Hey, what's happening, ladies and gentlemen, Kale here from the Electric Badcast and the Electric Bad Arcade, and there's Serge right there, and we're doing a little something special. We're obviously remote. You know, Serge and I usually like hanging out together. Like all the pin pals do. That's right. But Serge messaged me, and he's like, we have to do this in our emergency episode of the Electric Badcast presents Pin Pals, Episode 2. And what is this about, Serge? Well, I'll tell you. You know, if you're in our Discord, you know that I put out a vote for what should be our next title. And there were a lot of votes. Feel free to vote if you haven't yet. And yet, I'm not going to listen to that vote. We're going to do our second episode on this emergency podcast because Stern released a pin. And I think I've got a handle on the rules. And I think it's worth actually a conversation about. And then we'll go back to what was in there in the vote as kind of what the next episode should be. Make sense? You already have a handle of the Star Wars rules. I know that sounds crazy, but I think I do. That's right. Well, listen, what's going on? I've watched some videos. I watched a little bit. I just got back from the gym, and I was actually watching. You had Jack Danger playing with one hand. They were doing a live stream from Stern with Ray Day. Yeah, it was a quick video, about 20 minutes. Yeah, yeah, a little live stream there. And super cool stuff, but I wasn't really paying attention, so you're going to have to fill me in on what was going on. All right, let's do it. I'm going to share my screen in order to do this. Here's our reveal, and I'll show basically the layout, and we'll draw on the camera on the play field here and talk through the rules. And I'm not going to try to bore everyone with going through every single rule. That's not the goal of this, although we might go through every single rule. But the real goal is to talk about it in terms of is this a good theory? Is this a good game theory for what they want to do? And it takes a very different view than the 2017 Stern Star Wars. You know, that game divided fans a lot because, and some people love it, and certain tournament players love it. It gives you your 40x multipliers and all of that. But to many people who are really into the theme of Star Wars, it didn't really represent that theme well to them because the theme is heavy on the scenes. It's heavy on the movies. And in that game, in 2017 Star Wars, the movies are chopped up into scenes. You play multiple scenes at once. You can actually play multiple modes at once. You can play modes from different areas, different movies. And, you know, you don't feel as much connection to it. There's something that's going on in the background. And so what I think that Stern did that was really, really different here is they are going very mode heavy on this game. You know, we talked earlier about how code can have modes and multiballs and multipliers and the fourth category, let's call it missions or side quests. And here they're going very heavy on modes, I would say. Does that make sense? First, you start off with things. And I think that's the right decision. And this is I'm guessing this is a Ray Day idea, right? Yeah, this is a Ray Day. It looks like Ray Day and MXV. It seems like together might have come up with certainly probably Ray Day primary. Mm-hmm. And so what I thought I could do is talk through first some just basics of the code, and then we could go back to the criteria that we set out in the first episode, and I'll reiterate that criteria in a moment, to see, like, even just with this early code, is it heading towards that direction of being good on those criteria? So just first, let's explain what's going on here. As I said, it's a mode-heavy game. And to start a mode, you have to hit force targets. So I'm going to draw on them right now. there's one right there, and then there's one right there, and one right there, and one right there, and one right there, and you draw, you hit any of those force targets to start the mode. If you had to hit all five, it would be a tough mode to start, but they make it kind of easy for you, is you could hit one, and it spots you others, at least to start off on the game. They want it to be friendly to the player coming up and get right into it, so you hit those five targets, and then suddenly eight shots light for you for different modes. And there's one, and each shot is representing a character. So if you were to hit this shot, after you hit those force targets, you would start at Yoda mode. And instead, if you were to hit this shot, after you start hit those four stand-ups, you'd get a Luke mode, or a droids mode, or a Lando mode, or a Pound Solo mode, or Chewbacca mode, or Leia mode, or Obi-Wan Kenobi mode. Does that make sense so far? Yeah, so what we're looking at here is the premium and you can tell that because quickly by with a quick glance you can see the java up in the top right you got a bunch of sculpts on this big old java cradling i messed that up sorry big old java cradling the ball right there right and so my question would be and i didn't watch the stream enough to see this so after you hit those force targets and then those uh your your mode shots light up on on the han solo mode in the center does the the ramp must start in the down position because it is a jump ramp yeah only on the premium on the premium it's a jump ramp on the uh pro it just loops to the wire form you know it's it's kind of a on the pro it's a faster game and most pros stern pros are faster than premiums because you have a quick loop and you could repeatedly loop the shot over and over again think ghostbusters left ramp basically where you know you have looping supers and some of that code is actually put into here looping supers on the center ramp. Oh, that's exciting. You know, for example. Yeah. And so one thing about this is that, you know, they're making, if you look at all the inserts, they're all related to a character. And this is very different from the 2017 Stern Star Wars, which made all the inserts related to a planet like Hoth and Tatooine and all that. And I never thought that was a good idea because people are really into the characters of Star Wars. They're not like, man, did you see that Tatooine planet? That planet was like crazy, you know? you know like nobody's ever said that right you barely know which planet they're on but you do connect with the characters and so they're putting that front and center here not just with the modes as we'll talk about but just on the inserts they're just signaling that this is trying to involve you more in the theme you know yeah i like it and then we'll talk about breadth in a little bit but one thing that's notable about this is by having eight different modes to start with it's a lot of breath, right? You could start your Yoda modes or your Luke modes or your droids modes. And I don't think they have all the modes programmed in here, but it looks like there's more than one mode on each shot. So what I mean by that is if you were to hit this, get all the four stand-ups and then hit the droid right there, it would start one of multiple different droid modes that they'll program in eventually. And that'll start randomly when you hit it. So think at least eight modes to start, but each of them probably has multiple, so at least 16 character modes, if that makes sense. Yeah, totally, sub-modes. So yeah, sub-modes. And one thing I like in a game is when you start modes, but you have different options of which mode to start like that. And so if you think, for example, about Foo Fighters, there's one shot to make, and then you have to pick six modes. Here, you could hit anyone at eight shots, and it gives you a choice within those eight shots of what mode you want, and I think that's pretty clever to do. And these aren't the only modes, so that's just one set of modes, right? They call them the character modes. Presumably, if you do well in the character modes, you'll get to its own mini wizard mode. But separate from that, there's Java events or Java modes, right, from Jabba the Hutt. And Jabba the Hutt's over here, and so his shots are represented with this right ramp. And if you hit the drop target two times right there, Then it opens the ramp to start a Jabba the Hutt mode. And there's three different Jabba the Hutt modes. There's Luke's Gift. That's what this insert is. There is the Rancor Pit. There's Jabba's Palace. This is Jabba's Palace, and that's Rancor, for example. If you go through all three of those modes, you'll probably get, and it says it right here, a mini wizard multiball. And so what I like is, similar to Jurassic Park, that had different mode pathways, there's the T-Rex modes, but there's also the control room modes, you know, for example. That's sort of what we're looking at here where you have character modes. You know, like I described, you hit the four stand-ups, you hit a shot, and then you're in this character mode. Totally separate from that, if you wail on this shot, hit the drop, hit the drop again, and then go right through the right ramp, you'll get into one of those three modes that are Java events. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I love the drop target in front of the ramp because it starts out as a dangerous shot, right? And so risk and reward. You're right. That is absolutely in this with a shot like that. And it's also true that the Jamba modes are more valuable, I've seen so far, than the character modes. They're a bit harder to get into and maybe a bit riskier to get into them because you have to hit that drop target a few times. On the Stern Star Wars Home Edition Plus, isn't there a drop target blocking the ramp on that? There is also a drop target blocking the ramp there. Very cool. You have those three drop targets, and then part of those drop targets block the ramp. That's so very cool. Yeah, it's funny. I was chatting with Roland before this, and we were looking at some stills. Great player, by the way. Great player. And we were both talking about how excited we were about the drop target in front of the ramp. That's really funny. Like, that's the one thing we were chatting about. But you know what it also provides, and Keith has said this before in his games, is a state change for a shot. You hit a shot, you hit it some more, but then the next time you hit it, it feels different than the last time because there was a drop target that blocked it, and now there's a ramp there. And it's always a clever idea if you can give people different feels for each individual shot. If something new happens when you hit that direction, that's a good physical layout choice. Very cool. When you get through this right ramp to start the Java modes, there's a spinning cup. And I can't really think of another board game that used a spinning cup. You know which designer loves spinning cups more than others at Stern, I'd say? Who did Diner? Yeah, you're right. Actually, Diner is, I don't know if Diner is, but Trudeau has a lot of spinning cups, like in Creature from the Black Lagoon, Mustang, games like that. And so here, it's kind of a very similarly positioned back right cup to Diner, to your point. and so the cup is spinning around and then you could hit the action button on which mode you want as it spins around so the cup spins between these kind of three modes so it gives a player a little bit of choice if you're paying attention at least to go through that cup and are you a spinning cup fan let me ask you that love it yeah i like spinning cups yeah okay okay good that's what i wanted i need to know who you are kale yeah and that's a very key question on on a first date that you got to ask you know well it's such a great feel you know both in diner and creature because when you get it in there and i don't know if it helps or not but everybody starts moving the machine trying to get more uh you know revolutions it just feels good right and actually this this is one where people might push it to get more revolutions it might not work but they might do that like you're like they're saying because on the multi balls generally the add a ball for the multi balls is from repeated like 10 spins around the cup if you want to have all you know for example This is great And so we talking modes again in the code and you have your character missions We talked about those. You have your Java events, which we talked about those. If you get enough Java events, you light this light towards the wizard mode, let's say. And then there's a whole third mode pathway called Vader modes right here, and those are started in the left scoop, for example. So you hit the left scoop, and there's multiple Vader modes. It kind of works similar to the character missions in that when you hit this scoop and it's lit for Vader modes, you'll see a bunch of shots lit. And the first shot you hit starts an individual Vader mode. And so there's multiple Vader modes. So what I really like about this game is the breadth of having lots of different modes, but also have them in different branches. So there's Vader modes, the character missions, the Java events. and this is like one of the heaviest mode based games I've seen from Stern in a long time. It's up there with I would say the James Bond newest code you know where MXB redid it and you have six main villain modes and six henchmen modes and specter weapon modes and Q modes in the scoop you know like four different mode pathways each with multiple modes and this is kind of looking similar to that. I'll pause there. Does that make sense? Yeah totally. So you play the modes and And if you do well in the modes, it can jack up your values and your multiballs later on. So I'm happy to get right into the multiballs. The last thing I'll say once more about the character, the modes, I should say, is you can't stack up the modes with each other. You know, like you had in the original 2017 Richie Star Wars. Here, if you start a Vader mode, you're in that. If you start a character mode, you're in that. If you start a job event, you're in that. And so they maintain the theme immersion that I think fans will want in the game. They want to play through the scenes, and this helps you play through the scenes, I would say, more than you can imagine. Serge, the shot on the left that's kind of underneath that helix ramp, are those drop targets or just lights? Just lights. This is a puck that returns to the left end lane. And maybe that's a good place to start to talk about the multiballs. There are three main multiballs in this game, and they're pretty simple to explain and to get. The first multiball is you hit this AT-AT, and that will qualify three green lights on the left right here. Can I stop you there? Please do. AT-AT. Yeah. You prefer AT-AT, and I should have said that. I'm an AT-AT guy. Yeah, you're right. I understand both are right. Are they? Well, yeah. So in the Kenner toys, originally, they called it an AT-AT, which is maybe why I call it an AT-AT. Because you broke it. But guys at Lucasfilm use it interchangeably. Some of them say AT-AT. Some of them say AT-AT. But here's my argument, okay? Okay, I'm listening. It's a military vehicle. That's true. There's no denying that. With military vehicles and weapons, when you have letters that make something you can pronounce, for example, there's a light artillery weapon rocket, a handheld rocket that our military uses. Probably every military has it. but it's called a law rocket and you know any any any time in military vehicles and weaponry when you can like say something instead of the the string of of letters uh and dashes that's what you do but but you do you man i hear you know what i'm not gonna do me kale it's you brought me into this world of podcasting and i'm gonna do you we're gonna call them adats for the rest of this episode. Fair. Okay. But I thought it was funny, like, all the guys at Stern are calling it AT-AT. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't grow up with the Kenner toys. That's right, that's right. Clearly. Okay, continue. Alright, so we're going to hit that center thing. Now, I will say, if you're asking me about, like, the playfield, I think it's cool that on the Premium it's mechanized and on the Pro it's static. But I do wish that, at least on the Premium, it wasn't hitting a stand-up target, that you were actually hitting its legs, you know, as a real bash toy. Here it's just a stand-up with it on top. So I'll say that, but, you know, got a cut call somewhere, I get it, but boy, that would have been cool if you could actually bash its legs, and then it knocks down. You know, you'd really feel immersed in that. But anyway, you hit it once, and that lights these three locks, and there's no drops there. To get the multiball, you just literally three shots there, feeds back to the left in lane, and then you're in your first multiball, the Battle of Hoth multiball, let's say. So that one takes four shots to do. subsequent multiballs, as you might expect, get harder. Instead there, you hit this shot, and then that lights only one lock, and then you have to repeatedly do that, you know, for example. So it's pretty similar to, let's say, Stranger Things, where you have to hit the stand-ups, and that lights all three locks, you know, on the left ramp. And then subsequent ones make it harder because they just light one lock. So that's that first multiball, the Battle of Hoth multiball. And again, I mentioned the Adaball, and I actually have a screenshot from their stream earlier, about an hour ago. And so here is the Battle of Hoth multiball. And during that multiball, the Sarlacc spins for Adaball times 10, basically. You know, I don't know if that's, there was no Sarlacc in Hoth, but I won't get involved too much into the controversy there. But basically you get the spinning cup and that gets you your Adaball. So I'll pause there. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. That's very cool. So that's your first, yeah. Well, so how many spins do you need for the add-a-ball? Ten to start off with. Wow, okay. So meaning it needs to spin around that cup ten times. So if you think that pushing the game will somehow do that. Right. We're going to have to grease it up good. Yeah, you sure are. That's right. That's right. And we could, but I might not. I saw the rules of the multiball itself, but that might not be that interesting once you're in the multiball. But that's really, I would say, the second of the, You know how there's three multiballs in this game I mentioned? The first one is actually easier than that. The first one is just shoot the center ramp a whole bunch of times. So the center ramp represents the Millennium Falcon here. And so if you keep on hitting that thing, you'll get into light speed multiball. It takes four center ramp shots to start, to qualify it, and another one to start it. And then you get into these Millennium Falcon features, and that's why they have this thing here called Falcon Features. So the first feature is a light speed multiball. multiball. And every Stern game has a gimme multiball where it's like just hit the Thor three times, captive ball, and you're in Thor. Or hit the captive ball in Jurassic Park a bunch of times, and then you're in T-Rex as long as you hit the left ramp. So they always have a gimme multiball basically, and that's the one here. It's just shoot the center ramp a bunch of times. I do wish... On the pro, where does the ball path go? When you hit that center ramp on the pro, where does the ball go? Yeah, I can even pull it up. You know what? Entertain the crowd while I do, if you don't mind. Oh, man. I know you can. I'm at a loss here because I'm like – I'm really trying to figure out what's going on. Because, of course, we're going to get the pro first. And that's the reason I'm asking you these questions about. We usually get the pro. You're so right. And then after that, we decide if we're going to get the premium. Both games look fantastic. It looked like a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it feeds to the left in lane. It's taking me longer than I'd like to get that picture up for you, but I'm pretty sure it feeds to the left in lane. That's fine. Let's just keep going with this. You know what? I'm very sure it feeds to the left in lane. That's what I'm going to say. Okay, good. And that's why the reason I'm so sure is because it allows repeating shots. So you go down here, and then you repeat up. And actually, the super jackpot for this multiball takes advantage of that, so you get enough jackpots in it, and that lights the center ramp for a timed unlimited super, so you could keep on looping that shot. And they kind of use this mechanic in a few ways in the game, in a few different options, a few different modes that we can get into, where you can continue looping that shot repeatedly, which might feel good, you know, like Ghostbusters, There's looping ramps, looping supers on the left ramp, for example. And so three multiballs, that's the gimme one. The gimme one is the light speed multiball. You get it by hitting that about five times. The second multiball is Battle for Hoth. You hit that and then hit this three more times. And then the third multiball is Death Star. And the Death Star multiball is just hit that shot four times as well. So the first time lowers this drop here. and the second one and third one and fourth one are physical ball locks into the death star so it holds the balls for you and then lets them out does that make sense for you yes a three ball uh lock it's a three ball lock three ball physical lock and then the balls come out after here like that what i love is both the pro and the premium have that feature the physical lock they both have a physical lock, which is nice. And I think what's worth saying about the code as we start to then go from explaining it to maybe talking through the theory of it and what works and what doesn't is I would say this is friendly for, and it very much designed it to be, friendly to novice and intermediate players coming to the game and trying to get into the theme. And I say that because... Yeah, and you want to do that for Star Wars. I think that makes sense for Star Wars. But I'm just mentioning it because it gives people a sense of the code structure and maybe to explain what I mean by friendly is the multiballs are not really complicated to get. It's not like King Kong, you have to hit on a pro the drop targets a bunch of times then the center ramp three times and then the right orbit. That's not obvious to people. But if people see this game, they could be like oh, I could hit the center ramp five times so I'm in a multiball. Or oh, I could hit the Death Star, maybe that's kind of harder to get, but it's only four shots. It's not like you have to do eight different things to get there. It's the same thing over and over again. Very easy to explain to people. Hit the Death Star four times. And then there's this shot, which is also four things. Hit the stand-up and then three shots into this area. So it's very friendly in kind of understanding what is happening, basically. And that's the multiball. And even the layout is friendly because it's a lot of backhandable shots, I would say. It's a fan layout, of course, and that means that it's often easy to, let's say, you could backhand this shot, for example. Obviously, the center ramp can be hit from both flippers. You could backhand this shot to Jabba from the right flipper, for example. And so they made it a fan layout to make it approachable, which also, I think, makes sense for Star Wars. They added one element. With a fan layout, it often can be a long player, and it often can be kind of quite controllable for pros at pinball. And so what they also did is they added these two pop bumpers. The Borg did is he added these pop bumpers, which is sort of unusual for him to add these pop bumpers down there. Very interesting positioning of those two pop bumpers. Absolutely, because you're going to hit them a bunch of times when you don't want to, and that's going to put the game into danger. If those weren't there, this would be like three times longer of a player. You going to see most drains from pop bumper related where the ball going to go now That what I would say from this game Because otherwise a lot of the shots feed flippers and you know can be quite safe that way And so that adds the chaos into the game While I'm on the subject of the pop bumpers, the pop bumpers also provide the multiplier in the game. You know, we said games have modes, they have multiballs, and they have multipliers. And so the pop bumpers provide this thing called the ion cannon. If you hit either pop bumper nine times, which nobody's doing on purpose, but it's there on the screen for you right here. It's called the Ion Cannon. So if you hit it nine times, so far this one, this player has seven times, for example. So if you hit it nine times, it will light all your shots, and you can see the light here, these inserts, and the next shot you hit of all of these many inserts will cause that shot to be worth two times for the rest of the game, or ball, I should say, I'm sorry, rest of the ball. Does that make sense? Yeah. That's a code feature that was used in other games. Guardians of the Galaxy is one, for example, where if you get through all your inlanes, it lights all your shots, and the next shot makes it worth 2x. Very similar thing on Aerosmith, for example. So it's a code feature Stern has used a lot, especially in Big Lebowski 2 and a whole bunch of other games, where the main multiplier is making shots more valuable times 2 through some mechanism like this. Any questions on that? you don't have well can can you get two times uh playfield multiplier and that i have i have looked at the what they've done so far and interestingly i don't see that there i don't see there must there must almost all strong games have a playfield multiplier but they haven't shown one yet all i've seen is shot multipliers and then in addition to that you can make the shot you know this shot multiplier makes it 2x but there's other things you could do to make it 4x and 8x As an example, if you did well in the character modes and then you get into a multiball, it will make those shots worth, if you're in, let's say, the Battle for Hoth multiball, it'll make them worth two times the value. So for those risk and reward type players, you might play the character mode, you might beat a character mode, you might especially try to beat a Han Solo character mode because that lights the super in, let's say, your light speed multiball, for example. And so that's going to increase the value of those shots in the multiball. Is that too deep? I don't know. No. I'm with you. Is that too crazy? You know, that's for the players that care about scoring. So there is some risk and reward here, but there's no crazy – there's no 40X multiplier in this game. Right. Right. Good. There's no, like, use the action button as fast as you can and move it and keep that in your head while you're playing. It's like they really want to keep you in the modes, I would say. And so the other feature I would say that's missing in the Pro, but is there in the Premium, is the ball save thing. and that's pretty cool actually when you saw it on stream how they saved the ball when it was in the middle they can make it go up at one point Jack Danger made it go to the right back into the shooter lane and so you get this magnet by hitting the spinners if you hit the spinners enough which are on the left and right orbit it lights this thing called Jedi right here and if you spell Jedi completely by lighting enough spinners that activates your magnet on the bottom and you use it by pressing the center button. The interesting thing is it's not like Spooky's Alice Cooper Midnight Castle, which there it stopped the ball and it provided a moment, and then it shot the ball back up. Here it's very much player-controlled, so you have to time it. As the ball is going down, you press the magnet. It uses some of the Jedi letters up, and then you still might have a few button presses. So you spell it, and then it gives you a few times where you can press the magnet on a timed way to save the ball. And that's why you saw during the Stern stream, they were able to save the ball multiple times. Like one time the ball went here, but it went immediately back, and they pressed it again, and then it went there. So you could kind of get this kind of cool effect from repeated magnet uses. And on the Pro, it is a virtual ball save. Correct. I think that misses out, but we've seen that before in Foo Fighters Premium, that also had an outlane ball save, but only on the premium kind of thing. It's cool when it happens. Up to you if that's worth $3,000 or so. Your mileage may vary there. I think the pro is pretty good in this game. I think it's getting most of it. I think they spent on the premium. There's really only two game change effects, I would say. One is the magnet, and the other is the ramp that moves up and down. There are other things that are different on the premium, but they don't actually affect gameplay. So, for example, there's custom sculpts. You don't get your Vader head and your Stormtrooper head and your Jabba the Hutt cradling the ball, you know, for example. But that doesn't actually affect the game at all, you know. And you also don't get your mechanized AT-AT or AT-AT. Damn it, I messed up, Cale. I should have said it right off the jump. you don't get your hat at but you're right on the on the pro the the art scheme i believe that is return of the jedi uh theme and then um which uh is the is the premium like the hoth theme or is that the le the playfield is the same it seems to be but the background cabinet the cabinet cabinet But yeah, Cabinett is Hoth on the LE. I think I love that they're making the artwork different on all three games. They should always go back to that. Make the artwork different on all three games. Make people want one of the models more than the others. I think the Cabinett artwork is great. And for the most part, real hardcore Star Wars fans say the Hoth movie. What is that? Empire Strikes Back? Empire Strikes Back. that most people would consider the best. That's the best movie. Yeah, best movie. Right, most of it. We can kind of agree. Not directed by George Lucas, interestingly, for what it's worth. Oh, interesting. Maybe that has an effect there, you know, if you're into that sort of thing. Right. I think that, you know. But anyway. And also, I was talking about how friendly this game is in its approach. It's friendly in its layout because it's a fan layout, other than the dangerous pop-upers. It's friendly in its code. The multiballs are hit one shot repeatedly to get that multiball. It's friendly in its modes because to get into a mode, you're going to accidentally get into a mode frequently. When a novice comes up and just flails, they're going to hit stand-up targets. And after they hit those four stand-up targets, all major shots, eight shots, will light up for them to randomly hit and get into a mode. So you're going to see all sorts of players get into a mode right away, whereas in other games, it's totally accidental if the player gets into a mode. They also, a lot of other games, make you have to press the action button. Like in King Kong, you have to press the action button to choose a mode. Here, you just shoot a shot and the mode will start. So I think it's friendly to people who are kind of newer to pinball. It doesn't mean that there's not going to be depth in this game or breadth, but it's coded in a way that's a lot different than more recent Stern games that are more complicated to understand, I would say. And you can see there's fewer inserts on this game, frankly. Yeah, for sure. Back to my insert nonsense, which is just like, compare this to King Kong, and there's like a third of the inserts here, I would say. Right. That way. Other things I could talk about the game, we talked about the modes, we talked about the multiballs, we talked about the multipliers through the pop bumpers. That's, again, this ion cannon thing. I mentioned in the last podcast there's this fourth category, side quest or missions, things that go on in the background, things that Keith Elwin puts in all of his games. You know, in Avengers, it's collect the Avengers spinners for Hulk and right orbits for Black Panther and that sort of thing. And in Iron Maiden, it's Cyborg by getting to spinners and pop bumpers and targets. And Jaws has a similar thing for bounties where you have to hit enough boats and enough captive balls and enough drop targets. This game, interestingly, to my view, does not have that, actually. There is not a side quest in this game of stuff going on that's always going on in the background, where you have to do enough of X. They haven't said that yet, and they haven't shown that yet, and maybe it will, obviously, it's a super early code, but by looking at even the inserts, it doesn't suggest to me that there will be a side quest that I could see of that kind. It doesn't mean there's not extra little things to do in the game. You know, for example, there is the lower right stormtrooper, where if you hit it repeatedly, it starts to hurry up, for example. Or if you hit the right ramp five times, you get into hyperloop, which is like a time mode where you're trying to hit the center ramp as many times as you can and then collect back on the right ramp. And you could ignore everything I said if that was too boring. but what I mean is there's not something going on in the background of hit enough of this thing over the course of the game to unlock a side quest that's meaningful like Cyborg, for example, or Soul Gem, for example. Like I said, I might be wrong, but I don't see the inserts here that would even predict that, I would say. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll pause there. How do you feel about that? I think time will tell. That's true. I mean, it could maybe be something they show on the brand new larger LCD display. Yeah, maybe you're not getting a sense of this, but I could see how they're using this LCD display already. It's much wider, right? Maybe like 30% wider or so. I'm sure they'll say specifically later. And so what you can do is you can put the scenes in their own area of the screen. I mean, you could have done this theoretically with a smaller screen. It just would have been harder to see. And so then they're using the extra real estate to give you game information. So the game information doesn't block what's going on as the mode is playing. They're showing you the scenes. And here, for example, in this upper window that I'm showing you here, here's an example of a scene playing. So you're in this mode, for example, where Luke is learning to use the force, and the scenes are playing there. They're not interrupting you with the scenes playing. Instead, they're putting the other information on the mode on the sides. So they're saying, hey, you have 23 seconds left on the mode, for example. and here's how many more pop bumpers you need to get the shot multiplier. And then here's how many shots you need to get the center light speed multiball, for example. That's the Falcon feature on the center rep. So one thing I like is that they're not blocking your immersion by letting you watch the scenes. And I think that's an effective way to use the screen. Yeah, this is more of a game changer than I think people realize. You're able to have your heads-up display of information and full movies playing. Exactly, exactly. And it helps to start Spike 3 on Star Wars because in this case, they really got the assets. It's very clear from watching the stream. It's A-plus on assets that they have all the call-outs from the movies. They have clips with all the characters playing. I heard them. They have C-3PO doing added call-outs, like jackpot and making you feel bad for drains, that sort of thing. They have the music that's there. So the assets are there. And if you have the assets, and of course they have the clips, as you can see, when you have the assets, you could use the screen for them, and that's pretty clear that they're doing that. Sure. Some other things I could say about it. I was saying that it's friendly. Even the skill shot is friendly on this game for example you know if you full plunge all shots are lit and you just hit anything at all and it gives you the skill shot And that similar to Metallica actually which is overall not that friendly, but in the skill shot it is. When you do a super skill shot on Metallica, another board game, everything is lit. And you just have to hit that, and you're very likely, almost everyone can get a super skill shot on Metallica, because you just flip away and hit something. You hit a captive ball, you hit a snake, you hit a scoop, whatever, you're going to get the skill shot. This is pretty similar that way, too. so it's you know I would say code is inviting to people who are into Star Wars and want to play through the scenes and want to progress in the game does that make sense yeah for sure sorry about that alright alright so should we say anything else about it I don't know what do you think I don't know what else you got alright so that's a fair question what else do I have bottom lanes, bottom lanes like Mystery and also Bonus X on the Vader scoop, Mystery on the Vader scoop I mean, and think about that like Stranger Things, for example, where you alternated your inlanes, sometimes we'd get Bonus X and sometimes they would get Mystery, for example. I also think that's how you get your Vader modes, which I mentioned earlier, if you get enough inlanes doing that. I might be wrong about that, they didn't quite explain that, but I think so. There's a combo system in the game that it's probably not for people who really want to be immersed in the theme, but it's just for maybe those kind of extra players that really care about those details. If you make a shot, let's say I make a shot on the left and it's coming back, it's going to light all the right shots for a character combo. And if you, let's say, hit Chewy, you get your Chewy combo. And you can keep on comboing and collect your characters, and that progresses your value and later maybe multiballs, that sort of thing. So those are some of your character combos, which I know is not as critical to a lot of people in the game. But I didn't want to leave anything out, you know, that way. That's amazing. What else? Let's talk about Spike 3. What else are we getting with this thing? I know, of course, you talked about the larger display. There's upgraded. this is and i'll listen to the um little talk i had the zoom meeting yeah so this is the first time that they have a separate tweeter and mid-range speaker in the in the in the head of the machine but that's it only comes with an le yeah i saw the le have four that's correct but you can upgrade it and uh that's the one thing about upgrades though i wish that the pro allowed you to upgrade to expression lighting you know i get that it's going to cost extra but they didn't actually they're not even using the cabinet that allows you to use expression lighting on the pro oh in the pro but the premium you can yes that's right and the la comes with it yeah and what i really liked is uh seth said you can crank this system up without distorting it that's interesting yeah I guess he was implying I guess he's implying that the what we have now will distort and it will you can't you can blow these things out in the order system they made a big point of saying that not all the features of Spike 3 are in this game just some of them we don't even know what all the features are in Spike 3 we know the bigger screen we know the speakers like you said we don't know how fast Does the game boot up when you turn it on? Stuff like that. You know, there's all sorts of things that I'm sure they're planning to put in. One very interesting thing, there's almost like a standby state in Spike 3. Is that right? Yeah. So, you know, Spike 2, you have on or off. There's some type of standby state that would, you know, sort of like you have your gaming console in a standby and it boots up faster, right? Yeah, that that'll be available. Also, the always connected Wi-Fi now, you know, there's no more like USB dongle Wi-Fi adapter. It's built into the board. You know, it has like the the different wavelengths. So that'd be very cool. Yeah. There's one last thing I could say. You know, one of the things I mentioned in the first podcast is we came up with 10 criteria for what makes good code. and this is a bit early but do you think we should go through those 10 criteria and maybe Matt yeah see each one what do we think about yeah why not yeah go um I'll give you the reminder of what those 10 criteria are um number one is moments number two is theme immersion number three it's breadth number four depth number five is um clarity um six is risk and reward and seven is a fair and balanced and eight is innovation nine is i was so close and we'll explain that and ten is bugs and so just to go through a few of those now on moments i already saw in the stern stream they programmed one clear moment in the game i'm really glad they did this because moments matter especially to a game like this that i think is designed more for uh to with the people who are into the theme in mind. I'm sure it'll be eventually good for tournament scoring type players, but for people who want to go on the journey of Star Wars, this is not 2017 Star Wars with 40x multipliers and chopped up scenes playing at the same time. This is Mercy on the theme, and people who want that also want moments, right? And so if you get into your Death Star multiball, which you do through four shots here, and if you get into that, you get into your multiball, and the super jackpot, after you get enough jackpots, is, again, hit the Death Star. and when you hit that Death Star, the game dies. It dies and it plays the clip, a famous clip, of Luke using the Force and sending his missile right into the Death Star. Very cool. And that is a cool moment. Sorry about that, Cale. No worries. We're probably going to have to end soon. But anyway, I think that's a cool moment And what I like about it is that it killed the flippers. It ended so that you could watch the scene. And a lot of moments, you don't need this, but a lot of moments help when you can actually stop what's going on and let the player soak in what's going on. And I think that's a pretty cool moment that they created in the game, and it's like an obvious one, and it's one that should be there, and it is. Yeah, very cool. Theme immersion, I would say, you know, we can't say that the rules yet have deep themselves theme immersion, But the code overall, by giving you a lot of modes that you can play through the scenes, gives you clear theme immersion. Breath, I would say you have lots of choices. You have your character modes and your Java events and your beta modes, and that's really great to give you all those choices. And depth is probably going to be there from completing those three branches, you know, of modes. So I see that there. Clarity, I think this game is pretty clear on what you do. Four shots starts that multiball. Five shots starts that multiball. It's not more complicated than that. Jackpots are lit right away. It's not like the King Kong situation where you have to do something to get jackpots going. And then the back half is harder to say because, you know, the risk and reward. We don't know if there's even a playfield multiplier in this game yet, but it looks like it's not heavily reliant on multipliers. So that's not a big part of this game, you know, I would say. Fair and balanced. You know, you don't have to pick a character when you start that blots other characters, you know, for example. and we'll have to see the pacing of the scoring to decide the balancing part one thing I do worry about in the balancing is are players just going to repeatedly hit that center ramp, it gives you the multiball it can give you other things, is that going to be something that they nerf in some way so that you can't just do that like you might in Mandalorian for example and I think the innovation is in the magnet save on the bottom I think that's pretty cool it's sort of been done before but it's done in a new way here and then just to round it out, we can't really know I was so close just yet and because there's, I guess you're always close to another mode, but because there's no mission in this game, there's no side quest that I can see, it's not clear to me if you're going to feel like I almost had that big thing going, for example. That's one thing I want to look out for as well. Was that too much? I said too short of a time? Well, I know my kids want me to come out and play with them. What are you going to do with the kids? Well, we're going to play some pinball. You know what? I know this is going to be sacrilege right now, but I don't even have a pinball machine in my house. Oh, no. I sold them. Last time I was over there, we had some. You got rid of them, huh? Now I just go to the Electrobat Arcade because you guys have done it so well. Oh, you know what? That is a good deal. And all you viewers of this podcast should also go to the Electrobat Arcade. I don't care if you live in Iceland. You come, you fly over, and you play pinball. It's easier to come to Electrobat Arcade than getting your own pinball machines, I would say. Yeah. One thing about this game that I noticed, it feels like a Star Wars purist game. And just from the visuals, because if you look at the play field, you have the Emperor, you have Yoda, you have Luke, Invader fighting, Jabba, the Millennium Falcon, the AT-AT, the Death Star. You have a Stormtrooper helmet. Tatooine Planet or Hoth Planet. That's not about the planet. Right, right. Exactly. You have the Darth Vader helmet. But what you don't see on there is the Ewok Village. Yep. Which I was into. And the reason I say this is a Star Wars purist game, this is old school. Because a lot of people might not remember this, but in the original trilogy, the Ewoks were that day's Jar Jar Binks. A lot of the purist fans were like, what the hell is this? These little teddy bears. It was controversial. But there is people my age, almost 50, they really like the Ewoks because that was the movie they really remember, The Return of the Jedi. Yeah, you're right. I don't see an Ewok shot. I can't deny that. There's not even one Ewok shot on this play field. but I will be okay with leaving the Ewoks out myself. And I hope you will too, Kale. I hope it doesn't hold you back. No, well, there's an Ewok on the cabinet. Yeah, we'll have the pro as soon as they come off the line. Well, I look forward to playing it and seeing if I messed up anything in this very early emergency podcast, as today Stern has launched their new Star Wars game. Yeah, I'm excited about it. Well, my pen pal Kale, it's been a pleasure. thank you for uh setting up this time for us and um i'll go play you know what in honor of today i will go play star wars related games with the kids i will be the unlock and they will fantastic awesome very good all right thank you for doing this search this is going to be amazing i'm going to edit this and throw it up as soon as possible and uh we'll we'll see you next time sounds good bye right on thank you search