thanks for tuning in to loser kid pinball podcast we're on episode 135 i'm josh roop with me as always my co-captain scott larson and i can't believe i messed that up last week yeah it's all good hey uh but don't you have a game coming here josh i just got the call from FedEx this morning. Anywhere from 12 to 4 at my house on Monday. I'm excited. Jaws Premium bought it from Flip N Out Pinball. Hey, if you guys ever buy from Flip N Out Pinball, tell Zach to stuff one of these shirts. If you're on YouTube, tell him, I want a Flip N Out Pinball shirt, and he will put one in the box for you. No, I have mine upstairs. I should have put it on for tonight. You're representing. I feel bad. I'm not going to lie. This is my first time representing Flip N Out Pinball on the stream, on the video. Well, I do wear the shirt. I just – I have a lot of pinball shirts. My wife actually wears this shirt a lot more than I do. She steals it all the time. She represents Fulfan out. And honestly, she's better looking than me, so people are going to look at that shirt a lot more on her than on me. It's probably true. It's probably true. But yeah, Jaws. I'm excited. And it's the premium. You got the premium? It is the premium. Yeah. So why did you choose the premium? So I played the pro. And don't get me wrong. the pro is a good game it's a fun game but i played the premium and it just felt next level it made the premium or the pro feel like it was it was like a location game yeah like a location game something about you know i thought it would be kind of silly the the shark coming out and like it's only like a one-hit wonder right like no no pun intended or whatever uh but no that shark adds some depth adds some uh strategy there it's really cool and it's it's I like the expansion of rules that Keith is doing, and it feels more akin to a Godzilla rule set than anything else he's done. And so the thing I really like – I don't know if anyone out there has played Jaws Premium yet, but I really like – well, it's on the Pro 2 – the bounty hunts. So you can start a bounty hunt, and it's playing in the background. So it's like get so many pop bumpers, get so many spinner hits, get so many ramps. And tell everybody, remind everybody who haven't played it, what do the bounties do? So the bounties give rewards, and they say on the screen what they are. But you can kind of, like, if you complete a bounty, you get, like, 40 million points, depending on the difficulty of the bounty you go for. Okay. But you're going after sharks. Okay. And so it's cool that you can have that running while you're doing a mode or you're playing a multiball. It's something that I usually go for the bounty hunts first to get them going. so they're playing around in the background while I'm playing the rest of the game essentially so if you haven't played a Jaws I highly recommend it someone was saying that Jaws is nowhere near what Godzilla is and I think it's hard to compare because it's two different layouts we're going for different concepts and stuff like that I still think the genius is there I feel like we kind of get this weird I don't know if it's the community lately or what but it feels like A lot of people want to hate pinball or hate what it's become, and I don't get it. It's easier to channel negative energy, the bottom line. It happens every time a game comes out. It tends to be, if you're into statistics, it's a bimodal distribution where people are either all in or all out. There are very few middle-of-the-ground things. And I would say I have played Josh. I have played Jaws. I have not played Josh on Jaws, but I have played Jaws. I did play the pro, though. I didn't have a chance to play the premium. And I thought it was fun. It was one of those things where I'm like, you know what? This game could definitely grow on me. I didn't love it as in, like, best game ever. But to be fair, I didn't feel that way about Godzilla or even Medieval Madness the first time I played those. Yeah. It takes a while to say, okay, what is the last ability? And that's what makes it a great game. And I think this game has a lot of last ability. I feel something special when I was playing the premium. And I just had a smile on my face. It felt fun. And here's the other problem too, right? There's how many people in this hobby? There's tens, hundreds of thousands of people. Because there's five dudes complaining on Pinside or complaining on Facebook. It's the whole squeaky wheel situation. Based off the numbers of who listened to Keith, we had over 8,000 listens on that episode. So people are excited for this, and it's definitely moving units. Other games that are coming into distributors are setting while Jaws just had its second run of pro and premium. And I don't know of many that are sitting in stock. Maybe the pros, but the premiums, all the distributors I talked to said they're literally coming in the door and shipping out to them. Yeah, so it's a great game. If you haven't played it, find one. And especially now that there's more premiums out there, find a person and hit them up. Say, hey, I want to come play the game. Okay, and if you want to order it, call Zach and Nicole at Flip N Out Pinball. They've definitely helped us out. Now, I'm going to go a little bit out of order. I know we have our notes. But since we're already talking about Jaws, I want to jump into the modding of Jaws. So the one thing I do want to talk about, the Stumbler mod, it was announced. And so if you're unfamiliar with Stumbler, great guy. I'm like, you've been under a rock. Well, okay. If you're listening to us, then you have to be at least familiar with the mods. So he released a Bowie mod, which looks really great. I mean, he's known – I would say he burst onto the scene with the Tokyo Neon sign mod for Godzilla. Now, he also has a couple other things for Godzilla. He has the Lolly UFO mod for Godzilla, the Subway building for Godzilla, and the Noodle Bar. Now, these aren't – these are high-end mods. Yes. This is not some person printing them out on a 3D printer. These are high-end mods, and you are paying a premium for them. Yes. But they look amazing. So if you haven't seen it, go and look at the Jaws Bowie of Death mod. And Josh, what do you think about this mod? Is this something that you're interested in putting in your game? Okay, so this is how I feel about mods. I feel like they're unnecessary for pinball machines. I feel like they're eye candy, right? Yeah. Okay. Okay, unnecessary or not essential? I would frame it as non-essential, but go ahead. They're non-essential. I am not much of a mod believer. All the games behind me, excluding Godzilla, don't look at it, they don't have mods. I've had World Cup Soccer for almost a decade now. I've never modded the game. I don't see really a point. I get the bling, yada, yada. Stumbler has made me a believer in mods. he is next level like the man is insane when it comes to mods i have uh i have the tokyo sign mod i have the the lollipop ramp or not lollipop noodle bar mod and i'm on order for it's called the subway mod but yeah but it's it's the other building on the opposite side so it's subway building mod so basically godzilla has four possible mods which by the way okay these aren't cheap the the godzilla the lolly ufo mod is 177 the neo uh the tokyo neon sign is 228 the subway building is 304 and the buoy death 295 for oh yes you're looking at a thousand dollars in mod to make it look very pretty by the way you are making it look very pretty very pretty and honestly i i feel like it elevates the looks of this game i know that sounds stupid because i'm like i'm like i don't hate mods but you know looking at stumbler stuff and i agree with you i feel like stumbler's been he was on the scene but when the toko tokyo sign came out it was like this man's serious yeah and then when i received it and i installed it the craftsmanship even the even down to the packaging like the man is just meticulous uh it was packaged well it looked great and so i'm not gonna lie i'm in on a buoy of death mod okay yeah yeah if you haven't seen this so on jurassic park on jaws the lower reel um i'd never noticed this but there's a giant piece of plastic that goes around the back of that sure and i was like because when i saw the buoy mod you replace that plastic and it looks like waves and then this buoy is actually floating it it rocks back and forth like it's in water and at the top of the buoy is a dmd and it will tell you like encounter or uh multi-baller it actually tells you what's going on in the game which is amazing to me like this is holy crap and my concern was is like maybe it's going to block some of the view or whatnot but really back behind that reel there's not really much to see there is the shack for uh quince shack but it's not i was nervous he'd be blocking shots right it doesn't look like it's doing that like i said before it's 295 honestly i would prefer the silver or topper but we're we're comparing a 300 dollar well okay like a two grand or most most definitely be a minimum of a thousand dollars probably probably and so my point being is is like i i don't really buy mods i feel like some of them are very cheesy i feel like some of them are just cake toppers but well that's what your toy story i know i know they're not cake topper mods but you have to admit when you first saw the toy story stuff you that's where your mind went but i feel like stumbler has made such a professional product that when i put it in my game it was meant to be in my game right like you i i know i've talked about this and i feel bad if the gentleman's listening but when i bought my very first pinball machine uh amazing spider-man i bought a pinball machine at the same time for a friend he's like if you're going there pick me up one so i go to this other guy's house and he had taken astro turf and astro turf the whole apron to his good no good gophers and then he had taken like a cake topper golf cart and stuck it back in the back like he just when you looked at it you knew it wasn't meant to be in the game right when i look at stumbler mods they do oh my game just quacked i was like what was that noise now i'm seeing it behind me so uh two fighters oh is it updating yeah it's updating it's updating hey insider connected update your games while you podcast kids you know it so if you hear more i'm pulling a tom here thanks tom from triple drain but yes sorry i've talked so much but i really i am a firm believer in these mods if you haven't checked these out and and the list opened like two days ago or three days ago i mean it hasn't been that long and there's our it's all right three four hundred people deep it's it's crazy right it's it's not yeah it's not super fast you're now you're right i am looking at so i did pull up the playfield pictures because i wanted to double check exactly where where it goes in the game so if you look at it it actually yeah there's kind of this um it looks like a rocky burr like a shore i i i don't live by the ocean i don't know how to like it's it's one of those a wave break things where they dump a whole bunch of water in or sorry rocks in so the waves can okay i okay i've been drinking a whole bunch of water in the ocean i've been drinking this yeah it's this sal pellegrino zero blood orange so i don't know maybe the uh maybe the buzz is going to me but uh it's like those those wave breaks i think that's what they're called and then then it just has some you know it's it's a plastic i mean what else are you going to say right yeah so this i wonder i bet that the lights in the mod are probably synced with the lights under the play field for the shark yeah you know when you start chumming the water yep i would bet that that's going to be synced uh like you know synchronized i guess because that was that was surprisingly cool when i played it in person is having them, you know, cause you had the lights that were blue. And then once you dumped the chum in the water, it became, they became red lights and it illuminated through the playfield. And that was, I didn't think that was going to look as cool as it did. So this is definitely bringing you in. And I would argue the same type of thing as, uh, like expression lighting kits, right? Yeah. Like expression lighting kits for music pins in my book. That is, that's a, a necessary upgrade. Yeah. Because it does feel so much different when you have the, the synchronized lights feels more like a concert. Um, I am with you too on mods. Um, I guess that my limit for, this is where I'm trying to find that balance because I, I totally agree that I am a topper guy. I did buy the most expensive topper I have is the rush topper. Yeah. And I was playing Rush the other day, and my wife came out from the office, and she's like, hey, that's a cool topper mod. I was like, yeah, it is. I didn't tell her it was $1,800, but yes, it is a cool topper. And so there is something about the experience. I try to walk that line, though, because you're like, okay, so how much am I willing to put in the game, and am I willing to bling it up that much? and what so i also feel that if i'm going to do it i want it to feel as if it is next level for the oem right so you have the the playfield plastics which definitely they're fine they're there to give some sort of experience but if you're going to put a mod in it needs to take it to a next level yeah like i don't want to glue a matchbox car underneath the hood and put an led light on and call it a james bond car yeah i agree but there is there is a limit of of okay what do you like to do so this actually so you're in on the stumbler mod that's what you're saying yeah i'm in on the stumbler mod okay yes so and the other thing too is so there's only if i am going to mod the game okay i think there's only two other mods that i i like feel like either there is a necessity or it's something like i don't mind spend money on money on okay and that would be a color dmd okay because the the perk of a color dmd is too it's not game specific right so you can put it in your want right yeah so if you have a world cup soccer and you you go to sell your world cup soccer move it to your whitewater or whatever um the other mod i'm not a fan of art blades but i love mirror blades really air blades yes i love mirror blades because i'm kind of the opposite i i prefer art blades over mirror blades really i i like the mirror blade because it gives it reflects the light and i feel like it makes the game feel more open i know it's really stupid but it like in my attack from mars limited edition yes it has a mirror blade and it looks really good on that does monster bash have those i want to say yes i'll have to go look i i it did on my le yeah well okay so i have the le so it probably has those things i tend to like the the art blades a little better but the mirror blades definitely something on the sides other than the black i think look good right so i i do want to get into this a little bit so we talked to again our our friend over at uh at uh um triple drain so travis murray had mentioned that he knows people who they actually get like a pro version a premium version and an le version oh yes and they mod up the premium version and then they decide if they want to which version they want to keep and so i i'm curious what people's approach to games are like that's now that seems like overkill to me to buy three games to mod one up because the minimum amount of mods if you're going through that you're probably looking at anywhere from 500 to 1500 on modding it out yeah and then you're then you're really getting into well should you've just got the uh the le which is pre-modded basically but i'd be curious to find out what people find the best mods are for games like i did buy the the armor package for deadpool and so i i still haven't installed it because i i'm notorious for buying mods and then not actually putting them on games so i i do have the armor package that i haven't put on the swords the b arthur swords and um i do have the tokyo sign mod from stumbler i just haven't installed it in the game yet and i actually still have the flying monkey mod um from steve govea i've had i've had it for like seven years i've had it for like seven years but uh i did steve i did install the gust mod the sarcophagus mod which if you're man if you're gonna get something for iron maiden you need to get that one that is awesome uh yeah so i i try to find like that balance of what i figure is worth it in games because it really is it doesn't affect the gameplay but it does it does take it up to a next level as long as it doesn't look like astroturf with a glued golf cart and that's the other thing too some of these mods are ridiculous like yeah they look like they look bad and then they're charging 50 75 100 and i'm like that's why i'm like when when i'm spending 250 to 300 bucks on a stumbler i'm like it's worth it like you can see the cafterman it looks professional and really it looks better than the professional right yeah yeah yeah there's some start even stern some of the stuff they release you're just like yeah i i'm sorry the toppers are i i have a love-hate relationship with toppers like there are a few of them where i look at and it's like yeah even if i owned the game i wouldn't buy that yeah fun fact about b arthur because you were talking about deadpool yep did you know in the movie in deadpool 2 when ryan reynolds is wearing his b arthur shirt from golden girls okay uh he paid for the royalties to wear that shirt the the movie company wouldn't actually they're like no we're not paying for you to wear that shirt he's like fine i'll just pay for it myself because because deadpool wears those shirts in the comics yeah and yeah i'm learning because you know deadpool and wolverine has been announced and so all this stuff's coming out of the woodworks and whatnot but uh yeah he it's crazy And by the way, if you're going to do a sequel, George Gomez, to Deadpool, do a Deadpool Wolverine. Yes. I am not kidding. Sell that. Package it. Get the licensing for it. That will sell. That will be such a great game. And if you're looking at a Marvel-type hookup, you need that hookup because Deadpool is a great – it's a brutal game, but it's fun. it's it's still that's one of the few games i've moved out of my basement to take a break from that i regret moving out of my basement it's it's a good game yeah it's it's a really good game and it's funny because when i first played it i was like this game's so simple it's annoying and then i started playing more of it so this is actually quite quite it's so good yeah if anyone wants to trade me my iron maiden for a deadpool pro let's let's have a conversation yeah no you need to get the premium man you need the drop targets because really it's more fun okay i i'm a sucker for drop talker targets though like i will pay talk it's stuck it's uh i will pay the money for the drop targets because it it's just i think it's just fun it's that that's one thing i love in pinball is seeing how the game changes and when you hit a target it just just goes down i love seeing that so that's what i'll get just pay the money and get the premium and then you get the disco ball true so you bring up a point of stern needs to get a hold of deadpool and wolverine to do that machine yep but i'm tying this in with i saw on on facebook from colin who's over kinetesis and this week in pinball and he poised a question because everyone's been hearing the rumor john wicks next from stern more than likely it's john borg as designer tim sexton on code uh with Probably Raymond with that, you think? You think Raymond's going to be in that? I think he might assist. Who knows? With Randy Martinez on artwork is what I'm hearing as well. Okay. And Randy did like Mandalorian, Star Wars. He did the line drawing stuff, yeah. So the question was poised, is John Wick too violent for Stern Pinball's brand that they're aiming for nowadays? granted we were talking about this before and they've made walking dead they've made game of thrones they've made medallica they've made game of thrones they've made acdc yeah they've made iron maiden heck even heavy metal yeah but that i don't know if that was i i don't really count heavy metal i honestly if you go back it's kind of brutal too like there's a part where when you Yeah. And Eddie rips the ball out of his chest like it's his heart. Yeah. It's pretty it's pretty gnarly. It's now I will say if you're going to look at it, it's still probably like PG PG 13. Yeah, true. It's not it. Now, Iron Maiden has intentionally done that to make sure that their art style has been has been safe enough. Right. It's been kind of like risky enough, but not like too bad. I think of a story back in the day where they had – so when you used to buy a record, okay? Yeah. So there was one time they did like a sample piece with Eddie as in – okay, what is it called? Is it the Vitruvian Man? You know the guy who's – the Da Vinci thing. Oh, yeah. He's got the two hands up here. Yeah, where his arms are out and up like that, okay? Yeah, yeah. Well, they made that for the decal in the middle of the record, and you know where the post goes. Yeah, yep. Right. And Steve Harris from Iron Maiden is like yeah we can do that It be funny It would be funny I can totally see someone parent walking by and saying what you listening to okay this is also the the band that have the uh the 666 number of the beast yeah so so they were probably walking that fine line anyway but apparently devil worship is is less offensive to moms than um uh than a uh a metal post in the groin i guess since those jokes have been around for years oh yeah yeah yeah but my point being so do you think john wick's too too violent for for stern and what they're aiming for okay i am on record saying that i have not watched game of thrones nor will i watch game of thrones because it is too much for me i say here yeah this is a personal preference again i've never watched it My cousin described it to me. He's like, to sum it up in two words, blood and bare chests. Yeah. I was like, oh. No, yeah. And there's a lot of that stuff, which is not – and it's not for me. Now, this is not me, by the way, saying that you can't enjoy that. That's the beauty of living in a free country, folks. Yeah, totally. That's your jam. They are not catering to all audiences. And this is the same thing as doing the Supreme Pinball machine. like the supreme pinball machine is not aimed at me one i i truly didn't know anything about supreme before the pinball machine came out nor do i really know anything about it since it seems like the the app that i there was an app that came out on iphone and it was the i'm rich app that had like you paid ten thousand dollars for it and it just had a picture that said i'm rich which by the way whoever sold that brilliant because they they sold like 10 of them but hey that's a hundred thousand dollars but uh it seems a little bit more like a flex right yeah like that's not that's not for me it's i'm sure that it's a fun game but i'd pay five thousand dollars for it you know it's it's it's like the home version right yeah so is john wick too violent they could actually release a version that is super violent or they can release a version that's a little more PG. They walk that line with Deadpool, right? Deadpool, it's an R-rated movie. There's a lot of violence and a lot of language in that. And so they released the Deadpool comic, which is still, he's still sarcastic. He still has all his lines. But they made it enough for a home environment. However, do they need to make everything that's for a home environment? I would say no. and pulp fiction pulp fiction is selling that is not like hot cakes yeah that is not a a traditional family friendly movie you're not taking your kids for move for a saturday matinee to watch pulp fiction it has earned the r rating oh yeah yeah it didn't earn it it like blew past it yeah yeah so so can you release john wick yes i i would say absolutely and there are enough people who will buy that and stern doesn't have to release something for you know everybody every time in some ways it's a little bit like um like spooky right yeah you like the play you like the layout but you don't like the theme get looney tunes i'm you're talking about text you're talking about texas chainsaw yeah yeah but i'm just saying like texas chainsaw massacre obviously not for the faint of heart yes right uh but if you want if you like the game you can get the looney tunes version now they're only releasing a game every year or two right spooky it's not it's not a fast release stern's releasing one every four months so they don't have to have something that is for you know pg for everybody and they release the sopranos yeah there's like a mode that has like it's an f word mode yeah i forgot about that yeah yeah and you got dance and strippers on the yeah exactly yeah and the playful too yeah i i'm i'm kind of like if the money makes sense uh in stern you know it's more uh inclusivity right like this hobby isn't but you don't have for everybody yeah not like every party has to be a kid-friendly party it's true it is true and so i think honestly if this is the same company that made playboy yeah that's true i i don't think it's a big deal to do john wick i just it's one of those things like like you said i enjoy pulp fiction i think pulp fiction is a great game it's not coming i watched it one time and i'm like i'm probably not going to watch it again but okay here's here's just a question though um i just googled it what do you think the worldwide box office of the john wick movie franchises just draw it i guess uh combined from one to four seems like it okay uh four movies yeah four movies i'm gonna guess over a billion combined because it's about 250 000 or 200 it's over a billion combined okay you don't think the stern would be interested in that kind of in that kind of audience and it has a huge fan fan connection like there's a fan base that goes after this and it's again it's the demographic that's buying pinball machines well and literally like everyone's clamoring for a matrix well there's okay not everyone there's a good chunk of pinball people i hear they're like i want matrix i want matrix right i take matrix if it's the first movie only. Don't put 2, 3, or 4, or whatever 5 they're going to make. Just the standalone Matrix 1. That's the only one that's worth anything. But my point being, if you made it just off of 1, it was a soft R. But the only reason it got an R was because of the violence. It doesn't even say the F word once. Wasn't it like a kick to the head or something? Honestly, I don't know if this rumor is true. If you're a listener and you can verify the story my understanding is is matrix released really close to the combine shooting and they didn't want kids to go see this and and to then think it was cool to to do more shooting and something to do with like also like parents and with the combine shooting there was a sensitive subject so they gave it an r so the teenagers weren't going and seeing this i don't know how much truth there is to that but that's really like honestly outside of there's really no swearing there's no sexual content in the first one like they're shooting a lot of people there's yeah there's a lot of laser beam shots this is guns so i i thought even then like the shooting i don't feel like something you wouldn't see in like a pg-13 movie there's not a ton of blood like there is blood like there's you see bullets going through legs and stuff like that But I still like, it's not like Pulp Fiction. Okay, Pulp Fiction is not PG. Yeah. But you see what I'm saying? Like a gun goes off and the whole back windshield is covered. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Where Matrix is not like that. So I just, that's why I'm saying like, it'd be really weird to me. And granted, I haven't seen the John Wick movies. Maybe they're very, very violent. They are very violent. The amount of people that he kills is like a ridiculous amount of people. What did they say? 500 people combined over four movies? Something like that. All because they killed his dog? John Wick deaths. Death count. There we go. Okay, here we go. John Wick death count is... Oh, jeez. Just give me the number. Just give me the number. John Wick kill count is 439. Yikes. That is a lot of people. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's all. What did we learn? We learned you don't kill this man's dog. i know seriously after he loses his is it like he loses his whole family and the only thing he has left is his dog something like that and then here all right speaking of violent speaking of brutal brom stoker black knight sort of rage okay he's going back on the line just the pro not the premium okay does this shock you does like the rumors are like they're trying to like take the the wind out of Steve Ritchie's sails. No, I don't think so. No, it's, it's about money. Like Stern doesn't care. Like, like legit Stern doesn't care about the, the, the programmer. You could argue that they were releasing the monsters to, you know, you could argue that. Okay, fine. But to take the sale was like monster bash. Uh, um, remake was coming out at the same time. Was that what the rumor was? No, because Steve Ritchie's not at Jersey Jack I'm just saying like people like have that thing now is it possible that there are ways that they can like poke at people sure yeah and you had Foo Fighters come out with like an alien thing and you're like wait what does that have I know that Foo Fighters is kind of alien but it definitely was hey we can whatever you can do we can do better i totally get that yeah but that's not the driving force like the driving force of this is the pros were the topper they re-released the topper by the way when i bought the topper i bought it for like 450 bucks and what's it selling for now a lot more was it two grand yeah i think so what that's a 400 increase yeah is that what we're about yeah yeah is it more than that is it two grand or is it 1500 still for a topper that was 450 when it was originally released yeah but here's another insane thing too this game seriously is probably just getting released like re-release for the topper right like there's no yeah is there demand for demand for Black Knight Star Rage, my understanding it was the worst numbers wise it was one of the worst performing sterns out there. It was and this is the problem right and we've seen this with Stranger Things, we've seen this with Monsters, we've seen it with even Ghostbusters to an extent where it comes out, it goes through a rough patch, it doesn't keep up with sales and so they cut it short and then people say hey i i still want so this is the supply and demand thing right um i think the the topper is still one of my all-time favorite toppers yeah it is really cool and uh okay i i have a love-hate relationship with black knight i and i kind of love to hate it in some ways because i wanted to love it so much yeah because the the but the upper play field okay if if it's a if it's a build and materials issue how much is one of those stupid physical ball locks i don't know okay do you think it's got to be a coil and a post so you're 20 bucks plus the the phone do you really think it's that cheap that physical ball lock up top I mean, I'm betting it's like 150 bucks. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Something like that. You don't think that you could. Okay. Again, this is me. Pure speculation. Okay. But you don't think that they could pull that out, put a flipper, a pop bumper, some targets up there and make it worthwhile up there. Because that is the most vacant play. I mean, it is so vacant. They made it transparent. well not only that but like p like tournament people hate it because yeah you can sit up there all day long if it's not brutalized yeah it's just it's a pointless upper play field especially when you look at black knight you know 2000 you look at black knight it just yeah there's there's a purpose for the upper play field right yeah um so i i just i just wish that it would okay to be blunt i think the pro is a better game yeah 100 that's probably why they're only running the pro yeah but there are people who there are people who disagree and that's totally fine you know they uh but this is my preference i would rather have the pro version of it my friend actually sold his le to get a pro yeah it's one of those games that like if you really do like it there's no reason to hold on to the music's awesome oh yeah the music's it really is a great game it really is the vibe is so good it's a dark horse it really is like it i'd pick this game over some of other stern's catalog it's just yeah and you know what man if i wish this one had the expression lighting kit i talk about that would be great yep with with the music well and i think it's a testament to how good the topper is when i mean really look at ninja turtles does a similar thing it's a technodrome but the eye so bad but the eye moves just like the head does on on black knight Foo Fighters just came out. It's the Megatron. Not Megatron. The Foo-tron. It's head moves and talks to you. We're reproducing this in different games. And so the concept's the same. It might not be as well executed as Black Knight, but we're going back to the same well, essentially. Like I said, it speaks to how good Black Knight's topper is. That's the only game that I know of where people are like, yeah, it's a good game. If you slap the topper on it, it's worthy of going into the collection. Okay, I just pulled up the picture. Okay, that mechanism up there, I'm guessing was at least $200. Yeah. That looks a little more engineered, but I don't think you need the physical ball lock up there. No, you don't. You really don't. And having the black knight. Now, I know that Steve spent all his money, his building material, on that ridiculous, high-cost Black Knight dude. But you have to admit, it's really cool. It really is. And honestly, let's be honest. This game is just kind of a love letter to Steve Ritchie and his career, right? Like, he is the Black Knight. So it's a cool way to honor him in a modern age. And it's a total gut punch. I mean, it is not an easy game. It's a total gut punch. But I just wish that that upper play field had more. Oh, okay. More something, some stand-ups and whatnot. Yeah, it just felt like the upper play field had nothing. Yeah. Speaking. I don't know. It will sell more toppers, but I don't think there's a lot of demand for it. I really don't. Speaking of gut punches. Okay. There are fans of the Blues Brothers crying around the world. Did you hear about this? Home Pin has acquired their next game. They're releasing. It should be shown this weekend at Pinfest Newcastle. Yeah. So we'll have footage of this next week. Okay. So, Josh, I usually take the first take on this. What is your take? I don't think either of us really have much of a connection with Blues Brothers. I've never seen the show. Have you ever seen the show? I've never seen the show, but I heard it's a classic. It's a classic. It tends to be of the demographic of people who are probably in their 50s and 60s. I feel like I don't need to see the Blues Brothers, and I'm going to tell you why. Why? I watched Eddie Murphy's Is It Delirious? The one where he's wearing the red suit. Yes, Delirious, he has the red suit Raw, he had the Blue suit And Delirious was actually kind of funny Like, okay Everybody It Okay, I'm not going to get into the Whole, like, PC Stuff, okay, that stuff is totally Not PC, and I will argue that It was a different time It was an early 80s Let's just say there's a lot of stuff that would not fly Today in comedy yeah um but he's a funny guy but yeah it's uh it was a different era absolutely so what are you getting out with that a lot of the comedians i enjoy so gabriel inglesias like reference that seeing delirious is what made him want to be a comedian a lot of people reference eddie murphy's delirious right yeah so i'm like well it has some really funny skits like the ice cream man if you haven't heard the ice cream man that one's great that was awesome yeah so but my point being is is i watched delirious and by the end of it i was like i don't get it yeah like why is this such a classic then i realized the reason i don't get it is because all these jokes have literally been stolen from this and placed in other right movies i've seen growing up so by the time i actually finally said eddie murphy's delirious i'd already heard all the material because they'd been quoted in everything else right so where i'm getting at with this is i could probably watch blues brothers I'd probably love it, but there is a lot of cultural references to Blues Brothers. There's been a lot of bits done in other movies and other TV series. I feel like if I watch Blues Brothers, I'd be like, I've seen this before. I haven't, but I have. It's deja vu. Personally, I am a fan of the old school Saturday Night Live. I feel like they have lost their way a little bit. They come out with a gem every once in a while. But the old school, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, up to – You're talking old school, like the first five years. Yeah, and even up to Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Farley. So that's the 90s stuff. Yes. The 80s was kind of a no man's land. The 90s, the early 90s was a little bit of a – it was an embarrassment of riches, really. They had Chris Farley. They had David Spade. They had Mike Myers. They had Dana Carvey. And ironically, Dana Carvey of that mix, he was the star of the show. Dana Carvey didn't do anything after. Now, I know he had a lot of health problems. But the fact that he was the star of that era and you had like Adam Sandler who went on to make like $4.5 billion in movies. Yeah. Yeah. so david spade once said because they're like would you ever be on who wants to be a millionaire as a host or whatever he's like i was already on that show once and they showed a picture and it was that cat it was like the 91 or 92 cast of saturday night live and literally the whole cast had made millions like individually they'd all made millions by themselves yeah so anyway the point being do you know okay speaking of eddie murphy though do you know why eddie murphy was so ticked that saturday night live for years it was a david spade joke which one was that so you know how he would do like the hollywood minute and okay david spade is a sarcastic guy right yes yeah he is a sarcastic guy so he would go through and you know eddie murphy had a lot of hits yeah and then he did oh it was like the vampire Harlem Nights and then he did like a vampire like okay then he just like lost it and just did a whole bunch of stinkers I think when the Shrek revived his career yeah yeah when the vampire thing came out yeah he because he would just have his little minute and he's like he pushed he put up the ad you know the movie poster and he said oh look a star's falling and they just kept moving on and eddie murphy was so ticked at that but he like what like he was so mad it was accurate but that's it was accurate it was actually yeah he just put a whole bunch of stinkers out there okay where were we going with this obviously his brothers we're we care more about saturday night live than blues brothers yeah absolutely no that's really what it comes down to honestly uh-huh if you haven't listened to dr john did a fantastic job if you haven't looked go to the pinball network do it right now maybe after this episode of interviewing podcast oh of what is his name mike the owner of home pin and it's just such an insane oh ranting of a man that's just giving the middle finger to america and yes hey if that's what your business wants to be cool whatever yeah he didn't win bonus points from that episode and basically just saying he he's not going to do business in america because he had like six bad experiences with customers i thought it was like three returned yeah all things from america basically just painted everybody in america is like unreliable and like wow that's what do we have interesting almost 400 million people here in america we've based the whole demographic off of four. Anyhow. But my point being is I've played Thunder Turds. I've played Spinal Crap. They just... They're not for pinball players. No, they're not. It's a weird concept. You're making pinball for non-pinball people. It just... It doesn't make sense to me. But hey, obviously you're still making money or you have learned how to swindle people out of money and maybe that's why you've moved from australia to china to taiwan taiwan yeah he yeah he moved out of taiwan out of i'm surprised oh is he moved out of taiwan no he moved out of china to taiwan i i really haven't kept up with him the i wonder how the earthquake's affecting him obviously not too much if they're releasing blues brothers i i would argue that the blues brothers okay we're not talking like okay there's like a-list titles b-list titles c-list titles this is in that cult title like it's a cult you know it's it's kind of along the lines of if someone decided to release rocky horror picture show yeah like you're gonna have some passionate fans so yeah i think i think if you released rocky horror picture show and did it like the way you did uh elvira's house of horrors yeah it's el gangbusters i think it's the way you present it may have it It may. It may. But the. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Christopher Franchi is saying Rocky Horror Picture Show. Look, I already got Dr. Frank and what was his name? That was Frank. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I already got that set up for you. Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's one of those. It's a cult classic. It's more of like people who are in their 50s and 60s really just who. So who going to buy it People who are like grandpas who are just looking for hey I just want something in my house And maybe they don care Maybe they don care about competitive pinball or having it work super well Yeah. Maybe. Okay, but your level of excitement on this from a scale of 1 to 10? With it being home pin, maybe a 2. Okay, let's just say on the theme alone. on the theme i think it's cool when they do you know obviously i wasn't a huge fan of godzilla as a thing but i think keith knocked it out the park so well that i'm like it makes me a believer godzilla okay but godzilla as a theme is a two it is it is a cult thing it's it's campy it's obviously it's hard for me to judge well on a theme that i've never seen the movie too so it's Yeah, but Keith spun Strong to Gold, and maybe you would put Godzilla as a three just because there are people who are really fans of the campiness, right? The Blues Brothers, they haven't been relevant for 25 years. Yeah. And I don't see that they're not going to get revitalized from this. So you're probably selling to an older demographic who's just looking for something in the game room. but as a theme itself it's not for me i i would show zero interest in like this my prediction is if thunder turds and spinal crap gives me any idea of where the gameplay is going to go that's going to be terrible with blues brothers we can officially call it snooze brothers right now it's gonna be terrible but okay this is what i've always said prove me wrong yeah prove me wrong i if i'm wrong great these are our predictions seriously i'd happily these are our predictions and if if you put out a good game then we we have no problem with saying we got that one wrong yeah definitely i think unless this is the one thing i do appreciate that people when they listen to us they say we enjoy what you're saying because we feel like you're fair imbalanced yeah like no one's necessarily like safe they're like we're not gonna thrash on someone right like this is probably the the meanest we're gonna get okay we'll still criticize though when we feel that it's constructive criticism right like it's yeah us saying hey this is where we think you fell short this is where we think you can improve and yeah and we enjoy your guys's products hey i wonder if there's a whole bunch of drop targets in the back that spell blues brothers Maybe. How many would that be? Like 13 or something? No, there's just going to be a center ramp that you have to spell Blues Brothers. Oh, that'd be awesome. You know what? You might win people over by doing a long enough sweepable drop to target a bank. That would be kind of cool, actually. And then if they spat out like 13 balls like Apollo 13. yes love it genius yeah i wonder if it'll be like just the blues brothers or if it'll be because they did like a a sequel with john goodman because you know um what's his name i bet i bet it's the old one and the other thing too is honestly john blushi died the only redeeming quality of this is like 4800 for this game yeah okay then you at least nailed the price point yeah you nailed the price point so if you're finding something that's like the equivalent of a home pin like a home version sorry like a stern home version then this may this may actually be similar to that i think the stern home versions are actually quite good but i agree you know it's in that it's in that ballpark at least they're not trying to sell it for nine thousand dollars true true uh so yeah all right and our last note on on on the notes we have for tonight okay we want to say congratulations to mia harboski she is the new person down at cgc she's the person that took ryan white's spot um slam tilt you beat us to it they released an episode two days ago by the way ryan white's out he's been out since december you know i i've heard amazing things about mia already i've heard distributors are loving her she's doing a great job me if you listen i don't know if you do or not of course she does she like welcome to the show all the time yeah if not butch will butch will be like hey by the way loser kids say congratulations and good job seriously i'm hearing great things so um and that's good i okay we've always said we love what cgc does we don't like the speed at which they do it but we do love what they do and i have four of your games downstairs so it obviously something's working right in in what you're doing can i can i give you some inside baseball i don't know if i'm gonna get in trouble for this or not oh go ahead uh i actually was in talks with cgc about working with them uh but because i was unwilling to relocate to chicago uh i was it wasn't for ryan's white position i was actually asking to help out i feel like their communication is terrible and i feel like their social media presence is non-existent well okay a lot of these companies their social media presence probably can do some upgrading yeah but they kind of wanted a an all-in-one package yeah and so um yeah hey maybe she can do that right maybe really honestly i think i think the bar is kind of low for cgc when it comes to that stuff i if if me is already knocking it out of the park like people are saying she is then i i don't see a problem moving forward i think she'll do great and if she's over social media awesome if not i'll give you some pointers reach out so okay i'm not saying we're perfect with loser kid but there's some easy stuff that you could be doing with your social media accounts like they have like three posts on instagram yeah i don't know if there's a pulp fiction post on there yeah josh knows a lot more about social media than i do i i've kind of checked out a little bit on social media okay i i do have a question for our listeners though i am i i will plan on upgrading my simpsons and i could either do the uh the color dmd the lcd or the led version okay i i actually have tried both options now the lcd it actually works great for like pirates of the caribbean like the stern one yeah and it it worked really well for that for spider-man it didn't work out so well like i and and um Iron Man. The LED actually worked out a lot better for that. With the movie picture pixelation capture thing, it actually worked better with the LED. So I wonder if someone has a strong feeling about Simpsons with the LED or LCD. You can go on the website and kind of do a side by side. Yeah, I know. I've done that and I've seen it. And that's why I've gone through. I think a lot of people prefer the LCD over the LED. I think they do. But you know what? I think a lot of people like the ability to blend the dots. And I think they look worse when you blend the dots. I do too because it's almost too rigid still. They're not as fluid. Let's just say, especially the Simpsons one, it looks weird. Yeah. That's why I just keep the dots. I still like the dots, yeah. but anyway that's uh that that's my my reach out anything else josh anything else you so we do have some person we do have some person we have a person that did reach out and left four questions they wanted to hear okay all right let's go ahead julie thanks for sending these in first question is what is a dream theme you would like to see made into a pinball machine who do you want the company what company and design would you choose to make it um i okay i'm not hiding that i love Keith Elwin machines because the the bottom line is keith is keith has that secret sauce so i i will take keith um on any game right okay that's not to say other i i can't like other other designers too but if i'm choosing one choosing keith uh i will choose stern just because of uh they're they have a price point and reliability that works out for most and stern has that uh that big bang for your buck okay yep dream theme okay man i actually i'm trying to figure out like what are the things that i would definitely want i know that i've narrowed it down to two okay so what i'm right what theme would you like so i'm in the same boat with you i want l1 i want stern to make it okay i want either a the aquabats yes dude go watch so to be okay it's a free i just find it funny this was like like this is back from like our fourth episode or something like that we were talking about dream themes it's still your dream thing five years ago and you want dang you jack danger for teasing it on facebook the other day about do you want to see an aquabats pinball machine yes we do okay okay i think it'd be easy it's anywho okay uh it it sets itself up if you haven't watched the aquabats super show or listen to their music i highly recommend it it is goofy it is silly okay it's not for everyone okay second one and i think it would do gangbusters is scott pilgrim versus the world okay the theme is still going strong after 20 years they just released a new netflix series called scott pilgrim takes off uh which was an awesome rehash of the song of the story the i mean the cast if you could get the cast chris evans brie larson who did captain america michael sarah todd brie larson oh oh she was in that she was in that okay uh the guy in captain She did Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel. Sorry. She did Captain Marvel. Well, and Chris Evans was Captain America. And then Todd, I can't remember his last name. It's not Todd. Who's the guy that plays Shazam? And he also is the voice of Flannery. Zachary Livy. Yes. He was in it. He was one of the evil exes. It has so many people, and they all love that movie so much. I was listening to an interview from Chris Evans the other day, and he says they're still in the same chapter. Granted, this movie came out like 15 years ago. They're still on the same chat, like email chain or whatever, and it's very active. They all love that movie. They actually voiced the characters for the new cartoon series on Netflix. So I just – it would be very easy to kind of Deadpool-esque where you're fighting the evil exes. It's easy. Like there's seven of them. You have to fight them to then be with Ramona. I just think it's a great theme for pinball and it would just if you've ever seen the movie like when he's fighting there's a part where he's like doing multiple combos like where he's just like and it's like 56 57 58 it'd be so cool like to have a fight mode where you like have to follow the arrows right but the final shot is on a spinner and when you hit the spinner it does the combo count of the 56 57 as he's beating the crap out of Matthew Patel or whoever it is I think it'd do great. I think it's old enough that you're going to hit an older generation, but still relative enough that the younger generation is going to be appealed to. Plus, it's got the whole video game thing going for it, like classic video game thing. So, yeah. That's my spill. Okay, so we've talked about themes that I think would be great. I really do think Deadpool and Wolverine would be a hit. I would love to see that. That's your dream theme? Or you're just saying that? You know, okay, dream theme. We've talked about this. I would love to have a Super Mario Brothers game. Yes, 100%. Like, that is an absolute no-brainer. I would take Super Mario Brothers over Zelda, and Zelda would be a close second. Because I haven't played two... Okay, full disclosure, I've only played two of the Zelda games. Which ones? The NES ones. like the old, the original, original gold card. The side scrolling everyone hated because. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I have that one. Well, the side scrolling is the two, number two. Number two. Yeah. Adventure of Link. Yeah. Yeah. And so I've done the first two. So that was, you know, those are kind of fun. But I would definitely take Super Mario Brothers. Okay. I'm just going to throw out a few others that I think would be great. I'd love to see the killers. The killers would be great. A great pinball machine. not their later crap their earlier crap okay yeah that's that's almost a band right yeah basically yeah up to day and age you can do all that stuff up to day and age uh definitely do the killers um and or i i would pick muse for you because i know you love oh music be great music music be fantastic and i think you could do a whole pin just off of knights of sidonia like literally that song you could you know i got okay but i will say simulation theory on muse because it has that whole 80s retro video game concept and in the concert he goes up to a video game and gets sucked into it kind of like tron yeah like it would be i think muse would be music great i those are music pins and we know that i i said the next question is is what mom or dad band would you like to see made into a pin so so i'm gonna i should have told you that too because pink would have been great by the way pink i still say pink would be a great uh band or a sorry performer to do it you taylor swift seriously if you put out taylor swift one my i could buy one and put it in my grandma in my mother-in-law's house well you could put one in every uh yeah taylor swift should have a pinball machine oh what is the store where you're going to get your girl's ears pierced you shouldn't because like they hot topic or something or a hot topic but they're like in every walmart or whatever. It's one of those little girls stores that... Anyhow, I mean, you could buy a Taylor Swift pinball machine and put them all in those. Yeah. Anyhow. Yeah, definitely. Those are just off the top of my head. And you can always throw in like Van Halen. Okay, there's a whole bunch of 80s rock that you could do. Van Halen would be great. Motley Crue, probably not safe for work, but it would sell. Alright, so moving on to the next question. You're saying a bunch of bands. So which mom or dad rock bands would you love to see themed into a pinball machine? You know, Kay, I would say that Journey would be great. Journey would be great. Endless God keeps on turning. Yeah. No, because it does have some slow songs. It has some jammers. Def Leppard would be great, too. Bon Jovi sold a billion albums. Yeah. Um, so really you're looking at kind of that glam rock era of that, of, um, the eighties. So those would be the huge ones that would still be quite safe. I, everybody would love a Van Halen really, but then it'd be like, is it Van Halen or Van Hagar? And I grew up more in the Van Hagar area era. And so I tend to like those songs a little more, but I appreciate the other songs. Um, yeah. but you could even do just a pinball machine off death leopard hysteria yeah no i agree uh the aquabats no okay yeah i will check out the aquabats i i know i bust your chops on it but i will check out the aquabats i will send you a couple songs that aren't so crazy i'll send you the ones that are definitely um so so the band i would love to see uh some 41 i think okay that's Okay, that probably is dad rock now. It is dad rock. But the cool part about them, I don't know if you know much about Sum 41. Don't know anything. But they do appeal to an older generation too because they grew up on Iron Maiden, Juice Priest, Metallica. So they did incorporate a lot of those elements into their music, especially in the earlier years. So there is kind of a classic rock vibe to their punk pop stuff. They just released what they're claiming to be their final album. They're hanging it up after this tour. it's called heaven and hell if you have not checked it out is amazing heaven is the pop punk side and then as they grew you know as as they made it later into their career so the first 15 years is like pop punk the last 15 years has been metal and so and when i say metal it's more like you know like 80s like speed metallica metal kind of stuff you know uh not master of puppets yeah yeah yeah master puppets stuff like that um with a little more heft to it okay modern edge uh but if you haven't checked out that album it's a double album amazing from start to finish uh but yeah i think some 41 you've got so much content there because they did this whole playing off of that 70s 80s riff of they had a fake band within the band called pain for pleasure where they dressed up looking like judas priest and they were you know devil worshipers or whatever you know like the whole gag from the 80s and whatnot and iron maiden uh you could you could tie that in easily there there's so much good music from from first album to last album it i think the thing about some 41 is is they took a lot of what they loved and they tried to mimic it and expand upon it and they did a really good job of that so that's why a lot of it sounds like blink-182 green day iron maiden so i i don't know i just think that some 41 they are technically a dad rock band they're from the 90s i'm a dad yeah okay i think i think if you're going to go with a band i'm up for lincoln park muse is great green day is amazing okay okay so i just thought of three three bands that uh okay um there is one that will sell definitely to new york especially ron and bruce um steel panther they could definitely do the steel panther band uh yeah Rod and Bruce would definitely go in on that one. Okay. I did think of Green Day, American Idiot. Just do an American Idiot pinball machine. That would be great. And the one – okay. I don't know why this has totally escaped us, but why has there never been talk about an Aussie pinball machine? I don't know. And that's what's funny is like when Venom was coming out and Aussie was – Yeah, Aussie showed up in that thing. And we all assumed there was going to be Ozzy's music in there, which turned out to be a total gag. But Ozzy – like why isn't there an Ozzy machine? I still don't know why there isn't a Pink Floyd machine. If you're going to start talking about like – Come on. Snooze. Still conceptualize? Okay. All right. Fine. Pink Floyd, yes, they sold a billion of them. But that would be like the Eagles. Laughing the fast man. And I agree with you. like like crazy train is going to appeal to me a lot more than money yeah but but concept wise there's a lot there okay but i okay ozzy should should have a machine okay i am i am on the bandwagon ozzy should have a machine i agree i'm starting ozzy should have i'm starting the engine so do you do ozzy or do you do black sabbath you do ozzy okay ozzy sold way more as a solo artist than black sabbath yeah it's kind of funny black sabbath was like a springboard for a ton of careers and then the people just never needed ozzy left yeah ronnie james deal left yeah zach wilde um i mean there was multiple guitarists was that ever part of black sabbath or was he just ozzy's guitarist maybe he was just ozzy's guitar because he because they ironically the uh uh the the original guitarist that Ozzy started with his name, Randy Rhodes. And, you know, there's the song flying high again. He actually died because he was high doing like loop the loops in a plane. Yeah. And then they had, they had another guy for a while, like JP something. I just remember him cause he, he looked very unique. He was half Asian. So he, he looked unique, especially for an eighties band. And was it Tony? iomi is he the gentleman that no i think it was like wasn't it jp or something i can't remember um billy ward geezer Casey Butler ozzy osborne no i i think the guy immediately followed randy roads there's a ton of people it's funny it's funny when you have when you go to wiki and it's like it tells you like four members and then literally under that it says list of black sabbath and heaven and hell members like it's just no i'm i'm just talking ozzy osbourne members yeah what i'm saying though is there's a lot of people that that springboarded off of black sabbath is all i was trying to say okay jake lee that's what i was thinking of so you had um randy rhodes died and then jake lee took over and i think he was only with him for like uh an album then i think uh uh zach wilde came on board and yeah anyway uh okay holy crap the list of people that have been in black sabbath is ridiculous well you get paid and that's the bottom line right yeah that's true yeah well if you want a touring gig that's definitely where you eat where you go oh yeah anywho yeah i agree with you black sabbath ozzy osbourne should have had a pinball machine by now yep i think there's still a pill there as well i think if you're gonna go it would totally sell it would totally sell so here's another point too so so gene simmons said that there's no such thing as rock icons anymore and you can't consider nirvana one because they only did a couple albums and and well gene's wrong i agree gene's wrong gene's wrong uh nirvana single-handedly uh like there's pre-nirvana and post-nirvana nirvana basically started all the all the grunge stuff yeah it's yeah it it it's it's not even close not even close and i i remember that uh and there's a story that i i have no proof on but it was the uh david coverdale from white snake as soon as you heard nirvana he's like well we we had a good run our career's over i think every every generation has a band right like the beatles inspired so many people yeah and the And those were 64 to 69. And then when you look at bands that made it successful, Van Halen. There's Led Zeppelin. I was going to say Van Halen was very influential. We wouldn't have Pantera without him. And most of your metal would not have been there. Then Nirvana, after Nirvana. I think the problem is, we've had this discussion before, is the music industry has pivoted so hard. It's fragmented. Yeah, it's fragmented. Because no one we don have and this is part of society issue too We don have shared experiences anymore because everybody and and we benefiting from this Right And that the whole point of pinball Pinball has thrived under this This. Hey, we have an interest in pinball. So we're breaking away and forming our own community. Yeah. So so we definitely thrive and benefit from it. So there's benefits and detriments to it. But there are very few giant bands anymore. You could argue Taylor Swift would be one. Maroon 5 would be one. You could argue even Rihanna for worldwide stuff. You could even argue Bad Bunny. But people would know a Maroon 5 song. Very few people outside of a certain demographic would recognize a Bad Bunny song. so i was listening to if you've never listened to finn mckenty he's really he's a really good gentleman that kind of specializes in kind of punk rock from about mid 80s up to this point like he's he's actually got a pretty good finger on the pulse of what punk rock is nowadays yep and he was talking about like is rock dead like we hear this like that's what that's just the old said and i agree it i think it is i think it is so he's like are we just old geezers staying on the front porch saying like get off my lawn uh his point being i i really like this concept so he he brought up art art was kind of stale till about the mid-1800s i want to see his work then you had an explosion of artists they were doing different things pablo picasso you know jackson pollock all this creativity and everything but then all of a sudden it kind of felt like everything that could be done with art was done with art but there was a good 70 year span of where it was just everything was new and fresh right and but ever since then like art hasn't died off obviously art is still around it's still very appreciated it's very loved uh but there's no like art icons right like we still talk pablo picasso we still still talk van gogh right um i mean you could argue banksy but i feel like banksy's more of a it's it's because of his political stance it's a brand more than we have brands more and even picasso became a brand yeah and you look at his early stuff and you could tell he was an amazing artist but he became a brand correct but his juxtaposition was like if you do that with rock like rock has been around it's had a really good about 70 year run from the 60s like if you start with elvis who you could probably say was the start of rock and roll yeah and the beatles perfected in the 60s or gave it a really good bump in a direction but then we started fragmenting from everywhere like you got ramones that started punk you've got you've got acdc that did more hard rock you know what i'm saying like and so we it's all kind of been done like metal like rock has it's kind of got to the last breath of well everything that's fresh and new but it doesn't mean it's dead but it still means that I would argue that it's not dead, but it's dead as a massive selling mainstream product because there are new bands out there. There are – even there's – I have a friend who's really into like European metal, and I've heard some of the new metal coming out of there, and it's very awesome. It's kind of like the Iron Maiden has that symphonic metal sound. It's not the scream metal, but it has the fast metal, and it usually has a female voice because they can hit higher notes. And it's really good, but it's not mass consumption like it used to be. Because when I grew up, there were, not kidding, there were four stations, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. and don't even the pbs stuff didn't count yeah that's it and so we we all consume the same stuff we don't do that anymore no we don't and it honestly i think taylor swift has done an amazing job of being able to break boundaries of we live in a day and age like you said everyone kind of has their entertainment right taylor swift's the only one that i feel like has somehow invaded everyone's entertainment, right? Whether it's her music, whether it's her love life, whatever it may be. She, she's been able to, yeah, to maintain some sort of connection. So there really should be a Taylor Swift pinball machine. There probably should. But I guess my point being, I just feel like rock and roll, uh, whatever, whatever you want to call it. Uh, I feel like we've kind of perfected that and there's still gonna be great artists that come out. There's still great artists that are producing stuff. But they're not going to be Led Zeppelin. They're not. They're not going to be. Even for everything U2 did, they're not the Beatles. Well, I think the other part, part two, is there's just almost no money to be made in music anymore. There isn't performing. There's not writing. There isn't performing. Correct. Like, I don't know if, do you know who Dragon Force is? Have you heard that song, Through the Fire and Flames? No. so it was huge back in the 2000s because it's it's very like 80s-esque metal like okay i i think they call it like power metal over in europe okay uh it was on guitar hero it was in guitar hero 3 and it was considered it was the hardest song to play on there okay but those guys blew up substantially because of that the it's called through the fire and flames if you haven't heard it okay go give it a listen it's definitely send me a link and i'll listen to it yeah definitely you'll love But if you like Iron Maiden and stuff like that, you're going to love this song. We did kind of go down the rabbit hole onto music themes. Yes. Okay. So just a quick couple minutes. Other themes that would be good. Sorry. Let me finish my story, though. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were done. Sorry. Sorry. No. So my point being is, so this massively successful song, a band that's done very well for themselves, they got paid $3,000 for Through the Fire and Flames for Guitar Hero 3. when they were talking to the guitarist he says three thousand dollars might sound like a decent amount of money but then you've got to split that he's like there's five members in the band yeah no it's nothing we had a manager we had the record label he said there was probably about 10 different people that got a cut yeah split three thousand dollars 10 ways no maybe a hundred bucks legit nothing however jet the band jet got the breakthrough from an i like an ipod commercial yeah the dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun and they got their big break so that's not necessarily a bad move for marketing now whether they whether they can sell concert tickets that's another thing but it's not but i agree i agree with you you have to be a performer if you're going to make music you're going to have to be a performer my chemical romance that's why they've done so well is because they were able to take conceptual albums and then apply them to a live action Okay, legitimately, the first time I saw like the Black Parade, though, I saw it without sound. And I imagined a completely different sound coming out of that band. I legit thought it was going to be like some sort of speed metal. Yeah, it's such a good album. If you haven't checked out that one, that's okay. Sorry. So what was your question? Okay. Well, okay. We went down the rabbit hole of music. Okay. And obviously music pins we know sell and do great in a home environment. The question was themes. Okay. Now we did, I talked about Super Mario Brothers. I've talked about that other stuff. A couple of the things like Andor would be an awesome one. By the way, if you're a Star Wars fan and you haven't watched the Andor series, you definitely need to watch that. It's along with Rogue One. It's my favorite stuff coming out of Star Wars. Other things that could be – are we talking like movie themes? Are we talking – She just said your dream theme. So just pretty much – that's why I gave you top two. I dream old. So I probably go with more of the nostalgia themes, things that I thought were cool when I was 14. So we're almost at an hour and a half. let's get these last two questions the third one's okay how do we feel about a bernie brown pinball machine yeah i'm sorry you're gonna have to go for an oprah machine um you know you get a machine you get a machine just see anybody doesn't know bernie brown is this is a standing joke because she like talks about her feelings i don't think there's i actually have read i'm trying to think what book it is something about being vulnerable and that was hey if uh if you're not vulnerable i can't be vulnerable in pinball i'm trying to defend okay okay okay and the final question which is actually a legitimate question okay all right what would you like to see happen in the hobby in the next three to five years oh um i would like it to solidify a little bit what i'd really like to see is some of these other companies step up and become more of a I don't want to say a legitimate competition with Stern, but to be closer to Stern's production and their level. The challenge is I fear that the market is kind of saturated right now. And I'm concerned that we went through this crazy nostalgia period over 14 years from 2010 to 2014. And I wonder if we're set up for a little bit of a drop off. I think we are. So I think we are, we're getting there where we, it was artificially boosted by the pandemic where it went kind of crazy and the prices went up. And sadly, I've said that I think that really hurt JJP because they jumped their prices up so fast, so much that unless you're a hardcore fan of a JJP game, you're not going to buy it new. I would buy an Elton John for $8,500, $9,000, kind of in the Sturm Premium range. I would buy that, but I'm not going to buy it for $12,500. So what I would hope for would be more of a solidification of CGC stepping up their production, Jersey Jack finding a more accessible price point for everybody. and people producing games that are similar to Stern Quality and Reliability. So I don't feel pigeonholed to avoid certain manufacturers because there are reliability issues. That's what I wish. I think what's going to happen is we're going to have a cooling down effect. There's going to be a few companies that are going to disappear. And you're going to see it cool off to probably more what it was pre-pandemic. where you're going to have a lot of machines for used machines that you can buy and sell for around $4,500, $5,000. And I wonder how that's going to affect. I think it's going to cool down the manufacturing because if people can't buy machines and artificially flip them for what they paid for them, then you're going to see people cooling down and looking at used games more than they are new. Yeah. my hope is um i guess i've been kind of paralleling what's going on right now with the 90s and i don't think it's as dramatic and the reason i say that is because in the 90s we had gotley bally williams data east and like capcom and we were slaves to arcades really yeah like we really were totally dependent on what was on location yeah so when the arcade died pinball was on life support yes um i i just want to see like same with you solidification i want to make sure that like pinball can Carl Weathers what we're going because there's going to be a decline there's just it's not pinball's fault it's the fact that the economy's rough i mean we're not going to go political or anything here but it's just you can see the trends and people people's wallets are very much strained and they'd rather buy food than a pinball machine you know i'm saying or pay bills which i don't taking my kids out to fast food it's 60 to 70 bucks for a family of five it is and that's not political that's economic and that's what pinball is is economic yeah and usually when when times are tough and economically the first thing to go are luxury machines the jet skis the the the rolexes you know what i'm saying like it's that's it's economy 101 yeah uh i just i i see pinball in a really good spot right now um to Carl Weathers the storm uh i i do see numbers are going to deflate um but other than that i just think overall it's going to uh i hope for it to just the quality of games that are being built right now still happen i feel like we're in a really good spot where the games really when i when we first started doing loser kid this was five years ago um iron maiden i don't think had been released yet or maybe it had been released um yeah i felt like yeah what what's what were the games that were hot then but think of before iron maiden we had deadpool but if you weren't around when deadpool was released and maybe that actually came out after iron maiden it did not deadpool super well no it didn't um but really i was more of like well why buy a stern for even a used price was about 4500 the cheapest kind of pros at that point were high fives brand new in box um when i can get a bally williams for two grand and this is a 90s johnny mnemonic judge dread fish tales you know it wasn't whitewater monster not monster bash medieval madness attack for mars white waters are still lower but they anywho they were still accessible yeah yes they were still accessible my point being is is um i just feel like uh stern games since the release of l1 games have elevated and i would prefer to own a modern game than i would have bally williams yes i would rather spend the what was it 9 500 bucks or it was less than that for godzilla premium for me but i would rather spend that much money than on a medieval madness and don't get me wrong i love medieval madness it's a great game yeah you're getting into a little bit like owning a you know people talk about i'd love to have a donkey kong machine yeah and i'm like actually you don't and i'll tell you why because what happens is it's great eye candy and it looks cool and you play it and you realize that this game was meant to be fun for 90 seconds yeah it's not meant to be fun for a long period of time and in many ways i now i still like the 90s games i the the remakes i have i like them and they're fun because my kids still like playing them but it is not the same depth of rules that a godzilla has that a rush has you know everything that raymond put into the rules and i'm still finding new things in the rule says i'm even messaging raymond saying okay explain this to me i'm not figuring this out and it's like oh you do that instead of that okay it's true but that's not the level in medieval madness the medieval madnesses shoot the ramp yeah now that's it well and that's the thing too is i feel like we really live in a cool day and age like i i know we've talked about venom hasn't done great in numbers and i do feel bad because i i feel like eddie's a great designer and and these games are pretty awesome. Took a risk. Honestly, if Venom had released 10 years ago, I think it would have been gangbusters. However, I still think you're going to see pre-Venom and post-Venom because they're trying different things with Insider Connected. My point being is from 2000 Stern, literally year 2000 to maybe 2016 yeah i can probably count on one hand the games that people just absolutely love from stern you've got lord 2016 probably about or yeah 2016 so 2000 to 2016 yes well i could count a lot i i would i would say to 2000 to 2010 you're talking like tron like pre-tron there's like it was tron lord the rings and simpsons pinball party probably there yeah but if you go after that i mean you've got a lot of acdc metallica um i'm saying they're good though but there was nothing like like okay those two are great it's not it's not the same level of you have walking dead in there it's not the same level of code though that they have now is that what that's what i'm trying to say that's what i'm trying to say i'm trying to say like every game that comes out now i can be like yeah i could see owning that game for a long time yeah but there's so much variety it's like well why would i own a venom when jaws just came out or you know i'm saying like right i can wait till the next one it it just feels like pinball has really became become like oh all the games are great where it used to be like oh austin powers yeah cool oh roller coaster tycoon i still wish shrek were a good game i own shrek and i i could not get rid of that faster fast enough it was just not fun it's a decent game no it's not but it's one of those games that it's a great theme it's a great theme my cousin who lives in town owns that game and i didn't read the rule set and i i beat the game on my first try and i was like Oh, that was kind of easy. That was a game, yeah. Yeah, it's a game that exists. Okay, we're at an hour and a half. All right, yeah. Did we cover the last one? What was the last one? It wasn't Brene Brown. Oh, yeah, we're pinball. Yeah, we got it. Where are we thinking? We're good. I would say we're cautiously, well, we're hope-timistic. We think it's actually going for a downturn, but we hope for better. I hope for They won't crash like it did in the 90s But I agree with you We were dependent on arcades Now we're dependent on home I think financially Even if we're in an economic depression Like we are right now Financially we are better off now Than we were in the 90s I think people have more disposable income Now Than they did then I could be wrong That was my point so uh cross fingers so so we're saying john wick here next week yeah and i think that john wick will be it okay it's going to be a theme that people are going to be excited about so it's either john wick i okay here's my prediction it's john wick i find this interesting though so john wick or we have heard and this has been so another podcast so i'm not i don't feel like i'm revealing any information but a remake is being made this year it's going to be the very first spike 3 game is what we're hearing and the remake is a re-imagined version of metallica is what i'm hearing yeah and that's but that's been the rumor for a long time correct but i find interesting yeah is john wicks next supposedly john borg's doing it yeah but if that's the case do you really think they would release john wick and metallica they'd replace i know it has nothing to like designer really doesn't define theme yeah i i don't think it's that i i wouldn't overthink that i don't know either but i do find it interesting i do find it interesting all john borg's games are not in production right now that everything is not stern which ninja charles has been discontinued rush has been discontinued yep uh i'm still surprised that rush was discontinued when it did because it's there was still demand for it yes it's really weird at one game of the year yeah and then they're like and it was already it was already canceled i think what at one game of the year yeah yep sorry i gotta pull this up really quick i'm just just really quickly i'm pulling up john borg so so rush was his last it's really weird to think too rush was in 2022 and it was the beginning of 2022 like i remember uh we had ed Ed Robertson on because he worked with that for bare naked ladies and and it was like end of january beginning of february i think is when we had him on yeah i think there people are still waiting on their expression lighting kits so rush teenage junior turtles monsters which is the year that i remember literally when monsters came out that was the first episode we ever recorded loser kid he's talking about monsters uh before that guardians of the galaxy are they still making guardians i swore they did a phone call and they were like joking i think they ran like one other one okay so that's that's probably canceled as well aerosmith hasn't been made for years kiss hasn't made me made for years walking dead hasn't been made for years i mean seriously we're back to tron and metallica days this is this is more than a decade ago yeah yeah there is literally no John Borg game being built right now. So I don't think he'd be a shocker if he released John Wick and Metallica. I'm still holding out hope for a Vault edition of Lord of the Rings. It would sell 5,000. So buy Metallica and show your support for Metallica. I bet this is a test run to see are these viable. I've actually never owned a Metallica, but I would be interested in a Metallica. so all right man uh if you want to get a hold of us we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com we're on all the socials uh usually i've been linking in in the show description just click on that it'll take you all of our socials facebook instagram x uh now threads uh we're all at loser kid pinball if you want some sweet swag hit us you know loser kid pinball podcast no sorry silverball swag slash loser kid pinball and check it out neil shelton now owns the place so thanks will for you know leaving the impression for your support absolutely yeah man and helping us all these podcasters and thanks neil for picking up that torch uh what else what else i think i think that does it um give us your last word scott okay uh bruce go give ron a big hug Thank you.