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BDYETP 74: Bond 60th Revealed, First Impressions of the Other Bond (and more!)

Bro, Do you Even Talk Pinball·podcast_episode·1h 46m·analyzed·Jan 15, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Bond 60th at $20K with limited gameplay info draws skepticism; market cooling across manufacturers.

Summary

Nick Lane and Kevin Manning discuss the announcement of Bond 60th Anniversary pinball by Stern, designed by Keith Elwin at $20,000 limited to 500 units. They critique the restrictive license limiting creative art direction, question the $20K price point during an economic downturn, and note the game hasn't sold out despite claims. They also cover Gary Stern stepping down as CEO, Spooky's slowing sales momentum with Scooby-Doo and TNA, and positive updates on boutique manufacturers like Four Amusement Only Games shipping Multimorphic P3 modules.

Key Claims

  • Bond 60th is limited to 500 units globally at $19,999

    high confidence · Official Stern announcement; hosts confirmed via CES reveal with high-resolution playfield photos

  • Bond 60th did not immediately sell out despite initial reports

    high confidence · Kevin verified that Game Exchange in Colorado still has stock available with $5K deposit required; Stern's website only had a few units for direct sale initially

  • The 'exclusive' topper messaging was misleading and later retracted via dealer communication

    high confidence · Stern issued clarification to dealers stating topper is exclusive to 60th model only; flyer marketing language ('Exclusive Official James Bond 007 Pinball topper') suggested exclusivity not just inclusion with that model

  • Keith Elwin is not programming the rules; Mark Panaccio is handling rules with Elwin as sounding board

    medium confidence · Mentioned via Stern Insider podcast reference; Kevin notes Elwin typically brings 'the whole package' on other games, suggesting deviation from his usual process

  • Spooky's Scooby-Doo and TNA 2.0 have not sold out

    high confidence · Both available on Spooky Pinball website; TNA limited to 250 units, not 500 as initially thought; Arcade Hunters unboxing showed 6 defects out of the box on TNA 2.0

  • The pinball market is cooling as pandemic-era hype subsides

    medium confidence · Kevin's observation: 'the market is chilling out a little bit finally'; linked to comparison with Halloween and Ultraman hype cycles; economic recession concerns cited

  • Gary Stern is stepping down as CEO; Seth Davis (from Disney) takes over

    high confidence · Pinball News report; Gary Stern remains Chairman; Seth Davis previously worked on Disney Plus and related Disney projects

  • Ben Heck is still working with Spooky on their next game

    medium confidence · Spooky posted announcement; clarifies earlier speculation about possible falling out; Kevin notes they 'got rid of his board set' but he remains involved

Notable Quotes

  • “I wouldn't buy that thing if it was $5,000...this is a really restrictive license, and they're just, like, they cannot do anything with the license on this game.”

    Nick Lane @ Early Bond 60th discussion — Establishes core criticism of Bond 60th: restrictive IP licensing severely limits creative design freedom

  • “If Stern is able to sell those units for that price, then they're operating like a business, and Stern's a business. Their only goal as a business is to make money.”

    Kevin Manning @ Bond 60th business defense — Frames the $20K pricing as legitimate business strategy while warning against short-term profit-maximization that damages long-term reputation

  • “I think the market is chilling out a little bit finally like the pandemic hype is like everybody take a breath let's let's wait and play these games.”

    Kevin Manning @ Post-Bond market analysis — Identifies shift in buyer behavior away from pre-release FOMO purchases to wait-and-see approach based on gameplay

  • “This Bond 60th, they're really pushing the price ceiling to see how far up people will go to pay for an exclusive thing.”

    Kevin Manning @ Bond 60th market strategy analysis — Interprets $20K price as deliberate test of collector willingness-to-pay for limited exclusivity

  • “They intended that to be exclusive. They were like, we're going to sell out 500, and that's it. And now they're panicking because they're not selling these things like they thought they would.”

    Nick Lane @ Topper exclusive clarification discussion — Suggests Stern pivoted from exclusive topper strategy to selling toppers separately after poor sales velocity

  • “The Beatles didn't sell all of those either...over 1,000 were made.”

    Nick Lane @ Historical comparison to Bond 60th — Establishes precedent for premium limited-run Stern games failing to sell through full production run

  • “When things get tough, people look around, and maybe they can't buy two pinball machines...they're going to buy the best pinball machine, and typically Spooky's not making the best.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyKeith ElwinpersonGary SternpersonSeth DavispersonBond 60th AnniversarygameSpooky PinballcompanyMark PanacciopersonBen Heck

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky Pinball losing goodwill and alienating core collectors with quality issues and perceived lower design quality vs. competitors; vulnerable in market contraction

    medium · Kevin: 'Spooky has lost and upset a lot of people...people look around...they're going to buy the best pinball machine, and typically Spooky's not making the best'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Boutique manufacturers (Four Amusement Only Games) gaining credibility through sustainable, transparent scaling vs. large manufacturers' aggressive pricing and quality concerns

    medium · Kevin praising Nick Baldrige for 'doing it right...Slowly building over time, getting games out. People are happy with them'; contrast with Stern/Spooky issues

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Bond 60th criticized for restrictive license limiting creative art direction; Kevin O'Connor's artwork described as 'hideous' and lacking creative flair due to licensing constraints

    high · Nick: 'restrictive license, and they're just, like, they cannot do anything with the license...the art...is not a good-looking game at all...I think it's pretty hideous'

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball market cooling significantly; buyers shifting from sight-unseen FOMO purchases to wait-and-see approach based on gameplay and reviews

    high · Kevin: 'the market is chilling out a little bit finally'; Bond 60th and Scooby-Doo not selling out; TNA only 250 units produced; buyers learning from Halloween/Ultraman hype crash

  • $

    market_signal: Stern issued dealer clarification redefining 'exclusive topper' language after initial marketing confusion; suggests pivot from original intent to sell toppers separately due to poor sales velocity

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.320

0:00
All right, coming up on this episode of Bro, Do You Even Talk Pinball, we're going to go and talk about Bond. We've got 60th. We've got our gameplay impressions. Plus, there's a lot of Topper talk going on this month. We're going to engage in that. This is co-sponsored by Gorin. All that and more coming right up. The Super Jet Pod!
0:30
I need a ramp. I need a loop. I want targets I can hit. I need the scoop. I need a double super chat bot in my life.
0:45
That's right. The Hall and Oates of Pinball Podcasting, Nick Lane and Kevin Manning of Buffalo Pinball. Good morning everybody This is Brady Even Talk Pinball For January 14th, 2023 We made it to 2023 What's going on everybody? Kevin, you're sitting way higher than me Hold on, I gotta lower this Alright, I gotta be on par My contract says that Kevin can't sit higher than me You're taller than me Nah, we're good, we're in balance All's right in the world We're gonna talk, Bond 60th People are hyped in the chat already.
1:30
Nick, how were your holidays? I really appreciate you asking that. It shows care and concern. It was good. It's because you're my friend, you know?
1:39
It means a lot to me. It was good. It was quick. I was trying to think when the last time we did the podcast, like the date, and it seems forever ago. It was like December 6th or something like that. Oh, really? Okay, yeah. That's why it would seem forever ago. All right, yeah, it was good. How about you? Good. I mean, we got a blizzard in Buffalo, so that was shitty, but we just stayed home. We didn't lose power, thankfully. We lost our internet for like five days, which, you know, for a 15-year-old, my son, it was a nightmare. But we made it through unscathed. You know, we stayed warm, and we just did all our Christmas stuff the following weekend. So you left town, so you avoided it. Yeah, I pulled a Ted Cruz as soon as a natural disaster hit. I got out before it hit. See ya. That's the way to do it. Going south. See ya.

Kevin Manning @ Spooky competitive positioning discussion — Identifies Spooky's vulnerability in market contraction due to perceived lower design quality vs. competitors

  • “Some good news though...Nick Baldrige on from Four Amusement Only Games...he has shipped out...he's been shipping our games every week. So good on him, Nick doing it right.”

    Kevin Manning @ Four Amusement Only Games update — Contrasts sustainable boutique manufacturing scaling against large manufacturer pricing/quality issues

    • person
    Nick Baldrigeperson
    Multimorphic P3product
    Scooby-Doo (Spooky)game
    TNA 2.0 (Total Nuclear Annihilation 2.0)game
    Queen (Pinball Brothers)game
    Pinball Brotherscompany
    Kevin O'Connorperson
    Nick Laneperson
    Kevin Manningperson
    Michael O'Donnellperson
    Shelly Sachs Eldridgeperson
    Dave Petersonperson

    medium · Stern dealer notice clarifying topper exclusivity; Nick speculation: 'They intended that to be exclusive...now they're panicking because they're not selling these things like they thought they would'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Keith Elwin not programming Bond 60th rules; Mark Panaccio handling rules with Elwin as sounding board—deviation from Elwin's typical full design ownership

    medium · Stern Insider podcast mention; Kevin notes Elwin 'brought the whole package together on all of his other games'; this reduces his authority/involvement

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Seth Davis (Disney Plus background) promoted to Stern CEO; Gary Stern retiring after decades; represents significant leadership transition

    high · Pinball News report; Seth Davis previously on Disney Plus projects; Gary Stern stepping down but remaining Chairman

  • $

    market_signal: Bond 60th at $19,999 limited to 500 units represents aggressive price ceiling testing; did not sell out despite exclusivity marketing, suggesting market resistance to premium pricing during economic uncertainty

    high · Stern put only handful of units on direct website sale (sold out quickly); distributors still have stock available; Kevin notes recession concerns and market slowdown; comparison to Beatles which also didn't sell through

  • ?

    product_strategy: No gameplay footage of Bond 60th released; hosts unable to evaluate rules/experience; represents risk for $20K purchase decision

    high · Nick: 'I'm not going to drop twenty thousand dollars on hopes and dreams...I want to see the game ideally I want to play the game'; no announcement of when gameplay will be available

  • ?

    product_concern: Spooky TNA 2.0 showing production defects; Arcade Hunters unboxing revealed 6 things didn't work right out of the box

    high · Arcade Hunters YouTube unboxing video evidence; Kevin expresses low confidence in Scooby-Doo quality given TNA issues

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Market sentiment shifting from blind enthusiasm to cautious evaluation; collectors pulling back from pre-order FOMO; willingness to pass on major releases based on design/quality concerns

    high · Spooky/Bond sales slowdown; Kevin: 'party doesn't last forever with people just buying games sight unseen'; Nick predicting manufacturer failures in next couple years

    • 2:25
    Awesome. So, all right, why don't we kick it off by thanking our partners. I'll let you do the honors. All right, so we've got, this is our 2023 lineups. There's some absences, but they were, you know, you snooze, you lose in getting back to us. We'll get you on probably next time because I'm sure they'll come back. But we got Pinstadium Lights. Pinstadium doesn't snooze. They don't lose, and they light up your game brighter than the goddamn sun. That's Pinstadium Light, controlled by app, iOS, Android, you name it. longstanding, award-winning mod, great customer service. We love you, Penn Stadium. Use coupon code Buffalo, by the way. Save 10%. We're saving your money. And, again, I will say this again. I'll say it a million times. We give away a set of Penn Stadium Neos, like, pretty much once a month on the Bro Show. I mean, that's how awesome Scott is. We give it away. It's valued at, you know, over $350, like close to $400, right, for Penn Stadium Neos. Just give it away. All you got to do is watch the live stream when we do it. and vote for Nick or Kevin, you can win it. So there you go, guys. All right, pinball.edu. Head over to pinballraffle.org for a chance to not only support charity but a chance to win a pinball machine. Not too bad. Titan Pinball, another longstanding OG sponsor, Titan Pinball. That's known probably for the silicone rings.
    3:43
    And, you know, again, I've got to put in order for some pinballs because that's my source for replacing the pinballs in my pinball machines. They've got all sorts of things Their mat, tools, etc Juicy Jack Pinball, maker of the most beautiful Pinball machines on the planet Multimorphic, give a shout out We've got a nice little partnership with them Kevin's always bringing the exclusives That's Multimorphic Pinball And then last but not least Pinside.com Yeah Pinside.com Go talk pinball, go argue pinball Or just be polite and respectful of other human beings and engage in a civil conversation. It's all up to you. So choose your own adventure. It's a fun hobby. You can go have fun with other people and talk about it on the Internet. Or you can argue about Bond 60th, which a lot of people have been doing. An official sponsor is, well, we don't have an official sponsor with them, is Better Health. Better Health, I think betterhealth.com. Seek out a mental health professional with any issues you might be facing. Better Health, check it out. we'll uh we'll touch on that again later i don't know if you looked through the whole lineup but i got it at the end um all right so stick around for that let's uh let's let's introduce the news properly here here's the tip it's the latest pinball news so hot it's on fire all right it is time for the news and it's on fire and we're going over to kick it off with a big announcement for the month uh stern pinball finally announced uh james bond 007 60th anniversary this is the one designed by Keith Elwin that they hinted at when they announced the other James Bond. When was that? Like September,
    5:23
    October when they, when they announced that. Yeah. Thereabouts. Yeah. It's been a while. They finally launched it. It was their, it's their CES game. They, they like to launch a game at CES every year. But this is it. There, there she is. So we had seen some of this, all the photo leaked via the, the 007 website.
    5:45
    So we kind of had an idea what the cabinet was going to look like and the topper. But now we have nice high-resolution photos of the play field. We knew it was going to be a classic-style game designed by Ellen. It's got a small LCD screen in the play field, a la the original run of Alien.
    6:03
    But it's also got – there was a lot of confusion when this came out because it looks like an LCD screen in the back class, but it's not. It's actually mechanical reels, score reels, with a little panel on the right-hand side where it lights up. Blur 1, 2, 3, et cetera, et cetera.
    6:23
    So, yeah. So, Who's Who? It's designed by Keith Ellen. Software by Mark Panaccio and by Kevin O'Connor. Price and production. Here we go, baby.
    6:35
    $19.99. $9.99. So, $20,000. and limited to 500 units. So, yeah. Here's what you get. Here's the features. A single-level playfield with no ramps, two flippers, four optical spinners, real back-to-back score reels, backlit plastics display around the score reels. Yeah, that's kind of what I said.
    7:00
    ABC stand-up targets to advance bonus X. AQ stand-up target. Left spinner to lock a ball in the saucer.
    7:08
    What else we got? four bank of bond to drop targets a figure eight spinner shot with a left spinner return uh two spinner wait sorry center spinner to top lanes two pop bumpers three bank of mi6 drop targets a captive ball three inline drop targets to lock the ball um right spinner orbit to top lanes odd job hat spinning disc playfield lcd screen uh m stand up target for bonus collect one-way gate to return to shooter lane rgb action wow it's got what they list the rgb action button as a feature uh 007 specter side armor union jack plunger 007 topper limited edition plaque out of 500 and stern insider achievements so there you go that those are your features for the bond 60th um what was your first impression when you saw this game nick um god I wouldn't buy that thing if it was $5,000.
    8:09
    And why? Well, I think what's going on here, number one, is that this is a really restrictive license, and they're just, like, they cannot do anything with the license on this game, right? They're getting license approval, their hands are tied, so any of the usual, like, flair of creativity in the art has just been stripped away from them. And now the art, you know, this is no offense to Kevin O'Connor because I'm sure he just had nothing to work with, but it's not a good-looking game at all. I mean, I think it's pretty hideous.
    8:46
    Now, I'll always say this. You know, usually when you see it in person, it's not as bad, right? But, like, just going off on this, it's pretty hideous, I think.
    8:57
    Basic art. I like the concept of sort of these classic late 70s, early 80s games with no ramps. Conceptually, that's cool. I would never pay over $5,000 for one because to me, this is the lesser version of the game.
    9:18
    To me. The ramps usually provide more satisfying shots, flow. I'm sure the rule set's going to be better on the main bond so this whole thing is sorry Kev you got me unraveled like I don't from a business perspective I'm curious because you probably paid more attention to what people are saying from a business perspective like if Stern can charge $20,000 for this and sell $500 then I say great like I have no qualms about it I think that's fantastic you know I've seen some cry babies on Facebook, like, oh, you know, they're ruining the hobby. Like, first of all, what this is doing is basically subsidizing their ability to, you know, keep the pro at, you know, $7,000, right? Like, so all the rich people, you're buying this game. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Thank you, James, that we know. Like, thank you, guys. Like, that's fantastic. So here's the thing. if Stern is able to sell those units for that price, then they're operating like a business, and Stern's a business. And I posted it. Somebody was whining about it on Facebook, and I was like, they're not the Boys and Girls Club. They're a business. Their only goal as a business is to make money.
    10:36
    Now, here's the deal. If you make decisions as a business and you're just like, yeah, I'm going to chintz out and put crappy parts in a pinball machine, and I'm just going to try to make as much profit as possible and piss off customers. Well, in the short term, that might work, but long term, you're going to lose customers, right, and you're going to damage the business. So, you know, make as much money as possible in a sustainable fashion, and there's no reason that they can't do that with this. Now, are there 500 people that are going to go out and pay 20K for what looks like the lesser version of a Bond pinball machine. You know, when you can get the premium, you get the pro, you can get the LE for cheaper. That I don't know. I don't know numbers that Stern sells. So that remains to be seen.
    11:29
    Yeah, and, you know, we're talking about our friends Ben and James, but James is not getting one of these. He decided after seeing it that he's out. And I feel like there's a lot of that. I honestly I've not followed this much as much of the chatter online aside from seeing a face stern post about it on Facebook and everybody just lighten them up in the comments.
    11:54
    So, yeah, the feedback I've seen is that people want a new Elwynn game, but they feel like this is a cash grab. And I mean, it's hard to argue with that.
    12:11
    Let's see. The other thing is, as far as there was a lot going around initially, folks were saying that this sold out immediately. It absolutely did not. Because what Stern does is they put up a few of them on their website for direct sale. And then people were seeing that. They sold out of those quick. It could have been like five games on their website. But if you go to distributors, they still have them available. here's game exchange in colorado uh it's just by 60th you put a five thousand dollar deposit down they're in stock so people still have these available um so they do not immediately sell out um spooky did not immediately sell out of scooby-doo either so you know there's i think that points to two things like i think the market is chilling out a little bit finally like the pandemic hype is like everybody take a breath let's let's wait and play these games and you We saw what happened when we all bought into Halloween and Ultraman, thinking it was going to be the next Rick and Morty or whatever.
    13:18
    Yeah, so people are chilling out. People are doing other things with their money. And this Bond 60th, they're really pushing the price ceiling to see how far up people will go to pay for an exclusive thing. And I think you made this point, like 500 is a lot for an exclusive, right? I think that if they did $100, they would have sold out immediately.
    13:43
    Yeah, $500 is a lot for $20,000. And we're at a point, I think we're in a recession right now, or we're headed to a deep recession. You could argue whether we're in one or not, but most indicators point to that we're certainly going to be in one in the next maybe six months to a year, if we're not already.
    14:01
    The Fed's tightening monetary policy. So you see every day open the news, there's jobs losses in the tech sector. Things are not good. Maybe a year ago they could have gotten away with this and maybe sold 500. I don't even know then. But, like, I've got to imagine things are coming to a screeching halt right now and the party's over. And this is just bad timing. And, again, I think it's the restrictive license that's difficult where their hands are severely tied in terms of creativity. A lot of times, people like a pretty object in their home, and sometimes the art carries the day for people. And if the art was much better, that might have sold more or done a little bit better. But this is not – I don't know. It remains to be seen. I'm really curious. I'm really curious how this does. So I don't know. Yeah, I mean, another factor is we still haven't seen gameplay of this. there's no word on if and when we're going to see a gameplay of this so you have no idea like i mean i have i have faith in keith elwyn he's going to put out a good rule set but i'm not going to drop twenty thousand dollars on hopes and dreams right i want to see the game ideally i want to play the game um and you know so you're just like putting this out there hoping to uh you know cash out on this limited hype on this theme and and there's there's going to be like with any license there's going to be the the elite collectors the super fans of the brand or the the franchise that just are like yes i have i have extra money this is the thing i love i'm gonna buy it but i don't think they're selling out of this i think this is going to be another beatles so ian gamigo points out that he's he's not working on the rules on this he does did he do why did he do the rules uh i know he doesn't program he didn't like design that he didn't set the, like, this is how the game's going to work and hand it over to somebody to program. I know he's not a programmer, but generally he does that.
    16:08
    You know, the other thing is, too, is it looks like the next Cornerstone game from Stern, the next game that they release is coming out in March, which I think is Venom, right? We all are in agreement on that. I think when Venom comes out, this game has had plenty of time to be really polished. I think Bond's going to be forgotten about pretty damn quickly. And we'll talk about this more in our gameplay impressions because we've spent some decent time, I think, in the last few weeks playing Bond. We'll go over that.
    16:41
    Playing in close. Okay, apparently they talked about it on the Stern Insider podcast that he's letting Mark do the rules, but he's there as a sounding board, so he has input and has said as much in his Insider interview. All the goats in chat are chiming in on this. Thank you all. Cause I didn't get a chance to listen to that. So that, that gives people even less confidence. I think if he's, if he's just saying like, all right, here's the, here's the design. You can, you go fill in the rules. Cause Keith kind of brought the whole package together on all of his other games. So that would, that is fun to shoot. Yeah. I'm sure. I mean, I wish Stern would do like a, you know, it's sometimes called a street level, right? Cause Gottlieb were the ones who coined the street level games in the early 90s where no ramp. So, you know, again, redoing the, that Sea Wish layout from the Beatles to something else and redoing this to something else and recycling it and selling it, you know, cheaper than a pro, maybe sell a game like that for 6,000. I don't know. I don't know if that's realistic, but that's where my interest would be in a single level game. And then even then it's hard to give up space in my game room for something with no ramps. That's kind of an, an older design. I think ramps, there's a reason that modern pinball games have ramps for the last 30 plus years. They're 40. They're generally a better design in a pinball machine. That's not to say that classic games aren't fun or great. They absolutely are, but there's a reason that ramps are in games. They're fun. People like shooting ramps. Meanwhile, you've got Schwanke and Schatz. I just bought my first Spend for $2,500, 1980 blackout, no ramps. You know, there's plenty of no-ramp options out there, older games. I'm sure this will have, well, I would hope this would have a more complex rule set than an 80s game. Like, more to do, especially because they're able to have the LCD screen in the play field.
    18:41
    You know, we were talking about this game at the tournament with Matt, our friend Matt. And he's a Bond superfan. and he says, you know, if they really wanted to go all in, they should have done, like, four score reels in the back box, integrated with the art, you know, really go into the retro thing, especially if you're charging $20,000 for a game like this. And I thought that was a good point because there was so much confusion with the screen. You know, the reels in the back looks like they could just be a screen. You might as well have just made them a fake LCD version of score reels like they did on Beatles and been done with it. If people can't tell the difference, like, what's the difference, right? go all in on the retro.
    19:21
    All right. Well, that's all we know about 007 60th so far. Hopefully we'll get a chance to play it relatively soon. Hopefully Ben stays in on his so we can play it. But if not, we'll see. We'll see if we ever get a chance to play it. All right. They had trouble. By the way, one more thing, Kev. They had trouble selling all the Beatles, right? Yeah, they never sold all those. Yeah. And they were far less made. Yeah. No, maybe there were over 1,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's, okay. All right. We'll see. I'm curious to follow this along. It's a lesson for all of us.
    19:57
    So following up with the Bond 60th, this is one of my favorite. You know, we called out Spooky for their bad communication last month or the month before. Here's one from Stern.
    20:12
    This came out. Good afternoon, U.S. Somebody dropped this in the topper. We have a Topper Talk Discord channel in our Discord server, so this went into Topper Talk. Good afternoon, U.S. Stern dealers. There seems to be some confusion over the topper. This is the topper on the 60th anniversary one. In the promotional video for the 60th anniversary edition, when showing the topper, it shows the verbiage exclusive topper. What this means is that of the four 007 editions, Pro, Premium, LE, and 60th, the topper is exclusive to the 60th only, meaning this is the only model that it comes with the game when a customer purchases it.
    20:50
    That's not exclusive. Spooky, you're off the hook. I think, Spooky fans, you're going to like this podcast because I don't think we talk about you guys. And now Stern's like, hold my beer. We can fuck up just as bad. So I was like, let me go look at the marketing materials for this So this is the flyer The 60th anniversary flyer There's the front, limited to 500 games globally Exclusive Official James Bond 007 Pinball topper If you list it like this, you are Selling it as you can only get it on That's what exclusive means It's not like Comes with at no extra charge It says Exclusive topper
    21:33
    This is bad because it's very misleading, but it also takes away another thing to remotely help justify the $20,000, right? It's a weird thing that they did that. Yeah. I think what happened was that these things weren't selling, and they're like, well, we can cash out on some toppers at least if we sell the toppers. So they pivoted, and then they tried to spin it as a language issue. but it's like, no, you guys mess this up. Yeah, dude, that could, look, this is all speculation, right? Speculation, but Kevin, I think that makes sense, right? They intended that to be exclusive. They were like, we're going to sell out 500, and that's it. And now they're panicking because they're not selling these things like they thought they would. They've got these toppers, so they're like, shit, well, now we've got to pivot, and we can make a lot of money by selling these toppers to all the bond games. That's probably what happened. Yep. and they should have done that from the beginning yeah they should have had a topper like that from the beginning because one of the critiques of the game when it came out is that it didn't say 007 on it anywhere and here you got a topper that says 007 it would have been a no brainer people would have scooped these things up like crazy go poo already says go poo already it's just leaded plastic anyway who cares well I would agree but there's plenty of people who do care about expensive leaded plastic on top of a pinball machine.
    23:04
    That's been proven. It's been proven. There's a lot of people that do care. Especially if you've already got them on all the rest of your games, and you get it like a 007 and it doesn't have a topper. It's like, oh, I can't even look at it. Look how terrible it is.
    23:17
    My game room is ruined. The compulsive side of me can at least appreciate that, even though toppers... It's a dangerous road to go down, Kevin.
    23:26
    Exactly. Just don't start. Or just don't care like I do. The games that come with toppers have toppers. Nothing else has toppers. You know, that's how I roll.
    23:36
    Oh, man. All right. What's next from Stern? Gary Stern stepping down as CEO. We kind of saw this coming because Seth Davis took over as president last year. You kind of see the writing on the wall with all this. this is from pinball news in a further move towards consolidating the long-term future of the company ahead of their relocation to the new premises towards the end of 2023. Stern pinball made a series of announcements about changes to their senior management roles. Haven't taken over from Gary Cernan as president of the company. When he joined Stern pinball in October last year, Seth Davis bolsters his position as by also taking over Gary's chief executive officer role. having relinquished his president and CEO roles Gary Stern continues as chairman of the board with Dave Peterson as vice chairman of the board the remaining they remain the controlling shareholders of the company and will take on additional responsibilities as required on a project by project basis then you get the background on Gary Stern and Seth Davis also opting for retirement is Michael O'Donnell who has worked for the company for almost as long as Shelly. Oh, we missed Shelly.
    24:53
    Shelly Sachs Eldridge is taking retirement from her logistics manager position at Stern Pinball after working alongside Gary for more than 36 years. Shelly will be well-known to operators, distributors, and the press as the main point of contact for inquiries about orders and production plans, as well as sending out press releases and announcing new game titles for many years. So yeah, and Michael O'Donnell is out as CFO, Taking over from Michael as CFO is Nick Parfit.
    25:22
    He joins from Nvenia LLC. No idea what that is. But he also previously held senior financial management and planning roles at Jim Beam and Miller Knoll. So there you go. There's your Stern Pinball Management update.
    25:37
    Yeah, it'll be curious to see what happens under new leadership, new vision. with new leadership comes new initiatives, new strategic priorities so we'll see I guess we'll see where Seth comes from we know he comes from Disney I think he worked on Disney Plus there's some other Disney related things that he worked on yeah, any thoughts on this Nick? not really, no that's what happens shout out to Gary though I mean And yeah, look, he kept it going, man. He kept it going. He kept the lights on. And there's something to be said for that. And we're all, we're all better because of it in this hobby. So shout out to Gary. Yeah, man. I'll always remember the three-legged stool analogy, talk, whatever. And more, more wire than a Ford Pinto or a Ford Taurus. Ford Taurus, Kevin. Show some goddamn respect. Yes. We love you Gary All right You said we weren going to talk about Spooky but I going to talk about Spooky Because I just wanted to you know we touched on this earlier But you know they came out with Scooby They're going to do, like, 1960-whatever Scoobies, 1969.
    26:50
    And they have not sold out either. So if you go to the Spooky Pinball website, you can still get yourself any of the models. They also have TNAs available. So they did not sell out of those either. And I think those were limited to 500 too, if I'm remembering right. So yeah, like we talked about earlier, things, things have chilled out a little bit pinball wise. I think, I think also spooky has burned through some of their goodwill with the last two releases and you know, people are pulling the wait and see, I'm seeing a lot of a lot of posts in the TNA thread and about people having production issues with, with their TNAs that they're getting. So yeah, things are cooling off for spooky a little bit so i should have highlighted sorry kev go ahead no god i'm a jerk i was just gonna say between this and and and the bond 60th things are things are chilling which i'm okay i i'm actually fine like i want the market to go back to where a used game is 500 less than a new game right like as a new pinball machine buyer like i'm okay accepting that like you pay a premium to get the new in box game you save a little bit money on it if you buy it used. That's how it should be, in my opinion.
    28:04
    Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what podcast I said on a couple months ago, but this is the fear, right? When the market slows down,
    28:16
    it's like batting down the hatches. Things are going to get tough. You need to survive. But what Spooky has done is lost and upset a lot of people in that. The party doesn't last forever with people just buying games sight unseen. based on just titles, and you just crank up the numbers of games you make every time. When things get tough, people look around, and maybe they can't buy two pinball machines, maybe they can't buy a pinball machine that year, or whatever. They're going to buy the best pinball machine, and typically Spooky's not making the best. Somebody might get a Godzilla, and then they'll grab a Scooby-Doo or Halloween, but if they can only get one pinball machine in that normal time period, then it's going to be the Godzilla. you know that's that's that's my thing and and you know you've lost some hardcore fans of spooky who were buying these titles and alienated them so i don't know we'll see what happens man but yeah i'm some uh someone's gonna go out of business in the next couple years that's my prediction um some good news though uh well another piece of news about spooky is ben heck apparently so last month i mentioned that uh there may have been a falling out between ben Heck and Spooky, but apparently there's not because they posted yesterday that he's working on their next game. So there you go. They just got rid of his board set, but he's still around. So there you go.
    29:37
    For better or worse, they got Ben Heck still. And some other good news is we have, so we had Nick Baldrige on from Four Amusement Only Games last month. We did a little interview about his first game, Drain, for the Multimorphic P3. He has shipped out. this is a photo of the first two modules he shipped out just a few weeks after we, we spoke with him and he's been shipping our games every week. So good on him, Nick doing it right. Scaling up slowly, you know, doing it. He's building all these himself at this point, but you know, he just got an expanded space at the maker space that he's at. So, you know, he's doing it right. Slowly building over time, getting games out. People are happy with them. So congratulations to, uh, congratulations to Nick. that's great to see uh arcade hunters in chat oh arcade hunters i watched your unboxing video of tna um he's a uh six so if if you go on the um arcade hunters youtube channel you can see their unboxing of total nuclear annihilation 2.0 he said six things didn't work right on it out of the box i don't have the best of hopes for scooby um and also i think it was um org dog said they're doing 250 um 250 tna 2.0 is not not 500 so they haven't even sold out of 250 of those so that's
    31:00
    ouchies ouchies um all right so what's up next oh boy uh well well i can touch on this i think i moved it down hollow uh down a little later but um more more machine shipping uh that we have not seen any gameplay of Pinball Brothers delivering the first Queen Pinball Machines. This was on December 22nd via NAP Arcade. This afternoon, Pinball Brothers reached out to me to let us know that they have delivered their first Queen Pinball Machines to customers. The Australian distributor RS Pinball made the 6.5 hour drive to the Pedretti Factory Gaming... Oh, Austrian, not Australian. I was like, that doesn't make sense. 6.5 hour drive to the Pedretti Gaming Factory in Italy to pick up several games for clients. Pinball Brothers is planning on shipping out another batch of Queens in January.
    31:52
    They're moving these out. Who knows what the heck is in them code-wise or how they play, but you can buy one if you want.
    31:59
    I wonder how many of those they're going to sell. I have no interest in that game at all. Love to play one, but yeah, zero interest. We had League Night last week, and Alien from Pinball Brothers was in the lineup. and our host Patrick, who gets mentioned every show, he's never going to break that streak, was like, I'm going to try to put it in League Night, and it didn't make it through the first or second game. We had to go to another game. All other games that were picked for that evening made it through, including all the Sterns, of course. Well, the old Sterns, too, like the classics that he had from the 80s. Those all lived great. All the games. Typically in League Nights, we don't have that issue. typically right like it's always on the table where because everybody plays the same games uh it causes a problem but big surprise right like this is what this is why we stay clear of of these games because of the reliability issues yeah so uh patrick did follow up with me with a response from uh pinball brothers and they said that was a software bug because we had extra balls off that caused that. He said he'd never run into that when playing with extra balls on. It was a software problem, not a hardware problem, thankfully, but it's still a problem. How long has this game existed? God, forever. When did we stream it? Like, 2016? It's bizarre that... I mean, if that game just came out, I'd be like, yeah, okay. It's good to know it's not a major thing, and most people won't see or experience it, but it's also kind of weird that at this point in time, you know, that hasn't been addressed. But whatever. I mean, look, I'm not in the market for the game. Yep. But I think that's why we're not excited for Queen, right, or anything like that.
    33:52
    They're not at the level of Stern. Stern was like, if you want to call Stern AAA, these are like AA. Yeah. And they also developed Alien when they had David Thiel. They had a bunch of really good coders and programmers. Who knows who's doing the work behind Queen, right? Like, we have no idea. Like, at least I don't.
    34:14
    It's got to be a whole different team, software-wise. So I would take a wait-and-see on that one. What code was on it? I don't know. I presume it was the most recent code on that alien. Yeah, I mean, Patrick's the kind of guy who's, like, 100% up-to-date on things. Like, he doesn't mess around. Yeah, for sure.
    34:34
    I put this one in for you, Nick. the American pinball holiday update. You like that one, right? The letter from sure, sure. We can, we can, why not? I mean, this is look, I'll say this time and time again, even though we do this once a month, we have to, there's not enough pinball content. So we've got to dive into press releases. So, yeah, I mean, we'll, uh, this is my enthusiasm level of the segment, more awkward, uh, communication. So, well, I see you love this. Yeah. You do love this stuff and we'll, we'll go through it. All right, can I read? I'll do the dramatic reading.
    35:08
    Subject, American Pinball end of the year press release. Well, that's not how you format a press release, but okay, let's go on. As the holiday season approaches, American Pinball wants to wish all of its customers joy and comfort. The company is grateful for the continued support of its customers and looks forward to serving them for many more years to come. American Pinball reaffirms its commitment to customer satisfaction with the announcement of its continued dedication to providing high-end pinball machines at competitive prices. In light of this commitment, the company will continue to honor all existing prices on orders placed and all agreements made. In preparation for increased production in the coming year, American Pinball is also pleased to announce that it will be hiring additional employees to join its team. The company is dedicated to ensuring that every customer has a positive experience with its products and services and believes that this commitment to customer satisfaction is what sets it apart in the industry. American Pinball thanks its customers for their steadfast loyalty wishes them all a happy and safe holiday season and looks forward to serving them in the new year by bringing joy and entertainment to their homes and hearts sincerely the American Pinball team that's not a news release by the way that's a letter the most interesting awkward piece of that is in the middle where we reaffirm our commitment continued dedication to providing high-end pinball machines at competitive prices. In light of this commitment, the company will continue to honor all existing prices on orders placed and all agreements made. Was there some controversy that you and I missed or something? Because that is like, that's a really weird statement without context.
    36:48
    Yeah. I don't know. The only thing I can think is that we all knew there was a price increase coming at the end of the year from Stern or in the new year. And Stern has, like, if you pre-order a game, the price can go up on it before you receive it. So to me, this is them kind of throwing a little shade and saying, we're going to keep our prices the same, even if we haven't sent you your game yet. And all our current pricing is going to stay the same. But they didn't want to, like, actually say it. So they kind of say it, but not really. But it's also weird. It doesn't sound like they needed to say anything or address it, but now their hands are tied. So if for some reason prices shoot up, I mean, look, macroeconomics and supply chains and stuff, prices could just skyrocket in the next year. So now their hands are going to take a loss on machines because they put the statement out, or are they going to go back on the statement and be proved as liars? Like, it's just that statement. Here's the thing. That statement didn't need to go out. They could have said, hey, we want to wish everybody happy holidays. We've got some exciting things coming up next year that we can't wait to announce or something like that. Or don't send an email.
    38:02
    Or don't put that in there. You can wish people a happy holidays without some weird thing about your pricing and commitment and customer service and whatever. Are there people waiting for American pinball machines? Well, they made, like, six more Oktoberfests at the end of the year. So, yeah, they've got to fulfill that demand.
    38:20
    Yeah. Like I said, Lesham, I'd love to play an American pinball machine, but nobody I know owns it. They don't own it. Nobody has them. You and I know a lot of collectors and people. We have a league where we go to different houses every month.
    38:34
    We were just in a tournament last week. You were in a tournament two weeks ago. Not a single American pinball did we stumble upon. Like, who is buying these things? I'd like to sincerely would like to play one and spend some time with one I'm not going to go out and buy it I just can't even get access to it so I don't know the only one I know about around here is that one that Hot Wheels at the Lowe's Arcade in Lockport I went and played it once and I was like okay it's a pinball machine, I've played it, it's good, it's fine I think they have, it sounds like they have good quality I don't pay enough attention to American Pinball but I also don't hear quality concerns like with other manufacturers. So I like that. Like they, they seem to have a commitment to quality. Of course, when you make like five pinball machines a year, it's easier to really inspect the quality of them and it should be good. So, you know, it doesn't mean models. He means like five actual pinball machines. Yeah. Five. Like they ship the box and shipped five games for the year. And they're like, well, that's a wrap.
    39:39
    We do next year. Good job. Everybody high five on each other. Woo. Yeah. Gamigo made a good point in chat They're committed to customer service But also they just Their customer service manager just left They've run and peaced out He's like I'm out of here But rest assured we're committed to your customer service So it's all good One day American Pinball Maybe we'll actually get to play our games And we can actually review them Maybe I don't know I don't see anything changing No one we know in our friend circle wants to buy our games I don't know it's not my fault Don't get mad at me Sorry not sorry Alright it's been a while But we haven't talked about a brand new pinball maker in a while Are you ready?
    40:25
    Yeah I was also looking at the iTunes review Oh well that's coming That's it It's like Right before Game room updates Yeah, of course you put it in. Of course, come and put it in there. Okay. We're going to get to that. Okay. All right. So this came up in the Buffalo Pinball Discord. Dude, if you're not in the Buffalo Pinball Discord, you're missing out. It's where all the hot memes happen. It's where all the Playfield palaces get pointed out that I bring to you every month. We just lost a viewer. But this is a French pinball machine coming to you. So a word of note here that I'm running this through Google Translate, which has resulted in some hilarious translation, but is also part of why I love this so much. So this is a company called Hexa Pinball, H-E-X-A. And this animation is like making me nauseous. I'm going to scroll down.
    41:25
    The animations are good. They are allegedly a new pinball manufacturer. It says a French pinball machine coming soon.
    41:34
    The theme is Space Hunt. so according to the translation via google this is how it reads play as spherus the last free representative of the balls your caps by the way reduced to slavery by the space hunters your fellow human beings have been tracked for several hundred years to the most remote corners of the universe this is dark while all seems lost in your fight for freedom you receive unexpected help that will change the balance of power. It seems the time has come to free your people from this invader. Are you ready to free the balls?
    42:11
    All right. First of all, disclaimer to anybody listening to this. We're just reading what's on there for all the sensitive souls, because if we're talking about balls and our juvenile humor, we're bearing the lead. All right. Let's go. Continue. The hunt begins soon. Okay. So that's your theme. I will say the animations are really good. so they at least have a good animator on staff yeah um the technique they have electronic mechanical uh tray and where it's obviously not translated correctly uh ramps and wire forms uh our top is cut from the carefully selected high density wood for maximum strength and durability for the preparation printing and varnish of the tray i think that means like Playfield is what they're trying to say here. We work with the best craftsmen in France.
    43:03
    It's all the best. It's, you know, we do all this stuff, and it's all the best. And we provide a quality 12-volt and 48-volt signal, and everything's going to be amazing. Our intrepid reporter, Dr. Blueberry Johnson, says it reads like some of the Deep Root pitch deck games.
    43:21
    Yeah, I agree. It does. I get Deep Root vibes from the animations and stuff. Because Deep Root had good animations, too. Remember, they put out that video with the cool animations and their whole animation studio in Utah and all that. Remember? Free the balls for humanity. I love it. Free the balls. That's too good. So they have Alexander Mack, the Hexa Pinball founder and project manager. Christopher Andre, the Hexa Pinball founder. So apparently they're co-founders and developer.
    43:51
    Luis Dos Santos, a game designer and artwork. uh they have an electronic engineer embedded systems engineer a sound engineer and a tech artist there you go in regards to the society i don't know what what they're trying to say there but uh hexapin was created by enthusiasts for enthusiasts our goal is to design and market ultra quality pinball machines assembled in france respecting traditional codes with the promise of a touch of modern so they're they're going to respect the classics with bringing modern features to it. Surrounded by specialized professionals from the four corners of France, the creation process takes place in compliance with the requirements of the different player profiles. As real pinball lovers, we pay special attention to it. So they're going to make sure everybody's happy. They're like, new players, skilled players, they're going to make sure you love this game. Also very concerned about the quality of our machines, obviously. We have taken the time to find the best suppliers in the area, thus we use materials guaranteed materials recognized for their resistance and their use, guaranteeing optimal operation. It's all so easy. It's going to be, they're keeping everybody in mind. It's going to run great. They're making it from the best materials. They have a theme. You can save the balls.
    45:05
    Hexa Pinball, sign up now. They go hexa-pinball.com, I think it is, if you want to see that. Wouldn't it be nice if they actually had the pinball machine made when they announced it? You know what I mean? Like, they actually had it. Like, they launch it. they make an announcement when the thing exists and you can see videos of it shooting in code, like, why can't we get that?
    45:26
    You know, then we just shut us up. Yeah, dude, I love it. Like, let's go. I would love to see a pinball machine from France. I'd love to see a different take, a different vision.
    45:41
    Our style, like Kevin said, looks cool. Let's go. I have put this at almost a zero chance I'll ever play or see this game. Yeah. We've seen this movie before.
    45:54
    We'll stay on top of it and bring you updates from Hex and Pinball along the way. But somebody in Discord today asked if we could give a Ballarama update to you because we haven't given one in a while. So I went and looked and the last update is from July when they sold their house. Yeah. They haven't done anything. They're dead. They're not doing anything else. Who could have seen this coming?
    46:15
    Weird. Pony Factory is still alive It's still not shipped I keep stringing that along For some reason Did you see the thread on FinZite about Pony Factory this month? No because I value my time What's going on? I popped back up I'm like what's going on with Pony Factory So I went in there and it's Andrew McBain Arguing with people about his game And people saying it's a joke And oh it's not a joke Why did you That Todd Tucky book deal and all that crap I mean technically it is a joke it's called Punny Factory so it is a joke it is it's on theme dude Punny Factory alright whatever how long have we been talking about it I feel like 5 years we've been talking about Punny Factory this is one hell of a troll I gotta say this is one hell of a troll yeah alright so should we give some impressions of the other James Bond game you wanna do that yeah let's do it let's do that there's a new pinball machine well newish pinball machine and we've got a video right that highlights that this is uh impressions and not a review oh no i don't we don't have an impressions intro don't we give me then we have a warning or something warning nick give a warning give the official warning i'll put the the screen on you and you can give the official warning this is a warning for the cognitively impaired this is an impression it's not a review an impression is like you know first impression of something we've we've not spent enough time on this game to review it and give it a numerical score uh therefore we might miss some things about this game might get some things wrong but i think first impressions are uh speak volumes and also there's not a lot in this game so it might as well be a review but it's not a fucking review there you go thank you thank you uh all right certain pinballs james bond 007 so this game came out was was like announced on september 23rd 2022 so october november december almost four full months we're at with this game okay so keep that in mind as we talk about this and how many games do you think you've played on 007 because we we played it at league night we also had it at the the launch tournament that we went to um that's a good question like 10 to 20 maybe? Yeah, I'm probably about I also went to Patrick's house two weeks before League and played it there.
    48:45
    So yeah, I've spent I even played it on Monday again. I was on Swilberger. I probably have spent at least a half an hour on the machine of shooting it, right? Probably half an hour. At least, yeah.
    49:04
    And we've only played Maybe not to 20 games. I don't know. But, you know, we've only played the pro at this point. Right. You haven't played the other. Correct. Yeah. OK, so we're talking about the pro. That's the the doctor. No game that everybody everybody just calls it doctor. I play doctor. No. OK, it's James Bond. But OK.
    49:22
    Yeah. So let's talk about art. Let's just kind of go run through it. What was your first impressions of the art? I think it looks fine. I mean, like, I'm fine with the 60s art style, what they had to do. I think it stands out in being something that's unique, which is nice. It's got that 60s vibe to it, obviously, because it is art from the 60s. I think the play field art's solid.
    49:48
    Yeah, I think it's good for what it is. No issues with the art. Yeah, it's not like a top-tier pinball art package, but like you said, it's okay for what it is. Would you say it gets the job done? Yeah, and I think the art on this I think is significantly better Than the art on The 60th I mean, just like Just when you look at the package as a whole This is the better looking version I'd rather have this version in my house You know Than the 60th Not including the price of the Flex That comes along with the 60th But like I think this is a better looking game They're also not trying to cram what, 30 movies into one machine either, so they're able to focus it in a little bit more. It's kind of overload on the 60th version because you've got all these movies, all these posters, all these assets you're trying to integrate with this machine versus these. You at least can focus in on this one era of James Bond.
    50:50
    Yeah. Mr. Nurtastic says, and I agree with this, this game makes the 60th look really bad art-wise. Yeah.
    51:01
    Again, I'm with you. This is a win for everybody who, again, got riled up and was like crying that Stern's charging 20K for a game. You're missing it here. You can get this pro for, you know, $7,000.
    51:21
    But even then. I don't know if I would. But if you want Bond, like if you're crying because you want Bond, you can get the better version for significantly less.
    51:35
    Again, let all the wealthy people who want to flex subsidize and we should all thank them. We should all send them a card. Thank you. Thank you for helping to subsidize so we can keep the pro-level pricing where it is. I appreciate that. I'm grateful. I would put better in quotes because it might have a cooler layout, but code-wise, and we'll talk about code. This game has a long way to go. And if it doesn't get there, this may end up not being the better game. It's got more stuff on the play field, more ramps and stuff, but the other could end up being much better code-wise.
    52:12
    If they are just like, all right, on to the next one. Nobody bought this game. We're done with it. You never know.
    52:21
    So what do you want to talk about? Let's talk about the layout. What do you think about the layout? I thought it shot great. I thought it was a fun shooter.
    52:32
    Yeah, I thought the comboing shots, especially when you kind of wrap it around and you're able to pull some shots off from the upper left flipper, whether it's kind of like another kind of quick wraparound loop or to the side ramps, I thought that was great.
    52:51
    All the shots felt real. I think I would say all the shots felt really good to me. and I enjoyed shooting this game I think the only knock that I would have is I found that kind of the left eject that far left eject where the underwater scene is how it kind of goes there and then shoots it up instead of down I get the idea of like hey instead of shooting the ball towards the flippers like every other game let shoot it up That just whatever I mean I wouldn say it bad but it definitely not good It's just sort of there. I feel like maybe that space could have been used in a better, more interesting way. But that's really my only knock. I think that the strength of this game is definitely it shoots really good. you know the drop targets by the dildo um watch it watch it easy easy again that you know we've seen that already it's recycling from um avengers well the drop targets are deadpool right it reminds me of hulk on avengers like this yeah kind of yeah yeah yeah i was singing deadpool same kind of pretty much the same thing um yeah Yeah, I mean, that's kind of getting a little boring at this point. That's not terribly exciting. I almost, and maybe this doesn't make sense, so this is kind of thinking out loud. Maybe a return to, like, the Avatar-style, like, you know, wall that you hit would have been maybe a little more interesting than that, just to mix things up. But, no, but overall, again, the strength of this is there's a great shooter here. yeah i the only area that i didn't find interesting was the area around the rocket well the the under the left upper left flip or two is weird like like you said the little saucer where it just kind of like clinks in there and plops out seems like a big area for not a whole lot um the the rocket area it's it's probably because there's no code on that or at least i if there is i don't know why i would possibly ever shoot that but it didn't seem like there was incentive to shoot that area. When you did, it was just kind of like, okay, give me the ball back and I'll shoot something I actually want to shoot versus shooting it into this rocket area that doesn't seem to do anything. No, that's a good point. I didn't talk about that. That takes up a significant amount of real estate. Your eye is drawn to it. It is the only real thing on the game, at least on the pro, that provides a world under glass feeling. right right um it's just pretty limited so you've got that rocket and then behind it there's there's stand-up targets right kev um but it's just like it's really lame when you shoot it back there because there's not a lot of ball movement that's going on like that should have either been like a spinning disc back there to ricochet into those targets or maybe a pop bumper of some sort but I just don't get what they're going for back there. There's nothing satisfying about it.
    56:02
    Jax, Emma, and Chad says it lights Spectre, which you can see it lights up on the back box there. You can, but what's actually happening to the ball movement or the satisfaction of getting it back there is just, again,
    56:18
    it would have been cooler if that was a spinning disc. right you kind of get up there and it's it's whipping around it just it doesn't doesn't do anything when it's back there right like it just kind of just kind of got into the shot yeah yeah i don't know it just it makes me wonder if they were going to do something different like what i suggested but for whatever reason either couldn't pull it off or you know they hit their building materials so they're just like this is this is it i don't know yeah especially if you're trying to hit those targets directly behind the rocket, it's like, how are you ever going to hit that?
    56:53
    It's going to take pure luck. It's just like, there's no action. Yeah, exactly. So, it's a spell specter to build bird one jackpots and light goldfinger target. Okay, that's exciting.
    57:09
    So, yeah, overall, the layout is fun and cool. I like how it reminds me of Corvette, which was Gomez's first game with the upper flipper shots and correct me if I'm wrong. I think that was the only other Gomez game that had a third flipper on it. Um, but yeah, I like his kind of return to that style, uh, layout, uh, the, the side shots are, are cool, but I didn't in tournament play. I didn't find myself shooting him much because the points, the rules are just so jank that I was just trying to get it back into the pop numbers to give 20 million points all the time. And that's how I won. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about that. I mean, the rules are terrible right now. I mean, it is a box of lights,
    57:52
    and for what is in there, the scoring is just terribly imbalanced. Like, if you start a mode, shots are like a million, but like as Kevin was saying, if you hit enough pop bumpers, you get 20 million. Like, it's just really weird, and it's kind of like your only strategy in the game is just keep on spamming multiball and play it that way, multiball and pop bumpers, you know? So this game was announced in October. Pros started arriving in November. It's now January.
    58:23
    And it's just, honestly, there's no reason that I can see to pick up this game right now. I don't see any reason. I wonder how the game's selling. We had our friend Matt, who was supposed to get his game in April. His game came last month. And maybe that's nothing. Maybe that's just an anecdote. So, but anybody I talk to, our experience playing it, there's nothing there right now. There really is, like, we have no idea how this game is going to, what it's going to turn into, when it's going to turn into something, if when, right? I have no idea, but it feels like we're at least a year away from getting a real game here at this pace. So, I don't know. I wouldn't buy this game. I'm so happy I did not buy the premium almost did and that's why I have my policy and I overrode it with emotion and it came to my senses thank god I didn't buy the premium for $9,600 I'd be I would only blame myself I wouldn't be mad at Stern it's my fault but I've been enjoying my big buck on a reloaded I won I saved some money you and Josh Allen both enjoying some big buck Hunter this week. Oh yeah, shout out to Josh Allen, who, he knows what's up, man. He does. He knows what's up. We can be BFFs. We gotta reach out to him and play some Big Buck Hunter and then help him get into pinball, because he's just one step away. He's taking the gateway drug, and pinball's next. But yeah, man, like this game is it's not gonna get good for a year, and it's gonna be when Venom comes out, it's gonna get all the attention. That game's gonna be a fully loaded game, ready game, completed.
    60:16
    And then Bonds is going to trickle out and be forgotten about, I think. Yeah. Arcade Hunters makes a good point. When you start a multiball, if you have a mode running, it just ends. And it doesn't resume after the multiball is over. Wow. I didn't even know that. Yeah. I did not focus on modes at all. I would only start multiball. the bird one or the left orbit one, whichever, the jetpack multiball and then I would just put it into the pops and while ball save was active I would let the balls drain and put them into the pops and shake the game around while I was in the pops and that's how I won league that's how I won into the tournament on this game the code is a joke I cannot encourage anybody to buy this game right now even if you're a Bond fan you're going to get so bored of this game so fast and there's never a guarantee that code's going to get finished especially if the game doesn't sell well they could just move on to whatever's next like you were saying and if it's Venom and everybody buys Venom that's going to be the game so Donnie and Chad asked is this going to be Batman 66 where it takes like two years and so many codes to be great well look at the X factor in that game was Lyman right like you had confidence that Lyman when he makes a game he made it amazing, right? Like, the coders on this are not lineman level coders. And to Kevin's point, they might move on to the next game because it doesn't sell well and they'll just call it a loss and move on. I don't know. You're taking a gigantic risk buying this game now because you know they're still going to make this game a year from now or most likely. You can still pick it up. There are people selling it who've gotten bored, so there's no incentive at this point in time. And what's crazy, Kev, too, as you think about it, they've raised prices on the LE and the premium for this considerably. This was $13,000-some LE and plus for people rushing out and getting it.
    62:24
    I'm sorry, you're losing right now if you bought it. Right now. That could change. And there's plenty of people who just want a pretty game, and they're probably happy with the code as it is. Fine. but for the rest of us oof and as we talked about earlier there's problems with the working with the licensor on this you know and I know Stern's talked about this I think George Gomez has talked about this like when they have established relationships like with Marvel they've built up trust so they're able just to run really fast do things and not get pushback this is a new licensor that they maybe not understand pinball or what needs to be done or what needs to happen What I've heard is it's been a very painful process for them, just getting basic stuff approved. So that's certainly slowing things down. So it's just, this game's a mess right now. Will it be a mess a year from now? Will it be maybe one of the best games a year from now? Anything's possible.
    63:20
    I'm waiting for Elwin's next game. I think this is my, Kevin, I don't know. Hearing what is coming out, I don't know if I'm going to buy any game this year. You know, right now nothing's like indicating that I would, but, you know, we'll see. But certainly not Bond. Yeah, you never know. And it makes you wonder if they were going to see another Elwynn game this year or if the Bond 60th is going to be it and they're going to push him off until next year. I mean, it could be.
    63:52
    Yeah, I don't know. I think, Lord knows, I think they're able to get caught up on game production, though, with the slowing economy and everything else. Maybe it's a blessing, you know? Yeah.
    64:04
    And, you know, Stern has a history of putting games back into production, so if they do get this game up to speed and demand goes up, maybe they'll start making more down the line.
    64:16
    Yeah, so Arcade Hunters says, I appreciate your comments, Arcade Hunters, the game's had four updates and it still says, quote, pending licensor approval. So I'm sure, look, I'm sure Stern is frustrated by this. So my sympathy to them. I mean, it's like, you know, if you can make a bond machine, who doesn't? Everybody wants a bond machine, right? And I say everybody in quotes, right? But, like, people want a bond machine. So it's natural for somebody to want to grab that license. And it sounds like they're probably going through a little bit of a nightmare right now. So it sucks, right? This is the scenario, though.
    64:50
    Yep. So only two cornerstones in 2023 from Stern. So it's probably for the best. like you said, if the market's slowing down and they can catch up on their past orders, then they're going to be moving too. So they can make realistic expectations with machines for the year. So that's good.
    65:13
    Yeah. But with Lonnie Ropp as the lead coder, proceed with caution, everybody. Proceed with caution. Those are our first impressions, not a review. I mean, there's really not much that we can talk about. The lighting. The sound in the game. Oh, my God. I feel like the Bond theme song. That's all you get. Fuck me, man. Like, seriously. Great theme song, right? But there's nothing in the world that I want to hear on a continuous loop constantly. There's, like, nothing else. And there might be something else in the game, but all you hear is the Bond song over and over and over again. And then there's that one mode or something where the female character is just talking endlessly. Well, not shut up. What do you think about James? Does James know this?
    66:00
    It's just cringe. It's bad. I'm sorry, Bond owners. You're getting screwed right now. Hopefully things change. I want to see a great game out of this. Yeah. That reminds me of the early Guardians of the Galaxy code. The bobble-y bobble, bobble-y bobble. Remember that? Yeah. So bad.
    66:22
    The slot machine lady is the worst. The attack knows exactly what I'm talking about. It goes on way too long. She's super annoying. It's just nonsense that she's spewing out. But that's like, the weird thing is, like, I lock on that, not only because it's annoying, but that's like the only thing that comes to mind in terms of, you know, like voice lines maybe from the movie. I mean, I'm sure there's more in there, but.
    66:47
    Get it out of my head. Sorry, guys. Sorry, everybody. Sorry. Yeah. Have you heard from James? Yeah, something like that. I was trying to get it on my head, and yet when I hear it, it's nails on a chalkboard.
    67:00
    Oh, my God. It lasts like 30 seconds, Donnie says. Yeah, it goes on way too long. Yeah, they're probably just like, oh, just play this line from the movie. It's fine. I heard, I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that the licensor did not want the different movies mixing with each other. So that's why one thing completely stops when you go into the next thing. Oh, my God. Dude, Stern probably regrets this license. You know what? I wouldn't be surprised. They're probably in a pickle right now between where the economy is and stuff. But it's got to be such a headache working on trying to make this game when you've got a licensor and you can't do anything, your hands are tied. They probably can't wait to be done with this game. They probably want to move on. The team working on this probably would love nothing more than to go on to the next project where they can just make a game and not have to deal with the nonsense from the licensor.
    67:55
    Alright, anything else you want to talk about on this? The lighting, the display Nope, no reason to get this game right now Save your money 100% And if you're playing it in tournament, put it in the pop-up Because you'll probably win Just to piss people off, this game is a 4 No, this game is a 5 right now based on the layout If I had to give it a review Maybe we'll review this game one day I mean, I have no idea how to approach this thing Like in just Talking about it or dealing with it It's too bad according to our review 3 to 5 isn't an expensive night light so yeah it's in that range yeah I would put it at a 4 probably yeah but that's not a review though we didn't review it everybody alright so we've been talking about Bond a lot and Bond has the rocket and we jokingly referred to it as the phallic symbol that it is we got some listener feedback let me pull it up here Nick you want to You want to kick this off? Yeah, I'd love to. So, you know, like I know sometimes we bring up feedback that we have from listeners, which is fine. If somebody puts it out there, they obviously want attention. So we'll bring it up and people, I don't care what people say. Like I don't necessarily care. I think this is kind of funny. So this is, we've got someone's attention and we'll talk about this, but I'll read it. disappointed. One star from Jake Danzig. Wow. I've been a long time listener and I've always enjoyed the show up until this last episode. I don't mind criticism to a point, but saying that Spooky effed everybody and then dicks and dildos on games, really? Such crass and juvenile nonsense. I thought you guys were better than this. Well, Jake, I don't know why you would think that.
    69:44
    Okay? I don't know. If you're a long time listener, I can't imagine some of the things we've said on shows and it's just the amazing thing is that's what made you walk away i will say you know i will point to the fact that we've talked about lord of the rings le and the beard dick on the back glass years ago years ago we've been talking about dicks on pinball machines forever so there's nothing new if you can't handle it sorry we're not the ones that put them there we didn't put them there i know kevin you sent me this he's like He's acting like we put him on the game. Also, the community has been, the pinball community, you know, for whatever you want to consider a community, they've been talking about these things. We talk about the art and we talk about the perception of the game, but we report on it. So how are we the bad guys? I do declare, sir, I enjoyed your podcast, but the moment you talk about dicks and dildos, that's it.
    70:41
    Goodbye. Bye. I just arrived and I'm okay so far. You made it through. We can get through this together. You know what? You can make jokes. Jake probably has a Scooby-Doo coming. Probably. And once you put on the screen the dicks and the ball coming out of the dicks, I'm saying I'm doubling down, Kevin. That's it. It ruined it because he'll never be – you've ruined the game for him. He'll never be able to unsee it. But, Jake, as I pointed out last time, are you mad at us or are you mad at Spooky?
    71:10
    Do-do-do-do. Wait, I have that, I think. I don't know where it is I missed it I could do Lion Man I haven't busted out the soundboard in a while you know I love Pinball Man also this guy he said he's enjoyed long time listeners so we've been doing this since 2016 doesn't write a 5 star, doesn't give us any good reviews comes in hot with the 1 star because we said dicks and dildos on a thing. I will say we got some really good feedback about the last episode, too.
    71:50
    It's not all tears in the chat. I love it. That's what I get out of people. What do you get out of this? I get this out of it. That's right. I get the pinball personality. All right. I was thinking, Kevin, and this is – when I see this, I don't think, hey, let's talk less about dicks and dildos. I think maybe we need a segment called Dick Talk, like TikTok, Dick Talk, and we just order the top ten dicks in pinball machines because there's a lot of them. There's a lot. Like, this is – we're just scratching the surface. Martha brought up the back – I'm going to ruin this for everybody else who doesn't like this. Look at the back glass on Godzilla. See what you see there.
    72:35
    See if you can spot the dick. Godzilla premium, right? The premium art is what you want to look at? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah.
    72:47
    Okay. Yeah. There you go. There's your listener feedback segment. Why don't you guys go look at Force 2 Backglass, okay? Go see that one. Oh, God. Go look at Force 2. Or Silver Ball Mania. Have a look at that one. Force 2 is number one. Spoiler alert. Force 2 is number one for Dick Talk. Top five, top ten.
    73:09
    How about trying to explain what's going on with Embryon? Good example of what's in the middle of that play field. Take a look at that and get back to it. How do you talk about pinball art without talking about dicks? You know, it's part of Americana. It's part of the culture. It's been going on forever. This guy, I think he's in the wrong hobby if he can't take it. This is part of the art package, pun intended.
    73:30
    Part of the package. All right, let's see how many people we've reached today. If you want to join the fun, you can go leave us a review on iTunes. That's where that one was. you can go in and uh you go in and leave oh god somebody said oh god i just looked at force 2 what was it begs the question what does force one look like exactly oh yeah see we've had there's been ladies all over pinball machines for years decade by the way by the way this is the most engaged the chat has been all episode got everybody on this. Yeah.
    74:11
    We love it. Chad loves it. Well, the guy is Schwank, right? So I just arrived and I'm okay so far. Yeah. Of course you are, Schwank.
    74:21
    Oh, well, that was fun. Listener feedback. We love your feedback. Talktoonball.com if you want to give it behind the scenes. If you want to do it publicly, go do it on our iTunes reviews. We'll check them out next time. All right. So, Nick, we went through a couple tournaments. We haven't done that in a while. Yeah, we did. bust off the rust, you know? Yeah. Why don't we kick it off with the Toronto tournament? You want to share a little info about that? Yeah, so we went up to the Bluffs. I think the Bluffs does a weekly tournament. The Bluffs is almost like a storage office space place where they've been running tournaments for years. And the funny thing is, the last time we traveled to Toronto for a tournament, I mean, I don't think he didn't go with us, but Jeffrey did and Nick Kaiser. It was in February of 2020, so right before the pandemic, right? And they had like 30 or 40 people. But we were like, ah, let's go to Toronto. We got to travel for a tournament during Christmas break. We went up there. There was only like eight people. It was me, you, and Jeff went representing Buffalo.
    75:30
    And then our Canadian friends got to see Joe Cherovino, which was a pleasure. But had a great time. They were playing, spinning vinyl records, playing pretty much all classic pinball machines.
    75:43
    I managed to win it, so pat on my back. But it was just good to be up there and see friends and play pinball.
    75:51
    I don't know, man. I miss that stuff. We almost didn't go because the storm kind of threw me off in what I had to do, but it came to my senses. Yeah, it's good. I was like dude I've been sitting around doing nothing for get out of this house let's go so we did it and I'm glad we did I played like shit I'm gonna blame it on the fact that I had to drive but it was a great spot I like their collection of games a bunch of classic games stuff you don't always see it wasn't just a strictly new stern lineup which can get a little tired when you play a lot of tournaments so I would definitely go back there like you said they had music going good people good vibes Cool spot, fun games Yeah, totally Looking forward to going back, they're talking about doing maybe A weekend worth of pinball tournaments Sometime, and they have a couple different Locations up there, Maple Pinball is another one Yeah So yeah, I'd love to do that Yeah, I think, you know, in the back of my mind Maybe going up in February You know, maybe going up Every other month, something like that But where we do two tournaments Where we stay overnight and try to maximize the travel time up there. So, you know, it's not – Toronto's close to us. I mean, it's like a little over an hour and a half if there's, like, no traffic, but that's not how Toronto works. Kevin was nice enough to drive, but really, you know, I think the goal is to go up there, play a tournament, stay over, chill, maybe hang out in Toronto, and then play in another tournament and, like, head back and do that. So we're working on it. We definitely want to come to the Maple ones. You guys, here's the problem. You guys have the bluff tournaments on a Thursday. You used to have one on a Saturday. So, look, we work. That's not easy. And then the one on Friday is a little better, but still, like, we can't get up. We have to leave work early and stuff with the traffic, so it makes it a little challenging. In other words, we've got to take time off from work, which is not always practical. So you should accommodate us, in other words, when you're planning your pinball tournaments. Thank you very much. It is weird, though, Kevin. It is weird. Like, it is weird that they don't have Saturday tournaments. Right? Like, that's like a, I don't know. There's like no weekend tournament. Most tournaments in pinball places, like, majority of the ones will happen on the weekend because people are free then. But, hey, listen, it's Canada.
    78:08
    You guys do you. We love you and we want to come to more tournaments. That's all we're saying. That's right. We also did a Bond launch party out at Swoal Burger in Rochester.
    78:19
    I played a lot better that time. Nick's been on fire. He almost won that one, too. Yeah, I came in second on that one. Dude, that was a long day. That was from noon until I finally finished at like over 7 p.m. Yeah, I finished around 6. I was burnt. But, yeah, shout out to Nox Immunes, which is tall Todd out there. He ran a good event.
    78:42
    Yeah, I've been excited to play competitive pinball, Kevin. I think that's what's going on. And it's kind of funny, you know, like you and I from like 2014 to 2019, really, like we're aggressively running tournaments and doing stuff that we weren't really traveling a lot. We definitely traveled for tournaments, but not a lot. Now that we're just doing league, I think we're able to get back to some of the bread and butter stuff that we really enjoy. And I love going to, especially a venue I haven't been to, but I love going to another city and meeting the people there and seeing their culture and playing in those tournaments.
    79:25
    I didn't necessarily forget how much I loved it, but it just kind of reminded me to an extent how much I really enjoy doing that and how much we haven't been doing that, if that makes sense. Absolutely. I've had the same feeling lately where it's like, oh, I just kind of want to play in a tournament, you know? And then it's like, you know, Toronto, Rochester are close enough where we can just pop out for a day and check it out. You know, we might... We thinking about going to Pinbrew in April There some other stuff coming up So yeah definitely I got that feeling too where it like Oh this is cool I want to do more of this Having two years where we didn do any of it kind of like makes you appreciate it. Once you get back to it, I think not only just playing competitively, but just seeing your friends. I mean, we haven't seen Joe chair in like three years. So and meeting new people and just, you know, sharing this hobby that we love with other people who are way into it too, It was so much fun. Yeah, so what's next? We want to go – we're going to try to go to Toronto again. Yeah. Maybe in February we can look at that. And then we got Pin Brew. It looks like we're both free. I know. Knock on wood. Hopefully we can finally get out there.
    80:43
    Keith has been asking us the past few years. Hopefully we can make it happen this year. And I was talking to Tim Hood from Wormhole, who's saying that, like, I want to go out to Houston and play in their events. They do a week of Whoppers. It's like, if I'm getting this correct, it's like seven days of tournaments. Oh, wow. Leading up to, I don't have it in front of me, but like leading up to a pinball major event, something like that. So I want to go out for that. That's my goal this year. And then anything in between that might pop up, right? But, yeah, we've got to start traveling for this stuff. And also, dude, the rankings. Oh, my God. My ranking is terrible.
    81:24
    Minus 2,840 fucking seventh. My top ranking is from 2016 when I was 270th in the world. So I've got a... Maybe this will put me in a nice C division in some tournaments where I can just crush. So maybe there's a silver lining there. But I've got to work on that. It's not representative, I think, of my skill level. I'm ranked 42-83 right now. I think my high was like 700 in the 700 range so yeah the mighty have fallen so we were asked if we're doing TPF I like TPF that like tournament sold out within like no time whatsoever so if I can go down and play in that tournament I would want to do it but I'm not going to go down to the TPF and not be able to play in a tournament it would literally drive me nuts yeah so you know There's too much demand on enough tournaments, and Pimberg disappearing really caused a problem. But also, I wonder how much pinball tournaments are down because of the pandemic and people who are still steering clear of them. I wish I had good numbers on that. If anybody knows or has actual stats on that, it's on my way. Just scratching that curiosity itch. Yeah. Maybe we got Indus going on this weekend. They had to put out a warning that somebody showed up with COVID and planned on staying. And then they eventually had to tell me, you can't stay if you're positive. Like, why did you come if you knew you were positive? Like, why would you show up? So it just adds a whole other layer of bullshit to running an event like this. I'm glad we're not running major tournaments now. We're good. We did it. We did our public service. That's right. I got some posters. from the summer open. They were good times. We loved having you and hosting you. All right. Well, GammaGo says the IFPA did post stats and figures, so I'll check that out. Thank you, Ian. Okay, cool.
    83:30
    All right. You ready for some game room updates? Are you going to stay with us? I'm ready for the bathroom. Go ahead, Kev. Bathroom break for Nick. All right. You get me on full screen then. Nope, that's Nick over here. All right. So what's going on in my game room? So a few of you last month noticed that I had an out-of-order sign on my Disoptron. I put that up there for fun. It was the Wreck-It Ralph Check Back With Me Tomorrow picture because my son had had some friends over and the game was not working, so I put it on there. Happy to report that it's back up and running because I had sent my monitor chassis out to Arcade Cup.
    84:06
    He's a long-time CRT monitor repair person for arcade enthusiasts. He's well-known. He has a great reputation. So I sent it out to him. It was not quick. He has a long back order, but he has a great list on his website that keeps trying to show you where you are in the queue, you know, how many are ahead of you, all that. So it took about six months to get it all fixed and sent back to me. But I plugged it in, man, and it works. So if you've got a game, and that's a game that I was like, absolutely, yeah, Flynn's here too. if you got a game that you love an old classic arcade game with a cathode ray tube monitor in it and you want to get it fixed up I would highly recommend Arcade Cup just you gotta have some patience because it's going to take a little bit I paid for the speedier service, I paid a little extra and it still took about 6 months take that knowledge and go forth with it if you're going to get a monitor repaired I've actually been thinking about taking my Neo Geo monitor chassis out and sending it Because it's good, but it's not great. It could be better. So I was like, maybe I should just have him fix that too and bring it back up to speed.
    85:18
    Like new. Secondly, and Nick's back, so we can talk about this a little bit. I bought a pinball machine from an auction. I told Nick about this a little bit. But there was a local, like, legit auction house, not an arcade auction house. Just, like, this local place that auctions stuff, like estate sales and stuff like that. and a coworker of mine said, hey, I saw this auction. There's a bunch of pinball machines there. So I checked it out, and it was mostly EMs, but they had a Matahari. And I was not able to make it out to see the preview. They had, like, two preview days where you could go and check out the wares in person, all the machines, and you could inspect them. I didn't get a chance to do that. So it came down to the last day of the online bidding, and I was like, well, I'll throw $10 on top of whatever the high bid is. It was not too crazy. And if I get it, I get it. And I got it. So I threw, it was like, I think $360 was the bid. And it came out to about $450.
    86:23
    All of a sudden done with the fees and taxes and everything. So I went and picked it up. Loaded it all up. And I thought to myself, I wonder if there's going to be any other folks that are picking up pinball machines. And if it's going to be people who know pinball or if they don't. And there was a group of folks in there. I guess they're in their probably mid-30s, and they bought one of the EMs. I forget what game it was, but they had no idea. Didn't know how to take the legs off, didn't know how to take the head off. So I did my pinball duty, paid it forward, and showed the noobs how to break their machine down, take the legs off, take the head off. And they were so happy. They were like, it made me feel good. I was like, that's awesome. Like, new people getting into the hobby. able to kind of share some of what you learned over the past 10 years or so that we've been doing this and um you know kind of get them get them set straight and i'm on the right path so it's like you're gonna you're gonna thank me when you're trying to get this thing down in the basement that the head is not on this you put those two connectors on four bolts and you're gonna be all back to normal i think it's it's important to notice the nuance in kevin's character it's not just talking about dicks and dildos but it's also helping new people in the hobby there you go it's all aspects of pinball we cover it all cover it all um yeah good karma it's good karma it comes back so yeah they texted me the guy the guy and i exchanged uh numbers because he's like do you fix the as i was like well i don't fix ems but i might be able to like find somebody in the hobby that that does if you didn't run into problems down the road um so i gave my number and he texted me when he got back he's like game set up playing great got a few things to tweak but it's it's good to go like they they didn't know how to take the ball out of the machine or take the glass off i showed him how to do all that stuff so it was good good uh good experience all around and it was uh fun i like to have a winter project and uh matahari's good for that um our friend matt it's actually got a bunch of extra boards we're gonna tweak stuff on it because it's got the the the cpu board has uh has acid damage from the battery so we're gonna try swapping out some boards and testing some stuff out but i shut the whole playfield off uh it was a mess man it had like dirty rotten uh rubbers like rubbers look like they had never been changed the playfield's in good shape though so uh it's got some it needs the right slingshot plastic if anybody i'm putting out a call if Anybody has a slingshot plastic, right? Slingshot plastic or plastic set from Adahari, hit me up.
    88:56
    And I need that for mine. It also needs a new pop-over skirt for the one pop-over, but I'll probably just swap them all eventually. But everything else is in good shape. Playfield's in good shape. It's got all the plastics. The electronics are the thing that needs some work. So hopefully we can get it back up to speed, and we'll have a nice classic that I think is going to end up at my dad's house because he's mentioned a few times that he wants a pinball machine in his basement. So I'll probably just be like, here you go. Here's a Mata Hari for you to enjoy.
    89:30
    What else? I got, on the arcade side of things, I got a thing. Here, I'll put it over here for you. It's a monitor high-voltage cage for Tempest. all brand new uh newly manufactured if you got a vector monitor vector atari game this is called this is from vector head arcade i ordered it about a year ago it took them about that long to ship them out but you know with custom hobby projects like this that can be the kind of time frame you're looking at it's one of those things like i hope i never have to use it but the monitors and those games are kind of notorious for being flaky so I grab that so I'm not going to mess with it while everything's working but if it breaks down the line I'll have a replacement for that and in our monthly book update I feel like I have a new book every month now I have the Supercade book this is from Van Burnham she did the original Supercade about I don't know 10 years ago or so and I got it and it's a really cool look at the origins of the arcade scene. This is from 85 to 2001, so the other one was from the late 70s to mid-80s. So this kind of picks up where that left off.
    90:52
    I mean, the art is incredible. She's a really good designer. The attention to detail is really good, and it's got all these full-page images. There's Mario Bros. 3, and there's a fold-out page and stuff. It's crazy. So it's home consoles and arcade stuff. and uh so if you got an interest in in that kind of retro game stuff i would highly recommend that so i was a kickstarter backer but you can just buy the books now um you don't have to to pre-order they're available to buy and finally i got a i got a few games for christmas the one i've been playing most so far is mario and rabbits sparks of hope on the switch it's a turn-based strategy kind of game i played the first one and never finished it i liked it when i played it but it got really hard and then i gave up um this one i've been enjoying more uh than the first one so give it a go if you got a switch and then it seems like your kind of game uh would recommend so that's that's what's new in the game room over here what about you nick uh let's see so not not a ton i know i talked about my little um arcade cabinet from i arcade and I liked it so much that I actually upgraded to the gold edition because I thought that it looks a little bit better. It's more of a traditional like US style arcade cabinet. It's got a light marquee. So this is the Space Invaders version. It's got the different style kind of joysticks in that. That's kind of I don't know. Kevin, do you know what those are called? Versus like the round top joysticks? They're the back top joysticks instead of the ball top. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, still really loving that, like the system. Unfortunately, I strategically took a picture where you can't see this, but the side panels were damaged, like the T-molding kind of was pulled off. So really testing out their customer service. I'm still waiting for them to send me replacement panels. I guess they're, like, manufacturing it now because they sold out pretty much over the holiday. So we'll see. I'm hopeful that it happens. Also, I upgraded. I put in real tempered glass in there, and then the glass that they sold me cut my hand because they didn't round the edges. Oh, my Lord. It was just causing – I looked down. My hand was bleeding. Martha was helping. Her hand was bleeding. And I told them, and they didn't really seem to care. Wow. They're like, sorry, but that's the way it is. You know how glass is. Yeah. So I don't know.
    93:23
    Listen, I like that little thing. it's good in my spot. And we got a chance to play another solution, which is what Patrick got. He got the Arcade Legends Ultimate. You can have a little time on that.
    93:36
    These are kind of like if people want, if you have your quote-unquote game room, and you want to add an arcade cabinet to it, but you don't want a dedicated one like Tron or something, which is thousands of dollars heavy, and you don't want to necessarily build your own multi-cade MAME cabinet, There are these other solutions out there which you can kind of assemble yourself that are cheaper. But I think the quality of these kind of things between Arcade 1-Up and Arcade Ultimate Legends, I think the iArcade has the best cabinet quality in terms of the materials that they use. It just feels sturdy and pretty robust. But the one that Patrick has, the Arcade Ultimate Legends, it's around the same price point. He actually got his, believe it or not, Kevin, for $350 on a sale, which is a steal. He's added the CoinOps USB stick to it, which is like 7,000 MAME games. It's unlicensed, so take how you want to feel about that. Unlicensed, but it's got a ton of games. And then he bought a really cool LCD marquee.
    94:49
    So that's another way to do it, right? And it's a pretty cool solution. I think the materials on that aren't overall as good in some ways. It's light and wobbly, but a ton of games, really good value for what you get. So that's another way to add an arcade game to your game room and not spend a ton of money on it. Yeah, his was cool, the Arcade Legends. I had not played one of those. And I like the LCD marquee that changed with the game. and the fact that he was able to mod it and add a whole bunch of extra games and stuff like that, it seems like a real fun kind of hobby project. And if you just want the arcade kind of feel with a cabinet in your game room and a bunch of games and not have to worry about repairing CRT monitors like I talk about, then yeah, it's a fine solution if that's you. If you've got a bunch of pinball machines and you just want some fun arcade games to go with it, 100%. We can play some Magical Drop any day. Yeah, they should market to the pinball audience where it's like your first thing is not an arcade machine, but you have a game room, right? So it's like, why not add one for under $1,000? Here you go. Yeah. Oh, you're spending $20,000 on a Bond 60th anniversary? This is less than the topper that goes on top of the thing. And again, what I love about it is I'm not sacrificing the space of a pinball machine there. That's key for me. Yeah. pinball machine i mean maybe i get to the point where i have enough machines that that adds um you know some diversity to the collection but yeah anyways not a huge update but something yeah that's cool yeah i've always liked having a mix of games in my game room so um yeah i like i like i like it all man i like it all all right i think that's gonna do it you got anything else before we wrap this show up uh no you know what's uh would be nice um after getting a bullshit one-star review, if you have been enjoying free content for years, or maybe you're even new and you like what we're doing, we do get a lot of nice positive feedback, and we appreciate it.
    96:54
    Take a moment to write a review on iTunes or whatever you listen to this podcast on. It'd be nice. You don't ask for too much. I don't think it's going to move the needle too much either way, but maybe if there's other people getting into the hobby, and you think, hey, a good podcast to listen to is Brody Even Talk Pim. All those guys have been around long enough and know what they're talking about. And you don't mind a dick or dill joke every one in one 60th episode. It's a great podcast. Great podcast.
    97:23
    All right. Yeah, you can also follow us on all our social media channels. We're on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Discord channel.
    97:32
    We should start a Pinball Phalluses channel in there. You got a YouTube channel If you want to see archives, old, old broadcast, not only of this show, but also pretty even pinball. If you want to watch live and win the stuff, you know, we talked about giving away pin stadium lights and we give away, you know, one of those pretty much every month, follow the Twitch channel, twitch.tv slash Buffalo pinball, turn on notifications. And when you see Brody, even pinball pop up, tune in, vote in the first 15 minutes, you get a shot at winning one of these awesome prizes. So thank you to our sponsors who make that possible. Thanks to everybody who watches. If you want to give us some feedback, talkpinball at gmail.com is the email address. If you want to support the show, we have a Twitch channel. On Twitch, you can subscribe, throw a sub. If you've got Amazon Prime, you get a free Prime sub for any Twitch channel. You can share that with us. No extra charge for you. And like, make sure that you can drop a review for more. All right, who's ready for some Topper Talk? You want to learn all about the James Bond Topper. If you have enough topper, there's more coming at you from Goran.
    98:41
    All right. What's the final word, Nick? I hope everybody has a good 2023. Play some pinball. And it would be great to see some of you guys out at tournaments and events. We hope to get out there. Hope to meet you guys. So thanks, as always, for listening. This is a lot of fun, and we appreciate the support.
    99:00
    Until next month. It's Topper Talk with Goran right now Let's all have some fun This is about plastic on top of your pin Go and buy one now There's a topper here and a topper there Here a topper, there a topper, everywhere a topper It's critical to the gameplay experience You must buy one now It's your monthly fill of toppers right now Topper Talk with Gorin.
    99:33
    Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Topper Talk with Gorin, the part of the podcast where Kevin and Nick give me about three to five minutes to talk about everything happening in the very active and profitable topper community. Now, today we'll be talking about the new Stern James Bond topper for their new James Bond pinball machines. So let's head into the office and talk about that now. OK, so here we are in the office. So let's jump right into the James Bond pinball machine topper. Now, this topper initially debuted with the James Bond 60th Anniversary Limited Edition a couple weeks ago. Now, this release really broke the mold for how Stern typically does their releases and their different editions in a release. Typically, there's a pro, premium, and LE model. Usually, none of them come with toppers.
    100:21
    The three models are usually done by the same designer, and they're all very similar. You'll see more differences between the Pro and the Premium than the Premium and the LE. But with the 60th Anniversary Edition, it's essentially a whole new game. The typical three were designed by George Gomez. This one was designed by Keith Elwin, and it was limited to $500, and it cost $20,000 MSRP. But that included the topper and a lot of the other accessories that you would typically have to pay extra for. So let's look at it close up here. You know, just at first glance, it's not doing much for me. It looks nice above the game, but there is RGB lighting all across the outer edges, all in these inserts here, all across the edges of the lettering and logo as well.
    101:11
    And I think when you see it in action, it's really nice to look at. It sort of reminds me of a slot machine topper, and those are meant to attract people. So I certainly think it's doing its job. We can see the RGB lighting here. This isn't lighting that you would typically see in a Stern topper, so it's very different. I like it. I appreciate them, between the Mandalorian release and this, sort of breaking their topper mold. Now, there is a little bit of drama surrounding this topper. It was originally thought that this topper would be exclusive to the 60th anniversary edition. exclusive meaning that you could only get it if you purchase the $20,000 game well a couple days after release um fun billiards and game room superstore made this facebook post saying that james bond toppers are now available for pre-order and it's compatible with pro premium le models of the game as well of course the uh 60th anniversary edition and for $9.99 which is certainly expensive for a topper, but it's honestly a bargain nowadays for Stern toppers, although I don't know if I would pay that much for it. But this really upset a lot of people because the Stern release trailer said it was exclusive to the $20,000 model. Stern later came out and said what they meant by exclusive is that exclusive meaning it's the only one, the 60th anniversary edition is the only edition that comes with the topper. Now, that's not quite my definition of exclusive, but that's just my opinion. So overall, I think it's a nice looking topper, fits the game well on top.
    102:51
    And, you know, a lot of people have a lot of opinions whether it should have been made available as an upcharge for these other models. But I'll leave that up to the viewers to decide what they think CERN should have done. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Topper Talk with Goran. Tune into the next podcast for another episode. And as always, get out there and buy a topper. Thank you for coming to my Topper Talk.
    103:16
    Nick, there's more content. More content. More penis-related content that I didn't cover. We forgot.
    103:31
    I forgot. All right, you ready? Let me bring this over here, and then we can talk about it. All the people who, you know, left because of Garnet. You get bonus content. Oh, he got played. All right, here we go. Ready? All right. Oh, man.
    103:46
    Whoa. What is that? We're just going to go ahead and zoom in on that. Why is that? What's going on with that hot dog? Look at what's going on with that hot dog. What are you trying to insinuate, Kevin? I don't know. Wait, what's going on at the bottom of the hot?
    104:08
    He's grabbing the end of himself. I thought that might be what he's doing. There's some mayo on the top of them, conveniently placed. Because who doesn't put mayo on a hot dog? Yeah, I know. Just a little bit on the end. Right on the tip, too, right? Yeah, just on the end. That's totally normal. And we're wrong. You know, we're just the deviants. Yeah, we made this. So this is the Funhaus 2.0 Rudy's Nightmare Topper. And, yeah, it's lewd. It's so lewd.
    104:38
    So Pedretti Gaming has been... Who wants that on top of their machine? That looks fucking terrible. They're starting to become a decent sized pinball manufacturer According to this week in pinball They also recently revealed the Topper For their updated Funhouse 2.0 code The Topper interacts with gameplay Through the light shows They are limiting it to 200 units And a cost of $445 Oh you want to see it in action? Let's watch it in action Look at the static Look at that voice, it's terrible it's a topper promo it's the official topper oh man it lights up it's not just flat plastic it is uh they are molded like figures that light that light up i guess yeah so there you go it's fully gameplay integrated if you consider flashing lights to gameplay integrated. 200 units. There you go.
    105:39
    Yep, there you go. Funhouse 2.0. Rudy's Nightmare. Get yourself a lewd hot dog for the top of your funhouse. Really ruin that classic Pat Lawler game. The terrible topper.
    105:51
    There's your sales pitch. Why is that? Come on, dude. Come on. What is wrong with... What the fuck, man?
    106:02
    You know what? People got upset about the monkey playing grab ass on Oktoberfest, but I miss that monkey. I'll tell you. That was whimsical. The days of the monkey would be reminiscing. I wonder if I could still get that OG Translight. I would like a back box, light a back box of that one with the monkey on it. You could have Dilt Cycle light it up for you or something. It would be beautiful. Alright y'all, that's going to do it. Thanks for watching and we'll see you next month.
    106:35
    Thank you.