I thought from a predictive standpoint, just like we saw from Bally Williams in the 90s, it was a good theme in theory. Right.
    64:03
    I love the art. The theme integration, I think, might be the best on it. Again, Woz is pretty well integrated, too. But the Hobbit theme integration is great. Right. Yeah, no, all of it. The problem is its play. Right. It plays terribly. But the theme integration is good. The art's beautiful, all that stuff. That's great. I like all that stuff about it. Then you had Dialed In, original theme, non-widebody. I think it's their best pin. I think it's their funnest pin, anyway.
    64:36
    And then you had Pirates, and let's face it, I've never said anything other than it was a dead franchise. It was a dead franchise that that pin, when Stern put out Pirates, that was a well-timed, aimed in the height of that popularity. When this one came out, there's nothing. Nobody cares. Yes, they just put out a fifth movie. Nobody cares. Guess what? Fast and the Furious is coming out with a spinoff movie. They've had, I don't know, eight movies now? Eight, I think, yeah. Yeah, they've had eight movies. They've got a spinoff off of the main series coming out this year. And it's hugely, and that's it. That would have been a good thing to target. Pirates of the Caribbean was just horrible, horrible. And now Willy Wonka, pure nostalgia, purely aiming for that nostalgia thing.
    65:25
    And it's, there's not enough people out there, I think, who have that strong of a nostalgia to make it a huge thing. Maybe I'm wrong. I thought, compared to Pirates, compared to Dialed In, obviously, but its original theme, I thought Wonka was a better pick. I do, too. I'd even say Wonka might be a better pick than Wizard of Oz as a theme. I don't know. I don't think so. Woz is more timeless. Wonka is more relevant because there are a lot of people who are still alive who watched it a lot as kids. Right. Whereas everyone who, I mean, everyone's seen Wizard of Oz, but not everyone likes it. Right. but it was a very US oriented show I don't believe it did as well overseas so that's a problem for Wonka and I don't think younger generations really watch it as much as maybe our generation thinks they do and how many of the younger generations haven't seen Wonka but they've seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with can't remember his name yeah I don't know maybe I just think I think this is good and just in the fact that I think JJP needs to try and stay away from Johnny Depp themes at this point now that's valid so this is a positive once we see more about the game theme is theme and it's interesting to talk about from a business perspective but it'll be interesting to see how it plays and the rumor mill is that Eric and I've been missaying his last name it's not Mounier it's not French like that it's like Miner I know that's wrong too I told myself I was going to listen to it in audio format and try and memorize it I'm just going to call it Eric M to be safe the rumor is he who designed Pirates will be designing Guns N' Roses ok a lot of people like how he designed Pirates and if they're going to do a wide body and the rumor is that Guns N' Roses will be a wide body I would probably prefer Eric to do it because I think his Pirates wide body layout was more enjoyable to shoot than Hobbit, definitely, but even than Wizard of Oz, too. I didn't care for Wizard of Oz's layout all that much. It's okay. But anyway, last pinball piece of news, and we'll be done.
    67:43
    There is a rumor. Someone on the Twitch channel, no, I'm sorry. It was someone on Discord, Chefstar, over with the Gaming on 10 Discord, had asked if we were going to cover this, and I didn't know a lot about it so I've read up a bit on forums. Apparently there is a rumor that Chicago Gaming who makes Attack from Mars remake Medieval Madness remake, other remakes is in the process of getting ready to make Alien Pinball. A remake of the Highway Pinball Alien Pin.
    68:15
    I could not find what the source is for this. Like I don't understand where the rumor is coming from so to speak. So I'm not quite sure how it's cropped up. It seemed to me that this is getting discussed now just because Big Lebowski is being shipped from those are pre-made ones has sort of kicked this one in the pants as another failed project that got a few out the door sort of thing. But the way the rumor goes is Pinball Brothers has the rights to the alien design. They are working with Chicago Gaming to build the remake version. And as the rumor goes, Chicago Gaming is working on converting some of the cabinet stuff from the highway cabinet to more of a Bally Williams wide body cabinet, super pin style, I guess. And also needed to square away the license with Fox or Disney now for Alien because it's no longer current. They'd have to renew it. Right.
    69:18
    I personally don't think this makes any sense. I don't understand why Chicago – let me rephrase it a different way. I don't understand why Chicago Gaming would, for their first wide-body pin, do Alien with such a small market base built in. The thing that they – and the reason – my logic on this is I could see why Pinball Brothers would want to do it. So I see that side. This seems more plausible than the Dutch pinball stuff to me. But where the idea to me kind of falls down is there are a whole bunch of super pins from the 90s that people,
    69:57
    they're high cost and there would be a lot of demand for based off of people remembering from the Bally Williams years. That's entirely what Chicago Gaming has relied on. So, I mean, not Popeye, of course, but you've got Star Trek Next Gen. You've got Twilight Zone. You've got Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure. Those are super pins that people really, really love. They have licensor challenges of a variety.
    70:28
    I don't know if Star Trek Next Gen would actually be that difficult to do. I don't think it was all that expensive for Pinball Arcade to do that one. Whereas I think it was hard to get, who is it, Rod Sterling from Twilight Zone. They couldn't get his likeness easily. Indiana Jones might have. But huge demand for those games. Alien you have to do the license negotiation And a lot of people have never tried it So you've got a big audience that doesn't know If they'd like it And I Plus you've got the issue of People who didn't get Their pin from Alien Being mad at Chicago Gaming For not giving them what they are owed From the company Because remember Highway Pinball Got taken over by Pinball Brothers transferred almost all of the assets over and then went into administration on the company. So when it came time to count Highway's assets, there was very little in the bank of anything. And the chief creditor listed was Pinball Brothers. And Pinball Brothers shipped a number of pins when they were running Highway. But it's very easy to get a vibe when you look at how they did it, that they just waited out basically the statute of limitations on the asset transfers and then killed the company off. That's exactly what they did. so given that I think this is again much like working with Dutch where because of the burn on customers it's a little cleaner in that a lot of people will only think Highway and they won't think Pinball Brothers because they don't know but that it's one of those third rail things maybe this is a third rail that's not always electrified I'm not sure how to describe it but I just don't see the value in Chicago Gaming doing the only thing that would make it attractive to them is the current use price on aliens is ridiculously high.
    72:14
    I think the only thing that really makes sense to me on this is if it's a contracted production. Where they're just like, oh yeah, you'll pay us this to run the machines off for you? Fine. And maybe that would be what this rumor is tying to. But I still don't know. the game needs to be redesigned. Setting aside my issues with its layout,
    72:46
    it breaks a lot. So they're going to have to re-engineer a lot of stuff because, I mean, the magnet on the xenomorph tongue thing has fallen off all over the place.
    72:54
    It's very homebrew-esque in its quality. So that's just a lot of stuff if they want it to be up to their standard that they would need to re-engineer, basically. Anyway, just a rumor. So I thought, okay, that might happen. And I won't put odds on it other than I think it's unlikely to be true, but I think it's more likely than seeing Dutch succeed. So there's hope in this if you want to trust the hope. I guess I don't feel too bad if you want to latch onto this one, but to me it doesn't make a lot of business sense for Chicago Gaming to do this, but whatever. Yeah, it doesn't. I agree with you. So what does make sense is before we go to video games, to play a game of 20 questions, Tony. The hit game. You did pretty good last time. I took your favorite game, as you may recall, Attack from Mars. It took me far too long to get it. It only took you 10 guesses. So for those of you who don't know, who are new to the show, what we do on 20 questions is Tony will ask me a series of yes or no questions. This will be about a pinball machine. It will be a flipper pinball machine. It will be a pinball machine that he has played before. I will answer yes or no to those questions. after the 15th question. So as of question 16, he may turn to online resources to help him for his final few questions. And then we go to 20. And if he doesn't get on the 20th, it's a fail. That's only ever happened once. And here comes two. No, no. I believe in you, Tony. I believe in you. And I will keep count so you can go ahead and ask your first question whenever you are ready. Is it an EM? No. Does it have a DMD? No. Does it have an LCD? No. Is it from 80 to 85? Yes. Is it by ballet? Yes. That's question five. Is it from 80 to 82? Yes. Does it have more than two flippers? Yes.
    74:43
    Um, I got a game stuck in my head, but I don't think it's from that time period. I can't get it out.
    74:52
    Um, does it have a magnet? No. Is it from 81? Yes. Now, you see, this would be the exciting part, Tony, because now, based off of everything you've narrowed it down, you could guess all of the possible games and get it before 20.
    75:12
    Except there's a problem with that. No, there's no problem. Do it. There is a problem with that. Do it. There is one problem with that. What's the problem? I don't have all the games from the class of 81 memorized.
    75:24
    But you might have most of them memorized, And maybe it's one of those. Is it 1812? No. Trying to remember.
    75:37
    And that was question 10, by the way. Okay. See, this is where we run in. This is where I say we. Yes, the royal we. This is where I run into the problem.
    75:49
    Because the stuff I memorize compared to the stuff you memorize. Because I know at this point you'd have a real easy time with it. because you have the games memorized. And I'm sitting here going like, oh, I remember one of them, maybe. And I like three others that might be but I think they might be from later I don remember for sure Mm So Well then that means in my view you have two options You either continue to, like you just did on your last question, pop in games and hope that it's one of them. Or you need something else to try and narrow it down with. I know. But we know how well the narrowing it down has worked for me in the past. because normally I'd go after like theme thoughts but that's kind of backfired on me lately so I've been trying to steer away from that into something that's a little bit more concrete you know what I mean yeah I know I understand I'm just trying to is it a Richie game no like how I put that one in there to use one question to ask two questions that was all it was clever I'm going to weigh in on that cleverness when we're done But I don't want to ruin the excitement There's so much tension right now It'd be even more clever if I'd memorized These games beforehand You've got the manufacturer You've got the year You have a key layout component known You've rolled out a designer I've got two key layout components known. That's true. And you've got two designers eliminated. So there are multiple angles you could approach this from.
    77:43
    The problem is I literally cannot remember any game. I cannot. I mean, I can think of a lot of games that are from that era, but I don't remember. And that's the thing is I know there were a lot of good games that came out that year. There's a reason it's such a popular thing. Right, right. Well, given this case, I think my suggestion to you would be to use theme at this point because it seems like I don't know what else is going to help you then. Yeah, I don't know either. And you just have to take the chance and then be mad if your definition of the theme is different than mine. I'll try and use Tony logic.
    78:24
    All right, well, does it have a space theme? Yes. Is it Space Shuttle? No. I don't know if that's the right year on that one, but I know it's somewhere in there.
    78:40
    Give or take five years. Is it Space Station? No. There we go. That's the one I was thinking of originally. Does it have aliens in the art? Yes. That is question 15. You may use resources.
    79:02
    Okay. Interesting. Is it Flash Gordon? Yes. Okay. 16th question. Okay. That wasn't in my mental list. Embryon was. Okay. Well, Embryon would have met some of those definitions as well. Yes. Pretty much all of them, I think. I'm not sure on the flipper count. I think it's more than two, though.
    79:29
    Yeah, no, I said, yeah, it was four flippers. Okay. So, in terms of Flash Gordon, Bally 1981 game, what's his name? The Hawkeye Voltan or whatnot is in the back glass, and the Emperor Ming, who is also not human, is on the play field. So, alien in the art. well IPDB ITIPDB references as a fictional character theme they do have to go to outer space and visit a variety of planets so I felt that would qualify as a space theme definition and it has no magnet and it has three flippers so it had more than two flippers and the designer was Claude Fernandez who used to work for Williams briefly see here I was thinking on Flash Gordon I was thinking 82. I was like almost convinced it was 82. It is one of, if not the highest production game of 81. I don't know if it was more than 8-Ball Deluxe or not, but it's up there with 10,000 units. In terms of your other game guesses, they were all too modern.
    80:47
    Space Shuttle was your closest. That's 84. but it's not a Bally. That was Williams. This is before they were merged.
    80:55
    And then Space Station is a System 11 game, so it's even later than Space Shuttle. Then 1812 or Class of 1812 is a Gottlieb premiere game from 91. It was just before they went to DMDs.
    81:08
    And also it's only a two-flipper game, I believe. And then your Ritchie question to eliminate both Mark and Steve Ritchie. Mark and Steve Ritchie never worked for Bally. At least Steve didn't I'm not 100% sure on Mark Until they of course were in WMS But they were on the Williams side So they weren't with it when it was Bally's standalone So there was that aspect as well And I think that pretty much Hits on everything That you brought up in terms of your questioning A lot of this is simply because I don't have the knowledge So people know You have played it a lot I have played it a lot Now I did not name either of these games But there were two games That I thought But I wasn't positive Were in this list That were in this list Because Centaur and Embryon were the two That kept coming into my head And in terms of Now Centaur I believe is a two flipper Layout Not a three or more So that would have in my mind I would have disqualified that because of your flipper question. Embryon would have been an excellent guess. It actually met all of your criteria.
    82:25
    And the reason Embryon was so much in my mind is because last time we were up at Todd's I played it like nine times. And the reason why I made my remark about you being able to, after a set point, once you had 81 in Bally there were only seven games left. I just didn't know them. And you were so far away still you could have just gone through them all. If I don't them all. That was my problem. All right. So now that I've had people screaming at me for my lack of knowledge. No. And my how much of a plebe I am when it comes to the deep knowledge that is what brings everybody here because of your personal deep knowledge. I'm sure no one got it right. Yeah, right. I'm sure no one got it right. You're sure no one got it right like eight questions in. everybody's screaming at me we're going to go ahead and segue on to the video game section not a whole lot huge just follow up on a couple things we've touched on this year with one big item I'm going to keep the big item for last earlier in the year especially right at the end of last year we talked about the Elite Dangerous Community was doing their big across the universe giant group thing. Yeah. It's over. It finished about the same time E3 was. That's why we haven't really talked about it before. Oh, okay.
    83:57
    Because we were dealing with E3 and then dealing with the Let's Not Talk About Video Games post-E3 funk. Right.
    84:05
    So we're going to talk about it real quick. There was a very, one of the forums posted a final infographic, and we've got a link to it in the show notes that kind of tells you a lot about it. But the interesting things are there was originally 13,000 players who started the run, more than 13,000 actually, but of those, only 3,747 finished the journey. Okay. every ship type in the game that's possible for somebody to play in that game including the starter ship the ship that you get for free when you first start the game took part somebody flew at least one of all of those ships in all actuality the starter ship had 66 of them start it and two of them made it to the end there's only one class of ship that none of them survived all the way to the end. Okay. And the numbers that I find the actual most interesting are the platforms, because it's a multi-platform game. So when they departed, originally there were 10,663 PC players involved, 1,584 Xbox One players involved, 1,365 PS4 players involved. Actually, finishing the run was 3,042 PC players, 363 PS4 players, and 342 Xbox One players. So, pretty hefty drop-offs all across the board, which isn't a surprise. And I said we'd have the link to that infographic. It's really well done. looks real nice and has lots of just fun information into it. Yep.
    86:06
    And we're going to go ahead and segue while staying in space here. Last episode we talked about the CCP and Eve and their new AIs that have been hitting stuff. Yeah, NullSec. They've made another change to NullSec. Now this NullSec change is one that I was part of doing some survey work for, not survey work, but answering surveys and answering questions and stuff when they originally talked about this like a decade ago. The way communications in EVE works is when you go into a system, there is a chat with a list of everybody on chat who's in the system and you can look at them and they'll tell you, you know, what they're flying. It won't tell you where they are, but it'll tell you what they're flying, what corpse they're with, just give you all the general information. which meant in high sec and null sec that you have a ready intelligence bonanza. So when somebody or a large group of somebodies appears in system, you have all that intelligence. So if, you know, somebody pops in and they're in a freighter, you're like, hey, Bob's here with the freighter, and if suddenly chat has 50 extra people here and they're hauling battleships and carriers and super carriers and stuff like that, You're like, hey, there's a giant raiding force here. And groups of people actually put together third-party applications that would go through the chat and would pop up and give you intelligence and stuff. So, like, if you're in the system and you're not paying attention and 70 people jumped in the system, it would give you a big ding. Right. And it would let you know that, hey, there's a raid going on or there's this or that. but there is a third section of space in Eve wormhole space and that's where I actually spent the vast majority of my time the last few years I played Eve was in wormhole space and in wormhole space there is no chat you can chat but you don't know if there's anybody in the system with you, there's no information the only way to know is if you're in system and somebody chats in the system It will appear. But if you weren't there when that person chatted, you won't see anything. And even when it does appear, you don't have any information on it. Not even their ship? Not their ship. You don't have nothing. You have just their name and what they said. Well, they just stripped chat from NullSec. So NullSec chat is gone completely. It's now just like wormhole. Okay. So people can talk and you'll see their name and that's it. And that's it. You have none of the information. You can't just watch the chat to see a whole bunch of people jump into chat. So they've completely stripped all of the intelligence that has been used by these major corps in NullSec for their major wars and everything since the beginning of the game. It's all been stripped out. Now, unlike the changes with the Drifters attacking structures and this and that, this is something that's been talked about for years. it's been run through the council I don't remember the proper name of it right off the top of my head now but they've talked to the council about it because there's actually elected players who serve on an advisory council to CCP and they've talked about it so this wasn't a surprise that came out of nowhere that nobody had seen before it's stuff that had been talked about but now that it's happened it's a thing to see how the corporations are going to react to such major changes in the game.
    89:53
    And CCP has already said that if there are problems, they'll roll this back. Hmm. Okay. But... Given the PvP nature of that area, I think it makes sense to remove it, but as an outsider, that's my speculation. Even most... Not all, but most of the players that I've seen, I'd say we're running a strong 60-40 split or for it. Okay. From what I've seen, including the head of the largest corporation, Neve, thinks it's great. So we'll see what happens. Yeah. I think for a game as old as EVE is, that is as player-driven as EVE is, making these changes to try and keep the player base engaged is a good idea. so and we'll bounce off to our last thing the light switch does it look like a light switch well some of the colors are kind of yellow turquoise and very pastels they're going heavy Nintendo's going heavy on the pastels with this one they have officially unveiled the switch light which it's not a surprise we've known this was coming. They've talked about it before that they would be making a smaller version and there's been rumors about it. There's been rumors about a more powerful version of the Switch. But here, the Switch Lite is, they've dumped all the information and everything out on it. So, what we do know, it is a dedicated handheld device. It can't be hooked up to your TV. You can't put it into a docking station so it goes to the TV. The controls are physically part of it. They're not removable like the Joy-Cons on the regular Switch. Okay.
    91:49
    It is coming on September 20th. The price point is $199.99. So it's like a $100 savings? It's $100 less than the regular Switch. what's telling is that's the exact same price of a current brand new 3DS XL and I think this will finally end all of the thoughts that the 3DS aren't being abandoned well that's been your speculation since the Switch was announced was that this was going to replace displace the portable because it does both and the fact that they've not announced any new and that's what has made me think you're right there's basically no new 3DS games coming out. So given that, it seems like it is being phased out. Yeah, and I think this pretty much guarantees that. Yeah, because this is only portable. Right. It has a slightly smaller screen than the regular Switch. The regular Switch has a 6.2 inch screen. This only has a 5.5 inch screen. So it's about the same as your average phone, unless you've got one of those enormous phones, but the normal kind of standard phone size is the screen you're looking at. It's got the same resolution of 720p that the Switch has in handheld mode. It's supposed to have slightly improved battery life. I assume because of the smaller screen. Yeah, the smaller screen and adjustments to electronics layouts inside, giving it less issues with heat and stuff. is what I've heard. But they're still tight. It's three to seven hours depending upon the game, how stressful the game you're playing is.
    93:34
    It will have some restrictions on games that are playable. You can only play games that are playable in handheld mode. Okay.
    93:46
    Because there are some games that have come out for Switch that you have to play them on a TV. Any major games? No. Not that I can think of.
    93:55
    Yeah, not that I can really think of. I know there's some out there, but it's not like Zelda or any of the others that have.
    94:07
    But it will be compatible with all controllers. Even though you can't take off the ones that are on it. You can still connect a different set of Joy-Cons to it. All right. You can connect. So you can, because it's all wireless, you can wirelessly connect your Joy-Cons to it. You can wirelessly connect your pro controller to it or your, your Pokeball controller or whatever it is. It'll still work with all of those. Um, so I personally don't really see the point of this machine at all, except for maybe like when they rolled out the 2ds word that was aimed primarily at children. Yeah. I, that's where I would assume that I see two things. One would be, it sounds like it will be sturdier you can't lose the joy cons built into it, it's slightly smaller so for people who want something that's highly portable and have found the regular Switch a bit cumbersome also this might be an angle there and then the price point so for people maybe those on lower income spectrums that struggle to get new consoles, this might get a bunch of people to go ahead and jump Switch was already very affordable as a new console. Now that you've got it down at this rate as an option though, $200 becomes achievable for a lot more people as a gift or something. Right. That becomes a lot easier for hey, Merry Christmas. Now in terms of, in my head, I imagine most of these will go to kids and possibly those who are highly oriented towards wanting a replacement for a 3DS. But I think most people would still rather pay $100 more and get the tremendous flexibility gains that you get. Because I know so many people who praise the docked version as well. And I play almost exclusively docked. But I know there are some people who play primarily handheld. But again, those people already own Switch. Right. And my kids, they play because my oldest daughter has her own Switch. My youngest daughter uses my Switch to play games. and they'll play handheld sometimes, but normally they'll play docked too. So it's just one of those things that I think it'll be interesting to see how it, I don't think it's going to ever match the regular Switches. It's not going to displace the main Switch skew, but I wouldn't be surprised if this does okay. I think it'll do fine. I think it'll be a good little niche. Now what is interesting is besides their having a yellow, a turquoise, another color that I don't remember. They're all pastels. They're also releasing a special Pokemon Sword and Shield edition that is white and has outlines of the mascot legendaries from the new Pokemon game. But because this comes out on September 20th and the new Pokemon game doesn't come out until November, it costs the exact same as any of the other versions because it doesn't come with Pokemon. You'll still have to go buy the Pokemon separately when it comes out. It would have been nice if it at least came with a code to let you download it or something. Yeah, when it does come out or something. We promise it's coming here. But then they'd have to move the price point up. They'd move the price point up from $199 to $250.
    97:41
    So, it'll be interesting. I'm interested to see the talk of a more capable Switch. Yeah, I just don't know if Nintendo is going to pull a Sony and Microsoft and do an incremental mid-cycle upgrade. They've done it. They've done it for years. They started it. On their handheld market.
    98:03
    Because they had... You started with the 3DS then you got the... Yeah, you started with the 3DS and you got the 3DS XL and then you got the new 3DS and the new 3DS SXL, which was literally just an upgrade, they looked identical to the old 3DSs, except the old 3DS games wouldn't play them. Wouldn't play new 3DS games. Yeah. Because it was just a straight up upgrade. It would play the older games, but the older machines couldn't play the newer games. But otherwise, they looked alike. Because we ran into that issue with my daughter wanted a couple games, and it's like, well, they won't play on your 3DS because you don't have a new 3DS. And that was their literal naming was, it's the new 3DS. So I don't know if they as a company had a good experience with the confusion that caused. See, that's the thing that the PS4 Pro, Xbox One X have avoided. Full, all games work on the older versions. Right. All you did was get performance improvements, better graphics, or at the very least load times. So outside of that I think it makes more sense to Release a new unit A new console And Nintendo hopefully after the Wii U Has definitely learned And give it a dramatically different name So people don't get mixed up Yeah And Nintendo has been real bad about it Because it went from the DS to the 3DS To the new 3DS And the new 3DS XL and the 2DS That were all out at the exact same time Yeah like 2DS I mean I get it Because it's like well it doesn't do the 3 Yeah, but it's a 2 instead of a 3. It sounds like it's the old unit. Right. It was confusing to me when I read about it. And it basically just lost the 3D capability. And it was much tougher. It was designed more for kids. Yeah, it would have been great for me. That also made it larger. So, yeah, we'll see. And the Wii and the Wii U, yeah, no. Nintendo needs help with their naming and with their online presence. Sure. And how they throw content strikes at the community that actually hurts their brand. Yeah, they're doing okay, but they do struggle in a variety of areas. But I think that this, with it not being ultra disruptive, I mean, other than the handheld only mandate on some of those few games that are impacted, I don't think this would be very disruptive or confusing to people and it keeps them in a way hardware wise in the public eye as we are approaching the holiday season of next year where we're going to have new units from Sony and Microsoft, actual new generation and Nintendo I don't think is ready for that yet given how late the Switch came out there's no way that they'd be here they still want to maintain a certain level of presence and competitive edge versus those new behemoths when they hit.
    101:06
    Well, I think that's everything. That does appear to be everything that I have for myself. Okay, well, I'm done too. So for those that want to reach out to us, you can always email us, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. We're on the web at eclecticgamers.com. You can also find us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're on Twitch, Instagram, and Twitter as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in two weeks. Until then, I am Dennis. And I am Tony. Goodbye. Bye.