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The Super Awesome Pinball Show - Ep. 39 George Gomez Pt. 1

The Super Awesome Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 48m·analyzed·Nov 23, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Super Awesome Pinball Show Ep. 39: Expo recap, failed Prince game licensing, new Stern reveals, and George Gomez interview preview.

Summary

Christopher Franchi (Frenchy) hosts The Super Awesome Pinball Show Ep. 39 featuring a discussion of Pinball Expo 2022 highlights, new game reveals (James Bond, Magic Girl, Queen), the failed Prince pinball licensing deal with American Pinball (estate demanded $1.5M upfront vs. Beatles' $1M precedent), and upcoming interview with George Gomez. The hosts discuss Stern's $2,000 Mandalorian topper, charity auction successes, industry economics, and Franchi's artwork contributions including redesigned Twippy awards.

Key Claims

  • Prince estate demanded $1.5M upfront licensing fee for pinball, compared to Beatles' $1M (groundbreaking at time)

    high confidence · Christopher Franchi describing American Pinball licensing negotiation for Prince-themed game

  • Stern's Mandalorian topper costs $2,000 and provides integrated game features plus Beskar currency tracking

    high confidence · Host discussion of Expo reveals; mentions Insider Connected integration and progressive Foundry Awards modes

  • Loser Kids Autism Charity event raised $25,000 total through donations and auctions

    high confidence · Franchi mentioning 'Flipping the Script' fundraiser; Christopher donated JAWS translite that sold for $455

  • James Bond pinball has early code, Geiger counter mode, and SPECTRE letter targets; animations approved despite licensing restrictions

    medium confidence · Hosts discussing stream footage of James Bond reveal; Parsons noting LCD animation quality and licensing constraints

  • Pinball Expo 2022 charged $130 per table rental, separate internet and electricity fees

    high confidence · Franchi criticizing venue pricing model; drew comparisons to cruise ship nickel-and-diming

  • Magic Girl had long wait lines but underwhelming reception; compared to earlier Papa Dough games with recycled sound effects

    medium confidence · Host commentary on Expo experience; mentioned Circus Voltaire audio similarity

  • Music licensing for pinball typically involves 7-9% royalty of wholesale cost plus upfront guarantee deposit

    high confidence · Franchi explaining licensing economics model from experience with sportswear IP licensing

  • Stern invited Franchi to sign autographs at Expo despite 4-year absence from company; Gary Stern called him 'part of the family'

    high confidence · Franchi's personal account of meeting at Stern signing table with Greg Freres and Zombie Eddie

Notable Quotes

  • “The Prince estate wanted 1.5 million... Prince is awesome but I don't think he is not the caliber... of the Beatles”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~48:00 — Explains why Prince pinball licensing failed; reveals IP valuation hierarchy in pinball industry

  • “Stern is one of the few people that can actually integrate it into their gameplay itself... special features, special modes, and a progressive mode”

    Host (discussing Mandalorian topper) @ ~12:00 — Highlights Stern's technical advantage in topper integration vs. aesthetic-only competitors

  • “You did four games and four fabulous games. You're part of the family.”

    Gary Stern (paraphrased by Franchi) @ ~37:00 — Shows Gary Stern's approach to talent relations and valuing Franchi's historical contributions

  • “If you fail to sell what you think you're going to sell, you eat that extra cost.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~52:00 — Explains licensing risk model that makes smaller manufacturers vulnerable to upfront IP costs

  • “I can't sell these you know that's bad juju... there are people who deserve this that I don't want money from”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~30:00 — Shows ethical approach to Lyman Sheets Batman 66 signed prints; gifted rather than profited

  • “The floor was cement... when you're standing playing pinball all day... it's tough on your feet”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~34:00 — Criticizes Expo venue logistics; draws parallel to Pinberg annual pain point

Entities

Christopher FranchipersonChristian LynepersonJeff ParsonspersonGeorge GomezpersonGary SternpersonLyman SheetspersonCharles ThomaspersonTom Drummondperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Smaller manufacturers (American Pinball) unable to compete for major music IP due to upfront licensing costs; creates barrier to entry for boutique companies

    high · Franchi: 'American Pinball you know nothing against them... they're not Stern you know they don't have the money behind them'; licensing model explanation shows $1.5M+ capital requirement before manufacturing

  • ?

    community_signal: Loser Kids Autism Charity 'Flipping the Script' fundraiser raised $25,000 with significant pinball community participation in donations/auctions

    high · Franchi donated JAWS translite plexiglass ($455 final bid); broader community donated items; 12-hour streaming event

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball Expo 2022 viewed as standout event by attendees despite venue/pricing complaints; strong emphasis on community unity and celebrity participation

    high · Multiple mentions of 'one of the best ones'; high-profile attendees (Tom Drummond, designers, streamers); charity success; House of Blues concert outing

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Franchi's artwork redesign removes visual element (comb-shaped background) from Twippies after years of iteration; strategic refinement toward cleaner aesthetic

    medium · Franchi: 'started getting on my nerves... I'm taking that thing out'; added color fade and splatters for 'rustic looking' update; new colorway each year

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo 2022 marked by venue cost escalation (table rentals $130, separate internet/electricity fees) and community sentiment of 'best one yet' despite logistics complaints

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.324

0:00
What artists are turning you guys on today for the show when they're inspiring you to be heard? This podcast features three men who like to act like children and swear a lot. So get your kids out of here or I'll fart on their heads.
0:22
Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. This evening's performance is about to begin. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Christopher Frenchy, Christian Lyne, and Jeff Parsons of the greatest pinball podcast in the entire world,
0:50
The Super Awesome Pinball Show. The boys are back in town, the boys are back in town. The boys are back in town Hello all you pinball rock stars out there and welcome to episode number 39 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. And we got a gem for you, our favorite guest of all time, Mr. George Gomez of Stern Pinball is going to be joining us. And also one hell of a recap on Pinball Expo 2022. Stick around. You don't want to miss it. Or I'll replace your Count Chocula with some kind of crappy granola stuff with twigs in it.
1:39
And no prize at the bottom of the box. Yes, the boys are back in town. Me being boy number one, Christopher Frenchy. How you doing? and my two other boys. The one with the boyish good looks, Mr. Christian Lyne. How you doing, sir? I'm great. Thank you for that intro. And the boy who looks really old and shit. Yeah, the bald one. That'd be Jeff Parsons. That's me. I'm listening to him every day. It's good to be back. We have a great show today, guys. We've got actually some news to discuss because it's finally not a slow news week in pinball. You've been to Expo and we've had some toppers revealed. We had some streams, so I'm excited for this one. That's what she said. The Mando topper is cool. It is. Sorry, Stern, I don't know about the $2,000. It seems like a lot to play for an accessory on top of your Pimmo machine, but it looks like $2,000. It definitely does. Pictures do not do it justice. You have to see it because you feel like a giant looking in the window of a little spaceship or something. like it's so dimensional and cool but everything's like perfectly to scale so just like a like the inside of a mini spaceship or something yeah that's exactly what you're going for right the razor crest and and uh you're actually sitting in the cockpit yeah but the lights you know the ambiance though you know it's got like that sort of blue glow you know to the inside and the video screen and all that works out real well it it looks really cool it actually provides also game information which i think is one of the few toppers that actually does that i don't know Yeah, I mean, what else does it?
Kerry Hardy
person
John Borgperson
Greg Freresperson
Zombie Eddieperson
Stern Pinballcompany
American Pinballcompany
Pinball Expo 2022event
James Bond (pinball)game
Magic Girl (pinball)game
Queen (pinball)game
Prince (pinball - unreleased)game
Mandalorian (Stern topper)product
Loser Kids Autism Charityorganization
Twippiesevent
David Lixperson
Pinbergevent

high · Franchi described pricing model as 'cruise ship nickel-and-diming'; overall positive vibe noted despite cost criticism; consensus among attendees

  • ?

    community_signal: Gary Stern's inclusive approach: invited Franchi (4-year post-Stern contributor) to official signing table, reinforcing 'family' relationship despite tenure gap

    high · Direct quote: 'You did four games and four fabulous games. You're part of the family'; Franchi surprised by matter-of-fact acceptance rather than astonishment

  • $

    market_signal: Stern Mandalorian topper at $2,000 price point; hosts express skepticism about accessory cost but note market demand from operators (Zach Manning, Chris Marquette) and collectors

    medium · Host: 'I don't know about the $2,000... seems like a lot to play for an accessory'; countered by 'there's a lot of people out there... not going to have a hard time selling it'

  • ?

    announcement: James Bond pinball revealed at Expo with early code; features Geiger counter mode, LCD Bond animations, SPECTRE letter targets, progress bars

    high · Host detailed stream observations; Parsons noted early code status and animation quality; discussed licensing restrictions on movie footage usage

  • ?

    product_concern: Magic Girl reception poor despite long wait lines; hosts attribute to repetitive Papa Dough audio/call-outs suggesting minimal originality or sound design effort

    medium · Host observation: 'looked like a Papaduke game... same call-outs... sound effects if they weren't the same... were damn close'; attendees left 'looking like the Grinch'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Prince estate licensing negotiations for American Pinball; $1.5M upfront demand exceeded Beatles precedent ($1M), making deal economically unviable for boutique manufacturer

    high · Franchi detailed estate counter-offer process and upfront guarantee economics; game design artwork completed but deal collapsed

    • 3:21
    Insider Connected, I mean, this is why toppers are easy to make, but not really easy to integrate into a game, right? You can make an incredible topper, but Stern is one of the few people that can actually integrate it into their gameplay itself. So you get some special features, special modes, and a progressive mode, which is pretty cool. Like, you have to play a certain number of games until you win all of the Foundry Awards. But then data from Insider Connected is also showing up on top of the screen, like your login information, the amount of Beskar you've gotten in your lifetime, a bunch of other stuff, you know, really cool stats. I forgot to use your Beskar joke. Oh, it's going to use it at the end.
    4:01
    Okay. All right. I won't say anything. So, yeah, it's super cool. But, man, that's a lot of Beskar. 2,000 Beskar. Hey. Hey-o. Try the video. I don't think anyone's really going to buy as impressive as this is. If they want it, they're going to easily cough up that $2,000. Yeah, there's a lot of people out there. They're not going to have a hard time selling it. Zach Manning, we were seeing on his show, he's sold a lot of them. And I talked to Chris Marquette, and I'm sure that the orders are rolling in for him as well. So, yeah, I mean, pinball, people and their money is easily parted, I think. No! yes now speaking of stern uh and uh reveals i got to play james bond what did you think it was uh i liked it i liked it i thought it was really fun um i only got to play like two games on it um so i didn't get to uh you know really dig in but uh i thought it was fun i thought it was cool interesting shots it's very gomez oh no i played the premium i never i don't play pros okay i don't you know i don't i turn my nose i turn my nose pro oh i'm sorry i have to leave yeah pros are a small fry mcdonald's as opposed to the large a hamburger as opposed to a bacon cheeseburger with caramelized onions and barbecue sauce how about boy there's your le yeah yeah yeah just uh no no fun so yeah you imagine mcdonald's had the the pro the premium the le burgers i mean the people are saying the people are saying who have played this that uh the pro might be a little bit better like it's the flow is a little better and the gameplay might be a little better but who knows you know i haven't i wouldn't know because i didn't play the two so i don't know but i'm more of a visual guy i like fun stuff in pinball so if it shoots better but it doesn't look better i don't care i'll take the one that looks better yeah i mean You guys have seen my pinball machines. None of them are how they looked out of the box. There's all kinds of crap added inside. It looks like the toy section in Target or something in there. It's cool, man. Yeah, so Bond was cool. Parsons, you saw the Bond stream. What did you think about the stream? Did you have any feelings on the game? I really loved the animations, what animations there were on the LCD. I know there's a lot of restrictions with what they can show on there right now because of the licensing issues they've got, but that'll get cleared up. A whole lot of scorpion. But I mean, the creations that they did of like Bond scenes in animation was really well done. I mean, it really impressed me.
    6:34
    There's a scene, one of them, number one, the chair that he sits in behind the glass. You never see his face. A ball drops down into that chair. And it looks like it was put right in the movie. You can tell it's not the movie, but it's really damn close. I love the tilt warning screen. I love the high stakes reward when Bond throws the card on the table and your mystery award is on the card. I thought that was super, super cool. That's very cool. And some of the modes that they had already integrated into the game. I know the code is super, super early, but the Geiger counter. Did you see that mode? I did. So it's like you hear the radioactivity on the Geiger counter and then you have to find the shot. And the louder, the closer you get. That's such a cool idea. Brilliant. Behind the rocket ship there, I know it's challenging. But I do like those targets that we have to spell. Is it Spectre you have to spell? Mm-hmm. Back there? Yeah. I like that concept. It kind of feels a little like Pirates of the Caribbean, the first one from Stern, where you have to go up in the Tortuga and spin around and hit as many of those things as you can. It's kind of a little like that. That's what I liken it to the most. What did you guys think? It looks fantastic. It does. And a lot of stuff that I haven't seen before, like Progress Bar and the modes. That was really cool. You can see how far along you are, how much more time or whatever you need to do. That's very helpful. They did that in Guardians, too. Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Cool stuff. So I'm excited to see when they finally get all the code in there. But even early on, it looks good. Yeah. They're not even halfway through the code, I think, at this point. Stay tuned to our interview with George Gomez later on where he discusses that and more. So stick around.
    8:12
    So, yeah, that's it for Bond. That was very cool. I didn't get to play Magic Girl. I heard I didn't miss anything. It was a huge line, right?
    8:22
    It was a big line, and nobody walked away. They waited in line, and then they played it, and then they walked away with like, you know, just looking like the Grinch. Like, you know, man, I waited 20 minutes for that? I watched the stream. It looked like a Papaduke game. It had all the same call-outs. In fact, I even think some of the sound effects, if they weren't the same from other games like Circus Voltaire, they were damn close. You know, it sounded very much like that. Well, I'm curious what those those guys, you know, what wasn't there and what those guys did. You know, it was that, you know, their idea was to, you know, if we're going to finish this, let's just steal from other Papaduke stuff, you know, to make it as authentic as possible. You know, could could have been the case. Don't know. Beautiful game, right? Yeah. I mean, with it all lit up and playing, did it did you get a good look at it? Oh, yeah. It was right next to me. Literally, I just look over my right shoulder and it was sitting right there, which which I did throughout the weekend. and there was always a line because I wanted to jump on it. And always a line. Goddamn. I hate people. But, well, so. And I didn't get to play Queen either for the same reason. Always a line.
    9:30
    Oh. Heard it was fun, though. But don't know. No firsthand experience. Okay. How about the homebrew line? There was a ton of them. The homebrew was over my left shoulder. Actually, it was straight ahead. We were faced kind of sideways the way they put us in there. we were down the you know main aisle go straight to the back and then we're to the left facing the right for some reason but um didn't play any homebrews i hardly played any pinball honestly i sat at the table and uh when we were done you know doing the the signing stuff thing and you know handing out prints and whatnot we were so tired but my daughter and i that is we were so tired that we went and got dinner when we went back to the hotel and just crashed that's cool so you got to meet a lot of people though a lot of pinheads swing by to say hi oh yeah yeah yeah um charles thomas struck again love that guy what did he bring you he shows up well now last time he gave me a beavis and butthead uh animation cell with beavis on it getting uh he's getting harassed by stewart at a concert or something and it was a multi-level animation cell because there was a background then there was a cell that had people in the background and then there was a cell that It had Stuart and Beavis on it, so it was like three layers. He shows up this time with a butthead animation cell to go with the Beavis. Nice. So that was pretty cool. That was cool.
    10:53
    I actually stumbled across something very interesting that you guys will appreciate. I was kind of arranging my art prints, and I had this plastic envelope that had these Guardians of the Galaxy prints signed by me and Borg. and I wanted to just kind of put one on the table and put the rest back behind the table because I was always trying to condense it. I didn't have enough table space. Expo was awesome. The only sucky thing was that the tables were not provided by the hotel. They had a separate person there and it was $130 per table just to rent them. No! This place sounds like a cruise, man, because you know how you get on a cruise and it's super cheap and then you're stuck in there and they start nickel and diming you for drinks and stuff like that? Never been. I feel like Expo is similar this year in the sense that apparently there was like an internet fee. No! Where you had to pay some ungodly amount. There was a electricity fee. Yeah. No! And now there's a table fee. No! Like, all right. Yeah, table and chairs, everything you had to pay for. Wow. So anyway, so I had limited table space, and so I'm trying to condense. I pulled these prints out of this envelope, and it's an odd size. It's like 20 by 20, the Guardian's print. something special i did for a tpf or something a while ago but what i found in the back was something i completely forgot about i had done five prints of batman 66 that were all numbered 105 205 305 etc and they were signed by myself george gomez and lyman sheets oh man so i was like wow i forgot that i had this and my first thought was i can't sell these you know that's bad juju you know i'm not gonna profit off of some you know guy that's passed away like we'll go to rare signature here three thousand dollars please um it's not necessarily i mean i think selling them is is giving people a chance to own that i mean i no one needs five of those well so that's true but my thought was there are people who deserve this that i don't want money from so i gave i gave one to gary stern i gave one to george gomez i gave one to greg fraris i kept one And then the fifth one, I gave to Charles Thomas. Oh, my God. That's awesome. You know what? He deserves it for such a huge fan and such a good guy. He's such a good guy. Yeah. So I was happy to give that to him. And then, you know, I just felt the people who worked on that game, it was something nice to have, you know, that they didn't think they'd get at the time. You know, no one thought that, you know, what happened to Lyman was going to happen. And, you know, so I think I made the right choice. Absolutely. That's really cool of you, man. And listen, speaking of really cool of you, I know you did something else that was very important, and that was being part of the Loser Kids Autism Charity event. And you donated some stuff for that, right? Yeah, I donated my final. When I had done the JAWS translates, I did 10 on plexiglass, like actual genuine back glasses. And again, I had stumbled across the 10th one. I had saved the last one for myself when I was in my basement digging around through boxes and found that. So I donated that to them and I think they got $455 for it. That's awesome. So they made $25,000, which was their goal in donations for, it's flipping the script. I was blanking on the name there for a bit, but man, they made a difference in a lot of kids' lives and they should be really proud of what they did, you know, and all the pinheads honestly are, should be really happy that they did this because, you know, it's putting pinball in a great light uh just by being involved in a really worthy charity and doing so so much for for kids so josh and scott did a heck of a lot of work to make that whole thing happen most definitely yeah and the 12-hour podcast that they did the stream or whatever it was was uh was pretty taxing because they had to kind of host that you know they had to be yeah you know the mortar between the bricks and on that thing and so it was pretty tough on them but uh they got i love how The whole pinball community came out with donations for stuff to auction off.
    15:00
    I love seeing when the pinball community all gathers together like this for a great cause. Absolutely. Can you feel the love tonight?
    15:12
    Yeah, it was very cool. And Project Pinball was there. I didn't have anything as cool as the Plexiglas Jaws Translate, but I did give them a regular one to auction off. So I don't know how that did. I didn't really follow up on that. But, yeah, it was just a good feeling, good vibes. A couple of cool things happened. I knew that Gary and George were going to be at the Stern. Stern had their own autograph signing, like just for Stern people, which was cool because eventually I found out that they had everybody there. You know, I mean, they probably had the bookkeepers there. Anything you wanted, you know, they were pretty much there for a signature. and um i knew that the two of them would be there and you know great chance to give them those prints so i was hustling towards the um the seminar room and you have to go up this escalator and all that and they were standing right at the bottom of the escalator talking to each other i'm like oh perfect they're they're both right there one shot i can get this done so i gave them to them and uh and gary invited me up to the uh signature i saw that that's so cool man yeah i'm just like I'm like, oh, geez. I'm like, I haven't worked for you guys in like four years or whatever like that. And they're like, well, you did four games and four fabulous games. You're part of the family. You know, get up there. And so I went up there, sat next to Greg Freres and the Zombie Eddie. It's just a nice little sandwich to be in. So we had a good time, signed a bunch of crap. That's a nice family reunion, man. Yeah. It was funny, though. I was surprised that nobody like came up to me and they're like bug-eyed, like, you know, what are you doing here? it was just kind of like matter of factly you know some no big deal just signing stuff moving on so that was cool the vibe from from everybody at the show was that it was one of the best ones yeah the only gripe was that the floor was cement and it was you know when you're standing playing pinball it's not the kind of event where you're in a chair a lot you know you're when you're standing playing pinball and all that it's tough on your feet if they have this at the same place next year which I'm sure they will. Go get yourself some Skechers or something, you know, some really well-padded shoes. Skip fashion and just go for comfort and necessity there. That same thing would happen at Pinberg every year. You'd be standing playing pinball all day on cement floors, and I literally shot for like five different pairs of shoes to bring one year. Yeah, that and, you know, it was unfortunate with the tables and all that. The snack bar.
    17:36
    Oh, boy, the snack bar. $35 for lunch for me and my daughter. Oh, wow. No! And we weren't getting filet. That's not a snack. Yeah, we weren't getting filet or anything. This was like four chicken, they called them chicken tenders. I called them chicken nuggets.
    17:55
    They weren't quite chicken tenders, but the little mini pizzas. It was all crap food, hot dogs. And none of it was glorious. You know, you'd think if you paid $6 for a hot dog, which it was, that you'd get this big, fat, you know, hot dog. No, just a regular old hot dog.
    18:12
    No. Did they have food trucks there? I imagine they probably don't. No food trucks, no. All they had was this one concession stand. And so that kind of sucked. Yeah. But there was a Portillo's nearby. There you go. So we went with Teolas and got some Portillo's. Oh, nice. I had some serious FOMO this year. I'm not going to lie. I usually, I know, and I just, you know, kind of, I fall back on the fact that it's my girl's birthday around that time every year and I'm not going to make it. But, man, it looked like such a good show this year. And everyone was there.
    18:46
    So many good celebs and good people were hanging out. So I'm sorry I missed it. I'm glad you were there to represent, though. Yeah, I gave out all of our glow-in-the-dark stickers. That was a big hit. Everybody was sticking them on their badges and stuff. So, Kerry Hardy, I was really sad. Kerry Hardy came to the table, and I took one of the stickers, and I stuck it over his Loser Kids hat. He had it on backwards, so it just said Loser Kids Pinball Podcast on the back, and I put our sticker right over that. And he left it there for the day, but I was kind of hoping that he'd do a callback, and on his first video that he did once he got back home, it would be there, you know, and he'd, like, peel it off or whatever. It's a joke, but he didn't come through. Damn you, Kerry.
    19:30
    I'm glad he's there. It was cool. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. I gave him a big old hug when I saw him. Yeah, definitely good to see everybody. It was a really good time. It was tiring, but it was fun. I didn't get to make it anything cool. Like, they had, I don't even know if there was a bar in this place, because the convention center was kind of separate almost. It was connected, but, like, I never saw the hotel. I was always in just the convention area. And apparently up on the second level where the seminar rooms were, there was this big area with a whole bunch of couches like a sectional couches where you could hang out and apparently uh uh after hours that was the hangout people would run to a party store and come back and just sit up there and pound adult beverages and have a good time but i never made it unfortunately i did yeah i didn't do too many social things there's a lot of dinners and stuff um tom drummond from better than ezra showed up with the coin takers oh man i saw that i was so jealous uh how was he was he fun to hang out with yeah yeah real cool real down to earth he was his face was a glow like a kid on christmas morning he was so happy to be around all that pinball because you know as he said in the interview he's relatively you know new to it and so i don't think he's i think that my problem was his first yeah you know any sort of pinball expo that was his first and then everybody not everybody but let's see borg eric minier the pinball bros todd mccullough their pinball brothers not todd mccullough pinball brothers and the coin takers all went down to the house of blues downtown to see them and i was invited tom invited me but the problem was that you had to take this train and then the train left off like six blocks or five blocks or something from the venue so there was a long walk still from the from the l train to the venue and my knee was really bad walking on all that cement and stuff so i'm just like i don't want to be an anchor and drag you guys down but then of course you know when you have the invite you know you could have went and then you see the pictures you're like god damn it listen man i i got some video from the marquette's and uh it looked like an amazing show and they tom drummond also went on a jersey jack tour with eric and he went on a stern tour with borg so he got the full you know pinball experience when he was out there i'm actually going to hang out with him on sunday so he's coming up to delaware and he's going to have a show out there so the marquettes and i are going out to uh to see his show and hang out with him and hopefully some of the other band members and we may make a uh stop over at the delaware pinball collective which is only about 15 minutes from the theater that they're playing in so more pinball for tom i think is that uh bruce nightingale's thing no that's in rochester this is uh joe fox and rodney uh and a few other guys okay cool that sounds like fun another another concert i can't go to come on out man you're invited another so only if i can get bored to smoke in my car on the way you know it's funny like all the things you know that that we had talked about our our tailgate party and all that more people came up to me and told me that they were laughing their ass up at the morgue stories more than anything else it's cool to get an inside look into you know the life of these guys. Yeah, I suppose. And the life of me suffering through it. Oh, no, it was a good time. So, yeah. We got through Expo. I think that was a really nice summary. Thanks for being our representative there. And since we're kind of talking about what happened over the last two weeks, I wanted to hit you up and have you talk a little bit about some of the art that you've posted on Facebook because we didn't have a chance to talk about that. So you have a Prince back glass that is amazing and you posted on Facebook and unfortunately came with the post that you're not going to be making that game. It came with the wah, wah, wah. Yeah. One more for the pinball graveyard, right? I mean, what happened?
    23:36
    Well, that's a harsh way of putting it, but true. but yeah that's painful um yeah well to tell the full story in a condensed cliff notes version i had the idea to to do prince we were we were i was talking with david fix for american pinball about some music ideas and i thought prince would be a really good one because i told him i would be interested in taking a step into the 80s like we're so stuck in the 70s with all the the as they call them the white what is it white middle-aged white guy dad bands hair yeah yeah dad bands and then you know all that i've heard all that um so i thought prince would be a good step in the right direction you know maybe when we do prince and maybe we can get beastie boys and stuff like that stuff that we've been talking about and uh american pinball was all behind it so i did up a back glass design and the side of a back box just to show the estate and roger went and showed the estate and they really liked it and they came back well now the beatles the uh you know the the licensing upfront fee for the beatles was a million dollars which was groundbreaking at the time right never before had a license cost that much right yeah well the prince estate wanted 1.5 um prince is awesome but i don't think he he is not the caliber right no no he is not the beatles and the cash i mean music wise you know maybe you might want to argue that he was better than the beatles but the cachet of the beatles you know right yeah no way and uh you know an american pinball you know nothing against them i'm insulting them but they're they're not stern you know they don't have the money behind them for something like that so they were just like well we can't do that and they came back with a counter offer that still sucked so it became obvious that that was not going to happen do you have any insight chris about what the average licensing fee per game. When you break down a license like the Mandalorian or another mainstream title or band, I wonder how much per game goes to that license. Because if you have 1.5 million to cover on top of all of your other costs, I wonder how expensive that game would have to be and how many you'd have to make. The way it works, actually, is that the money that you give them is called an upfront guarantee. And what that means is you have to estimate what you think you can sell what their royalty would be which you know at the time that i was you know doing licensing as well as being an art director and an artist at a sportswear company it was anywhere from like seven to nine percent of your wholesale cost going out so just to make it easy if it was a ten dollar you know t-shirt you know you'd be giving them 70 to 90 cents per shirt right um so the upfront guarantee is basically you have to say well we think we can sell uh you know pinball terms we think we can sell 3 000 games so you take the percentage which you know just to make it easy you know if it's 10 on a 10 000 game that's a thousand dollars it's a lot of pinball machines if you're going to make 1.5 million yeah you're right yeah it's a thousand So you've got to times the $1,000 by $5,000. So that's basically how it works. So what Prince or the Beatles either one the million dollars we just say million dollars that paid up front And then you don pay them royalties until you clear that But you do owe them that So if you fail to sell what you think you're going to sell, you eat that extra cost. But if you sell more, if you say we think we're going to sell 3,000 and you end up doing another run of 500 or something like that, then you give them their 7% or whatever per game after you've cleared the money you gave them up front. So it's kind of like a deposit in a way. That makes sense. That's a lot of money down, though. Yeah, it's a lot of money to cough up. Plus, you've got all your development costs and all that other stuff before you get a return. So that's why it's tough for a lot of these smaller companies to do this stuff, because they have to cough up a lot of money up front before they see a nickel in return. Well, it's unfortunate, man. That would have been a fun game to see. It's one more game that we know of that didn't get made. I wonder how many times this happens. I thought for sure I was going to see the day where there was a Let's Go Crazy multiball.
    27:59
    I was all about it. Little Red Corvette, you know, all the lights go out on the game and all these red lights come on. That's so cool. Like, it's just, like, I had all these ideas in my head for things that we could have done. And, yeah, it's gone. This is such a crock of shit. Is this the only artwork I've posted? I think so. Yeah, recently. let's let's talk about well you did the twippy arties right we didn't uh go into that yet so you were asked to kind of redo the the twippy art for this year yeah they're kind of they're basically locked in on the logo that i created but i've been doing like a new colorway every year just to change it up and then this year i changed it up even more because i decided that i really hated that kind of a comb shaped piece of metal in the background that had it looked like comb teeth going across it was interesting when i first did it but after seeing it year after year started getting on my nerves i'm like i'm taking that thing out of there so it's a little bit different but um and we did change it up a bit in that the way we normally did it the letters twippies were all just a solid color that kind of looked like they were made out of like a jolly rancher candy and all it's like yeah yeah clear colored plastic that was like sort of beveled and this year we did a sort of a different treatment with a color fade and some splatters and things It's very rustic looking, but it hasn't been revealed yet. Yeah, there's just a little teaser. I don't know. I thought it was already going to be out by now. To tell you the truth, I got a message from Will saying that they were going to post it. Quick editor's note. Yeah, yeah, it's out now. We've seen it. So, yeah, man, talking about the twippies, that kind of leads into my last few weeks because, I mean, you guys know Jeff Patterson has, you know, reluctantly stepped back a little to focus on his work. He's doing, you know, amazingly well. He's getting promoted into more responsibility. and I know he's still involved, but he's passed the torch to Will Auding, who has been his right hand man on Twip and the Twippies for a really long time now. He's been a silver ball swag too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And he's kickstarted Twip. So he's now pretty much fully responsible for the Twip post that goes out every Monday. And he is taking point on the Twippies as well. So I'm super excited to see where it goes. But I received an email about a week ago and they had asked me to host the Twippies this year, which was pretty freaking cool. Co-host, I should say. Yeah, this is the second time. I think Sarah and I were asked like a few years back and we were super honored, but we weren't going to be there. And this year, obviously it was super shock. I mean, the Twippies has grown dramatically over the years and it is the pinball show. Incredible way to highlight and celebrate the industry. But it would have been such an amazing chance to work with the co-hosts. I don't know if they've fully revealed who it's going to be, so I don't want to spill the beans, but I think it would have been a great show. Sarah and I have our anniversary that weekend and we had some big plans that I couldn't change. Yeah. So it was tough declining the offer, but whoever does host this year has some big shoes to fill because Jack Danger is not doing it anymore. So whoever it is, I'm sure they'll do a great job. But I was asked the same day that Jeff Teolos was, and I'm incredibly honored that I was even on the same page of options as that guy because he hosts a great event and he you know he kicked butt as the mca at pinberg and he's just a charismatic dude so anyway i'm honored thank you will uh and we need to have them on the show so we can hype the twippies this year and find out a little more about it yeah get to tell us on here too yeah i get to uh i get to announce the art award oh very cool yeah because he asked me to do the he asked me if i would present a trophy and i'm like absolutely he said uh he goes i don't know he goes which one do you want to do and he goes can you do art and i said well you know if i had a game in the running you know that would not be a good idea but i don't believe i will yeah even if you know i think i've got a game coming out in december but it's not it has to like i think it has to ship there's some kind of rule and the cutoff i think is is early december or like the first week in december something like that a game has to ship by then in order to be considered and i don't think that's going to be the case so i think i'm going to be game free you know they'll probably switch it up if something happens and something changes i'll do something different but as of now i'm doing the air award just don't stop on the twippy this time that's been done man well yeah that's that's old that's that's been done and that's been redone that's a callback joke but wouldn't it be funny if jeremy actually won and i was able to present him with a broken trophy well jack danger has the the fragments of the one you broke so i'm sure he still has those yeah yeah he still has those i retrieved the second one i went and got the pieces but they didn't go flying in the audience the second time i learned my lesson you don't want anybody to get hurt so i did it in a different fashion so that it would stay on the stage and i got those pieces and i think i gave them to jeff actually but uh i signed the bottom of the base nice that's a Souvenir, man. Yeah, so that's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to that. I do wish it didn't take so long. Because the voting ends on New Year's Day, and then you've got to wait almost three months to find out who won. It's just like, damn. You almost forget about it at that point. And then it's like, oh, that's right, I forgot. Well, the pre-vote is in November, and then I think the actual voting is in December. So the pre-vote is just to know who's going to make each category. So whoever the top vote is. Basically, like nominations. Yeah, essentially. I'm going to tell everybody right now, I'm shamelessly plugging us for the podcast this year. Fuck everybody. Every time you put up a little thing that says, hey, for your consideration, we worked hard all year, please vote for us. And then all these people come down to you and it's like, what's wrong with asking people to vote for you? The only people who get upset about it are other podcast hosts, one in particular. So don't worry about it. I want you to hype the shit out of this show this year, Franchi. Oh yeah, I'm going for it. I'm going for it, damn it. Hello, everyone. This is Christopher Franchi of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. When highways and roads were in disrepair, we here at the Super Awesome Pinball Show initiated a $97 billion road renewal program. When COVID hit and millions lost jobs, we initiated a 30% tax relief program. When the deer population got out of hand, causing dangerous conditions on roadways, we hired Ted Nugent to thin the herds. And when Taco Bell took away the Mexican pizza, We said, oh, no, you don't, and made them bring it back. And now we here at the Super Awesome Pinball Show hope we can count on you and your vote for best pinball podcast of the 2022 Twippy Awards. The Super Awesome Pinball Show, building a better pinball future.
    34:52
    Anyway, you guys don't know this, but I thought you would enjoy this. A podcaster had recently said, as they were making fun of our show, that all we do is interviews and all we do is go for quality over quantity. I'm like, since when is that a bad thing? We go for quality over quantity, meaning I'd rather put out two good shows a month than 12 mediocre shows. Yeah, I don't know who said that. Honestly, take three guesses in the first two probably count. This show has always been about making a really good product, and it takes as long as it takes. Yeah. Like some other shows that come out more frequently, you're beating a dead horse. Especially when nothing's going on. You're just saying the same shit over and over. Like, give me stars. I need to buy sushi for my wife. I like every single podcast that's out there that I listen to on a regular basis, including the ones we've listed right now. I think they're all good shows. I don't see why there has to be any drama in the pinball world. I've never listened to a bad pinball podcast, to be honest. I mean, there are some that are better than others, but they're all entertaining. And the thing I like about them, I don't listen to all of them. I just don't have the time. But the thing I like about the podcast is that you get something different from each one. Nobody really does the same thing. Like Zach's show, he's got a unique way of doing his show. Slam tilt.
    36:13
    If you want to hear two guys argue the whole time, that's fun. and honestly i know you'll probably uh shriek at this but i think canada does a really good job of summarizing what's going on in the industry i think he has very smart takes on a lot of stuff i just don't want to have a beer with the guy that's all yeah he's you know yeah there's no doubt he's good at what he does the problem is what he does is try to turn everybody off to pinball which i don't understand you know most of what he says is is negative and that's not That's not good. You'll find yourself without a hobby if you chase it away. So whatever. It is what it is. But, yeah, everybody does a good job at what they do, obviously. They wouldn't be doing it this long. Some of the people who have been doing it for a while, like Canada, wouldn't be doing it this long if they weren't good at what they did. Parsons, hit us with your last two weeks, man. Very, very, very brief. Not much going on. We were on the last season, last week of the season 26 of New England Pinball League, and I've got to brag about my kid because he made it into the A Division for finals. I don't think he's going to make finals, but out of the 300-plus players that we have in league all across New England, last time I checked, he was like 70.
    37:28
    Now it's time for some tournament talk. Anybody want some pizza rolls? I'm going to go make some pizza rolls. I'm talking about my son, damn it. and how proud I am of him. Of course, in my show notes, I wrote under your name, son is killing it in league because I saw your post.
    37:49
    And I wrote on mine, time to make some pizza rolls. But no, just, you know, I had a picture of him playing for the first time pinball on, you know, the little Mario pinball machine, the half-sized one. He was playing that at a restaurant and that's when he first started getting the bug. And of course I played and now he's, and I'm in C division. So he's kicking my ass. That's awesome. Listen, man, I do a lot to get my girls into pinball, and it just hasn't happened. So I'm very jealous that your son is loving it. He's absolutely loving it. Oh, if we may go back to your weeks on pinball, what are your kids loving these days there, Mr. Green? My kids are loving another kind of game. If I can't get them into pinball, I can get them into air hockey. and Uncle Franchi sent our girls a freaking air hockey table for our basement, which is now set up and they are absolutely loving. So I know I've sent you pictures and lots of texts, Chris, but thank you again for such a generous gift because they are there. We actually played this morning before my youngest got on the bus. We were downstairs in the basement playing some air hockey. Oh, is that picture right there, your daughter with the air hockey? Yeah, that is, with the air hockey table. Yeah, it was for their birthdays. Their birthdays are, what, a couple weeks apart? Yes. In October. Yeah, so it was their birthday gift. But I love my pin kids. You have hooked us up, my man. I have a Ms. Pac-Man right behind the computer here that you sent us last year. And we have an air hockey table. We've got some good Franchi exclusives in our basement right now. Neon martini. Yes, sir. You need to get a James Bond to go next to that neon martini glass, I think. I do. And did you do any prints of the back glass you did? No, no. Okay. You know, out of respect for Stern and what, you know, I mean, I feel bad for them because they were really handcuffed. And to come out with, you know, something like that where I had no handcuffs, I could do whatever I wanted. You know, it's like throwing salt in their eyes. So I'm just like, ah, I'm off the record. If you ever make a copy of the back glass that you did, I will happily pay for a copy of that. Well, I mean, I'll send you one. I just don't want to put them out on a table or off online or anything. I'm happy to print one off for you. Sure. Hell yeah, man. Thank you. No problem. So, all right. So, sorry to interrupt, but, yeah, I did want to talk about the air hockey table, which is sweet. Super sweet. It's got a little score thing on it. It's got all the hockey teams. All the hockey teams are represented. Even the new one. It's got the Seattle Kraken logo on there. Anyway, enough about that. Back to Jeff's week in tournament pinball. And I'm done.
    40:24
    Why do you got to break the guy down every time, Frenchy? That's it? He just missed the talk tournament pinball on you. No, seriously, that's all I have. I got nothing else going on pinball. It's just me. It's work, work, work, work, work. So I haven't even really had much time to play. Well, just in my defense, I mean, I'm happy to have you guys talk about whatever you want. Oh, I know. No, no, no. The only reason the pizza rolls thing is because everybody said they love when I say I'm going to go make a grilled cheese when you start talking about it. And I'm fine with you doing that. You got to give the fans what they want. I'm sorry, listeners. I'll never call them fans. So that's it for our weeks in pinball. And now the news.
    40:58
    And this just in, more crazy pinball bullshit with the WPIN Action Pinball News Group. And there is no news because we covered it all in our intro and everything else has been covered by every other podcast ad nauseum, so we're not going to rehash that. So up next, our interview with George Gomez talking everything you want to know about James Bond pinball. G-E-O-R-G-E, George. G-E-O-R-G-E George The Super Awesome Pinball Show Is that a border?
    41:46
    You know the border Brought to you by Cointaker in lovely Sunbury, Pennsylvania This show is sponsored by Cointaker distributor of brand new full-size authentic Stern pinball, Chicago game, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, playfield protectors, Bally Williams parts, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on. Hello, darling. This is Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, here with the three boneheads I love best on the super awesome pinball show. Wishing you all happy hauntings.
    42:43
    Now, back to our program. And now the Super Awesome Pinball Show is proud to present another interview with our favorite guest, Mr. George Gomez of Stern Pinball. Talking about his unique approach to designing pinball, in particular, Stern's new James Bond. And now, take it away, Australia's own, The Seekers.
    43:18
    Hey there, Georgie boy. There's another Georgie deep inside. Bring out all the love you hide. And oh, what a change that'd be. The world would see a new Georgie boy.
    43:38
    I wish my brother George was here. George. That's my brother George. Come over here, George. Today, we're lucky enough to sit down with him to talk James Bond 007 pinball and dig deeper into his design process. Welcome to the show, Mr. George Gomez. Hey, Katie. Heyo. Great to be here. You know, I love to hang out with you guys. I don't get to do it very often. So, you know, I don't know if you know it, but you are in the presence of greatness. part of your team is the official portrait artist of George Gomez oh yes I did see this that is like you know when you know I don't know when the unveiling is my portrait is going into the National Gallery this weekend only at the Chicago Art whatever it's called Franchetti we will unveil you know it's like the you know when they unveil the Obama painting or whatever right yeah four years later have the little curtain around it's yeah so that was so cool I saw that are you going to make that into a back glass and hang it you have to I mean you know I'll tell you what I gotta do something with those they're too good and I sent them I sent Chris I sent that out to all a lot of my friends that are not in the business and my family and everybody just cracks up, right? Because at first you did the teaser where I'm underwater, you know, in my chair.
    45:21
    I'm fighting with a Spectre diver. Oh, man. Like, you know, we've already ripped off each other's regulators and bubble holes, a couple of nuclear weapons on a mini sub behind us. You know, it's just unbelievable. It was very cool. Well, just so you know, I don't go through that trouble for just anyone. Most people don't even get a teaser, and then when they do, I just grab some image and throw it on there and put our logo on it and say, episode 40, whatever. But you get the posh treatment, sir.
    45:56
    These episodes are the ones that get the most listens, George. People want to hear what you have to say, and we've got a lot of questions for you. Yeah, no, I mean, those are fantastic, Chris. You'll have to send me high-res versions of that art so that I can, you know. I don't know if I have high-res. I'll send you what I got. I don't care. Whatever you have, I'll take it. Like Gomez, George Gomez.
    46:23
    George, let's start by talking about your personal relationship with this property because it's obvious you're a huge fan. We've heard that you saw your first Bond film, which was Goldfinger, when you were 10. Yep. And you convinced your aunt to watch it a second time immediately afterwards. Yeah. Gary Stern has said that you have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Bond. Was this a dream theme for you to work on? I think I know the answer to this, but let me hear you say it. Yeah, yeah. It was definitely, I mean, it was a labor of love for sure, as much work as it was. Like you said, you know, when I was 10 years old, my mom's older sister, my aunt, she was like the hip aunt, you know, that was kind of like, you know, sort of out and about in the city. It was hip to things that were happening. And she literally calls me up one day and she says, I saw this movie and it's awesome. And I'm taking you and a friend to see it. And so she just gave us popcorn money and movie money and dropped us off. And this is back in the day. You know, I was 10. It's 1965 and it's Goldfinger. And the entire theater is themed to the film. And it's one of those theaters with the old marquees that are, you know, the giant marquees with lights, right, that looked like a real theater, you know. And everywhere you look, there's the gold and black posters and all that. And we saw this movie. We had not seen anything like it. And I know that, you know, there's been 60 years of James Bond. And while James Bond has had a lot, you know, has had six official bonds, there are clearly a reprise that's not considered, that's not in the pantheon of Connery being dragged back to do the, whatever it was, Thunderbolt remake. Never Say Never Again. Yeah. And then and then, of course, there was I think there was a David Niven bond that, you know, again, doesn't falls outside of the scope of the franchise for whatever reason. So 60 years of bond and the impact of the original bond on the world was it when you're 10 years old, it was kind of like Star Wars. You know, it was like I mean, it was sort of like never seen anything like that before. and not only did it kick off the entire spy thing, right, which was totally in line with the Cold War and everything, but, you know, think about, you know, Mission Impossible and even the spoofs, right, our man Flint and... Get Smart. Get Smart and all that, you know, and all, you know, Man From U.N.C.L.E., all of that stuff was essentially spies are cool, we got to do spies, everybody jumping on the bandwagon. So Bond not only didn't kick that off, but honestly, Those six Connery films, they define the genre, right? Every film since has had the same set of elements, you know, rehashed with new villains. Now, you know, they've run out of Ian Fleming novels. So some portion of Bonds are completely reimagined, but they always have the same elements, right? There's always a female that, you know, begins life as an enemy, becomes an accomplice. uh there's you know of course you know a major villain and henchman and and bond has gadgets and specter has you know gadgets and and there's always a giant fight you know like the thing that i tried to reprise uh the the you know the only live twice uh a volcano fight you know you know ninjas repelling from the ceiling and all that stuff right so yeah it was impactful and you know But that year, guys at school would come to school. Everybody had like the core GDB-5 with the little dude that ejected and the whole thing. For Christmas, I asked for the attaché case, and I actually got it.
    50:01
    I'll tell you a funny story about the attaché case. Fast forward, now I'm in my 30s, and I'm a toy inventor at Marvin Glasson Associates, It's the most famous and successful toy invention studio in the history of toy invention. And one day I'm working on a thing, and a guy says to me, you know, we did something similar. You ought to look at it. Go up to the archive and take a look. And it wasn't a James Bond thing. It wasn't anything like that. I said, oh, okay, where's the archive? And all the time I had been there, I didn't realize that there was like this hidden level in the studio where a ladder pulled down from the ceiling and you went up there and you were like in this attic and the attic was compartmentalized by year. So there were signs, you know, 1962, 1963, all the way back to the history of the company. Every time they invented something, the deal with the toy company was you will send us whatever it was, you know, 15 samples of whatever it is that we had invented i'm walking past 1965 and there is a stack of attaché cases in in the boxes chris this doll just slapped you across the face i pulled one of these things off and i'm looking at it and i'm slipping out right i'm 30 i haven't seen the thing since i was 10 i go running downstairs you guys did this and over like half a dozen of the old, old-time guys, and, oh, yeah, I worked on that. I was like, oh, my God. That's so cool. Yeah. Well, that's what, you know, us pinheads, you know, the pinball nerds that are getting into the hobby and go to their first expo, you know, they get to experience that when they meet you because, you know, you've made, you know, Corvette or whatever, any other game that you've made. It's that kind of experience. I can totally understand. I mean, yeah. So, you know, Gary says encyclopedic knowledge. My encyclopedic knowledge tapers off after the Connery films. You know, I've got all the Fleming novels. They were reissued with really cool, arduous covers. Chris, you'd love to see these. Nobody's seen these. I think they were reissued by Fleming's estate. I don't know if they're under the Eon umbrella, you know, because they existed before that whole thing. But I have all that stuff. I have the Designing Bond books. I have the poster books, everything. I didn't really have to buy anything. I have all this stuff. When I sat down to do it, I knew a lot. And so I think that we've put a lot of it in the game that I said, oh, you know, I got to have that. Well, given the fact that it's a pinball machine based on a license you're passionate about and that Bond movies are filled with mechanical toys and gadgets, it seems like this was a project geared directly to you. But you weren't initially the lead designer on it. You took it over from Steve Ritchie when he left the company in 2021. But how far along was he on his version of the game? And did you keep anything that he had come up with in regards to his initial concept and game design? Yeah, so we started working on it. And when we were working on it, you know, I thought it was I thought it would have been a good license for Steve because he doesn't only certain licenses. You know, he's not a guy that likes to do stuff with a lot of overt humor or anything like that. So I thought I thought, well, Bond is right up his alley. You know, he likes action themes and stuff. And so I told him, I said, hey, you know, you know, we're going to get Bond. You know, you want to do Bond. So he started out down that path and he had gotten to a Whitewood. And I mean, this is just my opinion. I don't know for a fact, but I think he had been working on his next adventure during some of that. And when I looked at the Whitewood, you know, there really weren't any toys on it to speak of. and he had the forked ramp from Star Wars that disappeared into the playfield. And it was, I think it was a four-flipper layout, but whatever. My problem was really he left I got this whitewood I either finish that or I start over and I just couldn I mean I worked on I worked on his game for I don know maybe a week And um and I just said no I I hating my life I can do this And I I just I just shit canned it I mean, I went to see the exec team and I said, I am sorry, but this is going to be another Deadpool. And I'm throwing this out doing my own thing. And I just I just couldn't. I just wasn't. You know, you got to connect with the thing you're doing. It's just like you have to. It's so much work that if you if you're if it's not your stuff, man, it just gets that much harder. And I wasn't enthused by it. And I was a fan. Right. It was a Bond fan. And I was like, I don't know what to do with this. And so I started over. And so it was it was hard. You know, first of all, it was a reset for the team. Right. So the whole team, they were kind of energized, except for the fact that, you know, I was throwing a bunch of their stuff out to get that junk out of here. yeah no we're not doing so so it was kind of uh but they were they were sort of energized they were jazzed by the fact that i was way into the theme and and i was talking about stuff they didn't know right so it's like no no you don't understand we got to do the thing like this and all that inside james bond thing was which came real easy to me now you said that uh you believe that steve was uh sort of plotting out his next adventure when he was working on that Did the whitewood seem kind of half-baked? I mean, did that add to your decision to start over? You know, it just, my feeling on it is that I don't think he was inspired. And so I think that the whitewood was, you know, yeah, it was a whitewood. It was, it had shots. You could make shots. And, you know.
    55:50
    This is some glowing reviews. Right. He did have a DB5, but I didn't like the infrastructure to fire the ball out of the DB5. It grew out of the DB5. So it was like a DB5 with duct work? Yeah, a DB5 with duct work coming out of the roof. And I was like, yeah, I'm not feeling that.
    56:15
    Well, obviously, it's not your first rodeo. But I imagine that having a blank slate and a timeline to keep on top of, you know, with all of your other responsibilities, it couldn't have been easy. So we first heard about Steve leaving Stern around July of 2021, like we said. So that would give you significantly less time than the normal 18 months development cycle to get this game out. So how much time did you have to complete it? Whatever the time cycle, whatever it's been, so to speak. I, you know, I think we released stuff for production a couple of months ago. And so I think that now clearly, you know, we're not we're not we're far from done with the software. We're still working through and mostly there are some big, big licensing challenges with the use of film clips in the franchise and how you use them and all this kind of stuff. And that's really where we're at. We're getting a lot of those things through approvals. And as soon as we get it to the manager, to the licensor once, you know, they'll go in the game. You know, my pressure was, I felt a lot of pressure to keep the train, you know, keep the train moving, get back on track. And so a lot of the early pressure was me, myself. The problem with Bond and knowing Bond as well as I do, at least the Connery films, is that I couldn't make up my mind what I wanted. You know, I had at one point in time, I wanted the diffusing, the new countdown scene from Goldfinger. You know, I wanted a timer counting down like an old LED style timer, like or, you know, alphanumeric, not LED, alphanumeric Dixie tubes in, you know, in the film. Right. And I wanted you to have to, like, you know, stop the timer. And of course, you're going to get some extra big bonus if you stopped it on 007. And, you know, like the real one, by the way, stopped on 003. 003 and in editing uh somebody decided that you can't stop on 003 it's got to stop on 007 so this so they fixed the image but they didn't fix the speech call so he says another three seconds and you know we would have been oh yeah so you know watch next time you watch goldfinger you'll see that you know cool my problem was i just didn't know which direction to go in right my My two favorite films in the Connery franchise are actually Goldfinger and Thunderball and, you know, incredibly well crafted. And in those early films, Sean Connery looked amazing. Right. He was the dude he could wear absolutely anything, you know, like, you know, in Goldfinger. You know, he's wearing like a powder blue terrycloth onesie, you know, poolside. And he somehow, you know, he makes Goldfinger pay dearly for cheating at cards and he steals the girl. You know, he's like, hey, he's Bond. I was the only guy that can wear a terrycloth powder blue onesie and steal a girl, you know, poolside at the Fountain Blue in Miami, Which at the time was like the, you know, one of the most, you know, sort of she she hotel scenes in the world. Right. Nice. I was like, I'm like, seriously, watch that film. And you go, you go, this is the only dude on the planet that could get this amazing.
    59:38
    He makes it look good. Right. Right. People like to speculate. You know how they love to do that, George. And there's a lot of talk that there might have been a plan that maybe this was would be the next cornerstone title. Or did this bump something else in order to get it ready for Bond's 60th anniversary? No, the only reason. Yeah, this was the next cornerstone title. But that decision really wasn't made as much on the fact that, you know, it was slipping and all that stuff. It was more I think the two game a year decision was made because of the incredible backlog of orders that we have. And so it was kind of like a double edged. So it's like, hey, you know, George needs more time to finish the game. And it's not like we have a shortage of things to make. So, yeah. So I think that's I think that, you know, everybody talks about everybody freaks out when, you know, they're introducing a new game. They're only going to make the new game. You know what? That's almost never the case. Are there a couple of weeks where there's nothing but new game online? Probably. But very often it's interrupted, not interrupted, because there'll be the main, you know, the game we just introduced on one line. The other line will be running something else. I mean, yesterday I was in the, you know, two days ago, right before Expo, I was on the line and there were turtles on the line. So, I mean, the week leading in Expo, there were guardians and turtles on the line. And there was a small pilot area that built, I think it's 15 bond games. I think, you know, like some number of pros, some numbers of premiums, which you saw and played at the events. Right. Because, you know, games went to London games, you know, games went to a few other places. And so that's the reality. You know, I yeah, I know. I see that. I see some of the speculation. I lurk in some of the social media, Stern Pinball enthusiasts and stuff like that. And I lurk in there and I read what people are saying. If I can help somebody out with something, I jump in and help. But I also want to jump in and go, you guys are so far off on this.
    61:37
    In terms of new games, though, George, a lot of times you hear people will have two or three titles that they think are coming from Stern. And close to the new release, the next game release, everyone has an idea of what it is, 95%. They're like, this is what's going to be next. I don't think Bond was that game until it was. A lot of people knew it was coming at some point. What people didn't know is, and you're going to see it here in short order, is they didn't know about Elwynn's game, the 60th anniversary. So the 60th anniversary was actually a request from the licensor. They said, hey, can you guys do an old school game with reels and stuff? And we said, we can do that. And so it can't be the thing we sell to the majority of our audience. But and, you know, what I'm blessed, the community has so responded to Bond that I'm I'm actually a little shocked because I thought I was scared of, you know, like, you know, we don't have enough in it yet. You know, I don't you know, I'm pretty solid on my play field and my mechanical stuff, but, you know, we don't have a code in it yet. And I was freaking out about this. And the people have I mean, people were so complimentary all weekend and and that it can't be put on. And the sales guys tell me that the orders are through the roof. So I'm loving that. And I think Elwin's game is really interesting. And when you guys see it, you'll love it. So his covers six bonds, right? So he's got Connery all the way up. He's got Roger Moore. He's got George Lazenby. He's got Pierce Brosnan. He's got Daniel Craig.
    63:17
    He's got the bond that I always forget. There's a pilot. It's Timothy Dalton. Connery, David Niven. Timothy Dalton. So he's got all those bonds, and he's got, his game has a small display. The display from the home editions is on the play field, but it's got reels in the back box. And it's got, the mechanical engineering team did a wonderful job with these reels because we're not used to seeing reels backlit with LEDs. And those things, they look awesome. They just glow in the back. And they've got three sets of sounds and they harken to different eras. And so like that, I think I think he's going to ship a default with stern pinball 80s sounds, which is awesome. And of course, he's got all whatever music I have, you know, he's got and and stuff like that. So he's got a shot that I've never seen, which is really cool. He's got a single level play field and he's got this swoopy figure eight thing that returns the ball back to the flipper. and you can actually continue by shooting the other side of the play field. It's lots of pinball stuff. So he's got a crap load of drop targets, spinners. He loves spinners. There's lots of spinners.
    64:30
    Just in-line targets. I mean, he's got – it's very cool, and it's different. It's very different from mine, and I think that it's going to make it desirable. I think we're going to make – I think it's 500 of them, and I bet you those 500, they're going to be gone. And there's some cool, you know, we're talking about, you know, there's some really cool crossover features, Insider Connected, crossover features between his game and mine. And so there's a lot of fun stuff. You had me at 80s Stern pinball sounds. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Give me a spin, baby. The other thing about that game, so I don't know if you guys don't, you may or may not know Mark Panaccio. Mark is a software engineer, very talented. He was, he programmed the very first Elvira. He was at Williams for many years. and, you know, went on to work, he worked on Xbox stuff. And he I mean, he's really, really a talent. And sort of a high tech, you know, like a guy that like knows low level, high level knows the whole thing, you know, and has worked in all those areas. And and so he spent 10 years of his life right before he joined us, he had he was working on high speed trading software for you know, the financial business. And when he called me one day, and he said, Hey, I've done pretty well and I want to have fun again. And I was just, you know, I, you know, it clicked in my head. Oh man, I'm, I'm, you know, with Insider Connected and all the things that I have to do there, his expertise was going to be amazing, you know? And so we hired him and he did a lot of the, he did some, you know, he did some work towards the end of IC to launch. And, and he's the guy that he will pick up whatever you need him to pick up. You know, it's like, it's kind of like, what, what do you need? And I'm there. And when Keith started down the path of this game, We were trying to figure out how to allocate software resources. And he said, you know, hey, you know, we've launched IC. And if you guys you guys have enough resources, kind of moving that ball. And I don't not want to come back to it, but I sure would love a break and to do something else. And so so he programmed Keith's game and they worked well together. And I think Mark really enjoyed doing the stuff he had started out doing way back when in, you know, when he was working on games. And so, yeah, we're very happy. I mean, that game that game is going to ship. If it doesn't ship code complete, it's going to be like really close. So that harkens to another question. Like, when did Keith get involved in that? Was it from day one or did he was it an idea that it occurred like as the process of the development of the game? So it was written into I think it was written into the contracts. So I think it it always existed. What didn't exist was the timeline for when we would do it. And so what happened is that the licensor gave us some freedom to, OK, you guys, you know, launch the cornerstones and then, you know, you can launch the other game afterwards. And the more we got to thinking about it, the more we thought, you know, like there's going to be like cross promotional opportunities and buzz. And so we you know, I said to him, I said, hey, it's a single level play field. It's all pinball parts. You've played these things to death in tournaments. so you're like not only the perfect guy because you know these games because you've had to play them in every tournament you know that you've been in and so right you know he was a great sounding board for me uh him and guys like Zach Sharp who would when I did the Beatles right because I said hey you guys play these things in tournaments and tell me what and you know it was them that said I mean it was actually it was Keith that for for a long time I was very concerned that with a flat play field you know I fixed a lot of the shots right so you can make a lot of that upper area and play fields in in beetles is accessible from the bottom of the game that's not how sea witch was and if you ever see one side by side with a sea which it'll become instantly obvious to you that i moved a bunch of stuff around but um it was owen that said you know all those guys that played those things in tournaments they came up to me and said the first thing you got to do is fix all these shots and i was like okay he says yeah it's a fun game but man it could be a lot better game if if you fix all these things and so you know i had you You know, that thing had the opto spinners, which really rip. And I've got that on Bond. But he said to me, I was afraid of the flipper power. And so I was running the game with really weak flippers. And he said to me, he goes, you got to punch these up. So I did. And I'm very happy I did. You know, because as soon as I played it, I was like, it's sort of like we remember that old stuff fondly. But the reality is that the stuff you really want to play is the stuff we're making today. So when you do the bridge, you've got to keep certain things. So it's like, you know, part of what makes those things feel floaty is the fact that the flippers are weak. And so anyway, so he went into this sort of excited with sort of a different design challenge, right? And yeah, I think you guys are going to like the play field. Can't wait to see it. Now, there's an image of Keith's game that was floating around the Internet was supposedly Keith's game. Was that just a prototype image or was it pretty close to what we'll see when it's revealed? It's close. There was a render and I actually made the render. That's my render because it's close. What you haven't seen is I don't think you've seen the play field. You've seen the cabinet. The cabinet has 12 film posters on one side, 13 on the other. So every film is represented. And then, of course, there's a Bond poster art from each Bond on the back glass. It's actually a mirror and it looks amazing. And so it's like, you know, I'm sorry that I couldn't quite represent it in the right, you know, with the with, you know, I didn't I didn't have a lot of time and I knocked this thing out. And I really should have spent another week just screwing around with the lighting to get to get the render better. But it was not supposed to be out there. So I don't know. I mean, I don't even know how anybody got it. It was like sent to I don't know. It wasn't me.
    70:22
    It wasn't French. No, it's still right now. When you streamed the game, which, by the way, was awesome, and Jack Danger did an amazing job showing it off, and it was great to have a Q&A in the middle of the stream, you did mention that it was going to be revealed to the world, Keith's game, in about a week. And that puts us at tomorrow. So is there any chance that we're going to see this game revealed soon? I don't see it as soon as tomorrow. I knew that we were doing, right around the time we did the stream, they were doing the photo shoot for that game. And so they were getting their ducks in a row. You guys don't know this, but the marketing launch plan for a game is pretty intricate, meaning there's all this different stuff that has to happen, and you've got to get approvals for the stuff, etc. I don't know if you'll see it tomorrow, but you'll see it real soon. Cool. Well, we definitely jumped ahead a little bit to talk about Keith's game, but we want to jump back and focus more on your game and what you did in that game. So let's jump into that. we'd heard rumors that this title about it many moons ago and more than a few people mentioned that the ip came with an extremely limited asset pool available to pull from movie posters only but when stern revealed the game it was obvious that you got quite a bit more actors likeness movie clips the bond theme and even additional music what did you have offered initially and did you have to go after anything more to make the game as good as it could be yeah that's just one of those internet things but that asset package was the asset package was the asset package so all that stuff was available to us the only thing that i added late in the process was more john barry music right from the get-go you know we knew you can't make a james bond game without the bond theme gotta get the bond team you know and and i wanted my biggest single biggest disappointment is that the shirley bassey goldfinger uh song is not in the game and and i it would the price was just prohibitive. Gold finger He's the man The man with the widest touch And the same thing with the Tom Jones Thunderball piece. And he strikes like thunderball I really wanted those. I wanted them badly, but the reality is that, I mean, they cost just an arm and a leg, and we couldn't do it. For all intents and purposes, the theme music for Dr. No is the James Bond theme, for all intents and purposes. And then I have From Russia with Love, which is really a love song, and it's hard to integrate it into the action scenes in a pinball machine. I have Diamonds Are Forever, very similar, and I have You'll Live Twice. So I can tell you that your credit rolls are going to be awesome. wait no duran duran but i think that uh i did get a bunch of john barry music and the magic of john barry as a composer was the fact that he wove both the bond theme and the theme songs together throughout the films. And, and so what I did is I picked out some pieces from Thunderball and from Goldfinger that have, you know, slow passages, fast passages, action passages, so that we could use them as appropriate, you know, and in terms of what we're doing. And you'll see more of that even than you saw at Expo, because, you know, the Expo set, we were pushing, pushing to get not only approved stuff, but to get, you know, get stuff working. And so, yeah, so I mean, the asset package, what's limiting about it well what's limiting about it is that as chris found out very early on we didn't get to draw anything from scratch with the exception of uh villains henchmen and bond girls and that's only because the imagery was so thematically different you know so some of it was black and white some of it was stuff that they just you know they didn't when they were making the early films they didn't know they were going to be become what they were going to become So, you know, today when somebody makes a film, there's an asset package that they have in the back of their mind relative to licensing, relative to merchandise, etc. That didn't exist in those days. So that is not in the same way. And so, you know, while a lot of the work is really the work of Frank McCarthy, the famous illustrator, and Robert E. McGinnis, you know, who also did some of the stuff. And while that's what you see, you cannot discount Kevin O'Connor's work on this because he had to take stuff that's 50, in some cases, 60 years old and make it acceptable in the world that we live in. And so, you know, in terms of, you know, some of the scans that we were working with were not the greatest and some of the, you know, some stuff didn't exist as complete as we needed it to. So, you know, he would have he had to do a lot of work to get that stuff presentable. But, you know, when you go up to the you go up to the Eon Archive of Bond stuff and there is a wealth of material. There's, you know, I mean, there's material, not only the movie posters, but there's your set photography. there's you know the unit photography from the film there's i mean there's just a ton of stuff it's just a question of some films you know the later you get in the franchise the more stuff there is the more the cleaner better quality stuff there is so we were challenged by the fact that you know we're working with material from you know the span of time is essentially of our film of our game is essentially 1962 dr no to uh diamonds which was uh you know 70 71 something like that right i think probably you know in that time frame so that's what we had to work with now i have to ask since we're talking about that is it's a little out of a lot of place in our interview questions but when i was there i got a really good look at the game i got to play it as well which we can talk about later but i couldn't help but notice on the side on the left side cabinet of the doctor no model it looked like bond's face was melting on one side like And it looks like maybe it was like somebody was damaged and nobody fixed it. But I would have thought if that was the case, then you guys would have fixed it. The thing about the posters is that, the film posters, is that you can't add to them, meaning it's very difficult to repaint something. You can paint over to a certain extent, but you can't alter the original work. So you have to take the original work and represent it. And that's the way it was on that piece. And so that's what we had to do. That's the weirdest thing. Dr. No was a different illustrator. It was McCarthy.
    77:06
    And that, one of the things that we struggled with was what Dr. No imagery lends itself to a pinball machine. If you ever want to see not 100% of what we had to work with, but a lot of what we had to work with, there are several books on the movie posters from the franchise. and if you buy one of those books and you go you know go you know dig out dr no go dig out um goldfinger stuff like that and and you'll see what it is that we we're pretty much working with rare exception if it exists it's in those books um what people don't understand there's a lot of unlicensed unapproved uh fan art in the on the internet you know so we would find we would find stuff that we say what about this where's this poster and they're that's not real rats they found gomez george gomez they really wanted to throw that in there that's not real it's a frenchetti that brings an interesting point because through doing this show and doing interviews we've learned a lot about how older movies have less red tape when you know when it comes to using likenesses and assets and things like that was that part of the strategy in using the older movies? No, the absolute only strategy, and I picked this, Steve didn't, you know, I think Steve was interested in doing a more current Bond. I felt that, you know, when I imagined the product, and actually this was a conversation I had with Joe Kamikow early on, we were talking about, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did six old school pinballs and each one was themed to a film? And so we, you know, we started down that path and we started just bouncing those ideas around. And that's what, that stuck in my head. But I always wanted the Connery Bond because I think it's, first of all, yes, some portion of the audience doesn't know it, but they'll know it now because, you know, I can't tell you the number of people that have said to me, I'm spending the weekend watching all these films because, you know, they're so cool, you know? And I had not seen these. And, you know, the franchise, every actor interprets Bond in a different way. That is part of the art of being an actor. Right. And so Roger Moore was a lighter, sort of more flippant Bond. Right. And and, you know, and Connery defined the role by bouncing from, you know, he electrocuted electrocutes a guy in a bathtub. And, you know, as he's putting his tuxedo jacket on, he says, shocking, positively shocking. And he walks out. But he also, you know, think about the fight scene with Oddjob in Fort Knox. Right. And, you know, you can see this distress in his face. He's it's a fight for survival against a real foe. Right. So you you can go from that level of intensity to shocking, positively shocking, you know, And that's how he interpreted Bond, right? And over the years, those guys were clearly influenced by what he did, but they all each just gave him their own flavor. Daniel Craig's films have Bond humor in them, but he delivers it in a completely different way. And he's the most intense of them all, right? Because he's a Bond for our times, and we've seen a lot. Your brain's got to be allowed to fill in the blanks of modernity, if you will, right? Right Well let jump into talking about the game itself We talk a little bit more about gameplay but the Jack Danger live stream will be the best resource for people to learn about that So we want to deep dive into the game in a way that focuses primarily on your design process and the decisions that you made if that sounds good to you So with six movies chosen to be in the game how do you break down how to incorporate those movies into a pinball machine and what was on your list of things that you absolutely must have included Right So a clear must have was the DB5 Right And so it was a question of you know what to do with the DB5 And by the way you know the DB5 is while it a license from Eon relative to the Bond films it also requires the approval of Aston Martin And so Aston Martin had to bless the model and a lot of that stuff. Right. And Aston Martin was adamant that, you know, they needed an opening and closing roof. they weren't going to sign off on you know hvac duct work coming out of the top of the i wasn't i wasn't either by the way but that's what i was handed you know so so i you know i thought i think that um aston was involved from the standpoint of the detail and how you show the db5 what you do with the db5 so you asked me what was necessary the thing that i struggled with was of all the cool stuff what how do i get you know how do i make and pinball's full of compromises You know, there's some guy out there laughing at me because the jetpack is a lot like the helicopter in Rescue 911. You know, and I was like, you know what? I wish I and maybe if I can find it, if I can figure out a way to do this, I'll show you my original jetpack. It flew around and it was awesome because Bond flew in an arc and landed, you know, on the playfield in different places. But the amount of space that was taking up and the fact that, you know, I couldn't figure out a way to work it around the rocket. And I mean, you know, look, you got the amount of space between the play field and the glass changes. So the only play you're going to the only space you're going to use for something like that is in the back. And the rock is big. So, you know, at some point I knew there was going to be a giant fight, like a big, you know, end of Bond movie fight for the life and death fight. And I thought, OK, there's lots of them. The underwater fight scene in Thunderball, which is one of my favorites, is difficult to reproduce in a pinball machine. You know, I did what I could to reprise an element of it. You know, I was very moved by the McCarthy illustration, right? The Frank McCarthy illustration that's on the side of the Thunderball cabinet, right? I mean, that's just fantastic, right? That's the thing that Chris grabbed, you know, with me underwater fighting with the Spectre. That's right. I mean, look at that illustration. I mean, it's just so cool, right? It's like, how can you not do that, right? And I went to the sculptors, and I said, I want these guys. And, you know, I want G.I. Joe scale, three-inch recorder. Here it is. And, you know, it totally nailed them. I mean, it's like those things are so cool. You almost don't want – maybe you want to buy a set from the parts department for your desk because they're too cool to be under the play field. but I also thought it would be kind of fun to reprise my old monster bash creature from the black lagoon thing I thought that scoop you know that scoop firing up playfield that that either shoots the tank or it shoots the play the the pop bumpers you know I thought that was different I'd never seen that before so I thought you know we're gonna do some fun stuff with that there's some there's lots of obvious humor right like there's a scene in thunderball where Largo says turn on the underwater lights.
    84:06
    So I told Lonnie, That's a good impression. Yeah, I said, when we are in a thunderball thing and you fall in that scoop and you're holding the ball and do thunderball things and you're lighting those dudes, we got to have Largo say, turn on the underwater lights. And then you turn the lights on.
    84:24
    So I said, what I really want Largo to say is, Lonnie, turn on the underwater lights. that's what i really want him to say but they're never gonna let me do that so i i bonnie's been making fun he says that uh so i have i've seen the film so many times and i know so many of these uh one-liners and he says to me that we need to do a like a director's cut where the director talks over the film kind of thing so he says he says what we got to do is we got to get jack or you know what like an ace player to play the game on camera and then you Say the stuff. Right?
    85:02
    Because every time I say, da men in the crater, Lonnie freaks out. He says, you know, he starts laughing. He can't stop laughing.
    85:14
    Wait, say that again? Da men in the crater. Are you in this game at all, George? I mean, did you put your voice in there? Those guys so want me to do that stuff, right? They were like, I am pregnant.
    85:34
    There should be an Easter egg or something with going as call-outs. Right, right, right, right. So let's talk about it. So you got the rocket, and that area represents the volcano in You Only Live Twice. And what I wanted was, what I described to the team is, look, I want this. I want that multiball. first of all you know it's like osado chemicals was like the uh front for you know the rocket fuel they were using you know for the you know the specter guy etc the mr osado and and so you know i said yeah let's put osado chemicals logos on the drop targets and you take down you know the it's totally consistent and then you know you went but what i wanted was i wanted this multi-ball to be so over the top i wanted you know like auba sirens i want ninjas rappelling in stuff exploding, all hell breaking loose, the dude saying, that man is a crater! And, you know, Blofeld going, we are impregnable. Close the shutters, we are impregnable. Yes.
    86:36
    Absolutely. Lonnie says, can you just do that for all the speech calls? So, yeah, no, but I wanted, you know, So, like, all hell's breaking loose. El Menem's a great thought. You could even do the siren. That's great. Right. Yeah.
    86:57
    Right. So, a little bit about the process of building all the models of the game. Do you start with, like, the LE and work backwards, take things out? Where do you start? Yes, I always start. How do you go? I always start with, I think all of us do. I think all of us start with the LE because you've got to fit things. and and they take physical space and um so we start with all the stuff and actually there's a feature in elwyn's game a prime you know a big a big toy in the center sort of toy feature very pinball like but um in elwyn's game that's on the center of the play field that was in my game in the center of the play field for a long time and it just was like screwing up my my shots and so I took it out. But it had, you know, it had a lot of stuff. It had like the, I mean, it has, most of it survived. I wish for the guy that's beating the shit out of me about Rescue 911. Yes, I was there. I saw Rescue 911. That's not at all what I had in mind when I did my, and yeah, I wanted the articulation of the jet pack to be more elegant than it is. But I have, you know, I have real world constraints. I had to put a magnet in there. It's got to work. it's got you know i needed more structural rigidity than the beautiful you know sort of arc of movement that i did in my my plastic mock-up uh of you know working i i had a jury rigged a motor and a cam to fly him around and everybody was like blown away i was like oh that's so cool it was like yeah i know he can't pick up a ball he looks cool but he can't pick up a ball so you know i had that i had i decided that the thunder that the rocket was going to be the thing with the gantry and the big fight and a physical ball lock. I haven't used a diverter in a long time. I thought it would be a fun use of a diverter. I wanted to do a three-flipper game. Everybody thinks I'm a two-flipper guy, and my first game I ever did was... I have to ask you this. I have to ask you this, because we've had you on a number of times, and we've brought up the fact that there are some Gomez classic moves, and I have to just get you on the podcast to admit that maybe subconsciously when we brought that up we had something to do with encouraging you to do a three flipper game so the super awesome pinball show can take credit for that I mean can I just say that well and there's a guy there's an operator on the east coast he sent me a message when he heard I was doing bond saying I can't you I can't wait to see another two-flipper work of art. And I was like, right then and there, I knew. Okay.
    89:37
    Challenge accepted. Yeah. So I think the thing about three-flipper games, so the original question was, what do you start with? Well, you have to find the space to do all those things. And so there's physical space that's required for the rocket.
    89:56
    Which just took off, apparently, in someone's backyard. Sounds like a train. Right. And then you just have to fit all the stuff in. You know, it's a bit of a puzzle, right? And so I wanted the Dr. Note, you know, I thought the Dr. Note tank was sort of an obvious bad guy target. I thought the physical tank would be fun to make. And I thought, hey, let's, you know, I know it's a stretch to the fiction, but, you know, don't you want to have him drop the ball on the tank? I wish I had more height. So I wanted that to be more dramatic. But again, you know, it's like I'm stuck with what I have to work with in terms of the dimensions of the play field. And so I couldn't get more space and still represent the tank adequately and all that stuff. So it's all, you know, it's a puzzle. And that two-way ramp was very inspired by Gary basically harassing all the designers that upper flipper shots are totally lost on novice players. So I said, look, Gary, you can get this ramp from the bottom of the game or you can get it from the side of the game.
    90:57
    Nice. So for a long time, I call it the Gary ramp because years ago, when he looks at a play field, he looks at how much money did you spend on the feature versus how you're using it. Right. So he says, well, you know, you've dedicated whatever it is to a given feature, 50, 60 dollars, 70 dollars, whatever it is. and only a small percentage of the population gets to play with it. And so from that perspective, there's a lot of stuff that, you know, you have to kind of figure out a way to make stuff accessible. So I thought, well, you know, this will be fun. I want to do a three-flipper thing. Those two shots, the inside orbit and then to the ramp, that combination, you watch me do it on the stream, right? And that combination on the stream, you know, that combination exists in Corvette. And I haven't done it since. And it feels so good. And, you know, somebody asked me when we first started releasing the marketing videos for the game, somebody commented that that can't be real speed, right? And I'm like, oh, it is.
    91:59
    Buckle up, buddy. It is real speed. Didn't speed that up. That's for sure real speed. It's a fast shooting play field. One of the funnest parts about it and where now we're still tweaking a rule to make, you know, combinations on that play field are awesome because there's so many of them. No, it's a hard play through the shoot. There are two key shots, the right ramp and the left orbit that are off the tip of the flippers. And then there's a shot which actually you make more often than not because you're so afraid of getting to the tip. Just the tip? Just the tip. so there's that orbit shot between the ramp between the two legs of the ramp that you know actually when we open up the top gate that comes around and you can you could loop that and and so you know it just feels great to connect those shots and it feels great to loop it and and like when you do two orbits on that top thing and then you hit that ramp oh my god you think you're like just a you know a hero and so i think that yeah i think i had a lot of fun with that stuff now i can imagine with your experience and watching all these movies you didn't have to like sit down and watch them all again when you started the design process i did though i've watched them so many times in like and i in you know the magic of blu-ray i've been fast you know i fast forward to a scene i remember going on one more thought on these combinations right so right now the original design we went for a long way we we went with we needed um what i was had to explain to license or is there's no way that the weight of the theme of each film can be equally represented in their play field there's just not enough space you know so i so you have to make choices and from russia with love has that orbit dedicated to it and that orbit when you're in that mode essentially opens up a bunch of combinations. And so, but what I was telling the boys is I said, look, that's a real advanced player thing. So you, you, we have to, when the average guy makes a combination, we got to hit him with a reward right then and there. It's got to, he's got to feel great when he does that, not just when he's in that mode. So I think that we're going to modify things a little bit to get, to get some of that because even crossing ramps, right? Even that orbit that brings the, you know, the outside orbit that brings the ball back to left flipper and then goes to the swoopy right ramp, even that feels great. You know, you do that three times, and, you know, you feel amazing. So we need, you know, I keep talking to the, when I talk to guys, I talk about instant feedback. Like I want, man, come on, you know, you made it happen. I need the sound effect. I need the light show. I need that thing happening right now. I don't care what's on screen, but I need the feedback, right?
    94:50
    You play at that pool, it's the feedback, right? Those dudes are in idle mode fighting, but you don't care about that. You just want like, give me the feel-good sound. Give me the light show. I'm there. Instant gratification. Everybody loves that. You've got to have it. Yep. So after you watched all the movies again, did you go through them basically sort of like, I would imagine, if I can be so bold as to imagine what your process is, that you made just a long list of gadgets and different things that happened in the movie. Like what could translate into a pinball feature? And then you have to obviously cut that down to what's going to fit and all that. But originally, how long was your list of ideas that you could translate into a pinball feature? Yeah, it was long. And then on top of not really long, but the gantry, it's like, for example, the rocket gantry, right? So, Chris, you're right on. So what I do is I watch the stuff, I take notes, and then I sketch, right? I'm going to show you some of those sketches. I'm going to send you guys some of that stuff so you can put it up for people to see. Right. But and what you what you'll see when you look at the sketches is in some ways that evolution or in some cases that the real stuff is not as cool as the sketch. You know, it's like. Right. So the gantry had, you know, the gantry had more of an interface to the rocket, you know, so it looked a lot like the real gantry. And then but then the problem I had, I had some issues with I didn't have enough motion in the rocket. and I and I kind of I really liked that motion and so I had to kind of back the gantry off and then originally I didn't have the swoopy spiral around the to deliver the balls I had the I actually had the balls at the top of the gantry and they were almost like a connection piece like the thing the astronauts walk across to get inside the capsule right so I had the balls locked up there but you asked about my process and my process is I'm big on working cross mediums Right. Like I'm not one of these guys that like I don't sit and stare at my CAD screen for eight hours when I'm starting. Now there's down the road. Yeah, I'm that guy. But in the beginning, I'm working across mediums. So I'm like making stuff in plastic. I'm sketching. I'm trying stuff out on a whiteboard. I'm just kind of trying lots of stuff. And that process, that hands on process is what informs my decisions. And the one thing I've always, you know, like I try to instill this a lot on my designers is you have to get to decisions and you have to get, you know, you can't just, you know, iteration is a very natural part of the process, but you have to get to decisions. You can't get locked up in, you know, analysis paralysis sort of thing, you know, where you're just kind of like thinking about it and I don't have a solution yet. The solution comes from screwing shit together and trying it. That's where the solution lives. It doesn't live in some, you know, faraway thought bubble above your head. It doesn't. Really doesn't. And so I think that eventually, you know, I have to make the stuff real. So now I take my mock-ups and once I start translating my physical mock-ups and my sketches into CAD, I love the, you know, the coolest thing about 3D CAD is the library of existing parts that we have, right? So I'm never having to model a stand-up target. I'm never having to model a drop target set. All that stuff exists in the library. I'm only modeling the things that don't exist that are new. And, of course, I'm modeling new ball guides and new stuff like that. But there's an element of speed and accuracy that comes from the fact that I'm pulling out of the pool of engineering CAD that I can grab stuff. And I'm never modeling a post. I'm never modeling anything like that. So there's a lot of speed. And the other cool thing is that, you know, I've said this before. I think I said this last time we talked. But once I get into that environment, then I'm a nutcase about all the little details. And so I chase stuff that most designers don't chase. And so I want stuff to fit a certain way. I want clearances. I don't like wonky forced things. It's, you know, there's one plastic on bond that I'm not entirely happy with because I screwed around with the area a lot. And then I ended up, you know, I just ran out of time. And it's the one that covers up the Vuk. And that's very unlike me that you have like this, that the plastic looks to be deflected or deformed a little bit because it's laying on top of the Vuk. Normally, you know, it would be perfectly flat and level above the Vuk or it would be cut out for the Vuk or whatever. The hood, you know, for the eject. That's the, you know, that eject is right out of the inventory. It's the Deadpool eject from Hell House. And in that area, I played with, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but so there's a decal underneath the play field of the underwater fight on the wall of the cabinet. And so that when you light it up, you know, you can, you know, you sort of see that background. Unfortunately, you also see the slide for the play field. But, you know, it's like I thought, yeah, it's an underwater gadget, part of some evil specter thing. allows allows play fields to come in and out of the cabinet yeah you'd mentioned online during the stream that you were still getting approvals for some of the assets in the game where would you say you are with the game's code and at what point do you think that everything that you want to be there will get into the game yeah so um i think we called the stuff that expo.6 or.5 or something like that i don't remember what it is but that's a misnomer in a way because what you don't know is that the stuff it's not like the rule hasn't been written or any of that stuff that's all done it's just a question of i have to put the so what the licensor needs to see is they need to see an event happen on the play field relative to video and sound effects so so what we do is we do something very similar to what we do in a stream right you point a camera at the play field and then you have the video feed so that they can understand the cause and effect of things. And so it's a tedious process. And not only is it a tedious process, but we have tons of video assets. We have like a crap load of video assets from the films, which we licensed from MGM and Eon. And we want to use it. You know, we want to use all of it. And so it's a question of a lot of those scenes we caught up. So you make a shot, you see, you know, you see an introduction for the scene, then you make a shot, you see the continuing element of the scene, and then there's some sort of a loop. And then, you know, we see that you make the next shot, you see the next significant portion of the scene and etc all the way to the payoff right but do you expect me to talk no mr bond expect you to die so right so that those are the payoffs if you drain in the middle of that you're never going to see the end of that right and sometimes it's pinball a player can do anything at any time so the magic and the most difficult thing to bridge with licensing with the licensor has been the fact that things can be interrupted midstream because things can happen right you know, I'm in the middle of a goldfinger thing, but then I hit this orbit shot and I got to, I have to give you some sort of a spinner feedback thing, right? To say, okay, you're in the shot, you hit the spinner, I got to show you the spinner. Now we do play games with, you know, what takes priority over what, and the same thing with sound effects, you know, typically speech ducks everything around it so you can hear it. And I mean, it's complex, but what I was telling you about the state of the code is that it's going to make leaps and bounds because when you get an asset package that's approved most that stuff's in there you just got to flip the switch to show it to people so there's a lot of that and and so i think it'll take us a couple of months to be really done done and i also think that there are some really cool stuff there's some secret missions related to insider connected there's some crossover stuff with keats game um there's stuff like that that you haven't seen yet or haven't seen before and and so i think i think that that'll be exciting stuff for people i'm curious is this is this uh do you have this issue with all licenses or is this one kind of a little more than you're used to? It's a little bit more than we're used to. Okay. So when you do a game like Deadpool and you're creating a hundred percent of the assets, you're creating assets around the game when you're working with film and, and, you know, I've done both, right? I mean, Batman's got a ton of film and I managed to, we managed to sort of craft all of that film so that it feels natural and, and looks like it belongs in the pinball machine. I mean, just go play a Batman, you know? And so what we're trying to do is very much like that, right? It's closer to Batman than it is to Deadpool. George, can I jump back to where you're saying that in order to show a licensor that you are, how you're incorporating things into a game, you have to take video clips of every way that an asset is used in a game. So is it someone's full-time job to edit those videos so you can see like, okay, here is how we're using this movie. Right. So first off, It begins with Mike Vinacore, who started out as a game tester for us.
    103:40
    He's grown into what I call an associate designer. You know, he's not going to draw a play field. He's not going to invent a toy. But he's got a great feel for games, and he's got a great feel for game rules. He's been helping. You know, him and Lonnie worked on Stranger Things. Him and Lonnie, I think, worked on Guardians. And so, you know, he's been helping with a lot of the rule concepts and stuff. But and some of the grunt work that that he gets thrown at him is, hey, Mike, film these things in such a way that we can demonstrate them to the licensor. And then they go back to Chuck Ernst group and Chuck edits the video clips in such a way that, you know, hey, Pat Black introduction text sequence runs Pat Black introduction text sequence runs. Yeah, it's a lot of it's a lot of work that nobody ever sees. Nobody ever talks about. It's not exciting, sexy work. It's just stuff you got to do. And so I mean, we always talk about how assets have to be shown to the licensor. But you just kind of made me think about it. And that seems like a huge Herculean task because a lot of these licensors don't know what pinball is. They don't know how shots work and how video modes work or whatever. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And some guys, some licensors are pretty easy about it. And they don't require the nuance of detail. They basically just they're just interested in, you know, is it just brand equity? And, you know, they have a lot less involvement in in sort of how, you know, they I'll tell you what I found. The first time through with a new licensor is always difficult. And, you know, we've made, I think, three or four Lucasfilm properties and the first one was tough. But after that, they said, man, these guys are ace. They know what they're doing. So an approvals process with Lucas right now is, you know, it's substantially easier than it was the first time around. Same thing with Marvel. Marvel is very good at guiding us in the beginning. You know, our friend Jesse Falcon over there, basically he'll say to me, stay in this genre, use these assets. And then, you know, look, I mean, come on, look at the games we've done with those guys. And you're like, you know, and honestly, you know what happens is, and I've seen this several times. I've seen this with Lucas and Marvel, is they're proud of the work, right? The licensing department is proud of the work, meaning that our pinball machine is such an incredible thing sitting in a licensing department, in the lobby of a licensing department or wherever. And, you know, the guy down the hall, he's doing lunchboxes. And the guy down the hall on the other side, he's doing video games. And there's a guy doing comic books and a guy doing, you know, cups. And here's this pinball machine. and it's a walking, talking representation of the brand. I've said before that when we do it right, it looks like the brand built it. It doesn't look like it.
    106:32
    I think Stern pinball are the most fun pinball machines in the world. I truly believe that. I'm not saying that to you because I work for Stern pinball or I'm very proud of what I've done or what we've done. I really believe that they're the most fun. They're the ones that I like to play, and I like them better than my 90s games. You know, I mean, I don't like, I mean, you know, all due respect to the, you know, Monster Bashes and Lord of the Rings and all that stuff. Give me a Deadpool and, you know, all day long. If I had to, you know, the old question that I think you guys or somebody asked me, right, Desert Island, what game are you taking?
    107:07
    Oh, and what a cliffhanger. If you're going to want to find out what George Gomez's Desert Island pick is, you're just going to have to tune in next week for the second part of our exclusive interview with Mr. George Gomez. That's right, special back-to-back episodes just for you for the holiday season. In the meantime, if you want to write us, you can do so at superawesomepinball at gmail.com. And if you want to buy our funky swag, you can do that at silverballswag.com, where we don't charge a single penny over cost. Why? Because we love you. All the original content of this episode is copyright 2022 Asshat Radio Productions. See you next week, everybody, and happy Thanksgiving. And don't forget to vote super awesome for best podcast in the 2022 Twippies.