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Episode 161 - Shall We Play a Game 2.0

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 44m·analyzed·Feb 21, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

EGP hosts debate P3's mystery licensed game hype and warn against theme-based pre-orders.

Summary

Dennis and Tony from Eclectic Gamers discuss recent gaming and pinball experiences, including hands-on time with Rush pinball at Pizza West tournament and speculation about Multimorphic's P3's upcoming licensed game. They critique the hype-building marketing strategy and express caution about pre-ordering based on theme alone without gameplay experience, drawing parallels to the overhyped Wonka release.

Key Claims

  • Rush is a better music pin than Led Zeppelin

    medium confidence · Tony's direct assessment based on hands-on play at Pizza West tournament location

  • Rush has very tight shots and nebulous rules requiring video primer knowledge

    high confidence · Both hosts' direct gameplay experience at Pizza West; they specifically noted difficulty with time machine shot and unclear rule progression

  • Multimorphic's P3 mystery game teaser images may be themed around Venus/sculpture

    low confidence · Dennis references unconfirmed social media speculation; he personally did not verify the sculptor statue connection

  • P3 game will include a new playfield module alongside new items

    medium confidence · Inferred from Flippin' and Mashin' podcast teaser bullet points hosts had seen; both assume 'it's got to be' a new module

  • People are speculating P3 game is Hudson Hawk, Beetlejuice, or Gundam based on teaser images

    low confidence · Dennis and Tony discussing community speculation; no official confirmation

Notable Quotes

  • “100% honesty. Rush is a better music pen than Zeppelin. Okay. I would agree. Even though I prefer Zeppelin's music. Well, yeah, me too. But it's a better pen than Zeppelin.”

    Tony and Dennis @ ~28:00 — Core assessment of Rush pinball relative to Led Zeppelin; establishes baseline for music pin quality discussion

  • “The rules are still way too nebulous for me... it almost is like you need to watch a video primer to know what you're going to do”

    Dennis @ ~30:00 — Criticism of Rush's rule clarity and accessibility compared to Lord of the Rings

  • “Every single time a game is announced somebody's in the lead up somebody's always saying it's the dream theme and it's going to blow your socks off... I mean, it's just the normal kind of thing that you hear on every game. None of it actually means anything.”

    Tony @ ~45:00 — Skepticism about NDA-driven hype cycles in pinball industry announcements

  • “I don't like to do anything that doesn't let me say exactly what I actually feel about an item... I've known other past podcasters in pinball who took NDAs and regretted them.”

    Dennis @ ~48:30 — Principled stance against NDA agreements in content creation; references Deep Six controversy

  • “$10,000 is one of those things where there's a lot of hobbies out there where $10,000 isn't, oh, I got my foot in the door in the hobby. $10,000 is I'm one of the big ballers in the hobby.”

    Tony @ ~55:00 — Commentary on pinball machine pricing barriers and economic accessibility of hobby

  • “The number one rule in pinball, don't pre-order pinball.”

    Dennis @ ~62:00 — Core principle about avoiding pre-orders without gameplay experience

  • “When people only talk perfect, it scares me a little bit.”

    Dennis @ ~58:00 — Expression of skepticism toward uniformly positive NDA-constrained commentary

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonIanpersonMultimorphiccompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyRushgameLed Zeppelin

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: NDA-constrained content creators unable to provide balanced criticism, damaging podcast credibility and creating false hype expectations

    high · Dennis: 'I don't like to do anything that doesn't let me say exactly what I actually feel... I've known other past podcasters in pinball who took NDAs and regretted them.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Fanboy defensive behavior in small manufacturer communities (Haggis, Spooky early days) creates hostile environment for legitimate quality concerns

    high · Dennis: 'I'm seeing the same behavior in the Haggis thread about FABM... Bunch of Aussies are in that thread. Borderline thrashing anyone who questions what's going on.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Overhyped pre-release expectations setting unrealistic standards (Wonka parallel)

    high · Tony: 'There were people claiming that Wonka must be using different colored balls... And then the game came out, and Wonka's a good JJP game, but it's not even their best.' Dennis agrees this mirrors current P3 situation.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Rush pinball has excellent music integration but nebulous rules requiring video primers for comprehension

    high · Dennis: 'The rules are still way too nebulous for me... it almost is like you need to watch a video primer to know what you're going to do'

  • ?

    leak_detection: P3 game teaser images suggest classical art theme (sculptor/Venus, Hollywood Walk of Fame) indicating possible entertainment IP

    low · Dennis: 'I've seen some people say the sculptor's working on a statue of Venus' and discussion of Walk of Fame star image

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.314

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, February 20th. This is episode 161. My name is Dennis. Nope, my name's Tony. I'm Dennis The non-sweary one The nice one Yeah, you're the non-sweary one You're the nice one I am So what's going on? Let me tell you Yes, that's why I asked It is just The weather guys are so good For two months they've been telling us About all these severe Snowmageddon snowstorms we're going to get We finally got one We did, not technically a blizzard though Not technically Too bad it was on one of the times where they said there was going to be some snow But it wouldn't be too bad As opposed to the last time when they said we were going to get like a foot of snow And we got like two inches Yes And now we were supposed to get like three inches And we got like nine So Yeah it was a lot It was a pretty good snowstorm I have a snow story for you related to it Snow you don't. Yes, I snoo. All right. Mine didn't work very well.
1:33
I'm trying to keep up. All right. This one's going to appeal back to your cold heart. My cold, dark, bloody heart. Your cold, snow-white-out heart. Shiny and blinding. To be fair, my heart should probably be blue. I'd be in a lot of trouble if it wasn't. So, after the nine inches of snow arrived, and it's like 2.30, it's done. The snow's done. I look out the window. Snow's done. I go, shovel out the driveway, shovel out the sidewalks, go back to work. Because there's working from home.
2:07
Look out at five. My neighbors now cleared their sidewalk. The other neighbor has not yet cleared their sidewalk. What did you have, like, 24 hours? It's no big deal. My sidewalk is not cleared. The plow guy threw all the street snow on my sidewalk. And I still remember that time. You broke that child. I broke that child. And I actually said, I think Tony told someone to do this to me. I didn't. I think you did. I did not. So I went out and reshuffled it. I couldn't have told anyone because your house isn't in any of the routes that we did. And I looked and I was like, why isn't there more snow, like road salt snow, on the neighbor that, like it wasn't on her sidewalk who hadn't shoveled at all. It was just mine. It was deliberate. it. I've been targeted by the city. I think it's probably because of how the road curves.
game
Pizza Westevent
Flippin' and Mashin'media
Halloweengame
Godzillagame
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Wonkagame
Heistgame
Deep Sixmedia
Special When Litmedia
Haggis Pinballcompany
Zachperson
  • $

    market_signal: Pinball machine pricing ($10,000+) creates significant economic barrier to entry and hobby accessibility

    high · Tony: '$10,000 is one of those things where... $10,000 is I'm one of the big ballers in the hobby' and 'not everybody can buy five pinball machines a year'

  • ?

    announcement: Multimorphic P3 mystery game includes new playfield module and 'industry firsts' with flipper upgrade kit improvements

    medium · Dennis referencing Flippin' and Mashin' podcast bullet points: 'Tons of shots and toys. Industry firsts... new flipper kit feels real subtle shade to someone'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Multimorphic P3's next licensed game may be Hudson Hawk, Beetlejuice, or Gundam based on community speculation

    low · Dennis: 'It's obviously Hudson Hawk... I saw someone make a pretty strong argument thinking that it was Beetlejuice. I've seen people suggest it's Gundam.'

    • 3:01
    But it could have been delivered by somebody. They saw that you were the early achiever. They got out there. I can't order nobody to do nothing like that. Let's see how many negatives I can get in this sentence. I can't tell nobody to do nothing like that because they ain't in my area of responsibility.
    3:22
    That reminds me I'll bring this up So what else besides snow No it reminds me of an email We need to go over That's not Other than that Things have been going pretty good Same old same old Nothing special nothing terrible I'm kind of At a broken end for Shows because Vox Machina is over Peacemaker is over Pretty much all the shows that I've been watching Are done again so I'm now in another gap I guess Discovery is what you gotta go back to I'm gonna have to go back and finish Discovery Michael Burnham will save you Don't you worry I want there to be a Pinball machine released based on Star Trek Discovery And Michael Burnham plays it for you Just autoplays Because she solves everything She solves everything She is the Starbuck of Star Wars Yeah Yeah, except for Starbuck was a more interesting character because she had... Flaws? Yeah, flaws. Yes.
    4:33
    Oh, well, I don't know. But what have you been doing with this beautiful time? Well, I'm still working on Yakuza Like a Dragon. I don't even know how many hours in. There's so many side quests and stuff. It's taken a while. So that's what I'm doing gaming-wise. I'm pretty much caught up on my shows at this point. So and then work was really where at for legislative. There's a period where things are supposed to get out of one chamber before they can go. There's a deadline in Kansas called turnaround. So turnaround is this week. So most of the committee stuff has been in a rush to get done now because actually Monday is the last day of committee before turnaround. But so I've seen a lot of anti-public health stuff that's been lurking. And, of course, then they try and get it all through here in the turnaround. I'm more worried, actually, when we go to Texas because that's right at the end before they take their month break when the regular session is supposed to start.
    5:32
    And I might be out of town and need to be. Well, I mean, I, you know, I don't I guess if worse comes to worse, I'll bring a computer. But the state law require them to sing and dance for turnaround. Turnaround. I sure hope we don't get dinged A copyright with a perfect reduction CD quality right there We'll start hosting a karaoke show On our YouTube channel Just me sitting there doing karaoke Yes, you can do that I'd like to see if EGP YouTube Can go beneath the 78 subscribers we have.
    6:18
    No offense. Hey, you could do Suicide is Painless. You can do that one on key. Suicide is... I don't want to get there. Yeah, don't ding us.
    6:30
    We went to Pizza West for a pinball tournament yesterday. We did go to Pizza West. You lasted quite a while. I had an okay run. I credit 100% of my okay run to a series of Lucky Machine Pools and my new pinball music list. I only had to delete two songs from it because they screwed up my rhythm. They were fast enough with a high enough beat count. I thought they'd be okay, but I did very poorly with those two songs, so I deleted them. Oh, okay. Yep, so we did that. And we'll talk a little bit about Rush later because while that wasn't in the tournament, we went and played it right after. So we finally have time on that. And then, all right, so emails. I wanted to mention one before we move into our segments. This email is from Ian. Thank you for writing in, Ian. Ian has some critiques of the show. Oh, cool. That's right.
    7:28
    Let's hear how it starts. Now, let me get my Ian voice right. Hi, guys. Hey, it's going to fit. You wait. I love the show. I just wanted to toss a couple of comments into the mix. I might be an episode behind, so hopefully you still remember what I'm talking about. Yoshi Island Express is a ton of fun, and for $10 on Amazon, you can't go wrong. It's one of those games that just makes you feel good. I'm 57, so even old grumps like me can play it well. Okay, I may be the only one who caught the slight on Alabama, but since you see it's all coming together, but since you did it, I have to defend the homeland. Did you know that where I live in North Alabama, Huntsville, we have the highest number of PhDs per capita than any place in the country? For those that don't know, Tony is nodding vigorously. Yep, I actually knew that. We have hundreds of high-tech companies from Google and Facebook data centers to Raytheon, Boeing, etc. Dozens of software development companies. Marshall Space Flight Center, Army Aviation, and Missile Command, and Missile and Space Intelligence Center, and the list goes on. So please update your backwards slides to your reference, and to reference another locale. Mississippi, maybe.
    8:49
    That's true. No. Dennis knows that I do reference Mississippi a lot as like the worst state in the union. I will freely admit that. I could not. So thank you again, Ian, for the email. I could not remember which one of us slighted Alabama or if it was both. I couldn't remember and I didn't go back and check.
    9:11
    The thing is, he's absolutely right. Huntsville is amazing, but it's kind of the exception that proves the rule. Because all that means is how all the amazing stuff that is in Huntsville pulls the average for the rest of the state so far up that it's actually worse than anywhere else. But Huntsville's like pulling it up just by existing.
    9:37
    That's right, Ian. How are you going to counter those numbers? Huntsville is like the one smart kid who screws the curve in school. That's what it is. Yeah, no, I get it mathematically. You have a good point. Now, I was going to go completely different because I don't know anything about Huntsville or missile commands or any of that. I was going to say, oh, Ian, look at you there. happy as a clam rolling tide because that's what i think is y'all roll tide rolling tide out there thinking you're the research triangle of north carolina know your place stay in your lane know your place we already have the south has already claimed its intelligence bureau it's the research triangle everyone's jealous of it when i was in syracuse in new york in syracuse they were talking about wanting to build a research triangle between buffalo syracuse and rochester and they called it They wanted to be like, not Huntsville, the research triangle. So there you go. Well, North Carolina needs a triangle. Huntsville just has Huntsville. It's all it needs.
    10:40
    So anyway, so we had that. Thank you, Ian. Yes. No, thank you. He was a good sport. So let's go ahead and go into the, oh, I was going to put this in the pinball segment, but I guess I'll use this as sort of a transition. We had another email. Gosh. You know, on occasion we are reached out to, this is from Drew. So thank you, Drew.
    11:04
    Hey, team. I'm now reading. I don't know if Drew's from Alabama, so I can't do that voice. Hey, team. We came across the Eclectic Gamers podcast and we think there is a great fit. We are reaching out on behalf of the audio marketing team at Manscaped. Oh, man. That's great. We see a huge opportunity to partner together. We'd love to learn more about your podcast. And then they ask for a bunch of demographic data. So I have seen one of the YouTube channels I watch took a sponsorship by Manscaped, and it was the most cringe thing I have ever seen on YouTube. I was like, oh, no. Oh, how much did they pay you to do this? They're all like, so we tried all the products. And I'm just like, so that's why you're scratching all over. so manscaped there's nothing quite like a freshly shorn spot that's what I always think of with manscaped known for their hair removal equipment I'm sure they do other things but well no I'm not sure we're gonna pass on that that's a hard pass I'll be honest I shave like once a month and it looks like I have 5 o'clock shadow going on when I finally get around to shaving.
    12:32
    Nothing that I need very bad. I think it would be really funny though if they had been like, we'll give you $100 for Tony to shave the mustache on YouTube. It would have to be a lot more than that. I don't think our demographics will command more than $100. I'm trying to be realistic. I have been informed that I will be divorced if I shave my mustache. Well, that's more expensive than $100. Yeah, it is. I've got multiple kids. Yeah. I'll be living back here with you again, Dennis. I'll be sleeping under the pinball machines. It's cold down there. I keep the vent closed because I'm cheap.
    13:11
    Okay, so now we'll go into the pinball section. So let's start with Rush. As I noted during the intros, we went and played it after our Pizza West tournament.
    13:21
    So what are your initial thoughts? 100% honesty. Rush is a better music pen than Zeppelin. Okay. I would agree. Even though I prefer Zeppelin's music. Well, yeah, me too. But it's a better pen than Zeppelin. And that's, I mean, it's not great. You didn't like it. I wasn't huge. It's not terrible. It didn't actively annoy me. Let's go with that. But I had no real interest in playing it anymore. Right. Because there was a Godzilla there. There was a gut feeling next to it. So, yeah. Yeah, I am. You know, and I saw someone before, one of the very strong area players, sort of put on a little bit of a clinic when we got there. Right. Who was, I mean, you know, I think he ended with like 90 million or so, which seemed to be a pretty high score. Yeah, I, you know, when I played it, I actually got some Kiss vibes on it. Yeah. Which wasn't what I was really expecting going in. Or wanting. No, the shots felt It felt like there were a lot of shots And that I guess some felt tight, very tight The ring shot or the I guess time machine I was surprised at how difficult that shot was for me to hit I got more dialed in on it as you would expect as I played But I bricked that quite a bit And I thought it would be like the ring in Lord of the Rings Which isn't a particularly hard shot So that kind of surprised me The rules are still way too nebulous For me as one of those And Zeppelin was like this too Where there's I think a great deal of stuff You can accomplish with it But it almost is like you need to watch a video primer To know what you're going to do I didn't read the card on it Because I figured it wasn't going to tell me enough I almost never can get that much out of a card anymore But And the location it was at It was turned way down So you couldn't hear call outs and such So if it was telling me what to do, I couldn't hear it. Yeah, you couldn't hear anything. But that's not the game's fault. You couldn't hear anything. So, yeah, I liked it in terms of, I mean, I'd like to know more. I think given the number of shots on it that it could be an interesting game to play in tournament, it wouldn't be a game that I would want to buy. No, I think once code is complete and if you're somewhere where you could hear it, But any music pin, not being able to hear a music pin really hurts it because they lean so much into the existence of the music. Yeah, and I think this is the fate of it being at that location in particular. They always turn the games down at Nub's because it's so close to the tables that people are eating at, and it's a live music venue. So those little local bands don't want to lose to the good music of Rush. I can't criticize the live band because we were singing along to it. I enjoyed. So what can you say? I enjoyed. That's actually one of those places where I don't mind, like, going to a little restaurant that has just a little live band that's not being insane.
    16:26
    I like that as opposed to the going to something huge and all of that. So anyway, those are our actual thoughts, our hands-on thoughts with Rush. So we finally got it. Yay! We finally got a chance. Now, what are we missing? Halloween. Yeah, we're never going to get one on location, though. They won't route a Spooky. No, and I think that's the only other big kind of release. Maybe we'll see one at TPF. Spooky's usually at TPF. Maybe it'll be one at TPF so we can play it and see if it's better than it appears to be and that initial reports are. Well, let's move on to some upcoming discussion stuff. So P3, we haven't discussed them for what? An episode? Because we just recently talked about Nick Rodridge's rhythm game. But they are in the process of promoting their upcoming licensed game.
    17:23
    Now, there's not a lot that's out yet. There have been a couple social media posts. They're kind of doing the this. I mean, I don't know. They took, quote unquote, took. I don't care where the idea came from. It's not a bad idea. They're posting an image, like an image a day. I think in theory the images are all supposed to relate to the theme in some capacity. So there was a sculptor. If they didn't relate, it had nothing to do with it. It was literally impossible to guess from it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it reminds me, ColorMDMD used to do this. They'd drop a bunch of hint images that somehow would tie in. The fairness of it really comes down to, like, is stuff a stretch or not? But again, it's all just for fun, so I don't care how they do it. It gets people talking, so I think it's a decent hype idea. So the first image is like a sculptor working on a statue. I haven't clicked on it to see the full image. I've seen some people say the sculptor's working on a statue of Venus, but I have not confirmed that. The next one is like a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. and then there are images of the art of Lexi and Cosmic Cart and Heist and then the fifth box is Question Marks, which will be the new module. I'm sure there will be a new module. In addition, there was a podcast, Flippin' and Mashin', which I have not heard the episode on, but they did a teaser episode on behalf of the game. And while I have not gone and listened to the episode, I have seen someone post a summary of the topics that they covered. Because I guess both of them, now I'm aware both of them own P3s. Okay. And I guess both of them, and apologies if I'm incorrect on this, but my understanding is they have seen the game. They are under NDA, so they did an episode where they, you know, not to breach the NDA, but to actually go through and talk a bit about what's going on with it. So, super vivid hand-drawn art and not tied down to any style with a notation. I'm not saying this is not a joke. In a notation, it pops.
    19:40
    I'm sorry, just because that's an expression I hear all the time. Maybe a new module, question mark? Sure, it's got to be a new module, right, Tony? It's got to be. You would assume. You would hope. Lots of stuff packed into the game. In parentheses, the kitchen sink.
    19:58
    How they got so much stuff into a P3 module. All right, we're talking a P3 module and how much stuff. It's got to be a new module. Continuing that bullet, though. Tons of shots and toys. Industry firsts. We've seen industry firsts out of P3 before, so that is not surprising to me. best feeling shot in pinball question mark half of the day was trying to hit specific shots and not worrying about story mode because how fun it was deeper than heist go preorder a P3 because this is their Mona Lisa new flipper kit feels real subtle shade to someone and has better power to them if you own a P3 buy the flipper upgrade kit, crazy light shows on the head-to-head kits, playfield module will be accompanied by two items.
    20:53
    So, those were the talking points from the podcast. Secondhand. Right, I did not. I have not confirmed any of that myself, because we just fly by the seat of our pants here on a Collective Games podcast. Based off of that information, now, I don't know what the, you know, what is the license, What's the theme? It's obviously Hudson Hawk. I have, you know, there's been a lot of teasing that the whole team that's working on it loves it. I saw someone make a pretty strong, I don't know if it was accurate based off the information, but made a pretty strong argument thinking that it was Beetlejuice. I've seen people suggest it's Gundam. I've been mostly seeing shows and movies, whereas I had always been guessing that P3 would do a video game for their first license. I'm guessing that Walk of Fame star makes people lean towards shows and movies. Mm-hmm.
    21:46
    Sure. Though, I actually did look up the picture, and... Oh, is that it? That's it. All right, I saw that part. I thought maybe if I clicked on it, it would be more. No, that's it. So, yeah, I'm going to go with Hudson Hawk. It's got to be Hudson Hawk. Oh, my gosh. That would be funny. So until I see it It's basically I mean this stuff I've heard positive things about the flipper upgrade kits But those have been out for a while now So that's not anything new It's new but newish It's not news Here's the thing Every single time a game is announced Somebody's in the lead up Somebody's always saying it's the dream theme And it's going to blow your socks off And you always get these things out there saying that, oh, it's got this greatest thing ever, and it's got this never-before-seen watch it. I mean, it's just the normal kind of thing that you hear on every game. None of it actually means anything. Yeah, I'll say yes and no. You do hear it. You hear there's hype on all games, yes. I agree. And maybe it's because of the position that P3 is in in the market. They have very, very small market share. Very small. So what this most... I almost said I worry about overhype, but in a way I don't, because I don't think it'll hurt P3. Here's my analogy on it. What this reminds me of was the buildup to Wonka.
    23:19
    Do you remember back to that? I do remember it. There were these people that got under NDA, got to experience the game, And they all went out and it was a lot of this same sort of language. It's the best shooting thing I've ever played. It's the most incredible theme. Everyone's excited about it. It's got all sorts of innovation. It's the most, you know, like the way that the public reacted to it was so crazy at the time. And it was all like over a week-long period. But, I mean, I remember there were people that, based off all of this stuff, the speculation spun so far out of hand. This is my favorite to this day. There were people claiming that Wonka must be using different colored balls to represent the different colors of the everlasting gobstopper.
    24:09
    And that each ball, like the pink ball or the blue ball, were in play, the game would behave differently. Kind of like the Powerball in Twilight Zone. And so, oh, yeah, no, Lawler's doing it. So now what's better than having one special ball? Like five, five special balls. The rules are different with whatever random ball is in play. Holy cow. And then the game came out, and Wonka's a good JJP game, but it's not even their best. Oh, no. No, no, not at all. And it was just like after that, the backlash wasn't against Jersey Jack. You know, Jersey Jack was fine. Like I remember Special Win Lit. Like they were one of the podcasts that got to have it. I mean, people got kind of nasty with the host saying that they shilled it. Right. And they stood by, like, no, they really enjoyed it that much. And I would say the same thing with Flippin' and Mashed. I think they did enjoy it this much. But when you use that sort of language, we're always very cautious about – I don't think we've ever overhyped anything. We try not to. Of course, we don't go in under NDA as part of it. Yeah. Because of the damage it could do to our reputation. We have a reputation? Yeah, for not doing NDAs. Okay.
    25:22
    I will own up. That whole NDA thing, that's a big, for me, I don't like to do anything that doesn't let me say exactly what I actually feel about an item. Exactly. And I've known other past podcasters in pinball who took NDAs and regretted them. Look at the, it's not even podcasters per se, but the Deep Six. Oh, yeah. And all that issue that came up with them trying to, once they were free of it, and how much different the story became. Right. Because there was no story when they couldn't say anything. Right. So, anyway, my whole point is, I would say, for people that might be getting, it's okay to get excited. I mean, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but let's not, I mean, come on. Remember Wonka Let not be ridiculous here And like speculation like the greatest shot in pinball is a really bold statement Yeah I mean but it comes down to one personal opinion But, of course, it's like what do you think of as great? I know some people would say like the greatest shot in pinball is the warp ramp because they just like enjoying how it shoots. That's not the hardest shot. It's definitely not worth very much. So other people might want something that's like visually really interesting or other people are like I want a really tight shot that scores you a ton of points. And, you know, it's just how it is. It's very subjective. Sure, sure. You know, when I hear something like that, though, it always makes me – I speculated to someone the other day where it was, you know, I wonder if someone were to say something like that to Elwynn, if his response would be, yeah, well, what about the other shots in the game? You know, the rest. True. And then he points at Godzilla.
    26:57
    So I don't know. I mean, it'll be interesting to see what the license is. If it's something the entire team is really excited about, I'm assuming it's something pretty famous.
    27:07
    It depends. But I don't buy off of it. Because there you always run into the issue with that type of thing is when you're talking about people who work together and in situations like this probably share the same interest. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily something huge. It could be something that's huge to them that doesn't necessarily make it something that's going to be huge to the world, even though they might think so. I mean, I love Battletech, and I think it's huge, but most people have no knowledge or care about it or its lore or its background. Yeah, and I had someone who owns a P3. They weren't messaging me directly. It was in one of the discords. And they were like, I don't, my impression is they're not under NDA and they haven't seen it yet. But they're like fanboying, which some of the P3 people do. Yes, they do. And, you know, I think we've been, maybe we haven't been as direct about it. I think we've always tended to that pretty well. We don't like fanboying. It irritates me to no end. I remember when Spooky was super small and there were fanboys everywhere. It makes podcasting frustrating because fanboys are so sensitive that they message in over the most trite things. They take things as slights that are jokes, and it's just like, oh, my God, just let it go. And if you do have a legitimate concern, like, say, a build quality concern,
    28:31
    the sheer hatred and vitriol that you receive because you voice the fact that it's like, hey, there's a quality control problem here, would be insane. And it's very common to smaller manufacturers. I actually see that I'm seeing the same behavior in the Haggis thread about FABM. Very small company. He appears to be missing deadlines. Bunch of Aussies are in that thread.
    29:00
    Borderline thrashing anyone who questions what's going on. And it's like maybe they don't mean it to be rude, But it comes across as fanboying. And it's just like, okay. We've seen it with Dutch. Oh, anything small. Anything small. We've seen it with everybody. So I'm just saying, this isn't special to, you know, multimorphic or anything. This is a normal behavioral pattern in pinball that we see in people. And honestly, you don't even just see it in pinball. You see it in other fandoms as well. It's just a thing. So in a way, it's like, I'm getting, it's weird, because this is actually, I think, a decent hype strategy. like the images and stuff right almost undermined by people like coming and telling me you gotta order a p3 now i'm like oh my god what is this an infomercial and they're saying well because you'll have to wait possibly five months to get one that's what one of them told me five i'm like i'm not ordering something and waiting five months are you kidding me by then there'll be another stern out yeah well and and again like a conversation that you and i and some others I've had recently, some people in pinball, I almost feel like they don't understand what pinball machine money is. I mean, $10,000 for a machine. Some people, it's like they don't get the same understanding of what it is. I added it up in that conversation we were having. $10,000 is almost the total price of every vehicle I've ever owned in my entire life put together.
    30:32
    I mean, I'm more than that, but not a lot. $10,000 is one of those things where there's a lot of hobbies out there where $10,000 isn't, oh, I got my foot in the door in the hobby. $10,000 is I'm one of the big ballers in the hobby. Right. Yeah. No, and that's, I mean, Pambo's its own special domain because of that. And that's fine. I mean. Well, that's fine. I'm not saying, yeah, but every time I hear somebody with the whole, oh, buy this, buy that, buy that. It's like, not everybody can buy five pinball machines a year. And that's one of the things that I talk about from time to time on the pinball show in particular. Because Zach, as a distributor, sells so many new pinball machines to collectors. And it's like, you know, there are people in a position to do that. And there are other people that, even if they could, would really question tying down that much currency in product. Right. I mean, that's how it is. The majority of pinball fans do not have a house, like buying a house in cash amount of pinball machines somewhere. Right. And with the increasing prices in the used market, that a lot of times it's even harder to get in on that side of things. Yeah. And so anyway, the point, my point being like I would never I could never bring myself to buy a P3 to get the five months started without knowing the new license. Just being assured by people that can only ever say nice things that, oh, trust me, you want it. Right. But I don't trust you because you say I want you say everything is good out of it and nothing's perfect. And when people only talk perfect, it scares me a little bit. Right, and people have already forgotten the number one rule in pinball, don't pre-order pinball. Now, in this case, obviously, there's an actual platform, and you can buy it.
    32:51
    Because if I knew what it was, I could see saying, yeah, I'm going to buy it even before the module's out, because I'd want the heist module. Yeah, totally. I could do that, because I know I've played heist. I've played Heist, so it's a known entity. I know it's a good game. Yeah, Heist is fun. But it'd be like, to me, it's just, and it's not, you know, it's not to bully Multimorphic. It would be the same with, oh, yes, well, Toy Story. Come on, Toy Story. JJP's next thing is Toy Story. Well, I haven't seen it, so I don't really care. Yeah. Until I do not go around buying things off of theme. Do you know how weak I would have to be to do that? Hey, I absolutely love Godzilla. and I would not have purchased a Godzilla before I played it. I mean, I would now. But I played it. I enjoyed Stranger Things. And even having played it and enjoying the game, I'm not sold that I would actually go and buy one new in box if it was available. Same thing with Avengers or Deadpool.
    33:55
    I have huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles nostalgia, but at the same time, I'd never buy that game. And different people are different. And while I don't think highly of just buying things off the theme,
    34:12
    do the hobby the way you all want to do the hobby. That's very true. I'll give you my opinion on it, but don't let someone like me convince you to do it a different way. Right. So always remember that, too, because I think that's important. See, I won't buy a game as me, as a person. I would not buy a game that was just an awesome, super fun game, but I didn't like the theme. I would never do that.
    34:33
    At the same time, if I hated playing the game, but I loved the theme, I also wouldn't want to buy it. There's got to be a balance. There's got to be a harmony. The game might not be as fun as other games, but have a really good theme or the other way around. And it might bend me a little bit more towards that point. but well then let's play a game time it's game time Mr. Matt Roberts he gave us a game that went over pretty well several months ago so he wrote in so he's written in a bunch of emails and I've tried not to read them because some of them are tagged do not read this so alright so here's his email to us here's the idea behind game number two I've created a list of sets of three pins. All three pins have a physical feature in common. So it's a physical feature. Your task is to determine what that feature is, but the game only begins there. The meat of it is the naming at least one more pin, but hopefully several more from memory that also has the same physical feature. Here are two examples that will also be included with the list as examples only. So here's example one. Simpsons Pinball Party,
    35:56
    Wonka, and Bally's Strange Science. Do you have any idea what physical thing all three of those play feel? They all have play feel. They do. So we've won. We have to name another game that has play feel.
    36:14
    Simpsons. Okay. How about this one? Funhouse from Williams Guns N' Roses, the Daddy East version And Red N' Ted's Roadshow From Williams Physical thing all three have in common Maybe I should read the game and you should play Well, the only reason I'm not guessing is Because these are the examples He has the answers right below them So I've seen the answers So, in the first example The Simpsons, Wonka And Strange Science The physical thing that he listed was blocked balls are held over game to game.
    36:51
    And with Funhaus, GNR, Yadda Yeast, and Roadshow, they all have a left side plunger. Oh yeah, you should play this game.
    36:59
    You should play this game. I can guarantee you I cannot get any of these right. This is a Dennis game. And he said unfortunately he couldn't figure out any, he didn't know of any additional game that he could name after those three. So, alright, so, we'll try and play it jointly because the answer lists are separate from the question list. Okay.
    37:21
    Now, he sent multiple versions. I'm going to do version 1.3, Matt, and I hope that's right. This might be a disaster. This game might be one where everyone writes and says, don't ever do this game again.
    37:32
    We'll find out. Here's the first set. I've got my little notepad, so I'll be able to write it down if we can come up with anything. Let me start numbering them as well. Matt, I'm so sorry for what's about to happen. Yeah, well, gosh, I'm worried about all the editing because of all the quiet we might have. Okay. So, set one is Terminator 2,
    37:51
    ACDC, and Black Rose. It's not a lower playfield because Terminator 2 doesn't have that. See, Black Rose has the ship with a cannon. Oh, do they all have cannons?
    38:03
    Does T2 have a cannon? Does he count the RPG? No, that's T3. That's T3. Crap, I was thinking about the wrong game. Um... It doesn't, does it? No. Hmm. There's I mean there's the skull Lock Do they all have skulls? See I couldn't think of one Metallica has a skull Yeah I don't I was so happy with the cannons Because there's the cannon shot I'm going to guess cannon anyway Even though I can't think of a T2 cannon You're going to make that cannon Well maybe the The launch Counts as a cannon Because you pull the trigger and it fires out In which case, you could put Data East Star Wars or Jurassic Park, because they have launches like that. I mean, yeah. Yeah, but the other two games don't have a trigger launch. I'm just wondering if the device counted or if there's something I'm just not sure. See, I think that would be so different from the others that it wouldn't count. I can't think of anything else. I'm trying to think. I'm probably wrong. And in that case, I would guess Star Trek Next Gen as a follow-up game. Do they have a hidden scoop on the back of the launch? Am I thinking T3 again? Yeah, because T2 has that annoying beepy sound, and you have to plunge into the stand-up. I keep thinking T3. That doesn't help. All right, well, we don't know then. I'll still write down canon for my guess, but I can't think of anything else. Let's move on. They have flippers. They do. But I think he's looking for something a little more meaty. Second round, Fireball, the Bally game, Medusa from Bally, Mini Zag, Bally 1968. Do those all have zippers? That's what I was thinking. I don't know Mini Zag. The other two do. The other two are zipper flippers, which would let you go to, I think, Crocodile. 4 Million BC. 4 Million BC has zippers. Is it Crocodile that has it? That's the campus queen with zippers? crocodile or is it alligator or something? You know, I can't remember the name of it.
    40:16
    Nippet does. Yeah. I mean, Cosmos, I think. Cosmos has zippers. Okay. All right, that one went better. All right. Provided we were right. I'm sure we were. Round three. Lethal Weapon 3.
    40:36
    Star Trek Next Generation. Stern Godzilla. Diverters It's gotta be the I just I couldn't remember if Lethal Weapon 3 Had a diverter I thought it did I thought it had one As I wondered do they maybe all have Magnets Well I'll put down diverter cause But Cause I don't know You seemed sure No I'm not sure I just I know I mean I know Godzilla's got the building and Star Trek's got that big ship right in the middle, but I don't remember what's right in the middle of the lethal weapon.
    41:17
    I don't remember. The ramp. Yeah. Maybe they all have spinners. Let's see if Diverter's right. They all have Joe Pesci. Shadow has Diverter.
    41:28
    You know, that would be funny. That would be funny. I'll put Shadow down as another Diverter. We're sorry for failing you. Yeah, well. We're sorry. All right, round four. Bally's Hocus Pocus, Stern Electronic Stargazer, and Bally's Harlem Globetrotters. I don't know Hocus Pocus well.
    41:49
    However, Stargazer and Harlem both have three spinners. That's a pretty particular thing. Yeah. So I'm going to say three spinners. I can see that. Because I don't know if I've played Hocus Pocus at all Yeah, I don't recall And I'll put Silver Slugger It's a three spinner game I miss Silver Slugger It's gone It's in misery That's how I sold it too Alright, next round Round five William's Solar Fire William's Jungle Lord Bally's Twilight Zone Jungle Lord, Twilight Zone, and Solar Fire I know I've played all of these but I've not played Solar Fire very much. Yeah, I don't remember Solar Fire. It's my issue. Jungle Lord I've played a number of times.
    42:44
    I mean, it's got that weird little, like, bagatelle part, but Twilight Zone doesn't have that. I mean, Twilight Zone has that power play field, and Jungle Lord has that little separate bagatelle play field. So maybe that's what it is. Maybe it is a separate play field. Like a separate play field. Yeah. In which case it'd be.
    43:10
    Mando has one. Shrek and. Yeah, Shrek Family Guy. Shrek Family Guy has one. That was in. All right. Round six. Theater of Magic.
    43:23
    Champion Pub. Bride of Pinball. They all have something that flips Or spins Yeah the head rotates The head rotates Champion Pub Boxer rotates The cube rotates And the box Rotating toy Cactus Canyon does that Wonka does that Now it could be that it's a rotating toy That has different shots based upon what's up. But I'm not sure. Batman has that.
    44:04
    Batman 66. Oh, yeah. The carousel. Okay. That's pretty good. I feel confident with that one. Yeah, yeah. No, you were right on that one. Right away. All right, here's another one. Round seven. F-14 Tomcat.
    44:20
    Jurassic Park Data East. Iron Man. Hmm. They're fast and fun I guess that's not a physical action Well fast would be but Um You're right But for fast it's It's a kick back at you Oh The Raptor Pit DE Jurassic Park And then the Whiplash Whatever that shot is on the left on Iron Man So yeah, it's a kickback at you. You do that kickback thing.
    45:01
    Guardians has that. Guardians of the Galaxy. Didn't they have something like that in the new Jurassic Park 2? I'm thinking.
    45:13
    I don't remember it. I played it yesterday and I don't remember it on that. But there was another new game I think that did have that just like kickback in your face thing that I can't remember. Because you've got to react real quick. Yeah, it's I mean, Avengers has the magnet that drops right out of that tower But that's not using a kicker Right Guardians might be the only real recent one That's sticking with me Seems like something Borg would reuse These were all Borg games It's a neat trick Yeah Well, no, they're not all Borg games I apologize, F-14 is not, that's a Steve Richie It makes for fun Eh, we'll just be happy with Guardians as an alternative. Alright, round eight. We're doing better now. Twister.
    46:00
    The Beatles. Stern Turtles. Spinning disc. Yeah, I see they all have a spinning disc on it. So that would include Whirlwind. Are all these spinning discs magnetic? I don't think The Beatles is. I didn't think so. So because of that, Whirlwind would be okay.
    46:19
    Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, the JGP. The JGP, Pirates of the Caribbean. There is X-Men. TMNT Data Yeast, spinning pizza disc. Okay, that's probably good.
    46:36
    All right, round nine. El Dorado, Gottlieb game. Jumping Jack, Gottlieb game. Atlantis. Games I've not played before. Gottlieb game.
    46:49
    Oh, I have played two of these. I don't think I've played Atlantis, though. Jumping Jack and El Dorado have a lot of drops.
    46:59
    Maybe Atlantis has drops, too. I might recognize one of these games if I saw a picture of it, but I cannot for the life of me think I've played it. I'm just going to guess. Drops. Three banks of drops. I'm going to be more specific. Well, three banks of drops. If you're going specifically with three banks of drops, wouldn't that bring in Joker Poker? Is that three banks? It's four. Four banks. Or five. Ten Queen, King, Ace. But I thought it was just Jack, 10 Jack, Queen King. I thought it was in three separate banks. Oh, maybe. I don't know. I mean, there are the numbers, but I thought there was the cross the back, but weren't there drops on either side? I don't remember. You own the game. No, I don't.
    47:41
    I thought you did. Nope. No, I'm thinking Jacks are open. Oh, Jacks are open. That's just one long bank. One long bank. That's the problem.
    47:50
    But it did have all the cards. Never mind. I am wrong. That's okay. We don't always have to fill these in. All right, round 10.
    47:59
    Fire. No Fear. Grand Lizard. Man. Other than awesome soundtrack. Does Grand Lizard have pop bumpers? I don't think so. I don't think these have pops. I don't think they've got pops. Yeah. I know No Fear. Yeah, I played No Fear twice last night. No pops. Gosh, there are not very many games that totally lack any pop bumpers I'm trying to think if I can come up with another one right off the top of my head And I'm struggling I thought there was one more modern that ended up foregoing having any pop bumpers No, that's got pops at the top Yeah, we've seen Stern deviating lately from the three pop to like a two pop when people want it So I was thinking Because Avatar has pops up at the top Three Yeah you plunge into them when you fall out of the top lane I'm trying to think Transformers I can't remember Is it three on the left? Three or four Basically Stern wouldn't allow no pops So I would rule them out I don't think they've had a no pop game ever Unless I'm trying to think how many pops did Godzilla have One at least I thought Yeah, it's moot.
    49:21
    It's been too long since I've played it. Were there pops on Rob Zombie? I thought so. All I remember is it getting drawn in tournament. Could I just forfeit this one? I'm just tired of it. We just want to name any. That's fine. We're terrible. We're taking too long.
    49:43
    Okay, Medieval Madness. The Hobbit. Starship Troopers. They all have things that pop up out of the field.
    49:56
    Hmm. What was Starship Troopers pop up? I thought they had a bug that came up. You're probably right.
    50:03
    Pop up target. Because you've got the heads. Yeah, you've got troll heads. You've got all the monsters. Okay, so is this any sort of pop? Like, does Scolari Brothers count?
    50:20
    Because they're just drops that pop. Right. We're talking sculpts. Ironmonger on Iron Man? Well, it raises up. That doesn't pop. Yeah. Hmm. That's tough. There might not be one. His examples he didn't have. I like this, though. Pop-up target. I'll put in parentheses sculpt. I just don't 100% remember it. But I thought there was a bug that came up on the Starship Troopers. We'll put that down. I like it. I like the answer. Alright, round 12. Iron Maiden, the stern one, not the other one. Sorry, the other one was the stern Iron Maiden, Legacy of the Beast. Metallica,
    50:58
    Tales of the Arabian Nights. Do they all have a... Are we getting too complicated in our thoughts? Maybe, but... Alright.
    51:10
    I know Totan and Metallica have magnets that grab the ball and hold it. Metallica, we have Sparky, but you also have the Hammer, which on the higher end versions gets smashed and goes into the playfield. I know that the Genie does a magnet grab for the ball on Totan. It doesn't go in under the playfield, though, I don't believe.
    51:40
    I don't remember if Iron Maiden, though, had a magnet grab. Trying to remember I don't remember I don't either, we'll leave that one blank Everybody's screaming at us We understand your pain Alright, next, round 13 Addams Family Last Action Hero Wonka They have something that pivots to open a shot Addams doesn't The bookshelf Oh yeah, it does turn I forgot I don remember if something does that on Last Action I always remember the crane On Last Action Hero though I trying to think what else You know that not a bad one Yeah let do that
    52:25
    Something opens for a shot. Opens. Put that in quotes. Oh, do they? Hold on. I'm trying to remember on Last Action Hero. No.
    52:36
    No, it doesn't. Well, then we will stick with your answer. We have to trust in Tony. Failure. has forsaken, has taken us. Round 14. Oh, my God. Bally's Spectrum,
    52:51
    Williams' 67 Derby Day, and Williams' 71 Zodiac. I don't know any of those games. We'll leave it blank. There's no reason to pretend otherwise. All right. Round 15. International Concepts' 1989 Night Moves,
    53:10
    International Concepts' 1989 Caribbean Cruise, and Midway's 1978 Rotation 8. I don't even... I've not played any of those. However, I do know Night Moves and Caribbean Cruise are cocktail pins. So I'm going to guess that Rotation is as well.
    53:29
    A cocktail style pin. Yeah. So that would be like Joust? Yes. Or what was that other one you played that was in Chicago? That other one, Rat Race, wasn't really a pin. Yeah So But Joust yeah Yeah Joust And there was that Yeah we'll go with that There was also the There was a soccer one That was like I don't remember that But I don't remember what it was Yeah I don't remember that Okay Round 16 Batman the Dark Knight Junkyard Heist Cranes Last Action Hero has a crane So does Batman 66 Depending upon how you want to count it They're counting Junkyard has no pops From that before I'm going to put that in Depending upon how you want to count it Demolition Man If you want to count Yeah they probably wouldn't The Claw That's pretty good I like Junkyard's crane. That's kind of good. It's up there with the magnet, and it's kind of, yeah, that's fun. Okay. Round 17. Slick Chick, the old Gottlieb. Uh-huh. Going Nuts, Gottlieb. Gold Wings, Gottlieb. Well. I can't remember them well enough. I'm not positive.
    55:01
    Going Nuts was a really limited game. I played it on Pinball Arcade. That's a timed mode. Gold Wings might be a time mode There was a time mode premiere Gottlieb game, I don't remember which one it was But it was aircraft themed I thought it was like Thunderbirds or something Slick Chick though isn't timed Because I think the only Ones I've played are Slick Chick I've played Slick Chick a number of times The only thing I ever really remember is You want to Oh, maybe these are all You have to collect the numbers Well, with Slick Chick I don't think it's not numbers, though. He's trying to spell slick and chick. You have to do it in order.
    55:41
    I don't know. I don't remember. Would that be a physical attribute? That sounds like a programming attribute. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe they have lots of pops. I didn't think Goldwing had that many. I don't know. I've never played it. Or I don't remember playing it. We'll have to skip it. I don't know. We're terrible.
    55:58
    All right. Round 18. Challenger. That's a Gottlieb game. Joust from Williams. and AG Soccerball. They are all two-player head-to-head simultaneous games. Two-player head-to-head.
    56:12
    Good job, John. Round 19. I can't think of another one. I can't either. Stern Electronics' Catacomb,
    56:22
    the Williams 67 game Apollo, and Jungle Lord is back. Bag of Tails. We've played Apollo. Yeah. And for Bagatelle's, so many games have Bagatelle's. Yeah. I don't want to name any, though, because I hate them.
    56:41
    Okay. Next, round 20. Triple action. That's a Williams game from 73. Totan is back in play. And Stern's 2012 Avengers. They've got the spinner. 2012 Avengers has the spinner. Totan has the spinner. And I don't know the other, but I've not played the other. Oh, like the lamp? The little lamp, yeah. All right, yeah. It's got the spinner, the little lamp with the stand-up. I'll call it a standing spinner. I don't know what else to... A horizontal spinner. Continuing onward, we have what I am calling round 21.
    57:21
    Round 21 is Ghostbusters, Hobbit, and the Stern Electronics game Galaxy. I mean, Ghostbusters had the little drop pops, and Hobbit has the mechanism. We've already used that. Yeah, and I don't think Galaxy does, is the thing.
    57:39
    The... I just don't know Galaxy well enough. I think I've looked at pictures of it to write up about Italian bottoms and differing layouts. I think that's what I remember it from, but... I can't think of anything. Okay, we'll leave it blank.
    57:53
    Round 22. Revenge from Mars. Stranger Things No Good Gophers They all have A ramp That comes up to add a shot Or that moves Because Stranger Things Drops down No Good Gophers The one comes up in the middle so you can make the shot Okay ramp gets deployed Basically Jokers with a Z does that. Yeah.
    58:28
    Would you count Mousing Around? That one's blocked. Were these like move into position? Okay. They're like completely out of play and moving. Probably not then. Alright. Doesn't Iron Maiden have one that comes up? Only on the premium. Only on the premium. So I don't know if it counts or not. Yeah. I'll put it down as a maybe.
    58:53
    Okay. Round 23. Taxi Whitewater Creature from the Black Lagoon Don't you launch into a Vortex on all of those? Yeah, yeah, Vortex Ramp Right there on the launch Zing, zing, zing, zing, zing Well, you don't launch into the Vortex On Creature, you have to shoot it You have to shoot it, but they've all got a Vortex Yeah, Vortex, I'll call it a Vortex Ramp Alright, round 24 Haunted House Electra, the old belly, and Halloween. I, you know, Electra I don't think I've ever played. It's the one class of 81 I haven't.
    59:36
    Oh, multiple playfields. More than two as well. Electra has a lower end and upper. Haunted House has a lower end and upper. And Spooky has an upper end and upper. So they all have three playfields. Main and then... And Spooky counts that... The thing that caught me is they count the one without a flipper as a third upper, but... Right. That's like marketing. And by spooky, you mean Halloween. Yes. So, I'll put down three play fields.
    60:05
    He might have been thinking Halloween as three rather than four, but there are not many games that do that. No.
    60:14
    Alright. 25. TX Sector. Genesis. Gladiators. Those are all got themes. I have no idea. I can picture TX Sector in my head, kind of.
    60:35
    I can't even think of the other two. I can. I probably think of Gladiators the least, though. Yeah, I don't know what physical thing it would be.
    60:46
    All right, let's skip it. 26. This is the last main round. pin bot lord of the rings williams's indiana jones trying to think does lord of the rings have a bank that has to drop out of the way or something you have to knock out of the way to get access because indy does right to get access for the center shot and then there's of course the motorized bank on pin bot but on lord of the rings i don't remember having to Maybe there is There's the drops in the center And I think there is like a kick out saucer there So That's what I'd say A shot's blocked that you have to clear With targets Which if that's the case then that brings in Stranger Things That brings in Deadpool Yeah Attack from Mars depending upon how you argue at medieval.
    61:53
    Okay. Now what he lists as the impossible round. That's not what we were playing? No. We were playing the regular round. So, impossible round. There are five games here.
    62:07
    Jackpot. Theater of Magic. Twilight Zone. Addams Family Gold Edition. Demolition Man. They all use yellow number 4131.
    62:22
    God! I don't remember what was special in Adam's Family Gold. There's something programmatically different, but it has to be a physical thing.
    62:35
    I wonder if there's something that they physically had that they added to that one. I've never played it, though. I've never played Adam's Family Gold. I've never looked into it because they're never around. I've never thought about it. I've never been interested in owning it. so I'll just have to say, I don't know. That would be a good one. Alright, it's answers time. Oh, thank you. This will be interesting. How bad we are. Oh, we were supposed to write down our answers? Crap. Well, perfect score! Oh, good. He listed the games in the answers because I was like, I don't want to have to come back. I'm doing it all through my phone. Okay. So round one, that was, for those that are playing along, I don't know why.
    63:26
    That's fine. This is fine. All right. That was the Terminator 2 ACDC and Black Rose question. and the feature, he says, is a moving ball cannon. So I was right to stick by putting down cannon. And he did note other answers would be JJP Pirates, Star Trek Next Gen, which was the only one we put down. And if you arrived at cannon, which is more accurately what we said, that would also include Circus Voltaire and Houdini. Okay? All right. All right, so we got that one. Yeah, I feel good about that. I'm going to circle it because we got it. All right, number two. Round two was Fireball, Medusa, and Mini Zag. We said zipper flippers It is zipper flippers So the answers are Nippet, Gator Bazaar 4 Million BC Hayburners 2, Bally's Cosmos Doggies The Wiggler, Four Queens Op Pop Pop and Daffy We got a few of them Alright Round 3 was Lethal Weapon 3 Next Gen and Godzilla Stern And the answer was a corkscrew wire form. We said diverter. That was the one where I didn't believe in it, but it's the first thing I said.
    64:39
    So, corkscrew wire form would be Oktoberfest, Pinball Circus, Daddy's Star Wars, and he said if you just arrived at corkscrew, you could throw on Comet, Pinbot, Jackbot, and Party Zone.
    64:51
    Okay. I didn't think about that. Alright, round four. That was Hocus Pocus, Stargazer, and Harlem Globetrotters. We said three spinners. The answer was three spinners. Yeah. So other options were we only put Silver Slugger, which he does not have in his list.
    65:10
    Well, he said three spinning targets and the answers were Sword of Fury, Iron Man. I forgot about Iron Man because the one in the middle. JJP's Pirates. And if you just arrived at three spinners, you could also add Avengers Infinity Quest Pro model. So you could add Silver Slugger. I am positive Silver Slugger has three, exactly three. So So, okay. So we got that one. Hey, so far we're three out of four. That's not bad. Yes, right. All right. Round five was Solar Fire, Jungle Lord, and Twilight Zone. And we said a separate play field. The answer was player-controlled pulse magnets. Oh, wow.
    65:51
    I now remember. Again, I don't know Solar Fire well enough. But, yeah. Yeah, I completely. The power is a flare-controlled pulse magnet, and that's how Grand Lizard's ball save is. So we got that one wrong. He noted other answers.
    66:09
    Well, he – oh, sorry. One of the other answers was Grand Lizard. Farrow, which I've not played, and Rick and Morty. No, you can only – there's only one on Rick and Morty. Right. Okay. All right. Round six. Those were the games Theater of Magic, Champion Pub And Bride of Pinball We said rotating toy As our answer He says that the feature is an interactive rotating toy So we got it right He says the answers are Batman 66, Batman the Dark Knight Stern Godzilla Striker Extreme, NFL The Stern 2001 game Hyrule Casino, Gilligan's Island JJP Pirates, Lights, Camera, Action If you just arrived at something Rotating You could have then also said Orbiter One, Indy 500, Wizard of Oz Genesis, Judge Dredd, Dancing Lady From 66, Street Fighter 2 Willy Wonka, World Cup Soccer America Pinballs, Hot Wheels Mario Andretti, Monopoly, and Daddy Star Wars Also, Teeed Off, Speakeasy Popeye, Fantastic High Score, A Go-Go, and Suspense I want to play that game I didn't feel like there was a comment It was just Mario Andretti Monopoly Yeah, that'll be interesting I'm glad we put rotating Troy because as many as there were here, I would have felt really dumb. Yeah. Even though I shouldn't because we still only had three hints. All right. Round seven.
    67:35
    Those games were F-14 Tomcat, Data East Jurassic Park, and Iron Man. We put down the kickback, that attacking kickback. And he put the feature as a playfield kicker wing.
    67:48
    So other answers, that's the same. because he said Guardians, which we put down as our one other game. He also noted the last action hero has that, Big Buck Hunter. But then he said the following have kicker lanes that send the ball up to the play field or around a curve instead of firing the ball back at the flippers. Before revealing these, it might be more fair to give the opportunity to name a few of these games with the extra definition in mind. This was because he thought I might ask these questions of you and have read this ahead of time. Right. But I did not. So if we wanted to count that, then we get The Incredible Hulk, Banzai Run, Judge Dredd, Future Spot, Aztec, Flight 2000, Wild Card, Tag Team Pinball, Big House, Batman the Dark Knight, Contact, Zacharias Combat, Shooting the Rapids, Nautilus, and Zacharias Hot Wheels from 79.
    68:35
    Okay. So we got that one. Round eight. You're doing better than I expected. Yes. 100% honestly. Round eight. And, you know, you came up with a number of these. It wasn't just Dennis sitting here coming up with answers. All right, round eight, that was Twister, Beatles, and Stern Turtles. Right. We said spinning disc. He put down magnetic spinning disc. Which we talked about. We talked about, and we couldn't remember if Beatles was magnetic. So he noted that would mean lost in space. Oh, I forgot about that. But if you just did what we did and answered spinning disc, which was acceptable because he's giving us answers, Then, Worldwin, Data East Turtles, Dr. Dude, Fireball, Pirates, both versions.
    69:20
    Tron, Full Throttle, Stern's Kiss, No Good Guffers, Owl's Garage Band goes on a world tour. So, we got a few of those. Yeah, because Lost in Space has that one where you can get the big multi-ball going that's just got tons of balls on it as it spins around. The only thing is, he didn't list X-Men.
    69:37
    Does it not have a disc on it? I thought it did. It definitely has something where the Magneto gets the balls and they start spinning. Maybe it's not a disc. Maybe he forgot one.
    69:48
    Maybe he didn't remember, like he didn't know about Silver Slugger. IPDB. While you're checking that, I will go on to round nine.
    70:02
    So round nine, that was El Dorado, Jumping Drac, and Atlantis. We guessed three banks of drops. he said they feature a 10 bank of drop targets so I was that one I get to count other answers would be 2001 Dimensions, Gottlieb's Galaxy Gottlieb's Kingpin, Jack in the Box Target Alpha Eldorado City of Gold, Gold Strike and Solar City so we failed on that one we are failures round 10 that was where we had fire no fear and grand lizard we said no pops the answer he said it's got the spinner it does X-Men yeah you forgot X-Men I am storm I am rain and storm I did the voice and yes the answer was no pop bumpers so other alternative answers we only had the one you went back and had me put in Junkyard but in addition to that which actually, I'm not sure he has, well, let's just see what his list says. The Shadow, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle, that's the modern one without Pops, I was trying to remember. I knew it wasn't a Stern. Judge Dredd, Swords of Fury, Baby Pac-Man, Victory, Big Guns, Cosmic Kart Racing, Solar Fire, Lightning, Faro, Arena, BMX, Car Hop, Blackwater 100, Hard Body, Rock from 1985, and Truck Stop. He did not put down Junkyard. Don't forget about the Junkyard.
    71:37
    I think I see what happened. What happened? It's not listed on the notable features. Oh, okay. Yeah, of course. He's not going to memorize all these. It's not listed on the notable features, but when you look at the picture, it's right there in front of Magneto. No, I was trying to think. No, they had to do a disc. How else do they have the ball spin? It's like that's the easiest way to do it. You have to tear up the play field if you just had spinning magnets underneath it. But anyway.
    72:04
    All right. Round 11. This one were the games Medieval Madness, The Hobbit, and Starship Troopers We guessed Pop-up target and I put in parenthesis Sculpt because we weren't sure if it needed to be that specific He put down that The feature is pop-up targets So the answers would be X-Men's LE Which had a Nightcrawler pop-up Zachariah's Robot The Munsters, Spot Pops up, Ghostbusters Cactus Canyon, Raven 24, The Ironmonger, and Ringmaster don't exactly pop up, so half credit. I'm not counting how many of those we did, by the way. I'm giving us credit, though, because we said pop-up target for getting the main thing right.
    72:45
    All right, round 12 was Iron Maiden, the modern one, Metallica, and Tales of the Arabian Nights. We did not guess an answer here. We couldn't come up with one. Right. Features were a Newton ball is on all of them. Oh, son of a biscuit.
    73:01
    Bisquick. So other answers would be Thunderbirds, Theater Magic, Ghostbusters Stern's Dressed Park, Avengers Infinity Quest No Good Gophers, Family Guy, Shrek Hobbit, Stern's Indiana Jones Break Shot and Avatar See one of the other questions I was wondering About the captive Newton Ball With another thing But it didn't work on one of the other games So Round 13 The games were Adam's Family, Last Action Hero And Wonka Our guess was something opens for a shot The feature he lists is center playfield magnet So we would not be right No He said other games with this are Guardians, Iron Man, Ghostbusters, Premium and LE versions Brom Stokers, Dracula, Houdini, Oktoberfest, and Roller Games So that's a miss Round 14 was Spectrum, Derby Day, and Zodiac We did not guess an answer on this one He noted that the feature is there's no plunger lane The ball is served from the center drain Other games that do that That's interesting The only game that I thought that might No I'm wrong on that I'm not going to name it The ones he has down that do this are Planets, Williams Winner, Hayburners 2 Canasta, Just 21 Select a Card And Flying Turns None of those games are newer than 71 by the way Okay Okay, so that one was a miss. Of course, we knew we were going to miss that one.
    74:32
    Round 15 was Night Moves, Caribbean Cruise, and Rotation 8. We guessed Cocktail Pins, and he says yes, Cocktail Table Size. Other answers are Take 5, Eros 1, Spectra 4, Foxy Lady, Serka 1933, and Chuckaluck.
    74:50
    So we did get that one. Interesting, he did not put Joust. maybe because he thought of it as a two-player thing versus but you still even in a single player it's sort of laid out in that cocktail i i think it's a decent guess but i'm not scoring us credit for our alternative our alternative guesses anyway all right round 16 that was batman junk batman dark knight junkyard and heist we said a crane was the feature and he said features a wrecking crane then said batman 66 would be the answer there but if you arrived at just Crane, you could throw on Last Action Hero.
    75:26
    Which is what we did. Yeah. I'm giving this credit. Round 17 was Slick Chick, Going Nuts, and Gold Wings. That was one we had no idea. We did not guess anything. The answer was they don't have outlanes.
    75:40
    Oh. Okay. It says other answers would be Spectrum, Flipper Football, and then a bunch of old games. Majorette, Super Jumbo, Stagecoach, Circuit Swaggon, Slug and Champ, Jubilee, Flagship, World Champ, Crossword, QP Doll, Flipper, and Merry-Go-Round. Huh. All right. Interesting. I would not have guessed that. Round 18 was Challenger, Joust, and AG Soccerball. We said two-player head-to-head. And he said a shared play field for head-to-head play. So we got that one right. He said another answer would be War, which was by a company called Visa in 1978. He did also note, while NBA Fastbreak and Cosmic Kart Racing do offer head-to-head play, the physical feature is not quite the same. But he gave half credit. But we're not tracking that credit. It's not hard. All right. Round 19 was Catacomb, Apollo, and Jungle Lord. We guessed Bagatelle's, and he said feature is a Bagatelle. Other answers would be Big Guns and Williams Pato Gold. So we got that one right.
    76:46
    Round 20 was Triple Action, Totan, and Stern's 2012 Avengers. We guessed the standing spinner lamp-esque shot thing, and he said spinning posts. So I guess that's the technical term is spinning posts. And he said other answers would be Starpool, Aces and Kings, Batman 66. for a single spinning post throw on Avengers, Infinity Quest, Safecracker,
    77:15
    JJP's Guns and Roses, and Zodiac. We didn't put down any guesses. Round 21 was Ghostbusters, Hobbit, and Galaxy. We did not guess what could be the unifying thing on all of those. He said the feature is there are two return lanes on both sides.
    77:34
    So, I guess that's Oh, two in lanes, I guess. The two return lanes. All right, so double in lanes on both sides. Double in lanes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I didn't even consider the in lane. I didn't either. Well, I didn't consider that no out lanes thing either. That's how used we are to the current setup. You don't even think about things like that. The current meta has just destroyed our knowledge. So some other answers on two return lanes on both sides would be JJP Pirates, Centigrade 37, Cheetah, Devil's Dare, Fast Draw, Quick Draw, Amazon Hunt and the Stern Electronics Iron Maiden from 82 had those.
    78:13
    Round 22. Revenge from Mars, Stranger Things, No Good Gophers. We said that a ramp that gets deployed. He said a jump ramp.
    78:23
    So he included Iron Maiden which we put down for the Of course we were thinking a mobile one so we specified ours was the better versions No Fear
    78:38
    Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Stern Godzilla, Bonebusters, Frank Thomas Big Hurt, Robocop, Champion Pub, Comet, America's Most Haunted. Didn't have Jokers. That's a jump ramp, though. But ours were much more exclusive, because we were like, no, he's got to fly. So maybe we overthought that one a little bit, but it's counting, I've thought about it, so I think we might be overthinking a lot of these. Maybe. We're doing better than I thought. I thought it was going to be terrible. I thought our score was going to be like zero.
    79:08
    So next round was round 23. That was Taxi, Whitewater, and Creature. We said Vortex Ramp, and he said a Whirlpool Funnel. Ours makes it sound a lot cooler. Yep. Vortex. Other answers would be Earthshaker. Mustang. Sure remembered Mustang. Oh, yeah. Diner. JJP's Pirates.
    79:32
    Where? Oh, I was thinking GNR for a moment. I was like, where? Surf and Safari and Special Force. All right. Round 24 was Haunted House, Elektra, and Halloween. We put down three play fields. He says three levels. So, you want to count it? Yep.
    79:50
    Though, Spooky would tell you Halloween has four. I'm just saying. Other answers would be Crawl, Ultraman, Street Fighter 2, WrestleMania Oh, Ultraman, of course we should That one almost doesn't count WrestleMania, Spinball's Jolly Park, and Pinball Circus Which has four, so he would have allowed more than three But we were being very specific Round 25 was TX Sector, Genesis, and Gladiators We said we have no idea, we didn't guess He says they all have kicker targets I'm not quite sure what that is Other games that he notes are Excalibur, Touchdown, Surf and Safari And Bonebusters I'm not sure I've played any of those And then with one kicker target Haunted House, Black Hole Stargate, Barbed Wire Freddy and Nightmare on Elm Street Okay So And then round 26 were the games Pinbot, Lord of the Rings, and Williams, Indiana Jones. We said you had to clear targets to access a shot. He said that the feature was a flipperless upper playfield, so we were not right. Terribly wrong. Other games of the flipperless upper playfield would be Jackbot, Bride of Pinbot, Batman Dark Knight, Wipeout, Arena, Transformers LE, Twilight Zone, WrestleMania, The Shadow, Champion Pub, and Space Station. Then, okay, I won't scroll further. The Impossible Round. We did not guess an answer. So, we have technically failed at it. But, he does put a note. This round might be more fun if you continue by revealing one answer at a time until the feature is figured out. So, I guess we can try it. Okay. Alright. So, those games were Jackpot, Theater of Magic, Twilight Zone, Adam's Family Gold, and Demolition Man. Oh, I see. He wanted me to name those games. All right. Well, we're too late. We already did that. We didn't guess anything. So the feature was an extra ball button on the cabinet for buy-ins. Oh, I don't even think about that. Doesn't Judge Dredd have that? I believe so. I think a lot of the Super Pins did. The other answers for games like this are The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard, Roadshow, Batman Forever, Popeye, Judge Dredd. There you go. No Fear, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Indy 500, Star Trek Next Generation, Williams, Indiana Jones, The Pinball Adventure, Super Bowl there, and for Next Gen it was to be continued, Dirty Harry, Johnny Mnemonic, Capcom's Airborne, Corvette, Pinball Circus, Flintstones, Whodunit, and Spinball's Jolly Park.
    82:38
    Interesting. So according to my math We have 1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10, 11, 12 13, 14, 15 We got 16 Right Out of 26, 27 If you count the impossible The impossible That's better than I expected Honestly I can see where with the right Crowd that could be a fun con game So our score, not counting the impossible mode, was 61%. So a solid D. That's a solid D. A solid D effort. That's a solid D right there.
    83:20
    Okay. So thanks for sending that in. Hopefully with the editing this wasn't too painful for people. I know the editing is going to be a nightmare just by looking at how long it took us to do this. And before we move on finally to video games, Rumor Corner.
    83:37
    Rumor Corner. Not a very interesting one. Just that it's sounding like Stern is going to drop the next release cornerstone I am hearing in May. Game title speculation is all over the place right now. Been hearing James Bond. Been hearing Venom. Been hearing Back to the Future, though I've mostly heard that as a non-cornerstone, so I don't think it would be that. Jaws is apparently being discussed again, so there's a bunch. This is a terrible rumor corner. The rumor is Stern's going to release another pinball machine before the summer. A quarter stuff. Oh, no. Stern is releasing another game. It gave a month. We didn't say April. It didn't say June. It says May. We expect a certain level from rumor corner.
    84:30
    All right. Follow-up rumor. Sub-rumor for certain. J.J.P. is going to release a game in the next five years. Tony. So look, they can't all be filet mignon, okay? I'll give y'all a milk bone. This isn't even chopstick. I'll give them a milk bone. I'll give them a milk bone, rumor, corner, rumor. Though this one we may know before they even hear this. Rumor, corner, rumor, P3's game, Beetlejuice. There you go.
    84:58
    There you go. Juicy. I'm not comfortable with that rumor, but that's mostly people trying to deduce based off of the clues. But that's the one I'm hearing the most argument for. I also heard Gundam, so what do I know? I don't know. I have Gundam. It would be interesting. It's not what I would choose. It's not going to sell well, unless it's a great player. In all honesty, if somebody was going to go with an anime theme and wanted to actually sell halfway decently, it'd have to be Dragon Ball or Sailor Moon. I think Cowboy Bebop could do. It was one of the top American selling areas. Right. Very well viewed.
    85:41
    Anyway, that's it for Rumor Corner. Are you not rumor-tained? You clearly were not, so I gave you two rumors. All right, Tony, what's going on video games?
    85:50
    Okay, video games. All right, don't worry. This is only an extremely long section with a lot of stuff going on today. Not really. I'm just going to – we have some interesting stuff. There was an SEC regulatory filing released Friday from the Microsoft purchase of or attempts to purchase Activision Blizzard. I guess technically it's Activision Blizzard King.
    86:15
    What we learned is that, as we talked about on November 16th, the Wall Street Journal put out that big report on everything going on in Activision with all that interviews and the background stuff and all that. And all the major players, PlayStation, Microsoft, everybody, Coca-Cola, everybody started, put out there, oh, we're troubled by the stuff we've heard within the next day or so and pulled some stuff and did some changes. Well, apparently Microsoft, in addition to that, also began the negotiations to purchase Activision Blizzard three days after that story dropped. pretty much specifically because that story dropped is what it looks like.
    87:05
    That means the negotiations for that purchase took less than two months. Wow. To cross everything, cross all the I's and dot all the T's. The SEC filing also shows that at least four other companies reached out to look at purchasing. Though one of them only wanted Blizzard They wanted to split Blizzard off from the rest To rescue it I'd say Please give me the pretty one Maybe that was Sony We can't afford all of you Can we just have like the Blizzard stuff We just want Diablo That's all we want None of the other companies were named obviously But it was brought up Also based upon the filing Because Microsoft is going to do the purchase At $95 per stock option based upon that if Bobby leaves when the deal is finalized, he'll be walking away with more than $400 million in cash. Well, that's a pretty decent walk away. Maybe not enough to have a super yacht that competes with Jeff Bezos, but maybe a mini super yacht. But it puts him in a good place to walk away. He's had his fun running the company into the ground and all that. Also, wow, there's a lot of spelling errors in this section of notes. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, who have the lawsuit out against them, have subpoenaed documents relating to the company's handling of the workplace issues, but they've also sent out subpoenas for police department records on Bobby Kotick and 18 other current and former Activision employees. I bet Activision's not happy about that. Yes. Their reply was the exact reply You would Expect to see from them in this situation I'm going to read it out real quick It's the DFEH is requesting sensitive confidential information With no limits or relevant scope From Southern California Police Departments This serves no legitimate purpose It represents yet another questionable tactic In the DFEH's broader effort to derail AB's settlement with the EEOC Rather than protecting California workers The DFEH is impeding the meaningful progress at Activision Blizzard and delaying compensation to affected employees is their claim.
    89:33
    So poor them. It must protect Bobby at all costs. Don't worry I will survive this no matter how many of you have to die for me to make it through. The Sebastian is standing there just going like, Mr. President Bobby did you just say that? Jump in front of me. You said it. Do it. Don't you hear you? You want to know.
    89:59
    Bobby's just talking to the other executives. Quick, we need to make a defensive wall of bodies ahead of me.
    90:11
    The Nintendo hacker with the best name ever for a Nintendo hacker, Gary Bowser, Yes, they're going. has been sentenced. He was found guilty for his taking part in the cracking of the Switch and other Nintendo software and releasing hardware solutions to break those things and selling said solutions.
    90:36
    He has been sentenced to 40 months in prison, fined $4.5 million, in addition to a $10 million civil fine. Wow. So they're hitting him hard. Apparently. So with that now resolved, can Nintendo's lawsuit against the English language for using A, B, X, and Y go forward? Yes, that's where they're going next. While they continue to search, the thing is, is Gary Bowser was just like the visible front man for the group that did all the work. He's also the only one who was arrested. Because everybody else has, like, not been found.
    91:15
    They're hiding. They use their VPNs. We mentioned last year a little bit Paradox Interactive. You'd know them if you played, like, the Grand Strategy 4X games, like Crusader Kings, Hearts of Iron, stuff like that. They also publish a lot of other games from other developers. They had a report that came out last year, the same time that we had the issues with Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard's trouble started when it came to their interior cultures and the way they treat specifically women and all of that. Paradox also had a thing come out that hit them, not nearly as bad as like Ubisoft's or Activision Blizzard's obviously but it would come out and there were some issues and now they did this thing, it's this weird thing, might have helped Activision Blizzard, might have maybe gone that way out and had some help, but what they did is when the problems came out is they hired a neutral third party that was recommended to them by their workers union to come in and do an audit of their practices and their history and everything that's happened to try and find the problems. And they found problems. They had recommendations to fix the problems. And then after said things were found by a neutral third party,
    92:31
    Paradox did the really strange thing of enacting the recommendations. They've also released the report to their employees completely and unedited. and then they also published it on their website completely and unedited where they set and show all of their failings and all the recommendations and what they're doing to fix it.
    92:53
    In addition to that, they are also putting together an action plan in conjunction with their staff, the union representatives, HR and management to further improve the culture. So they went the complete opposite direction of Activision Blizzard or, well, honestly, even Ubisoft, because Ubisoft has not been seen as handling its stuff as well as it could. And they went with, yeah, no, we've got some bad stuff. Let's bring someone in here and fix this. Strange. Strange. And one final little just fun tap that I like to tap every once in a while. No Man's Sky. Probably the largest failure launch of a game ever. because it was so hyped and it was so junk.
    93:45
    But they've continually strived and put out new updates, and they've actually made the game quite fun. They're putting out another major update six years after their failure, and this one's a major combat overhaul. And they're also getting the game onto Switch. So after six years After such a giant hyped failure To have come as far as they have I can't do anything but applaud them for sticking with it Is the game What it was all hyped to be in the beginning It's still I don't think it can ever be the kind of thing Like we were talking about hype and pinball Things hit a certain point Yeah I was thinking about it That's an example In that one's case it was the Yeah. Well, we had like the lead developer person going on and over. I mean, he's promising things that weren't in the game. Right. I mean, one might say, I might say, he lied. He went out and he lied. And maybe he didn't mean it to get out of hand like that, but it did. But it did. And so it wasn't just like a, you know, Peter Milneau. You know, he always had a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering. Oh, so much. Sort of thing, you know, too much hype, not enough substance, but never to the extent of, oh, yeah, no, this is in the game. This is in the game. And it's like, no, it's not. Right. I don't know if it was like he just cracked under. I don't know. I don't care, honestly. It is neat to see that they've actually salvaged it. Yeah. People that give it a chance now seem to really like it. I mean, I have played it since because I got it on one of them super cheap Steam sales. And I've played it since many of the major updates. And it is actually a pretty fun game compared to the disaster that it was originally. So kudos to them for trying to at least not just vanish with money and go, ha, ha. But what's going on with Final Fantasy XIV? Final Fantasy XIV has not only is it back on sale, because sales were completely closed for pretty much all of December and the first part of January. Yeah, that server overload. Right. They've also come forward and started putting out their, or they've returned to having their free trial. So for people who are interested but don't want to just buy all in, you can get in and make the purchases.
    96:24
    Or not the purchases, but you can do the free trial and see how it is for you. So that means their servers definitely are back under control Things are getting better And our last thing Horizon Forbidden West Highly anticipated That's a Playstation game though It is, you won't play it Because I don't know I don't hide in the tall grass I fight out in the open On top of buildings with my tank I really enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn. It was one of the games I played on my PlayStation 4. I actually have it now on PC, and I'll probably get Forbidden West on PC at some point in the future.
    97:12
    But the director did an interview on a Dutch site talking about the games delays because, like many games, the game has been delayed. but the reason for their game delay was in something very unusual for such a large scale video game release anymore. They specifically did it. So they didn't have crunch.
    97:37
    They didn't have, they didn't do overtime running into the game release. They even went so far as they did a, like a mandatory shutdown vacation for two weeks over Christmas where they're just like, everybody's on vacation.
    97:52
    And they did not, so they didn't do the crunch. They didn't make the holiday release window because of it, but they wanted to stay away from doing that to their employees.
    98:05
    Because there's been a lot lately about just how bad the crunch is. We know Cyberpunk had a big crunch issue. And it still sucks. And it's still, more than a year since its release, none of the major DLC that was originally talked about has appeared. Nope. But I mean, Crunch is one of those things that appears and it would seem to be the norm. Yeah. It's moving away. A lot of companies are moving away. They're not the only one. I know the new Ratchet and Clank had zero Crunch. There was no overtime involved in that game. They did not release that game until it was done without overtime and Crunch and trying to force it into a window. And I think that's the kind of thing that is a good target for most of these companies. Because it used to be a game didn't come out until it came out. It's not like they had, you know, this game will be out October 3rd, and that game came out October 3rd no matter what. I know a lot of these games, they have to have the marketing. They've got to get stuff to the marketing people. They have to do the spin-up. But I think putting in delays specifically to do stuff like make sure the game is done without forcing people to work 60 and 80 hour weeks and take maps under their desk before getting up and coding more and not see their family for two weeks and all that is, you know, a good thing.
    99:31
    But we'll see if we see more of that in the industry going forward. Yeah, I mean, if the way the market is with employment right now, it may be a good time for getting reforms into place. A lot of positions are A lot of people are struggling to find employees So I'm assuming that's impacting That industry as it is I know it's more on the service side and such But when you're in high demand You can start saying Concessions will be that I want to guarantee That there's not going to be Large stretches of overtime You know what else would be a good way To try and get that stuff in A union Well, and I kind of thought about that when you were talking about the Paradox Interactive and how they followed their report and stuff. But they deal with unions. Yes, they do. They're a European company and unions are very strong. And maybe that's part of the, you know, who knows about how much of it was they chose to do the right thing or if it's just the entire culture is the right thing will happen. Right. Because that's the way it is. They're not like when the Raven QC guys were like. we voted to form a union oh we broke the QC team up and integrated you with other groups so the group that was trying to form a union can't now because you're not a group anymore we dissolved your group I'm reminded not an apologies to the listeners but we're at the end to whine about a union example of this sort of tactic but remember seeing a piece media piece there was someone and she was trying to form she worked for I believe an automaker an auto plant and she was the ringleader behind trying to unionize that shot. And one of the assignments on the line that she did have, along with a number of other people, was like digging in and like just taking the bumper after it's shaped or whatever and then like carrying it over to this other section to get installed at a later point. It's a two-person job. They put her by herself. And then after six months said, you're not meeting quota and fired her. and she said when they moved her over they'd done the interview ahead of time and they go, she goes, yeah, I'm pretty sure they're going to use this to get rid of me because I can't move as fast as there are with every... They showed her they had B-roll of her by herself and all these other people working in tandems and yes, that's what they did. Yep, those are the games that are played. Evil Corporation being evil. Evil, yes.
    102:03
    Well anyway, if we weren't too evil and you want to reach out to us, don't reach out to us if you thought we were evil. We don't want to hear it.
    102:10
    Email us at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or you can go over to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast and use the messenger tool to message us. We're at Twitch, Instagram and Twitter. Yeah. Eclectic underscore gamers. I forgot the name of that company for a minute. And we should be back in a couple weeks. I think we'll know the P3 release by then. We might know JJP's. They don't try and drag it out longer than that. That would be bad. No, totally not. I mean, they have a – that's interesting because they kind of have a – I mean, they can – in a way, they can do whatever they want release schedule-wise, but I would assume they feel that they're in a window right now. It's like, okay, Rush dropped in December. A lot of it really rolled in January. And they got to know, JJP is highly expected to release in March, Toy Story. and that will suck all of the oxygen away from P3. I don't care how beetlejuicy Beetlejuice is. So given that, if you want a window and you want there to be time to breathe to get sales,
    103:15
    now that's the time. But again, I don't know in the end how the bigger concern is the five-month wait to the platform. Right. Because as we noted on the last rumor corner, I've been hearing, and this is not just from one source, multiple sources telling me JJP is building that game. The plan is to have a number of them ready to go.
    103:39
    That would be, that's smart. It is. It's very smart. We will see if that's what actually happens. But yes, this is definitely a very short window for P3 to strike, and they have to know no matter what they do by TPF, they're still not going to be the big call.
    103:55
    No, but having the games at TPF would be, that's why I'm it's like it's got to be eminent. That's their home. That's their home show. They usually have a huge and by the way, for those, if you can, getting to TPF is a great way to experience P3. They were at they were at Expo as well. But just the booth set up at TPF is very impressive. Like it is. There's usually not very much of a line. They usually have all the stuff that's available. So it's a great if you're if you're remotely nearby and you've been curious about P3, I do highly encourage going to TPF. Get some hands on time. Jerry's usually at the booth You can ask him questions And also if you're remotely nearby TPF's just a fun time Yeah it is But until two weeks I'm Dennis I am Tony Goodbye