Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Flipside Podcast. I'm your host, Retro Ralph, and this is episode 41. Episode 41, can you believe that? Crazy, we've been doing this thing for over a year. It's probably getting close to a year and a half, and that excites me because I love doing it. So if you guys keep watching it, listening to it, I'll keep doing it. So, hey, before we get started, because we have a lot of stuff to talk about, you're going to hear a quick word from our sponsor, Flip N Out Pinball, which I do not have it handy to – yeah, it is. It's right here. Are you looking for a new pinball machine, a used pinball machine, or to trade in your old pinball machine for something new? Look no further than Flip N Out Pinball. They can handle all your pinball needs. They ship anywhere in the United States, and they will give you the best experience in the business. Check out the link to Flip N Out Pinball in the video description for more information. Now, back to the video. Hey, if you're looking for a new pinball machine, head on over to Flip N Out Pinball. Talk to Zach, Nicole, Greg, or Ken, and they will help you out. They'll also put you on wait lists for games. If you're, like, you know, not new games, but let's say it's a game you've been looking for, They get trade-ins all the time, so definitely hook up with Ken or hook up with Greg or Zach or Nicole, and they'll put you on the list. So it's cool. If you're looking for an older game or something like that, when they get it on trade, they'll let you know. Okay, before we even roll into the main topic, I do want to talk a little bit about Pinball Expo. Because Pinball Expo is right around the corner. We're 38 days away from Pinball Expo. So whether you've gone before or you've never gone again, or never gone ever, I don't even know what I'm talking about. It's really early in the morning here. So I'm having to record this right now because I have a bunch of work travel coming up. Like so much that I was downstairs thinking about it, and I try to keep to my biweekly schedule. I always want, you know, every two weeks you get a podcast. Well, the problem is, yeah, I got so much work travel coming up. But there's also – I'm all over the place. Okay, but Pinball Expo, 38 days away, 9 hours, 4 minutes, and 37 seconds, depending on when you're watching this. And there's a lot to be excited about around Pinball Expo because, you know, I know a lot of people aren't necessarily interested in maybe buying a Predator, but a Predator will be there. And who knows? Maybe it'll be this amazing game, and you'll be like, oh, my gosh, I need to own a Predator. I don't know. I love the movie. The movie was awesome to me. You can kill it. I loved it. I watched it more recently again just to see if it still held up. I felt like it did. My buddy Jamie Birchall said the music was cheesy. I'm like, this is an Alan Silvestri orchestrated soundtrack. How? I do not like that. But, I don't know. By the way, I'm trying to... Jamie got me a... You know, Jamie, if you heard the show, I tried a... I tried a Zin and it didn't go so well. But I don't want to be addicted to nicotine anyway. I'm really not um i don't really do a lot of bad things right i'm kind of like a even keel guy i don't i don't do a whole lot that that's bad for my body but i'm starting to use these things it's like an alternative to a zin even though i don't ever i haven't ever used well i did that one time and i freaked out so yeah no zin for me but yeah these things set um by the way yeah someone someone's gonna someone someone's gonna pick this up and be like oh he's sponsored he's pushing his product i No, I bought these my own. They're kind of good, though. They give me a little bit of energy in the morning. I don't know if these are good for me, though. I don't know. It's the six milligram one. This might be terrible for me. I might, yeah, I don't know. We'll find out. But it's in my mouth right now. So if I'm acting weird, it's kind of creeping away. It's kind of weird. It's kind of gross in a way. But anyway, so back to Pinball Expo. I'm so excited for this event. I always have so much fun at Pinball Expo. I've gone ever since the Godzilla launch. So I've gone a lot of years. I think this would be like my fifth year at Pinball Expo. I love it there. Tons of fun. I like being able to just meet everybody. So if you're going, let me know in the comments if you're going to Pinball Expo. If you're on the fence, go. It's so much fun. They have the – you can get the full package where you do like all the tours of all the different manufacturers. I'm not sure which ones they're doing this year. I think I know they always do Stern, but I can't remember if they're doing Stern and JJP. Or if it's just Stern. I can't remember. But if you have a Stern machine, actually, there's a little ad that pops up on your Stern machine. I think you can hit that and go directly to a ticket for it or something like that. Maybe it brings you to the Pinball Expo website. I never tried scanning it. There's so many events there. I have a panel, and I don't know what day it is. This schedule is really weird. They post this. It looks like a website from the 80s. It's like a really – not the 80s. It looks like a website from when the internet first started. I'm trying to find my own name on here, but I'm doing it with Joel from Flip N Out Pinball. Sorry, Joel from Triple Drain and Flip N Out Pinball. And Josh from Loser Kid. So let me see if I can find my name. I don't even know if I can find it. It's like a PDF doc. Oh, there it is. Okay, we're on Friday, October 17th at 11 a.m. It's called the Pinball Content Creation Panel. It's going to be Josh. Jack from Flip N Out Pinball Triple G. Sorry, Joel. You're barely Jack now. It says Jack, though. And then it has my real name, which I don't mind that. That's okay. Everyone knows my name anyway. But, yeah, so that will be Friday. But there's so many fun events to do there. I'm also volunteering again for the charity event. I don't remember what day that's at. I don't know. I'll put it in the link. I'll put the description in the podcast notes. I can't remember what day that that's going on. Last year, I did that also. It was really cool. It was really great working with the people over there. And I can't, why can't I find when it is? All right, anyways, I'll have a link to the whole schedule so you guys can see it. So my apologies for not being prepared because I'm looking at it right now and I still can't find it for some strange reason. but yeah it'll be in the it'll be in the description so you can check it out there but lots of lots of fun times there always the hall i think opens on thursday so that's when you get to play all the new games uh check everything out you know obviously we'll be all experiencing the star wars game there by stern will also probably even though there's no you know no official announcement but i think everyone is pretty much dead set that it's going to be the walking dead remaster so that will be there my guess is how they're going to do this is they're going to do it like they did last year they hit us with x-men boom and then the saturday i think they brought because they only had a couple of them made and i'm guessing they're probably gonna be in that same position here because most most i'm sure star wars is gonna be on the line by then so they might just produce like five or six of them they'll keep some of them at stern and then they'll move a couple over to the show floor which means there's probably long lines to play walking dead remastered i think it'll be interesting is the same thing is the same thing gonna happen at Expo this year that happened last year where as soon as as soon as Metallica Remaster hit the floor it was it wasn't like people vacated from X-Men but it was very much the focus the lines got super long so that's kind of exciting though because I like that game even though it's kind of a brutal and that's a brutal game to me although the other day I was at Electric Bat and Kale and and Jamie were kind of I always play real good when someone sits besides me and tells me what to do. It's weird. I'm like a good, I'm coachable, I guess is what that means. But I play really good when someone says, do this, hit that, do that. I don't mind that. As long as they're not too intrusive, when people start like putting their hands all over the play field and pointing to stuff, that messes me all up. But I'm looking forward to it, like seeing everyone there. So if you are going, like put it in the comments. I'd love to meet everybody. Come up to me. We'll hang out. We'll talk. We'll talk pinball. If I'm on a game, we'll play pinball together. It's just a great time. Like it's more about hanging out with everybody. than it is anything else. I keep hearing other people on other podcasts say things like this, and I do agree with it. It isn't the best place to experience a new machine, though. You just don't get the whole experience, because pinball is so much about, you know, obviously you'll still see the lights, but then you have these really harsh conference lights, so you don't get, if a game has a really awesome lighting package, you don't really get to experience it the way you would if it was at your house or in some kind of isolated situation. So that's kind of a bummer, because there are games I'm kind of excited to experience finally, like Dune. I really didn't get a chance to play Dune. I really want to experience that game. The problem is, I don't know, am I going to have the best experience on any of these games at a conference? That's the thing. I do like that pin sound is usually there, and they have headphones you can connect to so you can listen to the – you can get the better idea of the soundtrack of a game. I mean, there's so many things about pinball that's about the whole – Everything all together, the sounds, the lights, that whole experience, the shaker motor. And you just don't get it at a conference as well as you could. Now, sometimes they'll put like Jersey Jack last year put a couple of avatars. I think they put their CEs in like this tent area. Now, keep in mind that doesn't drown out the noise necessarily, but you were able to kind of experience a light show aspect of it a little bit better. And it did kind of help make it a little bit more of a controlled environment. So anyways, it was a little bit better, but you're going to have a blast if you go. Trust me. The thing, the welcome reception thing is on Wednesday. Usually it's over at Interium. That's usually fun, but if you've done it a bunch of times, then it's kind of like one of those things where I'm probably going to skip out on that this year. I'll probably just head straight to the show or head straight to the hotel. I'm staying at the Renaissance. Most people like to stay there because it's like you can just walk. You just walk. I love that. I have not – I have not – I've been lucky enough to get a room at the Renaissance every time. I don't feel like the experience is as good if you have to – I don't know. I like to be able – maybe because I have all my cameras and equipment and stuff, I like to just walk down and then go to the show. And it's nice because the hotel is connected to the conference hall. So anyways, enough about Expo, but hopefully – I'll have a link in the description to all Expo stuff. Hopefully you'll join me at the panel. And then why I can't think of the – this is really bad, but I talk about this a lot, and I can't think of the name of it, but I'm doing the charity event, and I don't know why I can't think of the name of the charity. They're, like, huge. They're everywhere. Worked with them last year. They were great. Sometimes I forget things. I don't know. I feel like as I'm getting older, I'm forgetting things. I don't know why. Like, my memory is bad now. I got to figure that out because I'm only 46. So if my memory is going at 46, that's not good. But I feel like my memory is the best right now. But anyway, I'm trying to rush through this because football is today. I a big football fan so Sunday day is really all allocated for football But then I leaving tomorrow for New York for a work trip And then on the way back from New York I won be going to the media day but I'm going to weasel my way into the Stern corporate headquarters and check out Star Wars probably on Thursday. So I'm excited about that. So I'll check that out. I don't think I'll be able to talk about it, though, because it doesn't appear, this is what my main topic really was, It doesn't appear like they have full licensor approval. And a lot of people are freaking out about this, but I feel like I have a good – I feel like I have a behind-the-curtain view of how licensing really works after the Harry Potter experience with Jersey Jack. And I don't hold this against Stern at all. There's people that are, like, saying Stern's Amateur Hour or Bush League and all this other stuff. This stuff happens. When you're dealing with licensors, they can come back and ask for anything, right? I mean, they're the license holder. You're really under their control. Even though it's your product, you're under their control. They can say anything and do anything, sometimes 11th hour, that can completely screw up your launch plans. And so I think people comment on this like they know. They don't know. Like they don't know. The licensor stuff is really complex, and sometimes they hit you with stuff last minute that you were not expecting. And so I don't blame Stern for this. And, of course, there's going to be people that are saying, oh, I'm a stern apologist for this. No. I saw it happen to Jersey Jack. I saw what happened. And it's like they'll ask for this or ask for that. Even when you think you're on the tail end of, like, you're about to be approved, you might be getting – the thing is the licensor might be telling you everything looks on schedule. We look good. And then all of a sudden someone decides we don't like this or we don't like that. All of a sudden, 11th hour, and you're like, crap, we were supposed to launch it on Friday. Now we're two weeks delayed. So to say that Stern is delayed, they're not delayed because they never gave a release date. Just like Harry Potter, they never gave a release date. So they didn't delay anything. It's not delayed as far as we're concerned. As far as we're concerned, they put a teaser trailer out, and there's some stuff going on on the back end that because this hobby is so small, people find out about. And then they make up these things. Oh, my gosh, it's delayed. Stern Bush League. Like it has nothing to do with them, man. They can't even control it. Now, you could argue, like, do they have the best launch plans or do you think that their marketing strategies are amazing? I don't know. I mean, it's pinball. Like, I don't think they have a lot of money to put toward this stuff. And especially when you're dealing with big licensors, I don't think they, you know, they don't work like – I work for a big corporation that's multibillion dollar, right? We put a lot of – we have these very, very detailed launch plans. And we have all these target dates we need to hit. We have all this collateral. We're paying sometimes outside agencies to help push it through media outlets. And it's pinball. You know what I mean? Like there's not a lot of money in pinball to be had in general. So I don't think they allocate the kind of resources to marketing efforts that big, giant companies do. So sometimes we hold them to some standard that I don't think is fair to hold them to. But they do have an official CMO now. So maybe things will change. I don't know. Maybe he's getting in there, getting his feet wet, and he's new to this business because he came from wrestling. I did get to meet him at Amusement Expo International. He's a really nice guy. It was a brief meeting, but it was interesting because I saw Seth and I saw Gary, and we just started talking. And he was there, and I was like, who is this guy? He was just standing next to me because he was on my peripheral vision. I could see him. My peripherals. I could see him. That's for you, Stringer, if you listen to this. I could see him there. And I was like, who is this guy? I could see him. And Gary's like, or no, Seth was like, oh, that's our new CMO. You know, at the time, it hadn't been announced. I don't even know if they even really, did they even do an official press release on that? I'm not really sure. So anyways, so this game is coming. It's coming. But the reason why I say I might not be able to share anything is because I believe they're making everybody sign an NDA, which I don't love that. But I understand it in this instance because they probably didn't want to change the date of the media event. And they might be hedging their bets a little bit maybe and saying, like, look, if we get the approval, maybe we drop the trailer on Tuesday. I don't know. I don't work there. So I don't know. Maybe they feel strongly enough that they'll get it, but maybe the NDA is a precaution just in case they don't. I don't know how I feel about that, though. Here's the reason why. if you bring a bunch of content creators and i would not do this by the way i am not a leaker i'm not i don't do that that's not my thing uh i work for a company that we have to do ndas a lot i i take them very seriously so but but the thing is a lot of people a lot of people sign an nba and they think it's like a friend da like oh it's cool like i can say whatever i want i mean if you really read the fine print of an nda it usually says something that that they can take legal action against you if you leak and do things like this problem is a lot of times it's hard to understand who leaked it but i think it's a little risky of stern to bring a bunch of content creators and some newer ones there's some people on this list that are new they're maybe newer to the hobby or maybe they're they're kind of on the outs of the hobby like they're not quite in the hobby they're like one foot in and maybe they're in other hobbies i think it's risky of a move to for stern to do just because there's always pinball leaks and i always hate the leaks because they're always crappy like we talked about this whole leaks thing before what do people do do they like rub vaseline all over their camera and then take a picture like i don't understand why leaked photos are always so bad. Like, it's like no camera. Think about this. No camera that you own. Even the shittiest smartphone that exists today would take a better picture than the leaked photos we get. Like, did you see the Harry Potter leaked Playfield photo? It looked like someone smeared Vaseline all over the glass of the pinball machine, all over their phone, just smear it all up, dip it in mashed potatoes or something, and then take the picture. I'm like, what is this? It's like, what phone are you using? Like, a Polaroid would take better pictures than this. I don't understand. It's, like, fascinating to me. And it's always, it happened in arcades, too. Like, in video games, everywhere. Like, they have these leaked photos. Like, what did they do? I don't understand. And the resolution is, like, that of when you used to go on, like, a bulletin board and you're, like, waiting to pull up a JPEG and it's, like, brr, brr. It's, like, doing it line by line. I don't know, man. It's, like, CGA. It's, like, purple. pictures purple here you go here's the play field i don't know but i think it is a little risky to have a bunch of content creators go despite the fact that you're making them sign ndas so i'm assuming when i go on thursday i'll also have to sign an nda which means which is probably all it probably is is this it probably says something like it you're allowed to take pictures and video but you're not allowed to show them until the embargo is lifted and they probably don't have a date for that embargo maybe they'll maybe they'll have a date it says maybe they'll have a date or or till the game is released so i don't know so hope so what that'll probably mean is on the day of the launch you're gonna get like a ton of content creator footage which is cool you'll be able to kind of determine uh you know if this game is something that you want to check out but if you're going to expo i don't know i mean the only the only game that i'd say you might be at risk of is if the le is like amazingly beautiful because it's star wars it probably has a chance of maybe selling out i don't know but they haven't sold out in le in quite a while i don't think i'm trying to think when did they sell out in le they had dnd didn't sell out x-men didn't sell out uh king kong didn't sell out metallica actually metallica remastered le sold out i think that's the last one because jaws the jaws sell out no but the last one would probably be metallica remastered that sold out that was beautiful they did a beautiful job on that oh my gosh the metallic I wished I had got the Metallica remastered LE. It is gorgeous. But so is the Premium. The Premium is nice too. But the LE on that one looked so good. The LE on X-Men looked really good too. I'm kind of surprised that one didn't sell out. Maybe that was like fatigue from that genre. I don't know. Anyway, so I'm excited. I'm excited to go there and check it out. I think, I don't know. I don't know what to expect. I keep on hearing like little rumblings that people are saying in little forums and things like that. I don't know where this information is coming from, but that they're not – that the game is just okay. I don't know where that's coming from, though. I mean, who knows? That's the thing. I was listening to Flip N Out Pinball, so shout out to Greg and Ken. I was listening to their podcast, and they said something that I'm totally all about because it happens all the time. I do think that people are influenced, whether it be subconsciously. They listen to a podcast, and if that podcast shits all over a game, it's embedded in their head or something. I don't know. It's maybe because the hobby is so small, and then it kind of like – we have this little micro – it's like a virus. It spreads out, and all of a sudden people are repeating it. Oh, it's not good. It's not good. But the people haven't even played the game yet. It's weird to me to make a determination if a game is good or bad if you haven't even played it. You can look at the – the one thing I'll give you credit for. You can look at the – or give anyone credit for it. You can look at a play field and say, oh, I like that layout or I don't like that layout. because some people really don't like a traditional fan layout sometimes. So they might go, oh, you know what? That's not really a game for me. And maybe you have a hard and fast rule against that. You hate all fan layouts. I don't know. But I just like to play the game. I can't say whether it's good or bad without playing it. Now, you can, you know, from trailers, you can go, oh, theme integration doesn't look so good. You can kind of make some determinations. But until you actually play it, I think it's hard to say whether a game is good or bad. But for some reason, there's a little rumor out there that it's an okay game, but it's not going to blow your mind. I think because the license is Star Wars, it won't matter. It's just not going to matter, I don't think. There's so many hardcore Star Wars fans out there that I think they – a lot of times that stuff, they buy it because they're Star Wars fans. I had a buddy that – I think it was Stranger Things. No, it wasn't Stranger Things. What was it? It was some franchise that he was big into, and he's like, oh, I'm going to buy it. Shoot, I can't remember. Anyway, I can't remember what – see, again, the memory thing. He bought a game because he's a big fan of this IP, but he's not a big pinball fan. You know what I mean? So that stuff does happen where people just buy things. You'd be surprised at how many people fall into that category of, like, I'll buy it just because it's something I love. I'm going to put it in my game room with all my other memorabilia from that time period or that era or whatever. So that happens quite a bit. But I'm very excited to check it out. We'll see how it goes. I wish I could share with you how I feel about it. It sucks that we kind of are going to be put under this like NDA, but hopefully it's not long. Hopefully it's hopefully they get licensed or approval and it happens next week. And then none of that NDA crap even matters. The only negative to that is it is kind of a bummer sometimes when like these people fly out for media day and like everything's already been revealed. So it's, it's less interesting. Although, although I always find it interesting to see what people really feel about the game. You know, like that stuff starts coming out. I guess the bad part about that is that we all know outside of like JJP, JJP code tends to be a little bit more mature when it comes out I feel like you know sometimes it hard because you go to these media days and you spend all this time and money getting there and playing a game which the code isn really anywhere near what it would be when it complete And so you're making your that's the bummer. I think you're making your determination on whether it's good or bad based on how it is then. And a lot of times that changes quite a bit. I mean, hopefully what you get when the game comes out is is is a fun game, but it's just not complete yet. but sometimes it's it's rough right like i i didn't really like even though i bought it i don't have it anymore i didn't really like the john wick code but i did like the theme integration to a point it wasn't like it was a little bit scattered like it didn't make a whole lot of sense but i loved the movie clips like that they used i loved the the voice acting that they did like i all of the all of that stuff was really cool i felt like they did that well like deconsecrated multiball was cool. Like, everything was kind of cool, but it wasn't there, right? It wasn't all there, and I didn't like the enemies blocking the shots. I didn't like any of that. But, I don't know. I like John Wick, though. So, but I did play the latest code on John Wick. I'm liking it a little bit more. The problem is, the one, like, Kale's going to kill me for saying this. I feel like the one on Electric Bat is, like, I don't know why. Like, I'll have one out of, like, every 15 games I'll have a good game on. I feel like it's a lot harder than the one that I had. I don't know why. Because I played it. By the way, I was in Utah. I was in Utah for work. I went to this place, R.C. Willey. I don't have these around in Phoenix. It's like a big department store where you can buy furniture and appliances. And you can basically furnish an entire home there. They have workout equipment, everything. Anything for your home. Man cave stuff. And they have pinball machines there. So I didn't know that. I had no clue that R.C. Willey sold pinball machines. But they had a John Wick for $1,500 off. It was on clearance. So if you live in Utah and you want a John Wick, they have them there for, I don't know why those big box stores, it seems like distributors, this is from me like gathering information over the years, distributors seems like they have no leeway to discount a game unless it's used. Unless the game is used, they can probably price that however they want. But if a game is new, new in box, they cannot deviate from the MSRP much, much at all if any so but these big box stores can i don't know why they have different agreements than they do with their distribution partners so like distribution partners like flipping out game room goodies uh mad pinball like those companies like that coin taker automated like they they have to stay now i've seen people i've seen distributors do things like show games because a show game the box is open so they can do different things with the pricing they still don't take like gigantic discounts off of it but you can get a better deal like at a show with a show game but uh but these but yeah so rc willie had had they had kong they had star wars they had oh no sorry it wasn't star wars kong uh bond wick and dnd i think yeah so they had and i think they maybe they did have a star wars i don't remember but but um but yeah that was kind of interesting that they had that stuff there they hadn't set up like a nice little area but the thing that was funny about it is I had an awesome game on wick and I was like why am I kicking ass on wick like kicking ass I had a really good game on wick and I'm like why why am I why does this seem so easy well I look at the back legs I didn't look at the bubble at the time I don't know why I just didn't look at it this game was like flat I mean it was almost like weird to play it because I was like wow it's really floaty and it was floaty because it wasn't even like pitched right but I had this like bomb game on it. I'm like, yeah, wick, baby, I did it. And yeah, then I looked at the back legs. I was like, oh, that's kind of unfortunate, though, because it's like these games are there for people to buy the general public. But they're not even set up well. You know what I mean? But whatever. I mean, I don't know if you're going to RC Willie to buy a pinball machine. You probably you probably aren't going there to buy a pinball machine. You're going there to buy like something else and you notice it or something or you're in their man cave section because they have a bunch of stuff. They like video game stuff and they have everything you can get. a you can get like a handheld rog ally like they have everything there nintendo switch i think actually i don't know if i saw yeah no they had nintendo switch there too so anyway so that was kind of cool and then also another place i went to in uh and i'm gonna bring up my pictures because like i said my memory is like completely shot but um there was another thing that i uh another thing oh i went to nickelmania nickelmania in utah was really cool they had a they had a um they had a Harry Potter arcade edition. I've been so curious to find one on location because I want to know there's a lot of stuff in that game. And I do think there's a little bit of a history of Jersey Jack. Like, actually, I shouldn't say that when I go to certain locations, it does seem like sometimes Jersey Jack games don't hold up as well on location. Now that's all dependent on the operator and a whole bunch of stuff. Right. But the couple of places I've gone, it seems like they're not, they just aren't don't hold up as well, but they had, they had both a dialed in. They actually had several Jersey Jack games, but the ones they had dialed in right next to Harry Potter, that game played really well. Like their arcade edition played really well. And I posted a decent score. I think it was like, see, I'm going to look at my screen real quick. 321 million. Not bad. I blew it, though. I had like two extra balls and I like biffed it onto my extra balls. But I did get the high score for the day. So I'll take that. But the GC score was a little high. I didn't get that. But yeah, no, it was holding up. So if you were questioning the arcade edition, I felt like it was in a high-traffic arcade, and it seemed to be holding up pretty well. The other thing that I found out on my trip, this was super cool. So I was in Utah because of work, and my office has this arcade. If I have time, I'm going to try to edit the pictures into this so you guys can see it. I don't want this podcast to be too long. Like I said, I really wanted to get this out because I try to do the biweekly thing, and I felt like I might not make that happen if I don't do this today. I have to pack still for my trip. and I have to get up at 2.45 in the morning. I have to get up at 2.45 in the morning. So I'm doing this for you guys. I'm trying to get it out there. So in our office at work, we have a Spider-Man and we had a Mandalorian. I thought that was really cool. I did not know we had pinball, added pinball to the arcade. We also have a Killer Queen. If you've never played that, it's a fun arcade game. We had an Exa Arcadia, which Exa Arcadia is like a, it's like a modular, think of it as like a modern Neo Geo. It has cartridges, which are really just M2 memory cards, like in this little thing. Anyways, I don't want to geek out too much, but they're like these little almost like gum packs almost, and you just slide it into the system. It's pretty cool. I was surprised they had that. They had an actual Neo Geo and a Street Fighter IV, and they had something that I think was a homebrew. I had never seen it before. It was Family Guy bowling. and I love it looked like someone took a silver strike and converted it to family guy I don't know I'm pretty positive they never made a family guy bowling they made a Simpsons bowling but never a family guy bowling so that was kind of cool oh the games they had on RC Willie by the way was King Kong Star Wars uh 007 or Bond and um and uh John Wick but they had $1,500 off a new in box game it's pretty awesome so I don't know I thought that was pretty cool yeah that wasn't the only place I went so I went to one other place I went to and the guy was super cool too by the way I got to meet him I'm trying to find the name of it I always oh quarters so quarters arcade bar in downtown Salt Lake City was awesome and I got to meet Mikey the owner he took me around and showed me they had this like private room area that you could rent out and it was really cool because they had like some early maybe they were late 70s early 80s pins in there and it was all decorated like this mid-century modern look it was super cool he brought me back into his like little service area but he had a good he had a good lineup of games too uh he had a guns and so a game i'd never really play because it's never anywhere they don't have it anywhere out here at least not that i know of maybe it's start uh star fighters but they had a guns and roses i played that a little bit guns and roses really heavy on multiball man like there's like a lot of multi balls i felt like all i was doing is playing multi balls but I was always curious about that game. It seems, I don't know that I'd want to own it, but it seems like a fun, like, I don't know, like the light shows and stuff on it were really cool. Like it definitely got, they definitely brought out the whole like band experience. They had a total nuclear annihilation. They had a labyrinth. Their labyrinth actually played pretty good. So sometimes labyrinths, I feel like when they're on location, I don't know what it is about that game specifically, but I feel like sometimes that game doesn't, I don't know, like the one I owned was a little bit quirky. had to do some tweaking to it they had a champion pub i don't know if you ever played a champion pub champion pump is really goofy like it's goofy but it's cool like the whole um in the back left of champion pub there's that like jump rope thing i don't even know how they do that like how do they shoot the ball up and suck it back i wonder if it's like like what props it up and then how do you do it consistently enough i don't know it seems like magic to me i'm like what the hell is going on and the whole boxing thing it's really goofy like the game is really goofy but talk about a game that really tried to to make it seem like you were in a gym like it's so crazy the whole fight thing is cool i don't know i would that thing i think would probably break down a lot based on all the mechs that are in it but maybe it doesn't i don't know but you don't see them on on location very often what else did they have i'm looking through my list uh they had a game called big guns which was really interesting i had never played that before they had a white water which that game is always fun to play they had a turtles a labyrinth they had a scooby-doo their Scooby-Doo was working and playing pretty well. I'm not a biggest fan of Scooby-Doo. And then TNA. So I played a bunch of TNA. Now, here's what was funny. I wish I knew this. I had to go to a dinner meeting that night with one of the guys that works for me. And I wish I didn't have to do that because they were doing a tournament that night, like within an hour. So I could have went to the tournament, but I ended up doing it. So yeah, so on this work trip, I did get to play some pinball which was cool i got i got my work done and uh utah i like utah man the Carl Weathers was nice there i love i love seeing all the mountains around so i guess uh if you were in utah utah for whatever reason i'd say nickelmania would be a cool place to check out josh actually gave me the josh and mikey both gave me the tips on nickelmania to check that out and then um yeah and then quarters downtown would would be cool but nickelmania had just a crazy amount of classics Like they had a lot of things. So I'm going to, I'm going to list the ones I played. I played, I played, I played a lot of pinball. It was right before I left for the airport judge dread. They had a black night. I played the data East turtles. They had a baby Pac-Man, which I was like shocked that someone would have a baby Pac-Man and a workable one. And it had like this weird, um, cause baby Pac-Man didn't have, it was just painted black inside. They had, they had sort of like, I don't know. Someone put some art blades in it or something. It was, it was a little bit like a beat up, uh, cabinet wise, but it played fine So baby Pac Theater of Magic Dude I would own a theater of magic I don know though i feel like theater of magic is really fun when i see it and play it but i wonder if i would get bored of it i don't know it's a really fun game though i really dig theater of magic a lot i feel like if i was going to get a classic i might or like a bally of that era i might i might consider getting a theater of magic what else did they have let's see um they had enough they had a champion pub there too uh sword of fury tales from the crypt i like tales from the crypt that's a fun one it has like a crazy i don't know what is in the tales from the crypt shaker motor but there's like some crazy it's like have you guys played if you play an evil dead and you put the shaker motor to the the highest setting does bug have a nuclear power plant inside the cabinet like i don't understand what he does what they do engineering wise do they juice up the hell lot of that shaker motor it's awesome like it's so awesome if you have not played evil dead put the shaker motor to the highest setting it's like i don't know what it's called it is insane and it adds so much to it when you hit when you hit like a lit shot during a mode it's like i'm like dude it's insane like my my wife can hear it in the couch on the couch when i'm in the garage and normally that's the whole point of the garage she can't hear anything she hears it it's insane like My buddy Rudy and I are like, we flip out every time. It's just, their theme integration on that game is absolutely insane. When you're doing the chopping the bits thing, they use the knocker, like, as the way, like, when you're chopping. They just, I know I sound like I'm gushing over spooky, but dude, they just, like, shit, man. They really do a good job. It's insane. They killed it with that game. Creature from the Black Lagoon, Lord of the Rings. i never really spent a good amount of time on a lord of the rings i really enjoyed the lord of the rings like i really sat there for probably a good 30 minutes and played i had a really good ball too uh they had a black knight 2000 uh firepower is one of my favorite williams older games that one's a really fun one i would own that too like i want to get like a classic like that i think it'd be cool to have a classic like that kale was telling me the other day he's like man you need a classic i really do i think it'd be fun to stream a classic too those games are just great like i'm really appreciating them more it's really because of playing at the electric bat that i'm appreciating them more so anyways so i know the main topic of this was supposed to be star wars but here here's here's what i'm going to say about it hold tight stern isn't bush league they're not trying to like they they they really i mean i'm speculating a little bit but just because of all the issues i saw that jersey jack had with harry potter and working with a licensor Right. It's not not not issues, meaning the licensors being like not not being. Well, you know, they're the ones that hold the power. Right. If they don't like something or if they decide they want to change something, they can like they can. And they'll say we want to prove it. Right. And sometimes I do think that maybe the companies do hedge their bets a little bit and say, all right, we're like at the final stages. They're saying we're we're pretty much done. So we're going to go ahead with our our launch date. But keep in mind, their launch dates probably move all the time. They probably have a target date, right? Maybe a target month. And if they're working with a licensor that has a very strict approval process, because I bet some of them, actually I don't bet, some of them are easier to work with. Easier meaning like there's less checks and balances or maybe they're just a little bit more open with the license, right? They'll let people do a little bit of interpretation of the license where some are going to be really strict. And I got to think Star Wars and Harry Potter, like they're going to be very strict on those types of licenses. So if there's something they don't like, they may hit them with something 11th hour when Stern thinks they're going to launch on this date. And keep in mind, they never gave a date. They never gave a date. And I bet they don't give dates a lot of times because they know how hard it is to settle on a date because there's they're working on approvals down to the final hour. You know, I mean, I saw the I saw the back end pieces of Jersey Jack and, you know, hopefully Ken's OK with me me talking about this. There are a lot of people that would say that Ken Cromwell left because he didn't see things go. Ken planned on being there through that whole launch. The problem is, is that the launch date kept moving. Ken had given his two or whatever. He had set a date of when he was leaving. I don't know exactly what he did, what the date was. but he was there that whole time working with us as if, Hey, I'm, I'm here. Like he, he, he was a workhorse down to the final days of us working on that project. And even though he wasn't there for the launch in his mind, I know he was expecting to be there for the launch, but it just didn't work out that way because the launch got extended so many times. So that stuff happens. Like it just does. It's not a, it doesn't mean it's, it really it's out of their hands to a, to a degree. I think they can get the date to a, to an, a range and then hope that they can get if all their ducks in a row, because they're very organized. George Gomez, when we were in a room for the John Wick thing, walked us through the whole process from start to finish from like, I can't remember how many months it was. Maybe it was 18 or 18 or 24 from when the project starts to when they're getting toward final approval and launch. And there's a lot of moving parts in there. if something gets messed up somewhere along that chain, it's going to affect the launch date. And that could be parts availability. It could be something as simple as artwork, parts availability, anything. So they try to get it as close as they can. But I think it is a challenge because they're working a lot of times with very large IP holders. I don't know how much publicly that Gomez had talked about it, but they had a ton of problems with Bond because like the Aston Martin sculpt, they had to go to like the, I don't know, the family that owns the Aston Martin license and all that so like that was separate from the movie and like it's just this stuff can be very complex so i don't look at it and go oh my gosh they're bullish i don't even know where that comes from but whatever i don't know i've seen it all on pin side and stuff i mean again kale would if i'm talking to kale he's like what are you doing on pin side i i do i enjoy pin side i try not to spend too much time there though because sometimes it just gets it just gets ugly people fighting and i'm like what are you even fighting about writing about pinball like and then I leave, but I'm usually there for some specific reason. Like there's a fix of a game or someone that has a, like a, some, something that can help me either, either in like how to set up my game or, or something like that. Like there's always something that people add there. I also go there for mods. I don't, I'm not doing as many mods as I used to do. I think honestly, um, really, if I'm really honest with myself, sometimes, sometimes you, I don't know. I started, I started doing some like, even though you're not, even if you do this, you kind of ruin it for yourself. But I started doing some math on like the games that I modded. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, this game is it's like I just blew the budget out on this game and I'm not going to get that money back. And so if I'm going to move that game on to someone else at some point. I don't know, it's kind of like a lot of money gone. I know I don't want to be like negative Nelly. I enjoy when you put a good mod in a game. It's just like it enhances the world under glass feel for it. Right. Like maybe there's something about it. I was like, oh, man, if they didn't use a plastic and did some kind of sculpt here, it would look cool. And a lot of times those are the ones I'm buying. I'm buying these cool sculpts that – or maybe some kind of lighting thing. Like there's something that I was kind of against on Metallica. It's like the right area where the four LEDs are. There's a mod for that. I won't say Diddy's Mod because I can't remember who it is. But it adds a much better display there. Like those lights are kind of confusing. I don't like those lights. It is in text what those things do. but I just feel like you never really know. The only one I always like remember is like the red one. I think is one extra. I think when the red one's blinking, it's, it's extra ball or something. So anyways, so I'm excited about coming full circle. I'm excited about star Wars. I think, I think it's, I don't know whether it's going to be good or not. I don't know. Like we'll find out, but I hope it's a good game. I think star needs it to be a good game because they've had, you know, their, their sales, at least from the outside. If you look at it, they seem like they're not as strong as they, they once were. So I hope they have a good hit here, But I think if they have a moderate hit, I have a feeling Walking Dead Remaster is going to be really popular. Because think about it. We had like a – I mean it was a DMD-style display. Now you're going from a DMD-style display to an LCD display. So now we can – I mean I don't know if they're going to get – I would imagine they're going to license a lot of the series footage. So that will add a whole other new element to it, kind of like with Metallica, right? now you had the animations in metallica were freaking awesome that was like one of the best i'd say that was like one of the best animations of last year they did such a good job with that so you know maybe we'll have some of the tv or some i keep saying tv show but the show clips and the animations could be really cool so i'm excited about that and that will probably be i'm assuming that's spike three two uh just to come full circle before we end i am excited about spike three but it appears that from what I've read on nap and then from what Gomez has said, we're not getting the full spike three package in star Wars. We're going to get the upgraded sound. I don't, I don't, I think the LCD is going to be exactly the same size, uh, but we probably will get maybe some of the new lighting that they're going to have. I don't know if we're going to get everything that spike three offers in that, in that machine, but I'm excited for where they're going to go with that. I will say though, looking at it a little bit, I've seen people post some information about the technical specs. It doesn't seem like the technical specs. There must be some special thing to it. If I get a chance to on Thursday, I would like to have – I've never done an interview with George. I'd love to sit with George and just – because at that point, he should be able to talk to me about more of the technical aspects of Spike 3. Like, I know they have node limitations on the current Spike 2 system, but I don't think the system's underpowered necessarily. I just think they can only address so many node boards. So I think that's going to make a big difference because now all of a sudden you're going to have more node boards, which means you can put more coils, more mechs, more things like that, more lighting. So they should be able to do a lot more with it than they can on Spike 2. But I don't think the processing power was ever a problem because George was explaining to me when I was there for D&D, I think it was Kong, that all of the animations are pre-rendered. So the computer isn't working on it. It's not like chomping a bunch of CPU and memory resources to draw the display imaging. That display imaging is already pre-rendered. So it's not like it's working hard and needs like a really big GPU to process all that. You don't need that. So I think they do that differently though than some of the other manufacturers. I think some of the PC-based manufacturers, they are rendering those assets live. So they might need slightly more power. I don't know that for a fact, but I get that hunch that they pre-render the assets and some need more processing power to do it. I don't know about, I've never talked to anybody about that at JJP, but I think that might be true. I don't know. If anybody knows more about how they handle their video and media assets on a JJP, that would be interesting. And then everybody else. I don't know how they do it either. See, I love this kind of stuff. It's real techie. I have a tech background, so I enjoy that kind of stuff. You guys probably should stop listening because you're like, eh. Because most people don't care. If it plays great and it looks better and there's better levels,