From unsolved mysteries to unexplained phenomena, from comedy gold to relationship fails, Amazon Music's got the most ad-free top podcasts, included with Prime. Because the only thing that should interrupt your listening is, well, nothing. Download the Amazon Music app today. How to have fun, anytime, anywhere. Step one, go to ChumbaCasino.com. ChumbaCasino.com. Got it. Step two, collect your welcome bonus. Come to Toplo welcome bonus. Step three, play hundreds of casino-style games for free. That's a lot of games. All for free? Step four, unleash your excitement. Woo-hoo! Ch-ch-ch-ch-chumba! Chumba Casino has been delivering thrills for over a decade. So claim your free welcome bonus now and live the chumba life. Visit chumbacasino.com. No purchase necessary. VGW group void where prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply. The Pinball Network is online Launching Silver Ball Chronicles It's great to hear your voice, Ron We haven't recorded since June Could that be true? Yes Such slacking times of summer Mmm Hello, everyone. I'm David Dennis, and this is Silver Ball Chronicles, and with me is Ron, full of charm, Hallett. How you doing, Ron? Okay, yes. Good morning. That's right, that's right. You are out there on a charm offensive along the tournament scene, raking up some major wins. I didn't win anything, but it was still fun. Yeah, but you did some really good, really good qualifyings. Good call. Didn't you win some stuff over at? In Buffalo, yeah. I won some money. At the Beast. The Beast. Yeah, there were all these Canadians there. You would have felt at home. It would have been pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good. They let me know where the washrooms were, and I was confused. What the hell is that? It's usually what Canadians do. The first thing we do is scope out the exits, especially when we're in the United States, because, you know, stuff gets crazy there sometimes. Bathrooms, and then, of course, the beer gardens. Although washroom does make more sense than bathroom. We're back from summer break. We've taken a little bit of time off. I've done some traveling to Toronto. I was to Prince Edward Island, which is a gorgeous vacation province here in Canada. You've been traveling and playing tournaments. Anything new and exciting happen while we were gone? There were new games out. Yeah. Venom. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's... That'll be in a future Brian Eddy episode, I'm sure. So what we're going to do is we're going to play that probably at Pintastic in September. I've got my hotel room booked. I'm very excited to attend. It's closer to Canada this year by about 45 minutes. It's further from me by about an hour and a half. Nice. No, not nice. Oh, well. They should have consulted you before all that happened. Well, also, what I have added to the website over at silverballchronicles.com, I've added the show notes to a new tab there from one of the requests from our Patreon. Our Patreon had said, hey, wouldn't it be great if you could add your sources to the website? So I've gone ahead and done that. It's been a bit of a pain in the butt. So if the sources are no longer in the Facebook post or in your podcatcher, podcatcher, you can catch those at silverballchronicles.com. As well, with this episode, I've tried something a little bit new. I have run an experiment to see if this would help me in any way while writing this episode. I have used ChatGPT. Oh no, you're replacing yourself. I have basically done no work whatsoever and just instituted ChatGPT. I said, hey, write me an episode of Silver Ball Chronicles, and boop, there it is. Actually, what this program has done is basically done all of the Google searches for me in an easier way than actually doing the Google searches. You replaced yourself by AI. For example, if I'm looking up a synopsis for a film or television show, and I need to know the Rotten Tomatoes, I can kind of ask it all in one sentence, and it'll spit it all out for me. But I have noticed, Ron, ChatGPT is really, really wrong a lot. So, for example, if I asked it about today's topic, there were often errors and mistakes, which I had to correct. So it's not about to replace me yet, but it might replace you. Oh, my. We've also sold out, Ron, with Patreon. We've had a few people swing in for a couple of months, get their free swag and swing out. But you know what? Thank you so much for coming in anyway. it's wonderful that you would give us a few of your hard-earned dollars just to say thanks. So you don't have to feel guilty with just coming in for a month and zipping out, but we've had some few cycle through the old Patreon and then, of course, through the Discord. So for $3 a month, you can come in and say thank you and really join in on the shenanigans. $6 a month, that's the one you want to come in at. You get access to our private Discord chat room. you can ask tons of questions have your vote recorded for episode topics you get early ad free access to Silver Ball Chronicles in your own special Patreon feed after three months you get a free sticker and our top tier the elitist cronies you get all of those perks but after three months you get a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt and we want to say thanks to our top tier elitists who've joined us we're on Facebook at Facebook.com slash SilverBallChronicles. Please take a moment and like and subscribe. As well, if you are on a podcatcher, like Google or Apple or your podcatcher of choice, please leave us a five-star review. That way more people can find us. Oh, speaking of which, we've got our first three-star review. Ooh. Oh, wait a minute. Is that good or bad? This is, I think it's fantastic. It's taken us a long time to get a three-star review. And this is a whopper, my friend. Oh, it says, let's see. Oh, oh, Adam D. I've seen, he likes to comment on several different podcasts. Let's see. I'll read this just as it's written. R used to be a favorite podcast, but now not so much. He did spell favorite correct, though. So we know he's not Canadian. It's mostly two guys reading from Internet sources and prior interviews. It's a fine time killer on a long drive or during house chores. Oh, the Canadian guy used to be a good lesson, but now he's become too hacky and jokey. It's very sad to hear that. And actually, he did very much describe exactly what this podcast is, which is two guys reading from Internet sources and prior interviews. That's quite literally exactly what this podcast is. But you're hacky. I am. Is that what you like, hacky sack? Is that what that means? I do. Maybe it's because I have a cold. Oh, you hack like a cloth. I got it. Yes, yes. But if it's that case, it's spelled incorrectly. My assumption is he typed this out on his cell phone. Ah, okay. And all of the words are slightly different. So you should be. Probably hokey is what he meant. Probably. We also meant to do a five-star review, but, of course, he's probably got chubby fingers and missed. Ah, he missed two stars. I got you. Yeah, that's how it goes. But that's our first three-star review. We've been at this, what, almost three years now? This is, whoa, holy crap, we've been in this for three years? Over three, yeah. We started in, I look back, it's around May, COVID. Right after COVID started. Wow. We're the COVID podcast. Yeah, we are. We're like one of the only ones that have survived. We came out of the ashes of the beginning of COVID, and here we are. Rising like a phoenix. Phoenix, it's always the phoenix, yes. It always rises. This is Phoenix, a 1978 game by Barry Osler, which you could have learned by listening to that episode of Silver Ball Chronicles. You like that? That's good. Yeah. That's good. Rising like the dough of a donut to be made for dipping that wonderful, wonderful coffee. Your show notes have the thing where, like, if you want to skip everything and actually start, like, worry the episode is, it'll give it time. Cool, cool. Yeah, we're dragging on here a little bit. Well, you are. I'm just along for the ride. You can also get a T-shirt over at silverballswag.com. Please swing on over and get a T-shirt. That way you can support Ron's golf ball habit because he keeps losing them. Actually, I did last time I golfed. I did not do well. Corrections and concerns. We haven't had any corrections or concerns, but you can send those over to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. If you've got anything you'd like to add, anything that we may have said incorrectly or, you know, misconstrued, please let us know, silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Is there anything you want to cover, Ron, in the preamble? To the Constitution? We the people of the United States, in order of form? No. All right. John Borg is a bro. Not one of those annoying frat bros in golf shirts. Not an annoying crypto bro. and he's definitely not one of those bros that owns a Tesla that tells you about it all the time. John is one of those Gen X brothers who just exudes cool, calm, relaxation. It's kind of strange because John's pinball designs are not calm and relaxed at all for the person playing. John Borg is known for his distinctive style and approach to designing pinball machines. His design philosophy is as distinct as a fingerprint. Borg focuses on creating layouts that offer smooth flow and satisfying shots. He aims to design pinball machines that provide players with a sense of continuous motion and engaging gameplay. His layouts often feature well-integrated ramps, orbits, and habit trails that facilitate a ball which is fast and exciting, always moving across the playfield. Borgi also gets the coolest themes. We cover John Borg's first part of his career in Episode 9, Borgi, Live in the 90s Licensed Dream. We cover John's career from his beginning at Gottlieb and Data East until his return to Stern Pinball. This is John's second kick at the can at designing on a mass scale, And John became the bro of Flo and truly cemented his legacy as a modern pinball legend. Hmm. You know, instead of bro of Flo, you should have called it the bro of Bash. Bro of Bash. You know, I'd see more of a Bash choice. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's another one of his distinctive things. I'll tell you that for sure. Now, over on Patreon, I asked if anybody had any comments. and Scott replied back that while Borg is one of the most predictable designers, he has a knack for making a theme fit his design style fast and tough. So would you say his designs, sort of in my introduction here, can be classified as a bit predictable? Yes. We will see when we go through them. Almost any Borg design, you can look at it and say, oh, it's the so-and-so from this game he did, it's the so-and-so from this game he did, or other ones like the entire upper play field from this game, etc. So let's wind it back a little bit, add a little context of where we are with John Borg's career. After Austin Powers back in 2000, John was laid off from Stern. He went to work with Bryan Hansen, who was formerly from Capcom. He was designing slot machines and redemption games. He also designed some kitchen equipment for a company called H&K, and some of that equipment actually ended up in a lot of McDonald's restaurants and hospitals. Wait a minute. McDonald's have hospitals? Oh, Ronald McDonald House, you mean? No, I think like the kitchen stuff in a McDonald's. Some of it was designed by John Borg. No, but hospitals. Like McDonald's has hospitals? No, like also in hospitals. Oh, okay. Hospitals have kitchens as well. That line confused me so much. Maybe he meant Ronald McDonald House or something. And they say there's something wrong with your education system down there. I'm just going by what your statement said. Now, Borg was not doing what he loved, but, of course, like most people, he liked money, and it did keep him in the engineering field. In 2007, the opportunity did come back again to work at Stern. John hasn't really said why he returned, but one can guess that Stern had sort of regained its footing after the collapse of Williams and the entire pinball industry in 2000. But we've got something a little more interesting coming along on the horizon after 2007. The thing is, I think they probably hired him because they had no in-house designer, as far as I know. Balzer was gone, so they had, yes, Steve Ritchie was on contract, Waller was on contract. And George Gomez was just doing it on off days from his job at Midway. So they really had no in-house designer. I'm guessing that's probably why. Why would you kind of come back to the weird, volatile, heartbreak industry of pinball? Well, you can sort of speculate that John was probably looking for better creative opportunities than building kitchen equipment. It likely wasn't fulfilling and as exciting as much as designing pinball was. I mean, come on, the guy in the 90s met movie stars all the time building pinball machines. He did Star Wars. I mean, come on. His first pin back at Stern was Indiana Jones, the legendary Indiana Jones pinball machine by Stern. It's a licensed movie myth and legend theme, April of 2008. Now, we don't know how many units were built of this pin because this is the time when Stern is a private company. so we don't have any release notes or information on units built. The art was by Kevin O'Connor, dots by Mark Galvez and Tom Kisivat, who has been, him and his brother have been very busy recently on a lot of pinball machines. Yep, and I heard his name a lot, that's why I know it's Kisivat now. I know, and I was trying to remember how they said it, and gosh darn it, I screwed it up again. The music and sound by the legend David Thiel. Software by Lonnie Ropp, Lyman Sheets Jr., Dwight Sullivan, and Mike Kissevat. Kissevat. Mike Kissevat. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. You remember that movie, Ron? Yes, I do. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released in 2008, and it was directed by Steven Spielberg. The story is set in 1957, during the height of the Cold War, So no more Nazis. Now we're fighting commies. Yep, Russians. Archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones, portrayed by Harrison Ford, embarks on a new adventure that involves a mysterious and a quest to unravel its secrets. Alongside his old friend and fellow adventurer Marion Ravenwood, who is played by Karen Allen, Indy faces dangerous, treacherous enemies and supernatural encounters in his quest to uncover the truth. And it also stars Shia LaBeouf. Mutt Williams and Mutt. Yeah, who were led to believe is the reboot to be the new Indiana Jones, and they realized that was terrible. Well, no, even in the movie. He takes the hat, and then Indy takes it back. Like, no, no, it's my hat. The movie was not good. It made money, though. But, yeah, it was not good. The worst reviewed Indiana Jones until the most recent dial-up. Destiny. That has also been said to be Jeff Teal's favorite of the Indiana Jones movies, a movie that he would see over and over again. Let's just say it's a trilogy and leave it at that. The Top Cast episode 27 with John Borg, Joshua Clay Harrell asked about his new design. And what's really crazy and interesting about this is Indiana Jones had yet to actually be released. And yet John is talking to this sort of the grandfather of podcasting, if you will, about, oh, you got to see this new design and here's the theme, which I thought was insane. What do you think? Wow. Deep, deep, deep thoughts. Indiana Jones was originally another layout and he put that layout on a back burner because they couldn't lock down the license that they originally wanted to do. So he later used that play field for another theme. Well, John Borg said, I started a different layout, and I ended up getting lucky and getting the Indiana Jones title. Would you say that he was lucky? Yes. That was a killer title. It's a killer title. Killer theme. Killer theme. It's all four Indiana Jones movies at that time. Yeah. The problem is they didn't really know what was going to be in the fourth one yet. So they kind of just made it mostly the first three. Yeah, as they should. So John says, I went out to San Francisco and met with Lucas. and I saw a PowerPoint presentation on the movie. They read me an overview of the movie while the slide presentation was going on. I asked them if I could have copies of the notes, and they said absolutely not. They told me I had to take notes as they were reading the story very quickly and showing the stills. I was trying to look at the screen to see the visuals. Now I was scribbling notes as fast as I possibly could. Between myself and Kevin O'Connor, we put our notes together. After we were finished, we got a pretty good overview of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. There you go. So back in the day, we had spoke in the first episode nine, Borgie living in the 90s license dream. They would get the script, and they would sit down, and it would be like a big presentation, and they'd come for coffee, and they'd take their time to ask questions. This thing, no, no, no, no. They are slamming through it as fast as they can to prevent leaks. And this might be one of the last ones where they even got to do that. I don't think any of the newer themes that are being done today, that they're getting access to the script ahead of time. The Top Cast episode was recorded before the game and the movie were released. But what did John Borg think of the film? Well, John says, it'll be fantastic. I think it's going to be right up there with Raiders. I love all the movies. Raiders is definitely my favorite. It looks like it's going to be fantastic and very action-packed. There you go. He saw this 35-second PowerPoint presentation, and he knows it's going to be awesome. You see, the PowerPoint presentation didn't show the horrifically bad CGI or any of that other stuff. I wonder if it had the refrigerator in there. Did it show that? Oh, the refrigerator. God, that made me angry. I did see it in the theater. I saw it in the theater, too. I was just fine. And it lost me. It lost me for two reasons. You had, let's go on a segue here. You had the refrigerator, which I'm like, why is he getting in the refrigerator? So did you want to add some context of that to people who have skipped the movie? Why did you skip the movie? Well, he ends up somehow in a nuclear test site right before a bomb's going to go off. It's like, he's dead. But he's in one of these towns they constructed specifically to get blown up, which they did in the 50s when they did these nuclear tests. So he sees a refrigerator, and he clears the refrigerator out, and he gets in the refrigerator. It's like, why is he getting in the refrigerator? And then he closes the door, and it says, lead line. Yes, and it protects him from the nuclear blast and blows him 100 feet away, and he just gets out of the refrigerator. And it, like, flies through the air and lands, and then he just sort of falls out. Now, the falling out is actually quite funny, and it's shot perfectly, because it's, I mean, it's Steven Spielberg. It just, it lost me. It's just like, oh, my God. It lost me. And then my second main issue was the fact that they have a scene where they have all these insects, and it's really bad CGI insects, which made it worse because in Temple of Doom, they had a scene with tons of insects, real insects. So it just made it look that much worse to me. I love Temple of Doom. A lot of people don't. That's sort of the lower of the three. I like that. It's got an Oscar winner in it. Short round. Oscar winner. Absolutely. The film did generate a lot of anticipation. Yes, it did. A lot of excitement for a couple of reasons. Steven Spielberg is back. Indiana Jones is portrayed by Harrison Ford. They've got the budget. Like, there was a lot of hype behind this. And this was really before the whole peak of throwing nostalgia at everybody and seeing what hits you in sticks. But unfortunately, Rotten Tomatoes, the aggregate of movie reviews, it came out as a 78%, which is a far cry from all the other ones that were like high 80s and 90%. Still better than the last one. The last one, what is it, 50-something? I don't know. I might get around to it. No. Did you like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? No. I didn't either. It had a couple of moments, but it just had a couple of moments. It wasn't horrible. but when they're it's hard to have Indiana Jones played by Harrison Ford and it'd be horrible you have Shia LaBeouf going through the jungle with monkeys and stuff it was just so stupid there's too much of him not enough Harrison Ford it's like they were trying to pass the torch and then they got cold feet but how did the game do? well John Borg says great, it did really well at the Vegas AMOA show this week. Distributors really like it a lot. People were taking pictures of it. They were getting a lot of good orders already. The geometry is great. The effects are great. The display is great. Everything you want in a new pinball. Did it, though, Ron? Well, here's the thing. To be fair. That doesn't sound good. No. To be fair, every pinhead I knew hated it. Every non-pinhead I knew loved it. Ah. It does have, it has awesome music if you actually listen. Well, David Thiel, the legend. The orchestral music, the Harrison Ford impersonator they got was actually decent. The Sean Connery impersonator, not as decent. I mean, but it has all the clips. Well, they should have got Zach Manning in his Sean Connery impression. It has tons of clips from the movies. I mean, the only thing it really had from Crystal Skull was the ramp. The Crystal Skull ramp. I don't believe it actually had any actual clips from Crystal Skull. The DMD was phenomenal because since the last Indiana Jones, we've had, what, 15 years of growth in the quality of dots? It's pretty cool. It's a good game. The art's not offensive. It's really sort of yellow. It's one of those games from the rules perspective. All you would do, you would just hit the, what is it, the Kyra Swordsman captive ball thing. You just hit them and try to get the multiplier up to ridiculous levels because there was no limit. And that's how you would get a high score. So this was a hodgepodge of coders that all sort of all hands on deck kind of game. We've talked about those before where we're on a bit of a skeleton crew. We've got to get a bunch of stuff out as best we can. One of the individuals that worked on the game was Keith P. Johnson. And he was on Head to Head Pinball Podcast, episode 41. This is back from 2018. So remember, Keith has a lot of hindsight when he looks at this game, so he's able to sort of critique what he says. You can't blame him, I would, as well. At the time when the game was released, John Borg, of course, is hyping it up because he has to sell the pins. And he said, I'm disappointed in some of my games. Having been involved with the likes of CSI and Indiana Jones, I think Indiana Jones is a far, far worse game than pretty much anything else. The fact that my name is technically listed on there is definitely disappointing. I was not the lead on the game, and I was just helping out. So he didn't like it. He did not. But, I mean, you've got to give him credit that he's able to notice that there's issues, and he doesn't hide from it or try to whitewash it or fix it. He's just like, yeah, it was not a great game. This was kind of in the woodchop era, right? And what do I mean by woodchop? Uh, it basically means you have to hit, each shot was for a movie. You had to, like, Raiders shot, the Temple of Doom shot, the Crystal Skull shot, Last Crusade shot. And you would have to, like, hit this three times and then something would happen. Okay, now hit it five times, now hit it seven times. The whole game is like that. So that's like the idea of woodchop is that you are literally, they're just hacking away. Keith P. Johnson says, there's so many weird decisions that went into that game that elude me. Your first multiball is an eight-ball multiball. Then your next one is five. Then the next is four. And then the last one is a two-ball multiball. Why would you have diminishing returns? He says, also, you have to hit the freaking middle of the game like 8,000 times to spell Raiders of the Lost Ark. And you get a two-ball multiball. What the hell is that? That's no fun. It's like I worked my ass off to get the end of this thing, and my payoff is a two-ball multiball. and it's over in like 20 seconds. It did have the arc was cool. The toy. The toy. The engineering, the physical engineering. It was cool. That was the main gimmick of the game. It has an arc, and you hit it a certain number of times. You get, what is it, like an eight-ball, multiball. All the balls come out of the arc. Like the arc opens and all the balls come out because there's like a trough under there. And then you start that multiball, which is funny because then as you're draining, then you can hear the ball loading the arc back up again. If you ever played Apollo 13, it's the same thing. You get the 13-ball multiball, and as you start draining, it starts reloading the balls for the next 13-ball multiball. It had the Photoshop back glass type stuff. Yeah, we're really in that era now where we're kind of jamming things on. It's more photorealistic with some hand-drawn elements around it. The art is not stellar. Let's put it this way. The play field, it was like sand. It is, like, very barren, the play-filled art. What do you think about the flyer? Let's see. The flyer is, wow, it doesn't have much. It just says Indiana Jones. Yeah. There's no silly gimmicks or anything. Like the Cairo Swordsman, the Holy Grail, and the Sankara Stone. I never remember what they were called in Temple of Doom. The arc opens, releasing eight balls. And the Crystal Skull. Yes. And that's, like, it. There's just, like, a skull. There's a skull, and it's just the ramp, the one ramp. You know what that skull reminds me of? Have you ever seen Dan Aykroyd's vodka? No. Is it vodka or is it tequila? And it's just like a skull. I have not seen it. That's literally what it looks like. There's your bit of trivia for today. Well, like I said, it does have a little, it's got a captive ball thing that you hit, and then it lifts up, and you hit the ball into the scoop. That's okay. It's pretty neat. But it's pure grind. It has the four shots in the middle of the inserts in the middle of the play field. There's like four different levels for each one. But each one is like, to start the first one, like I said, hit three times. Okay, now five, now seven. You've got to hit stuff so many times in this game. It's the mechanics that are the standouts, I think, in this game. The physical pieces, the playfield design. The music, they were all excellent, I would say, in this. You know, lax in the art department, but it's very on brand. Like the non-Pitheads I knew, they loved this game. They would pass up, like, Spider-Man and games like that, and they would play this one. Because you hit so many shots, and then you see a movie. Like, it shows you clips. Yeah. Yeah, you get rewarded fairly easily. I think Dwight Sullivan really speaks to close to the start button. That's kind of a term that he had coined, which means that stuff happens relatively soon for the novice player. It's a great game. It's not amazing. I don't know if I would buy one for the price that things are going at the moment. But would you buy this one or would you buy the other one? Well, neither. But, yeah, the other one if I had a choice. Okay. So the other one's a wide body and I actually don't like the way it shoots. No, no. The other one shoots way better. Now you're wrong. You can send your anger to silverballchronicles at gmail.com or you can subscribe to Patreon and tell me in a private Discord chat room for $6 a month. Would you say that this game is really where he's starting to find his style? So, like, he's designed similar things from time to time, but now you've got Austin Powers, which was his last game before he left Stern. Now this is his first game back. They're very fan layout, so the shots are left to right. Austin Powers is way flowier. Absolutely. The rule set of Indiana Jones does not allow it to be flowy. Yeah. The play field design, though, you can really see shots through pops. You've got a ramp. You've got stand-ups on the left and right. things, you know, moving left to right, right to left. I wouldn't call it a flow game. Okay. I'm going against his notes, folks. Now, but it is, I have to say, like, if you look at his Data East games, they tend to have more clunky. They are completely different than his later Stern games. They really are. So it's like he's, it's taken him, like, what, 10, 15 years to sort of, sort of develop that style and fingerprint, and we're starting to see it more and more throughout his games. And he's going to get a chance to design a lot of games now because of the crash. Many of the employees at Stern were let go in 2008, 2009. And, of course, that was the Great Recession. John was one of the few survivors that actually made it through those cuts. Well, he was their only in-house designer, so he had a pretty good chance to stay in there because they had no one else. They let Steve Ritchie, your services are no longer required. Pat Waller had already quit. And Gomez was, I don't know. He was on contract. Yeah, but he might have been getting laid off midway at this time, too. Yes. So, yeah. It was a bit of a mess. Yes, this is when we began the stripped-down cheap era, if you will, of Stern. Well, in 2009, it was a skeleton crew on board to help finish NBA, the sports-licensed pinball machine. It's designed by, get this, Gary Stern, Ray Tanzer, and John Borg. Art by Kevin O'Connor. Dots by Mark Galvez. Music and sound by the legend David Thiel. Software by Lonnie D. Ropp and Lyman Sheafs Jr. I wonder if Gary Stern just said, there needs to be a basketball in it, and that's how he got design credit. But he's got design credit. How bad is it that he has design credit at this time? And don't forget, John Borg also had to finish up CSI. Yeah, that's true. Because Walter left in the middle of it. And I was always curious. I could never find any information on, like, how much of that game is Lawler and how much of it is John Borg. Who are the people that are left behind? Well, there's the owner of the company. There's Ray Tanzer, who is the mechanical engineer guy. John Borg, who wears a lot of hats. He can do design. He can do toys. He can do that stuff. So he's wearing a lot of hats. You've got Kevin O'Connor, who's just been there forever. And you've got David Thiel, who's kind of the new up-and-comer who works remotely. And then you've got Lonnie, who has grown up at Data East. Yeah, that's the other thing. I think the other thing that kept Borg there. He was the Data East guy. They kept all the Data East guys. They fired everyone. They fired Keith P. Johnson, Williams guy, Dwight Sullivan, Williams guy, Waller, Steve Ritchie, Williams guys, you're out. A lot of people say that you've got to dance with the person that took you to the ball. Ah. Well, John Borg told the Internet Pinball Database, Gary Stern and Ray Tanzer started the design of NBA. It was originally supposed to be made for China only. When the downsizing happened, it was decided that NBA would go into the mix as a regular production game. I added the free throw kicker that shoots the ball through the air at the backboard, which is the coolest part of the game. I also added the lift flap assembly and the plastic ramp, spinning disc, and the wire ramp divert mechanism. There. So, like, again, he's bringing his mechanical prowess to it. It's not his game 100%, but he's there all hands on deck trying to get this. And they had Yao Ming, like, big time on the back last there. So it was definitely for the China market. And it's a guilty pleasure game of mine. I love an NBA. I love that game. I think it shoots great. It's got, I believe, Tim Tim Kitzrow's on there, Mr. NBA Jam guy, Mr. World Cup Soccer guy. NBA! I love that game. Boom shaka-daka. Gotta love Tim Kitzrow. Well, this brings us to probably one of, I think, the legendary status games that we've got nowadays. That's Iron Man. It's the licensed comic book hero theme from 2010. Again, we don't know how many units were sold because we are talking about a private company, but I think it sold a lot. Kevin O'Connor on art, Dots by Mark Galvez, David Thiel on sound, software, Lonnie Roth and Lyman Sheets. You can see same crew. We're in the same sort of issue here where we're just doing everybody that we've got left in the building. It's sold a lot eventually because they did a lot of different runs of it. And then they had the, whatchamacallit, what do they call it when they do the games again? The vault. Many vaults, in fact. What we're talking about here, so people don't remember this time. When Iron Man the movie came out, and around 2008, like Iron Man was like a B or probably a C-level superhero. Yeah, because Marvel hadn't sold them out yet. They already sold out like Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, their big names. They still had Iron Man in-house. Right. So you got Iron Man and Captain America and Hawkeye and all those guys. They were like C-level superheroes, right? You got Batman, you got Superman, X-Men, Spider-Man, and then kind of like everybody else. I don't watch superhero movies, but I watch Iron Man. Iron Man is one of my favorite movies. I love Robert Downey Jr. As the name suggests, the Iron Man pinball machine is based on that iconic Marvel superhero character created by Stan Lee. The game features artwork and assets from the first two Iron Man films, from 2008's Iron Man and 2010's Iron Man 2. This pin was released around Iron Man 2, a strategy we had seen more and more with Stern, where they usually wait kind of for a hit film or a series, and then they commit to building a pinball machine around the time of a second film or a new series release. And that, I think, is a way to mitigate the risk. And the name of the game is actually Iron Man 2. It says Iron Man on the translate, but when you would boot it, it would say Iron Man 2. Like Iron Man also? No, it literally said Iron Man 2. Interesting. That's super cool. And who coded that? That's Lonnie and Lyman. Oh, Lonnie. Iron Man is a superhero film that was released in 2008. It was directed by Jon Favreau, King of the Nerds, and it starred Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Zac Stark and Iron Man. At this time, Robert Downey Jr. was kind of on rocky footing with a lot of movie producers and movie studios. He was seen as somebody who was a bit of a risk. It scores a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, a score that Ron agrees with. Yep. The film follows Tony Zac Stark, the wealthy industrialist and a weapons manufacturer. Of course, he's also a genius inventor. After a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan, Tony is kidnapped by a terrorist group who demand that he build them weapons. Instead, Tony creates a powerful armored suit and manages to escape. Iron Man was a critical and commercial success. It was praised for its engaging story, its humor, and Robert Downey Jr.'s charismatic portrayal of Tony Zac Stark. He is Iron Man. No one else can be Iron Man now. It's going to be the worst role if they ever recast that. They will just, they will get beaten up. Because he is, it's like he wasn't paying a character, he was so good at that character. The film marked the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the MCU as we know it today and was setting the stage for the franchise that would become one of the most successful in cinema history And there is a pinball connection because of that, we got a lot more comic book pinballs after this. It's like easy to go to the well with comic book. Venom is a great example of that, right? Like everybody kind of generally knows what Venom is, and it's a pinball machine, and there you go. Overall, Iron Man introduces audiences to the compelling and flawed superhero character, combining humor, action, and a touch of realism that really kick-started the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it ignited a worldwide phenomenon that continues today. Although, nah, I don't know if it's as good. Iron Man 2 was released in 2010. It was also directed by Jon Favreau, and starred Robert Downey Jr. once again as Tony Zac Stark in Iron Man. It scored a 73, Rotten Tomatoes. It is a weaker movie, although I thought it was still pretty good, and I feel like 73 is probably a bit low. It has what's-his-name as the whiplash. It's supposed to be Russian. Mickey Rourke, Mickey Rourke. Iron Man 2 takes place six months after the events of the first Iron Man film, where Tony Zac Stark's dual identity as Iron Man has been revealed to the world, and he has become a global icon. However, Tony is facing new challenges on both his professional and personal fronts. Tony also faced challenges with his company, Zac Stark Industries, as a rival industrialist, Justin Hammer, played by Sam Rockwell, who I think killed it in this role, tries to replicate the Iron Man technology to further his own business interests. Meanwhile, a new threat arises in the form of Ivan Vanko, who you mentioned before is Mickey Rourke, a brilliant physicist with a vendetta against Tony and his family. This is also something I thought was really cool. What do you think the MSRP of Iron Man was new in U.S. dollars? It says $54.99. Yeah, it would have never cost that much. I guarantee you could get that for under $4K back then. Yeah. So we covered a lot of this game from a code perspective in the Lyman Sheets episode, Inside the Mind of Lyman Sheets, but I'd like to get into the design of the game from the perspective here of Borgi. This is a breakthrough in Borg's design philosophy and style. What are some of the key factors in that design style, Ron? Well, we have the two ramps, which I call like payback time ramps from Terminator 2 because they just, left, right, they go back to you. Orbits go all the way around. We have the Bash toy. And then we have the, what's it called, War Machine. Basically the Og-Off kicker, like from F-14 Tomcat, that throws it back at you. It's like a kickback target instead of in the out lane it's faced at. And get used to these things because you're going to be seeing them a lot. It's got magnets. We love magnets. It's got two magnets. Definitely a fan layout. Now, this had the Iron Man Classic and the Iron Man Pro Vault Edition. Yeah, the Classic had, I think it had the Monger, but it had less magnets. It was, like, stripped down of an already, what was considered at the time when it was a really stripped down game. That's the thing. I probably said this in the alignment episode, too, but when this game came out in 2010, it was just like, what is this? It's like, there's nothing on this thing. They got just one toy in the center. This is, like, stripped down. This is horrible. They even took out the service rails on the bottom, those metal rails, and they put in just these shooter rod pegs. Gotta love the pegs. I mean, everything was cost-cutting. And at the time, it just, people hated it. And then through time, over time, it's now considered one of their classics to the point where they vaulted it. Like a million times. It's always like, last call for Iron Man, and you're like, what, really? It's 20, it's 2022. There's so many different versions of this kind with the old backbox, and they had the ones with the newer backbox with the slanted display panel. They added LEDs versus the incandescent light bulbs. My issue with the Vault Edition is it was all LED'd out, but they didn't really have the technology for the LEDs yet because it was still running SAM, and it looks like it is epilepsy-inducing, the lights. It's really distracting. But they did put an LED in the chest of Monger, which does look cool. So cool. I love this game. I also have a Tron. So these are sort of in the same era, right? And it's fast. It's furious. It's got great, like, call-outs. It is like you're wearing the Iron Man suit and you're, like, flat out. It's so fun. No impersonating or anything. We just use clips from the movie. And I wish they would do that more often. You got like the robot voice guy. So David Thiel is really good at manipulating a person's voice with software or however they do that stuff. And then tying it into the theme. So, for example, in Iron Man, you've got like this kind of robotic voice that's guiding you along. That's like, you know, 100,000, 200,000. That's robotic? I didn't think that was robotic. Wasn't it? It's kind of like a... It's got the military guy there. You go, go, and it's got Jarvis. You have tilted the games there. Great. So great. I would totally buy one of those games. I did buy one of those games. Totally. Which one did you buy? You bought one of the earlier ones. I have an earlier one. Yeah. Little factoids about Iron Man. They moved the location of, I believe, the right ramp from the original run. than they moved it a tad because any halfway up the ramp, right ramps, were just going down the middle. And it's a fairly steep ramp, and their flippers aren't the best of that era. Tight ramps. Very tight ramps. There's a lot of bricks that you throw into the edge and the side of those ramps. That's the only gripe that I have. But, of course, that's kind of what makes it fun as well, is that you've got to be, like, on fire when you're playing. Unless you upgrade your flipper coils, which people would do. Yeah. Speaking of on fire, we've got Big Buck Hunter Pro. What does that mean? You're going to burn down the forest? What do you have against animals? In Canada, all of our forests are on fire. That's true. That's right. Licensed video game hunting theme. It's from January of 2010. John Borg on design. Kevin O'Connor, Mark Galvez. Kendall Hale on sound and music. And Lonnie D. Ropp, Lyman Sheets on software. This is based on the popular arcade hunting franchise of the same name. That's by Raw Thrills. Yeah, I think it was Play Mechanics before that. It wasn't originally Raw Thrills, but they bought out or combined with whatever company was making it, something like that. The objective is to travel across different hunting regions on the pinball machine, rack up points by shooting various wildlife targets. The play field features, of course, ramps, loops, targets, and players interact with all of the exciting mechs on the play field. The Pro, but it was actually just one model at the time. Yeah, it had nothing to do with Pro Premium LE they would use later. It was just the name of the game. Big Buck Hunter Pro. It sold from an MSRP of $5,000. Yes. Again, you could probably get it under 4K. Design elements. It's pretty hard. It's really hard. Really hard. Actually, I didn't mind this game. and a big buck on the front and you're killing animals and there's a buck that goes across and you just hit the buck that was pretty cool he would like hide and then he comes out he's out he's out you hit him and everything was like what is it you had buck the buck multiball you had bird bird multiball or something like every different type of animal had their their own little thing my favorite thing of this was sort of during the the beginning of the pandemic pinball streamer and tournament aficionado carl d'Python Anghelo did a series of wizard mode sort of hunts or wizard mode adventures where he tried to get to the wizard mode of pinball machines and he would just play that machine just for days days and buck hunter i think he played the longest and if this guy who is what top 10 in the world probably yeah you're never getting there well he set it up harder too but yeah yeah you're never ridiculous it is because you have to go through every different animal and finish it and yeah it's very wood choppy again right it's it's shoot this shot x times yes it is that's something that just kills new people to the hobby i think right like there's those those williams folk who grew up in the nostalgia of the williams era that just love all the mechs and whatever but the code is pretty lacking and it's fairly choppy then you get into this era where you've got a lot of awesome themes and great playfields and exciting gameplay, but my God, it's like shoot this shot a dozen times. I wouldn't say the Williams games are choppy. They're more shallow than anything else. You've done everything within 15 minutes or something. You're like, oh, okay. Then you just do it again and again and again. Well, Lime and Sheets appeared on the Slam Tilt podcast episode 100. That's my other podcast. That's your other podcast with Bruce Nightingale. Check us out. Bruce Nightingale, the leading model for the Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Yes, he is. We've been paying him quite regularly to wear that t-shirt. And he has been promoting the brand, I would say, better than any supermodel we could afford. So Lyman Sheets on episode 100 said, I think we were doing a game about every three months. We had CSI Out, N24, NBA, Big Buck Hunter, and Iron Man. For all those games, Lonnie and I had about three months. Big Buck Hunter we actually spent six months on, though, because for whatever reason at the end we had a little extra time before we could get it into production. That one definitely needed the extra time. That was a difficult game to work into something that was kind of fun. The reason that there's the wood choppiness in this era is we didn't have any time to do anything, which makes sense, right? But we have the bash toy. Yes. We have the bash toy. Plastic ramp. Fast orbit. Fan layout shots left to right. We're getting into a groove. Well, what about this one? James Cameron's Avatar. It's a licensed fantasy environmentalist theme. It is August of 2010. Designed by John Borg, Kevin O'Connor, Mark Galvez, David Thiel, Lonnie, and Lyman. Same crew. This is John Borg's first limited edition pin. Get this, get this. 250 LE. Yeah, an actual LE. It's amazing how that works. My goodness. This is based on the first Avatar film, and at the time, there was no sort of plans for Avatar Universe, which has now come about with The Way of the Water being the next film that was recently released. Avatar, the science fiction film directed by James Cameron, released in 2009 with an 82% Rotten Tomatoes. Avatar is set in the mid-22nd century on a lush and exotic planet called Pandora. The story follows a paraplegic former marine named Jake Sully, who is played by Sam Worthington, who is selected to participate in what's called the Avatar Program, a scientific project run by the Resource Development Administration. The program involves linking a human operator to a genetically engineered Navi-human hybrid called an Avatar. So you kind of like go inside this body from a machine. Does that make any sense? Hopefully it does. This is a process known as linking, and Jake's consciousness is transferred from himself to his avatar, allowing him to interact with the indigenous humanoid and navi species. Because they're kind of angry that the Resource Development Administration and the humans are destroying their planet for the resources. Of course we are. That was the first time I ever heard the term unobtainium, which is the resource that they were looking for. Did you see Avatar Ron? Nope. What? Never. Never. Still haven't seen it. No. No desire. It's a good movie. No desire. Come on. You love James Cameron movies. Yeah. I like Aliens, Terminator, Terminator 2. I love those movies. They're great. It's basically the same. No, it's not. It's got the same kind of crappy dialogue. It's got the same sort of military gung-ho captain guy. It's got all that stuff. It's got everything you want. And it's got, like, weird alien side boob. It was the first major 3D movie that made, like, a huge splash. Like, everybody saw this movie except for Ron. And if you have a 3D movie, you've got to have a 3D trans light. This was, what do they call it, lenticular? Yeah, like when you move left to right, it kind of moves and looks 3D. Looks pretty damn cool. It does look cool, but it's also kind of, like, not that fancy. Yeah, like it's like, it's a bit of a meh game, isn't it? I always liked it. You always liked it? Yeah, the LE, I'm trying to remember the differences. The LE had the amp suit actually moved. Like the feet went up and down or went side to side. And it had the nabby ball, which is basically the power ball. That's all it is. Why does the game get a lot of crap? It's another one of those from the stripped down era. It just has one ramp. One really long kind of wiggly ramp, plastic ramp. It's got the bash toy, I guess you could call it, the amp suit. It's got the link shot going into the movie. I always liked it just because I think it was one of the first games they did where it did the thing where you get the lanes up top, and then it flashes all these Xs, and then whatever shot you hit, it locks in a multiplier on it, so the shot's worth more. It's one of the first ones I've seen like that. So people would say that that is a Lonnie invention because he did the software on the game? Lonnie or Lyman. One or the other. It's very blue, which is my favorite color. That's another reason maybe I liked it. I don't know. It's got a magnet in front of the bash. We're getting the magnets. Borg is getting into it. He has his magnets. Orbit spinners. Orbit spinners. He likes his orbit spinners. Yeah. It shoots absolutely fine. And it's got the call outs. They got the military dude from the movie, and he goes all out on this thing. He makes it. He goes all out. Some people know that this is kind of the meal ticket, right? I've got to ride this character out until the end. It's like the guy from the pirate from Jersey Jack's Pirates of the Caribbean from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He's like, I'm going to be this pirate forever because it's going to pay me. Butch is the cause. I am Sue Jackpot! Like, yeah. So if you want more of that, Ron, you've got to watch the two movies. I believe he died in the first one, but he's back in the second one. Is that true? I can't give some ideas. Yeah, he is. He's in the second one, even though he died in the first one, because he was the main bad guy. And I believe he lives through the second one, so he's still alive, which makes no sense. Well, if you watch the damn movie, Ron. No, it still makes no sense. This brings me to the greatest game ever created. Oh, boy. Tron Legacy. In fact, it's called Disney's Tron Legacy. it's the licensed fantasy film theme, The Machines from 2011, John Borg on design, art by John Yowsey, dots by Galvez, sound by David Thiel, and we got Lonnie Ropp, Lyman Sheets, and Tom Uban on code. The theme. It's Tron. Tron Legacy is the science fiction film released in 2010, directed by Joseph Koskinski. He did Top Gun Maverick, You love that movie. Yeah, that was a good movie. I actually saw that one, yeah. Tron Legacy takes place several years after the events of the original Tron film released in 1982, which I saw when I was like a kid in the late 80s, early 90s, and I freaking loved that movie. So when this was coming out, oh, man, I was all in. I was old enough that I was, I watched, it might have been Alice in Wonderland. I think it was Alice in Wonderland. At a movie theater as a kid. Like a Disney movie? Yeah, because Disney would re-release them every so many years. And then they have trailers of upcoming Disney properties, and they had the trailer for Tron. So it wasn't out yet. It was the trailer. And I remember the cone thing. Yeah, the Master Computer. Yeah, Master Control Program spinning around, and that freaked me out as a kid. That scared the shit out of me. But, yes, we got Jeff Bridges again. We have a John Borg-Jeff Bridges connection. Iron Man, now Tron. Borg Bridges. Borg Bridges. The greatest collaboration that we ever get in Pinball Machines. Yes. This story centers around Sam Flynn, or Garrett Heidland, the son of Kevin Flynn, who was played by Jeff Bridges. He's the protagonist from the first Tron film, who has disappeared mysteriously. Sam, a rebellious young man, finds himself pulled into the digital world of the grid, similar to his father in the first movie. So it's kind of like, what would it be like to live inside of a computer? That's kind of the Tron world, and they take that up visually in something amazing. The coolest part about this movie is that Sam discovers that his father has been trapped in the grid for years, and it's being controlled by a program named Clue. And he's also played by Jeff Bridges, but it's a de-aged Jeff Bridges. This was like the first movie that I had ever seen anybody who was de-aged. And it blew my frigging mind. Because there's like a scene where this helmet comes off and it shows Jeff Bridges. But like 80s Jeff Bridges. And you're like, what? You look at it now and it kind of sucks in comparison to some of the stuff that Disney has done recently. But my God, at the time it was crazy. It's an awesome, awesome movie. Do you love this movie? I've never seen it. What? I've seen the original. I've never seen that. Oh, my God. This movie is great. I know I would like. What's the guy's name? Caster? Yeah, Caster's awesome. I would love that guy just from the game. He's like a bar owner kind of David Bowie crazy. I am just out of that. Yeah, he's so good. So the movie itself actually is a 51% Rotten Tomatoes. There are issues with the movie, particularly that you can tell that the script had been rewritten a bunch of times and that there are pieces of a bunch of different writers that you can see where the movie wanted to go in certain ways, but it didn't go, which is a bit disappointing. But it has a significant cult following, similar to the original Tron movie. So, like, people like me who are like, this movie's f***ing great, totally know that. I'll beep it out. This was kind of the first time that Disney had waded into, like, the idea of a universe, kind of like a Marvel or a Star Wars universe. They were kind of in trying to create different franchises franchises that they could milk to death. And there's actually a Tron Legacy spinoff animated show that was on Disney as well. Now, from the pinball's perspective, this was kind of the beginning, I would say, of the renaissance of pinball. This and probably the Transformers. They started to actually sell more of these, and they started to do more stuff with LEs and things like that. They didn't have the whole pro-premium LE stuff yet, but they did LEs for Tron, which had, if I can remember, I think it had EL wire on the ramps, so the ramps all light up. It had drop targets on the left instead of the stand-ups, and it gave you an extra multiball, Daft Punk multiball. We're looking at the play field here. Is this the flowiest flow game that ever flowed? It flows pretty good. It's insanity. It has one of my favorite shots of all time. The Quora shot or the Gem shot? Yeah, end of line. You hit the side ramp, it comes around, and you try to hit the scoop, and you get end of line. And it increases in value every time you hit it. If you could just keep hitting it. And if you really want to make it awesome, you do the right orbit all the way around to the upper left flipper, up the side flipper, then into the scoop. Awesome. It's amazing. Hey, Pinheads. When I'm not doing this podcast, I'm Dave, the financial advice guy. In a recent survey, we found that 70% of those polled were concerned about their retirement strategy. Canadians have a number of concerns when looking out over the next 15 years. Professional financial advice is key to helping you through a variety of challenges, ranging from inflation, market volatility, and determining how to maximize your retirement income in the safest, most effective, and tax-efficient way. Today's economy requires an experienced hand and a personalized plan. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Nordman. I am the Nordman, and I approve of Dennis Financial's investment and insurance advice. Their opinions on vacuum point grants are great, too. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial, Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book. Or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc., Canadian residents only. I would say, you know, everybody knows I have one of these, so I'm just trying to boost the value of my game. and quite frankly you can't blame me for that because it is actually it it does actually sort of stand the test of time of being a quality game it's great it's it's like iron man where it's really hard to kind of get anywhere but it it is fun when you get there yeah but we'll see we'll see more of this play field when we get to turtles now plastic ramps yeah it's not a fan layout because it has the third flipper to two kind of right hand shots but it does flow like crazy. A lot of it is, what gets me with this game is the way that those plastic ramps are molded. It, like, cradles the ball at high speed. There's some serious thought that went into the mold and design to cradle the ball, so it doesn't rattle around and bounce out or hit funny. One thing about Borg, he's definitely a fan of plastic ramps. What flows better, this or Star Trek by Stern? Star Trek. Star Trek does. But I think this is a little more fun because the ball times are shorter. It's pretty nutty. It's pretty nutty. Now, is this the greatest pinball machine of all time? I consider buying one at some point, so it's got to be at least that good. Yeah, okay. So Ron agrees. The funniest thing about this to me was the fact that the LE had the EL wire for the ramp, so the ramps light up. Almost immediately, somebody came up with a kit that you can just put EL wire on your pro to get this. It's like a little thing that goes on the bottom of the playfield, and the holes are already in the playfield around the rings. So you just sort of run this, what is it, electroluminescent? Is that the EL? Probably. Sounds right. So it basically shoots a light through the tube, and then the tube lights up, and it changes color and flicks around. There's been a few versions of this, but the original one. Oh, I forgot. The other LE thing was the moving recognizer, which is the thing above. It's got a spinning disc, and above it there's this recognizer thing, and on the LE it actually moves back and forth, kind of like the thing on Stargate that would move back and forth. Yeah, it's a very similar, it's attached to the backboard, and it just sort of moves left to right. It's kind of like a bit of a meh, but at the same time it's neat, I guess. It's neat. Now, they did multiple runs of this game. Oh, they did a lot of runs of this game. Now, they did a lot of runs, but those runs were small numbers. We don't know how many numbers they did, but there aren't a lot of these pinball machines out there, even though they've ran them a few times. But there's ways that you can tell which run your machine was on. So, for example, the first run of Pros in 2011, it had the screen-printed side art, so it didn't have decals, so the art was put directly on the cabinet. I'm trying to remember if they even called it Pros. It might have just been the regular Tron, L-E-Tron. It has the 3D movie Translight, so they took that idea kind of... Lenticular Translight. There's an unknown unit count, and its MSRP was $5,699. Now, when people are freaking out about the cost of pros nowadays, if you adjust for inflation, that's actually $7,440. Yeah, but it's MSRP. No one was paying that. The second run were the LEs. there were only 400 LE. True LE, baby. That's pretty, pretty, pretty good. That was also sold in 2011. It had the screen printed side arts, it had the drop targets, the ramp lighting, and the Daft Punk multiball, and of course the recognizer you mentioned. But in all instances it's basically the same as the pros. Other versions that were run in 2012, they ran a third run, which were just pros, so there was no premium at this time. It had side decals. Yeah, they stopped screen printing. And they also had the clue translights. So it's the yellow guy with the helmet. And it was not 3D. Yeah, they did that because the company that they used, they used the same company for those lenticular back glasses. And they either went out of business or stopped doing them. So that's why they stopped. Because they were doing, like every version, every couple of games seemed to have a lenticular back glass and then, or translight, and then they stopped. That's why. The fourth run was in 2013. Now, there were 200 units. Now, that's unconfirmed, but that's on IPDV, so it must be through the rumor mill somehow. There was 200 machines run on the fourth run. That has the side decals, and it has the Quora and Gem Translight, who are the ladies from the film. Yep. Okay. He's got to come down now. David's got to come down. We're out of Tron. Are you okay? I'm fine. Okay. We're going to go to X-Men. X-Men. It's the X-Men. It is the licensed comic book superhero theme. August of 2012. John Borg did the design. John Yowsey. Stephen Jensen, who only did some of the art here on X-Men. That's the only time he's ever been seen. Dots by Mark Galvez. Tom Kisivat. Tom Kisivat. And Rory O'Donnell. Music by the legend David Thiel. software Lonnie D. Ropp, Ways and Chang, and Mike Kisivet. Kisivet. Why can't you say his name right? Either brother. Kisivet. So Mike and Tom are brothers that work at Star Wars. Yes. Either that or for father and son, but I assume they're brothers. Yeah, they're both very similar in age and look exactly the same. The theme, this is X-Men, the long-running comic book series written by Stan Lee. Artist was Jack Kirby. It was first published in 1963, and it revolves around the team of mutant superheroes with extraordinary abilities known as the X-Men. Then let's get on to the game. Who's your favorite X-Men character? Don't cop out and say Wolverine. Well, I did watch one or two of the X-Men movies. I don't know. I think Magneto's kind of cool. Magneto's my favorite. Thank you. Look at us. Look at us. We're like the best of friends. I like what's-his-face who plays him. What's that guy's name? He was in Lord of the Rings 2. Oh. He's best friends with Patrick Stewart. But, yeah, again, this is, they don't have the pro-premium stuff again. They have the regular one, and then they had the LE, which they had two different LEs that you could get, which is pretty neat. I'm trying to think, what's the last time? Ian McKellen. Ian McKellen. I'm trying to think, what's the last time the Stern has had different LEs? So the Magneto LE, it had this, it was red with like cool Magneto art. It had a mirrored back glass, 250 units. Then the Cop Out Wolverine LE was blue. It had more of the heroes, not just Wolverine. Mirrored Wolverine back glass and 300 units. People wanted good guys more than bad guys. Yeah, no, the Magneto one is the coolest. That's the one that I've played. I've played the Magneto LE. Now, the big difference between the Pro and the Ellie is the Wolverine figure is very similar to the Well Walker, right? Yeah, very similar. And on the Ellie, it's got the moving ramp that comes over and almost hits him and sometimes does hit him. There's the Magneto figure, which is over the ball lock in the back. That's cool. It has a spinning disc magnet. Like, that's something that comes up a lot with John Borg. It has a magnet in front of the Wolverine toy as well. Again, similar to the Well Walker. and it has these pop-up targets on the LE, which are like the, what are they called? Like the Scolari brothers? They're trolls. No, they're the trolls. Oh. They're like trolls in Medieval Madness. This has a bit of a controversy amongst its layout, right? That it is basically the reverse of Tron? Nah. I would say no. There's way more shots. And there's a lot more toys and stuff. There's a ton of shots at the top. There's so many shots up there on the top part of the play field. And it's got, I mean, we're seeing Borg style now. We got bash toys, magnets, spinning discs, side ramp now. He's putting a side ramp in there. But those orbits, oh, my goodness, those orbits. Shot through the pops. Oh, my God, I love shots through the pops. But this is one of the ones I know a lot of people preferred the non-LE because the ramp was a little clunkier because it moved. Yeah, the ramp on the side. Yeah, it would move. So a lot of people prefer the Pro. And a lot of people didn't like it because the Wolverine toy is huge. He is huge. He's got to be close to hitting the glass. On the left side, like, there's this custom-molded toy of Wolverine in that yellow. It's really tall. It's wide. It covers the pop bumpers. It covers the ramp. It's in the way. So a lot of people remove them, right? I've seen it where it's just a captive ball only. Yeah, I have as well. In fact, the first time I played it, I was like, oh, I don't remember the captive ball being there. Or the second time I played it. And that's because then I noticed that the Wolverine had been removed. I'm like, oh. Yeah, they moved the Wolverine and replaced him with a captive ball. This is the way to go, in my opinion. He's too big. He is big. You know what they should have done is just put a piece of flat plastic there. People love the flat plastic. But his shoe's good. I mean, people like the, I think the Pro didn't have the spinning disc, but it had the magnet. That's right, yeah. And the LE, you would hit Magneto, come down, hold the ball, and then spin. Basically kind of like Turtles does, and the balls fly out. Yep. It shot fine. It's great. And it's got awesome art. It's got that comic book-y art. Yes. But like the real comic book art. We're getting better art. It's beautiful. The biggest letdown. Oh, the call-outs. I'm stormed. Oh, God, it's bad. It's so bad. And the music is kind of off. I mean, the sound and everything is done by the legend David Thiel. So something's up here. Something is like, you're using our call-out, people. I'm assuming that he had a lot of licensor restrictions. Because when we look at something like Marvel's Avengers. The second one? The second one. Even the first one was terrible with the call-outs. Actually, yeah, because I played that recently. And it's like, yeah, this isn't very good either. Except Hulk. Although it's tough to mess up Hulk. You just get someone to go, Hulk smash! And then you're fine. Yeah, see, you could have done it. Sure. It's a bit of a bummer that way. Now, what I have seen is people that were able to hack the code, change some of the callouts, and add the music from the X-Men television show from the 90s. And it makes the game a million times better. But we don't want anyone to be doing that. That's, you know, piss off Stern there. Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. That's against your end user license. Pretty much, yeah. Or if you're going to do that, don't bring it to a show. Yeah. And crank up the sound and bring it to a show that Stern is at. Like, hey, check it out. I guess this is the moment that everybody's been waiting for, Ron. Metallica. This is the band pin based on Metallica, the band. Sells in 2013. No unit count, but I bet you they sold a lot of these. and they had a lot of runs. Design by John Borg. Art by Dirty Donnie. Dots by Mark Galvez. Tom Kizavat. And Rory O'Donnell. Rory O'Donnell. Music and sound by Vince Pontarelli. And software by Lime and Cheese. How would you say that, Ron? Vince Pontarelli. Vince Pontarelli. It's fine. Pontarelli. You don't have to make it insanely Italian. Are you sure? I'm sure. yay this was covered a lot in our lime and sheets episode so we're not going to go too much into this but I did want to bring in some great quotes that I did find while doing some research around this one and then talk a little bit about the layout but when it comes to the theme what do you think about the theme of Metallica for pinball I think James Hetfield really wanted a Metallica pinball and his band was big enough that he was able to get it done Fair. Because he already had an Earthshaker rethemed to be Metallica, and that wasn't enough, man. So they went to CERN, and we want a Metallica pinball. And you're using our art guy. Yep, and you're using our art guy. Thank God. Dirty Donnie, please come back. He saved art for pinball. There's, like, before Dirty Donnie and after Dirty Donnie. It's pretty funny how that happens. We've mentioned that a couple of times. It's like, yeah, you need to use our guy. It's like, thank God. Thank God. Because when that came out, it was just like, oh, my God, look at the art on this thing. The pinball artist is cool again. What happened? So cool. Well, John Borg would say, and I mean, the guy's a bro. He's a bro. He knows what's up. He knows what's up. Yeah, Borg would say, I did a lot of BMX biking when I was a kid. We used to take out a boom box and go to the trails and just do some crazy shit on our bikes while we're listening to Metallica. Metallica pumps you up. There you go. Lyman says, I enjoyed working on music games. You have a lot more freedom with what you get to do with the game. You get a lot more fun with it. So you can see that these guys with the theming here, John Borg understands that Metallica's a go pumping you up in excitement and speed and fun and loud, and Lyman understands that you've basically got an original theme and you can kind of do whatever you want with it. And Borg is still known to go biking occasionally around the Stern factory. He's so much cooler than me, Ron. Well, to be truthful, that's probably not hard. What about that layout? This is a layout, right? It's really, really good I think this is his first game where we have We have the three models That Stern is doing to this day We have the Pro, the Premium, and the LE They actually had multiple versions of the Premium for this So the Pro, I think I remember about the Pro It's got this cool snake and the snake had fangs. And in the initial run of pros, and you can see it like in the flyer pictures and stuff, and the problem was it's got teeth. The teeth kept getting broke off, so they stopped putting the teeth in there. So subsequent runs, the poor snake has no teeth. Which is funny because there's a call out where they say, look at the fangs on that thing. Like, what fangs? But we have Orbit spinners. Well, if you have the premium. We have Orbit Spinners. We got the Bash toy right up the center. Magnets. Super flowy. Metal ramps this time. Yes, and it's left to right. We got, yeah, magnets. Fan layout. Inline drop targets. It's got a scoop. What blows my mind about this game, okay, when you look at that rear ramp way back to the left, right next to the inline drop targets and to the left of Sparky, the way the ball kind of goes up there and around that corner it like defies physics it goes up it's very steep and then it just sort of goes and sucks it down the down the habit trail it's unbelievable I don't understand how ramps in pinball work and I would love to sit with George Gomez and John Borg and talk about how ramps work because I find it so fascinating The coolest thing about shooting these ramps because they not plastic is the way that the ball goes like around them It makes that shink noise. Shink noise. I got to remember that. Is that in the new pinball dictionary? Shink. It goes shink. I mean, the centerpiece of this entire game is Sparky. John Borg loves a good bash toy. And Sparky, I think, is probably one of the ultimate bash toys. Now, granted, when you hit Sparky, it doesn't actually physically move because they don't want to damage the toy. It has an optical sensor in front of it that sees the ball. And then underneath the play field, there's a coil that makes him shake a little. It's actually above the play field. Is it? The coil is a little coil that's right behind him, and it just pulses and rocks. Because the top of him is separate than the bottom part. Because in the 90s, you literally hit bash toys, but they would break all the time. Well, he hit Wolverine. He didn't break. Yeah. Borg's pretty good at making the bash toys that don't break. I have yet to see an Iron Munger that was broken. I've seen Iron Mungers that don't register, but I haven't seen ones that were, like, the thing was falling apart. Although I think Iron Munger was just a toy that they repurposed. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Borg says there's not one toy that's really a lot stronger than the other one. The electric chair is the biggest toy in the game. When the guy starts writhing with the ball sitting on the magnet, he's, you know, it's just, it's a riot. Donnie made a real nice prototype sketch of Sparky, and we sent it over to Dave Link in Evolution Studios, and he sculpted it. It looks spot on to the drawing that Donnie created. They really went with a collaborative approach here to really bring the world that Donnie and the team wanted. They really, I think, did a knockout job. One knock that this game does get is that it is basically Iron Man. No, it's not Iron Man. No, it's not. It's not Iron Man. Whoever said that is dumb. Oh, it's a fan layout left to right. Okay. It's got two ramps. So does Terminator 2. So does, like, a ton of games. Right. So give me a break here. You're not going to get me on that one. Believe me, with Bork, there's enough comparisons you can make to other games. But that's not one of them. Now, this is, what, one of his, like, top three games? because you've got Tron is obviously number one. Then you've got like probably this one. Are we going by sales or how much you like them? How much? No, but objectively. Objectively, if you're going by sales, Metallica would be number one. No. Well, if you go by sales, Star Wars would be his number one game. Yeah, we're not talking about that game. Shoot the Death Star. The better of the Star Wars games ever created by Stern.East. You had mentioned before that the premium, it had the monsters and the road case. Yeah. I only know one person who has the road case. Basically, the Monsters Edition is the one with, they're like demons on the Translight. You know, they're not like real looking people. Very scary Metallica. In the road case version, the cabinet looks like a road case and it looks really nice. The play field is exactly the same, but the Translight is an actual photograph of the band and they look really old. It had the Pro, and it had the LE Master of Puppets Edition, where they only made 500. Only 500. It's a real LE. And then they made the Pro LED version. Yeah, because the original Pro was used incandescent, so then they had the Pro LED version. And then they also released, like, another set of premiums, but they were still the Monster premiums. And then they re-released, like, the end-of-the-line Pros, which were basically the LED Pro again. And that was, I want to say, 2018? Yeah, I'm trying to remember which one I have because they have the different backbox. Because the originals have the older backbox style than the newer ones have where the display is slanted. So, less glare. Yeah, they made a lot of these. What do you think? Five, six thousand? No one ever makes as many of these as they think they make. I'm telling you. I feel like five thousand is not a lot. Four to five thousand max. Okay, well, I think they made a lot of these. They did make a lot. They were very happy. I play this game a lot. It's in my league. I like it a lot. And you have full support of the band because the lead singer is the Big Pinhead, and they did the call-outs. Yeah! I'm going to be controversial here. Don't really like the ours. I appreciate the quality. I appreciate the detail. Don't really like it. What are you, Lars? What the hell's wrong with you? It's not Dirty Donnie's. We have the Lars of the podcast, ladies and gentlemen. His callouts suck. Every time it's like, shut up, Lars. Whatever. He sucks. Terrible. Terrible. His next game was The Walking Dead. That's the licensed TV series based on zombies from AMC. September of 2014, Kevin O'Connor and Stephen Jensen on art. Dots by Mark Galvez, Tom Kizavat, Rory O'Donnell. Rory O'Donnell! Vince Pontarelli and Lyman Sheets Jr. We also covered that in the Lime and Cheese Jr. episode because, quite frankly, the code is out of this world on this game. This is probably Borg's other top three game. So I'd probably put this one ahead of Metallica, in my opinion. Well, John says, Walking Dead has such a huge following. I'll probably even bring some new people into pinball, which would be really great. The Walking Dead fans are big collectors of Walking Dead and zombie paraphernalia. This is the ultimate zombie toy. It's just, it's amazing. It's true. That is absolutely 100% true. For some reason, those people that like The Walking Dead and they like horror and zombie, they are all in on The Walking Dead. They got the bobbleheads and the shirts. He's right. Now, the layout. Borg says, the layout was a big challenge because it's a little different than some of the recent games I made. The whole project was really a lot of work, but awesome. I was really stoked to get this title. I mean, it's fun, but people really complained about this layout. Well, they complained how brutal it was. It is brutal It is not fan at all It does have a lot of shots left to right But there's like this The whole right side is very weird It's very fan How is it not fan? There's no cyclone Well, because it's got that weird loop through the pops You mean the skill shot? Yeah, it's kind of the way Yeah, but the ball gets in there Alright, if you think it's a fan You can write us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com So the LE, it had a significant difference with the bicycle girl under the ramp. So the left ramp would flip up, and there would be the bicycle girl underneath you and smash her in the face. Premium NLE. That's right. The crossbow from Austin Powers, so you'd shoot the right ramp, and it would go through the apron and load a swinging thing. He brought one of his previous Mets back. The MSRP for this LE, loaded LE, lots of stuff in it, lots of toys, was $8,595 MSRP. Now, with inflation, that's $10,736. So it's still a good deal. It's really one of his, I would say, unique layouts he ever did. It's totally different than what he usually did. People complaining about, oh, Fan Leo, John Borg, two ramps, blah, blah, blah. Ball coming out of the pops, drain. Ball just drain, drain, drain, drain all over the place. A weird shot on the right side with Well Walker being so close to the flippers. Yep, we still have the bass toy. We have a couple. We have bass toy, we have the prison, which is a bass thing. So we still have the Borg elements, but it is different. This also had one of the coolest toppers around if you're into deadheads. Literally. Inside of a fish tank. That comes from, I don't know, season three or four. It's pretty cool, although, again, not for me. That sold for $400 USD, and that was a heck of a lot different than the topper we have today. It'd be like $1,500, $2,000 topper now. How about Kiss? I have played a lot of Kiss. It's the licensed band theme. May of 2015, and of course it's John Borg designed this because that's all he does is band themes. Art by Kevin O'Connor. The dots have been uncredited. Vince Ponarelli on sound. Lyman Sheets Jr. on software. And Kevin O'Connor did the original Bally Kiss, so they brought him in to do the new Kiss. And it looks just gorgeous. Hand-drawn, looks like the old game. That's right. Gene Simmons of Kiss approves. It's a Spike 1 game. So we've moved out of the era of Sam. We're Spike, but we're still Dot Matrix. And the Dot Matrix on the Spike games is awesome because they're able to have extra computing power, so it's almost like a video but in dots. It's so awesome. It's so good. This is where I pull probably the greatest quote Lonnie Ropp has ever said. He says, Pinball music, rock and roll music in particular, It's a great marriage. When you're younger and become interested in music and it starts affecting your life, you're usually listening to music that's not the music of your mom and dad. It's that music of the next generation, that new group, that new thing. And when you become an adult and you acquire some different tastes, but you still have that music vibe in your head, it's in your personality, it's in your bones. You walk up to a pinball machine and it's kiss music. You're hearing music that's drawing back experiences that you had when you were in junior high, high school, or college. And before you even flipped one ball, you're like, this game is awesome. Wow, Lonnie said that? That sounds like an advertisement for Kiss. That is a big deal, right? Like, he understands through and through. And Lonnie is a big Kiss fan, so he gets it. Although it's funny to look at Kiss now being, like, not the music of your mom and dad because it's like. It's the music of your granddad at this point. Yeah, like, it's funny that way. But it's also like, what is that song that this is made for loving you? I Was Made For Loving You? Oh, their disco song they did, yes. Yeah, like that's... Yeah, they tried the disco thing. How about the layout? Hey, this is a good layout. Yeah, we got the plastic ramp on the right side. Actually, isn't there a plastic ramp in the center too? I think it is. We brought back the plastic. We have four pop-upers because we're bringing it back to the original KISS machine. They had the four pop-upers. And they used the same pop-upper caps that were used in the original Bally Kiss. Such a great defense. We got flames everywhere because, you know, it's Kiss. Explosions. Of course, we put Gene. Gene Simmons' head is the demon, like the big toy on the play field. I mean, it's not really a bash toy, per se, I guess you could say. You hit it in him, and the balls. It's like a scoop underneath. The balls come out of his mouth. I'm sure once Gene saw that, he was one of the main things in the game. He's like, I like where the Sazan is going. Good job. Good job, everybody. He brought the Cairo Swordsman back, kind of. The Cairo Swordsman from Indiana Jones is in the same spot. It's now the Love Gun area. Well, it starts Love Gun multiball. I don't know if it's called Love Gun area, but you hit it in there. But it is now. Yeah. In the Premium LE, it's got Drop Target in front of it. On the Pro, you can just hit it in there, bounce around. You try to build up the Love Gun meter. It's got the Kiss Army kind of colossal bonus thing in the middle. The Premium Ellie has all the stuff on the back panel. So when you hit the right ramp to start Love Gun, it grabs the ball, and it goes all the way across the back panel because you're supposed to be, what, Paul Stanley? It's not supposed to be Paul Stanley, like, swinging across. Oh. He's doing a great, come on, awesome video that you said. That's one of the video clips is Paul Stanley going across the thing. That was insane. This is such a great video. Very Kiss, and they used all the right songs. I mean, they used all the... Same thing with Metallica. They used all the songs that you would want to be in a Metallica game. Basically, old stuff. And I don't... You know, I'm not a big Kiss fan. I'm not like... I'm not turning on Kiss to listen to it in the car. But when I'm playing this game, I'm like, man, this is awesome. Like, the newest song, I think, in the game is Lick It Up. And that's like 83, something like that. Lick it up! Lick it up! Gene Simmons knows where his bread is buttered. And it is before 1984. Yeah. And Gene does have one of these. Of course he does. He's keeping it for a long time so that he can sell it later. And autograph by himself and then say how it's Gene Simmons' personal kiss. So, yeah. The code on this game, it was lacking. It took a long time to get there, I think. Well, they had an update like years after the game was done. So the game was released in May of 2015, and it had a few code updates here and there. The code was literally finished in October of 2019. And that last bit, and then a lot of people were like, that took it over the edge. Now it's totally off. Because then they had city, was it city combos or city donors or something? Well, they had the choose your city, which they never really did anything with. Yeah, so the problem, okay, and people give Lonnie and Stern a lot of crap. You have to think, this is a major transition period through that sort of 2013 era. They don't have the staff that they once had. It was like Lonnie and one other person working on code for this game. The dots, the code, the integration, all of that stuff was such a big deal and took so much effort that they couldn't just take as much time as they do now. They didn't have the staff. So Lonnie was working on a bunch of other games and then was able to go back and finish the code. That's a big deal. They've got a lot of speech call-outs in this. John Borg says, I love how Gene is spelled here. Oh, sorry. John Borg says, Gene and Paul both recorded speech for the game, The Demon and the Star Child. We wrote probably 600 lines. I want to say 45 pages. And they're good. Well, of course they're good. I'm Gene Simmons. They're good. I'm Gene Simmons, and you need to shoot the pinball machine. Paul was good in his hand. That was insane! So much fun. So much fun. Anything else you want to tie up with this game? Would you buy one of these? I think I'd buy one of these. The thing is, the next game that came out was very similar. Yeah, okay, so this is Aerosmith. This is the, again, licensed band theme. May of 2016. It's a Spike 2 game. John Borg on design, Dirty Donnie on art. Dots are uncredited. Vince Pontarelli on music and sound. Software by Lonnie Ropp. The first released Spike 2 game. And this is, a Spike 2 game is a game with an LCD screen. Oh, yeah. Released because Batman 66 wasn't out yet, even though it had been unveiled. So, yeah. Exactly. Now, this is Dirty Donnie's best art package. It is so detailed. It is so beautiful. The colors are awesome. The layers that he has added. The Easter eggs that he has added. It is so cool. Yeah, I know a lot of people, when this came out, especially the pro version, if you look at the play field, the right ramp is in the same spot, seemingly same spot as Kiss. Then the shot to the left of it was the Demon. The center ramp is in the same spot. Exactly the same place. They're metal instead of plastic. But the thing is, on the premium in L.E., they had the whole upper play field. I thought it was cool. I really liked the upper play field. and I almost never see premium or LE Aerosmiths. I find that really strange. Do you think it was cost? Do you think people didn't buy them because it was more expensive? More people bought the pros. They did. I don't know. I really like that upper play field. Because the problem with upper playfields is sometimes you kind of get up there and you've got to hack away. You weren't up there too long. The upper play field there is if you don't use that upper flipper, it goes around and back down the ramp just like it normally would. And it's a small, just a little mini playfield. It's not going to stay up there too long. So we've got a scoop on the left side, a shot through the pops, two ramps, a bash toy with a magnet, orbits that are super fast. This is, Aerosmith is quintessentially a Borg layout 100%. What about Jackie? Can you describe Jackie to me? He is like a joker. Well, actually, he's like a jack-in-the-box that would come out. And he's done by Brendon Small. just like Sparky was done by Brendon Small. So whenever they want that voice, they hire Brendon Small. Beautiful sculpt, and he's got his hands on a toy box, which I believe is a callback to one of the Aerosmith albums. Toys in the Attic. Yeah. And what you do is you shoot kind of the bash toy in front, and then it allows you to lock a ball. And you can kind of press your luck by adding up to, what, six balls? Yeah, and basically it's, I think it's the same mech or similar mech that Borg did for NBA, where he fired it into the basket. Now it's firing it into the toy box. Yeah, you shoot this kind of like saucer on the right side next to the ramp, which feels awesome when you do it because it kind of clicks into place. It's awesome. And you can skill shot it in there if you do it right. And then it'll shoot the ball kind of up and over, around, and hit inside the box, and then he closes the box. He opens the box and closes the box. And then when it's time for multiball, kind of the floor of the box opens up, the floor of the box raises, and all the balls come pouring out. It is an epic, epic toy. And it's nice, you know, custom sculpt. CERN is starting to get away from the whole just buying stuff at Walmart aren't putting in the game. They're actually doing custom sculpts for these games. So the upper play field, the big difference there is you shoot up the ramp, you're in the upper play field, and it's got kind of like a loop that you can shoot with the flipper, but it also has the love in the elevator elevator. Love in an elevator. That's from Pump, I believe. That was a big album. It's really cool. I really like this game. This game got a lot of grief, I feel like. Well, a lot of it was like, man, it looks like Kiss. Yeah. But the interesting thing is they have the LCD, but there's no footage of the band in concert. Yeah, so it's all animated cartoon. And I guess the reason was Harris Smith didn't own their own concert footage or something. So they couldn't use, like, we can't use concert videos of us because we don't own the concert videos of us. Or the music videos, for that matter. Isn't that crazy? And because this is the first released LCD and there's no video assets, they had to create their own assets. And it's a skeleton crew. There's not a whole lot of big people working with Chuck Ernst. They did the best they could. You can tell. They did the best they could. It's not great. I'd own this game. I don't really like Aerosmith that much, but I would own this game. Wow. I would. Because that Jackie toy, the shots are awesome. The art is awesome. It's not an offensive theme. It's great. But here's a game I'm shocked that you don't own, and that's Guardians of the Galaxy, the licensed superhero film theme. May of 2007. It's a Spike 2 game. John Borg on design. Art by Christopher Franchi. DOS by Zach Zac Stark. Music and sound by Kendall Hale. Software, Lonnie D. Ropp, Waste and Chang, and Mike Kizavat. Yay, you said it right. The theme. Awesome theme. Yeah, John Borg says, in the beginning they asked me if I wanted to do a game about intergalactic criminals fighting a crazed warrior along with a gun-toting raccoon and a muscle-down tree. And I'm like, yeah, I'm in for that. God, he's so cool. He's so cool. He was so cool. He's so cool, in fact, that when I saw him from a distance at Pintastic last year, I was too shy to go say hi. Are you going to go, if you're going to Pintastic, are you going to go Thursday when they do the karaoke and you could sing with them? He's so cool. He's so intimidating. Now, originally the art was done by Dirty Donnie, and the art was so bad it was rejected by the licensor. I have seen a leaked image of this art. I can't find it, but I remember seeing a leaked image years ago of Dirty Donnie's original kind of concept, and it was not good. I don't know if he didn't want to do the project he couldn't do the project or it just the guidance he was given just didn't go the way it should have been but it was and of course it was preliminary right it wasn't a finished product so then they decided to bring on Christopher Franchi and he had just finished the Batman project this art package is stunning it's so good did you know that there's an easter egg under the ramp? Probably, but I forget what it is. Yeah. So you don't get to see it unless you take the ramp off, and it says, we're the Guardians of the Galaxies, bitch. Eh. Which I think is a line from the movie. I'm sure it is. There's lots of lines from the movie, but they're not done by the people from the movie. We'll get to that in a second. This game also got a lot of crap. It's so funny, the things that people in pinball gripe about. This game gets crap because it has too many hexagons. At the time, it was like hexagon gate. Artists are sensitive about the comments they get online, Christopher Franchi probably being one of the more sensitive. He got a lot of crap about the hexagons. Hexagons on the ramp. Hexagons in the middle of the playfield. Hexagons for the multipliers. Hexagons, like, hidden under the playfield. Like, hexagons, hexagons, hexagons. What do you think? Too many hexagons? I didn't really notice. I wasn't like, oh my god, there's so many hexagons. I didn't know. On Batman, Christopher Franchi only did the cabinet and translight and a couple of the images on the playfield, but he didn't do the whole thing. This is his first entirely from the ground up art package, and it's awesome. Christopher Franchi, we miss you. It's turn, my friend. This game is beautiful. This game is Metallica. Right. Again, it's tweaked Metallica, But if you go across the shots. So left to right. On the left side, you have the fuel shot. Left orbit. Then the shot next to it was where the inlines were on Metallica. This time, the rocket raccoon shot. The kicker fired back at you. But it's also, it's just like Iron Man. Same spot. You got the left ramp. This time it's plastic. And it takes a slightly different path. And you have your Batch toy in the center. Instead of Sparky, it's an awesome looking Groot head. Great sculpt there. Absolutely amazing. And he opens his mouth and you shoot the ball in his mouth. Looks good. Then where the snake was, you have the orb with a drop target in front of it. And the right ramp. And a hidden magnet. And you got the right orbit. Then you got the, what was it called, the crank it up, where you would shoot for crank it up on Metallica, the scoop all the way on the right. Again, they're not exactly in the same place. And it shoots completely different than Metallica. But the basic shots are very similar. It's a fan layout. It's hard to make fan layouts very significantly different. But we've got a wide open play field. Things are pushed in the back. My only gripe about this game is that the ramp shots are too tight. If the ramp shots were slightly larger, this game would be... Play better. Well, that's the problem is I don't play better. And that's why more recent Stern games are easier. because they realize people like me are bad. When we were talking about Kiss earlier, I always found the right ramp on Kiss really hard to hit. But this ramp, almost exactly the same location. So you should probably be good at it by now. But this is one of those games that everyone I knew got the pro. Yeah, so the LE, it had the group. It had kind of where the ramps are. It had these, and they were too big, and they covered the shots. You couldn't see anything. It's fine if you're playing it. If you're trying to stream it or go overhead shot, you're screwed. You can't see anything. A lot of people actually took them off. Yeah. But the thing that people forget, Guardians, and I didn't realize this, the premium in LE is full RGB lighting, which the Pro doesn't have. So I played someone's LE once, and I'm like, wow, the lighting is way better on this. Everything is clear. All of the inserts are clear, and it's done with RGB LEDs underneath. What are the few games they did that with? I think Star Wars. Not Star Wars. Star Trek, the LE in the premium. had the clear inserts. Yeah, that's right. What else? Oh, it has an extra magnet. The Premium in LE had an extra magnet. I don't remember where it was, but it had, like, an extra magnet. Maybe two extra magnets. So one of the issues with this game is the orb shot. You shoot that drop target, and then you can shoot kind of in there, and then it holds it behind the drop target, the ball. But then what happens is the ball comes down, and there's a magna force kind of hidden. Oh, yeah, and it just makes the ball go wherever. And the worst part is it just goes, it comes out, it goes, and it gets around, what's that guy's name from the movie? I can't remember. Ronan. And the magnet is under him, and then it just flips it to the left out lane. Or even worse, you get borg'd. So it goes from the magnet to the middle, a metal post between the two left inlanes, and it goes, dink, off the top of that, right out the out lane. And when we say board, we mean on his games, usually the left in lane, there will be two inlanes on the left, two inlanes and an out lane. And even when the ball looks like it's going for the in lane, it will just walk all the way over to the out lane somehow, just against the laws of physics. It goes off this little metal-like rail. It just goes just the slightest little dunk, and then you think it's going to kind of go right to the left in lane. It goes all the way to the out lane, and you just want to throw that game. This game had so many problems with cracked cabinets from tilting and shaking. Really? Yeah. So inside, this was kind of the era of they were still a bit cheap with the cabinets, and they weren't putting those reinforced metal brackets inside. Oh, okay. You're talking about the leg plate era? Yes. Yeah, where Stern went from the thicker leg plates that he'd been using to the really much smaller ones. I think they were doing them on the pros. Yeah, it was basically double-folded tinfoil that they just put behind the screw. Yeah, they had some issues with cracking, and they eventually went back to the full plate. Yeah, and that's because they had to send a bunch of people broke for cabinets, so their wallet got hurt by that. But the biggest thing was that this game was so frustrating, a lot of them did crack because people would shake them more. I never heard that. Is that a Canadian thing? In Canada, just crack cabinets in Canada. Yeah, the one from Halifax, I remember, had a huge crack in it. Can we talk a little bit about Groot before we move on? Groot is awesome. How cool is that toy? One of the better-looking sculpts they ever did. And for those at home, Groot in the movie is just a tree. He's like a living tree. It's so weird. Yeah, it's so weird. So you kind of bash his chin, and then the mouth opens, and then you lock a ball. Then you bash his chin, his mouth opens, and you lock a ball. And then the creme de la creme is that when multiball starts, he opens his mouth up and he just goes bleh, and all the balls come out. Oh, the creme de la creme is during multiball, you can open his mouth again, get a ball in there, get double scoring. The rumor was that this game was originally going to be Iron Maiden. No? No. I never heard that, but okay. Apparently it was supposed to be Iron Maiden, and that was supposed to be Eddie's head. Okay. All right, whatever. I know that they had, when this game came out, it had really early software and went through a lot of iterations. First it was like Groot all day, then Orb all day, but I think it eventually got to a good place. It also got crap on the LE because of the gold armor, which apparently was a leftover because they didn't sell... Oh, WWE. Yeah, they didn't sell you WWE armor. It didn't really match the rest of the stuff, but they just used their leftover WWE LE armor. Something else I wanted to bring up. You were going to say how great the music is in it. So can we talk, so I. You have a note that says no licensed music. They have a ton of licensed music in this game. So this move, this. And they added more as it went on. So this game was released just before I joined pinball, probably the year before or something like that. Wow. You are quite the noob. Yeah. And apparently there's a couple of things that I don't get. One of them was that originally it didn't have a whole lot of licensed music, and then they added some. Is that right? It had a good deal of licensed music, but they did add some songs later to increase the count. So the movie is like... But everyone was pissed. In the movie, he's got a mixtape and listens to all kinds of licensed music. That's like a staple of the movie. Yeah, and everyone was pissed that Come and Get Your Love Wasn't in there. Okay, so the other thing was that there's this reference that happens all the time that I don't understand. Bubbly Bob. Bubbly Bobo. What does that mean? I have no idea. Supposedly the guy says it in the movie. I watched the movie. I don't remember that. But, I mean, the bigger complaint was they could use the video from the movie, but they couldn't use the actual voice call-outs, like the actors, so they had to dub. they just got sound-alikes or kind of sound-alikes to do all the call-outs. Okay. And people were not happy with that. So then they removed a lot of those. No, they're still in there. I mean, what a lot of people did is they hacked the code and replaced... Because the call-outs are all from actual scenes in the movie. And for whatever reason, they couldn't just use the stuff from the movie. But they could use the video. It was so weird. So people just kind of hacked the code and put the actual sound clips from the movie in there to replace the bad impersonators. The game also, as it had aged and then was completed, has now become an all-time great. I like it. Yeah. And if you like it, generally, it's a pretty decent game. Oh, yeah, definitely. Because you crap on a lot of games. It's all about completing the various characters, and it's very bonus heavy. It's so hard. The game is so hard. It plays long. It plays very long. I can't. The ramps are tight. The ramps are tight. The shots are hard. Trying to get things all lined up in the right way is super difficult. I've never been to Cherry Bomb, which is when you complete half of the modes or play half of the modes or something. Cherry Bomb's awesome. You should get there. It's so hard. A friend of mine had one of these. He really loved it, and then he got rid of it pretty quick. And he uses the song Cherry Bomb, the actual song. So they definitely have a lot of licensed stuff in there. So this is where the LCD screen also started to evolve a lot more. Because we're adding more clips from the show. Yeah, they could use all these clips from the movie, but they couldn't use the sound costs. It's so weird. But they're struggling trying to figure out how to use those clips. Because you don't want to just sit there and watch a movie. Well, Chuck Ernst of Stern Pinball says, Lonnie really wanted to try to tell each little segment of the story. Like you've got to make that shot, or you don't see the story progress. And it's kind of like you're interacting with a movie. It's definitely something we haven't tried before. And obviously now with the LCD screen, we're experimenting with a lot of different things. So they're experimenting. They're still learning how to use this LCD screen. And Lonnie Roth says, it's keeping you in the moment. That's the new thing we haven't done before. Well, what does he do after this? Anything else you want to use to tie up Guardians of the Galaxy? Guardians is good. Guardians is good. Go out and play Guardians today. It's good. I did see the movie. Oh, there you go. Great movie. I saw the first one. It's a good one. My mother loved that movie. She loved Chris Pratt, I think. Everybody loves Chris Pratt. See, now, after Stern is in a place where, you know, when we were talking about 2008, 2009 era, and even before then, And Stern was in a position where they couldn't really afford total bomb games or literally could put the company out of business. By the time we start getting to 2018, 2019, it's going pretty good at Stern. They're hiring people left and right. Things are looking good. So they're affording their designers a chance to make stuff that probably they wouldn't normally be able to make. Steve Ritchie was allowed to do an original theme, i.e., Black Knight Sword of Rage. Can't believe he was allowed to do that. He was allowed to do that. And John Borg was allowed to do a theme that he wanted to do his entire career, his dream theme, which was? The weirdest dream theme. The Munsters. So this is the licensed vintage TV series from the 1960s. From May of 2019 was when this was manufactured. It's a Spike 2 game. Of course, John Borg is the designer. Art by Christopher Franchi. Dots by Zach Zac Stark. Doc. Well, else, like animation, I guess. Music and sound by Jerry Thompson. Jerry! And software by Dwight Sullivan. So the theme, this was based on the old TV show The Munsters, which started out in the 1960s. This was in the transition from black and white to color and was eventually killed by the original Batman. The Batman show was so big and popular that it just sort of kind of killed this. Well, the Munsters, I think all the Munsters were in Black and White. It says, John Borg says, I've been wanting to do this title for about 20 years. There are just so many interesting features and characters in that show. I spent two months just going over all 70 episodes and pulling funny scenes and speech lines. We sprinkled it throughout the game. Such a good game. Okay. The theme, okay, is the Munsters family. So in the 1960s, it's all about sort of like suburban families. It's a bit of a social commentary that if you're in the suburbs and these weird different other people, I'll let you figure out who other people are, move into the suburbs, you treat them differently and they're strange. Well, the others here are literally monsters. So vampires, a werewolf child, a mad scientist father, grandfather. And the father is a Frankenstein's monster type of guy. their dog spot is a dragon but the funniest bit is the fact that the one daughter is normal the one daughter is normal and like this gorgeous like 1950s kind of 60s girl and it's super funny that and then and she's treated weird amongst the family because she's the she's the weird one she's not the goth kid right she's the opposite it's a great show i used to actually watch this a lot, I think, at Nick and Knight when I was a kid. I love this show. I have a lot of nostalgia for this show. So when I heard this theme was coming out, I was like, oh man, that's awesome. I was so excited for this theme. And then it rolled out and it was like, what's going on here? And I was a little bit disappointed. And why were you disappointed? Let's start with the highs. So the sound package. Jerry Thompson kills it with the sound package. Well, Jerry Thompson says, Since it's a retro theme, I wanted the music in the game to sound retro and sound like it should fit in the show. Also, in addition to the music, I wanted to keep the sound effects, retro electromechanical sounds, little musical snippets, lab track, things like that. So it really feels like the show. Yeah, they got a very good Paul Lennon impersonator. Exciting, and the call-outs, and the sound effects that they were pulling from the show, and then integrated into, like, the pop bumpers and things. Like, ah, it's so good. Let's talk about the art. absolutely stunning. Well, they had the ProArt. Then they had the Premium, which was done in black and white. Then you had the LE, which was in color. And then people were pissed that they wanted a Premium, but they wanted it in color. So they released a color premium version, which pissed the LE owners off because they thought only they would have the color one because the playfields are different. The Premium LE has a mini playfield underneath the playfield. It's a form factor like the SKUI playfield from Family Guy with the same really small flippers. Oh, it's so cool. And actually, that's why I prefer the Premium LE because I love that little playfield. I loved it on Family Guy. I liked it on this one. The art just brings this to another level. And in some cases, a lot of people would say that the art actually sold this game. Christopher Franchi, this is probably his best art package. Well, that's not true. Beatles was probably the best. Beatles. Beatles was probably his best His best cornerstone or his best non game I think But this game is stunning So when he did the black and white he didn just go in and go black and white He like went layer by layer and touched everything up in black and white so it would be different. And there's a lot of Easter eggs in this game as well, kind of floating around. If you look in the drain, the outlanes where it drains behind the flippers, there's two gentlemen running. One of them is, I believe, the daughter's boyfriend running away, which is Dwight Sullivan. And then on the other side is the mailman. He's running away, and that's John Borg. Originally, these faces down here were different. The faces in the original play field were Greg Bone and Zach May from Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show. The powers that be at Stern said that they needed to be replaced, so they put John Borg and Dwight Sullivan, the game designer and game coder. How cool is that? Interesting. Fact toy. In addition to that, we've got a bash toy, the Herman bash toy with the magnet. Yep, we got Borg. Beautiful. We have, yep, nice sculpt. Herman with the magnet right in front of him. But the bash toy doesn't move or wiggle, or you don't actually hit the bash toy. He doesn't move. It's kind of a bit of a... He doesn't move back a little. I thought he had a little play. I don't think he jiggles or anything. It just kind of hits him. It has the spot toy under the ramp, which is the bicycle girl. So on the left ramp, if you get to a certain point, spot will appear, which is the dragon dog thing, and you hit him in the face with the ball. It has, what, the greatest 360 ramp of all time? I'm sorry, the greatest 180 ramp of all time? I'd love a 360 ramp. That would be great. It's still going. Well, about the 180 ramp, John Bork said, I just thought I'm going to do a 180 ramp. I did one 25 years ago, and I thought I'm going to give it a shot here. It's fun, and it's kind of interesting. You look at it, and you're like, wow, is that ball going to make it up the ramp? And sure enough, it does. And that ball is back at your flipper in just a second, ready for you to flip again. This ramp is something else. So it cradles the ball kind of as it moves up the ramp. Like it almost sucks it up, absorbs it, and then flips it around and sends it back. It's pretty amazing, isn't it? The whole game shoots good. This is John Borg's probably best layout. It shoots good. I'll never say best layout in a two-flipper game, because he's had a lot of really good three-flipper games. I love this game so much. Elliot Elliot Eismin over the mechanical engineer at Stern says, the first time that that ramp actually worked, we were like, whoa. So there you go. It is a cool shot. Now, they've done a lot of these 180 ramps, especially Keith Elwin has used a lot of them. I don't find them as satisfying. They're more clunky. They're less fun. Okay, other than the Avengers one, where else has he done it? He did two of them in Jurassic Park. One at the Helipad Stop. Oh, yeah, that's right. One of the those are 180 ramps. And then in the back of Avengers, he used one again. And then he used one almost in exactly the same spot in Godzilla on the left orbit. Really? Yeah. So when you shoot the left orbit, it goes up to a 180 and then through the building. Oh, yeah, I guess it does, doesn't it? So it's like Keith Ellman has used it to save space, basically. When you look at this ramp, it does not save any space. It is an actual ramp, which is why it feels so good. You get that, I hate using this term, kinetic satisfaction. You can feel it going up the ramp and over, and it's smooth and perfect because it's better designed, in my opinion. Now, the thing with this game is no one was really, I think people were really into the theme when it came out. They're like, monsters? I think that hurt it. And then they went with a really, they wanted like a throwback rule set with it that wouldn't be complicated. Yeah, so Dwight Sullivan was the game coder on this. This is the first time Dwight Sullivan had worked with John Borg. And Dwight says, I tried to make the game for everybody. I tried to make the game for the novice, the expert, and for the tournament player. Pinball overlaps quite a bit with all the game genres. This game draws a lot on press your luck. That's one of my favorite game mechanics. You can light super jackpots from all over the game in several different ways, and they stack. So let's say you have two lit. I almost feel like I should read this like he would. Yeah. So let's say you have two lit, but you think you can get it up to four out of ten. That's possible if you cancel your super jackpot. Now I want you to wait and try to build them up and get them when they're bigger later. That's press your luck. That's perfect. Dead on. I love Dwight's enthusiasm. The major issue with the code is that you build up super jackpots from around each feature. So each shot, you build a super jackpot for each shot. But the excitement around it is canceling the jackpot, the super jackpot, when you can get it. So you don't take it. And then you try to stack all the super jackpots together to make an even bigger super jackpot. So I think where the code goes awry here is that you're canceling out of everything and not taking something and not doing it. I don't know. It's just not entirely satisfying. Ah, meh. I don't agree with that. How about Aerosmith? You loved Aerosmith, where you can keep saying, no, I don't want to take the multiball. I don't want to take it because I want the five, six-ball one. Right, but there's other ways that you can still collect jackpots and points, and then they also have almost no wizard modes. I would argue that bigger issues affect that the shot, the actual super jackpot shot, isn't totally directly hittable. Sometimes it just kind of falls in there. Yeah, so you're always canceling it. You're like, no, I don't want a $5 million super jackpot. No, I don't want a 5 million point Super Jackson. The complaining for most of the pen heads I heard was, it's too shallow. There's not enough in the game. So here's this one, okay? When the game launched, it had no ball save. Do you remember that? Well, it had ball save, but the settings turned off. So basically, the programmer said no ball save. Which I was like, oh, cool. But people hate that. Yes, I understand. Hated it. So then in later code revisions, it was turned off. Yeah. So that kind of made people angry. Now, by the complaint of it's not deep enough, let me say this. First of all, most pinball players are about as good as I am or worse, and I'm not a great player. So when they step up, they're not going to get to a wizard mode anyway. They're just going to step up and shoot, and they might get some features going in a multiball and whatever. This game is perfect for that. Yeah, you might get a wizard mode on this thing. I might actually get a wizard mode on this thing. The problem I had when I played it is that I felt like I was in Grandpa's dungeon all the time, but that was in an earlier code. I love Grump. And that's because I brick the shop all the time, which starts Grandpa's Dungeon. I like Grandpa. I like that lower play field. I'm trying to remember. Can't you get a multiball going in the mini play field? Yeah, the mini play field and the upper play field. It is a lock. A tiny little ball. It's got a lock. I like that. It's pretty great. I do love this game. It gets a little bit... Yeah, I think we're in the minority of that. Agreed. Agreed. The license, it killed it. Most people are like, monsters? I don't think they were into it So they originally had, I think it was 600 LEs And the response was so big They upped it to 750 And that freaked people out They were also mad about it Yeah, they were mad Because Stern says we're going to have this much But no, we're going to do this And what? But it did have the super cool clock topper Don't forget the topper With the bird? The bird The bird's a raven That sounds right Which was voiced by John Borg himself Like I said, great Paul Linden person here This is Gene Simmons from KISS. I would like you to join the Patreon for Silver Ball Chronicles. Becoming a pro-crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Want to be included to KISS? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority in our episodes? Jump off to a $6 a month premium credit. And then go to KISS online. Stop that. We're not going to KISS online. Just finish up the damn list. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an Ellie Lutis criminal. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Funnels t-shirt. Then afterwards, you can swing on over to kissonline.com. I love Paul Ansel. Yeah, remember how we said the other, you know, Monster's Team wasn't? This is the opposite. This is the one that's going to hit. Okay, so when this theme came out, I almost pooped my pants. The people who got money remember this as a kid, and that's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, based off the early cartoons that everyone remembers. May of 2019, it's a Spike 2 game. The art package, the first time he's worked with John Borg, is Jeremy Zombie Yeti Packer. Uncredited animation, but it's the Chuck Ernst team, and it's Music and Sound by Jerry Thompson. Software by Dwight Sullivan, the second time they've worked together. In a row. This is Stern's first COVID-19 game released. So this game was actually scheduled to be released and was delayed until the summer of 2020. Yeah, they shut down the factory. American Pinball actually went ahead and still released their Hot Wheels game and it was dead in the water where Stern, concerned over a similar situation, waited and it was released and it sold very, very well. Borg says, when COVID hit, we all went home and we all took games home and everyone just played and worked at home. We sent bug reports and wish lists and things like that to Dwight. You're building and finishing this game from home, which is very weird because pinball is very collaborative, right? You come together, you stand over the machine, you talk about the shots, You cough on each other. You know, you're touching the same flipper buttons and licking your hands. Right? You're doing all those things, but now you can't do that anymore. You've got to go home. And Dwight Sullivan says, most of the work happens in the last three months of the game because that's when all the choreography starts pouring in. It all happened in Zoom meetings and Slack chat channel things and e-mails and stuff. Engineer Elliot Elliot Eismin says, Dwight would e-mail out, here's the latest code revision. Go download it. And we would all have to update and ensure every game was up to date so that everything can be ready. And then we could start again. Could you imagine working in that situation? Yeah, everyone does it now. It's the new normal, but back then, probably not. I would think at this point, well, I know, most of the coders, they all work from home. And they will come in occasionally. So the theme, okay, this theme, this pushes all the nostalgia buttons for me. I had a couple of the toys from Ninja Turtles. I watched the show on Saturday mornings. I used to play the arcade game when I go to an arcade. I can hear that music in my head right now. Ninja Turtles was this massive cultural thing, especially for those kids in the late 80s and early 90s. I think that this was a home run of a theme. Originally, Nickelodeon had approached Stern and said, hey, we got these properties. Would you like to do Ninja Turtles? And they were like, oh, yeah, we want Ninja Turtles. We're in on that. John Borg said, I started to watch the cartoon, and I got to the point where I was like, looking forward to going home after work so I could binge watch the next three episodes. It's like succession for John Borg. Can't wait to get home to watch that show. John Borg, it's all about the layout with John Borg. What about the layout here on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Well, do you like Tron? I do. Well, here you go. Hey! It's kind of Tron. I mean, we don't have the arcade scoop. We did away with that. No scoop. Instead of the orbit thing, we actually have it as a ramp. But the entire, like, left side, the left orbit, the upper left flipper, the ramp is in the same spot. The Quora shot is now the van. You have the two shots for the upper flipper. You have the ramp, and then you have the, what was it, the gem shot, which is weird. On Tron, the gem shot was brutally hard, and the ramp you could hit. I always found on Turtles it's the opposite. I can hit the orbit, but I can never hit the ramp. And it has the pizza magnetic spinning disc. Pizza magnetic spinning disc on both Pro and Premium LE models, except on the Premium and LE models, it spins both ways. So cool. So, again, we have the magnet with the spinner, which we know Borg likes. We don't really have a bash toy on this one. No. But we got a cool van. The Premium LE actually has a diverter that you can control. control the glider, which was very problematic for Stern. They had a lot of issues with people. I think it still is. Yeah, I think it still is. It doesn't always work. And it had, what, six ball, multiball, or eight or something instead of four or whatever. It's too many balls. The play field is packed, and when you have that many balls on the play field, you can't shoot anything. It was six on the pro and eight on the premium. Yeah, too many. Too many in both cases. the art is zombie Yeti's greatest art package. Probably only the next one is probably Ghostbusters. This package is exactly what it had to be. It is gorgeous. It's bright. The colors are fun. It looks exactly like I remember the show when I was a kid. Now when I go back and watch the show, I notice that it's a lot rougher around the edges with the animation. But this is how I remember it. The coolest thing I thought about the game is in the shooter lane, you have the plastic that has all four turtles on it. And I couldn't believe that was on the Pro, too. Yeah. In the code, you choose your turtle. It doesn't do anything other than just show you what turtle you have. So it's there for just that reason. But it looks really good. It's just an aesthetic thing I'm surprised was in all models. This game, it's held in high regard as being a great John Borg game, but it's also... It's really, really hard and very fast. For a theme, basically a kid's theme, they're like, yeah, it might be a kid's theme, but we're assuming you're all adults now and grown up, and we're going to punish you. Is it too hard? Uh, no. But it... I don't think so. But it's harder than you would think for a kid-friendly theme like this. But John Borg's games are hard. All of his games are hard. Not always. Guardians isn't hard. Well, for you. But Guardians isn't that hard. The problem, I think, is that that side flipper shot into the orbit and then into the ramp. It's hard. It comes around the right orbit too fast. Too fast, and it actually will hop, and sometimes it doesn't come to the flipper in a way that makes it easy to hit the side ramp. It's almost sometimes airborne. To me, that and the glider are the two issues. The other thing is that that right ramp, it doesn't feed to a ramp. It feeds to, like, the ramp ends, and then the ball drops on the play field to that left upper flipper. And it can sometimes still be bouncing, which makes it hard to hit the side flip. Right, and you've got a lot of steam coming off that ball up that ramp, and it's fast. The shot on the left side, there's like a layer shot, which is kind of a behind-the-flipper shot, and I'm a sucker for a behind-the-flipper shot. It doesn't quite work that well. I have a hard time hitting it. Like, it gets, it's a bit clunky, so that's a shame. But the code is where this kind of shines, right? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, how about, let's wind it back and talk a little bit about the art here with Johnny, with Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti)'s art package. This is also the first pinball machine to feature a meme on the side, which is the Ninja Turtles, like, Donatello eating the pizza meme from the newspaper or something. I don't know what that is, but it's there. Yeah, I'm old. I don't know what that is either. So what does Zombie Yeti say about his art package? He says, the first thing that I always do when I get a play field is I go ahead and actually lay out the shot path. It's kind of like user interface mixed with illustration. The gutter, i.e. the drain, was me trying to pay tribute to the beginning of the television show to have the actual baby turtles in there. Do you want to talk about those baby turtles? So at the bottom, you're going down the drain, and there's these cute little baby turtles transforming into the big ninja turtles. in the ooze and they're going, it's so cute, it's so cute. Okay, sorry, let's keep going. Then I just tried to bring the city up. We knew that the pizza was going to be central, but then I decided, okay, I'm going to have the turtles actually interacting with that start episode. I wanted to harken back to the fact that, you know, when the show was around, technology was different and we had these VCRs. Oh, man, do you remember the kid that had the VCR back when you were younger in the neighborhood? I had a VCR. God, you were the legend. Really? You could just go and rent whatever you wanted. Yeah, and you could record anything you wanted from TV. Oh, man. On my video cassette recorder. Yeah, and you were like the one kid that had one in the room? I even had a rewinder to rewind the tapes. The high-speed rewinder? Yeah, and I had the cleaning tapes, too. You've got to make sure your heads are clean. God, you were a frigging legend, my friend. So this glider mech, so it had a lot of issues. It sits on the ramp, and you shoot that side ramp, and then the glider can rotate to the right or the left and kind of stop the ball. But it works with, like, it's very weird. It's got, like, these, what, like metal strings or something that kind of. . . Yeah, I know a lot of times I've seen them just, yeah, break and not work. And plus it's big because it blocks, like, a lot of the play field. Mr. Elliot Eismin says, this is the fifth game I did the lead engineer on, and I've done other projects, so now it's kind of fun. I just get to play with the toys instead of having to struggle through the designs to make them work. Oh, not a great quote. What about the LCD? The LCD gets crapped on a lot in this game because everybody wanted clips from the original show. They did not get those, no. Dwight says, the episodes are actual stories. A mode starts off with some dialogue and you see what's happening in the story and then the ball kicks out and you're playing and there's a different pinball goal. And then when you win or when you fail, you see the ending of that story that episode. But it's all cel-shaded 3D animation because they're not a high-end video game studio, right? They don't have the resources or the clientele or the time to do that at this time. So I can see where it's going. Let's see. Dwight also says, I love making games that have choices. You push start, and right off the bat, you have the choice of four turtles. Each turtle has four different perks, one for each level of training. And there's these kind of RPG elements to it. When you're a character and you're training and you're getting better and more powerful or more able to score more points. It's like Stern has given Dwight free reign now, right? Like, do whatever you want, Dwight. We told you to make a simple game, and that was not the right decision. So let's go in the opposite direction of completely crazy. You pick characters. The character's got perks. He did this in Star Wars. There, I believe Dwight said it was his choice on Monsters to be simple. He wanted to have a throwback, like a simpler game. Okay. Terrible. So then he has a co-op move. I like Monsters. Okay, co-op play. Yes, we have co-op play. And Dwight says co-op plays are not new. That's true. TNA had it. But it's very, very exciting. Turtles just lends itself really, really well to co-op because turtles already are a team of people. So each player is a different turtle. Then we're working cooperatively to get through the game. and they have a chance of getting further than one of them would individually. You know, they have 12 balls to get to the end of the game versus three. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So you're adding these co-op modes. Later on, Dwight's going to add, like, the shell challenge or whatever it was called. Yeah, the shell challenge, which is kind of like to skip ahead to a bit of a mini wizard mode. Dwight is the king of extra modes in games. Yeah, he's gone nutty. Like, then he goes on to Mandalorian, where he's adding a bunch of stuff in Mandalorian. Different modes, an impossible mode, a monster mode. But that story is for another day. What about Rush? This is the licensed alternative rock band theme from January of 2022. It's a Spike 2 game. John Borg. Art by Michael Barnard. Animations by Chuck Ernst and Paul Kemenkit. Music and sound by Jerry Thompson And software by Timmy Tim Sexton Tim Sexton Timmy! What do you think about this game, Ron? I think it was the best game of 2022 What game in 22? And nothing that was as good as this Didn't Godzilla come out in 2022? 2021 Oh That's why I made sure I said it that way Oh Although, don't tell anyone I probably play more Rush than I play Godzilla. So Rush, this game created a national holiday in Canada because it is based on the band Rush with Alex Leifson, Geddy Lee, and... Neil Peart. And Neil Peart, of course. Or Neil Peart, I believe is the correct Canadian pronunciation. Yeah, Neil Peart, who had passed away years ago. So this game is really great. I played it a couple of times, and then the arcade in my local town, which just opened, had a fire and has never reopened. But I did play a lot of this game there, and I love this game. What a great layout, huh? Isn't this just X-Men? Yes, the top. The top half. But much better. It's a better version. Yep. It's literally, if you look at X-Men and you look at this at the top, it's literally the same. I mean, again, it's not exactly the same. It's tweaked, and it actually shoots way better than X-Men. Do you have a premium or LE? Premium. Okay. So what is the major difference between the premium and the pro? The premium, the one shot, it goes to a buck. It fires up instead of just a target. Kind of on the left side, right? Yes, next to the time machine. Yeah, it's less a dead end and more of a goes up to the ramp. And it has, on the left, the drop targets, there's a fork that comes up that holds the ball, which is not there in the Pro. And it has, what is it? Is there something with the scoop that's different? It can fire off two of them at the same time or something? Yeah, it doesn't all just feed to the bottom scoop. Yes, yeah, that's it. As well as the up-down ramp to the time machine. Yes, the up-down ramp to the time machine, which actually makes the game harder than the Pro. So this game is really kind of fun and different. It's quirky. It's basically an original theme. It's based on the albums and things like that. The call-outs, I think, are stunning. Those were worked on with Ed Ed Robertson, who helped Alex Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee. Ed Ed Robertson being the pinhead. He told them how to say the lines. From the Barenaked Ladies, basically every Canadian would love to hang out with Ed Ed Robertson. What they do is they take the call-outs, but they go a little deep. They go a little extra. So, for example, in Canada, we just say scoop. But for some reason, they wanted to play it up a lot. So when Geddy Lee says, shoot the scoop, so he really adds a lot of Canada into it. Like, they really ham it up. And to an American, it's funny because you're like, oh, those Canadians with their funny accents. But to a Canadian, it's funny because we know that he's hamming it up. But the meta joke is that we know that Americans think that's how we talk. So it's double funny for us because we know they're hamming them up for somebody else. Yay. It's so funny. And Ed Robertson in the game. He's Neil Peart, basically. Yeah. Yeah. What a wonderful game. Now, this had scoop gate. Oh, God, scoop gate, yes. The scoop, they had no protector on it originally, and then they were experimenting with different protectors, and then they had one they had on the LEs. The pros were getting wears. There was a pro in my area, and it had, like, major wear in the scoop almost immediately. So then the metal in the scoop was not strong enough, so it kept bending, and then the ball wouldn't come out. So then they had the permanent scoop fixed, which was a kit, which I have on mine. Mine actually came with it because I got a later run premium. So mine came with it, and I've never had an issue. It's fine. So instead of it kind of being able to fall in from the left and right side on yours, it has to go straight into the middle, right? Because it's got bumpers on the left and right? Well, the side, it just falls in. Okay. But the bottom one, yeah, you've got to be – I have noticed no – I haven't shot anything that, like, oh, that would have went in on a pro, but not mine. or an old one. I haven't had any issues like that. Okay, good, good. But ScoopGate was bad. Yeah, they had whole podcast discussions on ScoopGate and George Gomez saying what happened and et cetera, et cetera. I think they really took that to heart because the amount of times that conversations around the Scoop came up, it was very emotional for George and I think a few others that are like, people said, well, why isn't there a protector? So we put a protector on it and then it broke. There was never a protector on it on any of the Whitewoods or when they were doing it. So then they put it in to appease people. Because when they saw the promo photos, they didn't have a scoop. And they're like, oh, that's going to wear. So they're like, oh, we better put something on there. And they kind of rushed it. And it's COVID. It's kind of COVID and the testing and the this and that. It just kind of went awry. And the metal was very thin. It was just bending all over the place. It was. Stern cares, man. They care so much. and you can tell that because something like that happened, it just crushed them, and they felt very bad. Why there was a big deal when they came out with the permanent scoop fix, the actual how-to video is done by John Borg himself. Yeah, which is weird. How about Hoot Again? Hoot Again instead of Shoot Again, yes. This is the most Canadian game that has ever been made, and probably ever will be made. I don't think they're making these anymore, eh? No, they're not. I don't understand. Well, I guess they didn't. And Perjurus Gomez, they sold better than they thought they would. Yeah. They kind of had this, this was in the death spot, but he literally called it that, after Godzilla. So they didn't expect a lot from the game and were surprised on how much it sold. But I guess that didn't translate to it sold enough to keep making it, to keep rolling it out. How about the ramp board explosions? Do you want to talk about that one? So the up and down ramp node board. Oh, God. The poor, what, node board 10? Oh, node board 10. I think it's 9 or 10. Someone will correct me. I think it's 10. Oh, yeah, this is like this huge. So if you have a premium or an LE, the ramp goes up and down, and it goes to a node board underneath the play field, and so does the clock. That's the other thing. The premium and LE have a moving clock. The motor on the up-down ramp, it has a connector that comes out of it, and then you plug that into another connector, which then goes to the node board. But the problem was the pins they used in the connector were not the right pins, and the wires were falling out. And there's an issue with the node board where if you, like, unplug the motor from the node board with the game on, it fries the node board. Yeah, totally destroyed. So first they came out with fixed kit one, which was the motor with a newer connector on it. Then they came out with the second version, which is the motor, and instead of a connector, it just has a big, long wire that goes all the way directly to the node board. so there is no connector to worry about. And I have that installed in mind. And if you call your distributor and you have a good distributor, they should be able to get you one if you're worried at no cost. There. Done and done. There you go. Good job, Stern. It's nice to know that they continued to release a fix and go through the expense to do that on a machine that didn't sell gangbusters, but they're still doing right by the customers. Although, I mean, they should have done better engineering to prevent something like that. But that's what happens, right? At least we're taking care of you afterwards. And I will say, you know, I don't like really long-playing games. That's why I have tons of classic games and harder, older games that don't play forever. This game is one of the few exceptions that I don't mind playing a long game because the whole game is designed around this long journey, and the Rush music really lends itself well to the Wizard modes because they have these nine, ten-minute songs. It's very pretentious kind of music. Yes, it is. And it's perfect for you to get to the mini-wizard mode, like with Cygnus book one, Cygnus book two, and he's just like, yeah. And you've got to have the expression lighting, very important. Totally. What do you think about the hand-drawn artwork by Michael Barnard? He got a lot of flack. And he was warned, right? Like, I assume all of the other artists at Stern were like, hey, by the way, as soon as you release this, people are going to crap all over the art. The only thing I really didn't like were the faces, and that was the one thing that Rush insisted on, that the faces look like that. So I really can't blame the artist there, because the rest of the art packers I really don't have an issue with. I mean, if you're into Rush, which I'm sure you are, if you look at all the little Easter eggs, the little stuff they put in the artwork, it's all Rush-related. And it's all hand-drawn and fun and quirky. The faces on the front of that play field, though. Alex Lyson looks awesome. Neil Peart looks pretty good. And then Geddy Lee is like, it's a bit off. Like, it's a bit cartoony. Again, it's like old school Rush, but old school Rush, he wouldn't have the soul patch, like, there on his chin. He wouldn't be wearing the sunglasses. The detail isn't quite right on Geddy Lee. Like, if we're going to get picky, like, if you look at Alex Lyson on the left. Pinball people getting picky? No. It's just, it's like the quality of the design just kind of gets a little more flat. Alex Lyson looks really detailed. Geddy Lee looks a little more cartoony and soft. It's very odd. But that's a bit much. I would not buy the machine for that. Rush is not a serious group for those out there. They love to poke fun at themselves. They would have South Park clips introducing songs, Three Stooges stuff. They would have dryers behind them running as they're playing these crazy sets. They would make very serious type music, but they would not take it seriously at all. and I like goofy stuff and you really can't you can't get much goofier than Rush like I have and they literally have a setting in there for the humor level and I have it cranked up to like full Canadian does it say full Canadian? No I suggested that and I was told that was a good idea but they never put it in there because it's just like what a minimal normal maximum and I said you should do minimum normal and Canadian it's such a great I would own one of these games I picked up the James Bond game. That was the dream theme for me. I would definitely own a Rush. And John Borg, bringing it back to our subject, he's the perfect designer for this. I mean, he was at Pentastic last year singing a Rush song in the karaoke thing. No, it wasn't a karaoke. He was singing with the Rush tribute band. With the Rush tribute band at Pentastic. He's a bro. He's so much cooler than me. The play field is like he took the top half of X-Men and made it play better. The topper. It shoots great. The topper with the gears, which actually plays into the game because it shows you every combo you make, you get an album, so it lights up on the topper. So good. Do you want to just sum it up with why everyone should buy a Rush? It shoots great. I love that little inner mini loop. I mean, it does have – Borg does this sometimes. He'll have inserts that you can't even see. like there's a the mini I think it's actually the mini the inner loop you can't see the inserts in that right you were looking at the overhead shot and you can barely see it where it says one two actually it says two three it's got an arrow if you're like five foot eight like me you can't even see it no so of course people have mods they have a little thing that you can put over it where it shows what the inserts which I have in mind so you can see them but he brought like the time machine back He has that up-the-middle shot he loves. So he got that. So Lord of the Rings. Well, Austin Powers, I'm thinking. That's right. Yeah. It's brought his Austin Powers thing back. He's got the spinner, the Quora spinner, except it's on the right side, and it feeds that upper right flipper. Did the code go too far on this game? No. With complexity? No. I think it fit a nice balance between tournament and home play. It has things like the combo system. If you just want to play combos, you can just go for combos. I love combos. Who doesn't love combos? And it's a play field that feeds right into hitting lots of combos. So much fun. I love Rush. Everybody go buy one of these. Everyone go buy one of these. Tell Stern you want more. You want more Rush. So there you have it, Ron. That's Borgi 2, the bro of flow. We followed him through that second Stern era where he really developed his fingerprints, his style, his design. Some people say he's a little too samey. Some people say that he just makes a play field and throws a theme on it. But I would say that he has solidified himself as one of the greatest designers in pinball history throughout his tenure. Samey is fine as long as it plays a little bit differently. And what's wrong? We're using stuff that works. Let's keep an eye out for the next John Board game. That's right. As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. And then after that, you can go to kissonline.com and look at all our wonderful merchandise. Okay, enough. Enough. I can't have him do anything. He's going to do that the entire time. Stewie. Stewie, get over here. Come on. You guys haven't done one of these in months. We look forward to all your messages when we read every one. Please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a three-star review because that's the way we like it now. That way more people can find us. No, seriously, five stars is much better. Thank you. I went through your notes last night. What do you think? Fixing all your misspellings and the fact the title was wrong. Was it? Yeah. Episode 32, you get in, first thing it says, episode 33 with a different title. The old copy-paste. Mm-hmm. Did you see the tournament I was in? I was wearing a Silver Ball Chronicles shirt. Saw the shirt that Bruce was wearing. Yeah. Well, yeah. We ended up with the same shirt. Crystal Skull Artifact and a quest to unveil its secrets. Unravel its secrets. Okay, I'm going to go pee. Take a break. Okay. Thank you. So Elliot, who's one of the, what is his name, Elliot? I don't know where that came from, Elliot. He's one of the engineers. Oh, Elliot. Ouch. Where's my James Rees's Pieces?