It is officially here, guys. Stern Pinball's Avengers Infinity Quest by Keith Elwin has finally been debuted today. And it has been a whirlwind day today. And I'm very happy to see this pin. I was very excited to hear when it was announced officially. And then when it was officially released, I was even doubly excited about it. And if for whatever reason you haven't seen it yet somehow, which I got a feeling about 99.9% of the people have already seen it, Just look up Stern Pinball or go to Marvel.com or just look up Avengers Infinity Quest or go to my YouTube channel if you're not already here. So there's plenty of ways you could see it. But, you know, pretty much this game right here, to me, it just deserves a standing ovation, even before seeing it flip. And the reason why I say that is Is because I have so much faith In this designer and Keith Elwin Just based off how Iron Maiden played How Jurassic Park played And it just To me there's There's no reason to doubt him at this point Do we doubt it at this point That he is the greatest of all time When it comes to just designing pens We can totally ignore His playing ability which of course Is already the greatest of all time also But the fact that this man can pump out pins the way that he does is so damn impressive. This is so impressive. And we'll talk about Avengers here in just a few. But I want to take a second to really talk to you guys about just how great of a moment this really is. And, you know, I think we all seriously need to take a step back and realize that right now in this current form, we are seeing somebody that is in their absolute prime of designing. Somebody that is in their absolute prime of designing. And that's exactly where Keith Elwin is. And I was talking to several different people about this earlier. And it's funny. I had three different people make the same analogy. analogy. Three different ones make the same analogy, and it all makes sense. All of them said, this is like watching Tiger Woods in his prime, like the young Tiger Woods at the Masters, either walking down the fairway or just crushing everything in sight. This is exactly what this is. I mean, there's nobody that's even on the same page as Keith Elwin as a designer. I'm sorry, It's just not. There's no competition here. And I think we all really need to just really realize that and appreciate what we are seeing right now. The fact that these types of pens can be designed from just his perspective with rule sets in place, with everything that it is, and it makes for such an enjoyable experience. and when we take Avengers into consideration, this is the perfect storm. I guarantee as of right now, I'm recording this at five o'clock, September 2nd, 2020, the day that it was released, everybody realized it and I guarantee as of right now, LEs are sold out and on top of that, just looking at the design itself, premium or LE is the way to go. Pro, pro is still great. A lot of Elowen's pens, the Pro matches up with other designers' premium designs. They just do. But when John Youssi the Pro compared to the premium in LE, this legitimately feels like an excellent upgrade. It really does. He has fully outdone himself, and it's quite spectacular to see. And I'll have, you know, we can discuss the details and the finer details of it here a little bit later. But in terms of what he's able to do right now, and there's a lot of people right now talking about, you know, I understand some people don't like the theme. That's fine. What I don't understand right now is there are people out there that are concerned about the price because Stern did go up on their MSRP. But I honestly think we need to take a step back also, guys. We really do. So bear with me here. we need to really think about this we are getting a pin like i said just a second ago of somebody a designer that is in their prime there's no comparing anybody else to what l1 can do honestly right now we can still get a stranger things le for anywhere between nine thousand $99, this is new in box, to I've seen upwards of $94.99 new in box. That's still out there. Now, even if we take basically the $9,100 price, do we honestly think, honestly think that an Elwin design pen is not worth $200 more? Can you honestly sit there and, or if you're listening to this, can you honestly justify that it's not worth that. I can't. I've tried. And yeah, I love the theme. I love the theme, admittedly. Elwin's my favorite designer. But I cannot objectively look at this and say, oh, yeah, there's no way. That should be the exact same price as what Munsters was, as what Star Wars was, as what The Black Knight was, as what Deadpool was, as what Guardians of the Galaxy was. What are we talking about, guys? What are we talking about? The ones that are concerned about the price, what are we talking about? This is an expensive hobby. Yeah, I wish the LE was only $5,000. But when we're talking about the difference of $200, come on. Come on now. Think about everything that is in this pen. It is loaded. You legitimately have basically right at five rams. If we count the Avengers Tower, which is essentially a half ramp lock, at least four and a half. I mean, this pin is nothing short of amazing. The wire forms, even the Doctor Strange area, the little area that pops up. If you look on the pictures, if you notice, they've already adjusted that area to where you're not going to have to worry about chipping happening. They already saved us from having to get cliffies to put around that. There's a lot of things into this. Drop targets, just everything. Vucks, magnets, like $200 more. Come on. Come on, guys. I mean, that's just where I'm at on it. To me, this is worth everything. And, you know, people are going to hate this, hate me saying this. I might even get down votes, bring them on. But here's the reality of it, guys. I feel like Elwin pens are underpriced. They are underpriced. An Elwynn pin is a near guarantee to sell out day one for LEs. Iron Maiden was tough to get. Jurassic Park was tough to get. And now Avengers is going to be the same. Now granted there always a couple of stragglers out there I mean that bound to happen But guys let face facts Let face facts This is in another league This is in another league Elwin is one of those guys that is so head and shoulders above everyone else that he deserves every bit of praise that he gets for this pin. Every bit of praise. And there's no way in hell that any game he designs, in my opinion, moving forward, I don't see how he can be the same price as all the other designers. I don't see it. I don't see it. I think that he lends a definite argument for dynamic pricing, for his types of pens just to be just like the, what's the word for it? Creme de la creme, like just the top, just the maximum level of what you can achieve. I mean that's where I'm at on it And that's what I believe To me if I'm Stern I would seriously be considering From now on Putting him on pins that are just super LEs You're going to get it I mean can you imagine I don't know how they do their bomb I don't know if every designer gets the same Amount of bomb I imagine it's somewhere Around the same because obviously They don't operate on a on a dynamic pricing model. It's just, it's the constant MSRP, and then it gradually moves up over time, which is a natural occurrence. Whether we like it or not, that's just business. But this man can do more with his bomb, I know, more with his bomb, building materials for those scoring at home, than what anybody else can. You can't tell me any less. When I see this pin, it is amazing. There was no way that I thought Iron Maiden and Jurassic Park could be outdone, but it has been outdone. Where do you go from here? Where do you seriously go from here? This is so much further ahead than everybody else. And if I'm Jersey Jack and I'm about to release Guns N' Roses, I'm sure it's going to be great. I'm sure it's going to be excellent. I'm sure it's going to be jam-packed as well because Jersey Jack pins are naturally supposed to be. If I'm Deep Root, I'm American Pinball, I'm just like, well, crap. And they may or may not be like that. But at the same time, if I'm another company, I am figuring out right now, today, how I can get Keith Elwin with my company. Elwin is by far the most talented individual in pinball when it comes to this. And he is quite practically or quite possibly the only person in pinball that you could literally build an entire business around, an entire company around. A brand new pinball company, if they had Keith Elwin designing for them, it would sell. Now, we could argue all day long whether or not those pins would actually get out with the frequency that Stern would. But all I'm pointing out is, is what Elwin's power is and what he does. If this man is not making a quarter million of dollars a year, that is a travesty. That is an absolute travesty. Somebody should pack up the money truck for him because this is just amazing, and these pens will sell. There's no doubt in my mind, and it should definitely reflect. I mean, he deserves everything that's coming to him, and it's just flat-out amazing. But I think that there is a situation in which you could argue for dynamic pricing. any Elwynn pin that comes out, if you put out like 300 at 12,500, you would sell it all. If you put out even, you could probably put out 350 at 15,000 and it would sell. It would sell, no doubt in my mind. I mean, can you imagine how popular would Batman 66 be if Elwynn had designed it from scratch. I mean, it's, I mean, that's the way it is. He can touch pretty much anything. And, you know, I'm at the point right now, you know, I've, I've played plenty of different pinball games. I have all kinds of machines, like you can see behind me from all types of different designers. And I am literally to the point right now that after this theme, cause this was my dream theme, I'm like, aim be damned, move into the future. I just care about who's designing it. and the only pins that I will put in my arcade moving forward or in my home arcade is just going to be Elwin-designed pins. Like, it's not even – I'll play the other pins. I might bring in a pro real quick for a month just to learn it, and then it's gone. But when we're talking bolted to the floor, you've got to play it because the experience will be great every single time. It's Elwin all the way. these machines, what the big difference is too, what the big difference is, and anybody out there that's listening, if you're an above average player or even a top end average player, you'll understand what I'm talking about here. What really separates Keith Elwin pins from other people is you can attack it from different places. You can attack it from all different angles. There's many ways to score. There's many ways to get to where you want to go. And I can't say that for every other pen. I can't say that for Star Wars. There's one very specific way to blow up that pen to get to your eight to 10 billion. Ninja Turtles, there's one very specific way right now where all the points are at, where you can just rack up millions and millions if you can dial it in properly. Munsters is the same way. Of course, that's a little bit shallower rule set naturally, but there's only one way to attack it. And a lot of these pins are like that. And when it comes to pins like Iron Maiden, Jurassic Park, and now I assume it's going to be Avengers also, judging by what the inserts are saying and what the overall play field looks like, you can attack those pins from different angles. You can do different things. You can have different roadmaps that I've talked about before, especially whether that's in, you know, a tournament, whether that's at home, you can have all kinds of strategies, whether you're going loops all day, ramps all day, power features all day. It's, I mean, come on, there's nothing to it. And this right here, you could already tell because you have the grid, because you have all kinds of ramps, because you have the gyms, you, I mean, it's all going to lend itself to a way that is a very cohesive rule set. and it's going to be very cohesive in the sense that you can do different things in it and you don't have to play the same game every time. You don't have to. And that, when you don't have to do that, it's very difficult to get bored with a game like that. It is very difficult. And what Elwin really exceeds that is nearly every shot will return back to the flippers. I mean, think about that. Nearly every shot will return back to the flippers. And I know, you know, there's plenty of other games that do that, but his games do it in such a way that is buttery smooth. It is buttery smooth. And he does it in such a way that you want to hit the different shots. You have a reason to hit the different shots. You don have to hang out on the right side of the play field You don have to hang out on the left side of the play field You don have to park the ball somewhere You have a reason to use every single different part of the play field You have a reason to use your combos. You have a reason to stack things together. I mean, it all generally makes sense. So that's my Elwin soapbox right now. He's the GOAT, plain and simple. He's the GOAT. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if from now on any pin he puts out, the price goes up. get it. Whether we want the price to go down or not or stay the same, you can't look at this and tell me that that's not worth $200 more than what has been on the market. You cannot justify that. If you put this pen in front of anybody, if you just took it as a whitewood, theme be damned, just a whitewood, this would get picked. It would get picked at least, I would say eight or nine times out of ten, at least, over anything else that's out there right now. That's not an O in Pinnacourse. I mean, it just would. And so when we bounce this to what the theme is right now, because we have all these things coming together, and Stern is doing it right. The fact that Stern got with Marvel right up front is amazing. We saw Marvel release this earlier today on Facebook, and their Facebook has like 33 million people on there. Now, granted, not everybody's going to see that. Of course, there's different people that like stuff and all that. But it does get around. And it is getting around to all the different websites, which is typically what Stern does. But at the same time, guys, I'm telling you, I've got a lot of friends that are in comics that are not into pinball at all. And this pen has their attention. I'm telling you guys, today, pinball grew. And that's a great thing for all of us. Whether you hate the theme or whether you like the theme or whether you love the theme, if the theme is just to you, understand this has crossover appeal. And this has gotten more people interested in pinball than what anything else has done in recent memory. And that includes Star Wars. That includes Ghostbusters. This has people's attention. And a lot of people who it has their attention is the younger generation. generation. And I'm sorry, but pinball needs that to survive moving forward. Now, I'm not saying anybody that's a little bit older age like me, I'm in my mid thirties, anybody that's in their forties, fifties, sixties, pinball is still going to be there. There's still plenty of other options if you don't like it. Totally cool. But understand this will bring more people into the industry, which is good. I mean, I would say that's great. That's great for all of us. That's great for us as pinball people, as fans, that's great for all the manufacturers, that's great for anybody that has a job in pinball, that is tremendous. Because this pin, now, it won't make Deep Root answer it now, it won't make Jersey Jack answer it now, it won't make American Pinball answer it now, it won't make Spooky answer it now. But this pin is a call to action for everybody across the industry to up your game, to up the ante. and it's true because this is by far the most loaded pin at the price points that they have that we can remember right now. I mean, let's face facts. This isn't the mid-90s anymore. This isn't the late 80s, the early 90s to where we get the prices a certain way. This is 2020. You know, that was 25 plus years ago. This is 2020. You know, we cannot compare prices. I'm I'm 36 years old and married for over a decade with four kids, mortgage, and all that. We cannot compare it to the pricing of when I was freaking six years old. We just cannot do that right now. It's 2020. This right here, this right here changes the game, and I'm glad it is. I'm glad it is here. It's going to make pinball so much better across the board. So even if you don't like the theme, even if you don't like the layout, understand this has crossover appeal. And so talking about the theme in general, as I said, it's my dream theme. It is. Now, I can't accept people don't like this theme. I understand that there's comic book fatigue. I understand that there's even people that want to see this pen be based on the movies. you know and i talked about this a little bit before there's a couple things going on with that goes against reasons to have this from the movie and one of the main reasons why is simply the cost the cost would be astronomical and then on top of that i mean just think about this if we put let's say we use the actual mcu for this well it would be awesome would it really be awesome seeing the actual MCU characters in there, but yet not getting their voices. Nobody really liked that with Guardians. And I guarantee Stern heard that. Yeah, the artwork was awesome. I believe it was a Franchi pen, but nobody really liked it the way the voices were. Everybody wanted the Cleland code on there that basically gave the voices back from the movie and changed the music around a little bit and all that. So why repeat that? And then on top of that, if you end up going with the movies, you end up backing yourself into a corner to where whatever design you have that you're laying out has to relate to the movie. You cannot all of a sudden just come up with just your own storyline using those characters. That's not the way it would work. You would have to follow the storyline very close, if not exact. And to me, personally, one of the things coming from a video game perspective here, some of your worst performing video games that are based on movies were literally video games based on the movies. It just, they don't make any sense. Now, some of your best, especially dealing with comic book games, some of your best ones like Spider-Man, for instance, that was just a PS4 exclusive. Games like that literally have the characters. They're inspired by the characters, but they're conformed to their own story, which makes it amazing. Right now, the Avengers have a game out right now. There's a game out by, I believe it's called Square Enix, that is out right now. And it is its own personal story. It's its own original story that includes all the Avengers. And that story is damn good. It is so awesome. And so when you're dealing with this, that's the way the comics are, guys. There's all kinds of different story arcs. There's all kinds of different arcs that might not necessarily be canon. There's what-if storylines. I mean, there's other dimensions. And something like this, it doesn't have to follow the movie. The fact that Stern now can use this in order to create their own narrative just means that the rule set is going to be easy to be cohesive. offensive it's going to make sense they are not forced to make a square fit in a certain you know what i mean it's it just fits it fits that's where i'm getting at right now and this makes so much more sense and what i really like about this too is the comic book art looks so much better i guarantee it would it looks so much better than anything else that they could have came up with If this was dealing exactly with the movies just put this up against Avengers. I have one right over here to my right. When I look at this and I look at that, it's night and day. It's not even close. Now, if I look at this, uh, compared to even star Wars, which uses like, you know, for the movies. It's night and day. This is a comic book pen. It needs comic book characters. It's inspired by comic book characters. Stick with the source material as your inspiration and you will get a dynamite package. And that's exactly what has happened here. Now, what I also like about it is it seems like it's going to be very faithful to the comics. The fact that the Black Order is all there. I named off Supergiant in a previous video that I'm super excited to see because she didn't get to be in any of the movies. At least she's not in the MCU yet. And that is a classic character for Marvel, especially this past few years. I mean, it just is because the Black Order, when I say classic character, obviously they haven't been around since the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. I believe Thanos showed up in 1973, February, Invincible Iron Man number 55. So that's how long Thanos has been around. Now, the Black Order, they showed up obviously much later. But this generation knows who the Black Order is. This generation knows. Anybody that has heard about the Avengers dealing with MCU knows who it is. So this is perfectly fine. This is cool. And the fact that now we have, you know, so much inspiration coming from there. If you notice, they don't even call it the Infinity Stones. They call it the Infinity Gems. That's a direct comic pull. The fact that they have on the play field, it says Thanos' War Masters. That's a direct comic pull. I mean, that right there, those are the little things right there I can appreciate that I get excited about for this theme. And I guarantee you, a lot of other people that aren't necessarily pinball junkies that might not even pay attention to pinball, this gets their attention. I've had no less than over 12, 13 people, somewhere right around there, literally contact me today just that aren't even pinball fans. They don't play in tournaments. They don't own a pinball machine. 90% of them have never played pinball. They've heard about this. I didn't tell them about it. They heard about it, and they were like, oh, my God, did you hear? There's an Avengers pinball machine that's based on Infinity War and all this and that. And Thanos, I'm telling you guys, I'm telling you, this is a theme that will be huge for years to come. And I'm happy to see it. And it's just a lot of things coming together quick. And, I mean, that's just how it is. Now, in terms of its overall play, until we get to see it actually played, we don't know yet. What I do know is, like I said earlier, an Elwin I trust. He is an exceptional player. There's no way that he puts this on a whitewood and doesn't dial in these shots. There's no way. He is so analytical that you can tell that he's spent the time to figure out these shots. and when people talk about no innovation, have you not looked at the upper flipper, what it can do? Have you not seen the amount of shots it can hit? Have you not seen that it can repeat a ramp? It can repeat a ramp. What are we talking about no innovation? What are you wanting to see? Are you wanting to see the pin take off like it's a freaking helicarrier? I mean, we talk about innovation. To me, we got to, yeah, there's mechs. There's this and that. But at the end of the day, a pin has to shoot. You have to hit the flippers to make stuff happen. And when stuff can happen due to the way, due to the geometry, that's the magical parts in it. When you can have stuff that repeats and flows like butter and it's something that we haven't seen before, that is innovation. That's innovation. That's pinball innovation. Like, I don't know how else to put it. Now, I know some people might disagree with me there, but, I mean, that's the reality of it. If you can hit the shots, if you are fairly accurate, if you are the type of player that can trap up and do stuff like that, you know that that's innovation. You know that that's going to be fun to repeat. You know that that's where your eye is drawn to immediately with that infinity gauntlet shot. You know it is. We all were there. Paul, I guarantee any tournament players watching this, your eyes went to that. You were salivating at the thought of just repeating a ramp on a loop. That's innovative. For me, that's innovative. I guarantee you a lot of other people will tell you that's innovative. The way that that ramp goes up to the Avengers Tower, sure, it might have been done before somewhere. I can't think of it off the top of my head, guys. But for me, the fact that we can hit that from the right flipper, excellent. I love that. I love the thought of just seeing a ball just go straight vertical and get caught. I cannot remember another pin that's done that. All right? That feels innovative. The fact that the middle ramp, the same ramp that we were talking about earlier with the gauntlet, can be hit by three flippers, guys, three flippers. That is shot geometry that is innovative. Do you know, like, we could all day long, we could talk about a certain mech to be in there, a certain mech, right? Anybody could just come up with a $2,000 mech and just throw it in there and be like, look, innovation. The fact that you can see this pin that has a layout as such, a layout that is innovative. The layout, guys, okay? The layout is innovative. You have to see that. You have to see that. The ramp can be hit by three different flippers. That is freaking amazing. So, I mean, that's where I'm at on it right now. Now, I have to watch some more video of it to really get down and to see what the possible rules will be. I can't really speculate right now until I really dig down into it. And I'm going to do that here on a future video, probably a little later tonight, and just put that out on YouTube. So if you guys are listening to this, be looking out for that. Other than that, that's about all I got today, at least for this podcast. It's amazing. You know, Keith, you did a great job. I congratulate everybody that's at Stern, Zombie Yeti. whoever else was on software I saw that Raymond Davidson had been working on before congrats I know I'm missing out on a lot of other people but either way if you've worked on this if you've had anything anything to do with this any ideas anything else I mean just flat out congrats and again somebody pay the man somebody needs to get Elwin I mean because the fact is he is so damn valuable because I guarantee even him being a part of your company or any other company that spreads around that I mean he ups everybody's game I mean this is an amazing thing And you know Congrats to Stern and all the great stuff That they will get here in the future But this definitely ups the game across the board But that's all I got guys So we'll wrap it up there And you guys have a great day Thanks for listening guys