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Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast February 2026 recap

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·1h 53m·analyzed·Mar 2, 2026
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.038

TL;DR

Pokémon Pinball launches; Dutch Pinball Exclusive ends; Melvin joins American Pinball as creative director.

Summary

February 2026 was a major month in pinball news: Stern revealed Pokémon Pinball (designed by Jack Danger and George Gomez, co-designed with Tanyo on code), a massive licensing deal that sold out immediately with secondary market speculation; Dutch Pinball Exclusive ended in a split between Barry (Dutch Pinball) and Melvin Brown Williams over the planned Rasa game and new investor involvement; and Melvin was quickly appointed creative director at American Pinball under new ownership by Brian Vincent. The podcast also covered Stern code updates and Pokémon's unprecedented market impact as the world's largest media IP franchise.

Key Claims

  • Pokémon is the world's most popular media brand at approximately $240 billion annually, roughly 3-4 times larger than the second-largest brand (Hello Kitty at ~$80 billion).

    medium confidence · Jonathan Houston, Pinball Magazine editor, citing unspecified source data about global media franchise revenue

  • Pokémon Limited Edition was limited to 750 units, each with a unique serial-number-linked Pokémon character (similar to Batman variants).

    high confidence · Jonathan and Jonathan discussing Stern's official product specifications

  • Pokémon Limited Edition sold out immediately or before release, with significant secondary market speculation at inflated prices; could have sold twice as many units.

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston's direct observation of market behavior and distributor feedback

  • Pokémon licensing from The Pokémon Company International is extremely restrictive; Stern was limited to rearranging provided artwork elements with no creative modifications allowed.

    high confidence · Jonathan Houston and Jonathan discussing licensing constraints revealed during launch presentations

  • Production plan: limited operator Pros first (late February, not shown on Factory Friday tour), then Limited Editions, then Premiums, then remaining Pros.

    medium confidence · Jonathan Houston citing Stern's production roadmap, with uncertainty about actual execution

  • Dutch Pinball Exclusive split due to disagreement over Rasa margin structure and commercial terms, compounded by new investor involvement who opposed profit-sharing with Melvin.

    high confidence · Barry's email to distributors and Jonathan's interpretation of conversation with Melvin Brown Williams

  • Dutch Pinball's new investors are from the Netherlands with strong pinball passion; their involvement changed plans to build Rasa.

    medium confidence · Barry's email to distributors; investor identities and specific leverage remain undisclosed

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland toppers delayed up to 3 more months due to original display board supplier delaying from January to May delivery; Barry sourcing alternative supplier.

Notable Quotes

  • “Pokemon, far and away, is the biggest in the world far outstripping things like Star Wars and Star Trek and Marvel... Pokemon was something like $240 billion. So about three times, if not four times the size of the next biggest brand.”

    Jonathan Houston @ early segment — Establishes the unprecedented scale of the Pokémon IP license and its cultural dominance

  • “It seems that along with talking about the fact that the launch was delayed by license for approval, it does seem that Pokemon, as licensed from the Pokemon Company International, keep a very, very tight grip on their assets... they were given artwork elements and could rearrange them, but couldn't make any changes to them whatsoever.”

    Jonathan Houston @ mid segment — Highlights extreme licensing restrictions that constrain Stern's creative control

  • “After 14 years in the coin-op industry, traveling across the country and around the world, I knew it was time to take everything I'd learned... Wreck House opened its doors... features nearly 40 arcade games... 10 premium Stern Pinball models, all connected via Insider Connected.”

    Eric Gilly (via LinkedIn post quoted by Jonathan) @ personnel segment — Documents departure of key Stern sales executive to start competing venue business with 10 Stern machines

  • “We'd like to update you directly on a few important developments. Confirmed that the collaboration under the DPX name has come to an end... revealed a misalignment on commercial terms... margin structure and long term sustainability.”

    Barry (Dutch Pinball, via email) @ Dutch Pinball segment — Official confirmation of Dutch Pinball Exclusive dissolution and underlying commercial dispute

  • “Based on this experience Dutch Pinball has concluded this type of external collaboration introduces a level of complexity and dependency that does not align with how we want to build and scale the company going forward.”

    Barry (Dutch Pinball, via email) @ Dutch Pinball segment — Signals permanent shift away from collaborative sub-brand model like DPX

  • “He said he was kind of blindsided by the way that this bit happened... he'd been frustrated with Dr. Pimble's slow pace... he had a meeting with the new investors who weren't keen on making Raza, and having to split the profits... they basically gave him an ultimatum.”

Entities

Jonathan HoustonpersonPokémongameJack DangerpersonGeorge GomezpersonTanya KleisspersonStern PinballcompanyDutch PinballcompanyBarryperson

Signals

  • ?

    announcement: Stern officially revealed Pokémon Pinball by Jack Danger and George Gomez with code by Tanya Kleiss on Friday, February 13, 2026, after postponement due to licensing approval delays

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'We finally got to see it in its full glory on Friday the 13th... It was shown to distributors a few days earlier on the Tuesday, and then there was a media open day at the Stern factory for invited guests on the Wednesday'

  • ?

    product_launch: Pokémon Limited Edition (750 unit limit) sold out immediately or before official release, with significant secondary market speculation at inflated prices; could have sold 2x the production volume

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'The Limited Edition, of course, sold out immediately, if not before it was released... they could have probably sold twice as many'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Pokémon Company International imposed strict licensing restrictions limiting Stern's artwork creativity to rearranging provided elements with no modifications allowed, similar to past restrictive licenses like Austin Powers and WWE

    high · Jonathan Houston: 'Stern were very restricted in what they could do with the artwork on the game... they were given artwork elements and could rearrange them, but couldn't make any changes to them whatsoever'

  • ?

    code_update: Stern released four code updates in February 2026: The Walking Dead Remastered (Feb 11), Metallica Remastered (Feb 10, minor), King Kong Myth of Terror Island (Feb 4, major with Lost Temple multiball and combo system), Star Wars Fall of the Empire (Never Tell Me the Odds mini-wizard mode)

    high · Jonathan discussing with Martin: 'Four previous games all got updates, to varying degrees... The Walking Dead Remastered got an update on the 11th... King Kong... got a pretty big update on the 4th'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.342

0:00
Pokemon Pinball Revealed The end of Dutch Pinball Exclusive New Creative Director at American Pinball Texas Pinball Festival Preview Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston. I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine, and I'm joined by... and I'm the editor of Pinball News. And Jonathan and I are here to look back at all the exciting events that took place in the pinball world throughout the month of February 2026. And it was an exciting month. I know we say this most months, but I think it's fair to say that February brought us quite a lot of news, and we're going to bring it to you in this month's Pincast.
0:50
Yeah. A big summary. A new game, of course, and, well, the end of the company and some surprising events.
1:00
Let's just try. Let's dive straight in and start with Stern Pimble, who announced and revealed Pokemon by Stern Pimble. Designed by Jack Danger and George Gomez.
1:18
Long time rumored title. Not really a surprise. And apparently they reveal has been postponed some time due to licensing approval. Yes, that's right. We finally got to see it in its full glory on Friday the 13th, ominous date, but I think it went down very well for them. It was shown to distributors a few days earlier on the Tuesday, and then there was a media open day at the Cern factory for invited guests on the Wednesday before the launch, which neither of us could get to unfortunately.
2:01
Yeah, and as always, at least I did, I asked, okay, can we get a Zoom interview or whatever type of way of interview to talk to the design team long distance, because we can't make it. And as ever, none of that happened. No, I think you're a bit swamped by media requests when these games launch, so unless you're actually there, I think you probably get dropped off the list of people to speak to, but not a surprise. I was a little disappointed that it was but I understand that it was arranged at quite short notice. We only got the invitation what, about a week or ten days before the media open day actually happened, which was a little bit irritating for me because I was already in the US on the Monday of that week. And had I known that the media open day was going to be on the Wednesday, I could have extended my stay there by a couple of days and gone. But fortunately, my good friend Mick Brown was able to go for the People News report from it and recorded the presentation that Jack Dane and George Gomez and Tanya Clice, whose software lead on the game, did in front of the assembled media people. So you can watch that on the Pinball News site in the report on the launch of the game, also on our YouTube channel. So I'll get that plug out of the way. He said, actually, it was a surprisingly young crowd at this media or streamer's open day,

high confidence · Barry's email to distributors regarding supply chain issue

  • Melvin Brown Williams was appointed creative director at American Pinball under Brian Vincent's new ownership within days of leaving Dutch Pinball.

    high confidence · Jonathan's conversation with Melvin and American Pinball's official announcement

  • Melvin claims he didn't leave DPX because of American Pinball offer; the offer came 16 minutes after he posted his departure announcement via Brian Vincent message.

    high confidence · Jonathan's direct conversation with Melvin Brown Williams regarding timing and motivation

    • Jonathan (paraphrasing Melvin Brown Williams) @ American Pinball segment — Reveals the ultimatum dynamic and investor pressure that forced Melvin's departure

  • “He said he'd never forgive the way that he was forced out in such a way, which was very, very sad.”

    Jonathan (paraphrasing Melvin Brown Williams) @ American Pinball segment — Indicates emotional impact and lasting resentment from forced departure

  • “As creative director he will be ahead of all the designs being made a bit like George Gomez's role I suppose at Stern... he will help with the design process both his own designs and designs from other designers.”

    Jonathan (describing Melvin's role at American Pinball) @ American Pinball segment — Clarifies Melvin's new leadership position and scope of creative authority

  • “He says the American people needed a reboot. He says they're starting everything fresh. gives them that clean break from the old American pinball.”

    Jonathan (paraphrasing Melvin on American Pinball strategy) @ American Pinball segment — Indicates strategic reset and desire to distance new American Pinball from failed previous iteration

  • “Going back to Raza, he says that it's not part of their planning at this time... it wasn't why he joined American Pimble... in a year or two if the science fits into production schedule, it could be made, but it's not on Melvin or Briar's priorities.”

    Jonathan (paraphrasing Melvin on Raza status) @ American Pinball segment — Clarifies that Melvin's signature game (Raza/Retro-Atomic Zombie Adventure Land) is not immediate priority despite his appointment

    • Melvin Brown Williamsperson
    Dutch Pinball Exclusivecompany
    American Pinballcompany
    Brian Vincentperson
    Eric Gillyperson
    The Pokémon Company Internationalorganization
    Pinball Newscompany
    Pinball Magazinecompany
    Mick Brownperson
    Ron Lindemannperson
    Miteshperson
    Planetary Pinballcompany
    Wreck Housecompany
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Insider Connectedproduct
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandgame
    Razagame
  • ?

    industry_signal: Dutch Pinball ended its DPX sub-brand collaboration model permanently, concluding that external collaborations 'introduce a level of complexity and dependency' misaligned with company growth strategy

    high · Barry (via email): 'Based on this experience Dutch Pinball has concluded this type of external collaboration introduces a level of complexity and dependency that does not align with how we want to build and scale the company going forward'

  • ?

    business_signal: Dutch Pinball brought on new Dutch investors with strong pinball passion to improve financial stability and professional operations; this investment triggered the dissolution of DPX and rejection of Rasa project expansion

    medium · Jonathan: 'Dutch Pinball, as mentioned in Barry's email to distributors, has brought on board two new investors from the Netherlands... their involvement changed all that'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Melvin Brown Williams departed Dutch Pinball Exclusive after ultimatum from new investors over Raza production margin-sharing; quickly appointed creative director at American Pinball by Brian Vincent within 16 minutes of announcing departure

    high · Jonathan: 'One particular message coming in mere 16 minutes after he posted his announcement from a certain Brian Vincent, suggesting he might like to join the new American Pinball'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland toppers delayed 3+ months due to original display board supplier unexpectedly delaying from January to May delivery; Dutch Pinball sourcing alternative supplier requiring new procurement cycle

    high · Jonathan: 'Further delays of up to another three months on the toppers... the original supplier pushed them back unexpectedly from delivery in January to delivery in May which he deemed was unacceptable so it has decided to get them made elsewhere'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Eric Gilly, senior director of North American sales at Stern Pinball, departed after 14 years in coin-op industry to launch Wreck House arcade venue in St. Charles, Illinois, featuring 10 Stern pinball machines on Insider Connected

    high · Eric Gilly LinkedIn post (quoted): 'After 14 years in the coin-op industry... I knew it was time to take everything I'd learned from different concepts and build something of my own... Wreck House features nearly 40 arcade games... 10 premium Stern Pinball models, all connected via Insider Connected'

  • $

    market_signal: Pokémon is the world's largest media franchise by annual revenue (~$240 billion), roughly 3-4x the second-largest brand, representing unprecedented IP scale for pinball licensing

    medium · Jonathan Houston citing unspecified source: 'Pokemon was something like $240 billion. So about three times, if not four times the size of the next biggest brand'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Melvin Brown Williams appointed as creative director at American Pinball with role modeled on George Gomez at Stern: oversight of all game designs (own and collaborators), art direction, design process leadership, with full creative freedom

    high · Jonathan: 'As creative director he will be ahead of all the designs being made a bit like George Gomez's role I suppose at Stern... He says he has all the creative freedom that he wants in his role'

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball undergoing complete reboot under Brian Vincent ownership with Melvin Brown Williams as creative director; starting fresh with mostly new staff (Ron Lindemann and Mitesh retained); actively hiring coders and assembly workers

    high · Jonathan paraphrasing Melvin: 'He says the American people needed a reboot. He says they're starting everything fresh... they are currently pretty much the only previous workers from there, and they are hiring coders and assembly line workers'

    • 3:47
    which maybe that reflects the broad appeal of the Pokemon theme, because personally I'm saying it doesn't do anything for me, but that seems to be a common thread these days when they launch these new titles. I know about them, but they're not something which I'm particularly interested in. But it is surprising how many people are into Pokemon And I saw some details somewhere about the most popular The world's most popular media brands And Pokemon, far and away, is the biggest in the world Far outstripping things like Star Wars and Star Trek and Marvel and I think the second one on the list was Hello Kitty.
    4:38
    And that was... And guess what's coming next? Well, I don't want to tempt fate, but that, I think, the size of Hello Kitty was something like 80 billion worldwide per year. and Pokemon was something like $240 billion.
    5:03
    So about three times, if not four times the size of the next biggest brand. So it is huge. So they're making huge amounts of money and there's a lot of people who get involved in it. So I think from that aspect, if they can attract even a small proportion of those fans into the pinball world, who were not previously there. Well, they probably, I assume, going back to the younger attendees at the media briefing, so to speak, at CERN, I assume they reached out to Pokémon enthusiasts who professionally or more or less professionally are involved in that, and they might have been introduced to Pinball for the very first time. Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, all of them didn't really know much about pinball, and that's true of the media coverage as well. You know, quite a lot of the streams and recordings I've seen have been people who were, you know, surprised how much fun pinball was and were telling their viewers and listeners that pinball is still around and they wouldn't really have known about it otherwise. so I think yeah I think it's hopefully doing what every people company wants and that is to expand the player base and to bring in younger players so we will see but it certainly did very very well for them they got the three levels it's a cornerstone game from stone so they got the pro premium and limited edition limited to 750 units for pokemon the pricing has unchanged from previous cornerstones which basically means it's $7,000 for the Pro, $9,700 for the Premium, and $13,000 for the Limited Edition. The Limited Edition, of course, sold out immediately, if not before it was released, with pre-orders for various distributors. They'd have some apparently available for sales on the website, but the chance of getting one of those is pretty slim.
    7:15
    And now, of course, people who put in their pre-orders on this trying to make a fast buck on it and trying to get high prices for them and sending them for silly money on various websites and forums, whether they're getting them or not, I don't know, but it does seem that it was highly undersupplied for the limited edition, they could have probably sold twice as many Hmm, so well, the I'm not sure whether there is a reason for the 750 unit for the LE. I do know that each LE has a special Pokemon, like with the Batman. The villains and things like that. Yes.
    8:09
    Yeah. So a special tag unique for that game. So maybe there's only 750 Pokemon. No, this is a fun one. than that, but yeah, you're right, each one, each serial number is linked to a Pokemon, because Pokemon all have numbers as well. Pokemon characters. I mean, there are over 800 and I think 813 or something in the game so far, and there's going to be more added, but no, there are I think something like 3,000 in total out there. So I don't think that was a limiting factor.
    8:48
    But getting back of the game anyway. So the Premium and the Ellie, of course, top featured models. The Pro lacks the left lift ramp, which is also a ball lock. It's a static ramp.
    9:03
    The game has a Pikachu toy on it and a Pokeball, both of which are animated in the Premium and Ellie but not in the Pro. There's a Meowth Balloon which comes down and turns into a bash toy. That is, as in all models, but on the premium and early, there's a magnet under it, a disruptor magnet. And there's also a sneak in scoop. And also on the premium and early, there's like a spin around, like a whirlpool bowl on the left hand in lane, a bit like the opposite side to Creature from the Black Lagoon, that one. but unlike that game the ball doesn't always go in there so there is a diverter which will send it straight into the in lane or into the spin around depending on what mode the game is in so the ball won't get stuck in there quite so much and also they put little bumps in it as well to stop it from spending a minute spinning around so I thought about all that as far as production goes there's a limited run of pros being made first for operators to put out on location. After that, they'll make the limited editions, followed by the premiums, and finally the rest of the pros. The first one, the ones for operators, was supposed to begin production in late February,
    10:36
    but Stern's Factory Friday tour, which was a couple of days ago, didn't show it on the line. So I don't know whether that's been delayed or whether it is in production or has been in production, but they just weren't showing it.
    10:52
    Right. Okay. So, very exciting launch, I think, generally. I think it's a massive title, really, for Stern. For those people who are aware of it, I think so many people are into Pokemon. It's quite surprising, you know.
    11:08
    Talk to people. Well, I never was. And the surprise was that there's an office with, you know, 10 people in it, probably three or four of them will be big Pokemon fans.
    11:19
    Hmm. Well, I never was into the cartoon series. I did play Pokemon Go on my cell phone, my smartphone when it came out for a little bit.
    11:36
    But that's as far as my interest in Pokemon goes. I thought the app was fun for as long as it lasted. Yeah. But I get that the theme of catching Pokemons is very relatable to, or transferable to a pinball game. So in that sense, I think CERN may have definitely a hit on their hand. I'm just interested or curious to see whether operators besides the traditional pinball operators that we have right now see the potential of operating a Pokemon game on location.
    12:20
    Or maybe bring in new operators or something like that. I mean, for FECs and so on, it seems like a no-brainer to have a Pokemon pinball machine. Absolutely.
    12:32
    But is the local laundromat going to put a Pokemon machine in there or something like that. Yeah, I'm not sure if it's going to make miracles, but I think it's certainly going to appeal to a wide range of people who may be turned off by the previous traditional titles, the superheroes and bands.
    13:02
    Right. Well, the thing is if you think about it, if you have ACDC, Pinball, or Metallica. Those are titles that you can put easily into, I don't know, a trucker's bar or any type of bar. But with Pokemon, I mean, that's more, well, you'd think it would be more aimed at children, teenagers, maybe, but not so much people that attend barcades. Yeah, well, again, I think you might be surprised. that might attract people you wouldn't have thought were into Pokemon, but secretly are. Right.
    13:45
    Okay. There was one other thing I wanted to mention about the game itself, which is quite unusual. It seems that, along with talking about the fact that the launch was delayed by license for approval, it does seem that Pokemon, as licensed from the Pokemon Company International, keep a very, very tight grip on their assets and the use of them in the games to the point where Stern were very restricted in what they could do with the artwork on the game. Basically, they were given artwork elements and could rearrange them, but couldn't make any changes to them whatsoever.
    14:29
    So it's almost like the artwork on the game was defined by the licensor which tends not to be a particularly good thing we've seen that before with Austin Powers where they insisted it had that hairy finish to the artwork on the back glass which everybody went what the hell is that but that's what they wanted WWE also comes to mind the WrestleMania game that's right yeah so I have to admit I don't particularly like the artwork on the new Pokemon game, but then I'm not into the game, I'm not into Pokemon. I was going to say, would there have been any Pokemon-related artwork that you would have liked? Yeah, I think so. It would have been a bit more dynamic. It's almost like it's a theme which would work really well with the sort of Jeremy Packer, Zambietti artwork that they've done for superheroes and likewise. But I would appreciate that they're not allowed to do that for that particular license. Oh, well, then there will be some aftermarket thingy that's not available, and then you have decals. Yeah. Oh, well. Anyway, so, well, obviously, that was the main news from Stern Pinball.
    15:51
    Pretty much the only news, really. Were there any code updates, Martin? Yeah, I was surprised that you were so keen to find out. Yes, there were, actually. Yeah, there were four. Four previous games all got updates, to varying degrees or other.
    16:09
    The Walking Dead Remastered got an update on the 11th. It wasn't a big update, just some additional feedback on displays and insert lighting to indicate whether features are ready or collected. A few new sounds, some voice calls, and some new music as well, so that's quite good. Plus, of course, the usual bug fixes. Metallica Remastered got a very small update on the 10th the day before, just to fix a couple of bugs and add a couple of service menu adjustments, and that was all King Kong, on the other hand Myth of Terror Island, got a pretty big update on the 4th, right back at the start of the month with version 0.93 got a new Lost Temple multi-ball mini-wizard mode a whole new combo system which awards various time power-ups, depending on how many shots you do before collecting it.
    17:02
    Added more perks through collecting treasure, rule changes, scoring and balances, all that stuff. More call-outs, more lights, more sound effects, and new shaker motor effects. Definitely a big update for King Kong. Finally, Star Wars, Fall of the Empire. Got a new mini-wizard mode as well, called Never Tell Me the Odds. Got some new video clips added and some new attract mode settings and a few rule changes and bug fixes and all the usuals. So those were the four games which got code updates from Stern in the month of February.
    17:39
    Right, okay. Then I may have a personnel update. I think we mentioned a couple of months ago that we heard that Eric Gilly was no longer at CERN, Eric Giddey being the senior director of North American sales at CERN. And then I came across a post from him on LinkedIn, and I'll read this out loud in quotes. After 14 years in the coin-op industry, traveling across the country and around the world, I knew it was time to take everything I'd learned from different concepts and build something of my own. right here in my hometown of St. Charles, Illinois. Just three months ago, Wreck House opened its doors, and it's been an incredible accomplishment that my family and I are extremely proud of.
    18:38
    Today, Wreck House features nearly 40 arcade games, along with bocce bags, shuffleboard, and pool, plus full-surface bar and kitchen. We host leagues and tournaments every week, creating a space built around competition, community, and fun. I wouldn't be here without my time at Bandai Namco Amusement America and Stern Pinball, where I learned invaluable lessons that helped shape this concept. Special shout-out to Tom Simenik and John Buscaglia, both who were mentors to me at both companies. If you're ever in the St. Charles area, stop by and check it out. We'd love to have you. Very nice. Just having a quick look at their website as you mentioned it. Yes, it says they have 10 premium Stern Pinball models, all connected via Insider Connected with a leaderboard. So, yes, 10 pinballs, along with all those other games.
    19:36
    I'm not saying this confirms that Eric Gilley is gone at Stern Pinball, but it does confirm that he is doing something on the side, at least. Yes, Rekhaus in St. Charles, Illinois. so yeah one to watch out, maybe visit when we're over for Expo not too far away so no indeed it is not and that rounds it up for Sturm Pinball with yeah okay so move on to our second headline which was rather dramatic news about the end of Dutch Pinball Exclusive so we better explain exactly what that is now remember You might remember Dutch Pinball Exclusive was a company or a brand, a sub-brand, I suppose, set up as part of Dutch Pinball to build the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland game. It was a collaboration between Barry of Dutch Pinball and Melvin Brow Williams, who had the rights to the game. and so Dr. Pinball was basically building the game and Melvin designed, finished the design, did all the art directing, did the software and gave it to Barry to build and to fulfil the orders.
    21:01
    I think that's a fair summation of the two roles. However, there has been a, not falling out, but in a parting of ways shall we say, between Melvin and Dutch Pimble yes Melvin was the first to bring the news out in a I think we even called it a press announcement or something like that basically announcing that well they are parting ways, but it should not affect the production of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that will continue as Dutch Pinball is still building them, and Dutch Pinball, in the meantime, have also indicated that they will commit to building the remaining Alice's in Wonderland. Alice's Adventures.
    22:04
    Yeah, whatever. So many Alice games. The Alice game, yes. So, that should be a relief for those who have a game on order, that their game is still being built. And unfortunately, the DPX collaboration ends now. Well, we're going to do this in a slightly weird and backwards way, because we have more news about Melvin coming up, and a part of which got to speak to Melvin, and he can give us a lot more detail about this and his other news.
    22:54
    However... Right, okay, so to back up. However, hold on. So the original plan was to have Melvin come on this episode of our pin cross. And we had a confirmation from early in the week where he said, yeah, that's no problem. And then last night, just three quarters before I had to start a DJ gig, he texted me and he's like, I can't make it tomorrow night. and you can call me but we can't record anything and then I reach out to you resulting in you actually talking to Melvin because I was not able to and what you, Melvin, discussed, we're going to find out later. Because it covers this but also what has happened to Melvin since. So we will come back to that. However, after he announced the split, Barry then also confirmed this in an email to his distribution partners. And so he says, we'd like to update you directly on a few important developments.
    24:10
    Confirmed that the collaboration under the DPX name has come to an end. he said the title was first successfully brought to market discussions around a potential second title which is Rasa as we know that revealed a misalignment on commercial terms which I think comes down to a disagreement which we will talk about in Melbourne specifically regarding margin structure and long term sustainability of all parties involved as a result both sides mutually agreed to discontinue not only the second project but the collaboration as a whole okay so now to me that didn't necessarily mean that TPX was finished because another collaboration could come along and also become a Dutch Bimbo exclusive title but as we will find out that's not going to happen so he said based on this experience Stotzpinball has concluded this type of external collaboration introduces a level of complexity and dependency that does not align with how we want to build and scale the company going forward so pretty much ruling out ever doing anything like that again now one of the things which hasn't been mentioned in well hasn't been mentioned so far and potentially is the cause for a lot of this, is the fact that Dutch Pinball,
    25:48
    as mentioned in Barry's email to distributors, has brought on board two new investors from the Netherlands.
    25:56
    Now, we don't know who they are, so we can't speak about anything they particularly bring to the company other than capital.
    26:08
    Barry says they both have a strong passion for pinball, and their involvement enables Dutch Pinball to operate in a more professional, stable and well-capitalized manner.
    26:19
    So, as we understand it, up until their involvement, Barry and Melvin had their agreement for building Rasa. We're going ahead with that, but the new investors' involvement changed all that.
    26:38
    But we'll come back to that a bit later. I don't want to keep leaping backwards and forwards. Let's stop and hold.
    26:47
    Anyway, it's varied to say that Dutch Pinball is fully committed, as you said, to completing the remaining Alice's Adventures in Wonderland machines and continues to work diligently towards final delivery.
    27:00
    However, after that, there was another email that went out to buyers telling them that there was further delays of up to another three months on the toppers for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland due to supply issues with the display board which is used for the cat's eyes.
    27:24
    According to Barry, the original supplier pushed them back unexpectedly from delivery in January to delivery in May which he deemed was unacceptable so it has decided to get them made elsewhere that's having to obviously start the process of getting them with another supplier from scratch which also takes time in the meantime it says Alice Games are still shipping but without the toppers so that was something we've seen before, well up until now people were expecting them to be available any time and looks like it's going to be longer delays for that which is a shame. But it's only the top round.
    28:10
    And if past experience end to go by, if Dutch people say they will get you that eventually, then they will.
    28:19
    But obviously disappointing not to have the entire package delivered to you if you been waiting all this time for anything Right Now before we close off the Dutch Pinball segment, although in the next item... We're going to open it again. It will still be mentioned. I did reach out to Barry today asking him whether he wanted to comment on the whole situation. And he texted me back basically saying that he things, everything has already been said and feels, well,
    28:59
    so why repeat it? That's my own interpretation of that, but basically everything has been said, so there's nothing new to report.
    29:09
    That's it. Well, nothing new other than what we've already reported. Yes, that's true. Yes. Would it be nice to find out a little more about the new investors, but I guess they will make themselves known if they want to. Otherwise they might just stay in the background.
    29:29
    Right, so that's it for Dutch pinball. Then we move on to our next company, American Pinball. You remember last month we announced the purchase of American Pinball, the company, by J. Brian Vincent, who we call Brian Vincent from now on, or at least by his family company. but he is heading up American Pinball.
    29:56
    And this month there was the announcement by American Pinball that Melvin Brow Williams has been appointed creative director.
    30:08
    Now, who's Melvin, you might ask? No, no, I don't remember. It was five minutes ago. Yeah, so having separated from Barry, and Dr. Pinball is part of DPX, he was very quickly appointed creative director at American Pimble.
    30:27
    And although Melvin has near-complete designs for retro-atomic zombie adventure land, Raza, as we were talking about before, apparently there are no immediate plans to build it at American Pimble. That's not why he is there.
    30:45
    As you said, to find out more, we wanted to bring him onto this Pimcast. and interview him, but as you said, Jonathan was busy working last night but I was able to speak with Melvin, who took some time out from his busy Saturday night, talk to us about the events, all the events really over the past two weeks from the script with Dutch Pinball to the appointment at American Pinball no, he certainly wasn't in a position to record an interview with us just yet, something we were really hoping to do at the Texas Pinball Festival in a couple of weeks or shortly after where he will be and Brian will be as well. And we as well. As well. And lots of other people, as we will talk about later in this PIN cast.
    31:34
    But as I was able to chat to him about his departure from Dutch PIN board exclusive and his plans as creative director at American PIN board. So these are my takeaways from what we discussed. They're not his words exactly, so don't hold him to any specific turn of phrase that I might use, but they are my interpretations and recollections from our conversation.
    31:57
    Melvin and Brian, as I said, will be at TPF along with us. They want to do a seminar there to talk about the new American Pinball.
    32:11
    So let's hope that takes place. So Melvin said American Pinball is restarting now. Many people are working on getting everything set up. We spoke about him leaving Dutch Pinball, Dutch Pinball exclusive, I should say.
    32:28
    He said he was kind of blindsided by the way that this bit happened. He knew about the new investors and welcomed their injection of new capital into Dutch Pinball to put it on a good financial footing, which he said was surely needed. Although he'd been frustrated with Dr. Pimble's slow pace of building the Alice games, and Toppers especially, for a long time. He had a disagreement with Barry to build Raza, and they were already ordering parts to build a pre-production game.
    33:02
    And so he had a meeting with the new investors who weren't keen on making Raza, and having to split the profits with Melvin, and throwing them to the mix, the whole tariff situation of selling games into the US and the uncertainty that gives. And they basically gave him an ultimatum to either accept new terms for the business of building Maza or leave.
    33:30
    Melvin couldn't really accept those new terms because they were so unfavourable. So he was out the door. That was it.
    33:39
    He said he'd never forgive the way that he was forced out in such a way, which was very, very sad. As for the DPX brand and possible reuse of it, Galdon and Barry created it together. Melbourne said he didn't want the DPX brand to be used for a Dutch pinball after he left, as he feels it's tied so closely to his name. And he thinks Barry won't want to use it either. But Melbourne said he wouldn't allow another game to be produced under the DPX brand anyway. So that definitely does seem to be the end of Dutch pinball exclusive as a brand.
    34:20
    When it comes to... Yes, that's right, yes. The existing games, existing Alice games will be, certainly will continue to be built under that brand, yes. Quite right, good point.
    34:33
    Moving on, he said he purposefully published his announcement about leaving DPX until just after midnight local time when the European market would be asleep, when the US was still awake so he could go to sleep and wake up in the morning and see what the reaction would be. And he said he was amazingly supportive of his decision and understanding as well. With one particular message coming in mere 16 minutes after he posted his announcement from a certain Brian Vincent, suggesting he might like to join the new American Pinball.
    35:11
    Melvin was keen to stress to me that he didn't leave DPX because of the American Pinball offer. The offer came in after he'd left. So, although he had spoken to Brian before, there was never any suggestion that he would go and work for American Pinball or work for Brian. It was purely business-related. and so the thing is they weren't strangers but he was surprised to get this offer and thought it would be a good fit for his skills and that's what Brian thought as well and he said as creative director he will be ahead of all the designs being made a bit like George Gomez's role I suppose at Stern he will help with the design process both his own designs and designs from other designers,
    36:04
    which we are yet to hear details of yet. We can imagine that Melvin's not going to be designing all the games.
    36:13
    He says he has all the creative freedom that he wants in his role as creative director. He says he's only been working there for a couple of weeks, but already feels like he's been there for a year with how settled everything feels. He says the American people needed a reboot. He says they're starting everything fresh. gives them that clean break from the old American pinball.
    36:35
    So I asked him whether he was going to be moving over to Palatine in Illinois to work there. He said, no, he's going to mostly still work remotely, but will come to the factory whenever he needs to. He'll come over and stay for about a week every eight weeks or longer, if he, stay for longer if he needs to, particularly around the time of new game launches and key points in the development of those. he says the Netherlands is only 8 hours away anyway so if he's needed he could be there pretty quickly you know the factory can close for the day at 5 o'clock and by the time it opens the next morning he can be there you sound doubtful in theory yes but even if you get the earliest flight still be there in the afternoon, but still. Well, in theory, yes. So, at American Pinball, Ron Lindemann is obviously still there as vice president of the company, and Mitesh is still there as a mechanical engineer from the old AP, but they are currently pretty much the only previous workers from there, and they are hiring coders and assembly line workers right now to get everything up and running.
    38:03
    And we remember last month, we also mentioned about the reimagined Valley Williams titles that American Pinball had licensed from Planetary Pinball.
    38:14
    Well, Melvin will be involved in the designs of these. When he joined a couple of weeks ago, they were already working on the design for one title, which Melvin's been helping with. He'll help further with that and make changes where necessary. He's also doing the art direction for that game as well. But for subsequent reimagining games, he'll take a larger role in the design of the reimagining.
    38:41
    He'll also get involved in original designs from Rake and Pimble. Maybe his own, or in collaboration with other game designers, as I said before. Because they're trying to bring some of those on board, but haven't got anything to announce just yet.
    38:55
    Going back to Raza, he says that it's not part of their planning at this time, and it wasn't why he joined American Pimble.
    39:04
    He says in a year or two if the science fits into production schedule, it could be made, but it's not on Melvin or Briar's priorities. Excuse me, I'll go back off.
    39:15
    Ah, we talk this much in one long session. Turns the cuphead going. Yeah, cuphead. I thought it was summary. It is, believe me. We've talked for a while. The Cuphead game is not currently part of the future either. Milderman said it could be brought into production at some point, as he would. As a few tweaks, it's almost complete. But that's not his decision to make, and again, it's certainly not a priority for the company.
    39:50
    I thought he was created director, so that sounds like it's a decision for him. It has control over the designs, but maybe not which designs go into production.
    40:06
    He says that the old American pinball, while they never made any particularly bad games, they never really had any big titles, and they really need something higher profile and more appealing. So that's something he wants to address, to get some bigger licenses involved.
    40:25
    Ron and Brian will do the employment of the staff and run the production line and manage the finances and all that and all the sports side. Melvin thinks the sports side is getting a big boost and that will show itself in the coming months with additional staff and more parts stocked to support both new and existing titles. he says it's very very important that when somebody rings American Pimple it gets picked up immediately and answered by somebody who's able to resolve the issue on older titles he says it comes to a point where they have to make a break with the old American Pimple and concentrate on making new titles so they won't be keep running Houdini, October 1st, Hot Wheels Legends of Alhalla etc forever or indeed much longer Classic Tank Force, he says, is a relatively new title, so they'll probably build those for a little while longer. Apparently they're still building Hot Wheels at the moment, and they do have the license for that still. So that's good to hear. That's quite a good game. I quite like that.
    41:31
    He says, rather than the previous model, there were different versions, the classic, deluxe, collector's edition, signature edition, and so on.
    41:41
    The new titles from the new American people will just have two models going forward, a standard and an enhanced exact naming yet to be decided.
    41:52
    It says there's a new team now with new enthusiasm to create the games. The reimagining games are a good starting point as there's already a solid base game from which to build and gives them a chance to build up the company further to the point where they can release their own original designs.
    42:10
    Announcements will be coming thick and fast over the coming weeks and months regarding new hires and upcoming titles.
    42:18
    And finally, I think he said it's refreshingly different to his experience at Dutch Pinball, where there were no staff to help design Alice, and he had to do it all on his own, or find his own external contractors to help in specialist areas. He said at American Pinball, there's already a fresh team of ten people working on different aspects of their upcoming releases. Other than Long and Matesh, Melvin says there's really nobody there from the old American Pinball, and everyone's new and got a fresh perspective on building games.
    42:49
    And that was about it. I think that's a summary of what we spoke about, so I hope that's given you some useful information, and we can look forward to a big stream of new announcements coming out of the new American Pinball fairly soon about new hires, new titles, and new plans for the business.
    43:10
    Right. Okay. Well, best of luck to Melvin and American Pinball, of course, and as well to Dutch Pinball with their new financial investors in the company and their vision for the company as well. Oh, well. So that rounds it up for American Pinball and Dutch Pinball in this case, sort of combined together. Moving on, we're heading over to Houston, Texas. Barrels of Fun. Yes. Well, I was at the Pinball at the Beach show. Unfortunately, you couldn't make it. But David Van Ness and Brian Savage from Barrels of Fun were both there. And they had brought along two Winchester Mystery House games, A dune game and a labyrinth game To be available In the Pavilion tent there for people to play For guests of the show I have to say Along with another game we're looking at In a moment, Beetlejuice Winchester Mystery House Had constant long lines When to play Even on a show where there's so many Machines that you could easily Go and play along with the machine Those two Mystery House titles were Machines, were in constant Demand, even From before the Official opening of the show You can find people who were Helping or working The show, playing it and getting early games in And I managed to sneak in And get a couple of games on it But After playing one I immediately Wanted to play it again and there was nobody else waiting to play it And by the time I'd finished the second game, there were about six or seven people waiting to play. So I moved along and let them take over.
    45:11
    Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I thought it was a good game. I got my first chance to actually play it, believe it or not, after all this time. So I could talk about it later, but I'm not interested in my opinions of it. But we can say that Barrels of Fun, the company, are getting some extra publicity. thanks to a new video from a company called Dassault Systems, who are the company behind the SolidWorks software package, a 3D design program. They feature BowserFun in their latest promotional video, where various people from the company talk about how they use SolidWorks to design various mechs used in the pinball machines, and also about pinball in a wider sense. And the video ends with a link to solidworks.com slash barrels of fun as you can find out more about their experience using Solidworks to build games, but when I checked it today that page doesn't exist. So maybe it's something which will be coming up shortly. It hasn't been released to the public as of yet. But keep an eye out for that, solidworks.com slash Barrels of Fun, and hopefully that video will be there, and more details of Barrels of Fun's manufacturing processes pretty soon. Right. It's actually interesting that, I mean, every pinball company uses solid words to design their playfields. So it's actually a surprise that they end up with Barrels of Fun. they easily could have went with Jersey Jack or Stern Pimble for Deathly Hallows. Yeah, true. But I suppose I don't know the process by which they picked Bowser Fun, but maybe it was just because they are a more open and adaptable company and they would suddenly make themselves available to the film.
    47:20
    Right. Or sometimes it matters who you know. That's true. Or where you are. Maybe SolidWorks' publicity department or media company around the Houston area.
    47:35
    Could be, could be. Oh well. Anyway. So, Berolov Afan also released a new code update for Winchester Mystery House. And that includes a new 13th wizard mode. The 13th wizard mode. Oh my God. You can clearly see I have all the knowledge in the world about this. It's very hard to actually say 13th.
    48:06
    But yeah, it's one of the features that you have to collect in the game. So after you've got all 13th, the new wizard mode begins which is called the 13th Wizard Mode. So there you go. Unsurprisingly.
    48:27
    Okay. Well, since it's a Wizard Mode, I'll probably never see it anyway, but it's good to know that it's there. Indeed. And there's also some new wildcard mementos to earn,
    48:38
    and probably some improved lighting and insert indications as well, along with a... I just had to clean my... Oh, yeah, from the 13th. Well, that's probably long overdue, so you probably see your notes clear now.
    48:58
    Yes, and along with the usual bunch of bug fixes in that Winchester Mystery House software update. I think that pretty much wraps it up for our Barrels of Fun section in this month's Pincast.
    49:11
    Right, so you also mentioned Spooky Pinball. being at the previous week. Yes, prior to it opening, there was, or even being set up, that people were saying there were going to be ten Beetlejuices at the show. Well, there weren't. There were actually twelve, which is even better. They had a nice row of eight and another four set up in a little island as well, giving plenty of space around the games for people to play them. And, yeah, I got a chance to play it, And I think it's a great, great game. It's got amazing multimedia assets in it. I still prefer Evil Dead more.
    49:55
    I don't know why. I think what was missing in Beetlejuice was it didn't have the same level of call-outs in it. It didn't have the guidance of what to shoot and rewards and telling you well done when you shot things that Evil Dead does. because I think the voice call-outs on that game are spectacular and as good as the art and really guide you through the game. And that was missing. But apparently, I was speaking to Spooky at the show, and they said they are in there, but they decided to turn them off for the show because it would be so noisy nobody would be able to hear them. I thought that was a bit odd.
    50:37
    I mean, you're surprised that's possible. Yeah. Well, I was sure it was easy to turn off things like that, but why you'd want to, I don't know. Maybe it's, I don't know, I was going to say maybe it's an adult speech or something like that, setting where you can turn off all speech.
    50:54
    But I missed it anyway, and I wish it was there, but I'm sure that would make the game much more accessible.
    51:02
    Maybe it's like tournament mode where you get no... That could be a good idea, actually, yeah. Yeah, I like it Other than that Yeah, big show for Speaky It went down very, very well for them I don't think they had hardly any technical issues With their Beetlejuice games at all I think They said they just had like one screw Come loose on the game On one of the games And that was it If so, that's a remarkable feat Considering they were all being played The entire duration of the show, understandably and so congratulations to them, they had a really nice stand, a nice area, had a big line-up of all their previous titles as well, which I'd only seen previously at the European Pinball Championship in Vokrabruck in Austria when Stefan Rieder from RS Pinball set that up last year. Oh, a spooky word there as well if I recall correctly maybe they got an idea from that like hey, maybe we should do this tomorrow Yes, and it looks good, and it's a credit to them to see how the games have developed from the earliest America's Most Wanted upwards to Beetlejuice. And that's over 13 years of Spooky Pinball, an anniversary they celebrated on February 1st, 13 years of the launch of the company. So congratulations to everybody at Spooky Pinball on 13 years of developing Pinball, and making some really interesting games these days.
    52:40
    Right. Okay. Next up, we have Multimorphic. Yeah. In Round Rock, Texas. They were apparently, no, they will be at the Texas Pimple Festival, which we'll be talking about later on as well. But that's the next big show coming up. It is. Any idea what they will be bringing? No, not yet I don't think they're going to be launching any new games So hopefully we get a chance To play Portal On a few machines But normally They have I was going to say I have a look at the size of their Stand on the Texas People Festival website Usually they have about 10 to 12 games Yes, absolutely I was just seeing whether they have the same size and they've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, maybe 14, 15, 16. Well, they've got 13 machines on their stand. And now we know Martin can't have them. Yes, absolutely. Because I can, yes. Yes, they have an 18 by 35 foot stand right by the entrance, but right by the seminars room so that there's another bank of machines on the outside of their stand and I don't know whether they're also going to be P3 machines or whether they're going to be public just general machines but anyway we can expect to see at least 13 P3 machines and we may get a chance to go and visit Multimorphic on our trip to the Texas Pinball Festival if all goes to plan. We're still working out the final details of that, but it'd be nice to call in to the company and see Jerry and the team just before the show, as they're all busy packing up, we can get in their way and interrupt them.
    54:43
    Right. So, okay, so aside from games, it looks like Multimortem will also have their anti-reflective glass, pin glass and pin glass plus, which is the white body format, if I'm not mistaken, at their stand at the Texas Pinball Festival.
    55:03
    The pin glass is only available through pre-orders. So if you would like to order one or more sheets of pin glass or pin glass plus,
    55:16
    then order through pinglass.net online. Yep, for collection. I think you have to mark your pickup at the Texas Fimble Festival, and they will have it there for you. So that's nice. I was talking about Portal just now. Actually, some new code for Portal came out this month on the 19th of February. Quite a few rule and scoring changes. Some new call-outs as well. several new setting options and lots of bug fixes that need fixing so version 1.2.3 for Portal I'm sure if you have that game it will probably have downloaded the update automatically by now as it does it all over Wi-Fi through the menu system so I think that pretty much wraps up our news for Multimorphic for this month OK, well next up we have Jersey Jack Trimble Well, we do, but there's not an awful lot to say about them this month. They've been pretty quiet. They're not launching any new titles at the moment.
    56:24
    They have just been promoting earlier ones on their social feeds, including The Godfather, Guns N' Roses, and Avatar.
    56:32
    I suppose we're kind of waiting for the announcement or the reveal of the next Steve Ritchie game, which is in development, but they seem to be doing pretty well selling Harry Potter at the moment. I was going to say there's no need to review Steve's game no well as with Spooky Pinball at Pinball at the Beach there was a full line up of from Jersey Jack Pinball All those games from Wizard of Oz up to Harry Potter And they had all three versions of Harry Potter available for people to play.
    57:07
    And a couple of Elton John games as well. And all in their own little area, which was nice to see. And I got to play all of them, I think. which was nice it kind of took me back a bit to playing games like Wizard of Oz after all these years but nice to see again how games have evolved over the years of Jersey Jack Pinball right ok next up we have Pinball Brothers from Sweden not too much to report they've been pushing Predator with multiple game and tutorial videos and that is of course ahead of its closure of sales at the end of March which is this month so if you're in the market for a Predator game act fast I would say stock is at distributors is probably limited and the production will end at the end of March so if you're into the game and apparently more and more people are into the game sort of a I wouldn't call it a sleeper game because people were aware of it but I think this is a game that really created a feeling with people that it's actually a lot better than they expected. Yeah, I think it got off to a tricky start with all the controversy over whether or not Arnie would be in the game and whether various lines would be in the game or not,
    59:00
    which they were told they would be and it turned out they wouldn't be and then that kind of put a bit of a downer on it right at the very, very start. But since then, I think it's been basically an improving story and I think they put a lot of effort into the code on that game, and, yeah, as you say, people are really coming around to it now, so make sure you don't miss out on it and become a fan of it too late to actually buy one.
    59:29
    Right. Oh, well, and slightly related, of course, Pedretti Gaming, also known as Pedretti Pinball in Italy, also known as Euro Pinball Corp well that's a collaboration with Pinball Brothers that we were just discussing no new games or anything from them but there was an interview in Le Eco di Bergamo which is a local newspaper in the city of Bergamo I suppose with Marco Pedretti which is a new name to me I was familiar with Andrea Pedretti.
    60:12
    Marco Pedretti is the legal representative and director of Euro Pinball Corp., as well as owner of Pedretti Gaming.
    60:21
    And he shares some interesting details on the history of Pedretti Gaming and their current business together with Euro Pinball Corp., joint venture with Pinball Brothers, yada, yada, yada.
    60:34
    A few notes from that interview day. He says they produce about 80 machines per month, which 80% of those goes straight into private collections. He says the strongest markets are Northern Europe and the United States. In Italy and Southern Europe, the phenomenon is much more limited, pinball that is, which is rather odd because Italy, as I recall, used to be a huge pinball country. Look at the number of manufacturers over there.
    61:10
    Not only that, but lots of games on location as well. So apparently something changed there. Surprisingly, given their pinball remakes business and their Predator Alien Queen Abba builds, he says, until a few years ago, licenses from the 80s and 90s were very successful. Now we also need to look for more recent periods because the audience is getting younger. and if you want to read the entire interview you can find it on the ecodibergamo.it .it ecodibergamo.it website and use the browser to translate from it there isn't an English language version but the browser does or Chrome at least does a very good job of converting it into English so it makes it very interesting to read so yeah echo dbergamo.it yep right so and then Turner Pinball yeah not much news from them either they will of course be at the Texas Pinball Festival being a Texas based company themselves not a million miles away but we were hoping to go and see them on this trip but I don't think there's really anything much to go and see we've really just been to have a little chat and maybe an interview with Chris Turner, but we can do that in Frisco, at Texas Fable Festival itself. So we probably won't be going over there. But they had been doing weekly Wednesday night live streams of either of their first few games, Monday's Arcade or Ninja Eclipse. It's kind of come a bit spotty of late.
    62:58
    They've been cancelled a few times due to various circumstances, but returned on the 26th anyway, of February. with more Merlin's arcade gameplay. So hopefully that will become more of an established weekly stream to get you better acquainted with their two games. No sign of a third title being announced just yet.
    63:25
    No. So we'll bring you more news about that if we hear any hints or speculation. But that's it pretty much. Return of the Fimbul. For now, we'll bring you more from Texas when we get over there.
    63:44
    Right. So then Chicago Gaming in the Chicago area, of course. Yeah, Cicero, indeed. I was looking for that part. Thank you.
    63:56
    So apart from the Medieval Madness Royal Edition and Topper Orders, nothing new has been announced and of course these topper orders were already discussed last month Planetary Pimble who is the rights owner of Valley Williams titles and as such involved with Chicago Gaming who are producing Medieval Madness, Attack from Mars, Monster Bash and Canyon as a remake apparently were frustrated with the number of games that have been remade by Chicago Gaming so far which resulted in their deal with the earlier discussed American people who are also going to be remaking Valley of Willows rather than just remaking them But yeah, I certainly get the impression that there's a lot of frustration there by some reason Doug Dubrow, who's in charge of Chicago Gaming, doesn't see any urgency in bringing out the titles. Now he's got other titles which are kind of almost ready to go, other remakes, but nothing's happening with them. and people are bemused as to why more titles aren't coming out and more games aren't being made.
    65:35
    If they're busy with what they're building, then there's simply not the capacity to do that. Well, they could always increase capacity, of course, and the demand is there. But anyway, there doesn't seem to be a lot of logic as to why they're not, when they're sitting on all these designs, which are ready to go, nothing's happening with them. And you can see why Planetary Pinball would be getting frustrated with that, because I'm sure they get paid on a per-unit basis, and if the number of units coming out of Chicago Gaming is low and restricted, and for no obvious reason, then, yeah, they'd be looking to other manufacturers to make more games and license them. So, that's indeed what happens.
    66:32
    Yeah, so, well, it makes perfect sense for Planetary to look for more manufacturers. Well, moving on to Wonderland Amusements,
    66:43
    who, as you may remember, were building the other Alice game, the 80% scale size version of a pinball machine which they named Alice Goes to Wonderland, being built in China and they were pressing hard to bring the game in at under US$1,000 and they did that. I think the original games that were offered on Kickstarter I think went for US$799 but I think they are now often available retail for 999 US dollars. Anyway, they have been building those. They're obviously, like everybody else, there's been big delays in actually getting the games built and shipped, but the last month we announced they had shipped the games. Well, they have arrived in the US and are now starting to turn up at the houses of people who bought them. So, they are working on their on fulfilling the orders That they took They said they, because of the way That the fulfilment takes place It's not being, the games aren't being Sent out in any particular order, they're not being sent To Kickstarter People who bought the game Later, but it's just Really about the geographic area That they are delivering them to So But anyway, they are fulfilling They are Delivering what they promised By the sounds of it, and we haven't seen any particular reviews of the game as it's been arriving, whether it's living up to expectations, but a lot of people seem to be very keen and are getting various mods for it and sending bits off to get them powder-coated and customising them to their own design. So, yeah, we'll bring you more details of that in next month's Pincast, when we find out exactly how the game goes. There'll be lots and lots of gameplay videos out there as well.
    68:49
    Right. Yeah. Okay, and then up to well, a long time announced upcoming title for the French Hexa pinball who we know of their first game, Space Hunt and the re-theme of that that they did for Twingo Car Yes, Twingo Car indeed Yeah, and others as well, indeed.
    69:18
    At Pinball Expo last year in October, they announced that their upcoming title will be The Three Musketeers. And that title is to be revealed at, well, this month at the Texas Pinball Festival simultaneously. Also in the city of Bordeaux, France, of course. So a double review on March the 20th.
    69:49
    And that should start at 6 p.m. at the Bouillon D'Art Gallery in Bordeaux. And that means noon, if I'm not mistaken, at Texas Bimbo Festival. Yes, that's right, on Friday. And the show is not open officially until 4 p.m., I don't think, on Friday. but there are going to be seminars taking place before the show opens. As we will hear later, there will be some Fix-It seminars and tech seminars being held at the TPF. So there's nothing actually scheduled in the TPF calendar just yet, but not to say there won't be because these things are often liable to change. and so we hope that we'll get to do a simultaneous reveal as you said both in Bordeaux and in Frisco at the Texas Reel Festival on Friday the 20th of March I've asked the organisers, I've got an invite to the one in Bordeaux but also to be in Texas for that one instead so we don't know quite how that's going to go we haven't really heard anything about what they got planned for Texas yet.
    71:07
    And it's a big mystery or surprise, whatever you want to call it. I think it's bigger in Texas, including the mystery and surprises, apparently. But I've reached out to the team there and hopefully we'll be able to find out what it is that they got planned. And we will be reporting from Texas about what they actually do.
    71:29
    Yeah, and believe it or not, I just mentioned their Space Hunt game, which got a code update in early February as well. Code version 0.956.
    71:43
    Yeah, yeah. I knew you... I figured I'd mention it because I knew you wanted to have that one. Yeah, well, unfortunately, they didn't supply a changelog to say what's new in it. But they did just say it includes numerous improvements and prepares you for the grand finale, which is coming soon. well there you have it you want that yes didn't you ok so then that rounds it up for Hexapimble of course there will be more news on them in our upcoming episodes where we look back on well the Hexapimble festival and of course the reveal of the three musketeers so make sure to tune in at the beginning of April for our next episode, of course. But in the meantime, we're not completely done yet. In fact, we even have an interview coming up.
    72:38
    Stick around for that. But first, all the way in Australia, we have Vector Pinball, which is a small pinball company, producing their own games. We've seen several games from them already. The 8-Ball Fury was the first one.
    73:02
    And then we got the Holden games. Yeah. And the famous recent game. Yeah, what's his name? Yeah, he's that famous. Yeah.
    73:19
    Exactly. So, anyways, they announced a new Ned Kelly game, Which is a name that doesn't ring a bell either He's a famous outlaw In Australia In the earlier Settlement days I think there was There's been movies made about him I'm not entirely sure But something in the back of my mind Made me think that Mick Jagger Played Ned Kelly At some point in a movie I may have to retract that If I go and check and find I would totally imagine I'll look it up well anyway the Ned Kelly game is the latest product you say from Vector Pinball in Australia it uses the same kind of alphanumeric display the 16 digit display as their earlier games they're only you are actually correct am I? wow it's a movie yeah a movie from 1970 with Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly I do know something not much but something I do know that there's only 100 units of this in total maximum being made for this Ned Kelly game and it's priced at 13,900 Australian dollars which translates to 9,850 US dollars 8,300 euros and 7,200 UK pounds so if you want to find out more about that game you can go and visit the Vector Pinball Facebook account.
    75:02
    And besides that, they also published the latest version of the rules for another of their upcoming titles, which is, you may remember, it's been renamed Irwin Allen's Lost in Space, the pinball game.
    75:21
    Well, to be precise, it's called Irwin Allen's Lost in Space, colon, the pinball. Okay, so we've got all that. Otherwise, no, it's Lost in Space. It apparently has seven main objectives which lead to the Lost in Space multiball. It also includes crew multiball, pod multiball, and ship multiball. So there's at least four multiballs within the game. And no details of pricing or availability of that just yet, but it's one they're working on and will come out fairly soon. Well, it'll be after Ned Kelly, I suppose. But I can imagine that, being a small company, they will be fairly flexible in their manufacturing and will produce, might produce a bunch of Ned Kelly games and then announce Lost in Space, do those and do some more Ned Kelly's. They can mix and match because they're all pretty much made to order, these games. Yeah.
    76:26
    Oh, well. Okay. And while we're in that end of the world, so to speak, any news from home? No. No, I've been desperately trying to find any information about new products.
    76:41
    Oh, my God. All that's on those social media feeds for the past few months is just a video of Mike Kalinowski, head of Homepin, setting off some firecrackers to celebrate the start of the year of the horse. And that's it. So nothing at all related to pinball or anything arcade or coin-op.
    77:06
    Right. I think there was one of the distributors of Home Pros, if I'm not mistaken, where at least four Blues Brothers games were in various stages of production.
    77:26
    So that game is still being, albeit as far as we know, in very small quantities. But I didn't want to leave that out. So they're still building. Good spot. I didn't see that one. So well done getting that. So now we can go to a bunch of companies Where we really have no news We haven't had a lot of news From some of the other ones But we can say that for pinball adventures In Canada, there's no news Ramps pinball No news either Last year they were at the very first pinball at the beach They weren't at this year's one Thought they might be there with a road trip To show progress on that But no, no update on that Victronic in Spain no news. Cardona Pinball in the US, no news. Quetzal Pinball, no news either.
    78:25
    Which kind of brings us to other news. Ah, okay. Well, you went to Pinball at the Beach. Yes, I remember I mentioned about that. Great show, really, really nice.
    78:39
    How many people were in attendance? Oh, that's a good question. It was limited to a thousand tickets And I don't think they sold all of those So I'd probably say I guess No basis for this whatsoever I'd probably say 700 Maybe At times it was busy In the main All the free play games were In a big tent called the Pavilion And There were a lot of them And I think almost at any point, you'd always be able to find a game that was free that you could walk up to and just play. So it never got overly crowded. But of course, around Beetlejuice and around Harry Potter as well, there were often lines to play, particularly Beetlejuice, even with the 12 machines there. And as I said earlier about the Mystery House, having two machines there, that was always busy as well, always a line to play that. But otherwise it wasn't crowded, there was a lot of space in there, you know, you never felt crammed in, and of course it's part of a huge resort, and it is a huge resort, because it actually consists of two completely separate hotel resorts, there's Island Grand on one side and Rumpus Beach on the other, and they're all part of the Tradewinds. resort, which is right on the beach. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't as hot this year, which meant it wasn't that nice to go out onto the beach.
    80:25
    Temperature was probably around about, in centigrade, I'd say, probably around about 15, 16, 17 most of the time, peaking, I think, on Saturday at around about 20, 21. But in the evening, it tended to get quite cold and the sea breeze was springing up. So there were outside events And drinks Functioned out there But a lot of people were sort of Huddled around the fire pits to keep warm And there was karaoke as well of course Which often As it did this time brought out John Borg to do his duet So that was good fun Yes It was a really nice relaxed time It was a little less relaxed for me Because I was actually Although I was a guest at the show and was socialising with people and was at the signings, autograph session and all that. I was also writing a report for Pinball News for that. So I was constantly taking pictures and videos and going back to the hotel room and processing them and writing the words and uploading them and all that kind of stuff. So it was a bit of work. It wasn't just relaxation. But I dare say, had the weather been a little nicer, I might have spent more time down on the beach. But it was nice just to be able to hang out with people and talk and not have to keep checking your watch to see you're not missing out on the next seminar or anything like that. So it was very nice and relaxed there. And I did sit down as one of the guests of your compatriot, Mr. Gerald Andersanden of the Dutch Pinball Museum, and did a five-minute interview with him, which is on the Dutch Pembroke Museum's YouTube channel right now, launched today, actually. So there'll be a series of those. I think I'm number six or seven of the ones that have been published so far. But, yeah, he sat down and added a little egg timer there, or kitchen timer, and said, you've got five minutes to talk about yourself and tell a story about which you haven't told before. So those five minutes vanished very, very quickly, because I'm not somebody who likes to talk very much, but I seem to manage to get through five minutes very, very quickly. And, yeah, I'd thoroughly recommend it if you wanted to go down there and not only just go to the show, but also spend some extra time in what is a lovely part of the country. And even if the weather, even if it's not that hot, it's still beautiful and so much to do down there as well. So it would be nice to be able to go back for next year and the third pinball at the beach and congratulations to the organisers of that Marshall and Ed who did a great job quite a great show there well done to them and of course you can read the review and report from the show on Pinball News right and then we have the Texas Pinball Festival coming up this month Yeah. And, well, the good news is we'll both be there holding another edition of our So You Think You Know Pinball quiz. Pre-prize quiz on Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Cypress Suite Bar, also known as the Happy Hour Bar, in the Embassy Suites Hotel. Yep. So, yes, we will try and hold it during free drinks time. for those who are staying in the Embassy Suites, you get tickets to what you get about you have to show your room key, I think don't you, or you get a card or something so you have a card, you have to stamp it these days used to be free for the entire time, but I think you get a couple of stamps on it now, don't you, and that's it but anyway, we'll be in there from 5pm on Saturday doing, as you say, doing our So You Think You Know Pinball free prize quiz If you are going to the show Please come along It's great fun Everybody always enjoys themselves And everybody walks away With some prizes or other You might think Your pinball knowledge Is not necessarily up to scratch Well the good news is All you need to do Is pick one of two answers One of two possible answers To a question if you get it right you move on to the next round and then when we're down to the last five four people left everyone wins prizes and then we start again so dead easy and you don't need to have a huge amount of knowledge and you can always follow the crowd anyway if you're not sure just do what everybody else does and pick that answer but anyway we will be there and I think we have an hour slot from 5pm to 6pm If you are going to come along make sure you go to the autograph session or signing session in the lobby of the convention centre That starts at 4 o'clock, and the lines can get quite long for that.
    85:35
    Hopefully not as long as they were at the Pimble at the Beach show. I was fortunate enough to be the other side of the table for that, signing various items. And that line was huge and it took two and a half hours to get through Wow they actually closed the doors in the end after two hours they closed the doors and then it took another 30 minutes for the people who were already in the room to get past everybody and get everything signed very very popular session I think amazing anyway Getting back to the Texas Pinball Festival, earlier today we recorded an interview with Paul McKinney, who is the main organizer of the Texas Pinball Festival. How about we just do that now?
    86:32
    And to find out more about this year's Texas Pinball Festival, we are joined by the organizer, Mr. Paul McKinney. Hello, Paul. Hello. Good to talk to you guys. Oh, thank you for joining us. Well, exciting year. This year, you've got quite a lot of changes coming up, which we'll talk about as well. But let's start off with the theme of this year's show, because every year has a little bit of a theme. But you've gone big on dragons this year. What's the story behind that? You know, I mean, I think the story behind it is I got one of the ninja eclipses from Turner. And, you know, I love the artwork on it. And then I started looking around, and I was like, you know, there's a bally dragon. And it's like, wow, everybody's done dragons. I wonder if we could get these together and just make a whole roll of dragon machines. And so that's how it got in. Interflip did the dragon game. Yeah, yeah, that's how it got in. Exactly, and that's going to be there.
    87:30
    Right. And I noticed from looking at this year's floor plan that there have been quite a few changes to the show floor layout from previous years. I know you've moved the entrance round and seminar rooms changed as well. Can you tell us a bit about some of the changes, both rooms and others? Yeah, we moved the seminar room, you know, back up to, you know, closer to the registration area for a couple of reasons. I can make the ranges a little bit smaller and pick up some extra square footage on the main floor for, you know, more games and more booths. And, you know, we'll usually have, you know, one or two seminars that are just like, you know, packed all the way to the wall. But, you know, a lot of people either watch the stream live now or they watch it after the show. So, you know, it made sense that, you know, hey, we could probably make that room a little bit smaller, and that was a way to do it. The other thing is, is, you know, I've kind of moved the entrance to where it's at the start of what we call Dragon Alley, which leaves that seminar room open to the public.
    88:33
    We've scheduled two seminars on Friday afternoon just after the noon period while people are still coming in, and maybe they don't have their tickets or maybe they're not sure they want a ticket yet, but they can get into some of the seminars.
    88:49
    And so one of those seminars is kind of an expanded, you know, here's how you do, you know, service on games. And, you know, just, you know, general public and collectors, that's something that they'll be interested in and they can just walk in and enjoy that. Okay, I mean you were talking about How you would change the The floor plan Within the main hall How do you sort of balance How do you strike a balance I suppose Between the number of vendor stands In the hall and the number of free play games Not just in the hall of course But also out in the corridors as well Yeah, I try to You know we've always We've always focused on the local collector From the beginning to the show And so I always try to make sure that we've got at least 200 games,
    89:40
    hopefully more than that, that local collectors are able to bring and compete for mission. We're already over 100 games, and I haven't even counted the ones that Spooky's bringing and a couple of other exhibitors, so we're probably getting close to 450.
    89:56
    Right. Okay. So when you, I mean, you've been at the Frisco Hotel Convention Centre for a number of years now.
    90:05
    When you sign up to host the show there, what do you get in terms of facilities? Do you get to use all the available rooms within the convention centre? Do you have to, say, negotiate your individual rooms for, like, the tournaments that are going to be purchased separately or part of the contract? you've got side rooms as well where you used to have Rob Anthony in there as well and you've got the ticket office and you've got stuff in the corridors, you've got the stage is all that does that all come as one big package or do you have to go through the city yeah it does now the last time that I did the contracts was about two years ago and when I did it that time we kept growing and growing and growing and we've been kind of piecemealing the different rooms together and I was like okay just give me one price where I can get it all and so like you know this year there's a room we've never used before that's upstairs kind of on the end right where the elevator opens where all the tournament games are and this is for you guys I mean you know I'm trying to set up kind of a quiet space where you know streamers can go in and just reserve a little bit of time in that room to maybe do an interview. I'll throw a hardwired internet connection up there if you need it. So that's another little new thing to do this year. So now you've got all these rooms. Is the convention center a good size for the Texas Wimbledon Festival? Or do you always expand? It is. It's about 60,000 square feet, which seems to be a good size. You know, this year is really the first year that I've had to turn away a couple of exhibitors because we just have run out of space, okay? And, you know, you never know. And, you know, who knows what will happen in the future. I always visit other sites and keep my eyes open. But, you know, Frisco has some perks to it, and, you know, it makes it a nice location. And, you know, while the carpet's not perfect, it's a lot better than no carpet. Oh, yes. Yes. I'll just say, Jonathan, you've got the question, so feel free to dive in. Oh, yeah, no problem. I'm glad of that. Well, I know Paul's been dying to talk about this because I noticed you have an entirely new website. Yes, we do. So, you know, the ancient website that we had started, I don't know, probably 2012. And when we did it, it was missing everything but the flames on the side of the header on the front. So, you know, it was kind of getting a little dated. And, you know, as I talked to different sponsors over the years, I meant the age of our website was kind of one of the concerns that they pointed out. So we tried to make something that was, you know, friendlier to attracting sponsors, a little bit easier to navigate. And when I built it, I tried to navigate it or tried to design it around the personas of the types of people that would come to the show, be it a collector, an attendee, an exhibitor. And I think it's been successful to a degree from that point. But, you know, there will be some more modifications next year as we learn what works and what doesn't.
    93:34
    Okay. But I assume there must be – But if you start doing a website, well, it wasn't like a small website to redesign. So you start doing this, I assume that's a lot of work. Yeah, it was. So it was. And, you know, this isn't a plug for AI. I know there's people that's a love-hate relationship. But when you're building sites, there was a lot I was able to do with AI tools that accelerated the speed of how quickly I could build it. So that was one of the things that helped. Yeah, I noticed a few AI images in there. Now, how locked down is the schedule of events, or are you still sort of open to other people coming up to you and saying, I'd like to hold a seminar or I'd like to launch?
    94:26
    Yeah, we've got one or two slots that are still open. Like I said, we're trying to kind of start the seminars around noon on Friday and then run them all the way through Saturday. I think there's like an early slot that's still open on Saturday and maybe one or two on Friday afternoon. Okay, because I've got a couple of people I know who would like to hold a seminar there and said, you know, we're thinking about it. And also the launch of a new game as well, which I haven't seen any mention of yet as part of the schedule. So I'm hoping that's coming up here. Which new game are we talking about? I was thinking about Hexer's new Three Musketeers. Yeah, you know, I've asked them to do a seminar, and, you know, either we've miscommunicated on that, or it just hasn't happened yet. Yeah, I was talking to them yesterday about it. Must be a language barrier. Could be. Yeah. So they said they're launching the game simultaneously in Bordeaux, and also at TPF.
    95:32
    I said, great, okay, but I'm not seeing you on the schedule anywhere. Yeah. Tell Alex to shoot me an email after I get off this. I'll contact him and say, where do you want to go? Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, because I'm trying to draw off a list of times and places I need to be in order to cover everything, and obviously having the schedule locked down makes that a bit easier. But anyway, I'm sure we will have that launch there as well.
    96:04
    And there might be some other people who also want to hold seminars. I'm sure they'll be in touch with you. They haven't already. There might be. And, you know, probably between the two of us, we all have different rumors of even newer things. And will they show up at TPF or will they not? I never know. We'll find out. Now, you're starting all this on Wednesday, actually, aren't you, with your new Tech Day? Yes, we are. Which is a new feature of the Texas Rural Festival. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came to be included, and how the take-up would that be? Yeah, you know, the take-up's accelerating right now. I mean, I think we had three more people register in the last 24 hours. So it's getting closer to the show, and it's like, oh, this part of my game doesn't work. Ah, there's that. Yeah, I can use that. So that's starting to happen. And that was part of the goal of it. The real part of the goal was, you know, I wanted to get more pin sound boards and more precision flippers on games to be enjoyed at the show. So it was an idea of, you know, how do we make it easier for people to do upgrades when they bring their games? Because I did that with my Godzilla. I think it was either last year or the year before last where, you know, Sean Palmer dropped the PenVision board into it for me. And that was really nice because I didn't have to do any struggling with it on my own. So that was part of the impetus on that. And then there's always the, you know, somebody's got a little bit of a flipper that's a little weak that shows up on the show floor. It's like, you know, what can we do in advance to kind of make that maybe not happen? So that was another way that ended Tech Day. And then it was like, we've always done these, we revived the how-to seminars a few years back. And those have been well received. And we do get, you know, some views on those. And I get good comments and good feedback on it. And so this is really kind of the hands-on edition of those how-to seminars. And that's on the Wednesdays. So you've also got an event in the evening on Thursday, I think. haven't you? They've got a karaoke event over at Two Brothers. Karaoke.
    98:21
    There's also a tournament as well on Thursday. Are you trying to consciously expand the show back into earlier in the week? So it can start on the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then a bit of Sunday. You know, five days.
    98:40
    That wasn't the reason. But it might be how it plays out. The real reason, Martin, was Paul and Greg, last year on Wednesday, there was an event that got shoved in in front of us, and we weren't able to start laying out the floor until late Wednesday night, and so Thursday and the rest of the show was hard to get through, so it was like, okay, let's create something on Wednesday, and then we'll have access to the floor to get it set up. So that was part of the impetus of doing it. and have there been any sort of events or features that you haven't been able to accommodate in the show so far that you'd like to at some point?
    99:22
    You know, I'd probably like to do, you know, one more music group. People seem to enjoy that, but, you know, I don't want to ground up the seminars either, so, you know, that's part of the schedule. Of course, we've got to be a little bit closer now, haven't we? Yeah, and the other thing that people always ask for is they want to play tournaments. Particularly, one of the features of the Texas Pinball Festival that I think is kind of unusual, and it's our location and where our focus has been, is the numbers that I'm looking at right now, 25% of the people that have pre-registered have never been to the Texas Pinball Festival before.
    100:02
    And a lot of the people that I've seen that come into the show, it's the first time they've gone to any pinball festival. Usually they come back the second year and they've kind of become a collector. So, you know, we want to be able to kind of continue to concentrate on doing things that drive that kind of interest in business, and that's what has led to the tech seminars. You know, a few things are kind of outside of pinball that have an entertainment interest to it that would maybe attract people that just wouldn't walk into a pinball festival. Do you know how they are finding out about you? Yeah, it's a couple of things. We get a lot of publicity through the city of Frisco and their website, so that's part of it. The other thing is, I mean, this goes back to changing the website. I think when we changed the website, they kind of reset the search engines, and more people have found us. We've also started to concentrate on, you know, other social media platforms.
    101:06
    Not great at it yet, but I'll get there. And so I think we've picked up some through that. Fantastic. Right. So if you don't mind me chiming in, you mentioned you'd like another music band. Have you considered DJs? We have. We've done that twice. and, you know, I thought about taking some of those side rooms and maybe, you know, doing the Scott DeNancey, you know, raid kind of thing again. You know, you get a lot of that at the Houston show. Keith does an amazing job, if you've ever been, you know, just having a band party all weekend.
    101:47
    We're not exactly that, but, you know, there's some good things with that. So who knows what the future will hold. Okay, let me be more specific. Can you consider it international?
    101:58
    Well, maybe. Tell me more. Like from the Netherlands. Okay. Oh, maybe. I'm sensing, I think that's a maybe. Yeah, so, you know, do you do the German Techno Rock? Okay, so.
    102:20
    I'm sure Jonathan could customize. I can do almost anything, but I'm... Let's talk at the show this year.
    102:30
    Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, I think I'm pretty much out of questions. I don't know if Jonathan has any more you'd like to ask, other than pitching for a gig?
    102:43
    Well, so a new website and a new show floor plan, but we still get the swap meet on Saturday morning. There is a swap meet, okay? There's not been a flood of big trucks saying we're going to have a lot of games there. Okay. But, you know, every year we get a couple of surprises. So we've moved the swap meet to start about an hour later at 7 a.m. Thank you. To make it easier on people.
    103:11
    But do you think people will actually start at 6 o'clock anyway? They'll start earlier anyway. Yeah, because of the... Yeah. And enjoying the hot coffee and donuts. Thank you to the organisers of That's What Meets That.
    103:29
    Well, we could speak for much longer. We'll actually be running into time to head over to see you. So we've got to wrap it up there. But thank you very much, Paul, for taking time out and giving us a heads up of what's coming up in the Texas Pimple Festival this year. So if there's one last phrase or one last sentence you could tell us why people should come to the Texas Jingle Festival and do your sales pitch, now's the time to do it. Yeah, well, we've got dragons, we've got lots of games, and one of those dragons will be animated. So that should be pretty cool. And we've got a new Lola's Mexican food truck and a lot of other food trucks. And if you park in remote parking, a Tesla will give you a ride to the event. So all new stuff and kind of cool. Yeah, well, thanks again, Paul, for taking time out to speak to us. Obviously, a lot coming up this year at the Texas Pimble Festival, and we will, of course, be reporting from it in our respective publications, which I'll talk a little bit more about later, because that's one of the other items of news I wanted to talk about. But while we're talking about Pinball News I can do a bit of self publicity here Well, almost self publicity And mention Well, it's Pinball News News And Or new Pinball News News Because we have Just launched a new Merchandise store On Sticker Are you going commercial? That's a good thing about it Stickermule.com slash Pinball News is where you will be able to find T-shirts, hats, key fobs, stickers, branded with Pinball News stuff, hoodies as well. And they're all being sold at cost price. So we don't make any money out of this. This is literally, you can just go on there, pick the one you want, pay for it and shipping, and it gets delivered straight to you. and we don't know anything about it at all. So I can thank my good friend Nick Brown, who I mentioned earlier. He was also at the Pinball at the Beach show with me, and will be at the Texas Pinball Festival as well, for setting it all up and getting that project underway. So thanks, Nick. And remember, stickermule.com slash pinballnews to get all your branded Pinball News merchandise, because let's face it, who doesn't want to be looking cool in a Pinball News T-shirt? Don't answer that. It is that I'm wearing my own Pinball magazine shirt. Otherwise, I'd be all over it. I'd be all over you. Yes.
    106:24
    Okay, talking about other things you can buy, Pinball related, we previously covered the film Mastering Pinball by Abe Flips, an Austrian master player and filmmaker which was available as a Kickstarter project. Well, now it's also available to purchase as both a Blu-ray and a digital download which you can get by going to abeflips.com. I'm not sure if the Blu-ray is actually available right now. I think it may have sold out and there's more coming in a week or so. But if you go to abeflips.com, You can purchase both the digital download and the Blu-ray when it comes back into stock. And there's also a subscription service priced at €4.00 slash $5.00 a month, which allows you access to additional bonus tutorials and more content with master class help in a subscriber-only discussion area. So AFlips is working on more and more content on new games and new techniques, or additional techniques, which maybe were either not covered in the original or could do with expanding on. So go and have a look.
    107:46
    I think it's, I don't know, like $40 or €40 to download the digital version of it. and yeah, it's a very in-depth and detailed and knowledgeable description of how you can improve your pinball skills.
    108:06
    Oh, very interesting. Yeah, I think we all should, really. Right, okay. So, one of the things that came out of talking to people at shows and particularly people at the beach, was that people, surprisingly enough, are very aware of us doing this, you know, our pin cast, and love it. I've got lots and lots of very nice comments about it. But more than a couple were totally unaware that we actually have websites as well.
    108:44
    Yeah. We do mention them, but we obviously don't link to them. So, Jonathan is editor-in-chief of Pinball Magazine, which is available at pinball-magazine.com, where he's got his web shop. You can buy copies of Pinball Magazine and books as well that he's published. Yeah, physical products. Yeah, we get them shipped around the world. Printed publications, yes, indeed, for as long as we still can with the current situations.
    109:20
    Oh, well. And Martin does not have a physical product, but he is the editor-in-chief of pinballnews.com, where you will find the latest pinball news as in-depth as possible. it's basically the number one news website regarding anything pinball. And of course we keep everything on the website so there's a lot of historical information going back 25 years believe it or not. So you want to see what was at a show in 2005 and we were there to cover it it's still there, you can see who was speaking what they were saying and some interesting personalities from the past there who we later learned more about but I won't get too much into that so you may be wondering what's the difference between Pimble News and Pimble Magazine I'll briefly point this out Pimble Magazine is more of a historical publication or documentation regarding the careers of people in the industry of pinball and I'm not so much focused on the latest news. I do report on whether there's new game out but it's not a top priority and apparently neither is it for pinball companies to give me any assets up front to write such an article and they expect me to write it once they just reveal a game Well, it doesn't work like that for me. I have a life as well.
    111:10
    So for the current news, Pimble News is the website to go to. But if you're into more of the historical career aspects of a Pimble designer and all the ins and outs regarding why such and such game has such and such feature and all that kind of stuff, then I highly recommend the publications of Pinball Magazine. It is incredibly in-depth and tells some amazing stories about pinball design and creation in the past. And it has a lot of historic information and perspective to remind us where we are now. yeah also some decision making choices why was chosen for this or for that or for this mag or that mag that kind of stuff and which occasionally resulted in surprisingly good games and sometimes not but oh well that's part of the Yeah, we'll all be winners.
    112:31
    It's interesting to see the whole process behind how pinball has been made and how it is made these days as well. And you'll get all that in Pinball Magazine. So that's the last of us patting each other on the back. But just to let you know that we do have our respective websites and in addition to this monthly Pinball Industry News pin cast that we do.
    112:54
    Yeah, and we appreciate your support. Of course. Yeah. so anyway I think that's about it then for this month we yeah we'll be looking forward to seeing you at the Texas Pinball Festival yeah and if we don't get to see you there then we will both be back at the start of April with our next Pincast looking back at all the events of the pinball industry throughout this month of March including as you said all the fun from the Texas Pinball Festival and the reveal of the three musketeers yes indeed so anyway until then from me Martin Laird of Pinball News and me Jonathan Houston of Pinball Magazine we hope you have a magnificent March and we look forward to joining you again at the start of next month for the very next edition of the Pinball Industry News Pincast so bye for now bye bye