Yo, VIP! Let's kick it! You got it, Vanilla Ice! What's up, everybody? Don's here with a surprise Patreon episode for everybody. And I thought that Ice Ice Baby was apropos of how it is. It's 10 degrees outside right now. Monday morning, Wisconsin. Everything's frozen. The To the extreme I'll rock the mic like a vandal light up the stage you had to jump like a candle dance man Remember sixth grade remember how cool sixth grade was when this was literally like the coolest guy around Late a bit. Oh, dude. I am alright first off I'm completely nocturnal now my jet lag has like come full circle and I'm completely flipped in a 12-hour paradox of reality After coming back from Australia Yesterday, you know, I've been working this week tomorrow tonight. Oh my god I'm gonna go to work. It's my last day at work and then in the morning I'm off to Stern. Couldn't be more excited. However, normally I get a couple hours of sleep at night at work. Covering a call at the hospital. And then I can have a semblance of a normal day where I can, you know, crank out some toppers, do some 3D modeling, play some pinball, go to Costco, have some fun or something, get some orders shipped out, you know. And life goes on, right? Yesterday, I got some breakfast with the family. And then I laid down for a minute at like 10 a.m. And then my wife woke me up at 6.30 in the night. I said, you gotta go to work! I work at 7pm. So I was like, what the hell happened to my entire day? And then, last night at work, awake the entirety of the time. Still like, fully awake. At midnight I went to Quick Trip. Which is the local gas station chain we have here in Wisconsin. Not Quick Trip with a Q, it's with a K. It's like an institution. Got some food. Luckily they had some meat on the roller grill. But I was like, alright, it's midnight, might as well be noon, I'm wide awake. How am I going to switch? I've got a week and a half off coming up after tomorrow. Starts with Stern, going to microphone brewing, and I'm just hoping that I can be awake enough to partake in all this without being a sleepy fog head. So, when I went down for the last couple of Stern tours, they were first thing in the morning, but now they switched it up. And what they're doing is they're having a lot of their distributors come by in the morning from like 10am to noon or whatever, and then they have us showing up at 2pm for the Influencer Media Tour. Media Tour, Breakout Session, whatever. I'm just, listen, I'm just excited I get to go play this damn game. I've been laying awake last night, trying to sleep, didn't really, didn't really happen. But like, I'm frickin' FOMOing pretty hard for this game. And like, I don't get like the whole, dude, you guys are, you guys are nerds like in D&D, that's stupid. I mentioned on the Discord for Pinball Show we were talking about this. But, um, like this game really reminds me of like an updated now version of a game that would have come out 20 years ago. It was Pirates of the Caribbean by Stern. This game reminds me of that because of kind of like the scope of what's in it, you know? Remember that game had, you know, that back little battle area where the ball would kind of bounce around and get locked in there? You had that big ship that was articulating and that would sink into the playfield. There was a little upper playfield you would shoot into and then like would drop into the pop bumpers. Then there was ramps and things. And this looks like you took that scope of a game, brought it into the modern era, added animatronics, bash toys, better flow designs, better materials as far as the bash toys, a more interesting layout, more flow that's in it, some innovation with that shield that pops up. Listen, listen, Galactic Tank Force had that atomic shield thing that would come up, right? And oftentimes your ball would just jump right over it, right? BRENT LANOS, ONathy, year 12ただ passo Lari Thorn and Allžeieran muerte Op Temple Upحم calls I'm a fan of the dragon multiball where like, you know, it's not like a timed ball save. It's like you just have 15 balls to try to beat the dragon, you know, hit them six or nine times or whatever. And there was a point where the shield was up and Zach just let all the balls just pile up there at the flippers and then got to take a break for a second and then just went flipper crazy again. Like that was fun and that's some innovation. And I like this. I like the complexity of what's there, like the complexity of the code. I like how they're really starting to leverage insider connected. And I'm like, I freaking really want this game. And I can't buy it, man. So a couple of reasons. Most of them are all self-imposed. I mean, tax season's upon us, right? I usually file by the end of January. And I should be leveraged to eke out a return. But I always want to hedge my bets. I also have a truck I bought, and I'm waiting to pay it off until after taxes are done so I know I can go ahead and expunge that money. And then I'm sitting here looking at the games that I have for sale, my Ultra VP, my Black Knight Sword of Rage, Metallica sold X-Men and old Johnny Wick boy over there. And I'm just thinking, you know, it just seems too soon to just drop X-Men and John Wick and go all in for D&D. So I want to have some time to like let these games breathe, get a couple hundred plays through them, let the code mature a little bit. I'm still hopeful that John Wick's going to turn into something amazing. It shoots well. And, you know, yeah, I guess, you know, the onus is on me to say it's awesome because I bought the damn thing and I have to sell it at some point. But I honestly do have good times playing it. You know, but whatever. I would sell it for $10,000 or maybe a little bit below. So I'm not looking to, like, hype it up so I can get $12,000 for it. No, that's not going to happen. I like to be realistic with my pricing. www.willywonka.com The game is out earning the pro that was there for sure and out earning a lot of the other games. I'm hearing updates from it. It's just a great version of it. It's got the Sharky Ball mod. It's the only one on location that has that. It's great. I'm happy for them. They'll be getting Metallica here soon and then we're in talks on a D&D so like I may be able to still get one soon but I don't know. I kind of want a break and I want to enjoy these games but man, like what the hell. So let's look at, let's compare and contrast. I'm going to conceptualize a game that Stern could have released as this cornerstone instead of Dungeons and Dragons. And if you saw this game, you would say, okay, that seems appropriate for what Stern does. I'm not terribly impressed by it. It's not awful. It's got a couple of cool features. All right. So imagine if you would that we got a standard Stern release, okay? And it was Superman, right? Not Superman from any of the movies, not any Justice League, but like comic book Superman, right? Pick an era, doesn't matter. And this game had a couple of wire form ramps. It had the Daily, not the Daily Bugle, the Daily Planet where Clark Kent works and you would, on the premium you would physically lock balls inside the building and they would drop down the fire escape for the multiball. On the pro you would shoot through the building and there'd be a virtual ball lock. It would have Zombie Yeti art all over it. You know, it would have all kinds of Superman villains and Superman in a couple different poses and maybe Super Dog down there with like Gary Stern riding it as a little cameo. And it would have a normal Italian bottom, you know, spin the wheel and pick a designer. Its innovation would be a Magna Save over on the left out lane, but like instead of just grabbing the ball over the in lane and dropping it, it would grab the ball momentarily Like and subscribe for free! The premium in LE would have sculpted Spider-Man and Lex Luthor locked in battle. The limited edition would have kryptonite green emerald powder coating and a reflective backglass that's a leader in the industry. That would have been the game. There would have been eight modes to play and then a mini wizard mode and then a regular wizard mode. There would have been three multiballs. The physical ball lock would have only been on the premium and then the Superman drop targets that you have to drop to get to the Fortress of Solitude Vuck would be stand up targets on the pro and drop targets on the premium and that would have been the game and it would have been $69.99, $97.99 and $13,000 and they only would have made 672 LEs because 1962 was when whatever came out, who knows. But like that could have came out and it would have been like all right this is the Stern game You know it interesting People have been wanting Superman for so long This is the game they going to get You know the pros will be on location and they do okay but it not like exciting right Not like, yes, this is what we want. Instead of that, we get a game not with Zombietti art, but with Vince Pros, who people are now sending me art that he's done for Magic the Gathering, like way back. Like this guy's pretty huge in that industry. www.sternpinball.com Subtitles by the Amara.org communitySTOR justified preview Whitman It took more than a week for the long-term I hope the procedurally generated dungeons have like other textures as well so it's not just the same yellow brick dungeon every time. It'd be fun if like there was a jungle one or like a graveyard crypt one you could go into like one Sunday it would switch to something else. I think that'd be kind of fun. I'm going to pitch that idea and see where it goes. A simple palette swap really is all it would need to be, you know, a jungle temple theme, you know, Egyptian temple theme, something like that, you know, And tied into D&D lore somehow. But that'd be cool. I don't think there's a way that you're really going to say you could never add, you know, more creatures to battle, you know, that would just randomly show up as time goes on with code updates. I don't even think there's a way you could necessarily say you couldn't add more unlockable characters, maybe for a total of five unlockable characters. We're seeing that in video games right now. Mortal Kombat 1 came out. There was the combat pack of characters you could pay to download. www.willywink.com We'll see you next time. Wild Birdail Noobs The Wild Birdail Noobs existence These are the names of the companies that support everyone that goes into incredibly difficult places. Now they're the CEOs of all kinds of这些型车 It's funny. This, this should still stay the same. Some of them are that go into extreme and I mean, they do have processes like a warehouse cybersecurity and unsupervised support we can late to use harm, whenever we have needed, I don't know if we've ever even tried it on Hey John, thanks man, that's so funny, I'm sorry, yeah, that's okay. Thanks for having me, man. Um, I think everybody knows Sonic D John Popadiuk, Bob Betor, Keith Elwin, Bowen Kerins, Laser Los, orbit ramps, Lyman F. Sheats Jr.., Automated Amusements, Joe Kaminkow, Python Anghelo, Digital I was going to get the game at some point and I didn't want to pay the Stern prices and I couldn't even find one. So I went and bought a translucent 20-sided die and a regular colored one and I drilled them and epoxied them and made my own shooter rods. And this place was loaded and it had all that stuff. It had every kind of tabletop and card-based game, props and things, tons of different dice to pick from. They had tables in the back. They did clinics. You know, if you want to learn how to play a game, come on down. Rob Wank The fun layout of things that they put in there and the code and the enthusiasm with Dwight and I haven't even listened to the Loser Kid interview yet. I gotta go pop in and listen to that. I've been asleep half the time since I got back from Australia. I love what they're doing here. I hope they continue this trend of bringing themes like this and not just another, you know, zombie yeti art game that from 20 feet away you put five of them together and you can't tell which one's which just by looking at them. You know, they're fun. They're fun. You know, but instead of and it's really compelling it's done in a cool way like and i think we're gonna see some of that you know with the screen use on dnd like when you're fighting through the dungeons and there's monsters up there like you can refer up and see like who you're fighting and then hit the shots hit the shots look up you know what's happening cool game i'm just i'm just really impressed with it and i'm FOMOing for that reason not because i'm afraid with i'm not it's not necessarily a FOMO. A FOMO is a fear of missing out www.willywink.com Leah Peare, Closed Caption On This game looks really cool. I'm excited about it. When I saw the John Wick reveal of the layout, I was like, eh. You know, in my head, John Wick was like, kind of, you know, a dark, wet cityscape street with like neon lights and stuff. And that's what they made. But it didn't have a big John Wick that was articulating and shooting balls at me. It didn't have a gelatinous cube full of John Wick guns. I don't know. This thing just looks fun. I like what they did here. Knapp's Pinball Show, DarkPhotos, InfernoNATags, Drop Bonus Knapp Pinball Show DarkPhotos InfernoNATags There was a dragon That a really big dragon I didn know it was going to be that big Look at that mountain though That cool And then gelatinous cube Look at that And then oh there are three flippers And like now I looking around I seeing even more I just noticed that there's a mimic chest over on the left. It looks like it's got, like, a big long gate that you can shoot into, and then the ball will drain out, you know, toward the flipper. That's cool. There may even be a little saucer that's there, too. I still have to dissect this whole playfield. I'll be able to do that tomorrow. So I'm very excited about that. www.willywink.com www.willywonka.com 25- displayed on display www.patreon.com There's been stuff I've dropped here since I started the Patreon, like first thing. So, you know, data mine yourself. I have weeks of commutes covered with audio stuff on here and I want to keep continuing to produce more, so thanks so much. I look back at where the Patreon's at now from where I started and it's just awesome that there's over 100 people now that are all part of this club that's supporting the show and encouraging me to do things like this. Just come home. I'm still wide awake from work. Let's put some thoughts down because I've had pinball running through the head all night. I was talking to Ryan Barry with Phantom Tilt. He's been dropping some content. I got to get caught up on his stuff. And he's coming out to the U.S. next year for Expo. It's going to be super fun, so looking forward to that. Man, I love what they're doing with this game. And I am FOMOing, but I know in my heart that I will be able to get one at some point, so I'm not too worried about that. I've got plenty to play, but I'm excited for where pinball's going. Thanks for watching! hypocrize I'm able to start, you know, working and collaborating some more with them. So, I paid for an Evil Dead. I'll be getting it. They're going to get me an early copy. Now, what they do is they've got a crew of around 50 people or so that they try to get their first games to, knowing that there could be some issues right out of the factory. And, you know, we're kind of, we know how to work on games. We don't lose our crap if, you know, a game's not absolutely perfect coming out of the box. And so, you know, if I need to take a ball guide off and grind it down a little bit and put it back in there so it's, you know, functioning perfect and then give them that feedback, www.willywink.com The one they've been playing with, you know, they've been tweaking and teasing as part of the design process and it's working really well. But there may be something that there's just no way to test for until production games are going out. Even if you take a few production games and run them through a thousand plays, you know, until they're in the homes of customers, until they've gone to the back of trucks, until they've gone to the shipping containers and showed up and been going up and down people's stairs, you know, things will jostle loose or whatever. So we provide them with some feedback on those early games. www.willywink.com This one, new factory, they have the new testing rigs that they built. So you can put just a playfield on a testing rig, hook it up to a computer that's simulating it being in a cabinet and you can play with the whole thing, flip it around in a rotisserie right there so you can adjust and fix everything, make sure it's working perfectly, make sure the backbox is working perfectly on its own, make sure the cabinet is working perfectly, then marry them all together as they go down the line. It's a much more streamlined process and it just mitigates the chance for gremlins to We're going to get in there, right? So I know they've been doing well with their TCMs and Looney Tunes now. Most of the issues that I see that are still lingering are code issues, you know, like a switch that just doesn't register if you do a specific sort of things during a mode. For example, in my Looney Tunes, if I'm in a mode and I start the TNT multiball and then I put a ball back in that under flipper lock while the multiball is still active, it's like the switch isn't registering. And I think that may be a code issue because the switch seems to pick up. But I'm going to test my switch too to make sure it's not a wire that's misfired or something. So that's just a little logic thing that we'll fix. But mechanically, the game's working just fine. I love those games. I love those games. So the QC is taking a huge step forward. Evil Dead will be the first game that's built in their factory ground up with this new system. And so I'm really excited about that to get those out. In exchange for being able to provide feedback, which I'm happy to do, it's super fun. Like imagine you had a pinball machine and if you noticed an issue with it, you were able to communicate that directly back to the manufacturer who would then implement a fix right away. Like that's fun man. You try to do that with a company like Stern and it's like you have to go through your distributor, they have to reach out and then there's a ticket generated and then maybe it gets lost, maybe it gets fixed but you never get good follow up, you know. It's just so cool to have a line right back to the creator and no good ideas are ignored. That's awesome. Can't wait to get the game. Wide body, looks great. I'll probably cave and get that top or two. Dag-dag-nabbit, you just have to have the whole package. So I'm excited about that. With that notwithstanding, we've got the Twippy Awards coming up in February. Oh, by the way, I was nominated in two categories, so I'd appreciate a vote. Just so we can see if we can place a nomination is plenty for me. I'm super enthusiastic about that. You know, it's just nice to get like some recognition that, you know, yeah, this actually is working, right? I love all the feedback I get to you guys. So don't be afraid to email me. Don's pinball podcast gmail.com. Message me through Facebook Messenger, message me on discord, whatever. But I love the feedback and the interactions. If if you ever communicate something and it's just ignored, it's because I didn't see it. I didn't see it and it got lost somewhere. This listener emailed me on December 20th. Okay, I left the U.S. on December 19th, and my plane landed December 21st in Australia. So December 20th didn't exist for me, and that was when this email was sent. And I was checking my emails every day in Australia, and I swear I did not see this email until I landed back in the U.S. some 10 days later. And then I got a follow-up email saying like, what, are you just going to ignore me, dude? www What a great encont iPad I hell I so glad The antenna was shootin Oh acchwell then got www Wimpy's February um there's gonna be a tour of Barrels of Fun's factory in Houston which is at the wormhole which is where the Twippy's are happening and I'm hearing it seems like Barrels of Fun's next game will be out sometime soon like March-ish so I'm wondering if it's worthwhile sending an email down to my friends at Barrels of Fun to see if maybe behind a room they got something they want to show off a little early um and and I could weasel in and play me some Dune or whatever it is they're making um I've heard Dune www.willywinks.com I was really hard for me on labyrinth and that kept me from really progressing all the way through every mode though I did get to mini wizard mode a couple of times. So hopefully their next build is a little bit more forgiving. I think you can make a layout moderately difficult and then you can use code to make, to add challenge. Make the first modes a few easy then they start to get a little bit harder and then the next multiballs a little bit harder and then that way you can reward that progression but still allow people like me to get in there and play. It's hard to go into Sam Iветa, I'm a fan of the show, but I'm not sure if Ryan McQuaid got let go too. That's what people seem to be saying. That kind of sucks. Especially, it doesn't make sense to me because if his game is about to go on the line, you want the designer there, like Q seeing the first hundred that are made to make sure they're up to snuff, they're working. www.willywink.com Mic to pronunciations and back. Now, playing devil's advocate, if this company's about to shut down, they've got a game that's fully licensed, just about ready to go. www.patreon.com I'm comfortably optimistic that that's going to happen, which is a good thing for pinball, because whatever you think about this company, the drama, or however it ends up playing out, at least this game will get out, right? A lot of people worked really hard on this thing that, through no fault of their own, may be in bad situations. It'd be nice to see them rewarded for it. That's all I'm saying. So that's American Pinball. Jersey Jack, I'm still excited about getting my avatar. I don't care. Hate on me all you want. Maybe I'll lose $3,000 in value. www.bit.ly Tim Tim Kitzrow, Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.uk www.airbank.com www.willywonka.com Title workplace of films produced by Quinn Mayers and Kevin гр canser regular virtual continued in best quality. The film made by°hestandards now imagined. In America among their one can and fabric immediatelyактерias, including neteck anti-pister, hard恩h hn personnage gabvartzz and animated sortiers. It has a guarantee of www.patreon.com Transcription by CastingWords Don's Pinball Podcast. Keep doing the Patreon episodes for you guys. I'm going to be at Stern tomorrow. Hopefully we can get a cavalcade of people and we'll be given like first gameplay impressions of this game. A lot of people are buying this game, not sight unseen, but like play unseen. They're like, yep, ordered it. You know, I listened to Loser Kid. That did it. I ordered it. I watched the CES footage yesterday, last night. I'm in. I ordered it. So given the way the market's been going, to see people just like going in, buying games without even playing them yet, It says something. It says something. So, pinball's not dead. I don't want pinball to die. That's the main takeaway that I got. Alright, why don't you bring that Ice Ice Baby back in here for me. This was Miami drum and bass in like 1992. This was like as cool as you could be in those early 90s. This was like six years before Medieval Madness came out. Where to your mother? Too cold, too cold. I've seen Vanilla Ice in concert like three times, and that's like in the 2000s. I strive to be pinball's cool uncle.