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The Pinball Show Ep 106: Queen Pinball Reveal & Common Sense Business Practices

The Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 45m·analyzed·Jul 25, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.039

TL;DR

Queen Pinball reveal analysis: praised aesthetics, concerns on code and mechanics.

Summary

Joel Engelberth joins Zach Minney on The Pinball Show to discuss the newly revealed Queen Pinball by Pinball Brothers (manufactured by Pedretti Gaming in Milan). The hosts analyze Queen's design, artwork, playfield layout, and upper playfield mechanics with mixed impressions, praising the translucent plastic illumination work while expressing concerns about code quality and playfield complexity. They also discuss broader pinball market trends, Joel's expanding content portfolio, and community dynamics around streaming and podcasting.

Key Claims

  • Queen Pinball by Pinball Brothers will cost approximately $10,000-$12,000 in the US due to overseas manufacturing (Milan, Italy) plus import taxes and $1,000 shipping

    high confidence · Zach Minney discussing pricing: 'So adding that to that, you're looking at about a $10,000 game for the standard edition and a $12,000 game for the limited edition.'

  • Rhapsody Limited Edition will be 1,000 units with $10,995 price; Champion's Edition standard model at $9,295

    high confidence · Zach: '1,000 units are going to be made... The Champion's Edition is going to cost $92.95, and the Rhapsody Limited Edition will cost $10,995.'

  • Pinball Brothers is hoping to start shipping the Rhapsody Limited Edition in early September

    high confidence · Zach: 'the more limited edition version coming out in September. It's early September starting to ship'

  • Joel runs multiple content platforms including Triple Drain Pinball podcast, Just Another Pinball Podcast (interview-focused), and streaming on Pinball Network and Flippin' Out

    high confidence · Joel self-describing: 'Triple Drain is just me chatting it up with two good friends... Just Another Pinball Podcast has really kind of honed in on one-on-one interviews... And even the Triple Drain guys understand... And then the stream is the stream.'

  • Joel's current collection consists of TNA (Total Nuclear Annihilation), Deadpool Premium, and Turtles Pro—his top 3 games he can fit in his space

    high confidence · Joel: 'My collection is TNA, Total Nuclear Annihilation, Deadpool Premium, and Turtles Pro.'

  • Queen Pinball upper playfield features three stand-up targets, a captive ball, and two exits—described as relatively simple and potentially lacking engagement

    high confidence · Joel: 'looking at the geometry of is that upper playfield actually going to be fun to shoot this one i'm kind of struggling with because it looks like you just have three stand-up targets and a captive ball'

  • Music-themed pinball machines often lack strong storytelling compared to movie or comic IP-based games, making design more challenging

Notable Quotes

  • “You're kind of like the Marvel Studios, Joel, of pinball creators. You're everywhere.”

    Zach Minney @ ~2:30 — Establishes Joel's prolific presence across multiple pinball content platforms

  • “The ever man streamer... you are 90% of pinball enthusiasts and hobbyists that watch streams or listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos. You are that person.”

    Zach Minney @ ~4:00 — Defines Joel's role as representing average pinball enthusiasts rather than elite competitors

  • “You're the hockey fights of minor league hockey.”

    Zach Minney @ ~5:30 — Joel's self-aware humility about his skill level; he provides entertainment through 'wrecks' rather than technical mastery

  • “I started all this at the beginning of COVID and what credentials do I have? None. Like I'm not a designer. I'm not, I don't do it. It's just, I'm a person who's passionate about pinball and started recording myself talking and turned on some cameras while I played.”

    Joel Engelberth @ ~9:00 — Joel's origin story demonstrates grassroots growth in pinball content creation during pandemic

  • “music games are rough... you don't have defined story or something defined, like clearly some path to follow. Like you do a movie or even, I don't know, a comic book.”

    Joel Engelberth @ ~35:00 — Key design philosophy critique: music themes lack narrative structure compared to other IP genres

  • “The moment you take a stance on something is the moment you get an email or a Facebook message or a pin side post and they're like how do you do that or how can you say these things... if you don't have an opinion, you're a shill. And if you do have an opinion, then apparently you hate pinball.”

    Joel Engelberth @ ~38:00 — Highlights community toxicity and impossible-to-satisfy creator dynamics

  • “Give me the hand-illustrated artwork of the members of the band Queen on the back glass over any of the renditions of the Rush band members on that game. Period.”

    Zach Minney — Comparative artwork assessment; bold statement of preference over Rush Pinball art direction

Entities

Joel EngelberthpersonZach MinneypersonQueen PinballgamePinball BrotherscompanyPedretti GamingcompanyStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack Pinball (JJP)company

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Content creators face impossible-to-satisfy community dynamics: presenting no strong opinion labeled 'shill,' taking strong opinion labeled 'hater'; Joel reports regular backlash via email/social media for any stance on games

    high · Joel: 'if you don't have an opinion, you're a shill. And if you do have an opinion, then apparently you hate pinball'

  • ?

    community_signal: Joel has expanded from competitive player/podcast guest to multi-platform content creator running podcast network (Triple Drain, Just Another Pinball Podcast) and streaming operations (Flippin' Out, Pinball Network)

    high · Zach: 'You're kind of like the Marvel Studios, Joel, of pinball creators. You're everywhere' and Joel's self-description of his various platforms

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Queen's upper playfield criticized as mechanically simple (three stand-up targets, one captive ball, two exits) lacking engagement compared to other music-themed games like GNR or Simpsons

    high · Joel: 'looks like you just have three stand-up targets and a captive ball so i'm not... not really exciting me too much' and Zach: 'not really strong. I'm not impressed with this upper playfield'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Music-themed pinball inherently challenging because band IP lacks defined narrative structure and story modes compared to movie or comic IP; even successful music pins require exceptional design to overcome this limitation

    medium · Joel: 'music games are rough... you don't have defined story or something defined... Like you do a movie or even, I don't know, a comic book'

  • $

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.317

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised.
0:12
The Pinball Network is online. Launching The Pinball Show. On this episode 106 of The Pinball Show, I welcome on and every man's pinball player as we discuss the new Queen Pinball machine, Dead Rabbits, Stern Pinball's trip to Comic-Con, and all we got was this lousy T-shirt and Aussie autograph. The upcoming Phase 4 of Stern Pinball releases, Stern production updates, and upcoming accessories. Pinball market trends, Joel's ongoing transformation into a certified shill, and Pinuendo. Damn, I love doing this show. And even more, I love that you are along for the ride. Thank you. Now cue a theme appropriate Queen song.
1:04
Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. Buddy, you're a boy, make a big noise. Playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday. You got mud on your face, you big disgrace. Kicking your can all over the place. We will, we will rock you. It's time for the Pinball Show. We will, we will rock you. It's pinball with personality. Buddy, you're a young man, hot man, charging in the street. You're going to take on the world someday. Ladies and gentlemen, what's happening? It's that time of the week again for the Pinball Show. It's episode 106. I'm your host, Zach Minney, and I've got a good friend on today. Surprisingly, I've never had this individual on before. very surprising to me because quite frankly i feel like he's a co-host already in a lot of ways he has grown immensely over the last few years from zero to hero it's the host of triple drain pinball podcast just another pinball podcast and the flipping out pinball streaming channel ladies and gentlemen joel engelberth hey hey hey joe you're here i am here yeah excited to be here I don't know. I just assumed, you know, like, I don't need to get Joel on. He's already – there's too much stuff. I do too many things. And I'm not saying that in a braggingly way. It's more of like I really should probably narrow this down a little bit. But, no, I'm happy to be on here and always happy to talk pinball. You're kind of like the Marvel Studios, Joel, of pinball creators. You're everywhere. It's – I don't – yes. To me, at the end of the day, Triple Drain is just me chatting it up with two good friends and having a good time. Just Another Pinball Podcast has really kind of honed in on one-on-one interviews.

medium confidence · Joel: 'I don't think it's so much the lack of storyline with band stuff... you don't have defined story or something defined, like clearly some path to follow. Like you do a movie or even, I don't know, a comic book.'

  • Pinball Brothers used translucent thick plastic with RGB illumination on their Alien machine to dress up the playfield—an approach expected to continue on Queen

    high confidence · Zach: 'they took a lot... they wrap alien with this translucent thick plastic but then they illuminate it with the RGB... I can't wait till people see that because it is one of the most impressive and probably simple kind of things to do but it dresses up the game so so much'

    • @ ~51:00

  • “good code is not. You don't just fall into that. I mean, it's a lot of work, and you have to be. I give a lot of props to Stern, their coders, and even JJP because a lot of these guys, they've played so much pinball.”

    Joel Engelberth @ ~44:00 — Acknowledges code quality gap between large manufacturers (Stern, JJP) and smaller boutique companies

  • “it dresses up the game so so much and I can't wait till people see that because it is one of the most impressive and probably simple kind of things to do... they wrap alien with this translucent thick plastic but then they illuminate it with the RGB”

    Zach Minney @ ~59:00 — High praise for Pinball Brothers' translucent plastic illumination technique as design innovation

    • Ray Day
    person
    Travis Murrayperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Dave Brennanperson
    Lane Bryantperson
    Dennis (Dennis Nordman)person
    Freddie Mercuryperson
    Michael Barnardperson
    Guns N' Roses Pinballgame
    Iron Maiden Pinballgame
    Led Zeppelin Pinballgame
    Rush Pinballgame
    Metallica Pinballgame
    Triple Drain Pinball Podcastmedia
    Just Another Pinball Podcastmedia
    Flippin' Outcompany
    The Pinball Networkmedia

    market_signal: Boutique manufacturer limitations: game complexity/mechanics less differentiated than major manufacturers (Stern, JJP); code depth often inferior; smaller design teams less experienced with engaging playfield design across skill levels

    medium · Joel on boutique vs major manufacturers: 'I don't ever try to put too much... rely on that with some of these smaller companies because good code is not. You don't just fall into that... I give a lot of props to Stern, their coders, and even JJP'

  • ?

    community_signal: Joel Engelberth's evolution from competitive player (circa 2019-2020) to multi-platform content creator with expanding industry influence; started podcasting/streaming at COVID onset with zero industry credentials

    high · Joel: 'I started all this at the beginning of COVID and what credentials do I have? None' and current involvement across Triple Drain, Just Another Pinball Podcast, Flippin' Out, Pinball Network

  • $

    market_signal: Queen Pinball pricing inflated by overseas manufacturing location and international shipping; base US pricing approximately $10,000-$12,000 including import taxes and $1,000 shipping cost

    high · Zach: 'instead of your rent-of-the-mill $500 to $600 shipping cost, we're looking at rent-of-the-mill $1,000. So adding that to that, you're looking at about a $10,000 game for the standard edition and a $12,000 game for the limited edition'

  • ?

    announcement: Queen Pinball officially revealed by Pinball Brothers with two editions: Rhapsody Limited Edition (1,000 units, $10,995) and Champion's Edition standard ($9,295); manufactured by Pedretti Gaming in Milan, Italy

    high · Zach Minney: 'this game is released by Pinball Brothers. They're hoping to start getting, which is interesting, the more limited edition version coming out in September. It's early September starting to ship'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball Brothers' translucent thick plastic with RGB illumination technique on Alien machine cited as impressive design innovation expected to carry forward to Queen

    high · Zach praising the technique: 'it's one of the most impressive and probably simple kind of things to do but it dresses up the game so so much' and noting use on Alien playfield walls

  • ?

    product_concern: Boutique/smaller manufacturer code quality concerns; expectation that code execution will be critical factor in Queen's success given mechanical simplicity

    high · Joel: 'My issue is with a lot of these boutique or smaller pinball manufactories. Unfortunately, sometimes the weakest part of the game is the code.' and Zach: 'unless Pinball Brothers has somebody that really comes out of nowhere and just blows us away they could they could'

    • 2:51
    And even the Triple Drain guys understand. They're like, yeah, you focus on – there's no reason to have three guys interview a guest when the reality is everybody just wants to hear the guest. So you really only need one guy to interview them. And then the stream is the stream. And I'm happy to stream between the Pinball Network and Flippin' Out. So it's a lot. Do you feel more comfortable doing one over the other, or are they both kind of the same thing to you? The stream? Yeah, between a stream and a podcast, or an interview. Doing an interview is more like, I don't know. I can give Travis and Tom a hard time. I'm not worried. I go into that. I mean, we have a few bullet points and just let it rip. But, you know, if you have somebody important that you're interviewing, you want to make sure you're putting on a good impression. But at the same time, you don't want to sound like an idiot, and you want to give them the floor. You want to make sure the conversation's continuing in a natural way, and you want them to shine. So that's absolutely, interviews are the most work. Streaming, you know, I just put my pride at the door and just, I know if I do something well, if I actually play well, that's a surprise to me and everybody watching. So I have very low expectations for my level of play. but my main goal when I'm streaming is just keep chat engaged, have a good conversation and, and you know, some laughs along the way. And it, that's pretty relaxed as well. I think that there's a big component of streaming and entertainment, especially streaming pinball that you're capturing. And that's the every man streamer. You know, we got the Carl D'Angelo's of the world. We got the competitive pinball of the world. Some of it is just thrilling. Some of it will put you to sleep, but you're the ever man. You are 90% of pinball enthusiasts and hobbyists that watch streams or listen to podcasts or watch YouTube videos. You are that person. So I think you represent all of us very well. Thank you for doing that. Hey, I'm happy to portray average. That's fine. I can do that just fine. Some of the people in stream or in chat, they always just – I make fun of myself because I – it's unfortunate. You have these amazing coders like Ray Day that build this crazy depth into a game, and here I am flirting with the first, I don't know, 40% of it. I can't get past that. Or if I do, it's rare. And, you know, I apologize. I'm like, sorry, guys. If you want to see more of the game, go watch IE Pinball or Ray Day Pinball. You know, like go watch some other streamers. And chat's normally like, no, we kind of view this like NASCAR. You know, we're here for the wrecks, and you provide us plenty of those. So, you know what? I'm happy to do it. You're the hockey fights of minor league hockey. That's great. That is great. And listener, you guys know that I've said this like a broken record. One of my favorite qualities, maybe my favorite quality in another human being is humility. And Joel, you've got it. I love humility. A lot of times people hear the word humility and they think it's a bad thing, but it's actually a positive attribute that people can possess. You're very self-aware. You're aware that you're not the best pinball player, but you can ride the successes that you do have and also be critical of yourself whenever you do make mistakes. I love humility. You're kind of a rising star here, Joel. Man, watch. Here we go. Turning up. I appreciate that. I mean, at the end of the day, I started all this at the beginning of COVID and what credentials do I have? None. Like I'm not a designer. I'm not, I don't do it. It's just, I'm a person who's passionate about pinball and started recording myself talking and turned on some cameras while I played. Here lately, you've been throwing some rumors out there, camped out by the water cooler, hearing stuff that I haven't even heard. So that's amazing. Some of those, it's interesting. Well, yeah, it's surprising. All of a sudden, people start emailing you or Facebook messaging you. Hey, have you heard about this or that? And I don't know. I'm not going to stake my name on it. I can't say that 100% of them are true. And I don't have the fancy song like Dennis and Tony. Yeah, did EGP send you a cease and desist and say, hey, we got rumor corner here. We don't need Jolie corner. Well, what's... Jolie. Jolie! Jolie.
    7:00
    Jolie. Wow. Man, I love that song. That's the first, you know, I've never actually had that. But in my entire life, you're the first person to, like, legit first person to put that together. Well, you know, because I'm a brilliant mastermind of pinball podcasting, that's why. Yeah, what a segment he's got over there. I'm not bitter at all. It's fine. I give facts. He gives rumors and, you know, whatever. I get it. Joe Lee. Now I'm thinking of Dolly Parton. Pinball Bounty, everybody. Did you see that Dolly Parton that did pop up on Facebook? Yeah, I sent it to you. I messaged you. You and 20 other people. That's the only bad thing about the bounty. Whenever I find a game like that, either I secure it and I still get messages or I turn it down and I still get messages and it reminds me of how bad I won a game. That one was close, guys. It was close. You said it's too sloppy for me. It's like sloppy. Well, okay. Now, I wouldn't have said that publicly, but the back of the cabinet work was a little. Look, it was beautiful. It had new play field, new plastics. I thought it was gorgeous. But for the price that they were asking, I was going to have to redo the cabinet. I'd rather start with a beater at that point. Okay. Man, are you a Dolly Parton fan? Sure. I mean, who isn't? Well, there's a lot of people, I would say. How can you not like that woman? I know she's a saint. Do you know that she was a Playboy Bunny? I don't know if she was a Playboy Bunny, but she was in a Playboy, I believe.
    8:31
    It doesn't surprise me. I was like, you don't know, Jolie. Okay. I did. I wouldn't even have born yet. Hey, you know you can sign up. She has a book club. You can sign up for free books. I do know that. She's a saint. Yeah. Because my children receive those books. Yeah. I owe Dolly Parton the world. And the reason I was in broadcasting, Joe, this is what we call a stretch, looking for a segue there. Speaking of bunnies, I, yeah, see, I'm trying. That was flawless. That really went, yeah, nailed it. No fucking room or corner, but whatever.
    9:08
    I haven't talked about this, but a month ago, listener, my family purchased a rabbit, a bunny, as a pet, as if we don't have enough on our list of things to be responsible for. We have four kids. We have two mutt dogs and a business and a house and an above-ground pool. And now we have a rabbit. Have you ever had a rabbit or a bunny rabbit, Joe? No, but I know my niece, she started with one, and then they got a second. And if you get a second, you've got to make sure don't put them in the same cage. If you get a second, there's no – She ended up with like six or seven, and she sold a few of them. Now she has three. I mean. Wow. So just stick to one. Just stick to one, and hopefully you'll be all right. Our beautiful rabbit. She's a little designer rabbit, so we had to buy her special. Rabbits are like five bucks, but if you're dumb like the minis, you want to find a way to spend substantially more on a rabbit for no apparent reason. Yeah. Yeah, so we went and picked up a rabbit. Her name is Harlow. any of you listeners harlow harlow harlow the hair i thought it was clever if any of you listeners out there have any tips for me on taking care of a bunny baby joe pages oh yes you are she's a actual indoor pet we're potty training her into a litter box and yeah and the dogs haven't eaten her yet so how horrible would that be joel my kids start screaming i go up there and there's just rabbit intestines spewed all across my wonderful hardwood floors dogs got blood clots on its mouth that's a that's a visual right there yeah my uh our dog found a rabbit nest in our backyard and i'll tell you walking across that was uh quite quite a murder scene she had like they were like split in half and like laid out in a line it was insane in trails everywhere Yeah, but... Okay. I don't know. Hey, good luck with that.
    11:06
    Yeah, we'll see. Email us at thepinballnetwork at gmail.com if I'm crazy or if you yourself have... Some people have pigs. That's weird. I don't know if we've ever started an episode of news here on the Pinball Show, Joe, with the Pinball Brothers. Listener, we know that the Pinball Brothers was kind of a result of Highway Pinball going defunct. and the Pinball Brothers stepping in, purchasing that company, and attempting to continue production of Alien Pinball Machines. They have since, this last week, released, officially, their next pinball title. And that, my friends, is themed around one of the greatest musical bands of all time, Queen.
    11:58
    Are you a Queen fan? I mean, they're a good band. I'd be a no, ladies and gentlemen. Well, no. Is Queen a dream thing for me? Is Queen something I've got to get at? No, it's not one of those bands. You son of a bitch. Fucking Everclear? What are you going for there? Counting crows? I mean, I... No, no. It's like, I just prefer more modern bands. I mean, this is outside, you know, people always talk about dad rock. I mean, I get it now. Now I'm a dad. But I'm not. It's just a different category.
    12:36
    You know, Queen was really more popular before I cared about music. You don't listen to Queen? You don't listen to Dolly Parton? What are you, Kings of Leon kind of guy there? No, Kings of Leon's not bad. But no, they're not on my iPod. What's on your iPod playlist there? You know, it's quite an assorted mix of... Eclectic? Eclectic, yeah. Shout out to Lane Bryant. Him and I, apparently him, and that would be in San Diego Falls. We have very similar tastes in music, but kind of some harder music, some hardcore music. That guy's super weird. Dude, Lane's a character. He is. He's incredible. So you listen to a lot of Marshmello there, huh? Weirdo? No, no. Okay. No, no. You can't even name a band or a group that you listen to. I've said before, like Muse. Muse is a modern rock band that I absolutely enjoy. I won't crap on it because I don't want the emails like I misspoke with Hart. I do love Hart, by the way. But no, Queen is a huge theme.
    13:34
    Queen or Muse. Well, I get it. Which is, if I was a pinball company and I could secure one or the other, yeah. Queen, you know, you're distributing them. You sold them on a few photos. It's because of Queen. It's because of the name Queen. There's a local guy that I saw he posted on Pinball Enthusiast He's like, Queen is my wife's biggest dream theme How comfortable should I be in Pinball Brothers? He's ready, he's ready to write a check But yet, he's hesitated just that tiny bit of He's ready, just because he heard Queen I will say that when it comes to music and band pins Sometimes they just don't stick with me I don't know why I don't think it's so much the lack of storyline with band stuff. That's why I like things like Iron Maiden feels like it has a story, or GNR has the light show choreographs kind of stuff. But I don't know if band themes stick with my collection a lot. But if they do, I would love to have something like Queen, because Queen is, I'm a huge Queen fan. I love Queen. I think that Freddie Mercury is probably one of the most talented artists of our all time. Of all time. It's like a sweet angel singing with those big old teeth. Love that guy. You know, he was worried about getting his teeth fixed because he didn't want it to potentially change the way he sang or like the sound that he made. I don't blame him. No, I mean, I agree. At the end of the day, you want to have a pinball machine where you like the music. But music games are rough. I mean, they're hard because, yeah, you don't have defined story or something defined, like clearly some path to follow. Like you do a movie or even, I don't know, a comic book. There's so many different comic books. There's so many different storylines. You don't have any of that. I mean, the one exception I can think of is Iron Maiden. Like Keith did a really good job of making unique modes because he just put Eddie, the character, in these different unique situations. but then you look at bands like Led Zeppelin and Rush, they don't really have unique modes, but the way that they handle the scoring and the song, well, that's probably not fair. Their songs, their modes or their multiballs are unique, but it's just they don't have a structure like that, like a story mode. It is much more give you a whole bunch of options and how do you want to attack this. Poor Ray Day. Isn't this the part you crap on Rush Pinball? No, it's not. Yes, I am a huge fan of Ray Day, But at the same time, I hope Ray Day's next game isn't a music pin. Give Ray Day some modes, baby. I want to see him attack something a little more linear, a little more mode-based. But no, music. I mean, you look at the difference between Metallica and even GNR. It's a lot of these pins you could just take out a band and put in a different band if you really wanted to and change a few little things. That's a good point. But it's not like this. I mean, GNR is a good example. There's really nothing about it that's GNR. You could put another band. If you had all those assets and all the music, you could place another band in there. Besides one of the band members designing the game, I guess. True, but when it comes to toys and mechs or even every song in there, yeah, it's going to be a slightly different choreographed light show. I'm just waiting for you to start crapping on GNR pinball now. here's the problem right so Travis tells me I'm a fence sitter Travis there it is Travis Murry tells me Travis is the problem yes he tells me I'm a fence sitter all I do is just I never have a heavy take one way or the other but I will tell you that's the biggest thing after streaming or podcasting the moment you take a stance on something is the moment you get an email or a Facebook message or a pin side post and they're like how do you do that or how can you say these things And it's like, okay, so if you don't have an opinion, you're a shill. And if you do have an opinion, then apparently you hate pinball. Yep, you're a pinball hater. You know, I never understood the whole saying fence sitting. Because fence sitting would imply that you're comfortable. You don't want to go one way or the other. Sounds awful. How comfortable would it be to sit on said fence? There's nothing comfortable about sitting on a fence. I couldn't imagine sitting on a fence. I don't know any broad fences enough for my fat ass.
    18:06
    There's no good fence. You're just stuck on a chain link. Yeah, and I always picture the pointy picket fence. And I'm like, where are you going to sit there? I don't want to be on the fence. I'm going to jump off the fence. You take some strong takes recently, poor GNR or Rush or, man, good thing I didn't give you an Aerosmith pinball to stream. That's what's funny is GNR, like I don't actually – I understand. I had a strong take on Halloween, and I get that. But GNR, I'm not actually saying anything bad about it. It's just this is a game that this roller coaster that I've gone on of the first few weeks I had it, thinking this is one of the greatest things I've ever played, and it made me reconsider my entire collection if I should start going more JJP route because of how much I enjoyed the light show and the large display and just the overall package that was presented to me. but then once I played it over and over again that's when you start to find if I have to repeat these things every time I hit the start button am I enjoying those things I got out of the honeymoon phase and I really do have a huge respect for the game but there are things about it that are reasons why it's not in my top 3 and it has to be in my top 3 for me to own it Why is that? Because I can only fit 4 games So what do you have right now in your collection? My collection is TNA, Total Nuclear Annihilation, Deadpool Premium, and Turtles Pro. Wow, that's a good line. Yeah, I'm a big fan of those. Not saying there aren't necessarily better games out there, but between games that give me consistent fun and fit in my budget, these three have made the cut. They do it for you. Okay. Yep. Let's jump into Queen Pinball by Pinball Brothers. You can follow along with us, listener, either at naparcade.org. Pinballnews.com has a release showing some pictures as well. We know that this game is released by Pinball Brothers. They're hoping to start getting, which is interesting, the more limited edition version coming out in September. It's early September starting to ship, and it's called the Rhapsody Edition. Easy come, easy go. Little high, little low. 1,000 units are going to be made. And then there is a Champion's Edition, which is more the standardized model. It's not limited at all. Price breakdowns on the two. The Champion's Edition is going to cost $92.95, and the Rhapsody Limited Edition will cost $10,995. And you get extras on that, like a shaker motor, shooter rod, powder coat, interior lit arc blades, which are kind of interesting there, numbered plaques, certificate, yada, yada, yada. And that's kind of the details between the two. Now, there is, for those of you in the United States, keep in mind they're coming from overseas. They're manufactured over in Italy, I believe. Yeah, Milan, Italy, built by Pedretti Gaming. And the import taxes and shipping are a lot more expensive to ship overseas. So instead of your rent-of-the-mill $500 to $600 shipping cost, we're looking at rent-of-the-mill $1,000. So adding that to that, you're looking at about a $10,000 game for the standard edition and a $12,000 game for the limited edition. The first time you've seen pictures of this game, your first impressions, Jolie. Wow.
    21:35
    I'm 34 years old, and I just think it's hilarious that I get Joel a lot, like people singing Noel. Oh, man. How original. But Jolie. Jolie makes sense. Nobody has ever done that. I'm just really impressed. So my first impression was, eh.
    21:54
    That was, eh. My first impression was, eh. Well, okay. So we actually, on Wednesday nights, typically every other Wednesday night on the Pinball Network, I do like a chatting stream. And when this first came out and when these pictures first came out, it was months ago at like a pop-up store. And we were looking at those. And we really broke it down. And, you know, some of the – you can kind of figure out the shots based on, you know, like, okay, looking at this, how smooth do you think that looks or how is that going to feel? But really, the first thing we dove into was the art. And I know we had a great time with the art blades because of this crowd and these hands. The thumbs. I think he's actually – Remember the thumbs? Yes. I think they might have edited the art a tiny bit. They do. Because I'm not seeing – they had some hands that were massive. and it just it looked so weird having a thumb that was as big as an arm it just looked odd so i think they've edited the art yeah stepping in the right direction i love it uh upper playfields to me i like them because that's something for a non-pinball player they see that and they're like oh what you know i want to experience that but at the same time trying to look at the geometry of is that upper playfield actually going to be fun to shoot this one i'm kind of struggling with because it looks like you just have three stand-up targets and a captive ball so i'm not i like seeing more like a give me a physical ball lock like gnr or give me something like like simpsons yeah give me yeah give me something there simpsons being able to hit that behind the tv and then up on the couch i mean like that's a fun upper playfield or give me a unique playfield upper playfield like shadow you know something that's unique experience so the upper playfield here, I don't know, not really exciting me too much. Not really strong. In my opinion, because I'm with you, I'm such a shill and I sell this game that I can still have criticism. It gets me in trouble either way I go. But I think the thing that could save it is code. Because I'm not impressed with this upper playfield. I think it's beautiful. It looks good. But yeah, there's three stand-up targets, an exit, and a captive ball. Two exits, I suppose. So, yeah, it doesn't do much unless the code relies upon it and it becomes fun and challenging up there. Then, OK, you saved it. But otherwise, yeah, that's going to be a tough one. My issue is with a lot of these boutique or smaller pinball manufactories. Unfortunately, sometimes the weakest part of the game is the code. So, I mean, yes, absolutely. This game, the code could be incredible. It could be a huge surprise, but that's something that I don't know. I don't ever try to put too much. I don't try to rely on that with some of these smaller companies because good code is not. You don't just fall into that. I mean, it's a lot of work, and you have to be. I give a lot of props to Stern, their coders, and even JJP because a lot of these guys, they've played so much pinball. some of them are competitive players they know what really works for good engaging code at multiple levels unless Pinball Brothers has somebody that really comes out of nowhere and just blows us away they could now when I first seen the game everybody was just ribbing on man they were brutal on this artwork I said it last time whenever this game was in that pop up store I don't, I mean the thumbs were rough the art blades stood out yeah yes but they're gone yeah i don't know i don't doesn't make me angry at all like the the artwork on the back glass i i think it's good art like i don't see that like what's wrong with that art yeah i don't it's not like i agree there's there have been games that have come out even in the last few years that you see the art and you're like oh boy you know could you could you have like please there are so many better artists out there I get that. I didn't have that type of reaction on this. The Art Blades, yes. There was some stuff on the Art Blades that I did react to. But the play field, I'm with you. I don't have a problem with it. It's not offending me in any way. I mean, now I say offending. There are some. There like a nude woman in one area and a nude woman riding a bike So I get it It fits in with Queens I not not like personally offended by that girl baby i get it she makes that rock and roll go round i think the arts yeah i would say the arts fine i'd give you you know i'd give it a straight down the middle b plus why not but now caricatures when you when you have that when you do a hand drawn or like a i don't know that's hard like an illustrator mercury's freddy mercury mercury wow apparently I can't say his name. It's not easy. Yeah. His face is, I would be curious. That's Freddie Mercury's face. Is it? But if you put it right next to the reference photo, like how good is, I don't know. I don't think it's bad. I'm not a Queen expert. You know what? I'm going to be bold here. Let's get bold, listener. Go for it. Give me the hand-illustrated artwork of the members of the band Queen on the back glass over any of the renditions of the Rush band members on that game. Period.
    27:22
    Yes. That's bold. It's subjectively true, but also bold. I mean, I will have to give props to the GNR artist because instead of flirting with that at all and trying to do an actual photorealistic rendition of their face, he went all skeletons. That is even better. And made something really cool. Now, I understand Queen as skeletons probably wouldn't go over too well. It doesn't make as much sense. But, yeah, give me that. Now, I will say, was it Michael Barnard did the Rush artwork? Give me the rest of his artwork over this Queen artwork, you know, like the albums and the owl. Give me that stuff over the Queen stuff. But I'm not mad at this. I'm not mad at all. Not either. If I was the queen, there's plenty of people that are huge queen fans, and there's nothing on here that I would – there wouldn't be a reason why they wouldn't want to put this in their basement or whatever, their music room, because I think it shows off the band in a positive light. Some people think the artwork on the cabinets are a little plain. I think they show Wembley Stadium there.
    28:37
    And I kind of like the orange over the limited edition gold look to it. Again, it's not horrible. It reminds me of the Led Zeppelin stuff. It's just very album, basic kind of thing. It could be, now that I look at those photos, it's pretty plain. I don't know. Cabinet artwork's interesting. If you have a larger collection, you don't see it. It's just you have your game shoved between other games. But for the avid Queen fan that's going to stick this in the corner of their basement by itself, sure. It would have been a lot better to actually have some people or like the actual band members on the side in some capacity. Oh, you want to see just a silhouette with the arm up?
    29:21
    I'd be fine with that. I mean, now that I'm looking at this, it's a whole lot, like 80% of that background is the sky.
    29:31
    Like it's a gradient with the word queen. I mean, it's big and bold, but. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What about the layout? It's getting some criticism there as well. people are like, I don't know if it's really got anything in it. It's got some molded toys, but eh. I mean, don't get me wrong. This is one of those games I'm happy to flip it if I see it at a show or whatnot, and I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, but, you know, I'm not seeing any shot here of like, ooh, how's that going to work? Like I want to experience that. I'm seeing drop targets everywhere. Drop targets are great. Now that's a step in the right direction. The plain drop targets on the left by the piano keys, visually are throwing me off a little bit. I kind of wish there was some graphic, but I don't necessarily know what would go on there. The only way that works is if they made them translucent drop targets and there is color back there or something. Well, if you look at the way that they did almost all the, like, walls in the game on the lower plate, it looks like they used some sort of kind of cloudy clear plastic. I'm glad you brought that up because this is something that I thought, joe was spectacular on pinball brothers alien machine that they did they took a lot and i heard it was dave brennan they were streaming alien on ryan kuyper's uh channel turbo graphics and he was talking about as well i love pinball brothers they do like this instead of metal under the guides or on the wood rails or like they wrap alien with this translucent thick plastic but then they illuminate it with the RGB and they that's what you're talking about here on Queen it is one of the most impressive and probably simple kind of things to do but it dresses up the game so so much and I can't wait till people see that because it is so well done and whenever I owned Alien for the short time I did I was like man I hope that other pinball companies or that this company just continues to do this because it's electrifying it looks really really good I I agree as well it's Well, I think I'm saying I agree too much because I remember I reached out to Dennis and Dennis is like, you should probably make a decision early on. Do you want to be a Greg Bone and agree with Zach or do you want to be like me and disagree with everything he says? It's hard to disagree with intelligence. I'm with you. But I agree. Light show is one area that I it's there's definitely a balance there because like TNA, total nuclear annihilation. What stood out to me when that game came out is how incredible the light show was. Like it stood out to me that all the inserts on the game are clear. And because of that, then you can do so much with the light show. And so then JJP comes out with the hot rails and Stern comes out with the expression lighting kit. And to me, light show is is it my I think it's a cheap way to really like LEDs are cheap. So it's a really cheap way to just make your game stand out. And I agree. Aliens light show is awesome. We say that you say that they are cheap and they are material. why they're cheap. I would argue that they are quite expensive because the level of coding that goes into them, now you've got to pay for that coder to do the level of telling a story with lighting. And I do agree. I think lighting can be an additional character in the story of a game, like it is on GNR and a lot of JJP games and a lot of Dwight games.
    32:53
    They're cheap, but I couldn't imagine how to code all of those different... Because whenever we see these code updates for Stern and stuff, the stuff that kind of really pulls it in, besides just the rules, is tuning in some of the effects of lighting. It makes the package feel a lot more complete. Well, you're all about pinball moments. Oh, yeah. And lighting is absolutely an incredible way to make something a moment. And so when I see these, and I see these cloudy, I don't know, rails or stuff that's on this game, yeah, that to me is a great way to – change the atmosphere of whatever mode or whatever you're in and but also just overall illumination you look at how many mods are out there on people adding um spotlights to their slings or pin stadiums or something people want more light in a game so if this is technology and they even have these lit um like side art blades yeah this le maybe a yeah maybe a pretty pin lit all lit up well even in the if you look at the apron on the on the in the apron itself you know stern adds uh two spotlights basically in the apron and i know jjp now has some lights there in the apron well this has lighting all the way up the apron so i i'm all for it i now there's that balance you don't want the light show to be distracting or interfere with you being able to play the game or see the ball but if you can find that balance um this is what lighting is the main thing that i think makes a modern pin stand out from an older pin 100 these these light shows and and the RGB LEDs that are in. And an LCD screen helps. The LCD screen absolutely helps, but you're not, in my mind, you're not looking at the LCD a ton while you play. No, if a non-pinball player walks up and says, this is what pinball is, they see an LCD screen, they see all the pretty colors. See, I just assumed they were only looking at the toppers. That's why they want to walk over and play a game, right, Zach? Mm-hmm. I'm seeing these apron lights as well. That is cool. Yeah. So that's the thing. I mean, I know Haggis didn't Haggis add lighting into the actual walls of the cabinets with kelts. They did. So it's like there are some companies that are thinking, okay, there's some stuff here. Instead of people spending money for mods to add these things to their game, why don't we just include them? And then that adds up for features. Remember the Quetzal Super Hoop game? Yeah. I mean, they ripped off Eric Menier's patented lighting technology for their game. The Hot Rails. Yeah, they did something very similar. Or the same. depending on what the courts say. But yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's very cool. But it's just simple lighting effects. Like I know Hot Wheels, what stood out to me was the arrows that point to the shot. Instead of having one LED under the arrow, they had three. So if you're trying to shoot the shot, it like did a strobing effect, kind of draw you in. And Hot Wheels also, when you had a danger, instead of just giving you an audible noise for a danger, they made all of the GI in the game flash red. to like warn you. And it's just little stuff like that where it's like, I'm all in. I'm all in on more or better or more light show. It looks like a, it's hard to see in these pictures, and this is what we'll talk about here in a bit, but it's hard to see where the ball goes in some areas. Like we got a left bank. We got a left, I'm assuming, orbit. We have a little path that goes into a saucer that kicks it up in the air, a la scared stiff kind of thing, and it goes to the wire form. We have a center ramp. The ramp goes up and around to the left, and it can be diverted. I see three optos in there. I don't know if you can stage balls there as a ball lock. It almost looks like it, but I don't see a pin or anything that comes up to hold it. But there's also a diverter that can make it go down the left side of the ramp or the right side of the ramp. Then going from center. Center ramps are kind of weird. Either they feel great or they don't feel good at all. So we'll see what that feels like. and you've got a stand-up target or a drop-down target that's blocking. I'm assuming an entry. See, I don't know what those next two paths are. I'm assuming the far right is an orbit and then either further right, drop-down target that blocks a stand-up that you spell out queen, it looks like. But there's two paths that I don't know what they do. One of them has got to go up to the upper play field, but I don't know how. I think that drop target directly to the right of the center ramp is probably what gives you access to the VUC that's going to put you up on the play field. That's my thought. What's the other one do? I assume the far right is a good question. I don't know what that does. I don't know. Well, if we had a gameplay video, maybe we'd know. Well, maybe that's what sends it back into the pops because maybe the outer orbit just goes all the way around. But I agree. We've got really nothing to go off of here besides a few pictures. But in my opinion, I assume the people that want to buy this game right now are the diehard Queen fans. So it probably doesn't matter how it shoots in their mind. They won it because it's queen. Yeah, they're the champions. They want to live forever.
    37:54
    Or they're the fat bottom girls. You don't know. Radio Gaga. What about the mechs in this game? What mechs?
    38:02
    Yeah, I'm not seeing any. There's a spinner. There's a Vuck. There's an upper play field, three flippers. But, yeah, I'm not seeing any. There's molded toys. Yeah, but there's no engineered, unique mech that I'm seeing in this game. We've got the old radio for Radio Gaga. I don't see a lot of mechs here. No, the biggest innovation I'm seeing is the lit Art Blades. I mean, that's... Yeah, I do like the polished stainless ramps like you did on Alien. It's a nice look. I'm not mad at this game. I don't know anything about this game. That's my stance on Pinball Brothers Queen. Yeah. I love the music they picked. There's a couple that they left out that upset me, but they have a lot of the good music. They're all live, all live songs, not studio recordings. How do you feel about that? I mean, Queen live is good. I mean, it's not like they perform very well live. So I'll be curious, does it say what the video assets are? Because obviously, you know, GNR, the video assets were live, but yet the audio assets were recorded, so they didn't sync up. I think they do have the video assets of them at that concert and stuff. Oh, then I bet it will be fine. I bet it will. I mean, when I look at this pin, the art package is good. I think the layout, I don't see anything that stands out to me that, like, well, that's going to suck. So I think the layout has potential. And then if the code's good, Pinball Brother, I mean, Aliens Light Show is fantastic. I think they have all the parts here that this could be a really good game. I'm looking at the details here. It looks like Wembley Stadium physical ball lock. So that is a toy in there. It does physically block the ball back there in Wembley. So that's cool. Um, a magic saucer. That's that one. I don't, it like shoots it up in the air, which is kind of neat. Um, the jukebox is a vertical up kick, fully lit radio replica. So we don't see that in the pictures, fully lit and stuff. So there's something there, a red special physical ball lock.
    39:58
    Where's that? There looks like there's that. Yeah. I see the ball lock on the left, but I'm not, I don't know. There's nothing – this is where a gameplay video – I mean, props to JJP. They announced the game. You had great video. You had great pictures. And then the fact that you had a stream, like a recorded stream of the game right there day one was super helpful. I'm seeing something here. So it says a two-metal ramp, two metal ramps to Wembley with three possible exits, which is really interesting. and now I'm looking on another page where the upper play field actually has an additional Vuck. It looks like it has a scoop and a Vuck. Oh, well, yeah. It looks like you have one that comes out on the right side of the guitar and then one that's back on the left. So maybe if you hit one, like it looks like with the flipper, you could flip into the Vuck on the left. So maybe there is some sort of lock, or maybe there is more of a satisfying shot up there by hitting that. I don't know where they're locking the balls in Wembley. I don't know. Okay. Magnets. Hashtag magnets. How do those work? Yeah. So I am not going to be as harsh on this as a lot of people have been. It just goes back to like the Toy Story 4 release when we seen that price increase. I think in general people struggle with self-awareness. And whenever they see a price increase, they find ways to justify it where it's not an issue and they may like something, but they convince themselves that they don't because of something else, such as a price increase. So whenever Queen comes out like this, I think that people start just poking every damn hole that they can in this thing, Joel, because they don't like a certain major glaring aspect of it. And for Queen, I think it is a couple things. It is, hey, where's my fucking alien that I still don't have? it is why are you asking all of this money all at once and it's things like that so then they start looking well what let me let me really list all the reasons why i don't like this thing i think that's what we generally do as humans we just we find one thing and then we poke holes in it to justify that one big thing same with toy story price increase so people are like how dare that Duke Kaboom ramp. That's just my take. It's my opinion. People may not agree with it, but that's where I'm at. Well, I mean, yeah, everybody has an idea of what the game's going to be in their head, and when the game isn't magically exactly what they thought, they're going to be a little upset. With prices increasing the way they are, sure, if this were to come out, and they're like, hey, and you can buy this for $8,500, it's like if all of a sudden this is cheaper than some of the other things on the market, people are going to jump into that and i just think there's so much more going on behind the scenes with every manufacturer than any of us will ever know and i and i unfortunately i think licensing really has a lot to do with that with the cost of the license or maybe you know why did they release this now when all the aliens aren't done well maybe the time is running out on this license so they need to get these made sooner than later and or they they said yeah we they made a promise a year ago that we're going to have this game out. So I think they're going to prioritize the licensor over the customer every single time. I agree. And we could go on about the specifics of this, but like, Joel, you were saying, it's hard to know because we don't know. We haven't seen a gameplay video of this, and that does kind of suck.
    43:35
    I'll be the first to tell you, especially as a creator of a lot of those. It sucks that I don't know where the ball goes, and I don't know what it sounds like. I don't know what it looks like. All I have is pictures, which pictures are good. So that is a great piece here. They do have a lot of information about the features, but we, you know, we want to see the ball rolling. We want to see the flippers going. So maybe not a stream, maybe a stream, maybe a video. I don't know what, but a lot of people are complaining about the nonrefundable deposits and buying a product without seeing it flip. How do you feel about the launch of this, Joel? They launched it. They just said, boom, here's some pictures, taking orders now. Buy, buy, buy. Yeah, it's tough. To me, I kind of mentioned it earlier, I think the Toy Story launch is kind of perfect in my mind. It gives you everything. It's kind of a perfect media blitz of really high-res images, multiple websites talking about it. Then you have, I mean, you yourself made an amazing video for them kind of behind the scenes. they had their own marketing company that they paid do a more pinball photos had awesome photos yeah it was a it was a buffet photos but the marketing company made a video that's better for just you know the overall internet to look at and then you have the joe cat stream come later that day to actually give us like i want to see how let's look at these shots how flowy is the game is he bricking things how's this code go from this to this to this to this so yes in a perfect rolled give us all of that i mean i'd rather have too much content on reveal than not enough i mean the only the the argument to that right is like halloween and ultraman halloween and ultraman sold out day one in four hours with nothing revealed um besides a few pictures and then a few weeks later when the stream came out all of a sudden people were selling their spots because it there was a disconnect between how the pictures looked and actually how it shot and I'm not saying I'm not trying to bad mouth them but yes there there can be a time that your gameplay or actually hearing the sounds or seeing the lights or seeing the video might hurt you but in my view if you're confident in your product and you feel like you you know this is what it is and I'm proud of it then show it in all of its light um do you think that manufacturers always have full control on how things are revealed. No, no, there's no way. I mean, we're going to talk about that probably in the Stern segment, where in my mind, there's got to be better ways to do this reveal, but I think people make exclusive deals on like, okay, we'll reveal this game on your website. So however you want it. And Stern does a lot of their reveals on IGN or Rolling Stone. So they're going to prioritize their relationship with Rolling Stone over Pinside. Yeah. And I don't know what pinball brothers – it could be that the licensor for Queen said, hey, we don't want any videos out there. We don't want any of this until such and such. I don't know. Or maybe not. Maybe they just didn't feel like giving a pinball video. I don't know what to make of it. Yeah. Yeah, but the more content you give, the more content you put out there is going to make your buyer more confident in what they're doing.
    47:03
    I think so. I mean, JJP, they brag about, what, $30 million in sales in one day? But then look what happened, though, with JJP. They gave everybody everything they want to make a good purchase, and then everybody still craps on them. So maybe Bill Ball Brothers sees this and is like, you know what? We don't want to do that. But you're the distributor. I mean, you had a long list. Well, you had a long list of people that said, I'm in on Toy Story. And then the day of, that's the question. Day of, when all that came out, did that list get longer for you? Or did that list, all of a sudden, you had so many people pull out? Like, yes, I get it. Ours, we didn't have to worry about that because the depth of our list, you know, we sold out of our initial allotment of them. So that wasn't a big deal. But there were cancellations.
    47:55
    Sure, but there's cancellations on every game, right? Yeah. Did you have anybody cancel when Rush was revealed or cancel when Godzilla was revealed? I mean... I'm sure every release there's somebody that's on the list that's like, nah, it's a bad time. I put my name on that dream theme list, you know, eight months ago. You'd be like Craig Bobby who his distributor said, hey, I got your Godzilla in stock. And he goes, I don't know, man. And he's like, he wanted to be in the right mood to accept it and make sure because he's just like, is there any way that I can be put later on the list? It's like, all right, Craig. Yeah, I wish I had 200 of those right now. I take one. I'm waiting myself. I'm ready. Yes, you are. I heard in the podcast arena this week, our buddy and foe, Kaneda, crying, bitching, and moaning, as he always does. but he was crying this week about he was telling people this is unethical you can't be taking non-refundable deposits basically what happened to him he either got burned or almost got burned on toy story 4 because some dealer was taking this interested list but taking money and didn't tell him it was non-refund i don't know just moral of the story people if you're going to get on a dealer's list for a rumored game don't pay any money for it what the hell do i need money for We're just putting you on a freaking Jim Henson's The Muppets list. I don't want your money for that. No. So that was his problem. But he's saying it's unethical for a dealer such as myself to take money from people on a nonrefundable deposit for a product that they haven't adequately, in his opinion, seen yet. What is your take? That would be hard. That would be hard for me to tell my wife, like, hey, I need to send X amount of money to – and she's like, well, what are you buying? Maybe I'm getting this. I think that's hard, but rumored titles, I would struggle with that. I would struggle without any sort of official release from a company saying this is what we're building. I don't think I could ever pull the trigger on that. Hell no. This game is great. Don't give any money to that. I would say this game is revealed, and they're saying it's going to be made. So now you're just taking a chance on, well, am I actually going to get it or not? And that's where, luckily, you have distributors that, like, okay, they're going to be the middleman. Unfortunately, it puts kind of the stress on you or Melissa, a coin taker, of, okay, now am I going to make my – if all of a sudden Pinball Brothers dies, well, do I need to give all that money back to my clients and it hurts your business? The answer to that is yes, but yeah.
    50:34
    But that's – I mean, luckily, I would feel a lot safer giving you or Coin Taker money than I would giving Pinball Brothers money. A lot of people would agree with you. Which is, I mean, people are even saying that about, like, Multimorphic. It's just there are people that have bought Multimorphic through a distributor just to have that extra level of security. Careful.
    50:54
    I know, I know. I'm not saying, but that's the idea, though, that to buy direct. Even JJP, it's almost, or Stern's selling directly now. Now, part of me feels like I would rather continue to buy a game through a distributor just to have that extra level of security or somebody to have my back on if things are going wrong. I think it's just because you know where I live. Well, there's a lot. I mean, yes, I think you, flipping out, is a great distributor. But there's a lot of really good distributors out there. I think what you're talking about is you build a relationship with a distributor. And you know that distributor a hell of a lot better than you know a Gary Stern or that you know a Jack Ranieri. And you feel more comfortable with that relationship, that business relationship. It's a lot easier to call or text or message you than it is to open a support ticket at Stern or JJP. Yeah, I get that. The non-refundable stuff, here's how it works. I don't think it's ideal as a hobbyist. I don't even think it's ideal as a distributor a lot of times. And you said it kind of sucks when you don't see a gameplay video, but if you're one in L.E., maybe you have to put it out there before. I get that, especially if some that are running in September listener, we're taking full payments for those now, and those full payments are non-refundable. That is a lot of money. That is a shitload of money. I don't negate that at all. But is it unethical? That's the word I keep hearing. I think it's ridiculous to call it unethical I think that's a misuse of the term unethical I think that is what you do when you take this big paintbrush and you just try to paint every damn thing that you can see red in order to support an argument that you have and to create toxicity within an industry but people know what they up against I get this all the time and it kills me it makes me feel like a piece of shit honestly joel is we have a non deposit because we are charged a non-refundable deposit by a manufacturer for a set product and we have to kind of follow the rules there and somebody after a week of their non-refundable deposit says hey you know such and such ended up buying this i don't need this anymore is there any way i can get my money back That is a crappy situation to be put in. I hate that situation to be put in. Because, number one, I don't want anybody to be in on a product that they don't want. I don't want that at all. But then again, the minute that I provide a refund for a non-refundable deposit to one person, then you have to do it for everybody. And then that's a slippery slope as well. My money is still with the manufacturer. It's still there. I kept hearing people on podcasts say, they've already sent your deposit to Jersey Jack or to Sterner, whoever it may be. So that's the excuse the distributor is giving them why they can't give it back. That's bullshit. No. That's not the way I see the business arrangement. The way I see it is I, as your distributor, I am asking for that nonrefundable deposit. I am ordering through the manufacturer, and I'm giving them the money that my business has. I'm not going to pass the buck and say, well, no, they've got your money. No, no, no, no. I'm a big boy. I've made that decision to become a distributor. I'm the one holding your nonrefundable deposit. But the problem is the terms were that it was a nonrefundable deposit at the beginning. You knew that going into it. While it may not be ideal for me to put that on there, financially I have to because that's being required to me from the manufacturer. Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm not trying to hide behind the manufacturer and say they're the big bad boy because I don't think they are. They're making a decision. I'm choosing to make that continued decision to sell this product, so it's on me as well. But to call it unethical, I think that's ridiculous. Yeah, no. I work in the software support industry, and we have some of the software we sell, we sell it subscription-based. And so you pay for a year. And we have customers call and they're like, hey, we actually don't use – we're three months in, but we're really not using your software. Can we be refunded for the rest of the year? And it's like, no.
    55:11
    Sorry. So I don't know. You need to know what you're signing up for. And I get it. In a perfect world, every game would be made. It would be sitting on a shelf in your building, and I could call you up and I could get a game in a day. But somebody has to pay for that game, whether it's the manufacturer, the distributor. Somebody has to buy it or pay for the parts and the labor to build it. So I get it. I mean, we're now in a spot where that responsibility is going all the way back to the customer.
    55:38
    And none of us want that. But, you know, for some of these smaller manufacturers, having to pay a deposit, refundable or not, is a risk. And you know what you're signing up for when you do it. And to piggyback the conclusion here for me as a hobbyist and a dealer, Joel and listener, I think it's I like to conduct a business. I tell my friends this all the time. I like to take a common sense approach to business. You take care of people. People take care of you. It's super simple to understand. There is nothing complex about this arrangement. There's a product that is revealed. Ideally, that product reveal is going to have all the information that you need to make a purchase that you feel comfortable with. period dot right on queen i would have loved to have seen a video i'm not going to sit here as a dealer and tell you no i don't think you need that no it's bullshit i'd love to send a video on the other hand if they choose to do a non-refundable deposit whether it's the manufacturer or dealer you know what you're signing up for do i like that i don't necessarily like that i play the cards that i am dealt and if you sign up for a non-refundable deposit you cannot expect to get that non-refundable deposit back unless that company goes bust. But it's common sense stuff. If you sign up and you give money for a non-refundable deposit, damn, it's non-refundable. Yeah. If you don't have enough information to make a purchase, don't make that purchase. If you're not comfortable, don't make the purchase. It's common sense. It's easy. And if you're not comfortable doing any of those things, then wait and buy one used. I mean, buy one used or wait until they start trickling out and you see the, like, Do you have enough comfort or you're comfortable in the company? Like, well, I can see it. They are. People are getting their games. All right, I'll get on the list now. Yep. And as an authorized dealer for Pinball Brothers, we have not been given information yet as to when we're going to see gameplay video or gameplay or when people can play it. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I'm eager to play it because I do like Queen License, but I don't know. We will have to wait and see. On to Stern Pinball. Stern Pinball made a splash at this year's San Diego Comic-Con with booth guest Todd McFarlane of Venom and Spawn fame and the Prince of Darkness himself, Jolie Ozzy Osbourne.
    57:53
    Jolie! Yeah. You say made a splash. It's kind of like a pencil dive. I mean, it was... I feel like Stern, yeah. I feel like we were all waiting for like a cannonball contest and Stern just walked up and did a pencil dive into the water. It was like, oh. A pencil dive. I remember doing those. Yeah, it's like, well, that wasn't what I was hoping for. Yeah, I mean... A lot of media did speculate, even some reporting, that we're going to see a new Stern pinball game revealed last week. And yours truly, I was worried about having to eat some crow because I told people they weren't going to see anything.
    58:26
    Whew. I'm licking chicken tonight, baby. No crow on my plate. So let's break down what that was all about. We were teased at McFarlane, and people have been talking about maybe a Venom Games coming out. Holy shit. McFarlane's at the booth. Oh, my God. Ozzy. what's Ozzy doing there? And then, well, they're doing a comic book together. They're signing. So does that mean we're going to get a Black Sabbath Ozzy game? Does that mean we're going to get a Venom game? Maybe Ozzy's doing the call-outs. Regardless, it's coming this week. Jack Danger's going to be streaming that. Holy crap. No, and then nothing happened. Yeah, yeah. We talked about this on Triple Drain and even on the stream I did two weeks ago with Craig and Hottie and Mike. But it's just there was so much there that if Venom, Venom has been rumored for a while, If Venom is going to come out soon, why would they not coordinate the reveal around having it there? You have the creator of Venom, Todd McFarlane, in your booth. You have fanatics, Todd McFarlane fanatics that are going to be waiting in line for hours. Those are people that are going to, oh, there's a Venom game? I've got to have it. So from a sales standpoint, it seems like that makes total sense. Travis was, not to interrupt, but Travis was making good points as well. at Comic-Con revealing a product like this is different than revealing it just some old pinball convention. A hundred percent. This is, I mean, there would be, I could say confidently, if Venom would have been revealed in that booth, there would have been people waiting in line that would have bought that game or would have immediately sought out, how do I buy this game? So there are sales there. Now, it's Stern's marketing that's going to make the decision of, is it worth it for X amount of sales from the people that are going to walk into that booth? Or do we have a grander, bigger reveal planned or commitments with like an IGN.com that we're going to reveal on their site for? I don't know. But I thought in my mind all the pieces were there for them to do something grand. But you and many others have pointed out Stern doesn't do that. That's not how they do reveals. So why are we assuming this is any different than the last 10 reveals they've done? and they kind of proved that point. It wasn't any different. I see the point that a lot of people are making including the well-respected Travis Murray. I still disagree with him and a lot of the people though. I do not think revealing at Comic-Con would have been a good idea and I'll tell you why. Number one, Stern Pinball has a lot of employees. It's a big company for pinball but it's still a small company. If you are an executive or even a head of marketing or a head of production, whatever it may be. There's not a lot of people, Joel, to be planning all of our employees to go over to the West Coast, to go to San Diego, to set this all up, but at the same time, we're going to simultaneously be doing the marketing team and the sales team is going to be revealing this thing and taking over. It's too much to go on all at once, too much to fail. If we want to get new people into pinball, being at Comic-Con is a great idea. They're playing Godzilla. They're playing Mandalorian. Hell, they got Mandalorian costume people coming up, cosplay coming up. There's plenty of exposure for pinball at Comic-Con without having a new title there. You don't need to muddy the waters of a brand new product launch as well. Plus, that would kind of take away from your other products too. It's just there's not enough manpower to be able to handle that type of 24 hours. There's just not. It's hectic enough whenever they're launching new titles, much less a lot of the company executives being across the country. It's just it would have been a mess, in my opinion.
    62:10
    I see what you're saying. Now, do I put it past Stern for being able to do it? No, I bet they could have done it. If anybody could, they could, yeah. But I get it. I get that if they're going to play the game of is it worth all that effort to do it this way, they must have made the decision no.
    62:28
    But, I mean, Venom is still a rumor. We don't even necessarily know with any, you know, 100% confidence if that's even real. Do you think it's next? I don't know. I mean, if it is next, we'll still be scratching our head of like, why didn't this come out three weeks ago at Comic-Con? But whatever. We're past it. It's just, to me, why did they have Todd McFarland and Ozzy Osbourne in their booth? Oh, that's easy to answer. That's easy to answer. You want to know the answer? Oh, I'm ready. Because it brings more people in their booth. It sure does. I mean, I think about that now. Yes. If they're saying, hey, we're going to have games there, how do we get people to stop and actually play them? Well, sure, let's get somebody big to come do a signing or whatnot. But you would hope that they're going to pick somebody that they either want to build a relationship with or they've already started a relationship with. Maybe there is a boutique Aussie game coming out in the next three years. I don't know. But if that's the idea, let's start the conversation with somebody we could potentially do something with. And that's why I think at the end of the day, maybe this wasn't, the celebration and culmination of a project. Maybe, just maybe, listener, this was the onset of something that may come in the future. Maybe. Sometimes whenever you get these appearances like this, maybe they haven't really completed this project. A lot of people just assume, oh, if McFarland's there, they've been working the last year together. Ozzie's there, he's been doing call-outs for the last year. Maybe this was the soft entry of saying, hey, we're going to be doing a project later this year or mid-next year. Why don't we at least everybody kind of hang out and get to know one another and bounce some ideas over dinner and stuff like that. Maybe this is the onset of a relationship. Maybe we don't even see Venom next. Could be. There's obviously Venom's been rumored now for a little while, and we know we're hoping we're going to get a reveal from Stern in the next month. So, I don't know. It's easy enough for somebody like me who's doing a podcast or a stream to try to put one and two together and hope I'm guessing right. But I guess wrong. And we'll have to see next month or whenever this next reveal comes out whether or not – I mean, it could be nothing Venom-related. It could be something completely different. It's weird how pinball companies do it compared to – like, Venom is – is Venom a Marvel? Venom's a Marvel. Yeah, Venom is Marvel. Yeah, so with releases, I mean, look at Marvel. Marvel just, I mean, they just announced at Comic-Con, they just announced their slate for the next, whatever, three years of every movie they plan on making. And that, to me, we kind of talked about this on Triple Drain, where it's like, why don't pinball companies do this? And why, you know, if Stern had a Stern Day or Stern did this at TPF, where they're like, all right, here are our next games for our games for 2023 are going to be this, this and this. Like, yes, as a pinball fan, that would be incredible. That would be awesome to know, you know, with confidence that these are the games or these are the titles that are coming out. And and I know I mean, there's already people like Toy Story. We we all knew Toy Story was coming for years. There were people as soon as GNR was revealed, they're like, well, that wasn't Toy Story. So let me set aside this money for whenever Toy Story does come out because that's my Toy Story money.
    65:51
    There are people that hold on to that. Yeah, but wanting that is like my late grandfather. God rest his soul. Love you, buddy. He actually went by Cheerio, which I love. Cheerio? Cheerio. Yeah, Cheerio. Yeah, unreal man. Love the funniest man I ever knew. But he would say to me, he's very inappropriate as well. He's old. I mean, he's passed away now. so you can't hate on him. But he would say, damn it, boy, you're thinking with the wrong head. And I think that's what you're doing here.
    66:22
    Think about this. I hate to bring it back down to reality here, Joe Lee, but phase four of Marvel, how would that benefit Stern Pinball to say, here's all our cards, here's what we're going to come out with. So if you don't like the next one, damn it, wait three more titles, wait, hold your money, hold your money, don't get rid of it yet. Well, I get it, and that's where – What benefit is there? Gary Stern says, what's your favorite game? He's like, the one that's currently on the line. Damn straight. Obviously, he wants you – he wants that, and he wants everybody to want – like, go ahead, buy the next game. This next game is the best game we've ever made, and that's the idea that, like, don't wait a year and a half or a year for X. You know, buy this one now. I get it from a sales standpoint that is – that I could see why Stern would do that, But I also know there are people that they're like, well, I'm not going to buy Toy Story because I'm waiting to see if Venom comes out. Or I'm not going to buy this because I'm waiting on this. Yeah, but those are all still rumors. If you make them true and say here's four titles that we're going to have next year, then you're making it a fact that people can wait. They can hold off. You're giving them a reason to hold their money, and that makes zero sense. The other thing is this.
    67:37
    Marvel owns all of their films. yeah stern doesn't own you know a rumored venom marvel they don't own a rumored james bond universal or whatever it may be so these licensed properties are probably like no you're not going to announce that you're working with us on something that's not part of our contract and i think it's really smart that stern doesn't do this because just imagine the following so it could be like something i don't know an example right now listener but you announce hey in phase four of stern pinball 2023 we're gonna be working with x and that x in eight months from now comes out doing really illegal stuff well yeah that happened exactly with you could have flash yeah you could have cut that project before anybody knew about phase four and they could have been off the it could have been gone look at um look at aquaman 2 or whatever you know amber heard is the main character in Aquaman. And then all of a sudden that comes down and Stern's going to be like, oh boy, do we still? Yeah. So my point is there's nothing but risk there making a decision to release all the titles that you're going to. Yeah. The truth is as a pinball collector or enthusiast, I would love to know more. But as an actual distributor or a potential company that makes pinball machines, releasing or announcing all those, it probably would hurt you potentially more than it could help you because it's either going to hurt you from people buying games right now or it's going to hurt you with your saying committing to a potential theme that may not pan out or you get in trouble with the order right where it's like you have a steve richie that leaves and now all of a sudden that game was supposed to come out well we need to push that back because we got to redesign some yeah yeah it's it's showing too many cards whenever we do Stern answers to no one. Exactly. Whenever we do consultation pieces for some pinball companies, I will always tell pinball companies or even like little on upstart arcade stuff, whatever they're trying to produce, I always tell them, from a marketing and sales standpoint, you try to give them the consumer as much as they need but not enough to feel like they know exactly what they're getting. You want to leave them with a little bit of surprise but enough that makes them so damn excited that the wrong head's going to work and it's going to pull out the money from their wallet before they can just think too much. And I'm being very transparent with you, but that's just the way sales, marketing, and that's the way products work in our world, people. That's just the way it is. Well, yeah. Travis keeps coming back to the fact that, like, no other industry does it as in entertainment. You know, video games are announced, you know, years ahead, and same with movies. but there's a big difference.
    70:29
    There's a big difference though, between dropping 20 bucks for a movie or 60 bucks for a movie. Absolutely. It is, you know, $10,000 on a pinball machine. Um, so I, I get it. Sure. That's what we'd like. We would like reveals to go different. We would like announcements to go different, but I also totally understand why they are the way they are right now. Yeah. And maybe I don't totally, but I, and there's still so sadly, there's still so much room for improvement in the pinball industry. and manufacturing so much room for improvement on marketing and sales. There really is. And we see little hints. I'm not going to give examples, but we see things throughout just this year alone that you're like, and they could have done that better, or boy, they missed this piece, or it would have been really nice. They would have probably doubled their sales if they did this. I mean, it's, again, a common-sense approach and do right by people. Yeah. I also think, I mean, even just the Queen reveal, it kind of, like, once again, really supports that theme sells machines. Absolutely. So look at Queen. You already have games that you've sold or people want them, and we've been shown very, very little. I can say, without getting into detail, I can say that we've sold more Queen pinball machines than we have many recent non-licensed themes in pinball already. That's day one sales for Queen. And we don't know what Queen's going to be like. the one thing that I would have liked to have changed for Pinball Brothers is to have more information. As a consumer I want a video. I do. Yeah, I agree with you. Or stream something. I want to see it. Alright, really quick I want to run through production updates for Stern Pinball. Godzilla Premium right now, Jolie is being made, which goes against what I was telling you guys last week. Godzilla Pro I thought was supposed to come before Godzilla Premium online but they're right at the same time. Godzilla Pro could be on another line. They have multiple lines of certain pinball. So Godzilla Pro is going to come this week, maybe late this week, maybe early next. But a little switcheroo there. I don't know if it's a parts thing or something, but Godzilla Premium is currently online, fo' sho', and Godzilla Pro is coming at the same time or right after. In other production update news, this one makes me really happy. Iron Maiden, the Aces High Toppers, are going to go back on the production line next month at the soonest! I'm to the hills. Joel? That's big. Yeah. I don't have a topper for my Iron Maiden.
    73:00
    Well, so it is just the Aces High topper, right? So it's not the Egyptian one? They have not given us information that they plan to make the Egyptian one. It's the Aces High one that most people liked, and that was the one that you couldn't find for a while. Yeah, and I will say now as an owner of a topper, once you get one, you're stuck because now every other game you're like, crap, I just probably get that I know so I'm showing restraint but yeah, for those people that get an Iron Maiden or some of these other sterns, they get them I don't know, a few years after they're released and then crap, now I got a hunt down, so I think that's awesome so you guys are going to see those, you can go to flippingoutpinball.com and pre-order one today. I don't know when because I know they're going on the line next month, but it takes them a while to do stuff. But $899.99 plus shipping. So I think that was a little price increase there. That's got to be. I don't know what it was originally. But, hey, it's cheaper than people are selling them used. Absolutely. Those things were getting up into the $2,000, around $2,000 for an Aces high topper. So that's substantially less than that. Also announced this week to dealers, Insider Connected Specialty Kits. Thank God, finally, for Batman 66 and for Star Wars Premium LE should be in production now. It looks like this is a special replacement arch for these titles. It's going to be $129.99 plus shipping. And I believe it's just a different arch than was released for the Star Wars Premium LE and Batman 66 originally. Well, unfortunately, that's just the arch, too. that doesn't even include the insider connected kit i i believe so yes i could maybe they just changed the orientation of the the configuration for the holes of the kit i don't know how they do that well i don't yeah well obviously the the premium le of star wars you have the the hyper loop or whatever that comes down so there may be some sort of mounting points or something so they yeah i i'll be curious to see where they are but they are unique i know batman 66 whatever Star Wars and then I think Elvira too all need, well even Stranger Things too. Well, and I thought those things but somebody said Elvira, it does kind of work. You can already do it on Elvira and then on Stranger Things I think Stern indicated to us no, they found out that it does it kind of works already on Stranger Things. It's good enough. I don't know. So I don't know. We're taking orders on those. I got a lot of people backordered flipping out pinball for those specialty kits so you'll be hearing from me very soon. I didn't lose your order. Still got it. Shout out Bruce Nightingale. So I'll get with you guys on that once they do start coming in. Speaking of toppers, Joe Lee, for those of you still wanting an Avengers Infinity Quest and Jurassic Park toppers, they should be making more this year too. So we're going to see some of those go back on the production line. It's exciting stuff. That's, yeah. Anybody that's in that hunt to try to find a topper, the last thing you want to pay for is it'd have to pay way over MSR because they're all sold out. So I'm all for Stern making more. So I want to give everybody a heads up on that. Don't spend your dollars on the black market yet. Speaking of toppers, some of the greatest toppers come from Chicago Gaming Company, but where in the hell are the Cactus Canyon LEs or SE Pluses with their topper? I don't know. But what I do know, Joel, is that you can tune in today, July 25th, for those of you wonderful fans of the pinball show that listen on day one. July 25th, Flip and Out Pinball streaming channel over at twitch.tv slash flipandoutpinball. Watch the gang stream Cactus Canyon with special guest, VP of sales, Ryan White from Chicago Gaming Company. Wow, that's exciting stuff. So BD and Bill and Courtney are going to have Ryan White over there to stream some Cactus Canyon. Yeah, they... Because Bill's got an SE, so they'll be streaming it. I am jealous of, I mean, I stream on the same channel, but we have very different streams. And their stream, the fact that they can be in Chicago and have access to some of these people and interview them and play alongside them really is fantastic. And for people, for chat to be able to ask questions directly to some of these industry professionals is really awesome. Yeah, and I don't know if, let's see, Brian White may have something to give away or maybe flipping out to give something away. Maybe he'll talk about where in the hell my LE is at. Come on. I want it now. I also want now something that I don't have that I do have ordered, and it's that Mermaid Edition of Fathom Revisited. Where in the hell is my game, Joel? I think it's in Australia. Mutton. That's my game.
    77:42
    No, those games, I'm glad to see they're trickling out. I'm glad they're being made. I also think it's awesome because they had one at Yagpin, and people are having a chance to play them. And so far, the reports that I'm hearing are really positive. So just be patient, Zach. Hopefully you'll get it soon. Patient number nine, Ozzy Osbourne.
    78:02
    Yeah, Haggis Pinball received Best of Show Award for Fathom Revisited at the Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective. I hear great things about the details of that game, the build quality and stuff. Juicy stuff. Yeah, they are. What is it? Marty's the one. I mean, he's putting a sticker on things, so he's got to be proud of it. Put a sticker on it. Put a name on it. Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait to see that. And speaking of Australia, there's some competitive pinball news here, one including Australia. The Brisbane Masters occurred this last week, as well as the Eggpin. The Canadians celebrating up there in Edmonton. Where are they at? They're somewhere up there. No, just Canada, right? It's all the same. It's all just cold north. But a lot of people went up to Canada and went to Australia for those two conventions and competitions. over at Yegpen. Eric Stone, Florida man, takes home first place at the main tournament. Congratulations. Son of a... God... Sorry, that was my Eric Stone impersonation. Yeah, he's animated. Yeah. Partly cloudy with a... Mother... Steve Bowden won the Brisbane Masters and also took home two other first place finishes in other competitions this past weekend over in Aussieland And young Padawan Escher Leskoff He won three events as well And the Aussie women champ was Danny Peck Nicely done, Danny. Escher is absurd. He's ridiculous. George with Don't Panic Flip, he has him on some of his streams because he's local to George. And I mean, like Escher, one of the times they played Turtles recently, he got to Cowabunga, which is the main wizard mode, which is insane to get to. he got to it i think twice in one game i mean it's just the kid is unbelievable he's like an adjunct tpn streamer at this point yeah which is awesome i mean super smart he knows when it comes to code and just like from a competitive standpoint if he knows i need x amount of points he can like do the math in his head on what exactly he needs to do to get to that it's it's He's a cool kid. It's unbelievable. I just hope he ends up in the industry in some way, either designing or building or whatever, coding, because it's just – Well, that's what I love about seeing Steve Bowden taking home this Brisbane Masters Championship because he's over at American Pinball, and who better to help with rules and concepts of a game than somebody this good at pinball and somebody this likable, too. That also helps. But, man, American Pinball, I cannot wait to see what Stevie B's up to over there with their games. Yeah. I'm ready for that Nordman game. I've been playing Whitewater a lot. I think we're all ready to see what, you know, American Pinball's talked a lot. They've talked a lot about all this that's coming, and I'm just, I think we're all just waiting. We're all just waiting to see it. And I hope they've under-promised and over-delivered. You know, that would be fantastic. Wow. Yeah, that would be great. No regrets. We'll have to see there. And shout out to Yagpin because I know there's a few TPN guys, you know, Top Rope and then the Castlemans with the pinballers. They're up there, and I'm hearing nothing but really good things about how well it's set up and impressed. I mean, Jeff Teolis is there. People are like, this may be a pin replacement.
    81:22
    Yeah. They are really speaking highly of it, which is awesome. And the artwork is kind of cool, too, for their logo, right, Joe? I freaking love the artwork. to the point where I told Mike, dude, you've got to buy me a shirt, and then we have to find a way to get it from Canada to me. Very cool. All right, I can sit here and I can sing to you Dolly Parton and her sweet rhythms of Jolie all day long, or I can sing to you something that you guys cannot get enough of. No, it's not the screaming goat.
    81:49
    No, it's not the eagle. Maybe it could be that F-14 fighter jet. Let's hit the market. Oh, shit. Market trends. that that was everything i hoped it was going to be we actually i have video on and to see zach go all out i uh yes thank you for thank you for doing that coming in hot coming in heavy let's talk about bushings let's talk about shafts getting lubricated perfect let's get training up training up this week is some kind of metal flipper bush shaft Oh, we're getting erotic here. Thing that Joe Lingleberth keeps shilling. What is this? So, you know, I was browsing Pinside, and I see this new product. You sure it was Pinside? Talking about bushes and shafts. And, yeah, the new product, it's these metal flippers. And there's been metal flippers before, and it's just like, ah, those look cool. But when I started looking into it, the guy also, so this is the Precision Flip flipper system. The guy also sells a precision-milled bushing, and the bushing is the part that actually attaches to your flipper mech that the flipper shaft goes through. And normally they're made out of nylon, and normally there's a decent bit of play there between the flipper shaft and the bushing. And because of that, when you try to do a dead bounce or anything, you'll see your flippers. Maybe the shaft's not big enough here, bud. Maybe that's a you thing, brother. This is just too easy for you. It's way too easy. Yeah, Tom, when I tried to talk about these on Triple Drink, Tom was dying. They giggled like little girls. He was dying.
    83:28
    Well, with that play, you can get – I mean, there's some inaccuracy there of your shots or if you're trying to do a dead bounce, like inconsistency. Might hit the wrong hole. It happens. To me, it sparked my interest enough to reach out to the guy. So I reached out to him. I started a conversation. And luckily, his name is John, super nice guy. He actually has his phone number on Pinside. You can PM them, call them, whatever. He sent me a set, and I put them in my Turtles. And I will just tell you, the way they installed was super easy because you attach the flipper bat after the shaft is installed, so you can position it perfectly with just one screw. Just installing the flippers, super painless. And then what I will tell you with 100% confidence, putting in the bushing and the flipper, my accuracy did improve. um i with turtles you pick a turtle so you pick before you start and and there's there's four tables there's score tables per each turtle i set the high score on all four turtles when i played that night so i had four games right and the overall gc so my overall accuracy went up i do think i i the the flippers felt more powerful so i could now backhand the left ramp which i couldn't do so i was really impressed in that left ramp pretty pretty consistently which is not something that I was able to do with the standard, you know, nylon bushing and standard flipper. So I mean, it makes sense. It totally makes sense. So I don't know if just the bushing is all you need and you could still use the plastic flipper or if it's a combination of the two, but I like the way they look. They come in different colors. I was super impressed by them. I will say people are cautious because they're like, that's a metal bushing with a metal shaft. So you now metal on metal. He does suggest some sort of lubrication, whether it's an oil or grease, which now I know exactly now all of a sudden you're you're adding that type of you know nobody wants that i'm just thinking we're dealing with all of these key words and then you've got to throw in lube there you go okay but what i i just what i will say is cosmetically they're awesome the installation the way you can adjust the flippers or even swap out yeah you said you can swap them out like if you if you want to swap out some uh some lightning flippers for you don't have to take the whole damn thing apart now just like you have to do with a regular flipper system you can just unscrew a little screw, boom, pull up the flipper bats themselves, put it back down, bam. That's to me why I hope a Carl D'Angelo or a high-end competitive player gets a hold of one of these sets because they could on stream pop the glass off, use an Allen key to pop off the bats, and put on two different size flippers in five minutes or less and totally change the way their game plays. So I'm excited about them. I'm excited enough about them that I'm going to get another set for my Deadpool. Wow. It's just – the game, I loved it. When I streamed it with the other night, I came away from Turtles like loving the game. That game normally beats me up, but when you actually start to hit some of your shots, Pinball gets a lot more fun. And so I know I sound like a shill. It gives you the competitive edge like naturally somebody like Steve Bounder Escher has. Yeah, maybe this is how it feels, yeah. That's right. I know I sound like a shill, but I can say with confidence, like, I'm impressed. There's a few products that I've been able to test. Pin Monk Flipper fans are another that genuinely have improved the quality of my gameplay, and I will gladly support them. Absolutely. So, yeah, reach out to – you can reach out to John directly if you have questions. Where do they buy that? They're on Pinside, so it's the Precision Flip Flipper System. And make sure you get the bushings. And, you know, let me know.
    87:11
    Feel free to reach out to me if you like them or don't. Or why, yeah. Yeah, it's awesome. And then hopefully once that makes him 20 to 50 sales additionally because of the show, he'll send me out a set so that I can try them out as well. Who am I kidding? I never install it. I've got mods. You buy every mod and you don't install anything. I don't even update codes.
    87:33
    I know. I don't know. Dude, I'm loving Toy Story so much that I actually went through the Unibooten Mac code update that you had to do on Toy Story before it became Wi-Fi. So you are going to be getting this week, Joel Engelberth, on the Flippin' Out Pinball podcast. You're going to be streaming Toy Story 4 with the newest code. Yeah. I'm excited.
    87:57
    I think I could have updated it myself, but I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for going that extra mile and updating the code of the game. It took a lot. It should be a good time. Spooky, I'm still trying to figure out yours.
    88:09
    Trading out this week is Godzilla Premium LE. Of course it is. Everybody still wants one. Everybody's still waiting for one. And for those of you who do not want to wait any longer, you're going to have to pay more. Because it's still over MSRP for the Pro, the Premium, the LE. Especially the LE. Damn, that thing is holding value. It's like a Pirates of the Caribbean by JJP. It's Godzilla Premium. It's Godzilla L.E., and the whole game is still there in the pro. Not that I'm rubbing it in to Joel, who's still waiting on his, or Drew Boivere from the poor man's that's still waiting on his, or the handful of other friends that I have that are like, Zach, I'm your friend. Does that mean nothing to you? And when it comes to business, no, it doesn't. Sit down, and we'll get to your Godzilla premium whenever the time comes. Nobody's cutting the line. Listen to me throw my friends under the bus. I don't think anybody's ever asked to jump the line. But most of my friends would take me up on it if I offered. I see you. The more I talk to Stern, the more I think that they are going to try to find a way to squeeze out one, two, three additional runs this year. Hopefully, fingers are crossed. But until this thing oversaturates the market in the next five years, it's just going to stay high. And this pin continues to trend up because it's always refreshed with pinball mods. This is like one of the newest games that is just being modded to hell, man. Turning up this week is Godzilla mods. For example, I have two mods coming to me, both for Godzilla, and I cannot say enough about the quality and the looks of these things. One being from Stumblore. Remember that Tokyo Sign mod that he was working on for Godzilla? Now, it's come out with a mod collection. It's called the Lolly UFO Mod Collection by Stumblore. And you guys know the pop bumper there that a lot of people are doing, like the um zillion chip there the the ufo spaceship so it looks like that but it has his like his just freaking light shows in it it's colored pattern led light shows so that and also you get in this package like sling posts that are animated and triggered as well that light up and a beam in the back glass or the trans light that is illuminated and adds additional lighting features to the beam of fire from Godzilla's mouth. So you get all of this. And again, the list is staggering. It's getting super long. And for a price of $2.35 for all of this stuff, yeah, I'm sold on it. This stuff is so well done. All of you people complaining, Stu didn't put enough in their game. Well, if there's a beloved game like this, all of the mod creators and brilliant minds out there are going to fix it for you. I can't say enough about Godzilla mods. T-Diddy, my pal T-Diddy over there, making the Nagel oil building mod. You guys see this? There's nothing going on to the left side of that game on Godzilla over the spinner area kind of thing. He created a mod that looks and matches the rest of the landscape and the cityscape in the background, including the three-dimensional building mod, whether it's on the premium L, either goes up and down, or it's just the stationary one on the pro. But he's bringing that world to life by adding another building feature into the game. It's just so nicely done, so nicely crafted. to get on that list as well because Godzilla mods are trending up as well as making, subsequently, Godzilla the game trend up too. Whew!
    91:30
    Damn, Joe, you're Mr. Positivity. And there's a lot of podcasters out there and streamers and content providers that are all about that positivity. And there's some people out there that just love negativity and throwing mud, whether it is a podcaster or just forum members.
    91:45
    But myself, that keeps it real. I'm only here to report the facts, people. Don't kill the messenger. what goes up must go down i've got to report that black knight sword of rage premium le is trending down now personally i think the game itself is much better in the pro version that upper play field is everything for a black knight game right that's what we've become accustomed to but if you want to fall asleep and stay up on the upper play field all day long that's just my personal take on the game itself that doesn't reflect the numbers but the numbers are also trending down I will say that I'm surprised they are still up as high as they are with this game. I mean, LEs are still going for like $10,000, $11,000. It seems just nutso and crazy to me whenever I see a game this high up there. And then you'll see like Walking Dead LE go for $8,000. Or you'll see like Turtles LE go for like $95,000. I'm like, there is no reasoning here. But I'm starting to see a lot of premium LE Black Knight sort of rages on the marketplace. and with that tends to come down price with a general softening of the marketplace already. You're going to see those drop substantially. I think if you're wanting to go in on a premium, you're going to be paying, or an LA, you're going to be paying about $1,000 less than you were eight months ago for this particular title. If you have been wanting this, in my opinion, inferior model of this game, the premium LA over the pro, I would say hold out a little bit longer. I think prices are going to continue to drop on this particular game, and the only thing that really keeps it up, let's not lie to one another, is that topper. The pro is a good game, though. The pro's a really good game. All's ridiculous this week, turning down is Canadian Pinball Reviews. Chris, I ain't got so much going for you. You have what you report to be the most popular and provocative pinball podcast in all of pinball media history. You give hot takes. You've got people willing to pay you a couple grand a month just to listen to your shows. None of this I can refute. But the reason you're trending down this week, number one is because you're saying shit that doesn't even make sense regarding distribution and stuff last week. But number two, throw some shit at a wall just to see what sticks to say. See, I said it first, but mainly it was your review while playing Toy Story 4 this last week during a stream. Oh, listener, the man sat there and said over and over how you should not buy this game because it was too easy. You're an idiot if you buy the CE. It's way too easy. And look, to each their own on Toy Story 4. A lot of people love it. A lot of people don't like it. And some of the arguments that Chris was making, I can't argue. It's more of a subjective kind of thing. But when you tell me the game is too easy and you try to vomit that propaganda to everybody and you proceed to then stream the game and play like a four-year-old and have no concept of what the rules are, bro, how are you going to call it easy? Crap on this game all you want, but the one thing you should always stay away from is trying to explain anything regarding its difficulty. Because you're like me. You're not a great pinball player. And if I picked up a game and missed every shot and had no clue how to start modes, to complete tasks, to start multiples, if I had no clue how to do any of it, the last thing I would be doing is telling people it's too easy. I do agree. It is too easy for Carl D'Angelo. It's too easy for Travis Murry, for the upper echelon of pinball people. But to me, to yourself, to many of your fans, Kaneda, it is the opposite of being too easy. Stick to the hot takes, stick to the rumors, but leave the reviews for the Greg B-plus bones of the world, and yours truly.
    95:35
    All right, Jolie, these people want to save some money. The market's softening up a little bit, so I'm going to save them even more cash on this week's Deals of the Week. Buy, buy, buy! Deals of the Week this week is from Flippin' Out Pinball, sponsor of the show. Ding, baby. Speaking of Black Knight, it's one of those, but it's a Sword of Rage Pro edition. We just got one in on trade that I'm willing to save you guys some money on. Rewind the clocks eight to 12 months, and everybody wanted Sword of Rage Pro by Stern Pinball. They wanted to throw the topper on there, and they were spending almost seven in the sevens for a pro. No topper. They were spending that. Right now, we have one in great condition that I'd be willing to let go to the listener here for the special price of $59.99. Buy, buy, buy! That's over $900 cheaper than the new one in box. Come pick it up. $59.99 for a Black Knight Sword of Rage Pro. Still have that pinball bounty open for a Dolly Parton. Thank you to all of you who did message me. There was one in Texas this last week, and it was a pretty one. It was a pretty one. But for the price, I'm willing to pay that price, but it's got to check all the boxes. It didn't check all the boxes. So if that's the case, eh, got to look for the next one. You're out there, Dolly. I know it. And I will be patient until you come home.
    96:51
    And as always, listener, I'm just here reporting the facts, maybe not telling you what you want to hear, but telling you what you need to hear because numbers never lie, and neither do I, on Pinball Market Trends. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was our show. Joel, thanks for coming on. That wasn't too bad, right? No, it was great. Started a little late. I was warned. I was warned by – I reached out to Dennis, and yes, Dennis was – well, I reached out on the TPN Discord, of course, because I want everybody else to enjoy the fun. He's like, number one, Zach will be late. Yep. And then he gave me some other stuff with prep, and no, I'm happy to be here. What can I say, Joel? Things pop up.
    97:29
    It happens, and I'm happy for you. Where can people find you? uh too many places uh you can email me at just another pinball at gmail.com but otherwise triple drain at gmail.com if you enjoy the podcast it's truly we look at that uh travis and tom and i we kind of look at that as poker night just three guys shooting the breeze on chatting up pinball um otherwise on the pinball network i stream every wednesday night from 10 to midnight eastern standard time and normally every other week i do a chatting stream so i get other tpn streamers or podcasters on. That's another thing we do. If you can't catch it live, those are always on YouTube and you can listen to those after the fact. Then every other week I also stream on the Flippin' Out channel on Twitch. Twister 4 is coming.
    98:11
    If you want to get a hold of me, there's plenty of ways. Do you think you're going to get to the wizard mode? I sure hope so. That's the challenge. The fact that Travis and Tom gave me such a hard time, I was not prepared when I said, and for Travis to be talking about this game being so easy, for me to be like, well, do you think I'll get to the wizard mode? And Tom, without missing a breath, goes, no. And I was like, okay. I still haven't got to the wizard mode. I hope. I hope I can do it. I hope I can do it for, you know, maybe a little bit of pride. That would be great. Yeah, you'd be like Kaneda.
    98:46
    You can reach me at thepinballshow at gmail.com. You can also watch the Straight Down the Middle video series. Greg and I are recording this week, I believe. What do you guys want to see from us next? little Rush review? A little Toy Story 4 review?
    99:00
    Bone's been playing his for a while. Maybe we can review that. This or that. We've got some fun stuff coming up. Or you can reach me over at Flippin' Out Pinball if you'd like to buy a brand new or pre-owned pinball machine, arcade machine, accessories, pre-order lists, etc. Email me at Zach, Z-A-C-H, at Flipp, the letter N, out to pinball.com. Or text message me at 812-457-9711 if you've got a billing question or maybe a part shipping or an accessory shipping question, email Nicole, N-I-C-O-L-E, at FlippinOutPinball.com. If you've got a tech question, a game or part that you got from us just is not working right, need to submit for a warranty, what is going on with my game? It's Greg, G-R-E-G, at FlippinOutPinball.com. Product showcase this week from Flippin' Out is a Mandalorian Pro, one of the hottest IPs of the decade, Star Wars Mandalorian Pro. Bring baby Grogu home today. A little special there, too. Contact me. We'll get you free shipping on a Mandalorian Pro. I got premiums, too, but they're showcased for the Pro. And we'll hook you up. We will hook you up. Toy Story 4, still taking orders on that. And we did open up a couple of spots on our website for a collector's edition. We got our hands on more of those. I wanted a ton of CE spots. I needed a ton of CE spots. We got them. And now we are blessed with some more. Sweet! Lock in yours today. Speaking of locking in stuff, hey, if you want to pay in full, for an upcoming Queen Rhapsody edition, you know where to go. Or if you want to put in a non-refundable deposit on a Queen Rhapsody in 2023 or a Champions in 2023, we've got them on our website now. In stock, if you guys are ready for a game today, we've got Mandalorian Pro, Mandalorian Premium. We have, I believe, an Avengers Pro, Rush Pro and Premium. Guns and Roses LE. We've even got Art Blades, Toppers, Banners, but we've got the games themselves ready to go. Cactus Canyon remake. I believe we have an SE ready to go. We're trying to inventory these games for you guys so you don't have to wait any longer. We've got Pro Insider Connected kits. We're still taking orders on Alien. We've got that Elvira 40th number 40.
    101:05
    Oh. I've got two people sniffing on that thing. They're circling it. Don't pee on it, people. It's not a fire hydrant. But somebody's going to snag that up soon. We've got that Turtles Premium I was talking about pre-owned. A Deadpool LE that I've been putting in my own collection until it's ready to go. Corvette, got that pre-owned Godzilla, taking pre-orders on the accessories as well as the game itself. Same with Rush accessories. It's got to come out sooner or later. Man, Lori and Topper, we've got a long, long, long list, but we can put you on it. And for those of you who said, hey, isn't MMR coming out, Medieval Madness Remake by Chicago Gaming coming in next year? Yeah, sure, it is. We've got a super long list. We don't know how many we're going to get. We don't know the pricing. We don't know the release date. We really know nothing besides they still plan to do a run of them. We can put you on our list, but we don't have any details on that. Golden Tee ready to ship. We've got banners ready to go. Merchandise. Escalera's still turning around four to five months. And I don't think we have any more Elite Pinball IJ Deluxe toppers left. But the Pirates of the Caribbean Kraken topper? Message me for details. Might be able to get you one. TVN Last Week's Final Round Pinball Podcast, as well as the Triple Dream Pinball Podcast, and the Pinball Tapes covering Cosmic Princess. We're running long. I don't know what TPN is going to bring us this week, but each and every day, we've got something wonderful for your pinball eyes and ears, and most importantly, your hearts. Thanks for listening to The Pinball Show. For Joel E., I'm Zach Menn E. And remember, if Zach ever actually invites you to be on The Pinball Show, all you have to do is show up, read some notes, put on a smiling face, and just don't eat food on a podcast like an idiot, a.k.a. David Dennis. Don't be David Dennis. Just don't ever be David. Whatever David Dennis does, just don't do it. We should be more Dennis Creasel. Yes, Dennis Creasel. No, David Dennis. There you go. Choose your Dennis wisely. That's great. Choose your Dennis wisely. David Dennis Creasel. Yes, David Dennis. No. He is the worst. And always practice safe pinball. And when push comes to shove and you want the answers to your questions, use your head. Sometimes the answers are easy. I'll talk to you next week I see a little silhouetto of a man And sorry for the delay Dennis I already warned you I was going to be late This time it was actually good Believe it or not I got like the little Hint from Nicole that she wanted to have sex And I was like um Sorry Joel You're going to have to sit the bench on this one More power to you man That's right I'm married four kids Doesn't come around often so Shoot, okay, yeah. Yeah, I'm nice and fresh there, Engelbert. That for you. It would have been funnier if you would have been like, I need 30 minutes, and then five minutes later you're like, all right, I'm good.
    104:00
    Training up. No, that's not what he says. He doesn't wait and see. Yeah, well, wait and see is really calm. Like, his wait and see. What is see? Say what? What's a bird that does that? Say what? Over and over again. I don't know. Like a peacock? A peacock makes a really kind of a... Can you take Bobby and be a peacock?
    104:23
    I don't know. I'm just thinking of the sound, the noise. If you're gonna... Crap. This is way harder. Yeah, I know it is.
    104:39
    So it's 1030 here. I mean, that would put us right at noon. So that's totally fine Good deal I'll have you a hard out at noon there Okay Hard out Alright That's what they call it in the biz Oh okay I get a hard out at You know I've heard a hard on But not a hard out Yeah That's what I had this morning Hey I'm happy for you man Nothing really matters Anyone can see Nothing really matters to me
    105:39
    you