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Episode 79 - Epic Munsters

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 54m·analyzed·Jan 14, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Munsters revealed with simpler rule design; art and mini-playfield feature analyzed.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers Podcast hosts Tony and Dennis discuss 2018 podcast analytics showing strong guest episodes and listener geography, then pivot to extensive analysis of Stern's newly revealed The Munsters pinball machine. They examine the art packages (black/white Premium, colorized LE, color Pro), the innovative lower playfield mini-pinball feature, and the simplified rule architecture designed by programmer Dwight Sullivan that eschews traditional mode-driven gameplay in favor of continuous shot-building and multiball activation similar to Iron Man.

Key Claims

  • The Munsters is a real game that came out in early January (2019), following Iron Maiden in April (2018), giving Stern three cornerstone releases in 12 months

    high confidence · Dennis (host) confirming the game's existence and release timeline

  • The Munsters uses a non-mode-driven rule architecture unlike Star Wars or Star Trek, with continuous shot-building toward automatic multiball/hurry-up activation rather than discrete mission selection

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony discussing Dwight Sullivan design approach from CES and Special When Lit podcast interview with the design team

  • The Munsters (Pro) model features a unique lower playfield with a mini-pinball (smaller ball), separate flipper buttons, and independent gameplay that can run simultaneously with the main playfield

    medium confidence · Dennis describing CES footage and post-reveal research; acknowledges uncertainty about exact mechanics vs. Family Guy/Shrek comparisons

  • Premium model is black-and-white art/playfield with minor color incorporation; LE is colorized version with coffin-themed cabinet; Pro has a different lower playfield

    high confidence · Tony and Dennis reviewing publicly released images and specs

  • Dwight Sullivan previously stated his next game after Star Wars would be less complicated in rules, which Munsters appears to deliver on

    high confidence · Dennis referencing prior Sullivan interviews on Special When Lit podcast

Notable Quotes

  • “It turned out to be real, Tony. You were right, and it came out in early January.”

    Dennis @ ~7:30 — Confirms The Munsters pinball machine's existence and release, validating prior speculation

  • “Munsters does not use modes in what we think of in the modern sense... it's more like do this enough and a multiball happens. Do this enough and maybe a hurry up happens.”

    Dennis @ ~32:00 — Explains the core design philosophy shift away from traditional mode-driven gameplay, a significant industry design trend

  • “I appreciate the black and white art package. I would go so far as to say that it's probably my favorite of the art packages, just because I think it took a lot of daring to go with a pure, not pure, but to go black and white for the art package.”

    Tony @ ~13:00 — Positive reception to unconventional aesthetic choice; notes business risk vs. artistic merit

  • “I think it would have been safer [to make the LE black and white instead of Premium]... they'd still have sold them out.”

    Dennis @ ~17:00 — Speculation on market strategy and production/supply constraints affecting product tier decisions

  • “Almost every game that is out there that is popular are games, or some of the most popular games ever are the old Williams games, and a lot of them didn't have modes.”

    Tony @ ~45:00 — Historical framing of simplified rules as proven successful design model, defending against complexity-focused criticism

  • “Stern is the one who can do stuff like this. They can take these risks because at the end of the day, if it doesn't work out, if this isn't a huge selling machine... okay. It didn't destroy them.”

    Dennis @ ~48:00 — Market positioning insight: Stern's scale allows experimentation that smaller manufacturers cannot afford

  • “I still think the biggest question mark was actually running with this particular theme... even though the show was only on for two years, it was syndicated a lot, so there are a lot of people who grew up in the 70s who saw it.”

Entities

The MunstersgameDwight SullivanpersonChristopher FranchipersonJohn BorgpersonJerry ThompsonpersonStern PinballcompanyCESevent

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: The Munsters officially released in early January 2019 as Stern's first major title after Iron Maiden (April 2018), representing three cornerstone releases within 12 months

    high · Dennis: 'It turned out to be real, Tony. You were right, and it came out in early January.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: The Munsters employs a non-mode-driven rule architecture that prioritizes continuous shot-building and automatic multiball activation over traditional mission/mode selection, representing a conscious departure from recent complex games like Star Wars

    high · Dennis describing Dwight Sullivan's design: 'Munsters does not use modes in what we think of in the modern sense... it's more like do this enough and a multiball happens'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Pro model features unique mini-pinball lower playfield with independent gameplay, separate flipper controls, and simultaneous multiball capability—a novel mechanical feature distinct from traditional lower playfields (e.g., AC/DC, Shrek)

    medium · Dennis: 'The lower play field isn't like ACDC's lower play field... it's like a pinball machine within the pinball machine... it's got a little vertical up kicker inside of it'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Premium/LE/Pro art stratification: Premium uses black-and-white aesthetic (artistic risk), LE colorizes it with coffin-themed cabinet, Pro includes color with functional playfield differences. Possible demand/supply constraint influenced tier placement

    high · Dennis hypothesizing LE as safer choice: 'they'd still have sold them out. Yeah. I can see that. And they worry that it's harder to see... either they don't want to pay the price on the LE, or they called their distributors and they can't get it already'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.344

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 13th. It is episode 79. I am Tony. I'm Dennis. Here we are. Do you like how I'm staring at the information and I still had to think about it for a second? Well, you want to be sure that you loaded the right thing. Yeah. For some reason, the 13th just felt wrong. Yeah. It maybe feels like it should be later in the month, but it's not. Yeah. Not yet. It will be soon enough. So, anything been going on since we did our year-end review episode?
0:50
Nothing super special. Work has been work And play has been play And I've still been streaming a bunch of Battletech And I'm probably going to Turns out I'm going to keep streaming Battletech Longer than I plan to continue streaming Battletech Because they pushed back the release date of Ace Combat for PC To the 1st of February Okay And not too far Right It just makes me It's just annoying Because I was really wanting to get that on the 18th and play it and stream it, but... Yeah. Now I can only do that if I do it on console, and I don't have a capture card for console yet because it's expensive. Mm-hmm. So you might just have to play Bloodborne.
1:34
I still couldn't stream it because I don't have a capture card for console. Well, I don't know what to tell you. Battletech is always there with you. You can always continue your Cold Waters campaign if you need to. Yeah. The Italian saga. No, that's No, Colt Waters wasn't Italian That's Rules of Rule the Waves Oh, Rule the Waves I'm currently playing another Italian run in Rule the Waves, that's what I played all day yesterday I'm at war with France right now and it's going really well Okay, well, that's good Yeah, I'm beating up on the French It's like 1920, we've been at war for almost a year now I've managed to pretty thoroughly crush their support forces, and they've refused to fight any actual fleet-scale battles. Okay. Except for one, and I want it handily, so we haven't fought any more sets. Alright.

Dennis @ ~50:00 — Theme selection rationale and nostalgia market hypothesis; expresses caution about licensing choice

Special When Lit
organization
Iron Maidengame
Iron Mangame
Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
Star Warsgame
Medieval Madnessgame
Deadflipmedia
Tonyperson
Dennisperson
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
?

gameplay_signal: Munsters' simplified rule architecture addresses ongoing community complaint that modern pinball requires excessive play-time to understand scoring strategy, positioning it as more approachable than depth-focused contemporary games

medium · Tony: 'There are people in the other camp who have been complaining that games are too complicated now... this could be seen as approachable in that regard'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's scale enables experimentation with unproven design approaches (simplified rules, black-white aesthetics, mini-playfield) that smaller manufacturers (JJP, Spooky) cannot afford, allowing strategic design risks

    medium · Dennis: 'Stern is the one who can do stuff like this. They can take these risks because at the end of the day, if it doesn't work out... okay. It didn't destroy them'

  • ?

    content_signal: Munsters revealed at CES with accompanying Special When Lit podcast panel featuring four-person design team (Borg, Sullivan, Franchi, Thompson), providing comprehensive media coverage of design philosophy and mechanical features

    high · Dennis: 'they had John Borg and Dwight Sullivan... Christopher Franchi... Jerry Thompson... the main four people you kind of associate as the leads'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Hosts contextualize Munsters' simplified approach against Williams' pre-mode era machines, framing it as cyclical return to proven accessible design fundamentals rather than innovation

    medium · Tony: 'Almost every game that is out there that is popular... the old Williams games, and a lot of them didn't have modes. You played, and you activated something, and you kept playing'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community division emerging around aesthetic and mechanical choices: black-and-white art divisive (some praise daring, others criticize ball-tracking visibility), mini-playfield with extra buttons contentious for traditionalists

    medium · Tony: 'There are some who absolutely hate the black and white art well That's to be expected.' Dennis re: buttons: 'I don't like a bunch of extra buttons on my pinball machines. I like two buttons'

  • $

    market_signal: Munsters theme selection based on 1960s syndication reach and generational nostalgia (grew up in 70s-80s), hedging against potential niche appeal concerns given limited original series run (two years)

    medium · Dennis: 'I still think the biggest question mark was actually running with this particular theme... even though the show was only on for two years, it was syndicated a lot'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Munsters' approach contrasts with Jersey Jack's deep narrative-driven code (Hobbit, Wizard of Oz, Pirates) and Spooky's accessibility-oriented designs, positioning Stern as bridging complexity spectrum

    medium · Dennis comparing designers: 'Jersey Jack... Dialed In is their best game... They're all really deep Kiefer code sets... and Dialed In is relatively shallow compared to Hobbit'

    • 2:34
    Well, I continued on the weekends to chip away at Hollow Knight, and I've been streaming that. I have not maybe one time played since our last recording any more of the We Happy Few game. So I'm not, I don't have anything new to report on that. That's a survival type game.
    2:54
    And I was streaming Sharky's Shootout on Friday, and the DMD started to go out. So I took a look at that, and my dad came over and we did board tests yesterday, and it looks like it's the high voltage supply from the board. And so once we figured, we had a whole issue with, we were misidentifying what the wires were, because the board looked like where it said pin 7, but it looked like pin 1, if you didn't look at it right. Oh, yeah. So we were testing the wrong wire for like an hour and going back and tracing it, you know, checking the transformer, and that was all okay. So then he took that board home so he could bench test, and usually it's resistors on those. I'd read already on the pin wiki repair guide, and at least one of the resistors is bad. So he's got resistors. So he was – I think he had to order that type because there's some special huge resistor, but they're not like pinball special. They're just different. Yeah, they're just different. Different than whatever is in his assortment of non-pinball resistors. So Sharkey's is going to be down for now, but the DMD is probably fine. It's likely just the voltage. It was behaving like you couldn't see all of it anymore. It was acting a little weird towards the end.
    4:05
    And that was probably when that part or pieces failed because the transistors on that power board could be bad too. Something could have taken out the resistor. We don't. I don't know yet. but the transistor, all that stuff's cheap. You can buy a whole new board for like $60. So you're not going to have to upgrade a color DMD? There is no color DMD for Sharky's Shootout. I know because I asked the guy if he wanted someone to work on a color DMD for Sharky's Shootout when I first got it, and he said, no one has ever asked me for that game, so no.
    4:35
    So he's like, okay, fine. It won't be a project for me then. And work's been a mess this whole week, so we won't go into that. it's been annoying but what we will go into before we go into our pinball segment is as we noted in the last episode we always tend to do podcast statistics right around our first episode of January because our anniversary of podcasting is at the end of January but this allows because we're so close to being on a calendar year cycle this lets me just snapshot for the year because I don't normally go into the podcast analytics with the audience because I think, broadly speaking, they don't care. But if you do care, this is a little bit of insight at this point, as we've always done ever since the first year. So I just look at the analytics from 1-1-2018 to 12-31-2018. So for, like, top show stuff, I always throw out our year-end review because it barely has any plays as of the end of December because he's out, like, two days. Yeah. So, in terms of overall, I think anyone who listened to us throughout the year is aware that we had a lot of guest hosts. It was easily far and away more than we've ever done before. I think we had more guest hosts this year than we had the other years put together. Probably. Probably did. And also, we only had one interview, which is probably the least we've done ever. I don't really like interviews. I know you don't. But as our analytics show, that interview was easily the most popular episode that we had. Yeah. So that was episode 55. That's the Deep Root interview. That was the name of the episode was the Deep Root interview. So I don't think that's very surprising. I don't think it's so much that it was our only interview of the year, but rather I think that was the first audio interview that Deep Root gave to anyone. So there was some hunger for information then because I think at that point there had been a couple of written interviews held at This Week in Pinball. But this was still before we knew all the developers that were going to be working with the company. So there was more of an enigma going on. So that probably fueled that demand.
    6:47
    Our second highest listened to episode was episode 68. That was, you'll love this one, Pinball Drama, The Pinball Machine was the name of the episode. That was a good episode. Well, for those that don't remember it, that was the one where Tony decided to execute a pinball thought experiment and talk about a, well, if we were to take the hobby of pinball and make a pinball machine themed around it, what would it be like? So that was probably the highlight of that episode. That was also an episode where we covered a good chunk of that Godzilla license drama on the pinball side. Oh, yeah. There wasn't really much of note on the video game side from that episode. Our third most popular episode of the year was episode 69, the very next one, which I titled The Meep with a Mouth. Tony doesn't ever know what I title them until I release them. I usually just take elements from whatever the subjects are and then say, all right, that's a title. I don't put a lot of effort into it. Just smash them up. Just smash them together and see what works. So this one is The Meep with a Mouth because we covered the Deadpool livestream, which was the first time Deadpool was shown on the Internet, to my knowledge, of actual gameplay. Yeah. And also, on the video game side, we spent a lot of time talking about the phone game Dr. Meep. Hence, the meep with a mouth. It works. Yeah, well, to me it did. No, no, I still think that one works. That one was pretty solid. So those are the top three episodes.
    8:08
    Now, one of the things I mentioned, I don't even know what episode, that I thought would be fun to do would be to actually look and see, at the end of the year, who was our top guest on the show. Because we did have so many guest episodes. and of course everyone wants to know who's a winner and who's a loser you're a wiener who's a wiener is a great question and the answer was according to listens it was episode 66 with Mrs. Penn was our top listens to episode with guests incidentally all three of the ones we just talked about beforehand were non our top three episodes were non guest episodes so I had to go and then start sorting them by ones with guests so Mrs. Penn was our top one our second most listened to guest was episode 72 that's the one where we had Joe Schober who's now with American Pinball on that was a good one and our third one was episode 70 and that's the one where we had Jason Knapp with Knapp Arcade on also a good one and I thought it was very interesting when I saw that because Mrs. Pin aside and her show is very different from a lot of the other pinball podcasts the guests that are popular the most popular not to say those with lower views were less are low or lessons were less or, you know, unpopular, but these weren't podcasters. Shober and Knapp aren't podcasters. Right. And I can see that. I can see where it could be that the, seeing as people already know the thoughts of a lot of the podcasters, probably are less worried about and less jumpy on the thing. And when you get someone who's not normally on a podcast who you can't find every week somewhere, it draws more interest. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I don't know because I don't listen to all the other pinball podcasts that are out there, but to my knowledge, Nap and Shover don't guest on a lot of shows, so they would have been unique voices to hear, and I think that would be a big driving factor. And Mrs. Pin has her Mrs. Pin personality. It just seems to win people over. So that could explain why her show was popular. Those were all good episodes, though, I think. In terms of putting them together, they were fun to do. So, to me, I liked all of them. Yeah, no, these were all, I mean, there were only a few episodes of the year I can recall that weren't fun to do. Actually, I don't think there were any that weren't fun to do, but there were several that were less fun than others. Right. And, well, so let's briefly talk about what was our worst performing episode. Because, you know, there is a worst. There has to be a best. There has to be a worst. And as I noted before, the year-end review one isn't counted. It would easily be the worst because it only had been out like a day when I had to cut the time off. So I always throw that out.
    10:54
    It was actually episode 53, Sewing Discord, which does not bode well for this episode, Tony, because that was the first episode of the year where we did the podcast analytics. Yeah.
    11:06
    Actually, I looked over the show notes on that, and we basically didn't have anything else to talk about. We had no news of note. but we really just spent the time going over what video games we'd been playing. Actually, what video games I had been playing dominated most of that. So it was very boring, apparently.
    11:25
    Just a few other analytics to mention. So for 2018, our top five listening bases by country were, in order, USA, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and Sweden. That's pretty in line with what I recall from years past. Yeah, I couldn't remember if Sweden was number five or not in 2017. I think those other four are in order, the same four. Sweden may have been. Those are all countries with pretty high per capita pinball populations, so that's not too shocking. Also, obviously, with the exception of Sweden, those are all predominantly English-speaking countries, though I think most Swedes know English as well. So I probably should say they're all predominantly English-speaking. I just don't know enough about Sweden to really be knowledgeable on that.
    12:15
    And then top website sources of listeners looking at those analytics. Google and Facebook were easily the two most dominant by far in terms of people clicking on an outside link to come to us. Obviously, we get a lot who subscribe to our site. That's tracked differently. And we had some spam listener thing. I mentioned this to Tony when it had happened. We've had three incidents where these services, I'm calling them with air quotes, like swarm and hit an episode. Like, I'll get a few dozen listens. It happened three times in the year. Because you see the site listed, and if I click on the site in the analytics, it says, you know, you can spend $10 and buy 100 listens or so. I guess people do that on SoundCloud, like recording artists might, I suppose, to try and say that their tracks are popular. You know, a false read to make it look like they already build success by already having success. Buying listens. I don't really see what that would accomplish in a podcast, but I'm guessing this is how they go out and maybe fish for business. Yeah. This is by hitting you with a bunch of listens and you see a surge. And it would really stand out because a lot of times it's not necessarily the latest episode. So when I see an analytic, I'll see a chart. And I usually just see the latest episodes, but I'll see an other category. And it's really high. It usually means one of two things. Someone new just subscribed and downloaded all the episodes, or something like this happened. So it did happen a few times.
    13:45
    I did find, I glanced back while you were going over the last section in the notes to find the listening countries in 17. And in 17, it was the USA, Australia, Sweden, Canada, Germany. Oh. So Sweden fell, and Germany's off the list completely. Yeah, the UK rose. I wonder if it was our extensive coverage of highways. It could quite possibly be. That won the United Kingdom over. Or perhaps they're aligning more with us because of Brexit. Could be. Or it could be that all of those buying things came from the UK.
    14:19
    That's an interesting point. They actually, I'm trying to remember when I looked at them, I think they actually use like official SoundCloud audience, like people with profiles. So it's the, I don't know where they're all from. I never clicked on them. All I know is that all of a sudden I see a bunch of named people, named registered SoundCloud people in the list. I'm like, this is weird. We very rarely get a lot of SoundCloud registered people listening. It's usually outsiders who click. Yeah, because that's how we get the votes for them. Yeah, because it's podcasts. It's different. Right. I mean, I've got a SoundCloud account, but I'm not logged into it. It does it normally. So when I click on something and I'm listening to it that way, it doesn't track me as my SoundCloud. It just tracks me as an outside click. The only other thing of note in terms of sourcing was Pinsight and This Week in Pinball were also – they weren't like three and four on the list. The list deteriorates really quickly because of how things are tracked. Sometimes it's different threads or different links. Pinsight's like that, whereas Facebook just was Facebook regardless of where the click came from. But Pinsight and Twip were high sources of audience. So that's really all I have in terms of a summary of 2018 from an analytic level for those who are curious behind the curtain about just how episodes perform and those sort of things. And here's the important takeaway from it. Sweden, we love you. Keep pushing hard. You can get your third place back.
    15:44
    Yeah, I don't know. I didn't record the numbers, so I don't know how hard they necessarily have to push, but I don't know. It's better to push hard. Yeah, they probably really need to. Well, starting in Canada, I mean, they have pinball podcasts of their own. I'm not aware of one in Sweden.
    16:00
    And so there are a lot of, generally you think if there are enough people around to make a podcast in the country, there must be some significant demand. And as usual, a lot of the sourcing when I see breakouts come from pinball sites. Right, which makes sense. So that's why. Well, that big thing is like video games. There are so many millions and millions of podcasts that do video games. Yeah, there are a lot, including a number of very professionally done ones, as in the people are paid to do them. They're from journalistic outlets in particular. So it's just a much bigger hobby. I know at this point all the video game podcasts I listen to, I think, except for one are put out by CBS Entertainment and this and that because it's like Giant Bomb and some of the other big, big, hey, this is our full-time job thing. Yeah, I, um, other than yeah, basically other than one, I don't really rely on non-journalists for video game podcasts at this point because I don't want to, so I don't.
    17:07
    Alright, so we're done with that, so we can now go to the pinball segment. There's one major news item to talk about, and that's monsters.
    17:16
    It's real? It's really real? It turned out to be real, Tony. You were right, and it came out in early January.
    17:25
    And it looks like Iron Maiden was in, I think, April. So you think in terms of a full 12 months, they got three cornerstones out, so that was all right. Now, did you have a chance to see the photos of months? I've seen the photos, and I've seen maybe a minute and a half of gameplay. I watched a little bit of the gameplay at CES. I did not watch the Deadflip stream where they were with, like, Dwight Sullivan, the programmer. All the stuff I've seen was from CES. Right. Okay. Me too. So what are your thoughts with, well, let's start with art because that's the only thing anyone could talk about before. So now we know that the premium model is the black and white model. The play field is black and white. And the cabinet art, trans-white or black and white, with some color incorporation. It's not strictly pure black and white. The LE version is colorized, same play field as the premium, but in color. The cabinet art is different and in color. It's more of a coffin. Yeah, it's a very coffin-esque. Yeah. And then the Pro is a color model, but it has a different play field because there's a significant change with the aspect of the lower play field. Right. So, I don't know. Did you like the art packages?
    18:37
    I appreciate the black and white art package. I would go so far as to say that it's probably my favorite of the art packages, just because I think it took a lot of daring to go with a pure, not pure, but to go black and white for the art package. And I thought it looked nice. Other than that, the Ellie is good looking. I mean, it is good looking.
    19:04
    Yeah, I liked the black and white look overall. I thought it integrated really well. I saw it with the light show, so you still see a lot of color thrown around. I also am a big fan, in general, of black and white. So, while I'm not sure if it necessarily was the best business move to make the premium model black and white, I liked it. But I didn't dislike any of them. Right. I didn't either. But do you think it would have been better to have made the LE the black and white? I think it would have been safer. Safer for the company. I think they'd still have sold them out. Yeah. I can see that. And they worry that it's harder to see than it is on a really colorful playfield. So with things like that, they'd rather have the LE, but either they don't want to pay the price on the LE, or they called their distributors and they can't get it already. It was already sold out.
    20:25
    I hadn't thought about the ball motion and the ball disappearing into the background of the playfield as an issue. Yeah, I've never really had that problem, but I guess I can't think of I've played a game that had a whole lot of gray on the play field yeah I mean Rob Zombie was kind of a dark play field but I didn't really find ball tracking particularly difficult at 403 Club which isn't it's not a bright area it's not a bright bar yeah no I can't I've never it's not something that would be a non-factor for me maybe that's the best way to say there are some who absolutely hate the black and white art well That's to be expected. So there's that as well.
    21:11
    Yeah, it was, to me, art was fine. What did you think of a lower play field? That's the big key difference is it's a lower play field with a miniature pinball. I'm not entirely clear if it's the same size as the donkey slash Stewie pinball on Shrek or Family Guy, which are basically the same game. Yeah. where they had an upper play field with a little mini flippers and all that. The lower play field isn't like, it isn't like ACDC's lower play field. It's not, it is a smaller ball, and in that lower play field, it was hard to tell from the screen, but from researching it more later, it's like a pinball machine within the pinball machine. Like, it's got different little shots. It's like got a little vertical up kicker inside of it. It's got, so it's its own little pinball game within the pinball game was the idea that they were executing with that.
    22:08
    I don't know. What do you think? Do you think that a lower play field like that is compelling? So compelling that you'd rather have that than a pro model, which obviously is devoid of a feature? I think I want to reserve judgment until I've actually tried it. Because seeing as it's completely independent from the other play field, it's got its own flipper buttons. and from what I've heard, you can run balls in play on both play fields at the same time. I don't know. It might not be something that I can really enjoy. What did you think of the decision to give it separate flipper buttons to control those flippers? I'm not a fan of it, but I can understand why they did it if they do have it set up so both can be active at the same time. But I don't like a bunch of extra buttons on my pinball machines. I like two buttons. So, like, any game that will have, you know, an extra flipper that's controlled by a third button, I typically just forget about it a lot.
    23:18
    So, and what would be less likely in this case, Dean, is you have to use them. It's one of those things that I'm not sold on it. Okay.
    23:28
    let's see other than that I'm not sure where I want to explore the well let's talk about the software I guess obviously we've not played it yet so we have no hands on experience to talk about it I didn't get to CES this year yeah and I saw kind of what was going on with it at CES I also heard an interview that on the special when lit podcast had they put together a panel with they had John Borg and Dwight Sullivan. I should say, John Borg is the playfield designer. Dwight Sullivan is the head programmer for the game. They had a couple other, Franchi, who did the art, Christopher Franchi was on, and I think they also had the, I think his name's Jerry Thompson, the audio guy who did all the sound package. So the main four people you kind of associate as the leads on their respective fields in the game. So when they were talking with Dwight, he had noted, and Dwight had been on that, he's been on that podcast several times, and before that he had an interview before Munsters was revealed, and he had indicated that his last game that was released from Stern was Star Wars, and that his next game was not going to be as complicated in terms of rules and figuring it out as Star Wars was. So Munsters came out, and when they were talking to him about his approach to code, Munsters does not use modes in what we think of in the modern sense. It's not a mode-driven game where you go like Star Wars goes and you start a mission. Or if I think of Star Trek and you're like, okay, well, now we're going to do Klingon battles. It doesn't have those. I guess my analogy, he didn't use this term, but my analogy would be it seems a lot like Iron Man where you do shots and eventually that will activate something but it's not like you prep something and then you go and choose a new mode or get into a new mode. It's more like do this enough and a multiball happens. Do this enough and maybe a hurry up happens. So it's more like everything is all your things you're working towards are active and you're actively working towards things but you're not going into I need to do Nero because I want this shot and this shot turned on because I can make those shots. Or I need to activate this mode so I can make this shot over and over and over again to build up the bonus. So then I'll go to this mode, which will let me score whatever bonus I built up while making that shot and increasing my score. Yeah, and again, this is where I wish I had seen a little more or more appropriately actually get hands-on with it. But my general feeling is it's like instead of the – in most pinball games now when I'm playing, it's sort of a, we need to get into a new mode. Otherwise, you're not making any points. You've got to get a mode going. Even Iron Maiden, where every shot is advancing towards something, ultimately is still trying to activate. You make progress, and then you activate your mode. Progress, activate mode. This, again, like, you know, Iron Man isn't like that. No. With Iron Man, it's like, well, you can shoot ramps, and you'll start building up your mark values. Or you can do the Iron Monger shot, and eventually you get Monger multiball. Same with Whiplash and Whiplash multiball. and whatever the other one is, Ironhide or whatever he is. I forget his name. War Machine. Is Ironhide the Transformer? Yes, he is. Okay. Sorry. Transformers are not a good pinball machine. So I'm guessing it's sort of like that. So, yeah, instead of, like, you're trying to get your next, you know, in different mode games, like Walking Dead, for example, you're trying to get your drops and then you go into your mode. Other games, you basically just have to make your mode shot, Like Star Trek, you're always ready for a new mode. You just got to turn it on sort of thing. This isn't going that route. It's more like kind of how you described where things are, I don't know if it's the same as things are always active, but it's more like you don't go into a mode to do anything in particular to score points. Here are your choices. They all do something after you make a certain number of shots. So play it and have fun with it. And don't be confused by thinking, oh, well, oh, gosh, I really need to do Tatooine, but should I wait and deploy my TIE fighter multiball while I'm in that mission? You know, it's not like that.
    27:51
    So what do you think of the idea of just stripping away what we don't understand and all this sort of gobbledygook of language of the idea of a simpler code set today?
    28:04
    I don't think it's going to be a problem. You don't think it'll hurt sales? I don't think so. As long as the game is fun. Here's the thing to remember. Almost every game that is out there that is popular are games, or some of the most popular games ever are the old Williams games, and a lot of them didn't have modes.
    28:28
    You played, and you activated something, and you kept playing. It's old school pinball. I think it be fine I think the home use people the homeowner the private collection owners might not be as happy if it doesn have the same kind of depth But I think overall, it's not going to hurt their sales. But most of their sales are to the home market at this stage, according to Stern. I'm sure it is, but I'm saying it's the people who are vocal about it. And this is a complete guess. I think the people who are the most vocal about something having to be super deep are also more in the minority.
    29:10
    I think it's more important. I think if a game is fun enough, you will just keep playing it, even if it doesn't have all sorts of stuff to move to.
    29:22
    Yes, I think for most people, I agree with you on that. I think that it's really a question of a fun factor, not a depth factor. Right. but obviously some people might define their fun only as being depth-oriented. But there are people in the other camp who have been complaining that games are too complicated now. They don't like that it feels like you have to put 50 plays on a game just to understand the scoring strategy to it, and this could be seen as approachable in that regard. We saw some of that with Total Nuclear Annihilation. That is a game with a very straightforward code set. it's very easy to understand what you're supposed to do. People say it's fun because it's so hard, not that it's deep, because it's not deep. It's the same thing nine times over. But people like it because it's fast, and they like the music, and they like the shots. Right. There may be some others who want their Star Wars code, or more apropos, I suppose, the Jersey Jack buyers, where other than Dialed In, Dialed In was a relatively shallow game compared to Hobbit, Wizard of Oz, and Pirates. They're all really deep Kiefer code sets. They're all journey pins. And Dialed In is their best game. It's not their best seller. No, but it is their best game. But we need to worry about the survival of the companies if we want them to make more pins. We personally don't need to worry about it. I'm not in the market for those. No, that's true. But then again, we're not talking about Jersey Jack who puts out a game every now and then or Spooky, who puts out a game when they feel like it. We're talking about Stern, who puts out two to three solid games a year.
    31:09
    Stern is the one who can do stuff like this. They can take these risks because at the end of the day, if it doesn't work out, if this isn't a huge selling machine and there's not enough code there, there's not enough depth, to the game, okay. It didn't destroy them. Yeah. I don't think this is a huge gamble for Stern. I still think the biggest question mark was actually running with this particular theme. I understand it in the sense that I've seen a lot of people say, even though the show was only on for two years, it was syndicated a lot, so there are a lot of people who grew up in the 70s who saw it because it was available on TV. I remember seeing it in the 80s. I mean, I've seen it, but I have no strong recollection of watching it regularly. I do. But even then, I didn't care that much. It was on before something else I watched. So, but I think there's room in the – I think I may have said this on one of the This Week in Pinball podcasts a while ago. I think that there's room in the market for code styles like Iron Man. You just don't want every game to be one. Right. So I personally like the idea of this code type because I have to admit I have been feeling a little overwhelmed with things like Star Wars where I'm not really sure am I choosing the right character? Am I choosing the right mission afterwards? And then the recommendation I hear from the better players in the area changes when the code update hits. So I feel like I never really understand completely. Now, if I had the game home, or if I was able to play on location more, that might not be a big deal. But Iron Man was always really approachable to me, because I understand what I needed to do. It's an enjoyable game.
    32:59
    What do you think of the layout of Munsters? I want to shoot it. Because I don't think it looks bad, but I haven't watched enough and I haven't shot it myself. So I just don't know. I think it looks like it shoots great.
    33:17
    It's, I don't, when I see it, I do think cookie cutters Stern. It's back to their standard, let's do a fan layout. All the shots are in the back, nice and safe away, nice feeds to the flippers. That's been their bread and butter for a long time. I think it's their bread and butter for a reason. I think people like to shoot fan layouts, and so that sells. And it doesn't bother me because the last two games have not been fan layouts. Deadpool is not a fan layout. Not at all. I like it. And Iron Maiden is not a fan layout. You could argue that the premium model of Monsters is not a fan layout because of the lower playfield. However, on the top, the main playfield is a fan layout playfield. And that's Borg. I mean, it very much looks like what you would expect out of Borg. The shots are in different places. I can't say I see it and I go, oh, that's Metallica. You know, he's moved the best way off to the side. He's not in the center like Sparky is. Of course, two ramps and two flippers. Like, all the fan layouts have to do that. So it is what it is. It looks like I think the ball would play pretty well on it. I think it would be a lot of fun to shoot. But I don't think, obviously, you've got, again, sort of like depth versus shallow. You've got some people who want that flow of the fan layout. I mean, you've got other people who, be they stop-and-go style players or flow players, want layouts that are more atypical at this point. But given that Stern has just done two of them, I'm not at all surprised that the third is a fan. No, that's not a surprise. I think that it will make it very approachable to people. Do you think that Monsters, when it's all said and done, sells better, worse, or the same as Deadpool?
    35:10
    Worse. But not by a lot. Okay. I agree with you. Why do you think it sells worse? Because Deadpool took a lot of chances. Deadpool is a more modern, more well-known modern license, which increases the interest. And it took a lot more chances, and I think it had a lot of stuff in it that was more interesting to the pinball person in the know. Where I think monsters being a license that is less rabid in its fan base, as it were, and definitely much older in its fan base. And being, like you said, a much more standard Stern-type game, I don't think it's going to sell as much.
    35:59
    As I noted, I agree with you. I don't think it will sell as well. Having seen it now, I think it will do better than I initially thought when I was only making a prediction off of theme. The issue with theme for me is that even though most of the market at this point is home collectors.
    36:20
    Deadpool is a better location theme. So operators who cannot or do not go and buy every single new stern that comes out will probably feel that Deadpool is a better investment for them than buying Munsters. And I would agree with that. I mean, if a kid walks in, they're going to know Deadpool. They're not going to know Munsters. And if an adult walks in, they'll know both at best. but so given that there's that factor I think that the layout will be a lot to people who are big time into pinball playing so lots of collectors who like to play a lot the Munsters layout may be more attractive because it looks like from what I saw with the CES shooting it seems to shoot a lot smoother a lot of people will favor that Deadpool seemed to be very dependent on precise setup otherwise if you get too much of a clunk factor on that sword ramp people really hate shooting that game. Plus, the right orbit on Deadpool doesn't feel like a great shot when it falls into the shooter lane. I still don't like it when it does that, even though it's meant to. It doesn't feel great to me. But I have a lot of fun playing Deadpool, and I probably would have a lot of fun playing Munsters. The other thing, though, that makes me think that Munster sales will be lower is when I look at Deadpool Pro and Deadpool Premium, I don't feel like I'm giving up very much if I were to go with a Pro. If you look at Munsters Premium, The lack of the lower playfield when you turn your head to see the pro model makes you have to ask yourself, do I want to spend $2,000 more to get the lower playfield? Is it fun enough or not?
    37:58
    It looked like a cool feature. So for me, it's like I really want to play. I'm assuming we're going to get a Munsters at the 403 Club because we seem to always get all the new mainline sterns. I don't know if it's a pro or a premium. I'm hoping it's a premium because I want to play the lower playfield. But I don't know if I was to put a game in my home, do I want to pay another two grand for the lower play field? Is it $2,000? Here's the thing that always factors in for me. What could I buy in pinball for $2,000 instead of that lower play field? That's a sharky shootout right there. I mean, it's a pin. I can buy a pin. Maybe not a lot of DMD pins. I could buy a lot of alphanumeric pins. High speed with money in my pocket. Pinball with money in my pocket. That's the factor that I, as a collector, always run my analysis through. And I think other people will as well, even new in box people. And the thing that you have to remember, and I know you remember it, but not everyone I co-host with does, is that not everyone has infinite amounts of money to spend on any game that they want. There's a big jump between that pro and that premium price. So even setting aside the art and the questions on that, there are people who are just at best pro buyers. and if they can't have the lower play field, they might just pass on this and wait for Jaws. You mean everybody can't order an LE just every day of the week with no problem? It's just not for everyone. We're not all made of gold bars. We're not all Scrooge McDucks. So it's just what it is. So I think the game will do well for them. I think it's not going to be a dud. Looking at how well it shot, I think, and passing as the team is, and I like the Iron Man-style code on it, I think that it will do just fine for Stern. But I think when it's, let's say, 24, well, let's not go that far out, 12 months from now, I think when you run the numbers, I think Deadpool will have higher total sales across their pro-LE premium combined versus Munsters combining those same groups. And I think you're right. But I don't think Munsters will be bad. It's not going to, I don't think it's going to bomb. It's not going to be a flop. It looks way too fun to shoot for it to bomb. Yeah, it's not going to be a flop. So that's really all I have for pinball news of major news note. I thought we might spend a little bit of time to talk about the Twippies. Twippies! Because for those that don't know, this weekend pinball has their voting going on for their annual pinball awards. We'll have a link in the show notes. And I thought, well, we should go ahead and just go through those categories and talk about what we voted for and what we think will win. I just thought that'd be something to do because I didn't want to talk about Munsters the whole time. Yeah, no. to our video game. It's a good idea. So, let's go ahead and let's get it going here. I have my little ballot loaded up. So do I. All right, excellent. So, the first set of stuff is going to be, when you go and vote, is a drop-down choice of games. Now, some of the games are only available in a few of the categories because there are remakes like Monster Bags remake or things like that. But, so, caveat, caveat, caveat. Best theme based on theme only. What do you think is the best theme of 2018. Deadpool. I agree. What do you think will win? That stupid pirate game. Pirates of the Caribbean? Yeah. You think it'll win on theme and theme alone? I think so. Oh gosh, no, no. I can't buy it. I think Deadpool will win. I think there's too many fanboys who will go after it because it's the game that they love the most. Yeah, but wouldn't they have the honor to say, well, that's the best theme integration? No. No, no, I think they'll vote for both.
    41:39
    Guys, don't do that. Don't be like that. I mean, because I can see arguments for some of it, but I mean, I think that's probably the worst theme of the year. So I wouldn't be surprised to see it winning. Okay.
    41:53
    Best displays, animations, and display. What do you... I ended up going with Deadpool again. I was torn, though. I really thought about going with Iron Maiden. Okay, I can see that. I went with Deadpool as well. Yeah, for me, it was the retro stuff on Deadpool. The 16-bit is what won me over. That was the exact same thing with me. And especially when you have the 16-bit, and then there's times when the high-res Deadpool stuff, stuff like that, that kind of fun little stuff, that's what pushed it over the top for me. What do you think will win this? I think Deadpool.
    42:31
    I think you're right, too. I know more people are bothered by Iron Maiden. some of the, they don't like some of the animation. To them it looks cheap because it really, you're trying to everyone, well, I'll say Stern in particular, seems to be struggling with knowing exactly how to use their display, the high-res display. And so I thought the 16-bit was a great idea and I think it'll resonate. Best light show, what'd you pick? I'm going to put a caveat on this. Some of them I did not, I haven't seen the light shows on some of them. Sure. But what'd you pick?
    43:03
    I went with Deadpool. Okay. I gave Iron Maiden my vote here. What do you think will win this light show? Do you have a thought? No, I don't because I haven't seen all the light shows. I think Pirates will. I think it will win this one. I was torn because I was torn between Deadpool and Iron Maiden, but I hadn't played enough of the other. I hadn't played Pirates. I haven't played Pirates since the prototype, so I wasn't willing to take the guess on it. I could easily see it winning it. I watched a couple streams with it. The Buffalo Pinball guys have streamed Pirates. Yeah. I was able to see some of the light show there. It's impressive. I think a lot of people it will resonate with. Best toys and gimmicks. What's your pick?
    43:45
    I'm with Deadpool. Okay. I gave this one to Pirates. Even though I'm not a huge toy person, the upper play field that fires into the ship looks cool at least. So I give it props for that. And I liked the reason I went with it, I liked the sword lock and the bobblehead, the little dead pool. Little dead pool. Little dead pool bobblehead and all that stuff. And I remember when all the stuff was coming out, that that was the one that got everyone, oh, this game's so dumb, look at that. And it's fun. It's a cool little thing, and I think it works. Now, who I think will win? I think pirates will win. Okay. And I do. I think that as well. And actually, back on the last one, as I noted, I thought Pirates would win Beth's light show. I have to say, though, and I haven't seen this, but I've heard a lot of people say that the new light show on the fancy model of the Monster Bash remake is very impressive. See, I haven't seen it. And I haven't either. But it could win. It could win overall. I don't know. I don't know how many people have seen it is the thing. All right. Beth's theme integration.
    44:53
    What game did you think actually integrated its theme into the game itself the best? I once again went with Deadpool you're going to hear a lot of repeats but the whole game room theme on the DMD he's playing pinball on the thing and the way everything I just liked it all the way it all worked together the way it matched yeah I went with Deadpool as well what do you think wins? I think Deadpool you think Deadpool will win this one? I think so even though best scene will be won by pirates I think Deadpool actually yeah I think so too I think Deadpool and theme integration Best music and sound effects. Now, that's not call-outs. This is music and sound effects. Now, this one, I initially was going to go with Iron Maiden. Mm-hmm. But when I got to thinking about the sound effects, I liked the retro sound effects in Deadpool. So I shifted from Iron Maiden to Deadpool. Okay. I like the retro sound effects in Deadpool, but I went ahead and thought that the basic sound effects when you're shooting the game, I liked Iron Maiden's too, and I'm not as enamored with the classic sounds as some people are, so I went ahead and I voted for Iron Maiden on this one. What do you think wins Best Callouts? Iron Maiden. I agree. I think it'll win. Best Callouts? I'm a broken record. I went with Deadpool. I almost did because I played video games or seen the video game footage with North voicing Deadpool so to me he is Deadpool right and that's the reason I did I actually voted Iron Maiden on this because I really like the male demon voice call out voice it's good and again this is basically me going through this was basically me sitting down here I could have just pulled out a coin that said Iron Maiden on one side and Deadpool on the other side and flipped it and probably come out happy because most of these were an argument between the two of them for me. What do you think wins best call-outs? Iron Maiden. I think so as well. I think there are a lot of people that are mad that Ryan Reynolds didn't voice Deadpool. Exactly. And I think that'll pull it down. And I've not heard anyone complain about the call-outs in Iron Maiden. No. That's rules. What did you think of that? I went with Iron Maiden. I went with Deadpool on this. Really? Even though the code's not done. I do not enjoy the Iron Maiden rules very much. I do not like this shoot any shot in the game to progress anything. I know it eventually starts making you dial in on the shots more, but it's a woodchopper, and I just don't like woodchopping games very much. I have the same problem with Metallica. Some people love it. It's just not my preferred style. What do you think wins best rules?
    47:37
    Pirates. I think it could. Because of the depth. Exactly. And there's so many people who worship depth. I know. There are so many depth queens out there that just have to have it. I think Iron Maiden will win it, but I think Pirates will be close. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. Best play of the field, gameplay and layout. It's Iron Maiden. I agree. I think the floor flipper and how it shoots, it's not a fan layout, but it's really flowy and fun. It's fun. And it's got a lot of fun shots on it. And as I noted, Deadpool has a lot of, got a couple of clunk seconds. It does. Trigger a lot and trigger me. So, so. Yeah. You see, this was, I think this was the one where I wasn't even close. When I saw this, Iron Maiden was instantly on top of it. What do you think wins best play field gameplay?
    48:28
    I think Iron Maiden. I think so too. Best artwork. What do you think? Alice Cooper. Okay. I could definitely see it's got a very good. Maybe Wynn's with so much of the artwork game. They do so good with the artwork. I mean, the games might be terrible. Rob Zombie was horrible, but the cabinet art and the back glass art and all that was great.
    48:51
    I went ahead and went Deadpool on this. I liked how they made it look like a comic book. That is nice. And that's different than they've done with any of their other comic themes before. I just thought it looked really good. I like Jeremy Packer's package they put together on that. What do you think Wynn's best artwork? Because there are a lot of really good packages this year. There are. I mean, Pirates looks pretty good.
    49:14
    See, and that's the thing. I think Alice Cooper personally, which is why I put it, but I think if people are going to really lock in, you're probably going to see Pirates. Okay. My guess will be that Iron Maiden will win artwork. So I think it'll be the other Jeremy Packer artwork. Yeah. See, my thing with it is I just, I don't mind Iron Maiden's artwork overall, and part of it might just be that I'm not the hugest Iron Maiden person. I much prefer Alice Cooper, and I think the artwork, especially the cabinet and back glass art, once again, on Alice Cooper, is so much better. Yeah, I, it looks, I mean, I can't, here's the thing. If I look at how, what the quality of the art looks like, I think you end up thinking that Pirates, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Primus, Deadpool, and Beatles are all eligible to do very well. They're all very well drawn. Maybe not Beatles. Beatles is pretty well drawn. It is well drawn. I don't think it'll win. No. I think the color scheme that Franchi went with is going to put people off of it, and it's just got a little too many Beatleheads around for a lot of people. Though after having finally got a chance to play Beatles, I enjoyed the crud out of that game. The quality of what he did for it is very, very good. He's actually, from a stylistic standpoint, Christopher Franchi's my favorite. Favorite in terms of his approach. He does more of a realism style, and I like that. But anyway, so I'm going to say I think Iron Maiden wins it, but we'll see. Okay, so now we're in the parts where people just start filling in things. Nope. You forgot Game of the Year. Oh, no, no. I'm skipping that. Game of the Year. Okay. Tony, what's your game of the year? I ended up doing Deadpool because I gave it top place and more often. It could have been a flip. Deadpool or Iron Maiden for me. I voted Iron Maiden. I actually have more fun playing Deadpool. However, I think what Iron Maiden does on a variety of levels makes it worthy of game of the year. A pro that has four flippers. We got the prop-up bar. I mean, so some of this is like things under the hood. Right. It's like it didn't. It looked like, okay, we're going to compete. We're going to put stuff out. It was so different of a layout. Obviously, Deadpool is a pretty different layout as well, but Iron Maiden came out first, and you had your playfield designer being so integral in terms of coming up with his own rules. Overall, I just think it fired on a lot of cylinders, and it was a huge breath of fresh air, so I'm voting for that. Who do you think wins? Iron Maiden. I agree. I think that the people broadly will vote for it. I like to say, for me, that was where I was leaning. But when I was looking at where I'd filled in, it's like, I filled in Deadpool over Iron Maiden on almost everything. So it doesn't seem right to do that and then say Iron Maiden's the better pick. Yeah, I could see that. For me, I just said, I can do it because I'm going to look past more than just my own personal favorite.
    52:14
    Because there are things I don't like about Deadpool as well. Yeah. Overall, there's a lot about it that I think... I'm glad it's on location. I really like playing it. Mm-hmm. All right. So now we're in the write-ins. Favorite pinball Twitch streamer? Eclectic Gamers Podcast. I forgot that we Twitch stream, Tony. You're the one who Twitch streams pinball. I do, but only a couple times a week. I voted Deadflip.
    52:40
    Who do you think will win? Do you think EGP will win? No. Oh. I think Deadflip will win. Okay. Maybe Buffalo, but I think it'll be Deadflip. Yeah, I think Deathlip will win as well. He's expanded his audience so much. But there's the question of how many of those people will vote in the Twitter. Right.
    52:56
    Favorite pinball podcast. What'd you pick? What do you think I picked? I think you probably picked the Riptide Pinball Podcast. This Week in Pinball was accurate to me. No. I had to vote for that. That podcast, come on. Yes. I had to vote for it. I almost voted head-to-head, actually, because they've worked so hard. And I'd say, if you don't know what to vote for, I would encourage you to consider voting for head-to-head if you listen to them, because they put so much effort into their interviews. However, I thought, I know how much work we put in to do our own show. We deserve at least one vote. Right. By George, I'll be that vote. And with pure honesty, if I wasn't voting for us, I would have voted for head-to-head. Yeah. Who do you think will win? I think so, too. They deserve it. Yeah. In terms of just the sheer amount of effort to do all those interviews. Especially considering so many of the interviews were done at, you know, a 12-plus hour time difference. And a lot of them are with people you don't hear from all the time. I like how when we had guests that aren't on all the time, people liked those episodes. The other thing, they interviewed some people that have not given interviews in a very long time. So, yeah, it was a good year for podcasts. It was. Favorite pinball YouTube channel?
    54:21
    The Eclectic? No, actually, I did not vote for it. I was trying to think. I think I've exported, like, two videos, though. Right.
    54:28
    I think it's three because... But they're all just sort of rips from Twitch. Right. I guess I did that one Goofy Rules video that I think someone asked me if I was on crack after they saw that. Because they didn't know what I was ripping off of. Right. Yeah. I mean, because our channel just riffs from Twitch. We don't really have a YouTube channel. We just, we provide, we have a, okay, we have a YouTube channel, but it's really just like an archive of things like good play, walkthroughs on how we've done particular games. Right. In fact, we probably have more video game stuff on it than we do pinball. Yeah, because I put all the battle plans on it. I've done a few other than early on because I didn't think. People don't want to go and re-watch. You can go to Twitch while it's still active and re-watch my live stream. I'll do things like if I have a high score run, I'll extract. I'll make a highlight and I'll extract that so people can see. Oh, look, here's how you're not supposed to play hoops yet somehow it gets you a good score. Things like that. Yeah. I actually voted straight down the middle. So did I. Because it's really the only YouTube show I watch with any regularity. Same here. And I skip some of those episodes, too. Well, it's the only pinball-related YouTube show I watch. Right, right. Yeah, same qualifier for me. I don't watch their unboxing videos and stuff because I think unboxings are boring just flat out. I don't watch them, period. They might do a good job on them. I don't know. I don't care to watch. I enjoyed watching Speedrun. I'm not a little kid watching Little Toys Be Unwrapped. And I enjoyed watching Zach getting drunk. And I've heard about that one. I haven't seen it. But I do like the reviews, so I watch those. and I like the this or that those are fun yeah you just listen to the this and that and then just go with basically the opposite of whatever is said and you'll actually have the right choices yeah that sounds about right yeah sounds interesting who do you think will win that I think thanks for the element I think so too I think they won last year so not that that means anything it doesn't mean that it's not a knighthood they don't get to have it forever but the only other channel that comes to my mind that might be able to compete would be the Papa channel with Bowen's tutorials, which, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it just seems like they're less consistent. They probably are really consistent at this point. Papa and I used to watch on Twitch, and then at some point they made the move to doing a lot on YouTube, and I didn't make the move with them. So I don't know what the deal is exactly with that. Favorite pinball mod of 2018? Left it blank. I did too. I think Penn Stadium will win, but I left it blank. I think so. I don't have enough experience with mods. I don't have a machine to mod. Yeah. No, I didn't have... I can't have any... I don't have anything that I think is a favorite, so I'm not making it up. Yeah. Favorite homebrew? Pinball Drama, the pinball machine. No, I left it blank. Okay. Because I haven't actually started... I left it blank also. Any thought on when we'll win?
    57:16
    I have no idea I seen like a dozen home pictures and this and that of like a dozen homebrews Yeah and this doesn I mean this could be any one It doesn necessarily have to be this year I go ahead and throw out a guess I think Nightmare Before Christmas will win it. Okay. Just because I've heard that one mentioned a lot. Yeah, that's perfectly valid. Rookie of the Year. I left it blank. I did not. I put Keith Elwynn in. I think he'll get it for his Iron Maiden work. Steve, I thought about it, but I have a hard time putting him down as a rookie. well he's a rookie so deal with it because he was the main one who came to mind and the more I thought about it I was like really? he never worked in the industry before he had a homebrew game that he had been hammering on but and he'd seen production I guess it's just one of those things that it feels like it's like how do you call someone a rookie who's considered you know one of the biggest I don't know do you have a thought on who might win the category No He would make the most sense If people can get over And actually see him I think this is going to be between two people I think they're going to go with either Keith Bellwin Or they're going to go with Eric Meunier For Designing Pirates I think those are the two Scott Denise was last year so I don't think people are going to pick him I don't think they're going to win an artist or a coder Or a player I think that's what's going to come down is his designer And I think Keith will get it Because he's sold more games Yeah. So more people know it. Favorite pinball website? I want to have fun with bonus. Oh, I actually saw on Facebook today that Steve Bowden, who runs that, is considering changing the name. Really? Yeah. Do you think he should change the name? I like the name. I like the name, too. All right, Steve, that's our opinion on it. So make whatever decision you feel. What's he considering changing the name to? Oh, some things that are a little more clearly pinball. I don't remember. Oh, I can see that. But I like the name. Yeah, I did, too. Now, this was tough for me. Was it? It was. Because I do read This Week in Pinball every week. Okay. Here's the problem that I ran into. I didn't consider This Week in Pinball because this is the Twippy Awards. That's why I didn't. I disqualified it in my brain. That's why I removed it. After I submitted it, I thought, you know, I didn't actually see that that was a rule. That was pretty presumptuous of me. See, because they were my first thought, and I'm like, well, but it's their awards. I don't – Yeah, and that was the issue I ran into. So because of that, I actually voted for Pinball News because I actually go to Pinball News. The problem that I have – it's a problem of – it's a drought. They don't put out articles every day. A lot of times there's not an article every week, but usually I really like what ends up at Pinball News. Right. It's pretty in-depth, and it was – So why it jumped out to me is I really like the coverage that Martin, who runs Pinball News, did when Highway was collapsing. It was really detailed. He got a hold of the insolvency documents and put them out there and analyzed them and explained it all. It was really thorough, and he covers the shows really thoroughly. And I actually had to rely on that to write my Atari article, which actually ran at Pinball News. So that's just the one that came to my mind. What do you think will win? I don't know. I think Pinside will. well I thought there was another section for forum I guess there wasn't no we talked about that and used to just do something like that so that's the only one see I don't like pin size I will go there but I don't I have fun with bonus in my RSS feed so I get it every time it updates I get it favorite pinball publication Tony this could have been easy Well, you would never screw up. Oh, I screw up all the time. You put so much thought into all of these. I put a lot of thought into this one, too. And all the thought I put into this one was, I need to get a hold of Dennis to see which article he's going to push for as his main article. And then I clicked the submit after I was done. Yeah, you were done. While still leaving it blank. Actually, none of those were any good. But that's not true. I like several of them. Apparently not enough to write them down. No, I didn't because I was going to check with you. and then I finished them. I'm like, oh, submit. I'm done. Oh, well. I wasn't going to send you a message when I was filling this out at like 5.30 in the morning. You could have. You just wouldn't have heard an answer right away. Oh, well. Yeah, I went ahead. Yeah, I voted for one of mine. And I went with A Beginner's Guide to Manufacturers, which, again, I thought about because that was run at TWIP. And it's like, well, this week in pinball, this is an award. Obviously, the award goes to the particular article, not to the site. So I think that's probably all right.
    62:03
    Why I went with it, it was actually, I don't know. I wrote like eight, including the ones I co-wrote. I think I had about eight articles in 2018.
    62:13
    I think it was the most read, the main reason I picked it. I don't know because I don't know Vienna. I don't see the numbers on the – I can see how many people have looked at Pinball News. I don't know on This Week in Pinball. Right. But I got a lot of really good feedback on it. And I also really liked working on that one because it required me to use a bunch of divergent sources to actually put it all together. And so that was a good challenge with that. And even though it's written up in a guide format, I think you can actually read it straight through, which I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull that off. But when I got done and I proofed it, I thought, actually, that read pretty well. Yeah. So that's why I showed it. I think Pinball Magazine is my guess as to what will win. That would be my guess. Number five, I guess, for people who know. The new one. I think that will win. I'm not done with it. It's hard for an article to go up against a magazine or a book. There was only one notable pinball book that came out this year, and it wasn't very good. Right. So I don't think a book will win. Favorite pinball location? I went with the 403 Club. I did, too. It's got the most games, and they're in good condition in our area. So it was a pretty easy pick for me. Yep. What do you think will win? Do you think it will be the 403 Club? No. Oh. I think it'll either be a location in New York or like Gold Watch or something like that. I could see it maybe be someplace in Seattle or Portland, but they have so many locations. It's really going to compete. Right. I'll actually say that, what is it, level 357 arcade. Could be. Out of, is that the Chicago area? I don't know. But Crystal is a tech there, has really been pushing it on social media. And hey, if you don't know what to put down, you might as well put down what someone suggests. So that's my guess there. Favorite pinball convention? Texas. I put that as well. What do you think wins? Texas. I agree. This is a new expo. It is. It's a new expo.
    64:03
    But I wouldn't be shocked if Expo wins or Replay FX for hosting Pinnberg. Favorite pinball tournament or competition? KC GameCon Pinball Championship. Okay. I didn't play in that, so I actually left it. I didn't play in it either, but I still voted for it. What do you think wins? I think if Pembroke doesn't win, I might have a stroke.
    64:28
    Yes, I would be shocked if Pembroke doesn't win. That's if I'm still sober by that point, because it is a cash bar.
    64:34
    And on the other hand, it's a cash bar. It's a cash bar. And unlike you, I don't have 47 people already planning on buying me drinks. Maybe you do. Maybe they just didn't say it.
    64:48
    Maybe. Look, Pembroke's full of alcoholics. they'll probably just start buying everyone drinks. They just say those things because I made fun of their favorite beverages. It was a classic ploy. That's how I've always survived on not having to spend any money. Always works. I always fall for it.
    65:06
    So before we move into video games, which we do have a number of items to cover in that category, I am ready to play you a game of 20 questions. We held off last time while we were Twitch streaming. but I am all set to go so you can ask your first question whenever you are prepared which means whenever I get my little thing out okay is it an EM? no solid state? as in, let me rephrase pre-DMD solid state no is it from the 80s? no is it from the 90s? no does it have an LCB? no Okay.
    65:51
    Wanted to make sure I wasn't going to end up staying too far back there. Yep. So, is it a stern? Yes. By the way, that was question six. Is it Sharky's Chewbacca? No. Bold.
    66:09
    Bold guess. Now, fully compliant with everything you asked. Yeah. Is it movie licensed? Yes. No. I'm sorry. No, it is not a movie license. I went crazy.
    66:23
    Is it Walking Dead? No. I thought maybe since you went crazy. Right, right. Because it's a TV license. Yeah, I can see that. But no, it's not Walking Dead. Is it WWE? No. That's question 10. Is it Deadpool? No. Okay. How could it be Deadpool? I already said it's not an LCD. Oh, crap. I got locked on the movie license thing. I know. I told you that was a good call. Good call. I'll tell you why I messed it up after we're done. Yeah. Yeah, I was hooked on the movie license. You're fine. You can keep going down that route. Perhaps you'd like to say I am Maiden as well. No. Okay.
    67:00
    Is it a music pen? No. I've only gotten like two guesses. That's a movie pen. No, it's not a movie pen. Oh, yeah. I understand it's not a movie pen. Unfortunately, everything coming to my head is a movie pin right now. Okay. I'm like, no, no, no, I didn't. I'm just, oh. No, no, no, I know that. That's why, no, that's why. Okay. It's just everything that keeps popping into my head. It's like, oh, wait, no, that's a movie pin. It's either a movie pin or a music pin. The others are both no's. So I'm like, uh, is it from 2015 and newer? Yes. I'm going to end up kicking myself when I find out what this is. It's a Game of Thrones. Yes. Question 14 Okay I'm sitting here and it's like That's a movie pin, that's a movie pin, that's a music pin That's a movie pin, that's a music pin No, that's not a movie That's one I should have gone to immediately after Walking Dead The issue was I'm looking at the theme And it's medieval And I'm just staring at it And of course it's the show So that didn't matter So it's just like It's like a movie, it's on HBO Exactly. And that was why when they were like, oh, it's a Stern and it's that new, it's going to either be a movie pin or a music pin or there's going to be like three choices. I was specifically using the premium. Just FYI. I don't ever make you pick the type. So that was a 2016 pin. I note that because the Pro is a 2015 pin, so they were both in your range, but in terms of just having to pick one particular game, that made me uncomfortable. I didn't realize they had two different years of actual manufacture. Yeah, I didn't either. Probably would have gone differently, but yes. And then everything else, obviously, was clearly within everything else you had asked. That worked out. There you go. So you got it. You got it before... You got it even... I got it before I got the thing. That's good. I would have had it like five things earlier if I said it immediately after Walking Dead like I should have. But when I thought non-movie pins, Walking Dead and WWE were the first thing that came to mind. So, well, are you ready for your turn? Okay, let me get situated here. Is it an EM?
    69:24
    No. Is it a DMD? No. Is it alphanumeric? Yes. Is it a WMS game? So, Bally Williams. No. Is it Gottlieb? No. Five. Is it Data East? No. You know, I really want to thank IPDD for making this so easy to do this on the questioner side. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It makes life very, very convenient.
    69:55
    Is it from 1988 to 1991? No. Is it from 1984 to 1987? No. But it's alphanumeric. Let's say we have different definitions. What's your definition of alphanumeric? That the display can display letters and numbers versus numeric. Actually, that's a no because I'm not – I don't know.
    70:19
    I think it's numbers only now that I think about it. That would be – that's a mistake on my side. Maybe no. Okay. Let me revise my thinking a little bit then.
    70:30
    Because I think it is numeric only. It is numeric only. Okay. So maybe no. That is a no. Is it a stern? Yes. Electronics. Okay.
    70:41
    Is it Sea Witch? It is not. That was 10. Is it Meteor? It is not. Stargazer. Yeah. That's it. Okay. And you would probably have that a lot earlier, but I screwed up that, your yes, no, right there at the beginning. That was 12.
    71:00
    Yeah, because that was, it is numeric. When I didn't get it through the mid-80s, at that point, I thought, I don't think I can go back any earlier for an alpha display. Right. And that was the problem is I misunderstood you, so I messed you up. Well, it can be tricky sometimes, especially when one works against the Decepticon.
    71:21
    Because I'm sitting here looking at astrology. It says astrology. They both start with an A. That's true. Hey, that's good. That's almost as good as mine. No, HBO. It was thinking, oh, it's a medieval thing, medieval thing, movie thing. No, no, no. No, it's just a caribou TV show. Okay, so video games.
    71:41
    Awesome Games Done Quick? Awesome Games Done Quick. That just wrapped up yesterday. It did. What is that? Was it yesterday? Technically, it was after midnight. So technically, it was this morning. No, it was before. Now, the finale where they just all, maybe that was still past midnight. Yeah. Maybe the past midnight Eastern. Right, which is where they were. It was past midnight our time. Okay. Because I watched the finale. When the finale was done, I shut it off and went straight to bed. and that was like 12-15. But, Awesome Games Done Quick. I know we've talked about them in the past, but as a refresher,
    72:16
    Awesome Games Done Quick is a for-charity video game speedrunning event. I was going to say competition, but it's not really a competition. Some of them are. But basically what it is is for, in this case of Awesome Games Done Quick 2019, and as long as I can remember, It's a week-long, 24-hour-a-day stream of speed runners running games and collecting money for charity. Yeah. So, and this year, it was the Prevent. It's pretty much, it's been Prevent Cancer Foundation for a while. It's pretty much, yeah. Awesome Games Done Quick does the Prevent Cancer, and I was afraid it was the Society Foundation. It's the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Probably a foundation. They give grants, so that would fit. And then in the summer, they have Summer Games Done Quick, and that's Doctors Without Borders. Right. And Games Done Quick is basically those charities choose to, and I've seen others do usually non-week-long things with them, but the Games Done Quick, basically you hire them as a charity to do a speed-running event to raise funding. Right. And all the funding that gets raised goes to the charity. They, I'm sure, get paid. Games That Go Get gets paid something to obviously run the fundraiser. But all the money that is directly donated. They have to to get the hotel and all that stuff. And all that. They, yeah, I think they get the money from the attendees who want to attend live. And they're probably paid something by the charity. But every dollar that they raise through the raising, the donations, the bits, the subscriptions, 100% goes to whatever charity contracted them. Right. they've been doing it for a number of years now and they set some pretty impressive fundraising amounts through that very impressive on the weekly ones because like just case in point I've got the final donation totals for this year's Awesome Games Done Quick was $2,397,492.51 it's huge yeah It's huge. So that's, and I don't think that's their biggest one. I think it's still behind 2017. Okay. But I'm not positive of that. They, well. It was close. Yeah.
    74:40
    Summer Games Done Quick usually lags behind Awesome Games Done Quick, but Awesome Games Done Quick has certain levels that they hit in the past that maybe, well, I mean, it's hard to raise this much. Right. So they used to not get over 2 million when I first started watching them. Yeah. Because I know while I was watching, they bypassed 2018. Okay. And the next, in 2017, it was a little higher, but I think they might have passed it also. I don't remember for sure. And they don't have the notes up there on any of the pages I'm looking at right now. But it was a very, obviously, it was a very high amount, a big haul. Mm-hmm. And it's fun if you, even if you're not into some of these games, just seeing some of the stuff, as long as you have basic video game knowledge, is fun to watch. I watch a lot of video games that I know nothing about. But to me, the big fun is watching video games that you know and watching how people use every tip, trick, little thing to shave games that took me 40 hours off into like a 23-minute playthrough. Yeah, even if you don't, and most people don't speed run video games, you get to see how they break games to be able to go faster. And I've actually been able to watch games that I either have played or am in the process of playing or was thinking about playing and pick up things from them to actually make my gameplay easier. because they have all sorts of, because the big thing on most of this stuff is they try not to fight anything that they don't have to fight because it's all about winning the game as fast as possible, not experiencing all the content. But there are all sorts of categories where, like, you need to go and collect all the collectibles. Right. All the games have their, I don't know if they would call it an official thing, but there's speedrunning groups, and they have what they consider official. there is any percentage run, which is just beat the final boss as fast as you possibly can. And then there's 100% runs that are like, oh, you have to get all of the collectibles and then beat the final boss. Or there's all sorts of different percentages and different ways to run it. Most of the games have multiple tracks, basically. Like 50 meter, 100 meter. It's like that. We were, before the second the penultimate game of the That was Super Mario Odyssey, and he was running the darker side, which meant he had to get 500 moons. There's another category where you have to get all 800 moons, and there's another one where you just go through and you win the story as quick as possible. So there are all sorts of different, and the strategies are different, because if you're doing a longer haul, maybe you do things that you have to keep yourself safe or whatnot. and it spends, different games are like one-hit-kill runs versus one-hit-kill runs. Yeah, I watched the Zelda, the Link to the Past one-hit-kill run, and a lot of these, they're running on modded ROMs that let them set it up for stuff like one-hit-kill or to allow certain things that wouldn't work otherwise. Any highlights that you liked? I watched all of Saturdays from when I woke up at like 5.30 in the morning until after the end of the finale. And it was all good. But my highlight of the whole week was the very first run was a Hollow Knight playthrough. Yeah, I saw that. It was very enjoyable. but my absolute favorite was actually on Friday night, Final Fantasy IV Free Enterprise. Now, Final Fantasy IV, for those of you in the U.S., you might have played it. It was Final Fantasy II on the Super NES. This is how it was released in the U.S. Yeah, originally, yeah. But in Final Fantasy IV Free Enterprise, it's an open-world ROM hack, and it is a scavenger hunt randomizer for Final Fantasy IV. So what you do is when you choose what they call flags, so you can set up the rules for the game, and then you get a seed, just like you get if you're playing Minecraft and you put a punch in a seed that gives you what the world is generated from. You have a seed that this world is generated from with your specific flags in place, and it changes the places of everything. The items are in different places or the same place. You don't know. They're everywhere. All the bosses are moved around in different places. All of the people that you would get in the game, so all the characters to go with your hero are in different places. They're not where they are in the main game. And you start the game with the airship. So the actual thing is you run through the game, and you're gathering everything, all the key items you need, whatever key items you think you need to beat the game and beat the final boss. And it's normally run as a race. Okay. Or at least in this situation, when they ran it, they ran it as a four-player race. I've seen this. There's something similar for Legend of Zelda that does the same thing, and I think maybe at the last SCDQ they ran it as a race as well. Yeah. All the pieces you need are randomized, and you've got to go and try and find enough to go in and fight Ganon. Yeah. And the way they set it up is it's not like if you're, you know, your first level and you walk in, the penultimate boss is in the first place you go. He's been scaled to the level that it would be to be in that thing normally. So, but it's all about tricks and this and that. And it was awesome to watch, and it was a lot of fun. and interesting to see how their paths diverged and how quickly their paths diverged as people went, well, I'm going to go to this dungeon because I know there's at least two key items in that dungeon. And some of them, well, I'm going to go to this dungeon because I know there's a key item and a character in this dungeon, so I'll get a second character real quick. And it was interesting. I really enjoyed it. Okay. And I included the link in the links that links to the Free Enterprise website, which got the hug of death on Friday, to no surprise. Right. But, no, I've never really been interested in, like, speedrunning games. I like picking up tricks, but actually the thought of just, like, speedrunning and doing the little hacks and tricks and this and that, I don't care that much for it because for me I'm more into it for like the actual story and yada, yada, yada. But in the case of this, this seemed like a lot of fun. And because of my memories of Final Fantasy IV from being a kid, it was awesome to watch. Yeah, I'm not particularly into speedrunning. I suppose if I were to speedrun anything, I would never marathon. It would always be really short, like games that are 20 minutes, once that speedrun speed sort of thing. Right. Yeah, I did like the Hollow Knight one because I've been playing through it. They had a good race with Donkey Kong Country. I thought that was pretty fun to watch. I did see that. I'm not huge into Donkey Kong. I never played it, but I liked it. But it was fun to watch. And I wish they would quit doing Tassbot. I'm tired of Tassbot.
    82:24
    Tassbot is popular, but I don't like Tassbot. It used to be really neat to watch them have what they call the task bot, which goes and does things that humans can't do. Everything can be controlled on every individual frame until you see just how badly a machine can break a machine. But it's at the point now where they're just, like, having it play made-up games and just nonsense crap. Well, and it's just like there were a lot of... That was my low light, the Scribblenauts thing. Yeah. The Twitch play Scribblenauts. Yeah, but it's just using TASBOT to pull it. And the guy who was running the computer was terrible. He couldn't talk. He's like, I'm really nervous. I'm like, yeah, get off the stage. You're not meant to be there.
    83:06
    No, some people are not meant to speak publicly. Yeah, very much so. And it was just like, oh, my. It was almost cringe. But I don't like TASBOT in general. I'm sick of it. I want to watch humans show me what they can do. I don't need to see, oh, well, look at what happens You can go and manipulate things on the 160th of a second because you can control frame by frame. And then have a machine just play it all at once. Ooh, look how fast they move. But no human can do it. So it's... Right. Now, yeah, it's one of those things where I think it's interesting to see once and then... It's like watching NASCAR, which is already boring, run by a bunch of auto-driving Teslas. What's the point? Exactly. Yeah. What's the point? That would be good. Now the other thing That I wasn't as keen on Is a lot of the Fan games Where it's Oh we made this game that's just super hard For the point it's super hard And I'm going to speed run this game And when they're talking about it Well this level The first time I played this game The first time I learned this level I died 5,000 times trying to learn the patterns in this level Now watch me die 500 times Even though I'm an expert at this game because it's just that hard. Yeah. I did not watch those this time. There's only been one instance that I've really, and I have really liked it, was when they were having Mario Maker run. And they do races, and they had pre-built challenging people had gone together, and they made maps that everyone was running the same, and they made them for GDQ and had expert Mario Maker platformers play them. And they weren't like 100 deaths. Right. But that was neat. Well, that was like, two of the ones on Saturday were like Quickie World and Super Gracie World were Mario. They were Mario things that were like. I've heard of Gracie World. And those were fun to watch. But there was another one that it was like, I want to kill the camellia too. And it was, I actually liked the guy who was playing it. He interacted well. but the game I mean it got to the point where he got hard locked at a point where he just started getting so mad he could not do it anymore he loaded to another to a save beyond that point and continued cheated yeah it's like oh okay I didn't realize you could do that yeah you should have just quit yeah well you know it happened in the Super Metroid which I again I wasn't too shocked because it's reverse boss order and it's practically impossible but But the guy had the load two saves, and it's like, normally your run would be done. Actually, I'm pretty sure one year they did a four-person Super Metroid reverse boss race, and two of them didn't finish. Right. It's fine. They didn get past the first boss Right Because you take so much damage because you doing it in the wrong order that they couldn make it One missed jump and you die to lava because you have no heat suit protection So, anyway. But, yeah, it's a fun event, and they do record all those, so you can go see the video on demand or VODs out there. You can see the past ones, too. Obviously, you have a week's worth of 24-hour content. Yeah, it's... So lots of really weird games, nostalgic games, classic games, and they tend to play a lot of modern games, too. So usually things that have only Hollow Knight's only a couple years old I think Doom wasn't at this one to my knowledge It was last year It was in summer And they ran at a time before that too Mario Odyssey obviously, pretty new game 2017 game They did the DLC for Splatoon 2 The Octo Expansion Octopath Traveler was run It was, and that's a really new game I didn't watch it because it's on my list And I haven't Yeah, I caught the last part of it. They only ran one story. That was the mode, just win one person's story. So they did, like, Halo Reach. Halo games aren't uncommon. Zelda games, there's always at least one Zelda game, probably several. Yeah, they usually run multiple at this point, because some of them are, especially at any percent, aren't that long to do. Right. So they did Majora's Mask, I saw. Yeah, I watched all of Majora's Mask. I watched all of... And then there was the one hit one with Link to the Past. I know they ran, not Skyward Sword, they ran the other newer one, Twilight Princess, which I didn't watch it. But, yeah, no, it's a fun system. They ran New Year. I didn't see it, but it was like Tuesday at 4 in the morning. It was still going when I got up. It was over a four-hour run.
    87:47
    That doesn't surprise me. All right. Well, let's see. I just actually read about this yesterday. Bungie. Yeah. Bungie did what we... Speaking of Halo. Yeah. Bungie did what we all wished Blizzard would do. Yeah, that's the article I actually saw was a plea. Please, Blizzard, leave Activision like Bungie did. Yeah. So, spoilers. Bungie leaving Activision. Yeah. Bungie made Halo, and when they left Microsoft, they left Halo behind. Yep, they had to. And they made Destiny. Yep. And Destiny 2. Well, now Bungie has decided to leave Activision. But this time when they're leaving, they're taking Destiny 2 with them. So Bungie is separating from Activision. They're being free. They no longer have Wormtongue speaking in their ear. They can return to their former glory, and they're bringing their current big game with them. Do you think that this is sustainable for Bungie to be without a major publisher?
    88:49
    Provided they can continue the roadmap and Destiny 2 maintains its popularity. it will fund them enough to keep working on it and probably fund up and put out another Destiny. Because, well, I mean the thing is, Destiny is designed to be a kind of like Blizzard's Overwatch in the sense that it's a game that you're supposed to keep constantly playing. Correct. They iterate and they put out a lot of DLC.
    89:13
    Destiny 2 had a I mean, from general standards, a pretty good launch. However, the game wasn't seen as very good. Seen as a step back from Destiny 1, which had a very rocky launch as well. I mean, they had a lot of initial sales, but there weren't a lot of people who kept playing it until they had a big DLC that sort of fixed things. I don't know the current status of Destiny 2. The new DLCs for Destiny 2 have moved it back up in popularity, but it's still not just... With a system like that where you're trying to sustain and keep basically a game that people are playing every single week, I just, I don't know if Blizzard, or excuse me, if Bungie is in the position to support it without a publisher or to fund them through those transition periods where you're spending without cash. Right, but they just got a deal with a Chinese firm that cut them like $320 million worth of funding late last year.
    90:15
    I don't remember the name of the company, but it's a Chinese company. It has to do with that gave them, I think it's one of those, oh, here's the money, and we get to do the Chinese release type things. Okay. Well, they might be all right. I don't know. I played the demo to Destiny 1. I did not care that. The shooting mechanics felt great, but I didn't care for the world, and I just never have cared since. And I've got Destiny 2 because it was for free during BlizzCon because the PC version is available on Battle.net, which Blizzard announced that it will still receive full support on Battle.net and still get all the DLCs and this and that. Okay. That's good. So, we'll see. I've never tried it. Yeah. Well, you might like it. Maybe. I've got so many games and the ones I do like it's those are the ones I play I've been playing an old not the greatest game in the ever naval combat game for like ever I played it literally I woke up yesterday morning I fired up awesome games done quick I checked the news and stuff like I normally do and then I started playing rule the waves and I played that until I went to bed I'm crazy when it comes to stuff I do things in weird ways Alright We're going to follow that up with a game That I have played Just a very little bit, not enough to get involved in this But I just love the Concept of this Emergent gameplay I like emergent gameplay I like that type of thing Elite Dangerous, have you heard about Elite Dangerous? Yeah, yeah Elite Dangerous, for those of you who haven't heard of it It's an open universe space flight game, and everybody plays in a one-to-one scale representation of the Milky Way, which means it's huge. And even in-game, the amount of explored space and the amount of space where humans are in the game is very small. And you make a fairly large amount of your money besides your normal trading and some combat. You go out and explore other systems and worlds and this and that. And that information, you sell that back and you get money.
    92:38
    Well, this year, because it's kind of open-ended, there's no real in-game type content, and they're doing some fun stuff, but most of it is driven by the players. The community has pulled together, and they're putting together what they call the Distant Worlds 2 Expedition. It's a follow-up to another expedition that they did that happened last year. It was nowhere as big, and it wasn't as expansive as this one. But the plan currently is they've got more than 9,000 players signed up for this expedition. And they actually leave today, the 13th, and they're on a 200,000 light year expedition across the universe of Elite Dangerous. So they're going from human space all the way to the edge of the galaxy on the opposite side. Now, what's interesting about this is the actual, because of how everything works in the game, how FTL works in the game, it's not an FTL like in Star Trek or Star Wars where you could just, you know, oh, we're going to this planet. And you go, okay, so we go to warp five and we go there. You actually have to take short jumps. and a whole lot of the prep for this entire thing was people had to have a special jump drive that you got through an NPC interaction and a series of missions because of how long, how far it lets you jump to give you a decently long jump but it's still going to be lots and lots, I mean like thousands of tiny little jumps where you can make two or three jumps and then you have to refuel and this and that and most of the jumps are blind and they're jumping into systems where nobody's ever been so they don't know what they're going into. So it's going to be this huge thing. But the actual expedition time, it's expected to take eight months. They're going to be doing this all year long. Wow.
    94:35
    Now, players that have been getting involved have been preparing for this for several months now. There are people who are actually, they are running it in, large amounts of people are running it in a full kind of role play situation. There are people who are running in it and their whole purpose in it is they are journalists who are chronicling stuff and they've got websites set up already and they're going to be streaming and doing all that. Because the interesting thing about Elite Dangerous is it runs, it's an MMO but it runs in instances. Like most systems do now. Like World of Warcraft used to run with servers. It runs in instances. But instead of running in an instance where there's like, oh, there's 5,000 or 10,000 people here, they run in instances of like 20 people. So most of the coordination for this is happening behind the scenes, outside of the game. They're coordinating outside of the game using websites, Discord. There's a special Discord server set up. They're actually working with the game's creators who are doing a whole bunch of work to help the whole thing pull together and work with kind of under the hood tinkering and stuff. So, in addition to all of that, they are running full up. There's an Elite Dangerous pen and paper RPG game. There's a D&D Elite Dangerous game that has been created, and it was Kickstarted, and it's been available all year. there are people who are running with this fleet who are going to be running small things of that and in-character stuff and this and that throughout as they play. And they're going to be doing skirmishes and stuff like that. There's people who are going on who their whole thing is, I'm a big cargo ship and I've got spare parts. And we do this and we make this and we make that. It's just the kind of emergent gameplay that makes a world that might otherwise not be as full and as open and fun to me. And it's something that we don't see in a lot of the games that we see online anymore. Most online multiplayer games are their bro shoot-em-ups, or you're playing football, or you're doing whatever. This kind of emergent gameplay is a lot like we talked about with AGDQ, the emergent gameplay of the speedrunners is the same type of thing. It's taking the game and doing something special with it that takes a lot more than just game. Right. So I just thought I'm going to keep up with it. I'm following some of the news reports. I'm going to keep up with it as it goes along. I haven't played enough Elite Dangerous to have even hoped to have gotten in on this if I had the kind of time that it would require to have gotten in on it. But I think it's cool to see this kind of emergent gameplay in video games. and when it comes to stuff like this, is this something that interests you?
    97:38
    Emergent gameplay and stuff like this where you're twisting something or is this something that you prefer to say something closer to have more actual like designed in-game content type thing. Like World of Warcraft was very in-game designed in-game content. Right. This is very sandboxing. Right. No. Not your thing? No. I've never seen a model of this that didn't take tremendous, tremendous amounts of time. And because of that, maybe if I were a student still, I might be able to swing it. But I have an emergent life I have to live. I can't be sitting here doing a, you know, I like to go and play a game and be in the game world, but then out of the game to sit and have to do my website about my game stuff and my game journalism about my in-game stuff. It's cool in how it all layers together, but it's way more than I would ever want to do on a single... Yeah. Because I run into the same thing of a... Why would I write an article about being as an in-character, in-game journalist for this game I sometimes play? Or I could write a real article that someone might actually find useful. That's what I run into. It's like, and if I want to play a role, like I want to be a, I'd rather just play the video game where I'm the journalist going around and doing it in the game. And it kind of holds my hand more than doing it outside of the game and integrating it in. I remember all the raid planning and stuff with Warcraft on the, and it was just, oh, it was a lot of work. And this just sounds like a lot of work. And I, and this is too much work for me. I can see it. See, I like, and part of the thing is I loved EVE Online. and like you said, it takes a lot of time and work. That's why I don't play EVE Online anymore is because when I was playing EVE Online, I was running three accounts. I was playing all three accounts simultaneously when I played. I was playing for hours and hours and hours at a time every day and it just got to the point with work and family and all that. It's like I didn't have the time to put into it. It wasn't that I did not enjoy that game. It's that I felt like I was spending, to enjoy that game, I was spending too much time that I needed to spend on other things, and it was causing issues. So I had to drop something, and obviously I'm not going to drop the family and work and all that stuff, so I dropped the game.
    100:06
    I would love to go back to Eve. I would love to pour that kind of time back into Eve. I remember days and days playing Eve online. I remember setting up with me and one of my core mates, who was actually a friend that I worked with, we were both off on the same day, and we stayed up for 20-plus hours in stealth bombers, in wormholes, in EVE, sneaking around. We spent four hours sneaking up on hunting and killing one guy.
    100:40
    That seems sort of troll-y. It was super troll-y, but that was the kind of thing I enjoyed in that game, and I enjoyed playing in the areas that required you to really work hard for the kills. It was, I am having to use probes. I don't just know who's here because of how it's set up. I'm in an area that requires me to use probes to find somebody. Then you have to lock them down. Then you have to get in close, and you have to track them. And it is involved, and it was time-consuming. And spending hours hunting the guy and then pulling out and waiting for him to come back. That was the best part, is if you pulled out and you waited for two hours, they'd almost always come back and start doing it again.
    101:20
    And then you'd pop them again. I was really trolly in that game. But it was a lot of fun. And that's the thing is Eve Online, even more than something like Elite Dangerous or anything else, is a pure sandbox. And everything, every ship, every gun, every missile, every bullet, everything in that game is created by players, for players, sold by players. It's got a full-on economy. that is 100% because of in-game players building everything. And that kind of thing is a very special thing, and I love it. And I would play more of it if I could, but there's just not that kind of time in my life. So I find this kind of gameplay and this kind of emergent play amazing. So, well, we'll step off of that. We talked, not last episode, but I think the episode before, about how Steam has a new competitor, the Epic Game Store. And we talked then about several of their exclusives they had, Super Meat Boy Forever, Super Giants New Game Hades.
    102:35
    It was announced at the end of December. They are getting They're going to be the sole place to get the Final episodes of the final season Of Telltale's The Walking Dead People who bought season Passes on Steam or on Elsewhere They will still get their games They will still get them It's just if you hadn't already had the season pass You can't buy the season pass anymore You can't get it If you want the final episodes You have to go to the Epic Game Store Well, in addition to that, they've got one more large, very large exclusive that just got announced.
    103:18
    Tom Clancy's The Division 2. Now, this is a game that was available on Steam for pre-order before this deal was signed. Now that this deal is signed, it's gone. It's off Steam completely. The only places to get it is from the Epic Games Store, and you can get it from Ubisoft directly. And from everything I read, people who had pre-ordered it on Steam will get it with their pre-order they've already done, but they'll get it from Ubisoft directly.
    103:51
    So, another big hit to Steam, and I don't know, I haven't really seen any big counters going the other way from Steam yet. And it's very early. It's basically been two months at this point. But I would assume that before the end of the year, we're going to start seeing reactions from Steam from this. They're going to have to react. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you'll see transfers the other way for a couple reasons. One, the Epic Games Store just has a lot less for Steam to go after. Yeah. And going after those products would probably mean Steam would have to make offers that aren't being extended to their existing producer base. That would be – it could cause more problems. Yeah. Because if the issue is that – if the complaint is that Steam keeps too much of the money, the only way to counter that as Steam is to not keep as much of the money. But if you're just trying to poach things back, you're going to have a problem with everyone else who didn't get the discount. Right. but ultimately I mean I don't know long term if Epic continues to gain things in my view it has to be bigger the Division was a disappointment for Ubisoft it did not perform nearly as well as Siege did Rainbow Six Siege which actually saw its audience active player base grow after the first year the Division was a very very ambitious game with a lot of flaws. They have faith in it, so they're putting out the second one. I would assume the second one will be a lot better. And a lot of people did buy the division. Yeah. But we're not talking Red Dead here. So it's a big deal, but we have to remember what percentage of the overall market does Steam still control. They have so much. I'm wondering how long it will be before they actually think they have to react because Valve has just got their cash-making machine, and it's still making lots and lots of cash, if you still have 90-plus percent of game sales under your, PC game sales under your hood, do you care about someone who has 3%? I mean, I just don't know if this is enough still. Yeah. No, I can see if it's not there yet. I mean, I think it would have been more devastating if Epic had gotten Far Cry. Oh, yeah. A favor Ubisoft game. Right. Well, and that's the thing, is during this announcement, Ubisoft and Epic announced that they will be partnering on additional titles this year. So as some of Ubisoft's bigger franchises, this is still a relatively new franchise that's going to grow under the Tom Clancy umbrella,
    106:37
    I could see that being a far bigger motivator. Because Ubisoft's not the biggest studio out there, but they're big. They play on the E3 stage. So if you have all of their stuff moving forward, that might be enough to get Steam to take notice. We don't know that they have all of their stuff. Steam already has had to do without on a lot of really big stuff that never was on Steam in the first place. They didn't need to be. Right. They have games that have gone their own and been on their own thing. Blizzard activates and stuff on Battle. They don't need Steam. Overwatch doesn't have to be on Steam. you'll come to them.
    107:18
    You'll come to me if you know what's good for you. Yes. So I think it's just interesting to see that there's been, because there's always been people who have been fighting to be the next team, and it looks like Epic, because of the kind of backing they have and the money they've got to throw around thanks to Fortnite, actually has a solid chance moving forward. We're going to see the monopoly. I think the monopoly is going to be seriously broken. Yeah, I think the biggest obstacle that Epic would face is developers being afraid that their sales will fall so dramatically if they're not on Steam. They actually end up with less money in their pocket, even though Epic takes less than Steam does. But if bigger entities are on there, it lends comfort to the idea that it will be okay. People are going to go there to buy the division, so they'll see my game. And if you can be on both platforms, why not be on both platforms? Yeah, that could be a thing.
    108:17
    You just mean to go get slightly more money from one than the other. Sure. Because, I mean, Steam's built-in user base of people who use Steam is so enormous.
    108:27
    Right. But longer term, if you think, well, if people have to go, if people have to have the Steam app and the Epic app on their computers, why not just be on the one that doesn't take as much of your money? Right. Might as well just stay with Epic. So, yeah. I think Epic's making all the right moves.
    108:48
    It's going to be interesting how that plays out over the course of the next couple of years. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, you have to start seeing more and more developers pour into the system. And I think the odds are good that will happen if Steam just sits there thinking, we're Steam. Yeah. You can't escape our gravity well.
    109:06
    Now, the other big question is, do they watch this? They let Epic build up and have everything playing and things get bigger and bigger. And then Steam just steps forward and goes, we have Half-Life 3.
    109:22
    Well, but how does that hurt Epic is the thing. Well, that's the thing. I don't think it hurts them at all. Okay, so you have to have Steam, which everyone already has, installed to buy Half-Life 3, which the percentage that the developers get to keep is probably moot when it's a Valve game. Right. So, I mean, don't get me wrong. It would be, I guess, win a media cycle. Hey, look, there's Half-Life 3. But to me, Valve and their future game development has nothing to do publicly with Steam. They're not linked. In my mind, they're not linked at all. Valve happens to own Steam. The only thing I think about in terms of Valve and Steam is that I blame Steam for why Valve doesn't make games. because they realize it's so much easier to take other people's money. That's true. Than to do work and earn it. You have to let me have the dream that Half-Life 3 will happen. It's like, congratulations, you are... I don't think it will. I don't either. I don't care. Half-Life, I don't care anymore. There's so much better storytelling than we ever saw in Half-Life now in other games. That's true. That it's just the memory of how cool it was at the time because it was revolutionary. But I worry that it'll... I mean, I don't want it to fall into the Duke Nukem forever. thing where 3D Realms was like, we've got to beat what we did before and they couldn't anymore. They were pioneers when they were first. After that, everyone knew what to do and they iterated off of it and you're competing against the iterations and you can't win against that. You just got to make something different. The silent protagonist thing is so dead. Nintendo can get away with it with Zelda, but that's not what people want anymore. They want immersive narrative experiences and single player campaigns It's not quiet guys whose wheels are wrenches. That or they want the Battle Royale. But if it makes you feel any better, I've heard that Valve has, apparently they have put out job recruitment things for developers, people. So that suggests gaming development. Yeah. So that suggests they're planning to work on something. I would take Portal 3 over Half-Life 3. I would take Portal 3. Yeah, Portal 3 would be good. Any day of the week. So, our last little bit of video game is just a fun little thing.
    111:38
    This was pointed out to us by Jake Danzig on Facebook, and then I saw it on the news and everything. A helicopter flying over to Chiefs Stadium caught them playing Mario Kart on the Royals scoreboard. And for those, because a lot of you probably aren't familiar, in Kansas City, Arrowhead Stadium, which is where the Chiefs play, And Kauffman Stadium, where the Royals baseball team plays, are side-by-side. Yeah. So that's why they happen to see the Royals score display, the big jumbotron, when they were over by the other stadium. And the response came out on Twitter. Find out about it. As cool as it would be, there was just some bored people. It was actually Royals Charities, which is the Royals Charity Company, was doing a charity event, and they were playing Mario Kart 8 on the 105-foot tall scoreboard. They mentioned in the Twitter that they're looking at auctioning off a game party on the scoreboard later this year. That's clever. So that brings up the question for me.
    112:55
    If you were part of it, what game would you want to play on a 105 foot by like 85 foot full giant thing?
    113:06
    Well, Smash would work pretty good on that. I'm thinking four players, really big, something that would be nice like that. Or you go to the old school GoldenEye style stuff. Oh, yeah. You can do some of the older but not super old Call of Duties and stuff that would work pretty well in terms of – there are a lot of things that would be really, really cool. I was thinking something along the lines of a fighting game tournament. A fighting game would be pretty cool. I was trying to stick with things that might let four people play because obviously racing games work really well with that. You could also, it could be really fun to do a lot of, like, vertical platforming style stuff with books. Oh. Basically everything would be. Pinball arcade. A pinball arcade, yeah. Bang. Then everyone would see it, and then Pinside, your favorite website, would light up with, that's not a real pinball.
    114:01
    Boo-hoo. Killjoys. Anyway, the graphics would be wrong. They'd have to go with Zen. Yeah. Oh, that's everything. That's it. Wow, this was a meaty show. It was a pretty meaty show. Well, we'll be back in a couple weeks. But until then, you can always contact us at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or reach out to us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're on Twitter and Instagram. And we're streaming three to five days a week on Twitch now. And all of them are eclectic underscore gamers. That's right. And so in two weeks. I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. See you later. Peace.