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Episode 100 - Centenarian

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 0m·analyzed·Nov 3, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers Episode 100: pricing corrections, market saturation concerns, Stranger Things rumor, and debate on retro display aesthetics.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers celebrates their 100th episode with a relaxed discussion covering personal life updates, water heater and plumbing repairs, video game purchases (Xbox Game Pass), and pinball industry topics. Key pinball discussions include corrected pricing for Kelts at $5,250 (not $6,000), sales projections amid heavy competition from used market inventory, a substantiated rumor about Stern acquiring Stranger Things pinball rights, and a deep analysis of whether classic alphanumeric displays could viably return in modern pinball given cost savings.

Key Claims

  • Kelts is priced at $5,250, not $6,000 as previously stated

    high confidence · Correction from Rorden in Australia (TPF attendee); explicit price confirmation in episode

  • Stern Pro models currently cost approximately $5,600-$5,700 at consumer door

    medium confidence · Dennis notes price comparison without definitive confirmation; suggests need to contact Zach Minney for exact verification

  • Stern Pinball has rights to produce Stranger Things pinball machine

    medium confidence · Described as 'fairly substantiated rumor' by Dennis; notes that Stern rumors typically come true

  • Jersey Jack Pinball is credited with pioneering LCD display transition in pinball with Wizard of Oz

    high confidence · Direct statement in displays discussion; established industry knowledge

  • Cosmic Convergence (by Suncoast/Home Pin) sold approximately 70 units

    low confidence · Dennis states 'under 100, though. Yeah. I think it was maybe 70-ish' with uncertainty indicated

  • Modern pinball market would not sustain regular games with alphanumeric displays as primary cost-saving measure

    medium confidence · Tony's definitive 'No' response to feasibility question; both hosts agree it would only work as boutique-style offering

Notable Quotes

  • “At $5,250, Tony, do you think Americans will buy this game?”

    Dennis @ mid-episode pinball segment — Marks correction of previous pricing error and pivot to market viability assessment

  • “I think the 5250 will be the real price for Kelts... We're getting close to hitting that spot where we'll finally move on and have it equal”

    Tony @ pinball segment pricing discussion — Analysis of Stern's strategy to align MSRP with actual street pricing

  • “So there's so much like new stuff also competing for people's dollars. Because you can already go and get, Deadpools are around $5,000, home use only... These are games that aren't even two years old.”

    Dennis @ Kelts sales analysis — Identifies used market saturation as primary headwind for Kelts despite favorable pricing

  • “I think Attack from Mars is the greatest game of the 90s. Well, the 90s are done, so I can always say that forever, and I know it's true.”

    Tony @ replayability discussion — Expresses attachment to classic Williams titles as subjective benchmark

  • “I would like to see a game more akin to some of the older games... uses some of the newer technology that we have to give it some modernization while still being play and display a throwback”

    Tony @ displays discussion — Articulates desire for hybrid retro-modern approach to display technology

  • “Stern rumors and the Jersey Jack rumors always seem to come true. Everything else, you never know.”

    Dennis @ Stranger Things rumor discussion — Establishes relative credibility of different manufacturers' leaked information

  • “No. I said a lot of words, and you basically killed it with one word, so let's pretend you said yes.”

    Dennis @ alphanumeric display debate — Humorous callback to Tony's dismissal of retro display market viability

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonRordenpersonZach MinneypersonKeltsgameAttack from MarsgameMedieval MadnessgameStranger Thingsgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's MSRP strategy appears intentionally allowing gap between list and street pricing to gradually narrow, aligning actual vs advertised prices

    medium · Tony: 'They haven't been adjusting up the MSRP. Right. They've been adjusting up the actual... we're getting close to hitting that spot where we'll finally move on and have it equal'

  • ?

    product_concern: Kelts faces substantial headwind from used market saturation; comparable games (Deadpool, Monsters) available at or below $5,250 price point as barely 2-year-old inventory

    high · Dennis explicitly identifies used market competition: 'Deadpools are around $5,000, home use only... These are games that aren't even two years old'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Trend toward throwback single-level layouts (Kelts, TNA, Mafia, Beatles) with simplified rule sets mirrors earlier EM and early solid-state design philosophy

    high · Dennis identifies pattern: 'single level layouts that are very reminiscent of the 80s or earlier'; catalogs multiple recent examples with straightforward mechanics

  • $

    market_signal: Kelts priced at $5,250 — below Stern Pro by $300-500, positioning as value entry point despite limited single-level layout

    high · Confirmed price correction from Rorden; explicit comparison to Stern Pro pricing at $5,600-5,700

  • ?

    product_strategy: Home Pin developing hopping zombie-themed pinball game targeting Chinese market, departing from typical Journey to the West theme selection

    medium · Dennis mentions seeing announcement of 'May zombie, May vampire outfit thing' for Home Pin's next game; describes it as intentional differentiation

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.360

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, not Sunday, November 2nd, not November 3rd. Right. This is episode 100. Yep.
0:28
And Dennis. It's been a pleasure. Yes. Can we stop now? Can we finally retire? Sure, if you want. Well, we made it. Whoever would have thought. I don't know. It wasn't that hard. It wasn't that hard to do it. We just record every other week. Yeah. I mean, we could have done it a lot faster if we'd put out like two or three episodes a week. Yeah, that's true. And, you know, we've made, I think we only ever really had one major exception. Nick Schell. When he was in town. We added an extra episode for that. We basically had covered two in two weeks instead of one in two weeks. Right. It would have been basically what most people would consider just an extra bonus episode, but we don't do bonuses. No. Because then what happens with, and I remember this happened with Nate with Coast to Coast Pinball, it was he had a couple weird exception bonus things, and then you count the number of episodes and you look at the episode numbers, and you're like, these don't align. Right. Well. That's unacceptable. In the real world, numbers align. You know, there's a reconciliation that must happen. It must be done. What happens in your job if the numbers don't align, Tony? Good things?
1:38
Oh, my numbers never match. Is that good? It's expected. Yeah. Well, I guess maybe we should expect this of our brethren podcast and our sister-in-law. If I bring a million gallons of water into the plant, I'm not going to put out exactly a million gallons of water out the other side because, you know, there's evaporation and there's all sorts of other things. Yes, but the numbers know about that. They're close. They know about those things. They're in the realm. The only numbers I need to be exact are the ones that are state mandated. Yes. They like to say what to do. For the health and safety of all Kansans. For the health and safety of all Kansans and everyone downstream of us. Yes, and everyone downstream. Very kind of you to be considerate to them in particular. Because if it was just like Mississippi downstream, we'd probably dial that stuff back. Oh, just a little bit. Just a little bit. Yeah. But since there's other people that we actually like. No offense to people. Shout out to all our listeners from Mississippi, who are no longer our listeners. Anyway, so yes, welcome everyone to episode 100. We're not doing a lot of special stuff for the episode. We didn't really get any questions in that I saw. Of course, I didn't ask on air. I kind of threw it out on Facebook a couple days later. And so what I do have is we're going to go through the regular segments like we normally would, and then we'll just kind of do an episode 100, just sort of discussion of the show, not analytic focused. We always go over the analytics. It usually takes like 10 minutes. We do them in January every year, so we're not going to talk about that. But we'll talk about some of the highlights and lowlights of what we think in terms of having done this for so long now. In terms of introduction, not a lot to really report at this time. I had to buy a new water heater yesterday. I saw that post. Yeah, it was a – it was – I went and was working from home, so I was doing laundry while I was in between my meetings. You were on break. I was on break, and I saw that the water heater was leaking underneath, not at the connections. So it's like, okay, well, it was the one that came with the house. So, okay. Well, we'll pass. That was a five-year warrantied water heater. I've had it for 17. So let's not complain too much. So I went and got that. And I was surprised it was going to be the same day. But I apparently called them early. And I just called Home Depot and said, let's arrange for an install. So there are some things that need to be brought up to code anyway with it because they probably did it themselves when they put it in. Did you go tankless or did you stay with the tank? No, I did stay with the tank. I thought about tankless, but I went, and now they have self-cleaning tanks. I didn't realize that was a thing. I didn't either. Well, I didn't realize I was really supposed to be cleaning the last tank anyway, because I never really knew anything about water heaters. Yeah, now they have some where there's like a stick in the bottom that, I guess, it spins and it keeps the sediment churning so that when you have the hot water on, it just comes out as harder water. It basically just gets the sediment out through pipes instead of letting it sit in the bottom. You know what that sounds like to me? What? Something else to break. That's what that sounds like to me But nine year warranty on the ones with the self-cleaning And so anyway You're right, you're probably all break and all hated That's just life So there's that I actually, just before going on air We went on a little bit later than we were planning to And that was Like you put on air, like we're actually going Like we're live streaming We basically are, but just pre-recorded Pre-recorded live streaming It's done the same amount of work almost. I recorded before a live bowl of candy. Yeah. The temperatures kept, I still had like 15 trick-or-treaters, but I usually get more like 20, 20 to low 20s. So, hang on. Well, maybe you get full-size candy bars. Maybe. I gave them the, here's the thing. I lowered the bowl. I need to hold it up high because I'm not giving people, I, I usually buy like $100 worth of candy. I give handfuls out. One of the kids, one of the kids who came by, He was a skeleton. That's all I remember. I did that, and he goes, that's what I'm talking about. They're like, you see? That's what they want. They want the candy. They do. Now, it's like all M&M's. So it's win-win, because I don't want the M&M's, because I'm not going to eat them. So then they feel like they got a reward. Not even peanut M&M's? I mean, I make exceptions, but normally, no. I would rather have. That's why the dots are in there now, because I poured the dots into the candy bowl after I turned off the porch light. Oh. So anyway, and I still have one bag unopened, so otherwise. Of dots. No, it's a mixed chocolate one. I couldn't get the dots in the bowl if I poured the other bag in as well. The other bag's got, like, Snickers and stuff. So let's talk about your diabetes. No, let's not talk about that. Let's not talk about diabetes.
Jurassic Park
game
Deadpoolgame
Wizard of Ozgame
Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
Mafiagame
Beatlesgame
Cosmic Convergencegame
Sharky's Shootoutgame
Stern Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Home Pincompany
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
This Week in Pinballorganization
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
  • ?

    rumor_hype: Stern Pinball has secured licensing rights to produce Stranger Things pinball machine

    medium · Dennis describes rumor as 'fairly substantiated' though still unconfirmed; notes pattern that Stern rumors typically materialize

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Marginal enthusiasm for Kelts sales prospects; initial projection of 400-500 units revised significantly downward to under 150 upon market analysis

    medium · Dennis revises from optimistic forecast to 'I would be impressed if it sold 150' after Tony identifies used market dynamics

  • ?

    technology_signal: LCD displays now near-universal across all major pinball manufacturers; only potential exception was Home Pin with Thunderbirds (status uncertain)

    high · Dennis states: 'the LCDs are everywhere. It's essentially every single manufacturer that I know of has made the jump'

    • 6:31
    So anyway, the water heater is that, and then the silver slugger I just sold. So they don't know when they can come pick it up, but they wanted to pay friends and family PayPal so that I take the ads down. So I'm like, okay, we'll do that. Did you take the ads down? I did. That's what I was doing. That's why we're late now because I had to go in the other room on my computer and try to remember where I had ads because as time went by, I finally put it on Craigslist. I waited a month because I wanted to give it to like a pinball person first because there's less questions asked. Right. And so with this new sale, it was, okay, well, it's their first machine, so there are a lot of questions, which is fine. It's just, I crossed that bridge last. Yeah.
    7:11
    You'd much rather just hand it out to somebody and say, here, you know your stuff. Yeah, yeah. They're like, oh, yeah, I'm going to come. I've got the thing. I've got the straps, and I've got my own wrench. I mean, I've always helped load, and everybody is fine. But anyway, so I really thought Sharky's would go first. I think Sharky's was the best deal I listed. And it's still here. It's still here. If you would like a Sharky's shootout. I still get queries every week, but everyone either, actually most of the time I don't even get people offering less. It's, oh, I'll be in touch and then... And then nothing? Yeah. So I think they just changed their mind. Or they lose my contact information. Very sad. It's very sad out there. So sad. So with all of that said, I think we should go ahead and transition right into the pinball segment. I've not been doing anything. Yes, you have. I looked at your intro notes and all it said was the date. That's because that's all I ever put in my intro notes. Oh.
    8:06
    So what have you been doing, Tony? You have a birthday thing tomorrow. Yes, that's why we're recording today. My oldest daughter's birthday is tomorrow, and we've been prepping for that. We had a game night last week that went all right. We played the newest Jackbox. And like all Jackbox things, some of them are really awesome. Some of them are really, really bad. Did that newest one not have You Don't Know Jack? I didn't remember seeing it in the list. Is that the first one that has not had that trivia game? No, some of the other ones have not had that trivia game. Okay, I didn't remember. Yeah, some of the other ones have not had it. Typically, there's the one big one. They always have either You Don't Know Jack or Quiff Lash. Well, this one in the slot where that would normally have the murder mystery. Right, which is, I like that one. Yeah, that one was a lot of fun. But other than that We've just been Doing With like you Home repair stuff We actually had some Solder on some of the old Copper pipes leading to our Shower spring leak Since we rent I've not repaired it myself And it's just Kind of patched while we wait For the plumber to come back from vacation So Okay. Interesting. So, needless to say, I'm not overly worried about it because we don't know how long it's been that way. But if you would, the hot water, when the hot water is turned on, there's a pretty steady leak inside the wall. So, yay. Yeah, I had that with one of my showers. And it wasn't a leak in the pipe. It was actually the fixture itself. I couldn't, and I kept repairing it, and it would only hold for a little bit. and it was shredding gaskets. Oh, wow. And I finally, when I got the shower redone, I was like, tear open that wall. I want that piping checked and fixed. And there wasn't any, like, wood damage or anything, it turned out. But it was actually, I could see the water coming out of the drywall. And for a long time, I didn't, because as soon as I turned it off, I wouldn't see it. And it was only when the shower was on. So I never, I always used to see there was a little bit of water on the floor, and the shower had run for more than maybe six minutes. And I was like, that's weird. Maybe it's leaking past the door. You know, like, I don't know. I just wipe it up and leave it. And then finally I turned the shower on and was not and did not get in the shower. And then I saw it coming out of the wall. And I was like, ugh.
    10:43
    So I thought maybe it was a pipe leak. And I'm like, no, your pipes were good. It was all at the fixture. Yeah, on this, I could see it. To get access to the piping, there's a little access point. and it's covered by a thin wood veneer and it had sprayed out enough that the wood veneer started to curl because it was so thin and so light it got wet and it got real nasty looking. So I pulled that off and, oh, hey, look, there's a little spray of water coming out. So, yeah, no, we got to get that fixed. But otherwise, it's been going pretty good all in all. Work's staying busy and I have begun, I'm not going to talk about it in the video game section because I haven't played it enough, but I have purchased Xbox Game Pass for PC. Oh, yes, that's right. To give it a try. It's totally because I want to try the Xbox Game Pass on PC because part of the reason I got the PS4 was because I could do the Xbox stuff on PC. That's why I got a PS4. It has nothing to do with the fact that I didn't want to deal with the Epic Game Store and I wanted to play Outer Worlds, which is available on Xbox Game Pass on PC. That was just a lovely, lovely bonus. That's a nice bonus.
    12:00
    And I've not finished that game yet, but that game is everything that makes Fallout Vegas fun. Oh, good. I've added it to my wish list of games to keep in mind in the future. Yes. Because I forgot it was coming out already. It's a lot of fun. And it's got a quest system that is very nice for, I would like to say it's really nice for working adults. Because if you go away from it for the entire week, like I did, like when I came back, and the quest isn't just find Mr. Jacobs. It has a list of what you've done in the quest to now, like paragraphs, explaining what you've done in the quest to now and what you need to do and why you're doing it, which is awesome. Nice. So, other than that, we can move on now. Okay. Well, I guess now we'll go to pinball if we still have anyone left from our water pipe discussion. Water pipes! So, speaking of water, I need to wash away a prior statement regarding kelts, which we talked about last week. A little bit afterward, or two weeks ago, excuse me. Yes. We talked about it based off of what we saw at Expo. I couldn't remember the pricing, and I said I thought it was around $6,000. That is not accurate. And actually, Rorden, who we've both met from Australia at TPF, he wrote to me and said the price is $52.50.
    13:27
    So, at $5,250, Tony, do you think Americans will buy this game? As you may recall, it's a single level. It had the scoop in the middle with the Silver Ball Mania horseshoe around it. They also had a scoop in the upper right where there was, I believe, a full-size flipper on the left that could access that and some stand-ups. It was very purple. I think it'll sell. I don't think it's going to sell Guardians of the Galaxy-level sales. I don't think anything crazy like that. But I think it'll sell good enough, especially at that price point, to let them move forward with a game, too. Okay.
    14:05
    So, does that mean you think it will sell more than Suncoast sold Cosmic Carnivals? Yes. Okay. Do you know how many Cosmic Convergles sold? No. I don't either. It was under 100, though. Yeah. I think it was maybe 70-ish. As long as the gameplay on this is good, at this price point... Well, it is less than a Stern Pro. At this price point, and as long as the gameplay, when you actually get into playing it, is good, I'm going to pull this out just out of thin air, 400 to 500 probably at least. Really? Wow.
    14:38
    I would... No, just, I mean, total. I believe I read with an interview with the creator that he indicated he would be thrilled if they were able to sell $250 I think they can get that I don't think that'll the price point I think will make it the price point is excellent and yeah obviously we still don't fully know on the gameplay I know some people it sounds like have been impressed with the description of what the intent is with the code I will say, I don't think this game sells 100. Really? Yes. And I would be impressed if it sold 150. I think the price is good, but I think the problem that Kelts faces is there's so much competition at price points that are around it. It's got an advantage in that this is less than a Stern Pro, but what's a Stern Pro to your door now? I don't know. We need to call Zach with flipping out, but I think for the average consumer who's not buying lots of games all the time, isn't an operator, has a deal, $5,600 to $5,700 two-year door. So, basically, $500 more than Kelts gets you a Stern Pro.
    15:52
    All right. Coupled with that, though, all of the games are out on the used market now because everyone's been making room for things like Jurassic Park and Willy Wonka and Elvira, And that's been going on for the last couple of years. So there's so much like new stuff also competing for people's dollars. Because you can already go and get, Deadpools are around $5,000, home use only.
    16:17
    Monsters are $5,000 or more often probably under $5,000 for a pro version for a Monsters. These are games that aren't even two years old. And all of that's competing. all of that is code complete and that's a valid point that I hadn't considered and so that's where I think if this had come out at this price point like when America's Most Haunted was coming out I think it had done far better but now there's so many games that are seen as good look at how many of all the games that are coming out from Jersey, Jack and Stern that within two months end up in the top 20 on Pennside now it used to be the top 20 was all Valley Williams and nothing could break through, and that's finally changing, as it should, because the development and advancement that we've seen in the hobby, it's better than it was in the 90s. And nostalgia just held the wall on that for so long. But you can only delude yourself so much into thinking that Monster Bash is better than everything that's been coming out. No. The only games that are better than everything that's been coming out are obviously Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness. and so what would it you know what would it take I'm curious now and we can you know context of Kelps which you haven't played yet what would it take to beat Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness for you or is it just impossible and we can just acknowledge that and move on I don't think it's impossible actually because those games are shallow They are. So they don't have depth. But they've got replayability. Yes, but what so does Ghostbusters not have replayability? Does Dialed In not have replayability? Not in the same way, not to me. Because I want to know. I want to understand.
    18:11
    Because I think Attack from Mars is the greatest game of the 90s. Well, the 90s are done, so I can always say that forever, and I know it's true. That's true. Here's my thing. I can sit down and feed a $20 bill into an attack from Mars, if I could accept a $20 bill, and be a happy man with all of that.
    18:31
    Brand new Jurassic Park. When I was at Logan's playing the brand new Jurassic Park Premium. Okay. I fed in like five, six bucks, and I won two free games. and I was ready to walk away like three games before I was done playing. I enjoyed it, but not in the same visceral way. And do you know what element of Attack from Mars and Medieval Madness is providing the replayability? I think it's a combination of the humor, the shots, the call-outs. I just think it all blends together in just the perfect way that I can enjoy it more. So maybe the next Brian Eddy game will displace them. Completely possible. And become the new number one. It could very well be. Or not. And it could just be that I'm a fanboy. I mean, that's also a valid possibility. Maybe. I mean, of all the games we've played, and there's games out there with good call-outs, but at the same time their call outs don't hit me the same way the call outs for medieval madness and attack on mars and the humor and the play I don't know there's less humor now I would argue but I mean so Deadpool went the humor route with his call outs and I can feed large amounts of money into a Deadpool and be a happy man but not medieval madness amounts no I mean that's the thing I have spent on the pinball arcade four and five hours straight only playing medieval or attack from mars I said one day when I was off work when attack from mars was still at pizza west I went up and I was there for an hour and I didn't play any game except for attack from mars and I put thousands of games on attack from mars but I didn't have any interest in anything else.
    20:35
    Okay. So Kelts is probably not going to be the replacement for you for Attack from Mars. Probably not. And actually, based on your, I think you're probably closer to right on the sales numbers than I am because I wasn't thinking about the used markets. I was only thinking about new and I was thinking just MSRP. I wasn't thinking the real price. Well, I think the 5250 will be the real price for Kelts. I mean, everybody else. Oh, well, Stern's the only one that sells under MSRP, to my knowledge. Right. But everybody else is like $10,000. Yeah. And what's been happening is it's getting easier and easier on Stern because the actual price has been moving closer and closer. They haven't been adjusting up the MSRP. Right. They've been adjusting up the actual. And so, in reality, we're getting close to hitting that spot where we'll finally move on and have it equal, I think. I think that's their intent. Have it be truth. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Which, for comparative purposes, makes life a little easier. It is a bit annoying to have to go in and say, oh, yeah, I've got a, I've got to remember to take $300 off of a premium. Right. To know it's real. To know it's a real thing. Okay. Well, so that's the update on kilts. Next item is there is a rumor. it's now seen as a fairly substantiated rumor but still a rumor nonetheless that Stern Pinball does have the rights to do Stranger Things as a pinball machine. Well I've assumed. Do you think it's a good idea? I've not seen Stranger Things so I'm just curious. Do you think Stranger Things at this I guess, do you think Stranger Things would be a good theme for pinball and do you think that after season 3 is the time that you release a Stranger Things pinball machine? I think that Stranger Things is absolutely a good theme for pinball. I think that they might have been, you know, I like to say that I think that it might have been a better strike right after season one because season two and season three weren't as good as season one in my opinion. But, the fandom has gotten exponentially larger after season two and season three than it was after season one. Okay. Because it went from a little niche thing to a much more mainstream thing. so that might help the actual sell some. I think that I'm not a marketing guru. I think it would have been probably at its purest and its absolute best in my mind right after season one, but I think the sheer spread of the fandom now is large enough that it could be made up for from all the new interest that came from the later seasons. Okay. Hmm. Yeah, I had a discussion about this topic briefly with Zach Minney on the This Week in Pinball podcast. I was just kind of, because I knew you'd seen the show, so I was just kind of curious. I love the show. It's a very enjoyable show. It's one of my favorite shows that have come out in the last several years. Hmm, okay. Well, I guess we'll see, because most of the time it seems the stern rumors come true. So, it feels like. More often than not. Yes. So it's like the Stern rumors and the Jersey Jack rumors always seem to come true. Everything else, you never know. Right. So speaking of not knowing, there's really not any other pinball news. So that's why I have those two fairly maybe esoteric. They're kind of light. Kind of light. So I put in a deep discussion. I don't call it a deep dive. I thought we should have a discussion about displays. I thought, we can have a discussion. I don't think we've touched on displays before, but Kelts has a standard display and the display in the play field, but it just got me thinking again. A standard display? What is a standard display? An LCD display is what I mean. And that's the thing. So as those who are listening, if they've been around the hobby for a while, they're probably aware of this, but basically credit is essentially given to Jersey Jack Pinball, and when they released their first game, Wizard of Oz, with triggering the transition to LCD displays because that was the innovation, if you want to call it an innovation, but it was the new future that was really different from what people were used to seeing in pinball. We've been living with the dot matrix display since 92, really. And other than the dot matrix displays shifting from plasma-based to LED-based, there wasn't really, from an artistic or visual standpoint, There wasn't really any improvement. So other than people got better at, you know, making good dot art. So now the LCDs are everywhere. It's essentially every single manufacturer that I know of has made the jump. I think the only one I wasn't sure of was Home Pin with Thunderbirds. But I think that even their new Chinese, did you, oh, did you see that? Their new, they've got the May zombie, the May vampire outfit thing going on. That's their theme is the hopping zombie from China for their next game to target the Chinese market. So, I mean, kudos to them for not doing Journey to the West like everyone does. Yeah, that's the obvious. I don't know. I guess it depends if you like horror or if you want a bunch of hopping zombies. I mentioned Mei because Tony and I, as many of you have listened for a while now, we play Overwatch. And there's a very famous Mei is a Chinese character in the game. And one of her Halloween outfits that they gave her one year is as that hopping sort of zombie type. And she actually has an emote where she holds her arms out and hops like how they're supposed to hop. That's why I was familiar with it. I don't actually know the history of all of Chinese folklore. But Overwatch educates me. So anyway, so displays. So we've got these modern displays now. But we're also seeing a lot of throwback layouts. We just talked about Celts. Earlier in the episode, total nuclear annihilation is seen as a throwback layout. Mafia was a throwback layout. Beatles is a repurposed layout, you know, restructured, refined, improved, but still a throwback layout. See which from Stern Electronics. So we've seen all of those coming out. So here's what I'm curious about. There clearly has been a market of varying degrees of success, obviously, for these single level layouts that are very reminiscent of the 80s or earlier. because ramps really came into prominence in the late 80s.
    27:09
    I kind of think of Space Shuttle, well, after Space Shuttle, but I think Space Shuttle may have had one ramp. I'm trying to remember exactly how it was constructed due to the shuttle shock. But anyway, by the time we're in the 90s, ramps are everywhere. Right. You know, T2, fan layout moved forward from that point on, and then it's like everything had two ramps. System 11s were laden with ramps, and they were in the 80s. is there a market to go backwards on the display from the LCD?
    27:40
    Alphanumeric is where I'm kind of thinking, sort of System 11 again. And what I don't really mean necessarily even what the displays are made out of in terms of their, again, they'd probably be LED. And I know that the displays, like putting in four player displays is probably more expensive than putting in an LCD. But what I'm getting at is you wouldn't have to program art assets if you go back to that. If you remember, the alphanumerics were mostly just text numbers and some really basic image animation. Well, like you've seen with Silver Slugger, the little baseball that, you know. Right. It's an O that's going across the screen. So, do you think that people who, to varying degrees, have been interested in the classic style layouts and arguably also, setting Kelts aside, more classic style rules. Beatles isn't argued to be a really deep code game. TNA's rule set is very straightforward. and Mafia essentially played like an EM with a rule set of hurry-ups that was no more sophisticated than Hoops was from 91. So I'm curious, if a price savings was with it, because we wouldn't have to pay for all these artists and programmers to code the screen, do you think that the pinball market today would sustain having occasional games, basically doing throwback displays and avoiding the glitz and glamour of the LCD? No.
    29:15
    I said a lot of words, and you basically killed it with one word, so let's pretend you said yes. Why do you think so, Tony?
    29:23
    Let's back this up. Do I honestly believe that the pinball as it is now could sustain something like that? Like I said, no. But, I wish it would. Because to me, I find it an amazing thought. I would like to see a game more akin to some of the older games. I would even like to see a very modern version of some of the older solid state and electromechanicals even that uses some of the newer technology that we have to give it some modernization while still being play and display a throwback I would find it very interesting. I'd find it, I mean, if it was the right, if it was fun to play, I'd definitely find it fun because I like that kind of retro styling. One of the things on a game that I'm sure anybody who's been to a convention, I know we've seen it multiple times, is that Mirror Universe Star Trek, where he replaced the old display with the Nixie tubes. Right. And it gives it a very special feel.
    30:40
    And even with your replacement displays you just did on Firepower, it keeps the old feel and look with modern displays.
    30:50
    I'm perfectly fine with stuff like that. I like on TNA that it has actual score displays up on it. I would like it. I just don't really think the hobby would survive it as anything more than a boutique-style game. And I agree. As I was writing this up, because I wrote it because I thought I would really like to see, and I've often, and I've toyed with it several times, the idea of fully operable, Because to me, it's so important by the – that's the issue with the Star Wars, the pin, is that potential buyers, they're not turned off by the MDF cabinets or play field.
    31:32
    Or that both swings fire at the same time when the ball is – I don't think that's it. It's that it doesn't actually have a coin door. It can't actually be routed. So to them, that's the difference between a toy and a pinball machine.
    31:45
    So – and I tell you, you can roll your eyes. I did roll my eyes. From a collector perspective, it's just an important difference. Right. It's where those that collect on the arcade side are like, mains don't count.
    31:58
    True. They only count real stuff. Even though, logistically speaking, a main makes so much better sense. We just can't main physical pinball machines. There's no practical way to do it because it's physical. But, you know, taking up a ton of space and buying a Ms. Pac-Man and then having to buy a separate Donkey Kong doesn't make a lot of sense to people when you can emulate accurately all the displays and stuff within one cabinet. Right. Now, I can see one of those things where, for me, with pinball, with arcade, I can see having a specific machine because it has specific meaning to you. Arcade cabinets, the only reason, there's only two arcade machines I would have other than a main cabinet. And it's both because they have deep personal meaning to me and nostalgia. I would have a set down Star Wars with the vector graphics because I remember when I was a kid, I would go to the arcade that was here in Olathe right next to Godfather's Pizza. Almost every time I spent the night with my grandparents, we would go to Godfather's Pizza. We would have pizza. And then we'd go over to the arcade and Grandpa would sit there and talk to me and laugh while I sat and played that game. And that was part of our thing. Right. And the other one is Burger Time. Because Burger Time is a game that has a lot of meaning to me. Because it's one of the very first games I ever, ever played. And it was the game that I remember the most playing with my dad and my mom. It's the one where we had the most stuff. Because neither of them really played much afterwards except for like Tetris and a little bit of Mario. But we played Burger Time all the time. Right. So those games, I can see that. But anything else? Main Cabinet. I mean, and even those games on a Main Cabinet would be fine to me. But I could see getting those because they have a specific... Sure, sure. And people have that with all sorts of stuff. Right. They go back and they get their first motorcycle that they remember. And they get the car that their dad used to have. And then they go and they get the boat. I don't know. I've never been a boat person. But that happens with boats. I can tell. I can smell it. Yeah. I smell it. Maybe. Possibly. Maybe. That all falls under the 3F rule.
    34:25
    So in this case, yeah, it's just I was thinking about it because one of the things I've often wondered is about, you know, the concern is the rising prices.
    34:35
    And that's almost inevitable because costs go up over time. Labor costs go up. A lot of the pieces may go up. Some things go down, like going to the LCD display would make sense for saving money. But that's where I've often wondered, well, if you could save on the labor and go with shallower games, that would allow you to have fully operatable by the collector's definition real pinball machines at a lower price point, kind of like what Kelts is trying to do. But what I can't ever get past is I think most collectors would say that it's just not impressive enough anymore. they don't want to what have I got the real game version down to the $4,000 that the pin is going for or did they go down to yeah I think it was about $4,000 for Star Wars the pin but it's like then there'll be it's still the same thing especially when you look at the used market yeah but for less than $1,000 more I can have Deadpool and it will have display and it will have deep code or I can have monsters and it'll have a it'll have all these shots and it'll be by this famous designer and there'll be neat animation you know the displays from the show and And that's better than an Alphanumeric. So I was like, yeah, it's an interesting idea to me, but I agree with you. I just don't think, other than a handful of them, that any company could really move a lot of units like that. And that's why I think Stern doesn't go back and vault their Stern Electronics games.
    35:58
    Makes sense. If you were to truly vault them, it would basically be doing those old displays with those old rules and those same old layouts. and it's hard for me to criticize it when I look at Beatles and it's like in every single way it's better than Sea Witch. It's just better. Well. It's better.
    36:20
    What are you going to argue? You might like the art on Sea Witch more? The sound was obnoxious, the scoring rules weren't as good, and the layout definitely was inferior. So I think in all of those ways Beatles is superior, but at the same time I think a non-Beatles theme would, for me personally have been more interesting. Sure, but they can do that by re-releasing, re-theming Beatles. That's the solution there. Here, you made Beatles it's way better than Sea Witch, now just re-theme it as Sea Witch 2.0 and give it a new art package. Let's not get into that 2.0, 3.0 stuff. 2.0. That's got some bad juju on it coming from the Bride of Pinbot 2.0 and all that stuff. People love Bride of Pinbot 2.0. It was 3.0 where the line was getting crossed. That was a step too far. Where they thought, hey, let's change Python's art. Well, that was the one thing people liked about Bride of Pinbot because it's not a very good game.
    37:22
    I think there's a spot in pinball fandom for this type of throwback stuff, but it's always going to be pure home-built machines or maybe small boutique where they make two or three machine type things. It's going to be designed specifically for certain people. I don't think it's going to have the kind of mass marketable sellability that would be required to have one of the big guys. To even have somebody like Spooky make it. Right. No. I think in terms of a savings, and most of the savings would have to be on development side is where I'm thinking. Labor side. and how much that would translate into the game is an enigma to me. But if Pinball continues to grow and the operator side of things is viable enough that you wanted a game that could be shallow because you were only targeting it to operators and not home collectors, there may be potential there for doing something that's like, this is as deep as a 90s game, but it's not what we do now with this intensive code team. and maybe a little more simplified, like it's going to do movie clips. We're definitely not doing custom animation stuff. I could see that, but I don't think the market on the operator side is healthy enough to go that route.
    38:42
    So I assume that's why they do not. Well, and then that's a thought is could they actually do this cheaper than doing an LCD display at this point? Well, the display cost itself, I think, for the LCD is cheaper than buying for LED, you know, multi-segment displays and doing that. Right. Which is why I think most companies wouldn't bother from a hardware side. So, you see, it's not on the BOM. It's on that when you put in an LCD, people are expecting you to not just display player one, player two, player three, player four scores on the display. They're expecting you to actually fill it with something that's interesting. Right. And you have to hire people to do that. whereas you don't really have to hire people to do that to display numerics.
    39:25
    That was where my thought was when I wrote it up, was coming from. Because, I mean, look at the LCD display on Total Nuclear Annihilation. You could get rid of that. From a gameplay perspective, it doesn't really show you very much. Right. Actually, my understanding is it's supposed to be what that LCD is showing you, that's supposed to be what Scarlett sees on her wristband in the art. That's her display to show you what she was looking at. But it's got the score displays separate, so you don't really need any. From a streaming standpoint, I actually like the LCD because it's easier, it's more legible to read the score on the LCD than those white displays wash out so bad.
    40:09
    It's just something the cameras get finicky with. But outside of that, it's like, I remember because when the first year it was going into production, I wondered, would they get rid of the LCDs versus the white wood?
    40:23
    I thought they could to save money if that was the goal. But, you know, Spooky's price was still within where they were on other stuff, even with all the displays. So who knows? Okay, well, that was it for pinball. So I know we have some stuff to talk about on video games. We do have some stuff to talk about on video games.
    40:45
    I guess we could start with, as we often do when it happens, with the transition of virtual pinball, which is a video game. It makes such a good transition. It does, because we just finished talking about pinball overall. And that was, we had an email, I'm going to say his name wrong, Eikos Gyorki, he's with Zen Studios. He wrote in to us and asked us if we would like the Universal Monsters Pack, which is the pinball pack that has Creature from the Black Lagoon and Monster Bash, which are two Bally Williams pinball machines that were actually made in the 90s. Right. And it just recently came out. So, I think, so basically for us to review. Right. Was my sense. So, I accepted. So, we have been bought with table packs. So, we have been purchased with table packs. Right. And so he sent you a code for Steam to be able to play it, and he sent me a code for Xbox One so I'd be able to play it on that. I do not know if you have had a chance yet to play it or not. I have played a very little bit yesterday evening between watching BlizzCon stuff. Okay.
    41:53
    Did you play both? I only played Monster Bash. Okay. And then I got sidetracked with it up on the screen. So if you look at it, my play time's like hours. You've played it for hours. But the actual time is because it got minimized while I was playing around with something on one of my other monitors, and then I forgot about it. Okay. So I've played Monster Bash several times, and that's about it. Well, and you've played Monster—now, I know you've played it in person, but I think you've played it on the Pinball Arcade as well, or have you not? I think so. Okay. Well, what did you think of Zin's version of it? Did you play their arcade-y version? Okay, so you played the classic also. I played the classic also. And it felt good.
    42:43
    My biggest issue had nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with the fact that I can't find my controller. So I was playing with the keyboard. Oh, no. Which made it a little bit... No, no, no. Yeah, which was ergonomically not the best. I remember doing that in the old days and I can't fathom doing it anymore it was so weird it was so I wanted to make sure that is out there because any issues I had about the physics could completely be because my brain was screwed up because I'm tapping the shift keys no no no but all in all I didn't have any big complaints about any of it it shot good I don't it felt better than some of the other emulated pinball I've played. But not so much better than a lot of it that it'd be like, oh, that's totally different. Some things felt like it worked better for me. The camera system felt like it worked better for me.
    43:48
    I think part of it's because I played a lot of Zen pinball, so it felt like Zen pinball with it felt like Zen pinball with a table I actually knew. Yeah, that was, I played both over, I did a little bit this morning I did a good chunk of last night and I also played it one other night I did both games, I put most of the time in on Creature, actually I did try the classic modes with both, but I spent most of the time in the arcade versions The classic modes, the physics did feel, I mean, the games felt more brutal because I think the physics felt more like actual physics. Right. I need more time to know for sure. I've heard some people, I don't know if the classic mode sets all the physics as quote-unquote real as possible or not because I've seen people discussing on Pinside, for example, how to go in and further refine it. But you don't get the ball trail and stuff when you're in the classic mode. It's very clean. Yeah. And it felt really, really responsive. Pinball Arcade, I mostly play Pinball Arcade on PC. I have it for Xbox. I mostly play it on PC.
    45:00
    This felt better than that. Yes. I can say that. Like, even the arcade version felt better to me. And I like the physics okay with Pinbarg. It's not awful. But it's just, the age shows versus what this was like. Now, I did spend most of the time with the arcade mode. And I was really working on Creature because I was trying to get my achievement. And I didn't get it. Because you are an achievement hound. I try not to be anymore. But sometimes I'm like, no, I need to do that to prove that I'm awesome. And I just, I still haven't gotten either one. Like, I thought, like, the achievement for the Monster Bash one I thought was to get two Monsters of Rock, which I thought I did, but I didn't get the achievement. I didn't even look at the achievements. You've got to look so you know. I know I haven't done the, well, I thought I almost had the creature one. Yeah, it's, you've got to go to Multiball, find the girl, and get the jackpot. And I don't think I got the jackpot.
    45:56
    I've gotten in the multi-ball because I'm getting my butt kicked in the multi-ball itself. Now, it's really not. What I do like is when you're in the arcade mode, on the controller, you can just go and just hit, on the Xbox controller, it's the B button. Just hit the B button, and you can either turn on and off. It's just the toggle of the extra effects. So if things are too busy and it's confusing you or you don't like it, at certain points you can turn it off. and you just hit the button again and it'll just repopulate it with all the, like the animation of the creature swimming around in the hologram it's really cool looking but like when I'm up in the top lanes trying to spell paid and there's the pop bumpers and I'm trying to get the feeds and lane change, it's harder for me to see when they're putting the coin, they put coins floating up above it to signify that you're getting paid or you're completing paid so I like to turn that off when I'm trying to get my lane change right. So I can just tap the button. I don't have to play one way or the other. I can just alternate. Which is a very nice feature. Which is nice.
    46:59
    One of the things I'm doing, historically when I play virtual pinball, I've always gone with a locked zoomed out view. Yeah. Where the ball is very, very small but I can see everything. I've been trying to transition into playing more where I can see the ball closer and let it pan and not get like motion sick. So that's view seven is the one I've been using for these. So it's like, when I'm in the lower third, it's steady. But then if I go up top, it goes up. And I've been doing it. So I played with locked view. And so I unlocked, and I liked how, I felt like I was making my shots better because things weren't so zoomed out, which was helpful. However, on Creature, I do have a complaint about that. And that was when I'm on view seven, the way Creature of the Black Lagoon works for those who have not played the game is, you have to collect these letters in film and then you lock a ball and you have two, there's no auto-plunge on Creature. So, you lock a ball either in the kiss shot on the far left or the slide shot on the far right and then a ball is put in the plunger lane and you can plunge. You can plunge into the top lanes or you can plunge full around and it comes out the left door.
    48:11
    With that, at least that view mode, I didn't test a bunch of, I ultimately started doing this, I go and Then there's another button you can push your X button, and you can change your views at will. So I had to start doing that because on view seven, when I plunge, especially if I plunge on the top lanes, which I like to do in multi-ball because it buys me time, the ball is released for the ball I locked, and it's not panned down to the flipper where that ball goes. So I'm stuck looking up top, and I am having to flip blind. I'm not allowed to see my ball. once a little bit of time passes it then seems to realize this and then always make sure that I'm able to see the flippers early with the ball but before then at the start of that multi ball it doesn't so it's either if I keep it in that view mode I had either full plunge just so I can get the camera back around in time before the ball is released because if it's a kiss shot it's going to release right at that right flipper correct the slide shot goes around and buys a little more time, but I typically lock and kiss because it's an easier lock. Or I have to zoom back out ahead of time before I do the plunge. So that's a problem. Because I shouldn't have to change the view to save the ball. You would think it would automatically count as the right spot. And it's only at the start of the multiball. Once about two seconds has passed and once I get the flip off on the ball that's on the lower part of the playfield that it already locked. It seems to understand from that point on. But anyway, that's the one thing I ran into. So I lost a number of multi-balls because of that, and I wasn't as confused at first, and then I realized, oh, it's releasing the ball before it's showing me it's released it, and that's where I'm failing. Because it's still up top, where I've plunged, trying to show me my skill shots. Right. So that's the one thing I haven't liked so far. Yeah, I've not played enough to have found anything like that. I've already earned table mastery on Creature. It's like, you have mastered this table. Yeah, I still have my achievement because I keep using my multivolve.
    50:17
    Next video game topic. This is a different one. We have before, but we very rarely touch on arcade games. I mean, there's not a lot of, at least I don't go to a lot of arcades with actual arcade games. And I don't really play a lot of arcade games. Yep. So we had someone, Lucas Pepke, wrote in to us and asked what our thoughts were on the Raw Thrills Arcade game called The Walking Dead Arcade. And I have a link in the show notes. I think this is him. I think he does bumper nets. I'm not sure. The person's name was Lucas, and he looked kind of like Lucas. So anyway, I have a link in the show notes to the bumper nets video on YouTube showing a playthrough of one of the chapters of The Walking Dead Arcade. Right. you've played this before. I've played this. I have not. I've played this and, because they have this and the Jurassic Park game at Logan Arcade, and I played both of them. Okay. What did you think of it then, because you have hands-on experience? For the type of game it is, that kind of on-rail shooter game. Yeah, on-rail shooter. It's very enjoyable. I would say I preferred the Walking Dead of the Jurassic Park one. Okay. Straight out of the gate, I thought the Walking Dead one was more fun.
    51:33
    I would rank it fairly high in that kind of on-rails shooter type thing. But I still think my favorite of the on-rails shooters are the time crisis games with the duck mechanic and with the foot pedal. They've got the foot pedal when you just stomp for the duck mechanic and all that. I like those games a lot. More than like there's the dark silhouette ones, which is the sniper one.
    51:59
    There's a whole bunch of them. But of those games, I like the time crisis games. I think the best. But this is, for a much more modern version of the game, a lot of fun.
    52:11
    It's weird to me because it uses a crossbow mechanic, but you don't have to reload the crossbow every shot, which... Yes, and I saw that in this video. I understand why they do it. It has a cool reload feature. But the reload thing is cool. But it's a semi-auto crossbow. And maybe there's a setting that I could have picked when I started the game that would force me to reload every shot, which would make the game way harder, but I think would also be more interesting.
    52:40
    But I only played through the first level, which is the video clip it looked like was the ones from the first level. Yeah, I think it says Chapter 1. Chapter 1, yeah. And that's all I played was Chapter 1. I played multiple parts of Chapter 1, but I only played that part. I didn't jump around to a lot of other stuff. But, no, it's a fun game. It's got a – the way it handles the source material and the whole zombies and, you know, headshots. When you miss and you get a shoulder shot and it's still coming for you, it sucks. Yeah.
    53:14
    How would you compare it to – much earlier, though, I think, same basic engine that Raw Thrills did, the Alien Armageddon game, because you and I both played through and won that. Yeah. We're not going to talk about how many 20s that's worth. No, we won't. We won't discuss that. So where would you rank it with that one? Because that's the one of Raw Thrills that I have played. I think it's better. That was my vibe from the video. What I liked, what I saw in the video, because as I noted, I have not played the game myself. What I liked about it was the, granted, you don't have to do it every shot, but the Crossbow reload mechanic was cool. It was a clever toy. But what I liked was in that chapter going through there were a lot of other with Alien, I just remember most of the time it was just basically, you know, what a lot of light gun games are. Lots of swarms of enemies and you're just trying to hit them all. There were a lot of segments in this where you had to not hit the survivor and try and save them from the walker, which was nice. You had to go for headshots, which was different than what the aliens required you to do. You had a lot of instances where you were in the dark, and so more atmospheric, where it's like, oh, a lot of sort of the rapid turns, jump scare-esque, oh look, now all of a sudden something's on you because there's zombies and they're just coming up on you. It had a few different weapon elements, periods where you would lose the crossbow and have to use something like a wrench, or shooting for exploding barrels, an armored zombie, I remember, so you had to bash their police riot helmet off first, sort of. So it felt like there was a lot of diversity even with the quote-unquote common mobs, whereas with Alien it was always like drone, drone, drone. Right. And then you have bosses.
    54:58
    Right. And that's a very valid point. And it was one of those things that, and I think that's part of why I liked Walking Dead more than Jurassic Park, is because Jurassic Park, it felt like I was constantly getting, oh, now you've got a spread gun, Now you've got a laser gun. Now you've got a flamethrower. Now you've got the super fast machine gun. All these different, like, weapon upgrades, but it didn't have the same visceral kind of buy-in, and it didn't have the same kind of atmospheric touch that Walking Dead. Yeah, and it didn't hurt that Walking Dead's playing the Walking Dead TV show theme while you're going through. Yeah. That is a creepy theme. It is. Yeah, no, it definitely was very much a... atmospherically, I think that's what makes it. Because in the Aliens game, atmospherically, it didn't feel as much like Aliens. I mean, I didn't expect it to feel like Alien, because, you know, Alien is that kind of dark horror thing. But even then, it didn't feel as much like Aliens. It felt more like I was playing, like, Alien Colonial Marine. Right. It's like Alien the Planet. Clean this planet out of the... It's Starship Troopers. Yeah. Laying the bugs out. That's what it felt like. But, no, definitely The Walking Dead is very atmospheric. It's very, very much a game that made it more interesting for your actual interactions in the game. I wish I'd had somebody else playing with me.
    56:27
    I think the two-player on that could be really interesting. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Well, I know you've got a lot of notes taken because you have been watching BlizzCon closely. So closely that you've even let your Monster Bash sit for hours. Yeah.
    56:45
    We'll start, since we talked last time about BlizzCon, about the protests. And honestly, there's been protesters. Yes. There's been a fairly large number of protesters. A lot of Winnie the Pooh sightings, I've heard. Lots of Winnie the Pooh sightings. And Blizzard, I think, has been handling it really well. There's not been, you know, big, oh, you can't come in, and you're kicked out, and you're this and that. But at the same time, I haven't seen anybody attempting to do major internal disruptions either. Right. Well, it sounds like they opened early on with an apology. They opened straight up with an apology. And you can take an apology from a major corporation how you will. Yes. I will say I've heard apologies that sounded much worse than that apology. Yes. I think what I thought worked with it is because there's almost this instinct. And I know some people subscribe to this as a theory that you should never apologize.
    57:43
    That I guess they think it shows some sort of weakness or something. I don't know how you I don't know how that resolves when you do something that's a mistake. Right. I had someone ask me. Actually, I remember once I did something at work and I said, oh, yeah, I just someone was upset about something. So I just apologized. And the person asked me, but why would you apologize for that? That wasn't your fault. And I think my response was, sometimes it's just easier to just say sorry and move on instead of, like, fighting about it. Because my goal is not to have conflict. My goal is to move. Like, I'm trying to accomplish something. This conflict is in the way. So, you know, and you can debate whether or not you should win or should not apologize. But they, in this case, I think it was smart. Because they went in and they said that they got it wrong. Right. And that's been the thing that they've been bungling for most of this period has been the whole fallout on the punishing of the Hearthstone player. And then they take back part of the punishment. And then there were other tangential punishments, like with the casters who were doing the interview. And it's like, yeah. So, acknowledging that that definitely, because I don't think, regardless of where you fall on this, it's, I think, universally safe to say Blizzard did not handle that as well as they could have. So it's a safe thing to apologize about. And even during his apology, he flat out said they responded initially too quickly, and then they took too long to decide they were wrong, is one of the things he said. That's probably helped, I think. I'm not positive I didn't see it but I'm pretty sure from everything I've read because I haven't seen anything from it that they didn't run their normal Q&A event this year which makes total sense in this situation but I've also seen pictures from the floor of BitLizCon where people had Winnie the Pooh backpacks and stuff Winnie the Pooh's on them hanging off them so they're obviously not pulling people out and throwing them out Right, for dressiness. Right.
    59:49
    Now, the other thing that I think can help with an apology is if you announce a bunch of games that aren't phone games that people have been waiting for. So has that been happening Tony They hit that pretty hard Yes I think in my personal opinion I think some of these games are not necessarily ready for an actual announcement But maybe it's like, but we better. Specifically, from what I've seen, and I've not read everything that's come out about it yet, But from what I've seen and from what I have, the Diablo 4 announcement is purely trying to make up for last year.
    60:31
    Because from everything I've seen and everything I've heard, that game ain't coming in 20. I could be wrong. But the few gameplay chunks they've shown and everything I've seen, I think that's a 21 game. Okay. I don't think they're there yet. They said they've been working on it. They were working on it before last year, but I don't think it's there yet. I could be completely wrong.
    60:53
    And they might have made an announcement that says I'm wrong, but it doesn't look like it. The cinematic for it was really cool, but Blizzard cinematics are always really cool. I do like that they are going for, or they've said they're aiming for more of the darker tone. That some of the, you know, like Diablo 2 had a much darker tone. Yes, yeah. They're going back to that. Okay. Well, Diablo 2 is generally most people's favorite who have played a lot of the series. Right. It's my favorite.
    61:31
    But I think that's good. They're much more of their, with taking Diablo back to its roots of the, I mean, very occult, lots more gore, more, less of the, they're getting away from what Diablo 3 was. Okay. It basically sounds like they're going for the kind of story beats from Diablo 2 with the refined combat system that was in Diablo 3. Diablo 3's combat system was very good. Yes. It's had a lot of price. Everything else, it wasn't as good. But the actual combat system is great. So if they can combine that with the more interesting stuff that was available in, you know, the first Diablo and Diablo 2, that's a good thing. Yes. So we'll see where that comes out.
    62:17
    They also announced a new Hearthstone expansion, and Hearthstone has expansions all the time. Yeah, I put that on my phone a couple months ago and played it for a couple weeks, and then I was kind of like, eh. I felt it's sort of grindy in a way. It is. I was like, I don't want to invest the time, so I uninstalled it. I played it the same way. I played it for a while, and I was like, I don't want to spend this kind of money on it. It's like, oh, I've got to do all this stuff for dailies if I don't want to spend money. Right. It's a lot. It was more than I was willing to do myself.
    62:54
    They announced a new expansion for World of Warcraft. Yep. And this is the 15-year anniversary of World of Warcraft.
    63:06
    And with this new expansion, they are going to the afterlife. Yay, zombies. I played in Undead. Yeah. So I was already in the afterlife when I played. Exactly.
    63:21
    You prefer rotten fish or squirrel? Yes. I was more of an aquatic feeder. You had your odorant. So, but I think for you and me, the major announcement is Overwatch 2. Yes. And that might be why I've added in the show notes a link to the cinematic announcement and also the gameplay trailer. Yeah. For people to watch. Because you should watch it because you should play Overwatch. You should. Because Overwatch is great. Yes. Because Overwatch stands for and defends the oppressed. That's right. Including Winnie the Pooh's. That's actually one of the protesters that I saw a picture of had a sign that said exactly that. Overwatch stands for for and defends the oppressed. Will you, Blizzard? Oh. Hey, to their credit, May's in their cinematic. May features very heavily in the cinematic. That's right. I think the first thing anyone who's anything about Overwatch will notice is there has been an art change. Yes. I like it. Yeah, I don't mind it. There's just little things. I know there's a lot of it's online and it's art, so there's going to be a lot of... Yeah, that's fine. It's subjective. Yeah, it's very subjective. I think it's fine.
    64:34
    Some of the stuff I've seen people throw out there is kind of nitpicky, and you also got to figure this is I don't know how finished the art is. They might still be making tweaks to the art. We'll see.
    64:45
    But the big important thing and what is really weird is this is officially Overwatch 2. Yes. But we can't split the player base on the PvP side, so not. Right. It feels like an expansion. Yes. And it's going to feel like an expansion with, if the rumors are true, a $60 price tag. And that's the part that might stick for some people. Because, I mean, one of the initial reactions, and this didn't surprise me, but what I saw online when the trailers hit was, this is everything that I expected Overwatch to have come with. Like, this is Overwatch with PvE and PvP. It's got co-op and all. It's like, this is what the full game should have been. Right. So why is this not just an expansion at a lower price point? Especially considering the fact that all of the new maps, all of the new heroes and all of the PvP stuff is going to be available to people who already own Overwatch 1 for free. It's just part of the game. Yeah. So basically, Overwatch 2 is do you want the single and co-op player experience? That's what you're buying for $60. Yeah. That's it.
    66:07
    From everything I've seen, it's going to be an eventual shift to the point where The client is just the Overwatch 2 client, even for Overwatch 1 players. They just won't have access to the PvE content. Right. But they'll have all, and for them not wanting to split the player base, for them not wanting to pull the Halo mistakes where they released map packs so they split their player base. Yeah, those were big mistakes. And not wanting to, you know, do the Call of Duty things where they release new games and split their player base. from that side of things this is a wonderful idea yeah I mean other than the cost which we don't know for sure yet I mean other than that aspect of it it's reasonable it's been years since Overwatch came out you built an esport around it so you definitely can't afford to be severing your player base apart because people like me that would be inclined to get Overwatch 2, it would be very difficult for me to want to put Overwatch 1 back in. It's like, what do you do? So they've gone this route where Overwatch 2, when you go in, all your skins and stuff you've earned in Overwatch 1 are carrying over.
    67:25
    So they're trying to accommodate as much as possible with that and still let people play in the same PvP sandbox together, which I think is important. And I think where the pricing may be able to get away with it is, unlike if this was, let's say, Call of Duty came out and it was just the single player experience, an 8 to 10 to generously 12 hour campaign. They are really emphasizing that this co-op stuff in particular is designed to be highly replayable. This clearly has RPG elements to it because you're leveling up and unlocking features for the characters. So they're going a route where this should be more than 10 hours of non-PVP play. And for the PVE, they did a big push. At the exact time the announcement started, they paid for streamers, popular Overwatch streamers, to immediately go into the game and start playing on their stage build, the PVE, and then segue into PvP.
    68:34
    And it was Seagull, Fran, XQC, and Stylosa, I think. I don't know him. Fran and Seagull, I know XQC, too. I used to follow his channel, but he's so toxic I stopped. Yeah, no, I follow Fran and Seagull. Seagull's one of the, probably the Overwatch players. Yeah, yeah, everyone likes Seagull. Yeah, Seagull's, I think, the Overwatch person I watch the most, other than if I can catch certain actual league players when they're playing. Right, which they're sporadic. They're sporadic, but I think I watched them. Yeah, Seagull's probably the Overwatch player I watched the most. But they played through multiple rounds of the PvE. It was just one map.
    69:19
    They only had four character choices to play in. Their choices were Mei, Reinhardt, Lucio, and Tracer. So, and they played, it was co-op, so they played through like that. And what was interesting to me is they got, there were item drops where they got items that they could pick up, and the items had, you know, green, they had commons and uncommons. Okay, so standard loot scheme. Standard loot scheming.
    69:47
    And the game had the regular mode, which is how they played through it originally, and it was pretty good. And it looked like a lot of fun, and it didn't look like it was too hard. and then they put it on expert mode and they wiped like instantly. Yeah. There are co-op events that Blizzard does around, you know, like Junkenstein's Revenge was the one that was still technically probably running until Tuesday or so. And if you kick that up from normal, holy crap, does they get hard really fast. It's like, for farming arcade crates, I love normal because it's basically a guaranteed I can go through and win nine games in 90 minutes or something. I'll be done for the week. Easy.
    70:33
    Hands are washed of it. Then it'll be like, there'll be an achievement. They'll be like, oh, well, let's try doing this. It's like, why did I think I could do it? Why did I think I was a pro? What happened to me?
    70:46
    The games looked fun. They had fun story elements throughout. Specifically, because I was watching Seagull. Seagull played most of the rounds as Lucio, and because they were starting as level one characters, they only had the level one options. Well, Seagull, as Lucio, had two options. He could choose one of them as a level one character. One of the options, let his boop heal 25% of a friendly player's health if he booped them. They didn't go flying, they just got boop health. They just got boop health. So, now Lucio could do his passive healing and pocket somebody. The other option he had to choose from was whenever he amped it up, they would get speed and healing. Oh. But there were even more bonuses because he's playing on the missions. When you're playing on the missions, there's changes to your character's normal abilities. When you're playing in the mission, your healing range was larger than it is in PvP.
    71:50
    Also, your speed increase was an attack speed increase as well. Oh, so he shot faster. Everyone could shoot faster. And Reinhardt swung for the fences like you would not believe.
    72:03
    And then later on, he played some May. And May's first two choices, the first one was when you drop into ice block, when you come out of ice block, it sends out a wave that freezes all the enemies around you.
    72:19
    Wow. The other option was when you kill somebody who you've frozen, they shatter and it does AOE damage.
    72:26
    Shards. Ouch. Yeah, both of them were really cool. And the actual, the story beats were fun. And I can see where it could have a lot of replayability. So, I think the price is going to be the big push. Yeah.
    72:40
    I haven't heard when it's coming out. Right, there's that. The other thing is if you do upgrade, if you do go from Overwatch 1 to Overwatch 2, all of your cosmetics go with you. Yes, I did see about that. So you don't have to refarm all your cool skins and stuff. You get to keep all your cool skins. You get to keep all that stuff you've dumped actual money on.
    73:03
    That's part of the reason why that's smart, that part makes sense. Yes. Now, when they did the PvP section, it showed off exclusively the new PvP style. The new PvP style or game mode is obviously an eSport game mode.
    73:22
    He said, you haven't watched any of it. I haven't seen it live. I saw a little segment in the gameplay trailer of Push, and my reaction, which you told me, don't worry, was that it looked like an escort mission to me, and that concerned me, because everyone knows escort missions are the worst missions in any video game. It's not an escort mission.
    73:41
    What it is is there is a push bot, whatever the fandom ends up calling it. Okay. I know Siegel's chat was calling them Peter Push, because, you know, they've got to be illiterate. But the push bot starts in the middle of the map, and it is like a payload map. Okay. So the teams start on either side, and they run towards the middle. Whichever team has players and have control of push bot, he turns and walks towards the enemy side until he finds there's a big barricade. and he will push that barricade closer and closer and closer to the enemy's starting point. And then when you get pushed off, when your team gets wiped out and pushed off of him, he'll turn around and go with the other team to push the barricade towards your thing. But the barricades never come backwards. They just move closer and closer. And there are checkpoints. And when your barricade, when you escort him to the point where his barricade hits a checkpoint, it moves your spawn. Closer. It moves closer. and then you keep pushing. So how is the winning decided? When the time expires, the team that has pushed their barricade the farthest wins. Or if you manage to push your barricade all the way to the final checkpoint, you instantly win. They had a match last less than three minutes. Okay. All right, so, yeah, this is interesting. It's sort of like, as you noted, it sounds sort of like the payload maps, except you play both defense and offense. At the same time. And that's my question. And my thought is that since this map is obviously designed for esports,
    75:25
    which map type do you think is going to be massively reduced to put this into league play? 2CP. I think 2CP is gone. It's the most hated map style, and it takes forever. I think 2CP is completely gone with this. In fact, perhaps related, perhaps coincidence, but an interesting telling coincidence, And as I read yesterday that for Season 19 of Competitive, Blizzard has said it is a reduced map pool of 12 maps. Lunar Colony and Paris are both out, and they're both 2 CP.
    75:59
    For those that don't know, 2 CP means two capture points. Right. One team plays offense. They have a set period of time to try and claim point A and then point B. If they get point A, they get more points. It keeps track of progress in thirds as checkpoints. and then the other team goes and does their offense against the defense. But if you get both, it goes on and there's another round and another round. I've seen it go as deep as eight and nine, I believe, at the professional level. Yeah. A number of points claimed and each round only has two points. So, I mean, three or four iterations. Yeah, it's also, broadly speaking, most even casual players' least favorite map type. Yeah. I think all you're going to see left is going to be push and hybrid. I think it will be the most common. Right. Well, and control, actually. And control. And control is completely neutral. So some people love control, some people hate it. Right. But it's seen as fair. It's the most balanced of everything. Right. And I think that's the whole purpose of push is to get rid of. Now, what's interesting is because it's this giant robot that pushes stuff, If you throw, say, a symmetric turret at it, it went through the robot and stuck to the barricade. Oh, okay. So it's physical. And if you jump on top of the robot, you fall off. You can't. He's slippery. Yeah. No, everything's set. So the robot itself might as well not exist. Okay. That he's there and he's pushing stuff, but you can't. He's basically symbolic. Okay. And that could just be what was in the stage build, but I know when Siegel was playing, he was playing just random characters. At one point, he played Bastion. He just stood in front of the barricade and let the robot push the barricade, and the barricade pushed him as Bastion in turret form as he just annihilated stuff. Hmm. So. Okay. It'll be interesting to see how, especially for the heroes who have alts designed more around a more static. So, like Hammond's minesfield, when your whole purpose is getting the robot to move. And the thing is, the robot actually pushes pretty slow. It's payload speed. Okay. But when you have control and you're moving from the opposing barricade to your barricade, he jogs. He's quick. You can flip back and forth between the barricades pretty fast. Okay. Based upon his speed. So, it'll be interesting to see.
    78:34
    I think we're going to see a lot of it. I enjoyed what I saw of it. All right. I haven't seen anything of it in actual real-life action yet, so I'll have to reserve judgment. We'll see. I don't know if Blizzard will bring itself to drop the 2CP maps. I mean, because they've still been releasing 2CP maps. Paris is a new map. Yeah. So, I don't know. But if they were to get rid of one, that would be the one to do. So maybe they'll put it so that that's like 2CP is the tiebreaker. Which would make sense. So you just rarely see it. That would help control for it.
    79:06
    Anything else from BlizzCon you wanted to touch on? Not really because I don't play a lot of Warcraft. I don't play a lot of, I don't play any of those. So I just kind of paid a little bit of attention to those just to get the highlights. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and transition to our episode 100 segment where we talk about, yeah. So I put in, Tony and I have our own notes, so he sees, I've listed some things to go through. I do want to go and provide a shirt update. One of the things we were hoping to do was on this episode announce a new Eclectic Gamers podcast T-shirt that would be available for purchase. Unfortunately, there were some delays with our artists and our project had to be pushed back. So even though we had made the arrangement months ago, it just wasn't able to work out. So instead of changing artists, I did find out right after Episode 99 that we're back on the schedule. It sounds like we'll probably be, assuming no other delays, getting started with that work at the end of this month. So I'm hoping by the new year we'll have it. Yeah. So we're sticking with that because we weren't going to brand it or theme it to Episode 99. Yeah, we weren't doing anything. It was just something we thought would be fun to do because we only really have the one design, the main logo. We're not changing the main logo. Right. It was just for funsies. So, anyway, FYI, that's in the works, and we'll next speak about it when we actually have something to reveal.
    80:30
    So, we're in episode 100. So, we noted at the very start of the segment, we've been doing this a long time now, with one exception, we've always essentially done an every-other-week format within two or three days. Right. Usually on Sundays. It's always a little flash. Yeah, I mean, usually on Sundays, followed by Saturdays, and we've deviated from that by as far as two days before. I think we did a Friday once. Yeah, and I think we did a Tuesday one time after TPF. Yeah, we've done things like that. It was like a Monday or a Tuesday. They're almost always planned, so we always say, oh, yeah, by the way, the next episode will be out. Other than that, we don't care if it's a Saturday or Sunday. We'll do whatever weekend day works for us because we figure you guys don't care.
    81:11
    So given that we've done this for a while, I thought we could just sort of share some thoughts broadly on the show without being, again, as I noted at the top, not delving really into the analytics. So the one I wanted to start with is the one that I'm always reminded of every time I put on a podcast shirt. Tony's wearing his podcast shirt from round three of our podcast, the orange shirts. I'm wearing round one. The blue shirt. Complete coincidence. It was what was ready in the drawer to be pulled out and worn. Yep. I just reached into the closet and pulled the shirt. But so it was now, I think, just under two years ago where we formally decided to drop the tabletop gaming segment as a regular segment. And now it's an ad hoc segment where we talk about board games when we have stuff to talk about instead of trying to drive and cover any news in it explicitly. So in terms of show format, that's really easily the biggest one we ever made was to shift away from doing the tabletop every single episode. Right. Now, tabletop was kind of your baby. It was. And the fact of the matter is, and the reason it went away, is I wasn't playing very much tabletop anymore. Because I didn't have the time to do everything. Because I added the pinball in that took up the time slots that I used to need for tabletop. That's true. And I just wasn't going to go play like I used to. And I wasn't long before. I'd already quit long before we started the podcast. I wasn't doing my weekly tabletop wargaming anymore. So it just made sense to have that switch because I was trying to force too much stuff in that it's like, well, here's a game I heard about but I've not played. Right, right. Yeah. And that was always my struggle is because other than at game nights, I very rarely would play a lot of tabletop and board games. And so given that, I wasn't up on any of the news. Right. And it was, the way it would work is with the video game stuff, you know, we both follow video games to varying degrees. And since that transition away from the tabletop, you actually feed in most of the video game stuff and building up a segment plan, whereas I put in most of the pinball stuff. Right. And so the workload got a lot easier after that shift. Yes. And we still do cover tabletop when it's something you know about. Yeah, when it's something either me or you or both of us have actually experienced. like when we went back we didn't do it this year. I think it was last year when we went to CanthCon and we played RPGs and all that. I loved that. I didn't get to go this year because I was on call. I'd like to go next year. I think that was in conflict with Carrie's pinball tournament that I went to. I remember the prior year was in conflict and I did CanthCon. Or two priors.
    84:03
    I like that because that's my one time to actually play straight-up pen and paper, roll-the-dice RPGs.
    84:12
    And as much as I miss playing board games and stuff, the more I play RPGs when I get a chance to, the more I really miss playing RPGs. Right. I don't have a local group. I don't have a whole lot of time. So I haven't been able to do it. Life is hard. So it's so all this, just like with our upcoming on the 8th at the pinball tournament, I'm going to be late because I've got family stuff that is a priority. Which is, it takes priority because it's the priority. Right. But I mean, that's one of those things that just fell just wrong. And it's the same way with anything else is it's hard to pull stuff together when everything falls wrong and there's more important things that get in the way. Yep. But I think that the show has done well with that transition. Yeah. So given that, I think it made a lot of sense. Logistically, it just made a lot of sense for us. Yeah.
    85:13
    So let's go over to the, just talking about particulars. So the one I wanted to start with was, what is the favorite episode that we ever did? And the one I've noted down was, I could probably just say the E3 episodes. If I want to be really specific, it would probably be episode 37, which is our E3 2017, because that was the one where we had five people here. Oh, that one was a lot of fun. That was the one where we had Mike and Eric and Jake and you and me. And the reason why I liked it was just how, I'll use the word passionate, people got at certain points. I know I'm mostly associated with covering pinball on this show and when I participate in other shows, it's always pinball, pinball, pinball. Dennis does the pinball thing. It's like, yes, that's true. But that's why it makes me sad to see so many of the publishers moving away from E3. Because E3, I always really like the E3 segment because that's when people just get pissed about stuff. I know. They get excited about things. And then you see there's always these major facepalm moments about what were they thinking at E3 to do this, and then there's the awesome stuff, and you get fanboy about all of it. And so that's why.
    86:32
    It's just a lot of fun because the discussion's so good. We always have at least one guest on when we do E3, and that helps a whole lot to get different perspectives. You know, we had another year where we had Dawn on,
    86:46
    and it's like, I just, I relate. So that would be it. I would say, honestly, the E3 episodes are probably, as a whole, my favorite episodes. I think my singular favorite episode was our Jack Danger episode. I wondered if you'd name that one. That was way back. That was our first year. It was, but we nerded out on Overwatch so hard. That was before I even played it. It was a lot of fun. I think that was probably my favorite. We've had some great interviews and some really good discussions, But between that and the E3 episodes.
    87:23
    Okay. Well, the next one I was going to say is for us to pick what our least favorite episode was. And for me, it's a fairly recent one. This would be episode 82, Solo Dennis. I had compliments on this one. But, oh, God, I did not like it. It was so weird. I didn't like how I paced. I went really, really fast. I didn't even get 30 minutes into that episode before I had covered everything. I know I talk fast as it is, but when I'm by myself and I'm just rattling off and I'm talking into the microphone and trying to talk to the listener, it was just really weird. It felt unnatural to me. And it only reinforced to me why I don't have any interest in doing a solo podcast.
    88:14
    Least favorite episode. I mean, the reality is that one would probably count because... Well, there was another one you weren't on either. Right, right. But this was the one, if I remember right, I wasn't on this one because of family medical issues. Yeah. So that's why that one wouldn't count. It's not because I wasn't on it. It was because of the reasons I wasn't on it. Right. There was another one I wasn't on, but that one was planned in advance. Yes. Where this one was like, not. Right. But I don't really hate any of the episodes. That's why I said least favorite, not hated. I didn't hate how episode 82 turned out. It wasn't my least fun one. I think it would have to be probably one of the first three or four episodes where I really realized my verbal tics.
    89:05
    And it's just because the verbal tics made me mad at myself. Because I don't really dislike any of them. I know there's been a couple where I wasn't feeling real good when we did them. and I felt like you could tell it because I was off, but I've not really had one that I didn't like. Okay. Or didn't at least have a good time doing. That's fair enough. My next category was going to be what was the hardest episode to do, and I would totally cop out and say, oh, that's easy. That was episode one. Oh? Okay. Because there was so much prep work that had to go into episode one. beyond anything we've ever had to face again. And on my end, it wasn't just recording the show and editing the show, but it was also figuring out where we were going to host it, figuring out how to do the RSS feed. And because we did not know if we were going to just experiment with this or do it for a while We paid nothing We went all in with zero dollars I had found a guide on how to be able to use Google Drive. Google Drive changed their approach. But you used to be able to use Google Drive and share the files in a certain way that you could then use a Google RSS feed, feed burner, which we still actually use because it was our first feed, and get that out there as an RSS using WordPress to actually build the – and so our website on WordPress, I still, even to this day, while I just laundry list as blog posts the episodes and have our other supporting pages about, like, our 20 questions games and our tournaments we've played and stuff, I actually still tag all of that stuff in the blog posts exactly as I did the first time so that if I ever have to use it as the RSS source again, I can. I still go in and I maintain it that same exact way but just all of that stuff and all of the research involved episode 1 was easily the biggest headache I mean the next one was probably around episode 15 when we had to do the transition to SoundCloud but comparatively not even when we transitioned away from like the Zencaster when we started using other things no I'm going to have some stuff that I'm going to bring up that's going to there were issues with that but just in terms of sheer difficulty, actually, just with ignorance about how audio works and how to get it out there in a way that people consume it through podcatchers. All of that was the hard of all the stuff I've ever had to do. It was the most I have to do at once about things I didn't already know. So I had to learn them. On the plus side, I had to learn a lot, which I like to do. But all of it all at once, there was just a lot. It was the hardest. Not the worst, but it was the hardest. Like you?
    91:52
    Not the worst, because I actually enjoyed how it turned out, and I enjoyed the discussions that came out of it. But the actual hardest for me was talking about my Robotech burn. Oh. We got a lot of praise on that episode, too, because you went for an hour on that topic, I believe I could have gone for three if I'd let the rage out. I mean, I tried to keep everything on the timeline and controlled. I was pretty upset. I'm still upset about it. But that was the hardest for me just because it was a matter of trying to balance the telling the story and what happened and the facts and everything without letting my actual annoyance override that was what made that episode hard to me. Okay. That makes sense. Well, it was really, I mean, that was probably the most detailed, structured notes that I've seen. I mean, because you had an entire outline to walk through at that time, and it was paragraphs of notes. Yeah, because normally I am a bullet point. I'm a bullet point note person. Well, that's how I tend to do it, too. Just throw in a few bullets. but with that one there was just so much spread over so many years and I knew as I went through it I would get so upset that I had to build a very I forgot it makes sense and it hadn't crossed my mind that was the obvious one to me that was the hardest one to me well now I want to go through what I call the tales of woe so when did things go wrong I can't remember this episode So this is the one where we were recording remotely from each other, which we used to do quite often. Right. And it was the one where your wife ran the dishwasher.
    93:48
    There was more than one of those, but there was one where it was very bad. The first time where the dishwasher was on, and I just remember at the time we were recording, I didn't think anything of it, anything of it at all. I actually went and I edited the episode in a different way than I had before. Normally, this is getting really into the weeds for folks. Normally when I edit an episode, what I do is I'll take this audio. I take any audio I have. I go in. I run a compression and dynamics tool on it to level out the sounds. So, you know, everything's balanced. And that's how you don't sound like total crap and one person sounds really quiet and the other sounds really, really loud. when you have two separate tracks, it works really, really well. When we're doing like we are right now, where we're both at the same table, we're on one track. So what I have to do is work really hard to make sure our levels are close on our microphones from the get-go. But then, I still run compression dynamic. I always run it. Always run it. I did run it on that episode. I did my editing first and then ran it. Like, I made my cuts and cleaned up the uhs and anything and the blank spaces and stuff like that. Normally, I would do the compression then go through, play little chunks, listen. So what happened was the dishwasher was too low in the audio waveform before compression and dynamics were run for me to hear. But then I ran it after I got done making the edits, so then it became audible to the human being. And I uploaded it. And I went out for a walk. And I was listening to the episode, because that's what I try and do is go back and listen and be like, okay, I need to work on my verbal text. I'm trying to see how many times I click, which I do a lot, and say uh as I think. I do that a lot too. My normal stuff. And I'm trying to improve on it. So I listen back to try and get better. And I'm hearing this chum, chum, chum, chum, chum, chum. I'm like, what is that? And it's like, oh, yeah, that's the dishwasher because you told me the dishwasher was on. I didn't think anything of it. I was like, oh, yeah, the dishwasher's on. Because I could have run noise reduction on it. Right. And that's what I had done before. And it was really loud and really noticeable, and it went for a really long time. So I actually started to, like, speed walk back home and go back in, re-edit, and re-post that audio. Now, with SoundCloud, it's not a big deal. I can do an audio swap. And I've done it before on a couple other episodes. This was the first time I ever did. Yeah. And I had to actually pull a file and replace it with a new, fresh one. And I was so upset because I still had dozens of people that already downloaded it. And at that time, I mean, now at this point, because I had to do a, I didn't edit on the last episode. And I got it edited like within four hours or something. I mean, and that beat most of the downloads, but we'd already had 100. Right. But back then, I'd be like, no, 20 people have heard that this was heard. No. That was one of my bad. One of my woe moments. Well, I think the reason we record in person like we do now is because of stuff like that. And since I don't have a space that's a non-communal space at home, that whenever we recorded, we would basically, to try and get clean stuff, I would basically lock my wife and children in their rooms. You threw them out of their house or locked them in the room. while we recorded, and it always made things, you know, rough on them. And I got to a point, we had one episode where we had a guest. I don't remember who it was.
    97:38
    But we had a guest, and between the pre-show, the recording, and the post-show chatting, I think we ran like four and a half hours. And she was so mad at me. I imagine so.
    97:56
    She was perfectly right to be mad. I mean, they were still coming in. They were trying to be quiet. Even with the doors shut. So it was still, oh, it was just terrible. That's why we record in person. And a lot of it has to do with, honestly, it's a lot easier to record when you can see the other person. Oh, yeah, the discussion actually flows a lot better because we don't have a delay with the sounder. Now, I do wonder if we'd be okay, because when we recorded, we never recorded with video. We always just did straight audio. That's true. Because we were using Zencastr. Right. I wonder if we did an actual video record or Skype. Even when we've done since then, we've done some like that where we've used Skype. not very often, but it's happened on occasion, we've always done audio only. I still wonder if video would make it. Yeah, we can try that sometime. That's a good point, because we both have webcams. It's not a big deal. But at no point does that solve the fact that I have to lock my family away for the duration of a recording. Yes.
    99:00
    And the safe rule on the recording is two to three hours. Yes, and normally, when we do it in person, yeah. I mean, our record times are usually around 90 minutes. Right. That's what we typically do. We're going long today, but we had a lot of BlizzCon stuff, and we have this. Right.
    99:17
    Let's see. Another whoa moment I remember is actually your cited favorite episode, the Jack Danger episode, episode 16. Oh, yeah. Now, Tony and Jack had a great discussion for that episode that you all got to hear. I had a great discussion, too. Unfortunately, at least 12 minutes of my audio was lost because we were using Zencaster, And at the time, I had an older desktop computer, and it would lag. And we didn't know what the source problem was because I was the one always capturing the audio. So at first, we thought it was something with a connection or maybe it was someone else's connection. And anyway, so for the episode with Jack, we went through, and one of the things we used to do with Zencaster to make sure that the audio would be okay is, after 30 minutes, we started to, one of the scenarios, and I think it was because of my system, but it always affected Tony's audio was he started to become really digitized. Like you're speaking through some sort of compression like a codec was running on your audio and you were flying the battle stars.
    100:24
    And if you want to hear it, go and listen to like the last 10 minutes of episode 2 because that published episode has it and I just put a disclaimer on it and we put it out there because we were new.
    100:36
    So anyway we would stop every 30 minutes and start a new audio record through Zimcaster. And I was losing my end. I lost like a couple minutes on one, a couple on another. But I think the second track that we did, I lost eight or nine minutes out of my audio. And so for what I did for that episode is I just had to do edits, tighten it up, mostly keep the conversation between Jack and Tony. and there were a few instances where I remembered what I said and I would re-dub myself back in, basically saying the same thing I had originally in order to be like, oh yeah, Dennis is in this conversation. This was during a pinball segment too, so that one you'll be like, wow, Dennis is awfully quiet on episode 16. I wasn't originally, but it worked out later on where it was like, oh, it was Overwatch and I wasn't contributing anything, but oh gosh, what a mess. So that was one of my other woe moments. I think my one whoa moment actually was like nine episodes worth of whoa moment type things pulled together. Other issues I can think of is, and most of them, they're whoa moments that the audience never hear. It's when I'm doing stuff and I don't think about it, and I grab my water bottle and crush it. While I'm talking, yeah, that's happened a few times. Yeah, he remembers that one. Because I swore. Yeah. I said, are you eating? Because I thought I heard a candy wrapper or chips. Yeah. And there was another podcast I used to listen to, and I had to stop listening to them for six months because one of the hosts ate ice cream on the air, and the spoon was hitting the bowl. And I was just like, I just lost, I just flipped my lid. And I was like, what sort of disrespect to the audience is this crap? And I turned them off and unsubscribed. And see, a lot of this, because when we were recording separately, and that was shortly after I got this microphone. Because before that, I'd been using a headset with a headset microphone. Right. And then I got this newer one. And the thing is, especially in that kind of situation where there was nobody there and my whole family was locked up, and I was just sitting there on my side of the house. I would it was nothing to look at except for the notes and talking and listening and talking I fidget, I would fidget with stuff just like when I'm on the phone at work I've got a pad for taking notes that is covered in bloody doodles all around the notes I take because the whole time I fidget and that was another issue I had, I mean I talk with my hands all the time it's something I do but when we were recording I just fidgeted with stuff. Sometimes I would spin a quarter in my hands, and it would occasionally get dropped. And sometimes I would, you know, have a pen, and I would start clicking it just without thinking. And there's always stuff like that. But Dennis has been real good and gotten to hide the vast majority of my insanities. Well, I used to. I spin things a lot, too. And that's why I'll then say, oh, drop my pen. Why do I have the pen in my hand? I'm not needing to write anything right now. It's in my hand right now. So I'm putting the pen back down.
    104:05
    Another whoa moment. Episode 60 when we had Ryan C. on as our guest. We used Zencastr. That was the last time we used Zencastr. Audio sync issue. So I had essentially all of his audio, all of our audio. we recorded through Zencaster which is a tool which we used to use a lot and then it started to have these sync issues. Zencaster sent out a note indicating that they resolved the issue with Chrome. That Chrome, basically what was happening is almost like a memory leak I think was the problem. Right. But Chrome, they basically rebuilt their engine and Chrome could do it. And we had used it a couple of times between ourselves and we had no problems. But I don't know if it was because my system was so taxed because we recorded locally and then Zencasted in with Ryan or what happened. It doesn't really matter. But what did matter was I got the two audio tracks and they did not align. And we're not talking like, oh, Ryan's three seconds ahead, so I just need to chop three seconds off and then I'll have them balanced. What was happening with this Zencaster issue, to get technical in a way, well, technical would be me using the right terms. Essentially, one of the audio elements, I think it was our audio, was actually occasionally getting little bits dropped. Very, very, I mean, we're talking like clipping almost, where it'd be like a little part of a work would be away.
    105:40
    You do that really well. Except most of the time, it affected generally the silence. So when I play it, I'd hear all our words. It was clipping out portions of our track when there was no audio coming in, almost always. There were a few instances where I did hear it. I know because I had to replay it really slowly. Because what I ended up having to do is rebuild that entire segment by hand. I didn't have to re-record anything. I actually had to sit there and play both tracks and then realize when it would start to get off again and insert silence to balance out us versus Ryan so that we were no longer talking over each other. That episode, I think, took over five hours for me to do that. It was like twice the length of the episode for me to actually go through and build it. I had to manually build it, balance the tracks out by hand constantly. Yeah. through the entire thing. I could never just go, oh, I'm now good. Because you'd only be good for a stretch of 30 seconds to two minutes. And then it would just be too bad again. And I have to add a little more time in to Ryan or to us so that our little clipped elements were now back in line with what his responses were. But it's hard because sometimes, like, you're passionate on something, you are talking over each other. And that needs to stay. And I can't remember anymore because it was only one take. It was hours worth of stuff. Anyway, that was awful. That was my worst edit job I ever had to do.
    107:16
    The Jack Danger one was easy because I was like, I'm just gone. So there ain't nothing to fix. There's nothing to manipulate or massage. This was constant, and I have never used Zencaster ever again because it's not worth it. That was just devastating. What a mess. Yeah. No, I can definitely understand that. We pretty much got completely away from it. Before that even, but that was the final straw. It still exists. Yeah, it does. I still have it bookmarked. The only other thing I had in terms of a woe thing, of things really going wrong that stuck with me, is when we started recording locally, we used a virtual mixing board called Voice Meter. I think the first three episodes we did with that, my sound was bad. I was constantly clipping like if you were to yell in a microphone and you blow the mic out I was constantly doing it and I couldn't figure out why because the meters and voice meter were always looking good and I should have tested it more and I had to keep apologizing for the episode but there was nothing to be I couldn't fix it because the microphone it was peaked out you'd have to re-record it ultimately I finally figured it out because I wasn't I didn't have the level where I wanted it in voice meter I used the voice meter gain control slider to increase my gain on my microphone, and yours was good, so I left yours alone. And no. So even though it looked okay in voice meter, by sliding that gain up, I was actually just blowing out the mic constantly. But I couldn't see it visually. It wasn't showing it in the red. Right. I don't know why it wasn't showing it that way, but once I took it back to the default and then just adjusted my gain on my microphone, because my microphone, you can adjust that in software, but my microphone also has a knob, and I just turn that up, fine. That was it. That was the one thing. So I never touch the gain meters on our microphones and voice meter. I have done it to adjust virtual sound coming in, which I can hear, because I can turn it on and hear it through my headset, but I don't with the microphones.
    109:21
    So that was it for Woe. Time to get a physical soundboard. You know, it wouldn't be a bad idea. I've bid on several in auction But they're just They're expensive It is Everything's pricey Yeah We don't have no Patreon We get by with what we can do We do what we can So the last thing I thought I would do is To counter our tales of woe Tales of wow So when things have gone really really right When we talked about wow Yeah And I Yes We actually We've had a good time And it was a pretty good discussion the last time we did it. For me, what I guess I would note, and this is the only thing that really flirts with analytics, was the show Uptix. That was always a nice thing to see. And having done this for 100 episodes, we've always been a fairly slow burn podcast. And as we expected, you know, when we started it, before we started it, Tony and I spoke about it. And we knew that by being eclectic and saying we're going to talk about board games, video games, pinball games, that we were divvying up our topics and podcasts thrive on being specialists.
    110:37
    Solid. I mean, so, like, there are lots of really, really popular podcasts about video games. There are lots of really, really popular podcasts about PlayStation video games, Nintendo video games. and the broader you make your thing, the less people it's going to appeal to, in particular, if you're going into different niche realms with what we were doing. It's like, how many people who are in the pinball hobby also love to play video games? A decent number, but not as many as who just want to hear about pinball. Right. But we're like, but we want to talk about that stuff, so that's what we did. And so I'm swinging my pin around again. So given that, But normally, as we've gone along and kept doing it, listener numbers have gone up, as you would probably expect them to. But we've had a few instances where they kind of, like, all of a sudden leaped up and then stayed up. So little surges. And there were three that I, I even went back and looked, because I was like, I kind of remembered them. And I was like, it gets a little weird for us, because I don't have good analytics for the first 15 episodes, because we moved from Google to SoundCloud. We had basically no analytics before we were on SoundCloud.
    111:47
    But our first surge was actually thanks to Don, who was with the Pinball podcast. That was the first time I am aware of that another podcast ever mentioned our podcast existing. And I think our listener count, we were really low back then, but I think it more than doubled because right after he mentioned us on their show that we were covering Pinball and talking about this other stuff. So that was our first big, big sort of wow moment. It was like, holy crap. And I was like, that's like when we broke 50, 50 people. It's like, whoa, people are listening. Why would they do that?
    112:20
    Then the second surge, then it just kept going up. Nice, steady little incline. No real surges. The second surge was early last year after the Deep Root interview.
    112:31
    So apparently, now the Deep Root interview where we had Robert Mueller on, and that was the first audio interview I think he did about Deep Root pinball, that's easily our most downloaded episode still. Which makes sense. Yes, it does. Because a lot of people who would normally listen to the podcast are like, oh, I want to hear about this. I want to hear about people smashing playfields with a hammer and all that. It was interesting. It was an interesting topic.
    112:53
    In fact, one of our iTunes reviews specifically mentions that interview in their review. So anyway, after that, a lot of people apparently just stuck with the show after that because that was a big – I mean, that was like over 100 permanent gain. That was a big surge for us. Yeah. That was a big surge. And then the third surge happened – I guess that was – yeah, I don't even know exactly. It gets a little weird. But it seemed to be after I started doing the Twip podcast. I don't think right away. But when I started to do it more recurring, but not quite at the every other week. And I guess some people thought, I'm assuming what happened was they wanted to know what it would be like to listen to a real show. It wasn't just a bunch of drama. It's like, what is Dennis like? They wanted something more than just a morning DJ version of pinball. Right, I think it was someone who wanted to listen and go, what would it be like if Dennis had a show where he didn't have to spend the whole time fighting with Zach about obvious stuff? And so then they can go in there and say, in fact, as you know, we had an email to our EGP email account from Dwight Sullivan. I'm assuming the Stern Pinball Dwight Sullivan. Actually, I know because the email said it was from Stern, where he said you were less wrong than Zach. So you see, it's a very different dynamic. That's my biggest goal in life. It's a pretty easy goal in all options. It is. So those are my wow things. Were there any, I don't know, episodes that you thought were real? I mean, you already named your favorite, but anything about that? It's not an episode. The people who come up to you at TPF?
    114:32
    It's the sheer number of people that I've heard. I recognize that voice. And it's one thing when we're at a local event, But that first year specifically at TPF, that was a very big thing that people were like, I recognize that voice. And they'd come up and ask me. That was my wow moment because that's like, why would you recognize me? Yeah. I mean. But you're known. Your voice is known. And even now, I mean, because you're in the pinball community and almost everything we do is within the pinball community. Right. And that's chiefly, I would say, because what our analytics do tell us is most of the listeners are pinball people. Right.
    115:13
    Which makes sense. I mean, our video game coverage is video games that we're interested in. There's so many professionals who are covering video games. We'll never do the news as good as IGN and Game and Corner. And I don't want to do the news because those guys, they do the news about us. I literally just want to talk about the video games I like. It's the same way. It's not within our wheelhouse. But if we did a secondary podcast that was all about, like, movies and TV, we'd be really good at that, though. Let's be honest. That would be pretty awesome. We would be awesome at it. We would be pretty awesome because we talk about that all the time. But, I mean, that's the target of things when we go to conventions. Yes, we went to CanCon. Nobody recognized me at CanCon except the people who already knew me from tabletop and playing games and stuff. For me, CanCon is just based around, you know, having a good time and playing stuff that I don't get to do very often. But then when we go to Texas, when TPF is the big thing, I mean, that's our big thing that we do as a group of friends. Yeah, it's our big friend vacation. We go to TPF, and it's a lot of fun, and it's all pinball related, so that's all there. But it was still, to me, it felt so different because it was like, I know people listen, but it's not the same. You're a part of a community that you're not physically – because outside of the KC competitive scene, you don't physically interact with all these people who are at Texas. Well, right. And I think the other big part of it is why it's so shocking to me is because where you interact with the pinball community at large quite a lot, I don't. I don't – I know I do – I know – You do locally. I do locally, but at large, it's just like, I mean, I post when I think about it stuff on social media and on the Facebook, but it's not something I normally think about. It's not something that I really get overly involved in. That's why our social media is basically, oh, we're going to TPF. Now there's a bunch of gluttonous TPF stuff, and it's probably going to be gone until next year when we go to TPF again. but it's one of those situations where I just don't really think about it and I don't interact with the wider group like you do because I spend so much of my time uh concentrating on you know family and work and and stuff like that and my all my other interests uh I've never dived into the you know Pennside and all the Facebook groups except for the local Kansas City groups so when I get out there and it's like okay hi yeah nice to meet you oh yeah nice to meet you yeah oh yeah I remember that it's like it was a very different thing it was a very wild moment yeah we're not entertainers by natural disposition so it's weird in a way and I've heard other podcasters mention it where it's like people they'll know things about you and you'll have forgotten that you said them on air yeah that happens a lot to me that does so especially So I get messages from people who add me on Facebook and I'll get a note, which is fine. I don't know. It's like, okay. I have a lot of those sort of conversations. But then sometimes they're like, yeah, but you mentioned this. I'm like, when did I say that? Why did I say it? Who knows?
    118:18
    Anyway, yeah, it's gone pretty well. And that's all I have for episode 100 to say. That's all I got to say about that.
    118:29
    I apologize. For what? We're not having more to say about that. I think we said enough. We did. I'm going to probably get this edited down under two hours, but we are past the two-hour monologue. Yeah, that's definite. I saw that. I knew this episode would go on. As a reminder, we are on the Eclectic underscore Gamers channel on Twitch, streaming KC Game Con on Saturday the 9th? The 9th. The 8th? The 9th. I think it's the 9th. It's the 9th, because I think the 8th is the first day of the event. Right. If you aren't in Kansas City We will be at Kansas City Game Con On both the 8th and the 9th I believe It runs 8th, 9th, and 10th I believe I'll be there on the 8th and the 9th So Yeah I don't know if I'll be there for sure On the 10th or not But we'll be streaming a lot on the 9th obviously Because that's when the tournament is Tournament is sold out I think they're running some other tournaments on the 10th That might be available Yeah they were talking about some side tournaments Right, right. But we're not planning to stream that. We'll stream the real tournament like we like to do. So we'll have that. So feel free to tune in via Twitch to see that. If you want to write in with us, you can always email us, eclecticgamerspodcasts at gmail.com. We're also available at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcasts. We're on Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple weeks, undoubtedly talking about KC Gamecom as at least part of that conversation. You would assume so. And other than that, I'll see you all next time. This is Dennis. And Tony. Goodbye. See ya.