UConn Yeti revealed. The Three Musketeers revealed. Circus Voltaire reimagined announced. And we're at the Texas Pinball Festival! Hi, my name is Jonathan Huston. I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined by... Hi, I'm Martin Nave and I'm the editor of Pinball News and Jonathan and I are here to look back at all the exciting events that took place in the pinball world during the month of March 2026, which included all those things we've just spoken about, plus a whole lot more, because it was a very busy month. Not least because we had the Texas Pinball Festival and a lot of stuff tends to happen in the world of pinball around about that time. Right. So, yeah, and, well, one of the biggest surprises and highlights of the show, if I may say so, was a new game revealed by Turner Pinball. Yeah, we weren't exactly expecting that. There was no advance notice, well, very little advance notice about it, shall I say. You can talk about that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but anyway, we're talking about, of course, Yukon Yeti, which is a Dennis Nordman design, Turner Pinball's third release after Ninja Eclipse and Merlin's Arcade. Yep, good one. So Yukon Yeti has a limited release of 500 units. It was being developed at Deeproot Pinball before they shut down, but But I think it was also kind of being developed in American pinball as well, but in a slightly different format. Well, slightly different playfields. Yeah, yeah, I know. It was meant to be a follow-up to Whitewater when it was there, in a game called Wild Water. But that, as you say, that playfield was somewhat different to what... Wild Water was entirely different. Yeah, I know, yeah. Not sure that pictures of that have actually emerged in the public yet, but we've got them. We've played the game. Yes, well, exactly. Anyway, this is Yukon Yeti, and it was the game that was being developed at G.Pinball before they shut down. Dennis Lawman designed it, we said. It's now been acquired by Turner Pinball as part of the assets from Deeproot that he got. And it's been released with, basically there is a core legendary edition which comes in at a price of just shy of US$10, 000, $9, 999. But there's also a sort of menu of additional items which you can add to it when you order the game, which include things like a topper, an animated topper, a shaker motor, anti-reflective glass, internal art blades, enhanced speakers with speaker lighting. You can either buy these all individually as a sort of a la carte selection or you can buy them all in an all-in package which saves you $250 if you pick the whole package. Now at the Texas Pinball Festival the game was on display in both the core legendary edition and with all the extras added. The film was added. So there are two machines there. It was officially announced at midday on the Wednesday of the Texas Pinball Festival, the 18th. Yeah, little, as I said, little notice on that. Yeah, so I talked to Chris Turner about that at the Texas Pinball Festival, Also because we both headed to, actually to Houston first before the Texas Pinball Festival and we reached out to Chris to see whether we could make a stopover in San Antonio to visit the Turner Pinball Factory on our way, well that would be quite a detour, but still on our way to Frisco. Texas. And he told us no, because as he explained at the show, there was basically no time. They were still putting these games together and finishing up so much other stuff and what have you, as always, apparently, with Turner Pinball and the Texas show. So that explains why our request was denied. Yes, access denied. But yeah, obviously it was, I think it was, according to Chris, it was a sort of touch and go to get everything ready in time for the show. But to be honest, you wouldn't really know that by looking at the game. Everything looked finished and complete and production ready. I don't think there was anything there that they were trying to get it working when it was on the show floor or issues with it. I didn't get to see under the playfield, but under the glass, the top part of the playfield, that looked very, very neat indeed. Yeah, I think it looked a very professional presentation, so I think they did very well if it really was a rush to get it ready for the show. And even more kudos to them, from what I could see, both games, or actually all four because there were also two Merlin arcade games. That's right. Held up the entire show without any troubles. Yeah, I did. I mean, I saw at one point where one of the games had the playfield up, but I think that was more as a demonstration to show what it looked like inside. Yeah, but it was a Merlin's game, not the Yukon Yeti one. I also saw the Yuki Yeti one, but this was earlier on, before the show started, so maybe that's understandable. Well, to my knowledge, both games held up great. Yes, a little story there that I didn't really get much notice of this. Yes, so we're in a hotel room in the Houston area and we had visited Belza Fun, we'll get into that later on, more to come on that. And I think Martin was very very tired and I think he went off to bed close to midnight. Yeah, it's about midnight, yeah. Yeah, so, and so did I. And, um... Well, that's because we actually knew we were going to be doing a lot of driving the next day, because we were checking out the hotel. We were heading off to Multimorphic, which is about a four-hour drive to get to Multimorphic. We wanted to be there around about midday. And then from there, we were driving, when we finished with them, I'm driving up to Frisco, which is about another three and a half to four hour drive. So with all that driving, seven and a half hours to eight hours, I wanted to make sure I got at least a decent sleep before we did that. Boy, did you! Yeah, it didn't quite work out like that. As Jonathan said, I went to bed about midnight and about 1, just after 1, 1.30, I checked my phone for some reason. I woke up and maybe it buzzed or something but I looked at it and so I had an email and it was from Chris Turner and it basically said oh by the way we're going to be launching our new game at midday tomorrow or today as it was here here's a link to all the assets for it for your article and I thought this is great because I'm planning to be up about six o'clock And then going to breakfast, because there's three of us here in the room, so it takes a little while for us all to shower and all that stuff. We go to breakfast about seven, check out about eight o'clock, and by midday we'll probably be at Multimorphic. So not a lot of time to actually write an article. But committed as you are. Yes, I ought to have been committed, yes. I thought, okay, well, only one thing for it, I'm going to have to work on it now. So, well, almost now. So the first thing to do is have a shower. So I haven't got that to do the first thing in the morning either. And then get to work on the article. So, yeah, download all the assets. Thank you, thank you for Chris for sending those to me. Greatly appreciate it. Tell the time of the year also. I'm sure, you know, as I say, I think it was a bit rushed. And to his credit, Chris was also up all night because I was back and forth via email about various aspects, asking questions, who's in the team, all that kind of stuff. So he was up all night as well, getting the games ready and getting the publicity ready and the website, I suppose. Yeah, finally got it, the article written and ready for publication at midday, around about quarter past five in the morning. So after which, went to sleep for about 30 minutes, got up and we hit the road. And so that was not the good night's sleep I was hoping to get, but thankfully... And I have to say, he still drove both to Round Rock where Multimorphic is, and then to Frisco without any power nap or anything. Yeah, just copious amounts of coffee and our travelling companion Marcel slapping me around the face every now and again to wake me up. And, uh... Right. But, uh, it was a, it was a, an interesting day and, uh, and, but it was a good launch, I think. Everything went well and it seemed to be very well received. Um... Oh yeah, definitely, yeah. Yeah, as you said, there were two machines at the Texas Film Festival, and long lines to play the game, of course. Yes. And, uh, um, well, a few, few people I heard saying, like, ah, it looks too much like whitewater. I think it's supposed to. Yeah. It's an unofficial sequel to Whitewater. But there's more shots in it and there's a very unique ball lock mech in there as well, which is different than the one in Godleaf's Wipeout, I'm not sure if you've seen the game, but I think it's called Whitewater Reference, although this is technically not whitewater, or it doesn't have to do anything with snow. Well, it kind of does. I think, doesn't it? Everything's white and blue, so it's... Yeah. So it is kind of snowy. But yeah, the ball lock mechanism is like a stair climber type mechanism. Yes. They shoot the ball in... Which is quite unique, I have to say. It is. I don't think I've seen one like that. It reminded me of something. I can't remember exactly what it was, but basically you shoot the ball in the bottom and it kind of shuffles the ball up One position each time you lock another ball until you get all five in there. Although you are able to start the multiball with fewer than five balls locked. I think after certainly four, I don't know if you could do it with three, but when you lock a ball it gives you the option to start the multiball now or carry on and lock more balls. And if you don't lock all five, then it climbs the balls up to the very top and they get released onto the upper playfield, Which is very similar to the upper playfield on Whitewater except flipped the other way round so the flipper shoots to the right rather than it shoots to the left. Right. And the Yeti doesn't move. The Yeti doesn't, the head doesn't rotate on the Yeti, it rotates on the topper Yeti. But yeah, but if you do get all five balls locked then the balls don't climb up to the top, they're all released at once. And they all come charging down the ramp straight to you and with the ball's over of course. Right, okay. And a little shout out to Avalanche Multiball. Right, so, interestingly, designer of the game, Dennis Dortmund, or at least the initial designer of the game, was at the show. He has been seen at the Turner Pinball stand, but I tried to talk to him about the game and I got nothing other than, well, I started working on this at Deeproot and that's about all he mentioned about it. So, it was very difficult to get some information from Dennis on the game. I even tried to get him to record an interview, but it didn't seem like he was available, so to speak. No, he didn't seem to be that keen to be photographed either, although I did manage to grab a picture from my report on the show. So, which is quite a nice picture of Dennis, to be fair. But there wasn't a Turner Pinball seminar where he was there to talk about the development of the game or anything like that, or the ideas behind it. Yeah. So, but I also have no idea how involved Dennis has been in the completion of the game as Turner have done so far. So, and it's also interesting because, because Turner has worked with different models of their previous games in the past, and this game was announced as the legendary edition, if I'm not mistaken. Sure. Yes. Yeah. So I figured, well, okay, 500 limited or legendary editions, that's one, but there could be a All of these are made by the same company, and they are the only ones that have made more than 500. Chris Turner assured me that's not the case. It's 500 and that's it. No other model, or any... well, basically no other model. So, if you're interested in this game, you have to get it now or it will be gone. Right. I'm guessing 500 is more than they've sold of Ninja... well, certainly more than they've sold of Ninja Eclipse. More and more they're sold as Merlin's Arcade as well. So if they hit that, that'll be a new high for them. Oh, definitely, yes. And I think they hit that already because I think after the first day of the show, they already sold like 250 games. Yeah, I didn't know they sold out completely. That's not what I heard so far, so I'm sticking with at least... What, 250 is a good number. 250 fold. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I was... And then days... Sorry, days after the Pimble Festival, speaking of selling out, um, Turner Pinball announced that the arcade edition of Merlin's Arcade also sold out. Or sold out, I should say that. Which doesn't mean the game is no longer available because there's apparently still 30 legendary editions available of that game. Okay. Right. And there's even more new stuff. Yes, please tell us. Apparently last October Chris Turner bought a piece of land, I'm not exactly sure where, but I'm assuming somewhere in the San Antonio area. And that's an assumption, so don't keep me accountable for that. But where he plans to build a new larger factory. The plan currently for Yukon Yeti is that the first 100 games will be built in the current factory. And as soon as the new factory is opening up or ready to start production, which should be like early 2027, then the remaining 400 will be built in that new facility. Right, assuming they sell all 500, yes. Yes, based on what I've seen from the game, I have no doubt they will. Yeah, you'd think so. It certainly played well. It seemed very solid. And I did have quite a lot of trouble on the upper playfield making the shots up there, but I think it's just a matter of getting dialled in on that particular layout. It's also a matter of age, Morrison. Yeah, well, that's nice, isn't it? I mean... Well, the reactions are maybe not what they once were, but... Talking about the current factory, I think at the moment the games are being built at Chris Turner's home. He has an facility there to build them. Yeah, garage, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, so whether this is an extension to his own property or a secondary property, we don't know. But it's good. But that new facility is definitely not at his house. Oh, it's not? Or he should build a house as well and move over there. Oh, right. That would also be the case. Okay. Well, it's good that the company is doing well enough to expand into new premises. And I think this is a good go... You have to wonder how many more extra deeproot games we're going to see coming out from Turner. And how many are there? Well, that's interesting that you bring this up. That also depends on how many does Chris still own the rights to? Because from what I understood, Chris Turner and Melvin Brower have made a deal a while Well, I go regarding the assets of John Popadiuk that were in the Zitware storage unit. And so there could have been some sort of trade or I have no, I don't know all the details about that. But I know that Melvin was interested in some of the deeproot stuff in, oh well. Oh well. Well yeah, I mean, obviously they wanted to build Raza, so, which was a deeproot property by that stage. Or at least certain aspects of it were. Right, so there has been an exchange, of which I don't know the details, between Turner Pinball and Melvin Brower, but, so it remains to be seen which titles Chris Turner still The Right to To Potentially Produce in the future. Yeah, and also Whether he wants to yeah whether those titles At stage where they're ready for production was they're just still only development ideas Were at deep root when that company closed down, but we'll have more on them a bit later But I think that kind of wraps it up for For Turner Pinball for this particular pin cast, we can move on. Talking about it way too long. We can move on to our second new game. Yes. Which unfortunately we didn't actually get to play. But we're talking... Or see. Well, yeah, not in the flesh as it were. No, we're talking of course about the three musketeers from Hexa Pinball based in France, of course. They launched their new second title after Space Hunt on Friday the 20th of March. Yes, which was announced long before TPS. Yeah, I was surprised that the game would be revealed. And they were planning to reveal the games at least on the same day in both Bordeaux, France, as well as at the Texas Pinball Festival. Yeah, well, that didn't work out. Yeah. So, unfortunately for Hexa Pinball, they sent three games, I believe, to the US, well in advance, I have to add. And for some odd reason, they were held up by customs, only to be released, I think, Thursday, Thursday or Friday of the show and then they got in contact with their courier company and they were basically like well yeah well the games have been released and they're in it in a park somewhere and there's no way you can get them and I even believe that two of the games were in Memphis and one was in New York so unfortunately for them a reveal of the game with a And now, the game actually being present. So they had this booth at the Texas Pinball Festival with space for three games. And, well, the team was also there, Alexander Mack was there, as well as two lovely ladies to assist him on the promotion of the game. And unfortunately, well, they came up with a solution in the form of a TV screen with a video continuously playing of the game. Yeah, a promo video, yeah. Yeah, and a little bit of gameplay streaming. And they even managed to get a wood reel game from 1949 called Three Musketeers in there as sort of like, okay, well, at least we got something. But of course, it's not like having the game actually there, which is a pity, but it is what it is. Yeah, couldn't do anything about it in the end, but the game did launch at the Bouillon Art Gallery. Trust me, that's right, because we've seen them. Yes, oh absolutely, they were desperately on the phone trying to arrange releases of the game, trying to arrange transport, trying to get it there, even later, even on Saturday or something like that, but it just wasn't going to happen. But as I say, the game did launch in France, as intended. They had a 6pm local time launch at the Bullion Dart Gallery in Bordeaux, for an invited audience there. It was meant to launch at the Texas Football Festival at 4pm, which is, I think, 10pm French time? So not simultaneous anyway, but it will be afterwards. But the game will apparently, well the games have been released now from customs and they will apparently preview or debut I should say at the, in the US at the Pinbrew show in Pennsylvania on April the 10th to 12th and shortly after at the Allentown Pinfest show in April 30th to May 1st. So, there will be an opportunity to play the game there, but whether they're doing a, well, they're probably doing a reveal now, because again, the details of the game are out there. And the details are that it's available in two versions. There's an unlimited classic edition, which costs 7, 890 euros, excluding tax, And there's also an upgraded Elegance Edition which costs €10, 390, again excluding tax, VAT, and is limited to just 200 units. The Elegance adds a real backglass, as opposed to a transite, adds a reflective playfield glass, across the cabinet artwork a shaker motor, Automotor, gold powder coated armor and enhanced playfield sculpts. Those prices I guess are going to be quite high by the time they get to the US with shipping and taps added to that, which might make it a bit of a challenge to sell over there. Also, I'm not quite sure how popular the Three Musketeers are in America. Maybe more of a European... Yeah, yeah, I mean obviously there's been cartoons over there about them and movies as well. Oh yeah, the Charlie Sheen one I remember. Oh, do you? Okay. Yeah, well, I haven't seen the gameplay footage yet. I don't know if you have, Jonathan, but... No. All I've seen so far is a video that kind of explains what's on the playfield, but no one actually playing it, which seemed a little odd, because that's one of the things that everybody wants to see is game play footage. If the game was going to be at the show and was revealed in France, surely people are going to play the game, so couldn't somebody have put a camera on it? Yeah, so, well, there's more odd things about the launch, or at least the promotional material I have to give them kudos for actually having a printed flyer available for the game, as well as some other printed materials, like a production sheet and what have you. But I found it rather odd that the promotional material was mostly talking about all kinds of stuff like the quality build of the cabinets and how the playfield is clear counted. And which is, I get it, it's important, but that's not how you sell a game. Yeah, I mean, you're not selling a car by telling that it has four wheels and two window wipers. Two? Wow. So, I found out, because I got a press release up front, and all I wanted to figure out, like, okay, the theme is the three musketeers, what's my objective in the game? And I had a hard time figuring that out based on the information that I got from them. Right, okay. So, um, but still, they did have printed materials, um, which can't be said for all, uh, new games. Um, so, they did get that right, although the information was not the information I was expecting. Okay. Although, the thing is, there were so many bits of, uh, documentation with this, there's, um, There's at least four. There's a landscape double-sided flyer and there's a product specification sheet which is actually probably a little more interesting in terms of having a list of what's on the playfield. It does have a cannon, kind of like the ACDC one, but it's mounted over the left slingshot. So I guess it kind of loads up like the Star Trek Next Generation one. It does kind of block the view of the in-lane, out-lane area a little bit, but hopefully not too bad. It's got some quite interesting sculpts on the playfield as well. It's got a lift ramp, well, a pop-up bash toy in one of the ramps as well. I'm trying to think... There's a moving ship. Sorry, go ahead. Well, there's a swinging target, yep, swinging stand-up target, which is apparently meant to be the English fleet, which they're trying to defeat. And there's some interesting ball lock mechanisms on the top of some of the buildings as well, which looks quite fun. Anyway, really it's one of those games where you need to see gameplay, so I'd urge Hexer to get some gameplay videos out there as soon as possible, I think that really helps sell the game rather than just static pictures which don't really give you a good feel for how it plays and how it flows. Anyway, so the game launch was a little underwhelming in Texas. Had to feel sorry for the Hexafinball team because as you say they put so much effort into getting the games there and it just wasn't to be. But hopefully that hasn't dented the game too much and they'll be able to pick up from that point when they show it at Pinborough and Allentown later this month. Obviously we wish them all the best. Of course. And, you know, well. Okay, so let's move on to a third game which, kind of like Three Musketeers, wasn't shown, but was announced, and that's from the all-new American Pinball Team. At their impromptu, I think it wasn't scheduled originally, Texas Pinball Festival seminar, where they announced that their first reimagined Bally Williams race would be, as I think we kind of knew anyway, would be Circus Voltaire. And it will be, according to the information given at that seminar, it will be available in two models, a classic and a reimagined. The classic will be kind of like an updated version of the original game, using more modern parts and electronics and lighting and sound systems and so on. The reimagined version will have new rules, new display graphics, new artwork, new sounds, and will be limited in number. And once all the reimagined ones are sold, that's it. Then we move on to the next title. Which is good. They said their plan is to have two releases a year. To have one original title and one reimagined title. Right, okay. Well, technically, this is already due. Yeah, well, true, but it's not an original. I suppose. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well they had a seminar there, they had Brian, Ron Lindelman and Nick Neitzel on the stage, a full team from American. And yeah, they're there to answer questions about it. All they showed of the reimagined Circus Voltaire was just a little animation of the title. Which started with the old animation for the DMD and then changed to a full colour, full resolution animation of the title. So, as it will be in the reimagined. Well, I have to say the team of American Pinball at the show, for lack of a better word I'd say, they look quite energetic and enthusiastic about getting the company on track and getting a mark on the pinball market so to speak. So he's had a certain amount of input to it, but not as much as he's going to have in some of the other reimagined titles later on down the line. So they have been working on this for a while, and as you will see, that's not the only product they've been working on, and they seem to have a lot of enthusiasm and energy to produce not just this title, but a whole slew of other titles they have in their pipeline. Yes. So, well, and speaking of what they have been working on, they did reveal a new edition of the American pinball's very first title, Houdini, at the show. And when I say new edition of the game, this is a limited run of the 100th anniversary for Houdini himself. The anniversary of his death, I think. Yeah, well, whatever. Something to celebrate. Or commemorate, should we say. And, well, the difference between the original Houdini games and this one is that Christopher Franchi created a new art package for this game. Which is mostly backglass and cabinet art. So the playfield is unchanged. And that is actually something that Melvin had a hand in because from what I understand, this was all realized within two weeks of the show. Well, okay. Well, I mean... Now, obviously, they only need a few decals to be applied to games that would be at the show, and some backglasses, of course, but they managed to do that. I don't think any code has been changed as far as I could see. No, we didn't see anything on the display that said 100th anniversary. It does say it on the backglass, as you said. Yeah. So, um... But this is the 100th anniversary edition, limited to 100 units, and it kind of brings back all the original 3D sculpts onto the playthrough as well. If you remember, towards the end, they started doing the, was it the classic version of it, or was it deluxe? I can remember the naming of the different versions of the American pinball games But they replaced all the 3D sculptures with flat plastics to make it a cheaper version of the game well everything seems to be back on this 100th anniversary version and uh and it looks all the better for it i have to say it looked really nice and uh and it was reminded me of what a uh what a classy looking game it was to start with And, but apparently all 100 of these sold out very quickly. Well, take 100, but we have a little bit more on that at the moment. Yes. All the available ones sold out quickly to distributors. I have a comment on that because I was actually talking to Ron Lindeman at the show and he told me he had, or he has, 126 resellers or distributors for American Pinball. So basically you have to disappoint 26. Got that many resellers? The game was already sold to distributors up front. It was like... although it looked like you had to be quick to get one, you wouldn't be able to get one from American Pinball if you were just a regular home user looking to buy such a game. You have to go to a distributor and find one that actually got one. Well, so the 126 of which only 100 or 99 or maybe 98 will get to that in a second will get a game and then they still have to have one. So... Yeah, I don't know whether they've actually got them yet and they built them or whether they're just on the line. I think it's safe to say, although this is pure speculation, that they were able to build the few that we saw at the show and I have no idea whether they... I'm sure in the meantime they might have continued building them, but given that this artwork was already done in such a rush, it surprised me if they would have had the time to build more before the time came. Texas Show. Yeah. They got the game ready for the show and that's the part that matters the most. Yeah, I'd also be surprised if they actually had a hundred units of each of the sculpts in stock ready to build this game because, you know, that was... Well, they didn't need to have them in stock now. No, exactly. Before they can get them. Yeah, well, they need them before they can build them, so... Yes. Yeah. But we were talking about 100 of these units and then we were a little... ...resistant about saying it's 100 because if you went to the Texas Pinball Festival and went to the American Pinball Stand, there was a QR code that you could scan with your phone or other device which allowed you to enter into a draw to win one of these Houdini 100th Anniversary machines. Yes, and the rule was you have to be present to win the game. You also had to be a resident of the US as well. So, although I entered, I don't know if you did as well, Jonathan. I did as well, and they told me like, if we happen to draw your name, we'll figure something out. Yeah, okay. And interestingly, this is completely not interesting for anybody listening right now, but Since I entered that draw and moments later I get an email informing me that my flight going out from Dallas back to Europe has been delayed. That sort of gave me, told me like, okay, normally I wou ld not be able to attend this draw, but now I can. And that's probably an indication that I'm likely to win it. Well, yeah, it's in the stars. But somehow you didn't. Win it or be present. Well, I don't know. As it turned out. Yes, so, originally the draw was to take place at the American Pinball Stand at midday on Sunday. But then they changed that and moved it to be part of the closing ceremony for the show, which starts at 2pm on Sunday. So it was actually right at the very, very start of that ceremony. They announced the randomly selected winner from a phone and basically the guy who was The name of the person whose name was announced wasn't actually there. But apparently, and I... Well, he was, I believe he was breaking down games in a main room. Yeah, it wasn't in the audience and he wasn't available to collect the games straight away. But I was trying to find the rules for the draw, but they've been taken away since it happened. But apparently, the rules said that when the name is called out, you have 15 minutes to announce yourself and collect your prize. Which to me sounds like a very strange way of doing a draw, because who's going to be hanging around for 15 minutes waiting for somebody to turn up or not turn up if they're not there? But anyway, that's not what they did. They waited, I don't know, a couple of minutes, gave a countdown, and then drew out a second name. And that second name person was there to collect the prize. So they proudly went up and claimed their prize. And just as they did that, the first name, the guy whose first name was called out, ran up to the stage and said, I'm here, I'm here. Which obviously created a little bit of a situation, because they'd just given the game to somebody else. But, Brian Vinson, good sports as yeah Brian Vinson has been, if they are at American Pinball, owner of American Pinball, very generously decided the best solution was to give them both a Houdini 100th anniversary machine. So they ended up giving away two of them rather than just one. So two lucky winners. So congratulations to the winners and well done to Brian and the American Pinball team for doing a very generous gesture And doing the right thing and making sure everybody was very happy with the draw. And I think a great bit of publicity for them, even if it did end up costing them a second machine. Yeah, well, in this case, also a lot of good publicity by doing... Yeah, goodwill, definitely, yeah. Yeah, so that was a little excitement at the Texas Mule Festival closing ceremony, but... We'll come back to that a bit later because we're going to be talking about what else happened at that show. And while other manufacturers are also present at the show, I think the Texas Pinball Festival will sort of be like the red line in this episode. Red line we don't cross or the red line that runs through everything. That's... Yeah. It's the kind of thread that's going to be returning to over and over. Well, that's sort of what I was hinting at. Excuse me, I'm not a native English speaker, so... This time of night, neither am I. Anyway, so let's move on... Yeah, move on to another company, one we mentioned earlier, about our visit to Texas and the Texas Pinball Festival, They'll be away on Tuesday, February 23rd. Fantastic Lindaănges! Thanks for watching! © eleic derwent. experience the that takes place All these things we'll last and then go and have some lunch with David Van Es. Okay, now here's a major announcement. He took us to a Mexican restaurant and I'm looking at this menu and I recognize almost nothing because Mexican is not very common. The The completely new culinary world opened up to me. Well, there you go. It was worth it for that alone. Nothing pin related, I just figured I'd mention it. Anyway, so, but, no, it was very kind of David to take us around. At the factory they had both Dune and Winchester Mystery House on two separate production lines, although they do sort of look a bit like intertwined. It's not like two completely separate production lines, but oh well, that doesn't matter. It's the same facility as they were in last year, although they did expand. And well, depending on how upcoming games will sell, I'm thinking they might end up owning the entire block at some point. Yes, looks like there's no space for them to expand further if they want. But yeah, I think David was saying they plan to make five Winterson Mystery House and five Dune machines per day. And also ten cabinets, because they make their own cabinets as well in the factory. They do their own woodworking. And so those would match up with the ten playfields they do, and cabinets, I mean, back boxes as well, of course. And although I think at the time they were a little short of staff and having a difficulty recruiting enough people to actually hit those numbers. Right. Well, that's actually one of the topics that were discussed and actually came by what I heard from several pinball manufacturers. The difficulty for them to find assembly staff or production line staff and actually keep them. Yeah, that's it. Because apparently not everybody's that much into pinball and if you're not into pinball and you're working in a pinball factory, you can understand that if something else comes along that you like better, off you go. Apparently, it's that easy. And that is actually quite an issue for various pinball, smaller pinball manufacturers. I have no idea how it is with Stern, but it is something to take into account that it's not always that easy to find the right people to build these games. No, you can kind of understand that if you're day in day out doing the same job, same repetitive work, it's not going to necessarily enthuse you after doing it for a month or two months. We're still building the same game, still screwing the same posts into the same places. Right. Yeah, and if another opportunity does come along then yeah. And of course that's a big overhead for the company, whichever company it is, they have to train these people and that's not necessarily a quick process. And if they're only there for a short amount of time and then they leave, then you have to start that whole process all over again. As soon as you find someone new. Yeah, that's right, as soon as you can find anyone. So yeah, we do feel for them, but they seem to be, so you know, if the output of some of these companies, not Bowser Fun in particular, but any of these companies is maybe not as high as they had hoped or had expected, you have to give them a little slack there. Right. That is one, along with all the other issues that makes making pinball hard, actually getting in order to build them is also, can be difficult. Yeah, and from what I understand, also, again, from not particularly pointing at one company, apparently this has partly to do with an attitude, well, problem if you want to call it, of the The current youth or younger employees, you're almost better off working with elder people, say 30 and up, because these youngsters have this attitude like, oh, I don't like this, I'm not going to do it. I'm not coming back for work because I don't like the work anymore. Bye. And you invest all the time to train them and they apparently feel no obligation whatsoever or... Loyalty, I suppose, to the company. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, anyway, while we were there, we did get a chance to play some Winchester Mystery House, because, of course, whenever that appears at a pinball show, there's always a long line of people waiting to play it. And Texas was not there. They was not, no. But fortunately, they have one set up in the lobby at Bowser Fun, and so we were there playing it for, well, I don't know, an hour, hour and a half. Yeah, something like that. I think we got in like 15, 20 games, something like that. Which means we spoke. Yeah, all that in 30 minutes. But we enjoyed it, and we really got to hear it as well, which is something you don't get And also, David Van Es and Brian Savage did a seminar at the Texas Pinball Festival on the growth of the company, well, formation I suppose first, and then the growth of the company over the past three years. Because it's easy to forget that they're still a relatively new company and yet here they are with their third title and working on a whole slew of future games as well. And we were talking about how Winters of Mystery House was such an unexpected hit for them when it was intended to be pretty much a filler game just to keep the line going between Dune, when Dune didn't sell so many straight up. It's been a bit of a slow burner that game and taking time to get traction. So to keep the line going, we've got the Winter's Mystery House there from Karl and we're taking a back. Actually earlier in development, I have to add, that's also one thing we find out. They were working on Mystery before June. Oh, okay. I didn't catch that. Okay, good catch there. Yeah, and so that kind of changed their outlook on future titles. And some people say, you know, why do you limit it to just 525 units? Because basically they didn't think it was going to be a big seller. And we're a bit taken aback when suddenly it sold out. Yeah, and also, given the limited run of Winchester, David, um, resulted in David seeing two different sides of the hobby, or, yeah, well, the enthusiast side of the hobby. Because on one hand you have people asking for more games, but he also received threats from people saying, you can't make any more games. Yes. Because I bought one and I don't want it to be going down in value if you make more. And people can be very threatening, so to speak. Yeah, yeah, so that's why, well, it's not why, but because battles are fun, they always stick to what they say they're going to do when it comes to numbers. So you won't be seeing any more than there is 525 Witcher Mystery House games being produced. There won't be a second run or a different edition of that. All of that. Right. It still would make a great re-theme as The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, but apparently we're not going to see that. No. Okay. We're talking of June, as we just were. It's time to start on wheeling out the new code. And June got some new code on the 30th of this month. Well, the month we're talking about anyway, which is March, which added the new voice from the Outer World Wizard mode, along with two new side quests and a new option that's been added to allow you to choose to start the game either in day mode or night mode or a random day or night. Plus there are actually 12 bug fixes in the code as well. So get your latest update to June if you have that game. Right. Does that wrap it up for Barrels of Fun? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And once again, many thanks for having us from over and giving us a tour and so on. Thank you Dennis and Es. Thank you Dennis and we look forward to hopefully welcoming you to the Dutch show later this year. And also, I should also add a big thank you as well for donating a Dune Playfield for our quiz. Exactly. We have at the Texas Pinball Festival in the So You Think You Know Pinball free prize quiz. And that was our star prize and created quite a buzz, I'd have to say. And particularly as it lasted almost until the very end before somebody actually drew that prize out as their random winning ticket. So again, yes, thank you. Thank you, David, and thank you, Brian. Yes. So moving over to Stern Pinball, you might have heard about. Yeah. They are the largest pinball manufacturer on the planet, currently. Hmm, yes. I've been busy. Yes, their latest game is of course Pokemon and at the Texas Pinball Festival Stern had quite a delegation present, their own booth of course, teaming up with fun amusements as the past couple of years. And from Stern Pinball Chicago, Tanyo Klyce was there, Jack Danger was there, George Gomez was there. Jerry Thompson was there. Mike Vinikour was there. Mike Vinikour, indeed. Trying to see you out. I'm trying to name him. Put him in the quiz. Oh, Michael Grant was also there. Yes, the head of the Stern Army. Yes. So, he was there. Also, kindly donated prizes for the So You Think Pinball quiz. As did American Pinball, by the way. They came up with a bunch of goodie bags and a new logo. And Turner Pinball, of course, gave us some shirts too. So, we should include them too. Okay, we have to name all of those. Well, those have been coming so far, yes. Right, so at the Texas Pinball Festival, Stern did a seminar on the making of Pokemon with George Gomez, Jack Danger, Tanyo Klyce and Jerry Thompson. Yes, I was... I have not actually seen it, I was present for only a little bit, but I do believe that there is a Twitch channel... Well, now, hang on, you say that, because I was looking, it was all on there. What they originally did was they had basically the whole day of the seminars as one long stream. So it would be like ten hours and then you'd find the bit that you wanted. And I thought, oh, okay, they're going to chop it up later. And there were a few little bits that were chopped up, but they were a bit weird and a bit random. and I thought well way will put them on YouTube so I haven't looked on YouTube and I couldn't see anything at the seminars in this year and from Texas Table unrestor on the on their channel and then I went back to twitch and all the videos are gone now so I guess I'm not keeping them not storing them on there that was just specify the because I know you miss you open as you have a A few days. I don't know how many days but they don't last that long. So maybe they're all gonna end up on YouTube at some point because if you go to the TexasPinball.com website you can look at some of the videos from previous years that are on YouTube so hopefully they will end up being on YouTube eventually but they're not there at the moment so they were stream live at the time. But if we didn't actually... Hopefully somebody remembers the rest. Yes. That's right. We pulled them down from Twitch before they all got deleted. But yeah, they had good coverage of the seminars there, so I really hope they are made available online as soon as possible. Right, okay. So there was this seminar, we have no idea what was being discussed other than it had to do... Oh I was there. I was there all the way through. Oh, you were, alright. Almost to the very end. I did have to leave at the very end. I had to go and... Did you hear anything shocking or that like, oh my god, I had no idea about this or... Oh, well, I think the, probably the takeaway from the seminar was the sheer amount of planning and work that goes into creating these games. All the initial ideas, all the kind of mood boards, the concepts that make it and those that don't, number of people who are contributing to this, and the sheer volume of documentation that comes out of it. I mean, Pokemon I think is probably an extreme example of that given how much material there is out there for the theme. And the enthusiasm, but fandom, by many members of the team who are working on it, Some of whom will, like uber fans, who will pick up on anything that's not accurate. And of course there's also all the backwards and forwards for the licensors as well for Pokemon, the Pokemon company, who are very protective of their assets, their intellectual property, and want to make sure absolutely everything is bang on point when it comes to all the look and the behaviour of the game as well. So, yeah, it was really about the sheer amount of effort and work and ideas and thought that went into the game and that it's not something which is just sort of thrown together as a quick production. So, anyway, that was the gist of it and I'm sure you will be able to see it for yourself if you missed it. Right, so, and of course, I think it was the first pinball show where Pokemon was publicly displayed. Yeah, a few pros had been going out on location in the meantime, but this was the first place it was at a show, and I think the first place the premiums were available to play. Right, so quite a few games at the show floor. I think you got to play it as well, did I? No, it was pretty busy. It was kind of annoying in a way, because I was at the fun stand and had all the Pokemon games all set up, and I guess George had gone round and done his little adjustment to the orbit lane. Orbit Lane, which was not on all these games but is on all the production ones that are now out. And they were all sitting there updating their code. And I thought, I can't play them at the moment, so I'll wait a moment until they finish updating. I went off and played a game, a relatively quick game of Jaws, turned around, all the games were up and running and they all had people on them playing them. Oh, I'm a typical! Luckily enough, luckily enough, the Game Exchange of Colorado, in person of JJ, had his regular party at the top floor of the Texas Pinball Festival Hotel, the 14th floor, where he had a Harry Potter and a Pokemon game set up, so I was able to play the game over there. Indeed, yeah, we both were. Yeah, but I did get to play on the show floor as well, but that was, you know, pretty much like once the show was up and running, so you just play one game and then you pass it over to the next person in line. Yes. And there was always, even with a whole bunch of machines, there was always somebody, one or two people waiting to play it. Yes, so anyway, it should come as no surprise that Pokemon Limited Edition is currently on the line at Stern Pinball. That will be followed by the Premium model, first for location owners, and then premiums that go to home users, and then finally the Pro model. Interesting, they're prioritizing location owners for the premiums as well. We never do that for the pros. The Pro's Right But they did a limited batch of pro models early for location use. But they're also doing that and then they put the LEDs in now and then the premiums for location and the premiums for home and then back to the pros again. Right and speaking of the limited edition, this is one of those limited editions that I think that they regret making only 750 because they really undersold. Yeah, yeah, and people seem to be getting quite agitated about which number they get because each one comes with its own Pokemon type, because the numbers of the machines relate to the numbers of the Pokemon as well. So then people want certain Pokemons, that means they want certain machine numbers. And I don't know if there's an active market in trading your LE for somebody else's LE, but I suspect if you get one of the more popular Pokemon on your LE, then that would be worth more in future should you come to ever sell it. Right. Oh well. And then there is the first aftermarket mod already for Pokemon, although it's quite a standard one I have to say. It is announced as the Pokemon Card Blaster by Stumbler Pinball. And basically this is a device that sits in the bill acceptor slots in the coin door, And it automatically dispenses a Pokemon trading card whenever a certain achievement occurs in the game. Like winning an extra ball, but of course this is configurable. And well, basically it looks like a generic card dispenser that could be applied to any coin door or American coin door, I should say. A motor driven card dispenser with interchangeable card size options, professional grade nylon front face, not something home printed. Oh well, there's all sorts of things and should be easy to install, less than 10 minutes and of course with a Pokemon game, yeah, you can include Pokemon cards. So very smart of StumbleUp Pinball to list this immediately on their site as a Pokemon card block. Yeah, at the moment I understand there's, you register for interest, it's not actually available yet. Once they get an idea on the number of people who are interested in buying it, then they'll go into production with it. But the number of people that currently signed up for it are 325. Well, yes, register their interest, whether that all turns into orders, we don't know. Right. But it certainly seems like a good idea, but obviously, as you said, it's for an American coin door that has a dollar bill, etc. The European coin doors don't have that, so if you want to have it on a European or non-US coin door, you'd have to replace the coin door. Or mount it elsewhere. Right. Any other news from Stern? Well, I came across something, a new hire. Usually we don't deal with the personnel stuff, but this one I found somewhat interesting. Stern Pinball hired Kush Patel, I hope I pronounced that correctly, as a mechanical engineer. And he posted on LinkedIn that he's excited to share that he will be starting a new role as mechanical engineer at CERN Pinball this week, or that was a couple of weeks ago. Joining CERN will be a big challenge for my previous roles, which is kind of surprising to me. I mean, why would you hire a mechanical engineer if you did something else, completely different else, in a previous... I mean, you hire something for... Yeah, didn't need to use some extra... But I look forward to both the experiences and challenges I'll have during this new chapter in my career. I'm excited to have the opportunity to contribute my efforts to a team that creates such iconic projects. And then he thinks a couple of people that supported him throughout the recruitment process. Okay, well, congratulations to Phil and to Kush on his new role as mechanical engineer. And let's hope he's any good at it. Yeah, I look forward to seeing him appearing on some of these panels in the future, explaining how he built these incredibly intricate mechanical mechanisms that you're going to see on upcoming games. Yeah, it's also interesting to find out on which team he will be working. Yeah, assuming they are assigned to teams, maybe they're not. Don't know on the character in mind. Anyway, what we do have from Stern, of course, is lots of new code. And despite being busy with the launch of Pokemon, they have not been slacking in releasing updates. In fact, we have five updates to the code this month, although one of them is a dual update. I'll talk about that in a minute. So Walking Dead Remastered gets a new version, 0.9, which actually adds some new custom speech and speech from the TV series, which also brings in new sound effects and new displays and a couple of bug fixes, of course. John Wick, remember that game? And that's now finally reached version 1.0, which adds a new The Duel wizard mode, and also changed some display choreography, and added some new displays, and of course some bug fixes. So that's now got its wizard mode and should be feature complete, I guess, as they decided to go and enhance it even further. Star Wars Fall of the Empire version 0.93 and this small update adds some new expression speaker and cabinet lighting effects, some playfield lighting additions and a few rule changes and bug fixes. King Kong The Mists of Terror Island. This is interesting. It adds a new Golden Gary treasure hunt mode, but only if you've got the topper installed, the official Stern pinball King Kong topper. So it's a top of religion mode. Also there's a new T-Rex boss battle multiball when you complete King Kong spread out the second time. The victory mode that was previously part of the Vader when you completed the T-Rex battle now moves to this new boss battle instead. And Treasure Perks have been updated so you can get a lot more wider range of those and a whole ton of achievement awards added. So if you're into collecting those and you thought you had them all then you haven't because there's a whole load more to get. And they also added all the music from the game into the DJ mixer feature available from the gameplay menu at the start which allows you to just listen to the music. And then just today in fact as we're recording this on April 1st, I don't think it's an April Fool but it might be, came a new version, 0.96 of King Kong which made some changes to the additions made in the previous version including the way that the new Golden Gary topper feature carries over from game to game and some of the scoring and feature balances of the new T-Rex boss We were thinking about the ACTOS mode, and the old battle mode. That has been tweaked as well, so version 0.96 came out today, and that's all our software updates for Stern for the month of March. Ok, thank you for those. My pleasure. And then I should have announced this earlier, We visited Multimorphic, but we also recorded an interview with Jerry Stellenberg. We did. Which will be coming up shortly, but first let's talk about our visit to the Multimorphic factory. Yes, nice to see the team there. They were busy when we were there and loading up games and breaking down games and shuffling games around to take up the Texan Spinball Festival, because they had a big stand there. Well, pardon me. But in the meantime, they were still, the team was still building some portal games and modules. Although, again, the process didn't seem to be as fast as, they weren't sort of working flat out, put it that way, while we were there. Although, to be fair, we were also there at lunchtime. So people were away or having lunch. Thank you very much for lunch, by the way. That was a tasty burger, as they say. Yes, so, apart from that, where we had a chance to also have a word with Nick Baldrige, who we saw there, who was getting his drained game ready to take to the show, and cleaning it all up from previous well part of their showroom at normal times but of course they were taking all the games down and packing them up and loading them into a transporter But it was good to talk to Jerry and find out various aspects of how the business is doing how they've been going for so long, and also to find out their kind of expected timescale for future games, And for portable production as well. And the issues that they experience, some of which we've just been talking about when it comes to barrels of fun, and other manufacturers as well. Now there's quite a lot of commonality there, they all face the same challenges. But they also did a seminar at Texas Pinball Festival where they got various people involved with the P3 system And where they all explained how they got involved with it in the first place, what attracted them to the P3 specifically, and also their experiences of owning or developing for the platform. Some people were owners, some people developed games, there's quite a high mix of people on the platform and so it's good to hear a range of voices. And of course, it was also not the previous type of multimorphic seminar we've seen before where it was going on so much about this added value of P3 against buying multiple individual games. So it was the needs of the people who actually developed for it and own it and operate the game. So that was interesting. Hopefully again that will be available on YouTube at some point. Right. But they also mentioned at that seminar that the next Multimorphic title will be another licensed one. But obviously no details of exactly what that is. Obviously the current one, Portal, is licensed too. And no timeline either for when we can expect that. No, no, I guess so. Like many of these companies, it'll either be when it's ready or when they need to keep the line going and they've fulfilled all the existing portal orders and built up a stock of modules and complete games. Right, and it was very good to see that the Portal game, they brought two of those, was still very popular and had a short line all the time during the show. It was never like you could immediately walk up to the game, no, you get in line to play it, so the interest is definitely there. Yeah, I think between TPF and the Houston Arcade Show, they're their home shows. So that's where you're going to be with the best chance of getting to play Portal. I think a lot of shows don't have one, so it's only if a distributor has the game that they're able to bring it along. So yeah, that's the best opportunity to play it. Well, it seems like now would be an excellent time to actually hear from Jerry himself. Right. Well, then let's find out what's cooking with Jerry Snellenberg. What's cooking? So much is cooking. But in the kitchen this time, rather than in the factory. Oh, in the kitchen. Yeah, what's your go-to recipe? I am a five-year-old in a fifty-year-old body and I love to eat and cook and make tacos, pizza and burgers. This is my diet. But I love making homemade pizza. So homemade dough, homemade, homemade, well you actually do it in the bread machine. I'm a fan of the recipe where it's a specific set of ingredients with flour, sugar, water, yeast, and put it in the bread machine, wait a couple hours, spread out the dough. I've experimented with a bunch of toppings, but just straight up pizza. Okay, so what are your favorite toppings? So I love pepperoni. I like to put green peppers and black olives on it. And cheese of choice? Always mozzarella. Just mozzarella? I just want straight up mozzarella. Right, and as for the tomato base, do you put any seasoning into that? Any basil or oregano? So always garlic powder and oregano. But I experimented with regular pasta sauces for a while, but the stores have now gotten pretty good pre-made pizza, pizza-specific sauces, which already have the flavour and the spices. Right, and what's your cooking method then? So... Oven, what temperature? Oven at 500 degrees on the pizza stone. So pizza stone gets preheated at 500 degrees, it only takes about 10 or 12 minutes for the pizza to cook. Okay, and how do you like it? How do you like the appearance of the pizza to be? Is the crust lightly browned or very toasty? Lightly brown, a little bit crispy, but I still like a little bit of softness to the crust, The cheese needs to be melted in gooey stringy. Do you have a thick bottom or a thin bottom? It's medium. I don't like cracker pizza, but I also don't like it super duper thick. So medium pizza. I actually like to put the toppings under the cheese. So put the toppings on and cover with the cheese. And probably the giveaway then for your current lifestyle, when's the last time you actually made a pizza like this? Oh, do I have to admit that? So, I had a child three years ago, and it was before that. Right. It was before that. Okay, but the classics don't change. No, and I still long for it. It used to be a Super Bowl party tradition. I'd have friends and family over for the Super Bowl, and we'd make up a bunch of homemade pizzas and enjoy them. Okay, well excellent. Thank you very much. Now, while we're here, so, what's going on with Multimorphic? Multimorphic, you have Portal in production, we just got a tour of the factory, thank you for that. And photos will be up on the Pinball News website as well as on the pinball-magazine.com website. And so Portal's in production, but that game was already introduced last year. Correct. So it's a successful title for you. So our process usually is to announce, to launch a title, see how much interest there is, and that translates into pre-orders, and then we order parts based on those pre-orders. So we're always about six months delayed from launch date to production start. Right. So we started production in around September timeframe. We launched it prior to that in March, about a year ago. We've been hot and heavy in production since then. And of course, since we're a P3, since we're making a P3, which is a modular machine, some of the customers bought machines with Portal, and other people already have their P3 and are just buying Playfields modules, game kits. So, our Playfield production has been churning out Playfields constantly for the last, how many months has it been since September? Four, five, six, seven? Seven? We're in month seven from September. Constantly, and some of those playfields go directly to game kit orders and some of those playfields go into machine kit, or to machines. You stated in your update newsletters, which you send out regularly, they can pick you for those, that progress on creating the portal playfields hasn't been as fast as you originally intended it to be. What's the reason for that? Is that down to manufacturing issues of parts to build the games? Is it down to other delays or supply chain issues? Or is it more focused around the factory here? Yes, so normally we predict that every project is going to have some number of problems, supply chain problems, or parts come in defective, or whatever that is. We were pretty good about our estimates on the parts. Our normal issue is staffing, is keeping a floor full of assemblers, because I don't know how familiar you are with the production process at most of these factories, but it's kind of a revolving door. People come to work here for a while, and some of them stay forever. Some of our core people have been here for many years, but a lot of times you hire someone, you train them, you bring them up to speed, And then they never talk to you again. They don't show up for work and you never hear from them. They're all the fed burgers. It's a constant thing. We demand, of course, that they work under certain restrictions and according to certain policies and then make sure we're building a quality product that meets everyone's expectations. Some people like the environment, some it's not perfect for. Our challenge since day one, we started producing machines in 2017, so almost nine years, has been staffing. It doesn't matter how much we pay, people are probably listening to this now, you just gotta pay more and you'll get better people, that's not the case. We've tried all ends of reasonable pay rates for people and it all comes down to a person's sense of responsibility and commitment. That doesn't vary according to their age or employment history then? It seems not. You've got retired or ex-service people. We recently hired someone who had retired from a technology job. They were bored. They were very wealthy and they were bored and wanted something to fill their time. They weren't ready to fill that time with a real job apparently because we brought them to speed. They were one of our test engineers because they had a lot of familiarity with technology and they could debug and think through things logically. But yeah, it didn't last very long. So keeping people up and trained and making sure that we can roll product out in a consistent And we have a very important schedule. It's probably the hardest challenge. Strangely, when you think of pinball, you think it's super complicated and there's all these things you've got to make work and you've got to design cool mechs and you've got to figure out supply chain. All that to me is easier than managing... ...building the thing. Yeah. It's not the first time that we hear that. No, you're not unique in that sense. So where are you with Portal, Playfield, module development, production I should say, as far as all pre-orders? So we have shipped all pre-ordered playfields, I believe. I think we're right around the cusp of... I think we shipped the last few out last week. Right now we're building orders that came in since... Okay, when we say pre-orders, I mean day one pre-orders. We've shipped all day one pre-orders. Now we... Throughout the year, people saw the game, they got the experience of the show or in somebody's house or whatever, and they've since bought in, and we're still working through those orders. Currently our lead time is about two months. So somebody If you put in an order for a game kit or a machine, it's going to be about two months before we ship it. That's still pretty good. Yeah. I mean, with other companies, and I'm not mentioning any names, but you order a game and you're waiting for God knows how long. So we listen to a lot of different podcasts and things, and there seems to be a perception that we are always very slow and have a lot of delays, and that's not the case. I don't even think it's the case comparatively to other companies, but we always launch and then we build up a big queue of people who wanted it. It takes us generally about a year to get through that queue, but after we get to the end of that queue, we're still pushing out new product for new orders. I would say the reason for that perception is a very laudable one in that you actually own up to when you have production delays. You tell your customers, okay, we're having a problem with this, it means it's going to be another month or so. There's other companies just might tell the distributors but distributors don't tell the end buyers so it's just a rumor mill and if you've not heard it's been delayed now that game's not going to come out for another three months and once you're upfront about it and that openness can be perceived as being more prone to these issues than other companies even though you're probably less prone to them. Interesting point. It's the curse of being an engineer. We all want to tell you exactly what's going on. We can only fix it if we admit what's wrong. So, given that you have fulfilled the day one orders for Portal and you just mentioned that once you announce a new game you need like six months to get production going, obviously you need to get or to keep the line or the manufacturing line going as well. Obviously, I don't know how many Portal games you still have to build, but it sounds to me like you should not be that far from announcing a new title. So I just said we have two more months or so. If an order came in today, we'd ship it in about two months. That gives you kind of an idea of what the queue is right now. But what you said about wanting to keep the line running being an implication for when the new game is coming, it doesn't connect. So the P3 is unique, right? The P3 is a pinball platform. When we announce a new game, we get a lot of orders. And if we have zero orders after Portal production finishes, or when we get through the current set of orders, until some future date where we launch the next game, the production floor won't be idle. We'll be building up machines. We'll be building up base machines. Right, okay. So if we build up 40, 50, 100, 300 base machines, those will be ready for the launch of the next game, and then when the next game parts come in for the playfield module, we build the modules, slap them in the machines that are already built, get them tested and shipped. So our production floor won't sit idle waiting for a game to be launched. They'll be super busy. Okay, and that's why you're different from a lot of, or any traditional pinball company, basically. Right. Okay. We have a ton of machines in process. We have a table set up with a lot of playfields because some number of our customers already have machines. So it's a very different production environment than a traditional pinball company. Okay. So any word on when we might get a new title from Multimorphic or a third party or... So normally we launch a game right around or before TPF. Right. That's what we've done the last four titles, I believe. And we did that because the games were ready. Well, the new game's not ready yet, so when it's ready, we'll launch it. Okay. That's all. Fair enough, fair enough. Great. Okay, well, thank you for taking some time on this very busy build up to the Texas Pinball Festival. You know you've got to transport a whole lot of equipment and games and spares and glasses up there for your stand. So we look forward to seeing you up in Frisco in a day or two's time. And thank you again for taking time out to tell us what's cooking with Jerry Stellenberg. Thank you, Jerry. Thank you. Yeah, it's a music box. It does, but also, yeah, so when you open this wooden music box, it plays 22 seconds of the original composition for the drained game from Charles Wolfe Music. Edm environment, Global Environment, Community penalty, You can see it for yourself. Also, Nick mentioned in his latest update that a game that we spoke about before, Skillbound, which is being in production, well not in production, it's in development I should say, says it's proceeding very well. He's now in the part of the process where he's putting together the narrative sequences, and adding more minigames to it. So it looks like it's going to be a really in-depth game there. And probably something that we haven't really seen before in any pinball. So we're really looking forward to seeing how that turns out. So when Steelbound is announced, we will obviously bring you details of it here. Right. And of course, still to come, updates on, well, basically any other pinball companies that we haven't mentioned yet. Yes. Including Jersey Jack Pinball, and, well, the list is long. Hmm. Let's start with Spooky Pinball. Yeah, had a very impressive display at Texas Pinball Festival, including an enormous great Beetlejuice character, inflatable Beetlejuice, actually scratched all the way up to the ceiling. And if you've been into the main hall at the convention center in Frisco, you know it's quite a high ceiling there. So, it is, it was something that you could spot from any point in the hall, no matter where you were. And they also had 19 Beetlejuice games set up at the show. I think it's 19, that's what I counted anyway. Yeah. And also I checked it on the video just to make sure that I was counting correctly. 17 set up on the floor, had six with the Beetle Snake topper on, three back to back, and then the rest were in a long line. Plus they had 17 in there and there were two more in a darkened gazebo called the Beetle Tent. Did you get a chance to play that game in there? Oh yeah, absolutely, yes, yes, multiple games. I had to get in line and then I was lucky that there was nobody behind me so I could play a couple more. My goodness. And I have to admit I'm not familiar that well with the Beetlejuice movie, but I did have fun playing the game, although I had no idea at some point what I was trying to do. But I have to compliment them on, I think this is the sandworm mechanism that's popping out, which is moving perfectly to the beat of the music. I think it's supposed to look funny, but I think it is a bit stupefying, yes. Yeah, I think it almost turns to shame when some of their animated things like T-Rex and so on, given the way that the Beetle Snake thing moves in, also Sandworm I should say, moves in so many different dimensions. And also, he lifts up to reveal an underground shot as well with the stand-up targets on it. Yeah, so kudos to the design team and the software department. Yeah, and syncing everything up. Yeah, so very, very well done, even though it's probably not a theme for me. But it doesn't matter because they already saw that. Yeah, unfortunately they didn't have a seminar at the Texas Pinball Festival about the making of these games, which would have been interesting to find out. Yeah, even more important, I asked them for flyers and it turns out every game comes with a set of flyers. There's actually two different ones, or it should be a four page one, but they printed them separately, so two on two, two-two, so to speak. I'm sorry I returned to the booth and multiple times asking like, did anybody find any flyers? And turns out that apparently, the crew that was setting up the games got them out of the box and they were like, what the hell do we do with these? Oh, let's trash them. So you were dumpster diving all weekend when you were trying to find them. I was dumpster diving but I didn't find any flyers, sorry. Oh well, too bad. I'm sure you'll get some eventually. Actually, I was able to get them with both pages, so to speak. Both designs. Both pieces, so to speak. Oh well, that's, I guess, all the news for Spooky Pinball for now. For now. Yep, okay, moving on. Jersey Jack, probably? Yes, Jersey Jack did have a seminar on Night Spooky at the Texas Pinball Festival where they had Jack, who just did a very brief introduction, and then passed over to Eric Meunier and mechanical designer Dan Lachick, I hope I pronounced that correctly, where they talked about the making of the Harry Potter game and all the mechanisms that were involved in that. and that and we've heard them talk about aspects of it before but there's always always new information in these so that was very interesting and again hopefully you'll be able to see that if you didn't catch it live when it does appear on iTunes. Right and of course Jersey Jack had a quite a large display as they always do at the Texas Pinball Show with of course Harry Potter games but also Elton John was there, of course. Steve Ritchie was also present. Was Elton John there? I didn't see an Elton John. I was looking for that. Oh, maybe I'm just imagining. I know they had some promotional material for Elton John. Oh yes, definitely. So maybe that was it. Yeah, I was looking for that game. But yeah, he says he had Guns N' Roses, Godfather, Toy Story, I think, still. Toy Story 4. Yeah, I was also there. Yeah, so, and well, it's always good to see Jack and to see Steve as well. So, and also Jersey Jack very kindly donated prizes for our So You Think You Know Pinball free prize quiz at the Texas Pinball Festival. Well, in this case, I think they donated or sponsored us with four different t-shirts. And which brings me to, apparently Jersey Jack Pinball have hired a former merchandise designer for Stern Pinball, who's currently working for Jersey Jack, which resulted in several new t-shirts. Yes, yes, which they had at the show as well and are available on the website. Yes, I noticed that. I wonder what prompted that and that's a good catch. Right. So, yeah. And then there is a little other news for something that we probably will see at some point in the not too distant future. I have to credit Knapp Arcade for bringing this to my attention. Sorry. Apparently, Jersey Jack Pinball filed a trademark for Jack in the Box, which is described as a downloadable computer software for interfacing with pinball machine and arcade game machines, downloadable mobile applications for interfacing with pinball and arcade game machines, downloadable computer game software, downloadable computer game software for use on mobile devices, and so on. A new version of the Pinball Game is coming out this year. The game is going to be called Jack in the Box. It's a mobile and cellular phone. So it sounds like the version is already connected. Yeah and it's Okay, sounds like they're not leaking up with Hexa then to use the Plunger app. Or indeed with Scorbit. We'll go back to them. It does sound like it, yeah. Okay, should also mention, as you were talking just now about the generous prizes that TreasureJet gave us, of course we forgot to mention that Spooky Pinball were also very generous in giving us prizes. Oh yeah, that would be great. What an apology. Yes indeed, and also Multimorphic too. Yes. So thank you very much for those, and we, they are greatly appreciated, and even more so are satisfied by the people who won them. The Lucky Few Yes, well we had 69 prizes and there was a Keeping track, but I think that's a record for it must be given the the amount of space they took up and Adverts dropped in extra tables to to display them all it was quite quite something But anyway, and if you're if you're curious I'm curious, how did that look? All those prizes displayed on these tables then. I suggest you look at the reports, the respective reports that Martin and I both wrote for our respective websites. Martin for pinballnews.com of course, and I did for pinball-magazine.com. And that's it with our own report on the Texas Pinball Festival. Yeah, and Jonathan's case, he did a full write-up of the trip and our visits to Multiballfic and to Barrels of Fun first. So if you want to see what those factories look like, go to pinballmagazine, pinball-magazine.com, and I can read Jonathan's diary of the show. Yeah, and the reason I do a diary is not because it's all about me. Definitely not. But, since Martin is already doing such an in-depth review and report of the Texas Pinball Festival, I'm not even trying to compete with that. So I gave it my own twist in the form of this personal diary. And it's always difficult to keep up for my diary with what am I actually doing the entire day because you run into so many people and you catch up with this guy and that guy and hey it's nice to see you and before you know it half a day is gone and you were like what am I supposed to be doing anyway in the first place? Oh right, I came down to pick up something. Yeah. And before you're there, you talk to ten different people or... So, and then, at some point, it's not even possible for me to remember everything. Before we bless you, John. Because at some point I'm like, okay, I know I went that way, or I went to this, and I went to that. I'm not sure if I said that, but there's four hours in between. What did I do in those four hours? And I'm completely blank, like, I was everywhere. Yeah. Oh well. Yeah, look. To the best of my recollection, I finished the report after coming back home, and it's, like Martin said, available at pinball-magazine.com website. Yes, and entertaining read it is as well. It doesn't cover everything, thankfully, that we got up to. Some of that is probably best not to put into print. Anyway, moving on quickly. Pinball Brothers, based in Sweden, but with a manufacturer in Italy at the Euro Pinball Cup business there with Patrese. We mentioned last time how Predator sales were going to be ending at... We're done, yeah. Good girl. Our Predator sales are going to be ending at the end of March, and indeed they did. Yes, so Predator sales have now officially ended. Now, whether that means that you can't buy them from distributors, I don't know. I was going to... No, I can tell you, distributors still have, may have them in stock. It was their last opportunity for distributors to actually buy a game. I've been actually tempted to buy a Predator game, but... You haven't yet? I still haven't played one, so I was too hesitant to actually pull the trigger on that one. As it were. Well, for those who did pull the trigger and do have the game, there's a new code for it. Version 1.0, yes. So, yes, sales have ended and the code is feature complete. The latest update came out on the 29th of March and that added the final wizard mode called the Final Battle. So to win the final battle, to play the victory multiball is the intention, and to qualify for the final battle you have to play through all the missions, assemble the full team, Play the game, fight your way through the jungle and get all the special items and then play the three multiballs, get to the chopper, camp attack and jungle blast. And then you will qualify for the final battle wizard mode. Alternatively, if you can't be bothered to do all that, you can go to the game play menu and play the final battle mode all by itself. daptableaktivw poorer I tell you I agree reservation Cast I don't remember whether they actually already started or even finished that Liga Bua game, which was a re-theme of Pinball Brothers Queen game for the Italian market. I haven't seen any posts about that recently. But you might be wondering what they are working on if it's not those two. And of course rumor has it that there will be a new Bally Williams remake, heavily rumored to be Tales of the Arabian Nights. But nothing has been confirmed yet, and neither Pinball Brothers or Pedretti Gaming were represented at the Texas Pinball Festival, so we were not in the position to talk to them or ask them about it. And do you wonder whether the remake market has been a bit mixed up or the addition of American Pinball into the mix now? Well, it certainly will make it more difficult to get, let's put it differently, I guess the most in demand titles are probably gone by now. Yeah, but on the other hand, you've got Chicago Gaming, who may have sort of staked a claim, shall I say, to some certain titles, but don't seem to be in any hurry to actually make them. In which case, is Planetary Pinball going to stick with them, or are they going to say, okay, well, if you're not going to make it, here's another company who will. Have at it. Right. Well, I know that Planetary Pinball is not being too content with the pace of Chicago Gaming. Then again, they also have a long history and they put out a quality product. So, I have no idea how that affects the relationship with, well, between those parties, so to speak. So, of course, I can imagine Chicago Gaming being the first to actually start doing these remakes and setting a trend, if you will. And I'm sure they had options on certain titles, but I'm not sure how long those options are available today. Yeah, I suppose it could also be argued that Dutch Pinball were first in the remake with the brighter pinball 2.0 kit. Right, yeah. Although it's obviously only an upgrade kit and still uses the original game rather than making the entire thing like Chicago Gaming did. Anyway, we don't care anyway, which is what we do. So, still no announcement on Pedretti and their next remake. No, but we're eagerly awaiting it. We are. And hopefully we will be able to bring you some news on that in our next episode. Now, one company which has announced what the next game is going to be, see what I did there, is Wonderland Amusements. The manufacturing is in Hong Kong, well in China I think, but they are based in the US and they have produced and shipped all their Kickstarters and Alexcos to Wonderland Games. Remember they're the sort of basically around about a thousand US dollar games, 80% size playfield and ball. Launched the whole thing on Kickstarter and then made the game available for sale direct or only in the US, North America I should say. Well they, as I was saying, have actually announced what their second game is going to be. It based on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it called World of TMNT colon Battle in the Silla Yeah catchy title That smells very Nesky, I would say. Yeah, a bit underground. I like the Silla. Yeah, so they haven't actually shown the full playfield yet, the game's still in development, But it does have green cabinet armor and trim in the Verses that we've seen so far There was a preview of it at the recent WonderCon festival in Anaheim, California but they only showed the cabinet and backbox and had a kind of like a paper over where the playfield would be showing And an idea of what it might look like, although it's not definite. You can get those pictures on Pinside if you go into the boutique pinball manufacturer's section. Right. But in the meantime, of course, a photo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Playfield has leaked. Um, maybe on purpose, maybe not, we don't know. Um, although there's not much I can make. That's also on Pinsir in the same thread, I would say. Yeah. Right, um, so, but there is, uh, a little bit of news. There's an interview with, uh, Peter Gould, who is of, um, Wanderland Remusement, which is available on YouTube. And from that interview I get that they will be taking pre-orders starting late April. And the first 48 hours the pricing will be 799 US dollars. After that it will be going up by 50 dollars and then 50 more, 100 extra. And their plan is to ship the games before the end of 2026. Which is, if you're still designing at this point. And there's also little, well, some info on who's designing the game. That's Jerry, the same designer as on Alice Goes to Wonderland. And the artwork, which is already shown, at least in this mock-up that was shown at the... Wonderful. Yes, exactly, that one, is by Matthias Santolaouko, which apparently is one of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book artists. Right. So, very authentic artists to be included on the game package, I would say. So that's all to come from Wonderland Amusements and that's all we have on them so far. Yeah, I wonder what the pre-order is going to be. Will it be a full payment up front or will it be a deposit? I wonder if they're still... will they still be using Kickstarter or will they try to launch without? and and or without such a platform so although it worked out well for them um the first time yeah okay well as soon as we get any more information on uh tmnt battle in the sewer we'll bring that to you right here on the uh industry news pincast in the meantime right we'll head down uh to the other side of the world and go to uh australia where we find victor pinball and now you may remember they are working on The Lost in Space game called Owen Allen's Lost in Space and they've been developing that for a while and teasing various aspects of it. Well now there is a gameplay video on Vector Pinball's YouTube channel and also on their website vectorpinball.com where you can actually see the game. So, that's the game. It looks quite fun, I have to say. Seems to flow pretty well as well. Not overly complicated, but that's kind of what you expect for a, given the level of the playfield, there doesn't seem to be any vastly complicated toys on the game. Also, no animations, it's just an alpha-numerated game. Yeah, yeah, as all vector pinball games are. It does have an upper playfield though, and some stand-up targets up there. Yeah, which really... it reminds me a little bit of Zakaria games from the early 80s. Right, I was thinking a bit more about Swords of Fury and that playfield, but... Yeah, Zakaria came to mind because they used the classic playfields as well. Yeah, and these light up, stand up targets too. Yeah, so think pinball champ, something like that. Although this one has small flippers and pinball champ has 3 inch flippers. Anyway, we'll see more about Lost in Space, or Owen Allen's Lost in Space, as I guess you probably should call it, and we'll bring you details of that when, I don't think it's available for sale just yet, But if not, it looks like it won't be long. Right. And it helps if you're in Australia. Indeed, yeah. That's right. So... Now speaking of Australia, I do have to give out a shout out to the Australian Pinball Museum, I believe it's called. I ran into one of the people running it, and excuse me for not being able to come up with his name right away, but I ran into him at the Texas Pinball Festival and he was kind enough to remember that I am a flyer collector and he brought me a couple that the Australian Pinball Museum has published themselves, which is very nice, very, very kind of him. There are some very, very cool ones, I have to say, that you fold open and then an image pops out. So, yeah, thank you very much for those and I'll be sending some flyers in return as a thank you. Thank you. That'll do. Okay. Yeah. Just, it's in my head, thinking about a simple... Yeah, why not? You're like, oh, all right. Okay. Yeah. Right. So, back to the US, where we have ramps pinball, and we're still waiting for any news on the, well, the finishing of the design of Road Trip and the production of that game. We have not heard any update on that in over a year. But there is an update on ramps pinball regardless. As it turns out, they will be manufacturing the Monster Hockey League game, which is a Jake Densick design, but for the occasion, his company is called Killdozer Homebrew, Kildozer Pinball, I would say. No pricing or details of the games are available yet. The game was at the Texas Pinball Festival, including its featured characters, Antoinette Johnson and I forgot the name of the other girl, who are actually featured in the artwork of the game and so on. And it was a popular game at TPF. There was only one available to be played, but it had a long line of people waiting to play it. In fact, I didn't even get to it, for which I apologize, because I promised that I would get back, and I was too busy, and by the time I was able to, the line was too long, and, oh well, you know. Yes, it was very popular there after debuting at Pinball Expo and being probably one of the games of the show there. Right, which is kind of odd because this is like a remake of Alvin G's soccer. AG Soccerball. Yeah, or football, what it was called in America. As I recall it, that wasn't a popular game back in the day. Apparently new code makes all the difference. New code, much better artwork, lighting effects as well. And yes, it was put out on Facebook and said people would sign up to a list and express their interest in it. Then if 100 people signed up for it, then they'd seriously consider looking to getting it manufactured. And that 100 target was easily reached very quickly. So, yes, they went out looking for a manufacturing partner and seem to have ended up with Bob at Ramps. I mean, they haven't actually made any games at Ramps yet, other than the Elf home brew. But obviously, if they get this into production, it will be the first game. And it's encouraging that that many people want to support the game. I bought the game. It's always tough to sell a head-to-head game. Because obviously you need, first of all you need two people to play it, and also you need the space on each side of it. And probably all around it as well, so it ends up being a bit of a piece by itself. You can't really slot it into a line-up of other machines. But I think the art package and the effects and the lighting really sold it. So, good luck to Ramps and to Killdozer and look forward to seeing more of these out in the wild, rather than just the wild. Then we can hopefully get a chance to play it. Right. So, congrats to, well, Jake Danzig, Killdozer, Pinball and Ramps, of course, on their collaboration. Moving on, I do have a little bit of news on Cardona Pinball, or I do have a little bit of possible news. Rumor has it that, well, Cardona Pinball has been silenced for quite some time. A 2.0 kit could be revealed at the upcoming Pintastic show. And we're talking about a 2.0 kit for another Bally Williams title, following No Good Gofers and Black Rose, if you recall. Yeah, so we have no idea which Bally Williams title we're actually talking about and whether there's any truth to this rumor, but it will definitely be something that we'll be keeping an eye on. Yeah, it's kind of easy to overlook Cardona Pinball, but yes, they've been in the 2.0 upgrade market for a while as well, alongside basically doing remakes of existing titles. So that's... Well, kits from that one. Yeah, that's right, yeah, upgrade kits. Not generally affecting the playfield, but the displays and animations and rules and the way the game is run on a PC or a different computer system, so to say. Not that difficult to upgrade, I can say, having done Black Rose. And I think it was definitely worthwhile for the lucky owner who got that kit. Right, okay. And that's all the news I got on Cardona, so that's pretty much it. Yeah, well, I was talking about no news. Not much coming out of Dutch Pinball either, after the events from last month, where we obviously had the new investors announcing the split with Melvin and DPX. So, a lot quieter at the moment. Right. I do know who, well, I've been told, let's put it like that, who the new owners are. Investors. Or the new investors are, I should say. Two guys both made of their money in real estate. They have a passion for pinball and are apparently very supportive of Dutch Pinball. I don't think I ever met either one of them before, or maybe I did, but did not pay attention. And I don't have their names written down, and even if I did, they wouldn't ring a bell. No, no, I heard who they were and none of them were familiar to me. I saw a picture as well. I still don't know who they are. Yeah, so, oh well, so, oh well, we'll just have to see how that turns out. One of the fallouts from the split with Dutch Pinball and the, I suppose also the slow pace of manufacturing with Dutch Pinball, is that people were able to cancel their orders at the beginning of the year and eventually get their money refunded if they didn't want to stay in and wait. And quite a few people did do that, which means that there are now a few spots available for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. If you wanted that game and didn't get in on the initial purchase, it's still possible to buy the game. And Cointaker had a couple of them at their stand at the Texas Pinball Festival. So it gave you the opportunity to play the game if you thought you might actually buy one. So, I don't know who else has them for sale, but I think Cointaker does. So, if you're looking for one... I think about that. Cointaker is a major importer for Dutch Pinball into the US market. So, that's probably your go-to point if you're in the US. Yes. And interested in getting Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Yeah, that one. Yeah. Okay, well, we all... No, I was going to say, you were about to say something. I don't know whether it was that or something else. No, I was about to say that this, all the news that we have for Dutch Pinball and Dutch Pinball Exclusive. And next off, well, we already briefly mentioned Chicago Gaming earlier on. I happened to talk to Cathy Duba and Doug Duba at the Texas Pinball Festival. And Cathy Duba was kind enough to sponsor our quiz, a future edition that is, with a couple of Chicago Gaming t-shirts which she has available. And I could not get everybody back to give away those last pieces of merch. So those will be available probably at the Dutch show in November of this year where we also do our quiz. I had a lengthy discussion with Cathy Duba and Doug Duba as well, who joined in later, Doug Duba being the owner of the company. And lots of stuff I can't talk about, but what I think I can mention is that they're currently running Medieval Madness, the Merlin edition, and the production run is expected to end in July. And after that, Medieval Madness is not very likely to go back in production anytime soon. At least that's what I make from it. So if you're in the market for a Medieval Madness, don't hesitate. Yeah, after all these years, yes, you actually want one. Yeah. Well, so, and that's all I got. Well, we know that Chicago Gaming is still working with Play Mechanics on a follow-up game for the Pulp Fiction one, not related to Pulp Fiction, rumored to be Halo, which is a video game. And as well, similar to Pulp Fiction and a Mark Ritchie design. But that's all speculation, rumors and what have you. I can only indicate that those are going around as a fact. Because it could also be that they figured like, hey, we're going to do another run of Monster Bash or Attack from Mars or Captain Scarlet. I don't know, that's not what I discussed with them, so... Okay, well, very slow updates coming out of the Chicago Gaming, so we can kind of almost expect there to be no news each month, and we'll be surprised when some news does come out. Other companies that also don't have any news this month, Bittronic in Spain, which, no surprise there. Home Pin also in Taiwan. No news from them. Last post from them was about the Chinese New Year, which we reported on last month. No news from pinball events in Canada, which no news for a very long time. And also no news either from Quetzal Pinball, either in Spain, despite them having a new game. We're not seeing it coming out anytime soon. Right, so... And then there's the other news! Hey! Right, yes. So, we already mentioned the Texas Pinball Festival, many times. What were your thoughts overall about this year's show, Jonathan? And the theming, and who was there, and what was on display, and the changes that Paul McKinney talked about in last month's Pincast. Right. Well, I thought it was definitely a good show to attend. The number of pinball industry veterans or designers and so on attending the show was less than some of the previous years. There were not that many new games as some previous years. I think we had a record of like seven new games at one show. Yeah, it's crazy. But regardless of that, it was still a good show. Hmm. I'd still, I mean, I'll be honest, there were, there have been additions that I would, if I would rate those 9 out of 10, I'd say this was definitely 8.5 out of 10. So, yeah, I had a good time. It was always good running into the TPF family, so to speak. There's a lot of new volunteers and a lot of volunteers no longer working there, which is a pity, but I guess that's how things go. It would have been nice to see some of the volunteers that were no longer working at the show, because of course you're familiar with them and it's always nice to see them. But all in all I was impressed with the show that they set up. Theme wise, yeah, dragons and pinball, yes there have been dragons in various pinball titles. The dragon that they chose for this show was not specifically related to any pinball game, but still, it's an angle and I can appreciate it. So the mechanical moving dragon at the entrance of the show, that looked very cool. That was quite a marvel, yes. I think that worked very well. Everybody wanted to have their picture taken with it or do a video of it. And I did like it quite so. If you look at the Pinball News Report for the show, you'll be able to see the video. And it's on our YouTube channel as well. Yeah, I thought the show overall, the changes worked well. I think the seminar room becoming smaller wasn't an issue. I thought it might be. But the only thing I think was an issue and which could be made to be changed was the position of the projector in that room because the screen was just over on one side. So either they wanted to have two screens or move it towards the centre so it's more visible to everybody. But now I thought it might be too crowded and apart from the closing ceremony on Sunday when of course it was very crowded but they actually took the back wall out for that so there was more space. That change worked well. I think the floor seemed packed to me, the show floor. There were no sort of dead areas where somebody might have been or didn't turn up or anything like that. I think the number of games, I didn't count them, but according to the organisers there's going to be about 500 machines, which it didn't seem to be that many, but I suppose overall, once you look at it, there are an awful lot once you bring into account all the vendor ones as well, you know, with Spooky with their 19 Beetlejuice games and all the Pokemon games and all the Desert Jack games and yeah, it soon starts to add up and it was yeah as far as the new game launch to go I think it was exciting to have Turner Pinball's new game there. It was also exciting to see American Pinball in their new version there as we talked about the impression that they gave of being a dynamic young team. That was good as well. And I think overall there was an awful lot of positivity there as well. Yeah, it's probably just fun as well. Yeah, although I didn't go back later. You went back more towards 7 o'clock, didn't you, when it was official start time? I was there with you at 6 o'clock, which is an hour before it's meant to open, but it's actually when it really does open. Yeah, so at seven we finally got donuts and coffee. Yeah, I was kicking myself for not going back for that, but hey, you know, I had other things to do. Yeah, so, a few points to notice. The show opened Friday on 4 a.m. and I got the feeling that a lot of people got in anyway way before that. There was hardly anybody on the lookout or should be allowed in there. Yeah, nobody was checking that. That seemed to be the case throughout the show, pretty much. Yeah. Also Saturday night, which is... The show closes at like 11.30 and then at midnight there's a vendor and exhibitor only party. The Saturday night after midnight party they had this DJ playing really good selection of music I have to say and being a DJ myself that's a big compliment because you always judge other DJs like how many tracks are there or songs that I would like to play and there was actually quite a few that was like I gotta find this tune, oh this is a cool tune, I gotta have that one. So, erm, and I really like playing pinball on a disco beat. Yes, I found that as well. Normally by about, you know, 1 o'clock I'd be flagging and feeling pretty tired after a long day, particularly on a Saturday when we started at 6 o'clock in the morning out in the swap meet. But by 1 o'clock, once the music was playing, I felt fully energised and didn't leave until about 1.30, I'm a big fan of the Houston show, because I knew I had to get up and check out the next morning and pack everything. So, yeah, I could have stayed there much longer. But, yeah, music in the show hall at certain times of the day does seem to work well. It's something which they do at the Houston show in a big way. In the evenings they have DJs and they have performers actually on the show floor blasting music out. You can't hear the games. Some people like it, some people don't, but it's the nature of the show. It's kind of like a party show. And I think it's... music is something which is being added more and more to the Texas Pinball Festival with the music, the bands and the performers out on the stage in the lobby area as well, who I thought were excellent this year as well. As well as the dragon, the Chinese dragons as well. That was a nice little diversion too. I don't know if you caught that. When they were parading up and down the corridors. Thankfully I missed it. Oh well, go to the Pinball News report. You can watch a video of it as well. One of the many videos. And of course there's the entire walkthrough of the show video too. If you want to know exactly who was there, I shot that on Sunday morning. So there were a few machines which had gone by then, and one or two vendors had packed up as well, which I'm not sure whether that's what they meant to do, but I guess they've come to an agreement. But other than that, everything is there. And also a big shout out to the tournament organizers as well who put on some great events. There were multiple tournaments both in the tournament room upstairs which is a separate area which got pretty warm I have to say during the show. Yeah and also there were some tournaments on the show floor of the Hangar Pinball stand where I think the Media Mavens tournament was held and also a big shout out to NTX Pinball who were holding lots of kids tournaments down in the corridor at the far end by where the arcade hall entrance used to be. So I think, yeah, I think the other thing when it comes to, we talk about access to the rooms, I think you can probably say that probably need to be more signage and more access to the seminar room. Because there was, people didn't seem to know exactly where it was and at times the doors were closed. I even got to the point where a seminar was going on and doors were all closed and all locked and people couldn't get in. So I ended up going, finding an entrance all the way around the other side which we weren't meant to be using but we got in that way and then we could go and open the doors for other people to come in. So it all worked out there, but that's the worst thing that needs to be updated and I call it a big success. Congratulations to Paul and the whole team who worked so hard on it. Speaking of Paul, interestingly, I have to give a shout out first to Nicholas of Pinsounds as well as Hexad Pinball. I had a bunch of pinball books by Santiago Chufo stored at Barrels of Fun and we were able to bring those books actually to the Texas Pinball Festival and mid-show I talked to Paul about those books and he offered to add them to the stock of the Texas Pinball Festival merch stand. And after the show, we also will be offering those books at the Texas Pinball Festival webshop. At the same price? Probably, yeah. That's a very good deal. And yeah, and I have to give a shout out to Nicholas of Pinsounds and the Hexad team for offering the books during the show as well at a special show price. So they were able to help some, to help sell some I should say. So thank you very much. And that also reminds me, we should probably consider taking Pinsounds into our monthly update as well, as they come out regularly with their new products, most recently PinVision and PinBlaster. Hmm, yes. Which one's their new display? Well, that's a very good one. I have not... They have a new dot matrix display which has a unique feature which Nicholas demonstrated to me, which is that it's actually touch sensitive or it's motion sensitive in that you can adjust the brightness of the display by waving your hand in front of it, moving your hand upwards to make it brighter and downwards to dim it. So yeah, it seemed like a very novel feature. Very cool. But what the actual name of that product is, I can't recall at the moment, but yeah, they do have a lot of products there and they do seem to be getting better as well. The PinVision is the speaker illumination, isn't it, which seems to be able to show graphics as well. I think some of the animations on there have come on leaps and bounds since it was first released. Anyway, yeah, probably about wraps it up for our Texas Pinball Festival. I shall not miss having to drive around all the corners in our car very, very carefully to make sure your big pile of books on the back seat didn't topple over and land on top of you. So, glad they arrived safely, anyway. Other news, well, just a little bit, just a little catch up, I suppose, on our good friend, Robert Mueller, well, our friend, well, Robert Mueller, of Deeproot Pinball, and Deeproot group of companies, who you may remember is facing a criminal trial for, well, now he's being, he's on, being charged with wire fraud. That's the current charge. His trial is currently scheduled to begin on the 13th of April, but there is a motion from his defence team to delay it for at least 90 days, saying that the prosecution, i.e. the US Justice Department, has changed several aspects of the charges against him, and they will require additional time to file a defence. Some things have changed. As I say, he's now been charged with wire fraud and only five of the original eight charges against him remain due to the deaths of some of the victims. You may remember people invested their pensions and their savings in Deeproot investment schemes and some of those are no longer with us, sadly, so their claims have been struck off. The judge is yet to rule on whether this delay is going to be allowed or not, but given the way it's gone in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if it's pushed back at least another 90 days. Right, so if you wait long enough, then all charges will... Yeah, all the people will die and charges will go away. Yeah, it seems to be working so far. Apparently there was a plea bargain offered and Robert rejected it, choosing to plead not guilty to all the charges instead. There is a planned hearing on the 6th of April, assuming all this isn't pushed back any further, where he will confirm that he was suitably advised by his attorneys not to accept, or, at least given the details of the plea bargain, and the consequences of acceptance or not accepting it, so he has to sort of, agree that he was advised, though he can't later claim that he had bad legal advice and he wasn't advised about what the deal would have been. So, it actually should take place in, about another four days' time after the publication of this. But as I say, it's been pushed back so many times in the past, there's no reason to think it won't be pushed back again this time. So that's it for the latest update on the Deeproot saga. And that also rounds up our episode. It does indeed. Of our look back or recap of the pinball industry news for March 2024. Yeah, and we'll be back at the start of May, yes, that's right, with our next Pincast, where we look back at all the excitement and events in the pinball industry throughout this month of April. So, until then, from me, Martin Eyre of Pinball News, and me, my name is Jonathan Euston of Pinball Magazine, we hope you have a truly awesome April, and look forward to joining you again at the start of next month for the very next edition of the Pinball Industry Podcast. The Pinball News Pincast. Bye for now. Bye bye.