hurry up. What's up everybody? What's everybody? That's an awesome start. Let's reel it back. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Dirty Pool podcast. I'm Jeff. Uh I'm joined here uh with uh Rob Rob Wrath from the Electric Playground. This is our second episode on mods. I guess to introduce that if you don't know who Rob is, Rob's kind of like Davey, but he's the top, whereas Davey's the bottom. Uh, and what I mean by that is that Rob makes toppers. And, uh, and Davey mostly puts everything else inside the game. What's going on, Rob?
Hey, man. It's great to be here. Uh, shout out to Davey. Uh, not not my business partner, but a good friend. And in this case, uh, with this beautiful game where we got Sim behind me, we work together. So, looking forward to telling you guys about that. Yeah, let's we'll zoom out. We'll take a look at it. We got a little like sneak sneak peek there. Uh, but we're we're going to dive into what's going on behind you a little bit after we talk about what you are and where you came from. Your company's new and you're like a baby in the in the pinball world. Electric Playground started in 2022,
right?
Yeah. Yeah. We uh my partner and I, Alec, kicked things off in 2022. We We told the story a few times. I'll tell it real quick. We uh both got our Godzillaas on the same day. It was about 18 months after it had come out and uh we both kind of set on our own path uh to make a topper for our games because we were both like modders basically. And uh I ended up uh wanting to make something out of cut uh laser cut acrylic because I had some experience with that. Uh it's kind of sitting there right behind me. uh based on the side cabinet artwork of the uh based on the side cabinet artwork of Godzilla.
Uh I started sharing it with a few people on pin side. People were like, "Hey, I'd love for you to make one." We ended up selling a few kind of under the radar because obviously it was using licensed content uh because it was based on the side of the cabinet, but it really just validated the opportunity for us. Um and then we quickly set off uh in 2022 uh building our first topper, which was Twilight Zone. uh and launched that at at TPF 2023 and been going strong since the rest is history.
TPF 2026, so three years later. Yeah.
I'm guessing I'm guessing you don't have the Godzilla still since the topper is on the wall.
Oh man, it's tough. So So I had it for a while. Alex still has his. I got the black and white one, but we're currently in our our third space. Started at my house and then we went to a smaller space and now our bigger space. But like having machines is is a they take up a lot of space even for us uh who need them. Uh, so there's a cycle thing going on. Um, and unfortunately I did I did I I lifted the Oh my god. I lifted the playfield on that more than most and it was it was kind of time. Yeah.
Got it. Got it. Uh, so if you don't know, uh, and this is to chat, not to you. We do this live and the whole point of it is to have engagement from the people that are hanging out here. So if you have any questions for Rob, you want to you want to throw something, any curve balls, give him some hard questions, I'm happy to throw them out there. Nuclear Black has showed up and uh he is obsessed with this patent for Whitewater, which he did the research, he found the patent. Apparently, there's this white foil like technique for how it's I don't know, man. How does it work? There's some sort of weird patent involved in it. And he found the original patent. So, uh you got to send it you got to send it on.
There's two games there's two games that you should not do a tapper for that we both want to do a tapper for. It's Adam's family and Whitewater. Um and yeah, man. I I'd be No. Why are Why is that the nogo?
Just cuz they they came with toppers and everybody has them generally or a lot of people have them. Uh but our but our idea for both of those is to like take them to the next level, right? With With uh with Adams particular uh like turn it into almost like a cuckoo clock where like things are happening in the windows.
Upcoming Adams family topper. Spoilers.
Not in the works. Not in the works. Don't Don't forget the the amazing high quality topper that comes with Judge Dread. Oh man, let's not forget that that fine piece of quality.
I had that game. I had that was my second game and I I love that topper. Uh no, no, I don't think it's on the list.
It's a little chintzy. Farro wants to know if you're doing a topper for Harry Potter.
Uh well, we have publicly said we're looking into it. Um there's some interesting opportunities with it. I got to see it for the first time this last weekend. Uh my dad and I, he works he works with me. Uh we went and checked it out. Um he's actually thinking about picking one up uh specifically for that purpose.
Uh it's it definitely is like what's there feels like it was never finished. It's very lifeless.
It's weirdly cheap. Absolutely
not a hot take. I don't think um I think that uh there's definitely an opportunity there. So it's on the list. I mean, we can we may get into licensing on this conversation, but like licensing is always tricky, especially with something like Star Wars or Harry Potter. So, that would be a big part of like how we evaluate it.
For sure. So, when you're taking on the idea of one of these, right? So, I'm assuming you prototype a lot of this stuff. Like, what is like a prototype idea that you would put together for one of your toppers where you were just like, "Fuck this. This is not going to work." Uh I think everything we've started is still like in the the realm of possibility. The [ __ ] this part generally comes down to how complex they are because you are you are seeing now some variation in pricing um on our our toppers and that that is very much directly tied to how many manh hours US manh hours it takes.
US man fine a fine metric for
value. Yeah. So, uh, but maybe, hey, maybe there's some tax stuff going on with that. We'll see. Um, but, uh, yeah. So, like I think a lot of our stuff that's like sitting on the shelf is like it's just too complex, uh, for what we what we need to do right now as a business. Uh, something that we completely threw away. Um, yeah, man. Nothing Nothing comes to mind. I mean, we definitely we definitely spend a lot of time thinking about the ideas. We build 3D models. So, we do a lot of digital work before we actually take the step into the physical side of things. So, I would say maybe there was a couple ideas
there. I've got a great ideas for Jaws that's like still in that digital phase where it's like, you know, uh could we really pull this off to the level that it would actually look good? I think the idea is strong, but executing it and making it reliable is another question.
Gotcha. And reliability an important part of pinball if people don't people don't know. Uh you talked about cutting your own stuff. Does your shop have all the necessary like mills and whatnot? I know. I've seen a picture of it. I mean when we were on uh you know in before the lock uh which by the way your your studio is both in color and in organization like the polar opposite to Davies. It's like you're like the monochrome crew.
Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know. Keeping organized is a is a superpower or an annoyance depending on who you ask. Um, we have uh we have quite a bit of equipment. Nothing too crazy, but uh we do have two uh laser beds. So, one is very big. It's like a 60x 40 inch laser bed, so it can fit a very large sheet of acrylic uh for cutting things that we do. And then we have a smaller one here for prototyping. Got lots of tools. Uh we've got seven bamboo uh 3D printers. Now, we don't do a lot with 3D printing that's like visibly uh visible on the outside of the topper, but a lot of the internal components are 3D printed. I mean, we even 3D print some of our washers now. I think washers are easy to come by, but making a washer that's exactly the size you need um has a lot of benefits to it, right? I mean, I think 3D printing
used to have a reputation for being of like temporary quality, but I don't I don't think that's really the case now, right?
It's come such a long way. I mean, whether it's like the material itself or the finish that people are able to achieve with it, um it's it's uh come a long way. I mean, I think that um it's only going to continue to become more interesting and it's it's more affordable. Uh there's also a lot of materials to achieve different things. Um the big piece of equipment that we don't have here in house is the the printer. It's a very large piece of equipment. Uh but we have a vendor. We're based in St. Louis, Missouri. Uh we're in the city and we've got a sign maker that used to do signs for a lot of companies, but he's we're one of his few clients now, which is uh pretty cool to have like a dedicated uh resource. Uh so shout out to Tim. Thanks for all your help.
Which also means that you're keeping him busy uh and definitely in business cuz you're making a lot of toppers. The amount of games that you have had toppers for seems to have exponentially grown over the last like 2 years, it seems. Because like if you look at the release cycle for how your toppers have come out. I didn't even realize you did one for Vicabowski which is bad. You know, do your research, Jeff. But here we are like you've got at least two or three in the works and a re-release uh of Twilight Zone coming out, right?
Yeah. Yeah. We've got uh Twilight Yeah. We're going to be doing we actually have like kind of like a last call coming up uh in a few weeks uh maybe in a month uh where we're going to be taking orders for uh whatever whatever our back catalog people want to be produced in this calendar year. Uh but I think we're up to about seven uh toppers in total uh including our latest Alice one. And um I think our pace right now is about two or three a year and I think that's probably a pretty good spot for us. So, we'll keep that up,
especially to keep the quality up because Yeah, Silver's got a great question. Is that what you're looking at?
Yeah,
go ahead. Go ahead and ceue us up on that. Okay.
Uh, where do you find the right balance of material choices? Acrylics, 3D printed forms, practical visuals,
uh, even the change from the base topper. Yeah. So, uh, we're definitely continuing to expand our our skill set. Um, I think one of the things that I was uncomfortable with initially was like the painting process of acrylics, not just uh working with acrylics. And we're starting to get more help with that. Um, and
vendors for painting and stuff like that.
Yeah. So, we uh for the buildings for Godzilla, we had done by Sergio Le, who's based in Texas. He's uh known a little bit in the mod space. He's done some really cool stuff. So, he did the buildings for our Godzilla uh topper. Uh we are actually talking with him about doing the front four uh buildings on Godzilla. Hot take uh for you guys out there that have Godzilla. We're looking into that. Uh but then we ended up printing the uh the console that has the screens and painting those. Uh my fiance Margaret actually helps with the painting on that. So like finding the right resource because that's a little bit different skill set than uh the the folks that we have with our team now. So we're going to keep
also nice to do it in family because it's cheap.
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. definitely. Um, it's also just a a personal taste thing. I mean, I think, um, some stuff I think the full 3D sculpted stuff makes a lot of sense. Um, some stuff I I don't. Uh, in the case of like Alice, which is combining those two elements, like I think that turned out really great. So, uh, we're going to be we're going to be continuing to push the boundary on that because it's something we get asked for a lot. Um, it's just a kind of an evolution of skill set type thing,
right? He wants to talk about Alice so bad. I'm not let I'm not going to let him. We're gonna milk it for another like 20 minutes or so.
No one here cares about Alice.
No, we'll get there. Silver I mean I think people would care more about Alice if more Alice has actually made it to the country, but that's a different conversation. So Silver's asking about classics. I think that's a great question. Would you I mean I obviously Twilight Zone I would consider a classic. I don't I don't I think he's talking more system 9 8 11 games and and earlier period, but is there any interest in putting toppers on some of these older games? So, we did do a topper for Captain Fantastic. It is an EM. Uh, we claimed it. Oh, we claimed it was maybe
maybe one of the earlier or one one of the first like official because it was a planetary pinball uh Valley Williams license topper for Captain Fantastic. Uh, that is actually a top 10 selling game uh all time. I think they sold about 16,000 of those. There may be some discrepancies there, but it's a very popular game. Uh we really enjoyed doing it. It was about $700 or $800. Um and I I kind of found like in doing that and I'm learning this with all toppers is like how top of mind a game is uh does directly translate to sales. Like how much are people thinking about the game? Uh because they are being asked to make an investment in an asset that you know already may cost somewhere around that much potentially. Uh, in the case of like Captain Fantastic, I mean, there's a lot of really nice ones out there. Uh, I would assume that's the same for Gorggar.
How do you How do you interface with Captain Fantastic?
Yeah,
since our system.
Yeah. So, our system is uh pretty extensible across multiple games. Um, the way it works is that there's a brain in the topper, which is a Arduino based computer system, and there's a board that has outputs. So this computer can basically tell the lights on the board to do lots of different things. It can have single lights. It can have motors or it can have light strips to do light shows. That is connected to a board underneath the game via Cat 5 Ethernet cable. It is a node board. So if you have a Spike 2 system, you're probably familiar with that term. And on that node board uh which is about this big, it's got up to 16 inputs. Uh so those inputs are photo resistors. So they basically look for light to turn on and off and we can monitor multiple lights on and off and actually use that as logic to know if like a certain situation is happening. Um and
is this using LOI the Davey's lolly board system or is this something is this separate?
I don't use that crap.
Oh Davey shots fired.
That is what we're using for Alice and that's one reason Alice is is cheaper but we'll talk about that later. Uh that's using Davey's existing system. Our system uh is our own homegrown system. It was developed by Alex Oer who's part of our team and it's continued to be built on by other our team members like Nick and uh most of our toppers use that system. Um and it's just a way to kind of in a kind of old school uh ones and zeros way know if know if something's on and and of course that works with EMS.
Yep.
Easy logic switch on and off. So you just clip on a kind of photo sensor, I'm guessing, to specific strobes or whatever elements you want.
Depending on where it is, it may be zip tied or we may build a 3D mount. So in the case of like Labowski and and I know some of our Labowski owners will uh will will sympathize with the difficulty of sliding this large 3D printed object underneath the center board where it tracks the five characters and the five bowling balls. And that's effectively a a pre-built kind of array
of photo resistors that allow the topper to know what's happening.
Would you say that zip ties are kind of like the MacGyver tool of like duct tape for pinball people? Like is is a zip tie the equivalent to duct tape duct tape?
Oh, for sure. I mean, we I use zip ties in my home now, like way more than I did before, cuz it's like once you start to to learn how to use them, they become a solution for rigging up.
Totally, man. I I put my marriage back together with zip ties, it's working great. So, you talked about different cost value for a lot of your toppers. So, like the the Double Tap, which is probably one of your I would say I guess that and the the Godzilla one since it's got so many [ __ ] monitors in it, but the Double Tap one is is one of your more expensive toppers and it has a lot of [ __ ] going on in it. Um, when you're
Yeah. Yeah.
pricing.
Go ahead.
Well, I'm just I'm both curious one and how you determine your pricing so that you so that it isn't uh prohibitively expensive for whoever is going to actually purchase it for the game. And then second, like,
yeah, I don't know. The value is really kind of the most primary thing on that I'm curious about. You someone who's buying a CGC game like that, it's new and boxed, it's obviously going to be an expensive game.
Do you factor in like, well, now they don't have any more money or now like they definitely want to make this like a a part of their collection forever. That something has to go into the thought process of how you kind of target the people that are going to buy it. You mentioned you want to pick a game that's in the spotlight. It's weird that you're picking Alice. We are going to get to that. But But let's talk uh Pulp Fiction because Pulp Fiction is a great game. I love Pulp Fiction a lot. I think it's a a super fun game and I think that your topper has so much [ __ ] going on.
Well, Pulp Fiction was Pulp Fiction was more in the spotlight until it wasn't. I mean, you can argue it's not so much in the spotlight anymore, but we had we had a ton of the success with Labowski. Uh very low volume game. I think there was about 1,200 at the time as reported. And we had it that one was limited to 100. Um I think we launched that in like November 2024 and we sold a hundred of them in like three days. It was it was pretty amazing. And just from like a percentage perspective like you know 10% of the entire market you know bought it. Um, we felt like uh
that we were starting to understand that like people that really like,
you know, have an affinity for the game as a collector or just as it being a unique item or it being rare would equate to them wanting to invest, you know, more in in upgrades for it. Uh, so we saw that with uh Labowski. Now, now Pulp Fiction did have a pretty amazing topper, but that topper was uh exclusive to a certain edition. So, if they would have sold that topper just like to anybody that bought either versions of the game, we wouldn't have done that topper. But, we felt like there's a lot of people that missed out on that and they really had a strong passion for that game. Uh ultimately what we saw was like right around the time we started to sell the topper, a lot of people were flipping that game and the value was kind of falling out on it a little bit and so we didn't see necessarily as strong as sales as we projected on it. But at the end of the day um pricing wise um there's a lot of labor that goes into that one. Uh we ended up incorporating way more complex lighting in it than Twilight Zone. Uh we incorporated speakers into it. Uh but also we had already done a lot of the work. I mean it's it's largely a rehash of the Twilight Zone on Topper. So there was cost savings from that perspective. Uh the original Twilight Zone Topper, the metal ramps cost like $150 a piece because of how uh bespoke that they were. But then over the time of Twilight Zone, we reduced the cost of that. Uh there there is more coating involved in uh uh pulp, so we had to recoup that. But there's no screen. So there's a bunch of different offsets with it. I mean, that one's 1,500 whereas, uh, Twilight Zone is, I think, 1630. Um, but there's a couple different reasons there, but the end of the day, I mean, it's like
that's just what we have to charge for that. I mean, some people say, "Hey, it's just a bunch of flat plastic," but, it does a lot. Um, and everyone that has it is like really thrilled with it. So, that's that's exciting.
The development and prototyping. I mean there's a lot of I think development that goes into any kind of physical prototype item that ends up getting manufactured that people don't really kind of take into consideration. It's like yeah it is fantastic but it's like well there's yeah
final rendition recouped kind of over the over the timeline of the sales and um yeah so it's factored in. So, when you take on one thing that I really love and we've mentioned Davey's name a few times, so I just to clarify, Dave is a Stumbler Mods, uh, if you're not familiar with that, but I you and I talked about in our like pre-show kind of chitchat that like
I don't like toppers personally. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that like a lot of early toppers and a lot of early mods weren't adding anything to the game and they weren't making the game like more of a cohesive package. But that's like changed now. And I think that you and and Davey are two of the kind of top mod people that have really kind of pushed the envelope of what these are to like more of like an artistic level where they do feel like they're part of the game, which you know, proven by the fact that you have a collaboration with Dutch Pinball here right behind you that is now like an official kind of part of the game. So, I mean,
I think um there's a Yeah, there's a couple things that I think are similar for Davey and I and that we want our stuff to feel like it would have come from the factory. Um that's a that's a tough thing to achieve and it also takes a specific, you know, creative direction uh from the early onset to get there. Uh, the thing that we focus on, which I think a lot of Dave stuff does too, but it's easier with a topper, is we like to do what pinball machines attempt to do, which is offer pinball moments. And we like to do that with our toppers. So,
right,
as we evaluate new games coming out or past games, like we want to see as many like wow moments or pinball moments or just interesting things to like if someone brand new is talking over our shoulder, like what would you be telling them why you think this game is cool or what would you be challenging them to execute in the game to make the cool thing happen? Medieval Madness being the most obvious example uh of that with the castle exploding. I mean, telling a 5-year-old, 10-year-old, 20-year-old, 70-year-old to make that castle shake is just pure joy and purely doable for all of them, uh, with a bit of effort. And we want to do that with our toppers. So, we like to have at least one pinball moment, um, in any topper that we make, um, whether that be movement or surprise or a light show or whatever it is. And I think that's where our bar is for it really. And that's why we it's very difficult for us to make a $500 topper or whatever because like building that into the early criteria of the design plan never pans out because of the labor involved of pulling that off.
Sure. I mean, I think that's a really smart kind of like design approach to have, you know, every topper needs to provide this particular moment so that there's that kind of like value and that you know what you're getting when you get, you know, a
t and it's different. I mean, with Labowski, there's no moment, but it's a work of art. Like, if you ever get a chance to see it in person, I I hear it over and over again. people open it up. It's It's heavy as all hell. Uh it has so many pieces. It is a work of art. And ultimately, we only sold the hundred, but we ended up selling a lot of uh wall arts uh too because people just wanted it for their wall and and there's somebody that made a conversion kit to turn it into a topper. So, that was really cool to see as well.
That's super neat.
Um but yeah, the craft
mod people modding mods.
Yeah,
totally. We It's a whole thing. Yep. Uh, so GTP Prague definitely agrees with you. He says he has 48 toppers all in his machines. He says pinball art is important. I agree, man. Pinball Pinball is art. It is a collaboration of so many different avenues of creativity into one physical freaking game. Um,
but yeah, going I mean just to go back to your comment about not being a Topper guy because we talked about this as a pre-show. I think it really comes down to like you have this thing and it represents something usually a story that you are passionate about. Uh even if you're not particularly passionate about the story yourself, you know, you you appreciate that it exists because of that. And it it can be the best version of itself. And there's a lot of mods out there. And the question you ask yourself is like, does this mod make it a better version of itself on the level that matters to me? And uh in the case of you know just to throw it out there it sounds like you're thinking about Twilight Zone with us because obviously it must do that for you on some level right? Yeah
absolutely. My Twilight Zone is a special game to me for a lot of reasons and I think that that's one reason that I want to make it unique and you know there's a difference between people that make mods and top like you look at car culture right like car mods are pretty good I would say like analog to like pinball mods. You know there's people that put spinny rims on their car. No. And then there's people that put like actual like things that that are that look like they belong.
If you put spinny rims on your car and you're down with it, that's cool, man. I don't know. No judgment. They spin. It's cool. You know,
great investment.
Uh, all right. Enough Enough [ __ ] teasing. We can talk about Let's talk about Alice. Uh, Joe wants to know if the Dutch pinball uh if they're using the topper for DLC modes in the code. So, he's making a joke. That's a stab at Stern for having locked content behind it. Obviously not. Uh let's take a look at this thing because it is very cool. So this is the design challenge here I want to say is unique because part of the topper existed already, right? Cuz you're kind of like this is like an expansion topper more than anything.
Uh
very much. Yes.
So this is this is the original topper without any modification. Um, and you said before in our other chat on uh in Before the Drain, which by the way, that's that's Rob and Davey's podcast. You should go check it out. Um, that the
before the lock.
In Before the Lock. Yes. Not In before the drain. That's when I'm that's when I'm just regularly playing pinball is me draining. Uh, so there's there's LCD screens inside of the eyes of the uh of the Cheshire Cat. And that and that the metal behind it is actually a mirror, which is kind of neat. Um, but this is what your mod adds to it. And uh why don't you go ahead and talk talk us through the the text, the trees, everything that's going on here.
Sure. Yeah. Um well, I got to I I'll pull up a different camera uh just to kind of give you guys a little bit of background on this if you'd like to hear that first.
Sure. Uh we also have the Do you want to play the promo? Do you want to talk over the promo video first in case people haven't seen that?
Sure. So, this launched today. Uh we've been kind of letting people know we've had a wait list for actually like three or four months. We've been working on it for a while, but it did launch today. Uh we were waiting for me to receive my game. Uh they're they're admittedly pretty far behind on it. But yeah, so this is the video. Uh it is an official collaboration with Melvin with DPX and Dutch Pinball and Davey with Stumbler. Stumbler actually built a mod board that allows light customization to exist for any mod, which I believe is a first of its kind in the industry. And uh that was a big thing for us about why we chose to do this because we wanted to be a part of that story and and it's something that we hope a lot of manufacturers start doing is providing you know more direct access to data and lighting and power um than they are currently today uh to allow people in this industry to make cooler stuff and make these better versions of themselves. Um so this is a three-piece uh uh expansion. Uh it's a left tree, right tree, and center arch. And uh it's designed of course to to integrate directly with the design of the existing topper.
So I' I've paused it here. Are you ready? Are you ready for a quick fire round?
Yeah.
So 10 10 plus swappable phrases for the sign. What are the 10 swappable phrases?
Well crap. I think it's only nine now that I think about it. Um so it comes with two. Uh that that piece of plastic that's there on the front is very easy to swap out. Uh it comes with one that says uh not all who wonder are lost, which is a famous phrase from the book. Another is we're all mad here, which everyone certainly knows from the movies. Uh oh, wow. You want me to read them off?
Go. How many you got from your memory? No cheating. No cheating. Stop it,
dude. I'm already done. Uh oh, Jesus. Uh, curious or curiouser. curiouser. That's one of them. Uh, beware of the Jabberwocky or the Jabberwock. Uh I man dude I don't know that's pretty good. That's 50%.
We didn't know we didn't know what the uptake was going to be on this. Uh the extra arches are 30 bucks. Uh you can get three of them for 80 which probably does seem like a lot but there's a lot of like admin and and work to do and sending off specific arches to the printer changing the boxes like getting it all in a day. It's like there's just a ton of admin work with it. So that's what they cost. Um, and we've we've sold a bunch of them. Like
the most you can buy is a three-pack. We didn't offer a 10 pack and like everybody's buying the three-pack. So, thank you. It will add up and and we appreciate that. But, uh, yeah, I think uh,
we got an app here, too. How does the app interface with the the topper?
Yeah. Do you want me to I can get into that for sure. Um,
do you want to pull it up on your own here? Let's watch Let's watch the rest of the uh, promo video before we switch over to that.
Okay, cool. I will talk.
Rob's so excited about this. How long how long have you been working on the development of this?
Uh, so we met Melvin on in before the lock before they showed the game and then I met him in person at Expo when they had the game at Expo. So that would have been October 2025 and I kind of soft pitched him on the idea of like, hey, let's take this thing to the next level. And curious enough, he was like, yeah, we kind of wanted to do that, but we just kind of ran out of time or whatever. So, uh, we started concepting pretty early on. I would say we really got into it in February, so it's been, you know, four or five months.
That's cool. That must be a fun conversation to walk up to a pinball manufacturer and just be like, "Hey, uh, so I have an idea how to make the thing that you're doing better." Like, how do you even start a conversation like that?
Actually, I soft pitched his Rens as main support guy on it because I was like I was just getting to know Melvin and he's uh, you know, he's done some really cool stuff. Uh he's a he's a big collector in the hobby and is doing something really cool. Let's put it that way. And I didn't want to offend him, but he was very open to it early on. Yeah,
that's nice. I mean, you got to you you there's no denying the fact that this looks like it's part of the game from the get- go here. It really is adds to the experience and really just kind of like naturally carries up the art style from the from the back glass. As someone who's probably never going to own an Alice and hopefully forgets to play one, uh I think it looks great. But, you know,
yeah, I mean, Melvin himself was like, I'm never going to be able to see this game without this this topper hat on. He bought five of them uh for his friends that have games. Uh he's going to be putting in the Dutch Pinball Museum soon. But it's it's really I mean, he gave me some artwork for it. Maria Keller, uh who did a all the artwork on this, she got some artwork from him to get started Dutch Pinball Museum soon. But it's it's really I mean, he gave me some artwork for it. Pinball Museum soon. But it's it's really I mean he gave me some artwork for it. Uh Maria Keller uh who did a all the artwork on this, she got some artwork from him to get started. But it is uh it is truly um just takes the game to the next level. So I'm very very proud of it. Let's put it that way.
I'm going to I'm going to save the manufacturing behind the scenes stuff until after. Why don't you if you wanted to show off how the app integrates with everything. Uh let's do that
running around like a crazy person. Uh but shout out to the team and Nick too. I mean like Nick uh was integral in working with uh Melvin and particularly Davey and getting the lighting to an amazing place. Uh he really pushed the boundary on the light show. So can
let's talk Nick Nick who you're talking about by the way for the people who don't know he did uh he did Tony Hawk
uh and you met him at Chicago Pinball Expo and then and then brought him in the beginning of this year right?
Uh so Nick is based in St. Louis. Um, and I started to see some posts on uh on Instagram where like this guy was like thanking people for giving him like empty cabinets and parts and all this type of stuff. And I was like, "Hey, what's going on here?" Like this guy's like people are giving him free stuff for this project he's working on. Um, are we still live? Yeah. Okay. I'm getting a text from somebody that died, but I think we're good now.
I noticed it did say that the viewership dropped to zero, but everybody's still here, so I don't know.
Twitch doing Twitch things. If you got dropped, welcome back. I don't know what's going on with that.
Welcome back. Welcome back. Uh, so Nick Nick uh was planning this launch at Expo and I started kind of just like trying to help him out with creative feedback. He was very tight with the idea uh for good reason. And not too many people knew about it. So I was kind of like a bit of a a muse for him, I guess you could say.
And ultimately I invited him to be in our booth at Expo. uh and he he came and brought his game and showed it off there for the first time, but also we started to talk about him getting involved with working with us. He He comes from the aerospace industry and had a ton of experience with electronics and was getting into pinball on a crazy level beyond where I was. So like I I would say I think by January, which is about 3 months later, he came on fulltime with us.
Cool. Uh Joe, when did we drop out? This is a Reream issue for sure. I'm looking forward to dumping reream as soon as I can, which uh as soon as we get uh approved for the [ __ ] 2K beta or whatever. We're going to we're going to dump this cuz I don't know. Enough of this inconsistent [ __ ] with Reream. Anyways, welcome back everybody. We got about 50 pinball lovers hanging out here uh watching all this new [ __ ] that we're doing or that you're doing with Alice in Wonderland. So, go ahead. Let's see let's take let's take a look at the app.
Cool. Okay. So, let's see how my little share situation goes. Give me a second. Got my own technical difficulties now.
That's okay. This is your chance. So, when Davey did his tour uh for his entire floor, we did it silent. That was the uh that was Davey's technical glitch. So, now you got to either one up him or one less him at this point.
I heard it was it was And you guys just went on and on. No one even knew, right? I mean, I I tried to to narrate for the experience, but without being able to hear anything, it was it was pretty funny. I think I turned into Arnold Schwarzenegger for a second. I figured since Predator didn't put it in their pinball machine that I would I would try to contribute.
Zing. Just kidding. I think that game's going to be great. By the way, shout out.
I wasn't paying attention. Something else.
That's okay. I wasn't paying attention either.
So, can you hit me on the full screen?
Uh, kind of.
You asked me to.
Yeah, this is full screen. We're good. you when we were there.
Yeah. Yeah. Go for it.
Okay, cool. So, um, so there is a specific module in the cabinet. Uh, it's Davey's LOI board system built out to a different level. It was specifically for built for this game. Um, and what it does is it controls the side rails of the game, which are an innovative feature, I think, a first of its kind. uh where you have animated lighting on the side of the game and there's also a a light strip in the shooter lane. Uh each of those have their own kind of settings uh for the game. Uh and then also the Jabberwock uh arm is controlled by the app as well. Um but what what's cool about that is it looks great from the outside, but there's not a lot of lighting like inside the game that's affected by the system, but the system does allow it to do custom lighting for modes and even for targets. Um, so this is uh this is a closeup of the topper obviously. Uh,
so for those that don't know, the Jabberwocki, the interactive portion is kind of a peekaboo solenoid uh or something on the side there that kind of sticks out.
Yep. Yep. So I'll show that. So I've got his app open. This is running on my phone iOS and Android app. And you'll see some light shows. So it's currently running in, I believe, the attract mode light show. But if I click um on this uh little icon on the left, I can go into rails. And now I can select from different like preconfigured light shows four different modes. So just like the light strip in your kids' bedroom or at your bar where you kind of can say like I wanted to do like chase or whatever, but that's just for that one light set. Basically like each mode is effectively its own like light set rule. So if I click on say like queen of hearts, then you'll see here there's a bunch of settings. And if I click this test icon, um, it's got to reconnect. Give it a second here. I didn't have this.
I'm assuming there's synergy to the color and whatnot that's going on the actual game modes down below.
It is. And that's that's the presets. So, but you can customize it to whatever you want ultimately. Uh, it's in the case of Queen of Hearts, I think it's like a red mode that's going on on the game. So, the light show uh specifically for that. Um, we'll give it a second to load. Red. You've also got uh custom settings for the the shooter lane, which in the case of the topper is the arch. So, there's a rainbow uh light show that goes whenever the ball's sitting in the shooter lane, and you'll get a uh you'll get that same exact light show on the topper as well. So, as far for the topper, um I think there may be a little bit of a compatibility issue between me kind of running this on my phone. We'll see what happens. But basically, you can use the app to test all of the light shows. Um, and then once you're happy with where it's at, you can effectively then save it and then whenever that event happens in the game again, whether it's a target or a mode, that'll be replicated uh on the topper. So, a lot of Davey's stuff was meant for mods within the game to like really show and shine. And of course, in this case, this is a mod that just sits on top of the game.
You've got little mod sections inside of the topper.
Exactly. Exactly. Um and and frankly like you know you're buying that tech whenever you buy the gain it comes included. So that's one reason that we were able to offer this at a 6 or $700 price point whereas our typical topper is somewhere between 12 and 12 and 1600. Um all right let's see if we can at least give you guys a quick example of this. So and I'm going to go to queen of heart and click test. So now you can see kind of what happens. Um, I will go to the shooter lane and say whenever the ball's in the shooter lane, which is for the jagger walk, uh, I can do whenever we get to ball lock. Uh, let's try three and click test. Um, did he come out there?
I don't think so. motors.
I think I I've got a bunch of different settings in here that may have got overwritten. Let's see what happens here.
Yeah, I think I deleted the setting so he's not going to come up. But basically in the trees there on the right hand side,
I can I can pull it up in the video once we're we're all pull back.
That's fine. He a little a little motor in there sends the jabber walk out. Uh which is really cool. I'm going to um restore it to faults. I've been kind of messing around around with some stuff here. We'll see what happens with that. But, uh, yeah, so it's it's really cool. And then, of course, there's multiple outputs on his mod board. Um, so folks that are still wanting to do mods can still make mods for it. Uh, but the hope is, and again going back to why we did this is that, you know, uh, we'll have the opportunity to integrate with his system. So, he actually recently, uh, signed a partnership with Planetary Pinball where they're going to be building this for classic Bally Williams games. So, they're making some efforts to kind of consolidate the mod system. So, uh if you ever look at the underside of like a Godzilla machine, it's like there's wires everywhere because everyone's kind of doing their own thing. And as this space becomes more popular, um there's the need for efforts to consolidate down into like singular systems to to create better outputs.
I mean, you see that in Scorebit. I know that Davies talked about how it would be nice to have more of a unified kind of communication like language so that people don't have to just depend on attaching little clips and lights and whatnot. Um, so yeah. Uh, chat if you have any questions. I mean, fire away. Now's the opportunity. This is this is what it looks like. Uh, Uh, Street Truth says, "Damn, ads on a live stream, man. I guess you aren't you don't go to Twitch much since you cannot turn off the ads and I have them set as low as possible. But thanks for the incredibly unhelpful feedback. Uh if there's any questions actually related to Alice and your topper or uh Rob and his production in general, please fire away. Um yeah, I I think this is cool. for installation process. I'm guessing that this is probably incredibly easy to put on just on the fact that it is I mean it's it's there's you don't have to dig around in the back of a playfield like when you put in [ __ ] Godzilla buildings which is one of the most infuriating things in the world. Uh and so I'm assuming installation here is very simple.
Yeah. So there there are it does come in three pieces. We tried to the shipping of toppers has been a challenge for us in terms of like maintaining you know integrity in rough environments. So, it does come in three pieces because this one is a little bit fragile when it's all together. So, you do have to put it together, but then it slides on top and then you've got wires that run into Davies. There's a very detailed instruction guide in terms of kind of walking you through it. Um, so not not difficult for sure. Um, anybody there's no there's definitely no soldering or cutting or anything like that. It's really just about, you know, following through the steps, you know, diligently.
Uh, and it'll process it probably take anywhere from
Go ahead. But I'm just curious what when you build a mod like this and you're building the instructions for how to actually put this together. Like I feel like that that's a timeconuming but necessary component.
Thanks for the gift sign out. Now you doesn't have to worry about ads anymore.
We definitely do our best to create um not only a detailed manual but we update it as it goes along. So as people run into issues, um it's via kind of a cloud-based like file PDF that we can make updates to. So we don't ship it with the manual because we know changes are going to need to be made. And then we have a lot of uh helpful videos that we make along the way. So if someone's repeatedly running into a similar issue, we also we're very we we put a lot of pride into our support. Uh, so we try to be not only quickly responsive, but we try to make custom videos for people when they're appropriate. So we're addressing their issue specifically. Um, so don't be surprised if you have a question or issue from us and we'll just whip up a quick video so that we can kind of help you through it as quickly as possible.
I mean, if somebody's having an issue, that means someone else probably will have a similar issue. So it makes sense to kind of like utilize that. Uh, Isl Pinball is asking, "How soon will the shipping start?" He's stoked.
Yeah. So we've got 15 ready to go. uh right over here on the the shelf. Uh we've got a put some custom uh arches in there. I wasn't expecting nearly as many of those, but we've got 15 ready to go. And then the way we did the pricing. Uh so, okay. So, so with this game, you know, it's all over the place. People what they got. Most people don't have the game. Uh 25 people in the US have the game. Half of them do not have the topper, which is a big bummer. Uh but basically what happened was when when Melvin received his uh first order uh of the top there's about 75 in in Europe in in overseas apparently. So there's a nice chunk overseas. Uh but for the US order which just got fulfilled about a month ago. half of them didn't have toppers because what Melvin found out was not only were half the toppers uh that he received for the US orders rejects, but the guy who was making them for him ultimately decided he wasn't able to continue his business. Um so Melvin not only had to
Yeah. not only had to switch vendors, but also had to make the tough decision to ship half of the machines without the topper.
That's I mean that sucks. That's a nobody wins in that scenario cuz the I mean the guy who went out of business didn't want to. Dutch pinball doesn't look like doesn't want to look bad for the consumer. But I mean in the end people are buying a game and they expect it to come with a topper if it's advertised as that.
Yeah. Yeah. And they're and they're pretty behind on the shipping. I mean they're they're about I think I guess by that those numbers about a 100red in on a 500 commitment for this year. Um they're of course I'm sure trying to get caught up. Uh but it it did ultimately put a bit of a damper on, you know, our roll out plan in the sense of people being excited about getting it. But the reception has been amazing and we've got a lot of orders. I'm really happy with where it's sitting and and also our our topper works even without the factory topper. So people might have some fun kind of seeing what it looks like without
Yeah, that's kind of neat. If you if if someone on the channel is watching and has an Alice that doesn't have a topper but also has the Rob Wrath uh electric playground topper, I would love to see what that screenshot looks like cuz I'm I'm curious what the the void in the middle looks like if it just has the text arc. Uh thank you everybody for followers by the way.
No one will fit that criteria yet, but but we are shipping about 15 out within the next uh week uh once we get those custom arches printed. So you'll I'm sure you're going to see that on the owner thread on Pinsai at the very least.
And custom and custom text too. Well, GTP Prague says that he's got one. He's already ordered it today. So, maybe you could send one that says GT Prague eats poo.
I did ones. Um, it's just a lot like converting custom copy into the right font and then like doing all that. I mean, if someone really wanted to push me hard on it, I guess it's possible, but we didn't offer that as like an option.
I could see how that would be a uh I don't know. That would be a neat thing to be able to add, but I don't know if yeah, the product the the cost to do that would be kind of crazy. However, this is a fairly cheap topper all things considered. I mean, here, let's take a look. I have uh
at least I'm supposed to have
5.99 for the first 100. Um, we did offer a discounted price for the first 100 because we knew like a lot of people were, you know, going to be buying this without actually having the machine and we wanted to make sure we moved a certain amount of units kind of early on um because it, you know, our plan was to be in a little bit better situation with, you know, how many people had the machine. So, we wanted to offer a little bit of discount just to kind of thank people uh for making the move early. But the the final retail price is $679, which um you're going to be able to order through Coint Taker, which is the main US distributor of the machine. So, when you check out, if you haven't picked it up early, you'll be able to add it on to your your purchase when you make final payment.
Sure. Sure. Dude, Gallon Donald made a hilarious comment saying that you could put a stuffed uh stuffed toy Cheshshire cat under the arch in the meantime if you uh if you were one of the unlucky the unlucky five people that have one without one. Uh
yeah, I mean you can probably pick one of those out for 30 bucks on Amazon. So,
right. Thrill House says uh not a question. He just thanks you, man. He's saying boost in St. Louis as a pinball city. Represent. He loves his Twilight Zone topper and can't wait for the next offering. Maybe something for Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I don't know. Are you thinking about doing something for Lord of the Rings or
We are We are proud people here in St. Louis and I am I am honored to uh work with some really cool people and to build this here. Uh Lord is definitely on the list, man. And I mean, uh, Alec just acquired a lord. He's going real deep with it on a from a mod perspective. Um, and he's been pushing me hard to finish up an idea that we've been working on. Uh, it's really cool. Uh, it's going
obviously I am somewhat interested in that as this is Lord of the Rings right here.
It's going to be a it's going to be a marvel uh functional and electronics wise. Um, I'm sure we're going to be able to pull it off. Um, we are right now kind of evaluating it from a licensing perspective. Um, so that's kind of where it's at right now.
Yeah. Don't get sued. That would not be good for the mod community just in general.
Yeah. Yeah. Please make Lord GT Prague. All right.
So, this kind of goes into some fun side questions I have here. So, we were just talking about licensing. If budget and licensing wasn't an issue at all, what is a game that you would love to make a topper for, regardless of how ridiculous it is? Wow. I I never thought to think like that. Um that's what I try to do. Challenge people with dumb questions.
Well, I don't know. My My favorite game is Jurassic. Uh and that game isn't even using the license properly. So, I guess I wouldn't pick that one. Um I don't know. I'm not a lot of video. Maybe if by the end of this conversation, I mean, Star Wars is like a no-go for us. Oh, they kicked the camera. Uh, Star Wars is kind of a no-go for us for obvious reasons. So, like, but of course, there's not like a real inspiring game to make Star Wars for. I am excited if if Star Wars is on the Stern road map. So, maybe that'll quickly become the one. Uh, that would be my answer. Um,
well, so but yeah, kind of read my mind. So, I guess then let me fill in and ask you if you were going to on any time period of game, right? Maybe between these three games, if you had to pick one of these to put a topper on, uh, I'm just curious which one of these you would pick. Uh, Raven.
What is Raven?
What is Raven? What? What? Oh my god. We got to We got to pull up What? Raven Raven is the finest gotly pinball machine ever made. Are you kidding me right now?
You know what's you know what's throwing me off is is uh there's a game that we were working on that had a code name of Raven and I'm like are you are you playing a joke on me or what's going on here? But I still don't know
that's hilarious. No, let me Oh my god. Yeah. No, this is Raven. This is the finest pinball machine ever manufactured. And if you'll notice, if you look right there with licensing, what does this game have to do with licensing? Oh,
well, you know, it's like if Commando if they made a Commando game, but it it wasn't Commando. Anyways, but the important part is you'll notice that there's no topper here, man. Come on.
This is not a licensing question. I thought the question was if licensing was not not a factor.
That was your question. And then the follow-up question was which one of these three games would you put a topper on?
Colin's disappointed in the general content strategy of this production.
What's up, Colin? Speaking of uh speaking of Kineticist here in the in the house right now. Thank you for hopping on. Uh we were just talking about Pinball Expo and if you were going to be doing the uh the whatever the meet and greet daily do
media the media mixer. Yeah.
Yeah. The media mixer.
Uh anyway, so this game needs a topper. Can you slide like shove the DPX stuff?
Let's focus on what matters right now. And what matters is a raven. This one I don't think will be on the list. Uh we were talking about uh Nick's a big fan of skateboarding. We were talking about um Radical the other day. Maybe
that's not
that would be that would be a fun topper to be. That could have been your choice, man. You could have picked Radical.
Yeah.
Frankly, you know, Lord is one of my favorite games. I wish that was unencumbered from a licensing perspective. I'm trying to figure out what to do with that. Uh, but if I if I were to rewind a little bit before we started on at least the concept for this, I would say that that would be a dream one for me. Um, so we'll see where that goes.
Yeah,
fair enough. Fair enough. Colin says combos are happening. It's lit. Thanks for hanging out, man. Uh, see you later. He's heading out. Uh, I'm also excited for Expo, man. Uh, are you bringing a presence to Pinball Expo?
Dude, we're going to we're going to do it up. We're gonna have a 20 by 20 booth, so it's gonna be big. Um, and uh, we're gonna have a bunch of games there, I think. Uh, we'll have Alice, so for those that haven't got to play it, you can come check that out. I'm going to lug that bad boy up there. Uh, and, uh, we're going to have a bit of a lounge situation going on. So, we're going to have some couches and it's going to be kind of a chill thing. Um, and who knows, you know, we might have some new stuff to show off. Timeline is kind of uh, interesting. We're working on a an old B Williams topper right now uh with Planetary. So hopefully we'll be showing that off there. Um
we are doing some classic games.
Oh yeah, we do classic stuff. Just not Gorgar classic. Yeah.
Oh my god, he [ __ ] on your Gorgar. I'm so sorry.
Don't listen to him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Gorgar is awesome.
Well, I guess yeah, I don't know. Gorggar's cool. I just think it's it's definitely um it's tough to pick toppers to build games for. I'll just put it that way. Can I Can I give a shout out for my my little giveaway because I want
You can Of course, man. You can say whatever you want on here.
Okay, cool. So, we we did these cool new hats. Um these were made specifically for some of our VIP customers. We've got a lot of customers who acquire quite a few of our toppers, which is awesome. Uh but this is a pretty special hat. Um and I want to give one away. Uh, so the way this is going to work is uh just DM Jeff if you win and I'm gonna ask two questions and whoever can answer either of the questions first will get the hat and both of these are like kind of you had to kind of follow along with us to know these to certain degree. Um, so the first question is what is the first pinball machine that I ever owned?
That you ever owned? And then the second is, what was the name of Alec, my partner's childhood arcade?
Wow, these are deep cuts, man. You're really making them work for this hat, man.
Might take a bit.
I thought you were going to be like, "What, you know, what color is the Queen of Hearts in in Alice in Wonderland?"
I'll give out some hints. How much time do we have? How much time?
We have plenty of time.
Plenty of time. We'll get we'll give it we'll give it a few minutes for uh people to come in. Oh, Thrill House says Accelerama.
I I'll say the questions one more time. What was the first pinball machine I ever owned? And what was Alec uh Alex's childhood pin pinball arcade or video game arcade called?
Well, is his was his childhood arcade called Auxilarama? Cuz that's somebody's answer.
No. No,
that is incorrect.
Unlimited Unlimited options. You can just keep firing away till somebody gets it right.
One hint, one hint. One of those questions, the answer is extremely easy to know.
I'm guessing your first pinball machine you owned is not an Alice in Wonderland by Dutch Pinball.
That would be amazing. Mostly because it's a miracle that you got one. And uh yeah, that's it. Well, clearly no one who knows me is is watching this this program. So, that's good to
I I am kind of curious.
My dad's watching, but he's he's holding back. Um I'm curious to see if he even knows the answer to those questions. Should I give another hint or should we kind of move on to a different topic?
No, let him let him simmer on it. I got a few more questions. We'll let him we'll let him simmer on that while we while we dig in here.
Uh has has someone ever requested something so crazy for you to build? like what was the wildest request that you had for a topper from like a fan while you were at Expo or something? They were like, "Hey, don't pick me for the Raven thing."
Uh, I don't think that's a real game. Um, I had really fun talking with a guy who uh so there's a small group of people that there's a lot of story to this apparently. Uh, they basically turned uh five uh World Cup soccer into Do you know?
I don't. uh this great Papadoot game, which uh Alice is kind of a Papaduke game, but continue. Sorry.
Mhm. They turned five World Cup Soccers into Kill Bill games, and there's five of them, and they're basically all different apparently.
Um and I think I think there was some kind of passing of the torch situation going on, but I think all five of these exist. And uh they're interested in me making five toppers for it. and the idea of maybe selling, you know, a derivative of it as a kind of like a wall art thing because we've done that with Twilight Zone a couple of our time.
That's cool. And you're actually considering that
or they just a combo, not actually a real thing.
Uh well, I'm bringing it up because maybe he'll like get back to me on it. I think it kind of died, but it's certainly something I'd be interested in. It'd be fun. I I love that movie. I mean, or that those two movies.
Okay, we have we have two We have I'm sorry. We have three machines now. That might be your first. And also Nick Nick's now in the chat and is razing you for not knowing that Raven is a real machine.
Uh you do need to get educated on the knock knockoff era. He is correct.
Um okay. Is it whirlwind?
The game the game was a got the game was a gatlib and it was inspired and it was licensed and it was
your first your first pinball machine you owned was a gut. It was it was a licensed Golib game and it's uh it's based on a very popular arcade game Firepower. No, that's uh not Gotautle. Uh okay, that's pretty that's a plenty for people that know a lot about pinball. That should be enough for for someone to get that.
Um everyone's off the rails talking about Genesis now. What a what a weird game. huge on Genesis.
Yeah,
I think if I ever did like a Genesis game, it would be we're making 25, you know, it's going to be not it's probably not going to going to blow people away mechanically, but it's just going to be like a really nice thing. And uh yeah, I think I could see like a game like Genesis, but it'd have to be super limited just because the other thing about making these toppers is like so with like Captain Fantastic, like we don't even want to make any more of those because it's just like so difficult to get it on the line. I mean, we're not making pinball machines here, but like getting stuff on the line is like mentally challenging for everybody on the team and and I anybody any of the team members know are listening, they're like laughing right now. Uh
we got two more. Pat said Street Fighter and and Colin said Mario. Are either of those it
Street Fighter 2? Street Fighter 2. That's a nice
hat arcade. Got it. Nailed it.
H. So, I had it my my senior year of college. Um, I had this game in our kind of like fourperson apartment on the 11th floor. It was amazing. Uh, it was awesome to have a game. Not a game I would ever probably own again now, but at the time it was it was kickass. It was fun.
Well, Pats Arcade, uh, you got yourself a a new a new topper for your head. Uh if if uh you are so inclined and would like that, please send me a message with any personal information so that I can pass that on to Rob and uh and he'll make sure that you get a hat. Get a hat.
Clear Clear back clear black makes me want to own the game because I I don't think I ever got to the wizard mode and he says it was a wizard mode ahead of its time. So
I've heard that it is very good. I Yeah, the the handful of times that I've played Street Fighter, I can't say it's the most amazing game. And I'm also mind blown that like it's a got since I feel like I guess this is like right before Capcom decided to make a few games before they tanked and only made expensive prototypes.
My issue with the guts is like I feel like I'm playing a game that's like three or four inches too high.
It's just like an awkward feeling to me.
Um I don't know. I I did the
Yeah. Yeah. something. Um, there's a pristine example of that at game game terminal in uh in Nashville. So, that won't impress me. So, the the answer to the other question was the electric playground.
Oh, well, duh.
Well, that's the easy duh. Well, Jesus, I can't believe we none of us got that. So, so whenever, so my so whenever we came together, uh we both kind of looked at our childhood uh arcades as inspiration for many things in the company. Mine was Challenges, Carbondale, Illinois.
Not quite as cool of a name, but the electric playground. And then Alec had uh was running a a pinball tournament for the advertising club here in St. Louis, and they actually used our logo that he had that made and used their that logo for that tournament. So, we kind of like co-opted that and uh
a lot of people think we were brothers because we look kind of alike. So, it all just kind of made sense.
Do you wanna Do you want to nyx the rumors right now? Is this like another Bill Burr thing and the and the guy from Smashing Pumpkins? Are you Are you two related?
I don't know that one. No.
I mean, they look alike now that you mention we're not related. No, I thought you were going to ask me like top or bottom question again, which is
I know I know where you and Nick stand. Uh, okay. Fantastic. Well, I'm I'm pretty much covered everything, man. I think that uh you know, thank you for giving the the lowdown on what Electric Playground is. It sounds like you are in hard. You said this was a full-time job now. And uh yeah, I mean, the pinball market's in a weird place, but uh pinball machines need art, and having people like you producing insanely high quality mods for the people that want them is uh is cool. And I dig it. Uh, anybody questions? Send them. This is your last opportunity. You can talk about Raven. You can talk about WWF Royal Rumble. Why would you do that? Nuclear Black. Don't talk about that game. No. Okay. Uh, Rob, thank you. I had a quick I had a idea, man. You should put like a the knocker sound should have an active like thing too on on your uh on your toppers. I feel like that's a that should that should get a light show too for the knock, right? Are you a supporter of the knock?
The latest update on this game, it knocks four times and it says this in the voice of the the queen says uh this game's got knockers.
So, sounds like a John Papadiuk game
very much. You can turn that off. Uh which is good.
It's always good to have a familyfriendly mode. Yeah, the art package on this game is a is a strange is a strange bird. Uh, you cannot say that they don't have some of the best sculpts in the industry. I think that the footage that I saw, I've not seen one yet. I know that on Tilt's getting one. I am looking forward to actually going and playing it in person. But, uh, the DPX stuff is of incredibly high quality. I think that the people buying this kind of uh, package know what they're getting.
The sculpts are amazing. It It really just it's just visually impactful. I mean, the game is like kind of like a circus terror. Pretty simple simple rule set by design. The artwork was Zombie Yeti's first uh if if I understand correctly, it was Zombie's first job in pinball. And Melvin unabashedly from the very beginning said, "I want this game to be as closely as exactly as that that Whitewood package was." So, it's it's very much that uh and uh it's it's just really cool. It's It's like not a game. and and Melvin would be the first to admit it cuz he has on podcast you you would not want to own only this game but in a five game collection it's really nice because they playing with like my my fiance it's like if we're playing even Kong right now like my games are like you know every ball is like 15 minutes and hers are not and this game is like my balls are like 2 minutes so it's kind of nice to have something that plays at a completely different pace and be special um and something to be excited about owning which is kind of the point of pinball. All so it's been fun to own. For sure.
Sure. Not every game needs to be a 45minute hourong uh romp.
No.
Um
yeah. For those who don't know the uh this is a deeproot asset kind of uh acquisition when Papa uh had to say goodbye to all of his IPs after his failed Kickstarter and getting sued. Um and so a number of companies picked up uh a lot of those assets to kind of like do stuff uh with it. people like Turner, I believe that uh what you call it uh
what's the name of that ninja game? Ninja Clips and also Merlin's Magic Car come from some of those assets. So, just a little bit of interesting pinball history and
probably not the format that a lot of people wanted to see these John Papadiuk games come to to light since it is kind of shrouded in a bunch of dumb pinball drama, but at least they're getting made and people get to see the the games themselves. So, or at least some of the assets in the games. It's uh yeah, interesting story. Um we'll see and and I know there's some thoughts about doing some more stuff. Um and and you know that's what Melbourne wants to do and he has an outlet to do that. I would say more pinball is a good thing. So
more pinball is a good thing for sure and these companies need to stay in business. So uh did uh so are you are you are contracted with DPX or Dutch or are you uh like what is what does the future look like for collaboration?
This was an extremely yeah extremely friendly deal. I think it was about pushing some boundaries in some areas to see how it would work. Um, so thank you to to Melvin and for Dutch for being, you know, a great business partner on this on a number of levels. Um, I think I put out there publicly like there wasn't there's not a royalty being paid back to Dutch on this one. Um, it is an official deal, but like they're not kind of driving up the price by charging a royalty. So, they're kind of passing that savings off uh to the to the consumer, which is cool. Uh there's definitely some talks of doing some other stuff. Um but right now, of course, they're in the thick of just delivering, you know, this to the people. So there's there's not any like ancillary projects going on. This is the focused.
Cool. Yeah. I feel so bad for them. The logistics of that being a problem and not being able to get games to people that really want them has got to be such an absolute nightmare.
Oh well. Tell Melvin anybody that Dutch wants to be on the show. I want to talk to him. So
yeah.
Cool.
Pass it on. Well, Jeeoff, thank you so much uh for for having me. I know we've been kind of talking about doing this for a while. Uh but uh I I'm excited to have you as part of the scene. I think you're bringing a little bit different of a flavor to things. So, appreciate appreciate you being here.
Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. And I'm hoping that uh I don't know if Shane's watching this, but when we get the uh on Tilt uh Alice, maybe we can convince him to to get the topper as well. It' be nice to actually see your work in person on on one of these since they are probably going to be a rarer game in the kind of grand scheme of things here at least for now. But
yeah, we can definitely set that up. So, it' be great.
Cool. I'll talk to them.
Let me know on the hat. Thank you for for playing, guys. And we'll get that out to you.
Pat, uh, ping ping me and I will make sure that that uh happens. Uh, Wolfman, to answer your question, I do not know when it's arriving at Ace. I thought that it would be sooner than later. I I think that's a I will I will do some asking and if you hop on the stream later uh next week and whatnot, I will hopefully have an answer for that. Um so yeah, in the meantime, thanks so much everybody who's watching. I appreciate all the new follows. Uh if you don't follow Rob uh on Instagram, Rob, why don't you do you want to plug all your your socials and anything that you want to spread the gospel of the electric?
Our website our website, Facebook, and Instagram are all TEP Pinball. Uh, two PS Te pinball. Um, and we're on YouTube as well.
Fantastic. All right, as I'm choking on, uh, water. Uh, as we do here, please stick around. We're going to go raid somebody. That's what we do. We try to find somebody and make their day. Dropping a bunch of pinball lovers on them. Um, yeah. I'm going to tag this up and put chapter markers in and put it up for everybody to watch later. Thank you so much for watching. Uh, all praise the great pyramid. Bye.