Transcript
Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
Speaker: We are on episode 149.
Speaker: I didn't realize we're almost to 150, Scott.
Speaker: That's kind of crazy.
Speaker: Actually, that's what I noticed too.
Speaker: I was like, oh, did we miss like an anniversary?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Truth be told, we had our 15-year anniversary this year, and both my wife and I forgot about it until we saw the happy anniversary from our father-in-law.
Speaker: Anyway, but this isn't our 15th anniversary.
Speaker: This is episode 149.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And we're doing pre-expo today, and there is a ton of games now available.
Speaker: If you're buying one of these games, Scott, who are you buying it from?
Speaker: Zach and Nicole Minniet flipping out pinball.
Speaker: And you know what I've really been eyeing is the speaker lights.
Speaker: And I know right now it's been really nice because they've been, you know, Stern's been releasing those out.
Speaker: And so if you want, I'm going to get it for Rush because I didn't get the aftermarket one, but now I'm super excited for them to come out.
Speaker: And I'm trying to debate.
Speaker: You guys are going to have to let me know.
Speaker: Should I get the speaker lights from Stern for Godzilla or should I get the flame ones?
Speaker: No, just something to think about.
Speaker: But also, if you want to pick up any game, reach out to them.
Speaker: I know they were actually looking at possibly a show discount.
Speaker: So if you're going to Expo and you're looking for a few hundred bucks off, you may be able to reach out to them.
Speaker: And today we're going to be talking about Expo, and we have an awesome guest on.
Speaker: This is not his first time on Loser Kid.
Speaker: He is a champion amongst men with the Papa Championship trophy.
Speaker: We got Colin McAlpine on today.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Speaker: I'm excited to talk about Expo and just to, you know, I like to correct, make sure it's accurate.
Speaker: So I have a Pinnberg trophy, not Papa, which is also, I think is cool because I think Pinnberg is better than Papa, but that's just my whole opinion.
Speaker: It is a huge trophy.
Speaker: Whatever it is, it's massive.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And you dominated on high hand, wasn't it?
Speaker: Wasn't that the game you took it over the top on?
Speaker: Yeah, that was part of it.
Speaker: That was the second out of four.
Speaker: But ironically, that was the one game that I actually took first on in that four.
Speaker: And then the rest of it was just not performing well, but not first.
Speaker: But yeah, I'm excited to be here for the pre-150th episode, for the pre-Expo episode here.
Speaker: Okay, I do have to warn you, even though Colin is the nicest guy on the planet and his wife and kids are lovely and super well behaved, by the way.
Speaker: don't invite them over to your house if you want any of your high scores to remain intact.
Speaker: Do you still have my initials up there?
Speaker: Yeah, I do.
Speaker: Yeah, Attack for Mars.
Speaker: There's no way I'm going to catch that.
Speaker: And I think Simpsons, I've currently put Simpsons in storage because I need a break.
Speaker: But yeah, basically Colin played all my games for about two, two and a half hours.
Speaker: And each one had like a GC from Colin on it now.
Speaker: And so now I have to look at his face.
Speaker: or at least his initials every time I play my game knowing.
Speaker: It's just showing exactly how absolutely, exceptionally mediocre I am at playing pinball.
Speaker: Okay, what did he set your high score on Attack for Mars at?
Speaker: I think it was like 13 billion or, I don't know.
Speaker: What is that?
Speaker: Is that like you, you go higher.
Speaker: I don't know, Josh.
Speaker: I'm just saying that's, that's a pretty good score.
Speaker: Legitimately.
Speaker: I think he played it once too.
Speaker: That's the problem.
Speaker: That wasn't even a warmup.
Speaker: That wasn't a, let me get used to your game.
Speaker: It's you know, I'm just going to step up and see what I can do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm lucky to crack like 1.8 billion on attack from Mars and Collins like doing that one handed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was a, it was a good, it was a good run there.
Speaker: And yeah, I think that was the first game.
Speaker: Ruled the universe on that game.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe you just have it set up too easy, Scott.
Speaker: Maybe you should have made it a little harder for him.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: He has it set up perfectly for Scott.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So legit, Colin is one of the nicest guys on the planet.
Speaker: He also is an amazing rules guy.
Speaker: He knows all the things.
Speaker: Don't you have like a little app that you have like all the things typed out for yourself?
Speaker: So when you're playing a game, you can look it up.
Speaker: It's like, okay, I'm remembering what I need to do on this game.
Speaker: Yeah, I can't keep it all straight up in my head anymore.
Speaker: And also because there's so many games out there over the years and also new ones coming out.
Speaker: So yes, it's not a cool app though.
Speaker: I'm not that high tech.
Speaker: It's just a Google sheet.
Speaker: And yeah, but it's over 800 lines long now.
Speaker: So yeah, there's a lot of little stuff that I pick up over the years that I put in there.
Speaker: And so that way,
Speaker: when I happen to see a pin again that I haven't played in five years, I can, I can pick that up and go, Oh yeah, that's what, that's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker: What makes me chuckle is like the newest games have pretty much like made pin tips obsolete.
Speaker: Like pin tips is good for like nineties and prior.
Speaker: Cause it's like even two thousands.
Speaker: Cause it's like, Oh, theater of magic left, left orbit slash ramp.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's because the code is like one 10th of what all the code is now.
Speaker: I know, but it's like, I bet if you were on pin tips for Godzilla, it's like, just don't.
Speaker: Shoot the wamps.
Speaker: But that is important.
Speaker: Some of the stuff I try to do for some people, if they want it, I try to develop just very novice level three things.
Speaker: Just three things to do.
Speaker: Because most people are not going to play a game that long anyway.
Speaker: If they have just a couple things to focus on, then
Speaker: First off, it kind of gives you purpose as you play as opposed to just trying to stay alive.
Speaker: And yeah, you can usually, even though there's like a hundred things you could do in the likes of like Godzilla or, you know, you've got Jaws there behind you, Josh.
Speaker: And I think I see a rush behind you there, Scott.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which are just redonkulous.
Speaker: And there's so many deep and nuanced things you can do.
Speaker: But for the average player, they're not going to scrape, you know, the surface of that.
Speaker: So just give them three things to work on.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Well, and I don't know if it's just your strategy, but I know a lot of high end players that I have played with.
Speaker: That is kind of the strategy.
Speaker: It's like focus on two or three things, whatever game you're playing on and just kind of blow it up from there.
Speaker: And if it's not working out, you just go to plan B, which is another two or three things.
Speaker: And so it seems to work very, very well for the high end players.
Speaker: There's the trade secret right there.
Speaker: If you want to go win some big tournaments, do it.
Speaker: And you're typically not really, okay, you're not shooting for Volanor if you're in a competitive setting.
Speaker: You're basically looking at which things can I maximize my points on because that's really what you're competing against.
Speaker: If you're trying to do the game, you know, the completeness, that's a completely different philosophy than a tournament player would have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, but the one thing I want to emphasize, though, is that there's – I think everybody talks a lot about, oh, well, this is a game designed more for tournament players or this aspect is for tournament players.
Speaker: Let's be real.
Speaker: Everybody is always competing.
Speaker: Yeah, you're always competing.
Speaker: If you're playing by yourself, you're competing against whatever high score.
Speaker: In Scott's case, he's competing against the high score I left him.
Speaker: But you're competing against your other previous high score you had or your wife's high score, your friend's high score or just something in your head.
Speaker: Hey, I want to try to get 50 million on this particular mode this time around.
Speaker: And so it's not so much of like thinking, oh, well, that's only for tournament players.
Speaker: The scoring stuff is actually for everybody.
Speaker: It's just what can you and what does everybody really want to comprehend and take the time to learn?
Speaker: And just learning even just a little bit, you're still going to be able to have a knowledge of, hey, if I put these types of things together, then I can do cool things with a score.
Speaker: And that helps me in competing with myself or the three friends I'm playing with at my house.
Speaker: And so I like to kind of dispel the notion of like that score and getting into even just maybe one layer deep on nuance of score is only for tournament players.
Speaker: It's for everybody.
Speaker: It's just a matter of who you're competing against.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's true.
Speaker: My son, he's always super excited when he enters his name in a game.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: And it's totally interesting.
Speaker: Now, I do want to...
Speaker: The reason why we are talking about rules and we're talking about scores because Pinball Expo is coming up and we are going to talk a little bit about Expo, but because we're already talking about rules, Josh, should we just talk about the reason why we have Colin on?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because he is.
Speaker: Now, are you the main rules guy for Princess Bride?
Speaker: Is that do I have that correct?
Speaker: Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Princess Bride.
Speaker: So this is a multimorphic game.
Speaker: So I know most of you are familiar with multimorphic, but it is an interesting concept in that you buy the main console or the, I don't know, do you call it a console or do you call it the pin?
Speaker: But either way.
Speaker: I call it the cabinet or the platform.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You buy the platform, which is the cabinet.
Speaker: And then, yeah, you can go from there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then you buy these little game modules that you can slide in and out.
Speaker: And so it's in many ways, it's you're getting a lot of games for your buck because with each, you know, with each other game, you're, you know, if I buy a rush, I'm buying a rush.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: But if you're buying a P3, then you can buy the P3 and then
Speaker: They have lots of different modules, which are a fraction of the cost of what a standard game is.
Speaker: And so the game, the latest game they have out is Princess Bride.
Speaker: So we want to talk about Princess Bride because the game looks fantastic.
Speaker: But not only that, it's starting to ship.
Speaker: People are starting to get these into their homes or on the line.
Speaker: And it's going to be at Pinball Expo to play.
Speaker: It sounds like there'll be at least one there, right, Colin?
Speaker: Yeah, correct.
Speaker: They'll have one at the... Oh, shoot.
Speaker: I'm blanking on the booth.
Speaker: I'll come up with it later or remember later.
Speaker: But they'll be at the Chicago Expo.
Speaker: And also Josh Kugler, who is the...
Speaker: lead software developer.
Speaker: So he did a lot of the coding and continues to work on coding for other P3 games.
Speaker: He will be there giving a seminar at the expo.
Speaker: So you can go and check that out.
Speaker: And then also he will probably be at the booth.
Speaker: Oh, it's Justin Wise's booth.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So he will be, he will be presenting the P3.
Speaker: So he'll have his there.
Speaker: And I think Josh might have his whitewood that he's going to bring there.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker: Cause I'm not, I'm not involved with the, with, you know, the, the presentation there at expo, but yeah, I encourage everybody when you're there, check it out.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's just super fun to play.
Speaker: If, especially, you know, for most of us, I'd say we're most all familiar with Pete, with the princess bride, but even if you're not familiar with the princess bride or you're,
Speaker: you know, you were living, you know, in under a rock and then, you know, that time period in the 80s, the early 90s that you didn't see it, you know, go check it out.
Speaker: I think it's a, it's a ton of fun to play regardless of whether you're like a super fan of the license.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And now one thing, because we, we don't have a game here, so we're not going to go through gameplay, but you did one with Buffalo pinball with Kevin Manny and you, so go check out Buffalo pinball.
Speaker: Great to,
Speaker: Great podcast, great video, and you're going through it with Kevin and you're walking through the gameplay.
Speaker: And so that's just a side note if you want to go check that out.
Speaker: The one thing that I do have a question when you're approaching something like the Princess Bride,
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I would say that most people, if you haven't seen it, then you know, it just, you should shut this off right now and just go and watch it because it's the perfect movie.
Speaker: It really is so great.
Speaker: But the challenge is when you have a movie, there's always a risk of it getting stale.
Speaker: And I think of Ghostbusters where it, you know, the first thing, the early code was you always did.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Who brought the dog?
Speaker: And so how do you take a movie that has such a storyline that is so iconic and approach the rule set so you can do different things without it feeling like you're doing the same thing over and over again?
Speaker: Excellent question.
Speaker: So yeah, actually, there was a lot of thought put into that by myself and also the rest of the
Speaker: So the cool part wasn't just me developing the rules, but I was working also with Steven Silver, the creative director.
Speaker: And then when Josh Kuhler came on board, he has a lot of experience dealing with rules as well as the time at American Pinball.
Speaker: And so, yeah, what we came up with was, you know, you can, you can, you don't have to play like Ghostbusters has these modes in each of the shots that are part of a tree.
Speaker: And you, you are forced to play those modes in the order that's listed, you know, from top, from bottom to top on each of those shot trees.
Speaker: And so as much as you want it in a movie where you want to take advantage of the fact that there is a plot line, there is a natural story of a plot progression and character progression that takes place in the movie or in the book, whatever comic book, if you will.
Speaker: In this case, I wanted to give the player complete control.
Speaker: So you as the player have complete control about which modes you want to play and which order you want to play them in.
Speaker: So there are different shots around the play field that you get to select from three different groupings of three different story modes.
Speaker: So there are nine in total.
Speaker: And then there are mini wizard modes attached to each one of those.
Speaker: So each little grouping, the castle, Gilder, and Florin, have four in total.
Speaker: So three modes and one mini wizard mode.
Speaker: and you can play them.
Speaker: You can't play the mini wizard modes, obviously.
Speaker: You can't choose those up front.
Speaker: You have to unlock those.
Speaker: But the other nine, you can bounce around and play whichever order you want to play them in.
Speaker: And I wanted to incentivize players to explore both playing them in completely different ways each time they play it.
Speaker: And also I wanted to incentivize them to explore playing modes in the actual order of the story.
Speaker: So the first one I'll explain is where you kind of pick and choose is because we also have shot features.
Speaker: And so there are features like our little kind of mini modes based on if you shoot a certain shot enough times.
Speaker: And that can stack and overlay with modes and multiballs.
Speaker: But the element there is if you complete, if you do well enough in one of those little shot features, it will buff or give you some benefit to a particular mode that is thematically tied to that character.
Speaker: So you can then choose and say, okay, well, do I want to play this Buttercup's Nightmare mode right now?
Speaker: Or do I want to do the other things first that buff and make Buttercup's Nightmare score more points or make it easier to play?
Speaker: So you can explore the game that way.
Speaker: So there's a lot of breadth, not just depth in terms of like, oh, how many modes and how many wizard modes, whatever.
Speaker: But there's a lot of breadth in terms of how you approach it.
Speaker: And then the other thing that's... I think there are a number of games that do that already.
Speaker: And so I have no problem with borrowing cool concepts and ideas from other games out there.
Speaker: So the other element that you talked about, Scott, as far as when playing games and playing modes in order.
Speaker: So I wanted to incentivize players to...
Speaker: consider playing modes in order, but you don't have to start from the beginning.
Speaker: So you could start from the very first mode, which is the Shrieking Yields.
Speaker: That's the one, the very first mode that we have in the story.
Speaker: Or you could start from, you know, something that's, you know, partway through with, you know,
Speaker: There will be blood tonight if you wanted to.
Speaker: And at any point, if you complete a mode, and if you then continue to play the next mode in the storybook order, you earn what's called a narrative streak.
Speaker: And so a percentage of your mode points gets added into your end of ball bonus.
Speaker: And that mode, that percentage grows the longer you make your streak.
Speaker: So if you can cobble together a streak of three modes or five modes that are in the storybook order, then in addition to the natural points you're going to get, you're also going to get this big, big fat end of ball bonus, kind of in the style of like an Indiana Jones, Williams, or Shadow, or Indy 500, where any mode that you play, you get all those points in your bonus, end of ball bonus.
Speaker: I wanted to do something in that vein, so that way you have a reason not to tilt.
Speaker: It kind of reminds me, it's like an expanded version of...
Speaker: Creature from the Black Lagoon, if you're not familiar with that game and you're listening, you have to spell film.
Speaker: And if you spell it in order, F-I-L-M, you get an extra bonus on top of that.
Speaker: So it sounds like you've taken that and just expanded it into this narrative sequence bonus.
Speaker: That's a really cool concept.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: Yeah, so I'm excited for players to explore that.
Speaker: And like Scott, to your point, it gives you a reason to try doing things a different way or try doing things in a different order.
Speaker: And so I wanted to specifically have that.
Speaker: I want people to want to press that start button again, whether it's in your collection at home or whether you're playing it on location.
Speaker: You know, I don't like games that just become stale and it's like, okay, hey, once I've made it to the wizard mode or once I've made it to this mini wizard mode or scored this certain amount of points, it kind of, yeah, it can get boring or old after a time.
Speaker: And so we did a lot of things with the rules and those concepts of the narrative streak and where you can get buffs from other things.
Speaker: So for instance, like if you play, if you defeat and complete the marriage mode, then the rest of the game, your true love multi balls, instead of a three ball, multi ball become a four ball, multi ball, and your scoring gets buffed.
Speaker: And the,
Speaker: your true love, instead of being a true love and spelling T-R-U-E-L-O-V-E, becomes true love, multiball, and you're spelling T-W-O-O and W-H-U-V.
Speaker: And because the P3 is dynamic and screen and those targets, we can change those targets and how they look.
Speaker: And so unlike most pinball machines where those inserts are static and they would have the same spelling every time, we can have, and Josh and the rest of the team are able to
Speaker: code it and create the, the, the, you know, the icons that are dynamic that change as soon as you beat marriage.
Speaker: Is there a to believe?
Speaker: It is in there.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: To, to blade is in the miracle max mini wizard.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I do want to go through, so I counted these up.
Speaker: So see if I have these, right.
Speaker: We have,
Speaker: the farm boy skillshot sequences.
Speaker: We have Shrieking Eels, the Cliffs of Insanity, Battle of Steel, Battle of Strength, Battle of Wits.
Speaker: So obviously the, you know, that's the physics, Indigo, and Vecini.
Speaker: Fire Swamp, Buttercup's Nightmare, There Will Be Blood Tonight.
Speaker: Guide My Sword, Miracle of Magic.
Speaker: By the way, I love that marriage is spelled M-A-W-I-D-G-E.
Speaker: And Storming the Castle.
Speaker: And
Speaker: When you're designing modes.
Speaker: Into the pane.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I'm not sure I'm familiar with that.
Speaker: When you're designing modes, typically coders will intentionally say, these are the easy modes.
Speaker: These are the middle modes.
Speaker: These are the hard modes.
Speaker: Did you take that approach in this?
Speaker: Not necessarily.
Speaker: We didn't go into it thinking that we wanted to have certain modes be harder than others.
Speaker: Some of them do.
Speaker: And the one exception to that is Cliffs of Insanity.
Speaker: Cliffs of Insanity is intentionally designed to be very easy.
Speaker: because we don't want people to miss out on the battle modes.
Speaker: And also because we want people to enjoy seeing that really cool mech that TJ designed, where you can see the ball climbing the cliffs on the magnet as you shoot the center ramp shot.
Speaker: But the rest of the modes are all pretty well balanced.
Speaker: There's a lot of difference to them though.
Speaker: And so I take great pride in how we are able to make each of those modes play and feel very different as opposed to, well, hey, this is just another sequence of flashing shots.
Speaker: There's rhyme and reason to each one of the modes and why we chose to make them the way they do.
Speaker: And we are able to take advantage of some of the
Speaker: The P3 unique features like Guide My Sword uses the P3 wall of scoops where you're trying to shoot into the open scoop, but you have to line up your sword with the scoop that needs to be opened by hitting the targets on the sides.
Speaker: So your sword then moves on the screen to finally point towards the correct scoop, and then that scoop drops open, and you can shoot it into there.
Speaker: And you have to do that three times.
Speaker: And so the first one is it's a gimme.
Speaker: The sword's already pointing at the scoop.
Speaker: But if you flail and miss and bump into those walls, then your sword's going to move off of it.
Speaker: So unique stuff like that.
Speaker: And then the other thing that's kind of a cool little mode that I hadn't ever seen anybody do before.
Speaker: So Shrieking Eels is where Buttercup is in the lake or river or whatever.
Speaker: And there's these eels that are swimming around her and trying to eat her.
Speaker: And it's a very short mode, a short scene in the movie.
Speaker: It's not long.
Speaker: But I was trying to capture, okay, what's it like when you're in water surrounded by eels that are going to eat you?
Speaker: And so the idea was instead of a traditional mode timer, it's more of like a continuous stacked amount of hurry ups because you're constantly trying to swim away from these eels that are trying to kill you.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: you have a certain number of shots that are lit and you only have like a 15 second timer to hit one shot.
Speaker: But when you hit one shot, then it adds on quite a few seconds onto that mode timer.
Speaker: And then the shots move around, they have to hit another one.
Speaker: And so if you hit some shots in sequence, you can actually see your mode timer increase up to like 30 seconds.
Speaker: And now you have a lot of time.
Speaker: But the flavor of it is some people get frustrated because they're like, oh man, that mode felt really short.
Speaker: It's like, well, yeah, because you're surrounded by a bunch of eels that are trying to eat you.
Speaker: They don't give you a bunch of time.
Speaker: And so just trying to create different modes and different feel to modes so it's not just feeling like the same thing and just a different set of shots that get lit up.
Speaker: How do you, so I'm thinking about, and sorry to Tim Sexton, but I'm thinking of WIC.
Speaker: In that game, it feels like some modes, like four shots and you're done with the mode.
Speaker: And some of it's like 18 shots and you're still playing.
Speaker: How do you find that balance in the code and in the modes to feel like it's fair and you're not spending more time on one mode versus another, but you're still trying to create that atmosphere, create that sense of whatever that mode's trying to portray.
Speaker: How are you doing that?
Speaker: So each of the modes you can generally complete somewhere between, I'd say, in four to six shots in that range.
Speaker: But there's also the opportunity for the player, if they play it skillfully enough, to
Speaker: there are lots of those modes where you can keep shooting other shots to ratchet up your scoring potential for the final shot, for instance.
Speaker: So that way it's not just feeling like the same.
Speaker: So if you do happen to just go lights out and just nailing everything, you can choose to cash out and say, okay, I'm done with that mode, or you can choose to keep playing it.
Speaker: But for your most, I would say 90% plus of players out there,
Speaker: You know, it's just, hey, they want to get through the mode and enjoy that.
Speaker: You know, they see the outro video and see what they're used to in that scene as far as those characters and what they do at the end of the mode.
Speaker: And so in that case, we didn't want to have any of them feel overly long.
Speaker: So I'd say anywhere between four and six shots.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: This game, I'm excited.
Speaker: I'm excited to play this at Expo.
Speaker: What was the Gentleman's Booth again?
Speaker: It just...
Speaker: This is at Justin Wise's booth.
Speaker: And I apologize.
Speaker: I don't have his business's name up in front of me.
Speaker: I'm looking at a post from Jerry's monthly update post.
Speaker: But if you go and look that up in the vendor booths or whatever, look up Justin Wise, and you can go and find his booth or just listen for the Princess Bride.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I haven't been to Expo at the new location, so I don't know how easy it is to hear different pinball machines as you're walking around.
Speaker: It's not as loud as Texas.
Speaker: It actually was quite nice.
Speaker: The environment was like Texas, but maybe a little more of a vendor feel.
Speaker: Well, in this year, they've opened up the whole convention area.
Speaker: So it's going to be pretty massive versus what they've... I mean, even last year, they only had half the convention center.
Speaker: So I'm pretty for sure they'll have maps and kind of an idea of where everything's going to be laid out.
Speaker: I'm excited.
Speaker: And so one thing I just want to interject here as far as Princess Brides, I'd love everybody...
Speaker: You know, I'm, I don't, I don't, I'm a, I'm a contractor for multimorphic, so I'm not an employee, but of course I'm going to be biased about a multimorphic pin, especially the one that I helped design.
Speaker: So my apologies if it sounds like I'm, I'm super biased on this, but I want people and players and also people who are, you know,
Speaker: considering their next purchase for their pinball collection.
Speaker: A lot of different people fall into different camps or different categories as far as they're considering something like the P3.
Speaker: And some of them fall into like, well, they wanted a top tier license or they don't like how the flippers feel or previously there were some quality issues or a claim that like, hey, this isn't real pinball.
Speaker: So my job as a player and the company's job and Jerry's leadership and what he's doing at the company is to
Speaker: convince any of you.
Speaker: I know neither of you have any P3 in your collection, so I'd love to be able to convince you as well to consider getting one.
Speaker: But for instance, like the license, like, hey, now we have the Weird Al, we have Princess Bride, so there are some really great licenses available if somebody's like, hey, I really want a good license.
Speaker: You know, mechanically, the stuff that goes on in the back as far as the mechanicals and the toys in the P3, most people would argue like, hey, those are some of the best that have come out in recent years, you know, from the Crane and Heist and
Speaker: you know, what Weird Al's done and now what we have in Princess Bride.
Speaker: If somebody, if you played a P3 a long time ago on the old flippers, please, please, please go play on the new P3 because the flippers are totally different.
Speaker: And anybody who did play on those old flippers and had a problem with them, I agree with you.
Speaker: I was one of those.
Speaker: I did not like how the old flippers played.
Speaker: But the new flippers are a world of difference.
Speaker: And that's the most important aspect for any pinball player is how the flippers interact.
Speaker: So try it again.
Speaker: And on the quality, I also say, man, Jerry and his team have done an amazing job.
Speaker: They listen to the community.
Speaker: The community came back and said, hey, Jerry, there's these X, Y, and Z of quality issues with your P3 and with the modules.
Speaker: And Jerry went back to the drawing board and went to an intensive discussion with lots of different people internally and externally and
Speaker: And they've come out with the quality update kits.
Speaker: And so if you're worried about the quality, go talk to somebody who has their quality update kit.
Speaker: There have been zero reports of failures since that's taken place.
Speaker: So give it a chance if for some reason you h ad a quality thing.
Speaker: And then as far as the people that want to complain about it not being real pinball, I don't know what to say to you.
Speaker: Because it's like it is absolutely real pinball.
Speaker: It is pinball.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so my whole thing is I want anybody who's considering it, it's like if for some reason you'd written off P3 in the past, give it another chance.
Speaker: And I think you will be not just pleasantly surprised.
Speaker: I think you will be overwhelmed with how much you enjoy playing it.
Speaker: No, I'll jump in a little bit because I was more concerned about having a system, a platform that becomes dated.
Speaker: And so if you buy the cabinet...
Speaker: And then you're buying new games.
Speaker: I mean, we know that other, other either consoles, video games, or pinball machines, they upgrade, you know, so we, you know, we're stern, we've had, you know, the white star system, we've had the spikes, you know, so we're going through all those things.
Speaker: My concern was, well, if you buy this, are you always locked into that?
Speaker: The one thing we found out is that they have incorporated the ability to upgrade your system with reverse compatibility.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: That has taken a lot of concern.
Speaker: That was my major concern with it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a valid one.
Speaker: If you buy this and say, well, 15 years later, the technology has advanced.
Speaker: And their ability to retrofit the game so you can backwards compatible it and upgrade it at the same time is actually something that would lead me to buy this game.
Speaker: And then the other, there's some other recent additions and changes they've made that like the cabinet artwork now is now available that you can actually, you know, put on the cabinet.
Speaker: And also there's, they're now doing front coin door.
Speaker: border artwork.
Speaker: So, you know, little things like that side target and a slingshot artwork is now magnetized.
Speaker: So for quicker swap out, so that way you don't like, if anybody's really like OCD about a, Hey, I put my final resistance module in, but I've got my weird out, you know, artwork on the slingshots and on the side targets, you can now swap those out even easier.
Speaker: You don't have to get out your screwdriver or
Speaker: and, you know, take off the plastic and put the new plastics down.
Speaker: So things like that, it keeps, it keeps innovating.
Speaker: And, you know, I don't want to overly sound like a, like a shill, but I just want, I want people to go and enjoy it either on location or, you know, consider buying it for their home, because I think there's, I think there's a lot of playability and a lot of value to it.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's all I'll say about that.
Speaker: So I interrupted you, Josh, as you were talking about getting excited about Expo.
Speaker: So sorry about that.
Speaker: You're good.
Speaker: I'm excited for Expo.
Speaker: This is what I love about Expo.
Speaker: You go out there, there's tons of games, whether it's old or new.
Speaker: There's just a ton to play.
Speaker: And I'm excited.
Speaker: This is one of those games I always look forward to Chicago.
Speaker: This is where I get my P3 fix.
Speaker: This is where I play Weird Al.
Speaker: And I think Weird Al is a wonderful game.
Speaker: I think my only complaint that's ever been with P3 is they kind of hide those upper flippers and sometimes it's a little hard to gauge.
Speaker: That's one of those things.
Speaker: I've only played a couple of games on it.
Speaker: And so I think maybe if you get more used to it, it becomes more natural to hit with those flippers.
Speaker: And the new, which there's different versions of the upper flipper kits.
Speaker: That could have been an older version, Josh.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The upper flipper kits now, because yeah, you're right.
Speaker: The first ones were, they were like completely hidden.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's difficult to then judge when am I going to flip because you can't see the flipper.
Speaker: And so those, so they, they incorporated that feedback.
Speaker: And so, yeah, give it the, the one that Justin Wise will have, will have, I think the newer upper flipper kits.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: I'm excited.
Speaker: And the one thing to consider to this is I just pulled up, so pull up Multimorphic.
Speaker: And really, there are 13 game options that are directly from Multimorphic.
Speaker: And I'm just, you know, so Princess Bride, Final Resistance, Weird Al's, Museum of Natural History, Heist, Cosmic Car Racing, Lexi Lightspeed, Cannon Lagoon.
Speaker: And then you have some extra ones that use existing play fields like Sorcerer Apprentice, Scoop and Shoot, Lexi Lightspeed, Secret Agent.
Speaker: You know, so you have these things.
Speaker: Barnyard.
Speaker: There's also some third party things.
Speaker: So if you really look at it from a package, I have 10 machines down here, but if you add up the cost of all those 10 machines, it's going to be significantly more than you buying a P3 and getting 10 games.
Speaker: So there is certainly something to be said about, you know what, if you,
Speaker: If you still want to experience pinball, but this can be, pinball's expensive, we all know that, but this can be a nice, easy way of incorporating something like this into your pinball collection.
Speaker: That gives a different flavor, really.
Speaker: silly question.
Speaker: I don't know if you know this, Colin, or not, but is there like a tester mode?
Speaker: So if like I wanted to make an upper play field and throw it in there and just switch it to flipper mode, so I'm just kind of hitting shots, is that possible?
Speaker: Like a homebrew?
Speaker: Like Josh, like you making your own, you making your own for a third and
Speaker: I don't know how, because I know that, I think it's Nick Baldridge that did the drain.
Speaker: Yeah, Nick Baldridge did.
Speaker: Yeah, he did drain.
Speaker: I don't know exactly how he started in terms of making that.
Speaker: He then also manufactures that himself or whatever contract manufacturer he uses to make that.
Speaker: So if you've ever seen the upper third modules,
Speaker: they're substantial.
Speaker: There's a lot going on with any pinball machine, both above the wood play field and below it.
Speaker: But there are things that I'm confident that if you wanted to do something like that, I'm not that type of person that is mechanically gifted to pull that off, but I'm sure that that type of thing exists as far as even playing around with that in some type of software environment.
Speaker: basis to goof around and try to design your own module if you wanted to go the Nick Baldrige route.
Speaker: Or you could do what Ian Harrower has done, and he's designed his Birdwatcher game as one of his first games he developed, which he now has ported it.
Speaker: So actually, his game works
Speaker: on I think three or maybe it's four different P three modules.
Speaker: So if you buy the birdwatcher game, you can play it on a number.
Speaker: He's he's he's ported the code and, and tweak the, the, the rule.
Speaker: So it works on all, you know, four different modules.
Speaker: It's really, it's really cool.
Speaker: That is cool.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I, we're, we're going to transition, but I do want to bring this, this up.
Speaker: Talk about the theme integration.
Speaker: like the assets that come into princess bride.
Speaker: So doing the call outs, like, are they, are they captures from the movie?
Speaker: You have a big screen, so you're going to be using a lot of these movie clips.
Speaker: And I know you specifically, you guys wrote the code for, you know, the scene, the battle of wits, you did it.
Speaker: So you could get that whole code.
Speaker: You didn't want to, to clip that scene at all, which is, it's a pretty memorable scene in the entire movie.
Speaker: I would say that most people can quote it.
Speaker: So tell me about the asset integration and how does that bring you into the pinball world of Princess Bride?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it does what only the P3 platform can do.
Speaker: So in terms of
Speaker: First off, the video and all the audio that you're hearing, but specifically the video, whether it's in the big rectangular movie screen or if it's in like a little circle pop-ups that come up, you can't get that with any other pinball system where the video is literally popping up before your eyes and you're not having to look up at the screen or a screen that's up in the back of the play field or up on the back box.
Speaker: So all of that is fully integrated.
Speaker: The team did an amazing job of
Speaker: painstakingly integrating and, and the timing of things.
Speaker: It's, it's really, it was very, very difficult for, for Steven Silver and the rest of the team to, you know, come up with and figure out, okay, how you splicing together different scenes.
Speaker: So for instance, like on that, on that, you know, battle of wits, you're like, you have this amazing, it's a, it's quite a long scene with all the dialogue going between Wesley and Pissini and, or he's really the dreaded probably Roberts at that point.
Speaker: But you have to also figure out like, okay, well, what if a player plays really well and suddenly, you know, you need to end the scene because they've gotten to the end.
Speaker: They've didn't, they've done all the shots, they've hit all the things.
Speaker: And so you have to come up with a kind of splicing, okay, we're going to have this part of the scene play out in its entirety until the player reaches a certain point.
Speaker: And then we're going to cut to another part of the scene that kind of gets to the,
Speaker: the ultimate, you know, part where he's like, look over there, you know, and then you take it, he takes a drink because now you've hit the shot, the goblet shot, and he's taking the drink.
Speaker: And so finding a way to balance that is really masterfully done.
Speaker: But the most critical part is that you're getting to enjoy, you know, the scene and that come alive in front of you, in addition to the world under glass in the back third of,
Speaker: you know, the hill ramp that looks exactly like the hill where Wesley and Buttercup are rolling down and the cliffs, and then you have the castle over on the left.
Speaker: And so that type of thing is something that is absolutely integrated, you know, unlike any other game out there.
Speaker: To this point, it really is highlighting, I think, P3 truly coming into its own in terms of, you know, in the past, you know, Weird Al is a great license.
Speaker: And I have a Weird Al sitting.
Speaker: I'm looking at it over here.
Speaker: You can't see it.
Speaker: But that was all, you know, coming up with graphics and stuff, except for one.
Speaker: There's one mode that actually uses the video assets from the music video.
Speaker: but all the rest of it was conceived out of whole cloth, which is awesome.
Speaker: But it's also not like something that's memorable for somebody.
Speaker: They're not going to see nostalgia and see the graphics, the cool graphics that they put on for, you know, Amish paradise and connect to it from a nostalgia perspective because they've never seen it before.
Speaker: It's just really cool graphics that are associated with that song.
Speaker: In this case, this is the full blown in your face nostalgia.
Speaker: And so you're going to get all of that and you get all the lines and the,
Speaker: it's not just also the playing the lines, you know, in, in perpetuity for every single mode.
Speaker: Like I know like guardians of the galaxy does that for instance, the start, right.
Speaker: This, as you progress, as you hit shots, it then cues the next line.
Speaker: So if you play prepared at I multi-ball, you know, as you get through the final stages of it, you know, he, you know, you're going to hear the back and forth between Rugen and Inigo as they have that awesome fight scene.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker: Stop saying that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the best theme of immigration, of course, in my humble opinion, because I also helped design the rules for it, is the one-handed swordsman in Battle of Steel, where you have to control both flippers with the left side buttons.
Speaker: And then mid-mode, when you're successful enough, you get to switch over to the right side, because that's what they do in the movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker: And just a quick plug, if you are a big fan of Princess Bride, which why wouldn't you be?
Speaker: There's an audio book and that's great.
Speaker: I highly recommend it.
Speaker: It's called As You Wish.
Speaker: It's Cary Elwes and he actually got a lot of people who are behind the scenes.
Speaker: So if you want even more into the story of Princess Bride, including him totally trashing his foot during filming, which is why he's limping half the time,
Speaker: It's a great book.
Speaker: I highly recommend it.
Speaker: So I can't wait to play Weird Al.
Speaker: I can't wait to play Princess Bride and get more time on it.
Speaker: I'm really excited to see how P3 has taken it to the next level.
Speaker: So that's why I am super excited for Expo this year.
Speaker: Josh is getting there.
Speaker: Josh is getting there a little earlier than I am.
Speaker: I may...
Speaker: It depends.
Speaker: I still, I'm on possibly getting Wednesday or Thursday off.
Speaker: If I get Thursday off, I'm going to try to fly in Wednesday and spend a little more time at the event, but I will definitely be there Friday and Saturday.
Speaker: And Josh, you are going to be there Wednesday for sure.
Speaker: I'm flying in Wednesday afternoon.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I land at like four.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And Colin, you said you're flying in for the pro circuit, right?
Speaker: But you're not going to be able to be sticking around for most of the festivities, right?
Speaker: Yeah, unfortunately, it's yet another time where I have to miss it.
Speaker: I will eventually get to go one of these days, but I have kids involved with various school activities.
Speaker: And my son is in marching band.
Speaker: It's lovingly referred to as Bantober for the month of October because there's a competition going on every single weekend.
Speaker: And guess what?
Speaker: We're in October.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm flying home after Stern Pro Circuit and the customer meeting.
Speaker: And then flying back so I can be a part of my son's and my family's life here back in Texas.
Speaker: But one of these days, I'm going to get to Expo and enjoy that and also hang out with you guys there.
Speaker: So I'm very jealous that you guys get to go back again and enjoy Expo again.
Speaker: I know you guys have, besides just being there as attendees, you also in different years have really done and been a part of it in terms of some of the fundraising you've done.
Speaker: for charity.
Speaker: That's also been really cool.
Speaker: I'm proud of you guys for what you did with that year.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: That was, that was a big, that was a lot of effort.
Speaker: And that was all Josh, by the way, I was definitely his sidekick.
Speaker: I said, Josh, you tell me what to do, but that was really spearheaded by Josh.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Josh, what are you looking forward to at expo this year?
Speaker: There is a ton of games that I'm excited to see one though.
Speaker: I'm really curious.
Speaker: Like I'm intrigued.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm excited for it.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm appalled by it.
Speaker: It is the goof.
Speaker: This is okay.
Speaker: This has got to be the weirdest reveal we've seen in the last, uh, what I can remember.
Speaker: I don't remember anything like this.
Speaker: If you don't, if you've been living under a rock, Alice in Wonderland has been released by DPX Dutch pinball.
Speaker: It's not extreme.
Speaker: I know that's what, that's what some of the other podcasts have been saying.
Speaker: And now I've got that stuck in my head.
Speaker: Exclusive.
Speaker: And they're bringing at least three of them to Expo.
Speaker: And I've got to say, okay, from the beginning, the slow drip feed of pitchers, I don't know if it worked for the company.
Speaker: For me, it did not.
Speaker: I don't like seeing one tiny corner of the game every week for the next eight weeks.
Speaker: It was annoying to me.
Speaker: And then when it finally showed, I felt like the trailer was
Speaker: not showing the game, which it's like you're trying to sell a game, right?
Speaker: Like I don't understand fully why you're not showing the game.
Speaker: And this is, here's the thing for me, like J pop, maybe I've had some of the illusion taken off because I've been doing this for a while and I've talked to people behind the scenes and the industry stuff like that.
Speaker: If you're not very familiar with John Papa Duke, he did make some amazing games for Bally Williams, like world cup soccer, which I own a theater of magic.
Speaker: Circus Voltaire.
Speaker: These are like very classic games that people love.
Speaker: Didn't you do tales also?
Speaker: Details of the Rabian Nights.
Speaker: But a lot of the thing was...
Speaker: When you hear designer, you think like Elwin.
Speaker: He is the leader of a team, right?
Speaker: He is the director.
Speaker: He has constantly got his fingers in, helping with code, stuff like that.
Speaker: Papa Duke was more of, he was the designer, but from what I'm getting is he very much had to be funneled into areas.
Speaker: Like with World Cup soccer, if you missed our interview with Larry DeMar last year,
Speaker: John Papaduke's dad had some health issues, had to step away.
Speaker: Larry DeMar finished that game.
Speaker: So it's more, in my opinion, it's more of a Larry DeMar game than it is a John Papaduke game.
Speaker: You can fight about it.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: That's my feelings on that.
Speaker: Here's the problem.
Speaker: John Papaduke decided to make these games after the fact.
Speaker: No one's ever been able to reign them in.
Speaker: We've had atrocities like Magic Girl.
Speaker: And if you don't know anything about that, go Google that stuff.
Speaker: We're not going to go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker: No, we're not.
Speaker: So every attempt, I do have to hand it to John Papaduke, though, because he started how many companies based like, well, OK, he started he started Zidware and that collapsed.
Speaker: And then they tried to make Houdini a part of American Pinball.
Speaker: And then that didn't work out.
Speaker: Then he was picked up.
Speaker: by Deep Root and everybody knows my undying love for Deep Root.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And, and what happened there.
Speaker: And now his designs have kind of been floating around and ended up
Speaker: getting picked up by Dutch pinball.
Speaker: Um, and, and this was for, this is for companies.
Speaker: So yeah, so he's, he's like tangentially involved in like an upstart.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's four companies though.
Speaker: That's four companies.
Speaker: Granted, deep root never really made anything.
Speaker: They just took money and ran.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, but the pin pot, the pit,
Speaker: No, the pin bar.
Speaker: Where's the pin bar?
Speaker: The pin bar, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I will say, actually, I thought the box was kind of cool, the shipping box, even though the problem is when you use it, you no longer have it.
Speaker: Okay, so... Papa Duke seems to...
Speaker: Go ahead.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: My point being is, is like at some point in time, like you've seen multiple, like over the past decade, everything he's touched has failed.
Speaker: And the games that actually do get made are not really fantastic.
Speaker: Like if you get your hands on a magic girl, I did last year at expo, which by the way, they might have one this year.
Speaker: And then,
Speaker: if you've ever played Arasa, there's aspects of the games that just don't work.
Speaker: It's like, I don't know why they decided to put this in there, but it's so frustrating when you've got a ramp that goes all the way to the glass and it's like, the whole point of it is you may or may not get it to the top and if you do, you get something cool, but it's like, ramps shouldn't feel like that.
Speaker: There should be more in the game that should be like that, not aspects of the gameplay.
Speaker: And you look at this game and the first thing is
Speaker: Okay, first thing to me is it's so sexualized.
Speaker: I didn't know that that was actually Alice.
Speaker: I saw the foam core originally, the concepts in the black and the white, and I didn't know if the girl up front was going to be Alice.
Speaker: Because traditionally, Alice in Wonderland is based off of a seven-year-old girl that goes into Wonderland.
Speaker: That's what has been in the book.
Speaker: This Alice is obviously not seven years old.
Speaker: She is not seven years old in this one, that's for sure.
Speaker: And she's not wearing much of a dress.
Speaker: This is a different take on it.
Speaker: This is like Jessica Rabbit went into some odd cosplay mode.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Well, and I get like, so there's, if you're a fan of comic books, there's the Grim Fairy Tales series, which does take some of like Little Red Riding Hood and makes it more of an adult and it makes it more dark.
Speaker: I get that concept and that aspect, but we are basing this off of a pre-made license and you're not giving very much context.
Speaker: Well, okay.
Speaker: Now, now I'll push back a little bit.
Speaker: The Alice in Wonderland series with it's Lewis Carroll, right?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: You do the original book.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I've never read the book.
Speaker: The challenge that we have is that the Alice that we're in, I would say that most people out there have not read the book.
Speaker: But the challenge is a lot of our framing of Alice is the Disney version.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so that could be a little different.
Speaker: Full context, I don't know how the Lewis Carroll book is.
Speaker: It's not adult, but it's definitely not child.
Speaker: It's solidly in the middle, but it's about a seven-year-old girl that goes down in the winter.
Speaker: And there's a lot of drug themes and stuff like that, which kind of present in the Disney version.
Speaker: I'm so confused by like, even there are stand-up targets with Alice's muffins on them that say, eat me.
Speaker: I mean, come on now.
Speaker: Yeah, that's not cool.
Speaker: I'm just like, this is a little much.
Speaker: Wow, I didn't see that part.
Speaker: You didn't see that part?
Speaker: Okay, well, there's so much to see, Josh.
Speaker: And here's the genius, quote-unquote, of Papa Duke.
Speaker: We put a spinning disc above the in-and-out lane, because that's exactly where I want chaos, is right above the in-and-out lane.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, don't get me started on that.
Speaker: Don't get me started on that.
Speaker: And then you put an upper play field that takes up, what, the top half of the game?
Speaker: It's more than a third.
Speaker: And then, don't get me wrong, I love Twilight Zone.
Speaker: I love the playfield of power, you know, the power.
Speaker: But it's also a wide body, and so it doesn't take up as much percentage-wise.
Speaker: So I'm assuming this is a standard body, and then they've taken the power playfield and made it huge.
Speaker: Oh, four times its size.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And for some odd reason, like...
Speaker: They want you to hang out up there.
Speaker: So they've made the whole bottom a rubber band.
Speaker: So that way you can keep the ball up there.
Speaker: But I'm just like, I don't know.
Speaker: Just play other Papa Duke games after Bally Williams.
Speaker: And you'll realize none of these work.
Speaker: So why did Dutch take a chance on Papa Duke when it's been proven time and time and time again?
Speaker: It doesn't work.
Speaker: And people are just frustrated.
Speaker: And they just end up becoming passion projects that people try to fix up later to try to make money off of a broken idea.
Speaker: I know I've been ranting for a while.
Speaker: There's one idea, what you just mentioned.
Speaker: So let's answer the question first.
Speaker: Why would a business like Dutch Pinball choose to do this?
Speaker: And I think there's, in my opinion, it's either one of two things.
Speaker: There could be a combination of things, but it could be because somebody on that team is just really super passionate about those Papa Duke designs of yesteryear, which are hugely popular.
Speaker: And there's the name cachet of those prior titles, because there's also a lot of negative name cachet around Papa Duke, and deservedly so over the last 10 years.
Speaker: And they're doing this because similar to Papa Duke's companies, he was very good at fundraising.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He could raise funds.
Speaker: And so if I'm Dutch pinball, if I'm a business, it may not be a bad business play.
Speaker: to do this just because they know that, hey, I can go and sell this and it has this name associated with it and a certain style of look to it that are going to make it sell out.
Speaker: very quickly on a certain few hundred.
Speaker: They're not a big company.
Speaker: It's kind of funny they have DPX.
Speaker: It's even like a boutique of a boutique.
Speaker: So it could very well provide them with the influx of money that they need
Speaker: in order to keep their business going and their business running.
Speaker: So I can't fault them for that.
Speaker: However, to your point on this, it's just, oh my gosh, they could have gone a different direction.
Speaker: I mean, let's be honest.
Speaker: There's certainly a market in the pinball community to sell sexualized art and product to.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: Let's be real.
Speaker: That exists.
Speaker: Well, it's what's based off of.
Speaker: Look at the 60s and 70s art.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They know their demographic and there's nothing wrong with it.
Speaker: Even back in special when lit, I mean, that the guy definitely pushes the sex cells.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, but to your point is it doesn't, there's so many other ways they could have gone.
Speaker: And still had that element of a sex appeal element to the art.
Speaker: But instead they went like way out in right fields.
Speaker: Like where did that come from?
Speaker: That doesn't look anything.
Speaker: That doesn't evoke any type of imagery of like, oh yeah, that's Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker: Except for some ridiculously...
Speaker: you know, you know, shredded stockings that she's wearing, you know, that's about the only, you know, crossover you can get out of that.
Speaker: So that that's weird to me, but I don't know if you're going next, but the, the spinning discs are just a, the icing on the cake.
Speaker: To me, the main thing looking at this is the play field is so compressed and
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is – I mean, there's like – okay, there's one like what I would look at and say that looks aesthetically shot, a satisfying shot in the game.
Speaker: There's one, and that's the ramp.
Speaker: The rest of them, based on seeing just what I've seen so far, they're not kinetically, aesthetically satisfying.
Speaker: And of the video they showed and the gameplay they were showing the other night, they shot the ramp and like 75% of the time it didn't go up and around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and not only that, like you were speaking of finances and I just, even on the gameplay video and stuff like that, like they have, I can't, I can't remember his name, Melvin and Melvin's explaining stuff.
Speaker: And he's also telling us this is all sold out.
Speaker: And there's plenty of distributors you can still go to that you can buy these from.
Speaker: Sold to distributors versus sold out are different.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: So if you have the manufacturer and you sell to the distributor, that's a different story than the game not being available for a consumer.
Speaker: That's what you're getting at, Josh?
Speaker: Yeah, well, not only that, but you're cutting the legs out from underneath your distributors by saying none of these are available.
Speaker: Because then people go and they're like, oh, they're still available?
Speaker: What's going on here?
Speaker: Are you trying to pull a fast one?
Speaker: Is there some FOMO you're trying to imply?
Speaker: Everything about this, even the trailer, oh, the trailer, like...
Speaker: Travis Murie pointed out to me, I didn't notice this.
Speaker: You don't see a single ball to the flipper till about a minute and 10 seconds in.
Speaker: It makes no sense.
Speaker: And then on top of that, it's like, I just, it's all this artwork.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Here's the thing that drives me the most nuts.
Speaker: This is the first thing, the first thing that just made me cringe.
Speaker: You ready for this?
Speaker: And, and congrats to Colin from Kinesis to, to loop this.
Speaker: But the fact that,
Speaker: that airy, weird, like, Mad Hatter, Jackpot!
Speaker: Jackpot!
Speaker: You're like, what are you trying to, like, it's like he got punched in the stomach, and he's trying to yell Jackpot, but I don't know what's going on there.
Speaker: It's just, it's terrible.
Speaker: It's just all around.
Speaker: The sound's atrocious.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Like, and the other thing, too, is this is like a carbon copy of the film core to a T with the artwork and everything from John Papaduke.
Speaker: You've had over a decade to perfect this and make this right.
Speaker: But you didn't.
Speaker: I think a lot of the lead up to this too was a lot of us were thinking, well, are they going to use the John Papadou?
Speaker: Because based off the foam core, it's not going to work.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'll play.
Speaker: I will give you guys a case for why people would buy this.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: So, yes, there are certain issues with it.
Speaker: What I will start with
Speaker: is what sells people initially on games?
Speaker: Theme.
Speaker: Theme and art, right?
Speaker: Like how it looks.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Now, it almost seems like they go through different phases.
Speaker: One, it's theme and art.
Speaker: And then you go into the gameplay area.
Speaker: And yes, an experienced gamer will be able to look at it.
Speaker: and say, you know, a pinhead will say, yeah, that looks like a fun game to shoot.
Speaker: And so they will assess it maybe on that.
Speaker: But I would say there's a lot of impulse buys and I will case in point, I would point out Halloween sold 12, you know, whatever 1250 games off the art package alone.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And people bought, like, that was an amazing success for them.
Speaker: So if I'm just looking at this from that standpoint, okay, visually, the art actually looks really good.
Speaker: In that now I can disagree with the choices they have made about how they've drawn Alice and the, you know, the, the queen of hearts, but I would say still it does for the, it still looks good.
Speaker: Like the art is it's, it's eye popping.
Speaker: The Cheshire Cat looks thematically consistent with it, even though it doesn't have that little weird claw that Dennis Greasel brought up.
Speaker: I do like the eyes moving too in that topper.
Speaker: That's cool seeing those eyes.
Speaker: It is really.
Speaker: Okay, so visually, if I walked by this, it would catch my eye.
Speaker: And really, John Papaduke's games have done that.
Speaker: So if I look at it and say, well...
Speaker: So on art, I would actually rate it pretty high.
Speaker: Now you can make, you can say there were questionable choices to be made about how they drew it, but this still looks like an aesthetically pleasing game.
Speaker: So you could argue it on that.
Speaker: Sorry, dying here.
Speaker: And the color wise, it does look really interesting.
Speaker: Like the way they've done the lighting, I would say it's very interesting.
Speaker: very good that way too.
Speaker: Now, what the truth will always be in, can you play it?
Speaker: And is it going to be any fun?
Speaker: But this could be an option where you're like, well, maybe.
Speaker: And then, you know, the, the call outs, how are the call?
Speaker: It's going to be all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: But I would argue there is going to be a market for this game.
Speaker: It may not be me.
Speaker: It may not be Josh and it may not be Colin, but
Speaker: But it does look interesting.
Speaker: Now, is this a small run to get capital?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It may be.
Speaker: But there are people who really go for that.
Speaker: There are people who go for the limited pretty things because they can have it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I can almost guarantee this is a test run to see how it goes to see if DPX can do Magic Girl next.
Speaker: I really think they're going to keep trying to milk the John Papaduke train.
Speaker: Because, I mean, it's a European company that's been trying to fix the Magic Girl anyway, and that's who brought it over for Expo last year.
Speaker: The same guy that's been running DPX, did he also buy the Magic Girl assets as well?
Speaker: I'm not for sure, so don't quote me on it, but it wouldn't shock me if he has.
Speaker: You guys would at least agree that you may not agree with what he has drawn, but the art does look good.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Some of it.
Speaker: Artistic style is pleasing to the eye.
Speaker: I'll put it that.
Speaker: There's a lot of attention to detail, but there's also... It's very condensed, too.
Speaker: And that's the thing.
Speaker: It wasn't
Speaker: Zombie Yeti is the one that originally did the art for Alice, right?
Speaker: And then he never got paid for.
Speaker: I think he did the initial one and also for Magic Girl.
Speaker: Now, there's always going to be the line.
Speaker: And we've talked about this before.
Speaker: And this is a hard subject for us to talk about because we're middle-aged white dudes, okay?
Speaker: So it's not like we typically have the high moral ground when you're talking about
Speaker: Can you can you be attractive and sexy and still walk that line that doesn't cross into inappropriate?
Speaker: Okay, Ryan Reynolds does it.
Speaker: Why can't we?
Speaker: He is he is way better looking than I am.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: He's also a lot funnier.
Speaker: Um, but you know, there are ways that have successfully done that.
Speaker: And you could, you could argue Elvira too.
Speaker: And Elvira is one of those where it raises my eyebrow, but it seems to work for a lot of the pinball audience.
Speaker: Now, is this going to fall into that category?
Speaker: Maybe, but, uh, it's, it is something to consider.
Speaker: It's also, it is European style.
Speaker: And really, when you go to Europe, there are a lot of, um,
Speaker: there are a lot of choices that Europeans will make that are, would be considered crossing the line in, in the United States.
Speaker: What's the game Expo that's the Spanish game?
Speaker: Yeah, was it Nemesis?
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: It was like in the 70s, the scantily clad chicks riding dragons.
Speaker: I don't even know if they're clothes there, Scott.
Speaker: Okay, well, that would be scantily clad.
Speaker: And they're riding a very suggestive dragon.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, there's three of them, so...
Speaker: Okay, but hold on.
Speaker: That's, I guess to me, I take a, I have a different, you know, criteria of like my order of criteria for pinball machines.
Speaker: And to me, art is not near the top for me, you know.
Speaker: At its base, at its core, why I love pinball is the physicality.
Speaker: It's not the rules and the scoring.
Speaker: I mean, I love that stuff too, but that's from a pure – I love the kinetic aspect of pinball, seeing the ball go and do things and go in cool paths and then that path suddenly changing.
Speaker: Because something changed in the game.
Speaker: And so it kind of surprises me.
Speaker: It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, but I'm in control of it.
Speaker: And that element to me, when I've been watching the trailer, first off, even just seeing the pictures of it, when I saw the pictures, I'm like, oh man, that's a really condensed play field.
Speaker: Then I saw the trailer of it and they didn't really show much in terms of ball paths.
Speaker: And then I saw them playing it live.
Speaker: And oh my gosh, that, I mean, for me, I just, I have, you know, in terms of my criteria, the gameplay physically is one of the most important things to me.
Speaker: And this, and this pin, I'm sorry.
Speaker: It's just, like you said, it's, it's, if they would have taken the original foam core design and tweaked it,
Speaker: and maybe fixed it, maybe having played it, I don't know, before you go and put it into actual all the wood and spend all the money on all the ramp paths and things like that, maybe they could have addressed that and fixed that.
Speaker: But the way it's set up now, and I'm assuming this is how it's going to get produced.
Speaker: I don't see them changing that.
Speaker: It's pretty locked in.
Speaker: And it just, I'm sorry, it didn't look good.
Speaker: And I hate to say it because I always want to wait until I play the game myself.
Speaker: to make that kind of assessment to it.
Speaker: But man, it was, it was a struggle for me to find something aesthetically, kinetically appealing about this game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I, I would argue that Keith Elwin's Avengers infinity quest is a better modern day John Papa Duke style game than anything.
Speaker: Papa Duke has released in the last three years or 30 years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It certainly has the ball paths and we've talked about this, right?
Speaker: One of the things that really draws you in is seeing a ball move at high velocity over a lot of area in the play field.
Speaker: And Keith Elwin's a master of doing those interesting shots that keep the ball moving.
Speaker: And visually it is, it is attractive to see the ball moving around.
Speaker: I totally agree with you, Colin.
Speaker: And by the way, by me,
Speaker: by me defending why people would buy Alice, I'm still not a buyer of this game.
Speaker: 12.5, no way.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But when we did talk about, okay, what other games have people done to try to raise money?
Speaker: Remember Dutch Pinball also did Bride of Pinbot 2.0.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they had the Big Lebowski.
Speaker: And so they have always made some interesting choices.
Speaker: Maybe not the most financially savvy choices, but they've made some interesting choices.
Speaker: I'm still surprised they're around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Big Lebowski, I mean, I've played that one.
Speaker: I played it quite a bit at the wormhole in Houston.
Speaker: And when it's working, it's a fun game to play.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker: I enjoyed kind of the hearkening back to like kind of the old, you know, different, you know, era of game in terms of the gameplay style in terms of how it's set up, kind of have this medieval madness kind of vibe to it in terms of stacking different, you know, character, multi balls and stuff like that.
Speaker: And physically and kinetically, the shots felt good.
Speaker: And that's what I'm looking for.
Speaker: And so I hope I'm wrong.
Speaker: I hope that my assessment of just the pictures and the trailer and the gameplay that they were showing, I hope I'm wrong.
Speaker: Because I always liked New Pinball.
Speaker: I enjoy the kinetic and physicality of John Papaduke older design games.
Speaker: That's actually one of his hallmarks is those big swooping, flowing ramp shots that go and do amazing things physically with the ball.
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: And so I hope I'm wrong, but it's – man, we'll see.
Speaker: So I think one thing – as I was sitting here, I think there's one thing that –
Speaker: post-Bally Williams, John Pocket Duke games that are what they're missing that the Bally Williams always had was there was one specific mech that was really cool that was unique.
Speaker: I mean, even though like World Cup soccer, it's very basic.
Speaker: It's a really wide open shop.
Speaker: It's one of my favorites with the goalie moving back and forth on a stick.
Speaker: It's a perfect mech.
Speaker: You've got Theater of Magic.
Speaker: That chest is super cool.
Speaker: That is one of the coolest mechs in pinball.
Speaker: Circus Voltaire, the...
Speaker: when he comes up, the magnet on his head, grabbing the ball, slinging it back, hitting the face, going up and the ball goes under.
Speaker: It does multiple layers of things, right?
Speaker: The chest does multiple layers of things.
Speaker: The genie, you hit him in the stomach and he kind of clenches up.
Speaker: And then when you hit it enough, the magnet in front of it catches it and drops the ball into the play field.
Speaker: It just disappears.
Speaker: I love disappearing.
Speaker: And the fireball magnet on the ramp.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We're missing that from these John Papadou games.
Speaker: And I feel like
Speaker: it's got the swoop.
Speaker: It's got the pretty, it's got the beautiful plastic ramps, but we're missing that mech that makes Papa Duke games, Papa Duke games.
Speaker: And I think you're missing the heart.
Speaker: And so if, if you guys ever attempting this going forward, that's what you need to be focusing on, focusing on as well.
Speaker: So I, I'm interested to try it and I'm interested to see how it is.
Speaker: Magic Girl was not that fun for me when I played it.
Speaker: So I'm hoping that this is different, but I will also argue that sometimes gameplay video can be a little misleading as to the game.
Speaker: And that brings us to our next topic is X-Men.
Speaker: So X-Men was revealed.
Speaker: Everybody looked at it and said, well,
Speaker: wow, this looks really interesting.
Speaker: This is different.
Speaker: This is their departure.
Speaker: Jack talks about bringing weirdness back into pinball.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then people saw the gameplay that they did, the stream.
Speaker: And there were people who pulled their orders from that gameplay.
Speaker: Because it didn't, it looked hard.
Speaker: It looked, and they're like, these are good players.
Speaker: And if they're just draining all the time,
Speaker: It unsold LEs, which you always want to do, right?
Speaker: Yeah, it unsold games.
Speaker: Yeah, it was the marketing kryptonite that helped out.
Speaker: However, afterwards, I have actually played it.
Speaker: And Colin, you have played it too.
Speaker: This game played nothing like that stream showed.
Speaker: I want to hear what you found when you played X-Men because I'm not a top tier player, but you are.
Speaker: So tell me about it.
Speaker: So, yeah, to your point, the shots are tight.
Speaker: There's not a single wide shot on the game.
Speaker: I thought there was going to be a wide shot with going back to the ringmaster.
Speaker: I thought the sentinel head...
Speaker: was actually going to drop all the way down like the ringmaster does on Voltaire, but he doesn't.
Speaker: It goes around it, yeah.
Speaker: His crown or whatever stays raised, and so you actually are hitting that still.
Speaker: And that's because there's really nothing behind it.
Speaker: And so it makes sense after seeing it in person why that choice was made.
Speaker: But each ramp shot, and there's seven of them.
Speaker: There are seven ramp shots in that game, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker: That's ridiculous.
Speaker: Just full stop right there.
Speaker: But the, to your point, Scott, it is, it is difficult in that those, all the shots, the major shots are tight.
Speaker: And there's not a single one of them that would go, oh, well, hey, there's the gimme shot.
Speaker: There's the easy shot.
Speaker: I mean, I think maybe the one that's to the left of the Sentinel head is probably maybe a little easier than some of the other ones.
Speaker: But they're all difficult to hit.
Speaker: But man, once you hit them, oh my gosh.
Speaker: To what I was making, one of my highest prioritizations criteria, it is so...
Speaker: kinetically and aesthetically pleasing, especially that left one where it does this pretzel figure eight, whatever you want to call it, where it goes around and then back around.
Speaker: It's a double hairpin turn.
Speaker: It's fabulous.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: It looks great.
Speaker: The design, I give major kudos to Jack and how he designed it and able to pull it off correctly.
Speaker: and I hope it's something that doesn't degrade over time as the pin gets played at your house or on location, that left ramp that then goes across the play field, rolls across the play field, not on a wire form, rolls across the play field and perfectly feeds this little side ramp on the right-hand side above where the shoot-oing comes out and then feeds then across that wire form that goes kind of over your flippers and feeds the danger room.
Speaker: That sequence and how that's designed is masterful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the Katana shot 2.0.
Speaker: That's how I say it's like the Katana shot.
Speaker: You look at that and say that shouldn't work, but it does.
Speaker: When you hit it right, it hits it.
Speaker: And with the danger room shot, you are exactly right.
Speaker: You shoot it from the right flipper.
Speaker: It goes through this, this hyper acute angle, then goes across the play field and then feeds a wire form that dumps you in the danger room actually at a pretty decent speed.
Speaker: It doesn't actually do it in a, in a, in a dangerous way.
Speaker: It's like, Oh, well that,
Speaker: it looks like it was meant to be.
Speaker: It's almost like the first time you see the ball that shoots across the play field and goes into the chest in Houdini or in, in Aerosmith.
Speaker: You're like, that shouldn't work as consistently as it does, but it does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so it's, but yeah, I,
Speaker: The bones and the most part of the physicality of it is there because you can't change that.
Speaker: You can change the code.
Speaker: You can change the mechanics, the game logic.
Speaker: You can do and mess with all those things.
Speaker: You can't change the physical nature of the shots.
Speaker: And the physical nature of the shots felt great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I do worry slightly, Scott, if you get a player who's even better than me, like you get all these young kids that just have robotic cyborg-like aim.
Speaker: The fact that all the major shots are actually ramp shots that feed back to your flipper could result in the game being very, very long playing.
Speaker: But you have to find those shots and they are really tight.
Speaker: So only those cyborg like players can probably keep playing this thing over a long period of time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it is like playing a video game.
Speaker: If you get dialed in, like that's one question.
Speaker: There should be at least a dangerous shot.
Speaker: there, there seems to be some hard shots, but there didn't seem to be, you know, like attack from Mars that straight up the middle.
Speaker: Like if you shoot that, you know, that draw those three drop targets in front of the saucer, you better be prepared to recover because you don't know where that ball's going.
Speaker: I'm not sure there's a lot of that in here.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: maybe hitting the Sentinel head and when the, the mouth opens and, Oh yeah, he kills you.
Speaker: Did you play the LE version or?
Speaker: Yeah, I did.
Speaker: I played the LE.
Speaker: I think that's the only one that's out right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, that's the, they manufactured that first.
Speaker: So I haven't even played the, the pro one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Me neither.
Speaker: But that Sentinel head, his little mouth, the one that, that kicker, it killed me at least three times.
Speaker: So, so that is the dangerous shot, but there's so many options that it may not be that much of a factor.
Speaker: So that does,
Speaker: make me wonder, you know, how would you adjust it?
Speaker: And it was interesting because when we talked to like,
Speaker: I think, I think we were talking to Elwin, wasn't it?
Speaker: When we were talking about lifting, like making the, the game steep.
Speaker: And he said, well, the problem is if you just jack up the feet on every game, you can actually make a game easier because it actually takes out the side to side action of the, of the slingshots.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It does one other thing too.
Speaker: It makes it so you can actually control and cradle the ball easier.
Speaker: Because your ball is going to have more vertical action on it as opposed to side to side, where it's going to try to roll off the flipper.
Speaker: So if you're worried about somebody over-controlling the game, steeper is actually better for control.
Speaker: But the other thing I'll say about this, I was very pleased with how the danger room area turned out.
Speaker: Yes, you're right.
Speaker: That was fantastic.
Speaker: I was concerned that it was going to be a drain monster down there.
Speaker: You could actually reasonably get back and forth from the main play field to the, you know, I don't want to call it an upper play field, but the danger room is basically like an upper play field in the lower, in the lower area.
Speaker: You could reasonably get back and forth without too much difficulty.
Speaker: I find it funny, too, that I look at this game and I'm like, how did he ever get it approved?
Speaker: And in the recent interviews, listening to Gomez, he's like, if I would have seen how much he put in this game, we would have cut.
Speaker: My stupid cat just started Rush.
Speaker: I don't know if you heard that.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Ah, cat.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: We saw your cat climbing around in the back.
Speaker: Yeah, well, he hit the... Can you hear Rush in the background?
Speaker: It's singing Working Man right now.
Speaker: Just a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just barely.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, then I, but yeah.
Speaker: So Josh, you were talking about the bill of materials and what Gomez.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if it was the bill of materials, but there's just so much in this game.
Speaker: They're like, you, we probably should have pulled the restraints a little bit.
Speaker: And, and I know that like, even Gary has stepped down.
Speaker: He's not like the head and like, he's still in charge.
Speaker: Like, but it's, you know, Seth Davis is, is definitely the man that's giving the green light.
Speaker: He's not a day to day guy anymore.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: He's like a, he's like a load star.
Speaker: He's like the, uh,
Speaker: the aspirational star, so to speak.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: But it makes me chuckle because even Gary, I guess, looked at this and was like, yep, I guess, you know, if I was still in charge, this would not have been approved.
Speaker: It goes to show that Jack is definitely pushing the bounds and somehow breaking through to make things like this work.
Speaker: And I'm excited.
Speaker: I'm excited to hear that it works because Gold Wings, in my opinion, does not.
Speaker: It's a fun game.
Speaker: No, Gold Wings is not a fun.
Speaker: I mean, Gold Wings is a snooze fest.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: Okay, it is a snooze fest.
Speaker: And this takes that cool, it takes the best elements of Gold Wings and reimagines them and it makes it fun to play.
Speaker: There's no other way around it.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: It takes Gold Wings and I almost feel like it gives it a radical touch.
Speaker: Radical is just all those loops and all the fancy paths and everything.
Speaker: It's like Radical and Gold Wings had a baby and it just
Speaker: But instead of Plastic Ranch... It plays way better than Radical and Gold Wings, though.
Speaker: And I do... Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: I enjoy Radical, but I think that it's too tight.
Speaker: Like, the shots... It's too, like, forced of, like, this is how you're going to play this game.
Speaker: Whereas... I'm excited to play X-Men.
Speaker: Because, like, everyone that's played it has just loved it.
Speaker: And the only complaint is code.
Speaker: But code is...
Speaker: It is what it is.
Speaker: It's a steering game.
Speaker: And I will say this.
Speaker: I think, this is me personally, I think Elwin should be the standard.
Speaker: Like when his games come out, I feel like there's enough meat on the bone.
Speaker: You don't really, like, you don't notice that the final mode's not in there.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: There needs to be enough meat on the bone when these games come out.
Speaker: Like the Elwin should be like the base standard, in my opinion.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think so.
Speaker: you get X, X-Men and you love it, but it's like the coach is so bare.
Speaker: It feels like you're just waiting for the, the, the brownies to finish cooking in the oven.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like, yeah, this is great.
Speaker: It smells wonderful.
Speaker: They look wonderful, but they're still, they're still raw in the middle.
Speaker: Like I,
Speaker: One raw brownies are awesome.
Speaker: You do not want to overcook your bounty to now.
Speaker: Remember, we didn't know a little, we have a little bit of an insight because they have publicly said they moved this up.
Speaker: So Wason didn't have as much time on the code as you pot, you would have.
Speaker: So give another, you know, three months or so, or we'll see now.
Speaker: However, this is, you know, the last time Wason's done games, it's been a while.
Speaker: You know, he did WWE and didn't he do the original X-Men or at least part of the original X-Men?
Speaker: Yeah, he did.
Speaker: So it takes a while for them to evolve.
Speaker: But I will say playing the game with Wason, he was super excited about where he's going to take this.
Speaker: So I'm optimistic that he can do that.
Speaker: And considering...
Speaker: we have next level coders now, like game designers.
Speaker: So like what Raymond has added to the mix of being a top level player and being able to do that.
Speaker: And Keith is kind of the gold standard of being able to find the mix of modes and score balancing and being able to distribute.
Speaker: There's enough there that
Speaker: weren't there when he has done his last games.
Speaker: And so I'm optimistic that this will all come together as a beautiful machine, but this does take a little time.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: It's going to take, I, it was a blast to play though.
Speaker: Right, Colin, you agree with that?
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: I had a fun time shooting it and exploring it.
Speaker: It was, it didn't feel, the first couple games I played on it, I got crushed.
Speaker: I mean, it was hard.
Speaker: So I'm not surprised at all by that gameplay footage that we saw when they were doing their release.
Speaker: Once you found the shots, then you were able to kind of, you can get in the flow.
Speaker: But to you,
Speaker: You guys are talking about, I think, one of your previous episodes, a couple, was it one episode ago, two episodes ago?
Speaker: And you were talking about how you worried that there wasn't enough, because there wasn't a sling on the left-hand side.
Speaker: That pop bumper that's above the little horseshoe area or whatever on the left-hand side.
Speaker: The stargazer side or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, the stargazer right above that.
Speaker: That thing will kill you.
Speaker: And the other pop bumper will kill you.
Speaker: There's two pop bumpers that are in lower playfield area.
Speaker: On the other L one, like his Godzilla and also on Jaws, he has one pop bumper that's in a lower, close to the flipper area.
Speaker: This one has two of them.
Speaker: get ready i mean it yeah especially depending on if you like you know if you want to make it hard and remove like the center post or something like that you know but no you're gonna you're gonna get crushed on this game it's easy to get crushed once you find the shots then you can just keep flowing and that's what feels so good is you do these combos the combos are just sick they're absolutely ridiculous and um
Speaker: I mean, it's got some potential too as far as how the code and the gameplay works.
Speaker: I like the whole notion of like if they're going to go to a place where if you go into the – you do the future and then so you're limited and you can only do like maybe something else in the future and then you can choose to go back to the past and you can go back to different modes.
Speaker: So I think that's a really cool game element if they kind of – if they dive into that.
Speaker: and really explore that aspect of it.
Speaker: It's got some cool, you know, mechs to it.
Speaker: It's, I really enjoy what they did with the little Cerebro where the ball gets held, you know, and it looks like it's floating.
Speaker: It's such a simple design and it comes across so well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Stern has been, I guess they haven't been teasing.
Speaker: We've heard rumors that Metallica is being re-released as a fresh take of,
Speaker: And supposedly before expo, we're getting down to the minutes before expo.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: And we're, we're what four days.
Speaker: Do you think it happens?
Speaker: Do you think code stays the same?
Speaker: Well, what do you think?
Speaker: What do you think we're going to see?
Speaker: Is that what your question is?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I want to know if you think we see this by expo or at expo.
Speaker: I know way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why would you want to short circuit your, your uncanny expense sales?
Speaker: I mean, they kind of did to Venom last year with Jurassic Park 30.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And Elvira blood red kiss the year before.
Speaker: I, I suspect that something is going to happen.
Speaker: The question is, what will that be?
Speaker: So if I were looking at Metallica, Metallica was a huge seller.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But still is challenge right now is, are you going to go like full LCD on this?
Speaker: Or are you going to do like a CGC with an expanded DMD but a colorized version so it still maintains?
Speaker: No way.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So you don't think that?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: If I'm running a business, it is a manufacturing business.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I work at a manufacturing company.
Speaker: I grant we manufacture chemicals.
Speaker: But there's still – this is all about standardization.
Speaker: There's no way that Stern from a business standpoint is going to want to do what you, you described as far as doing like a CGC expanded, you know, fancy looking DMD.
Speaker: I think if they're going to, if they, if this rumor turns out to be true, it's going to be an LCD.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So CD Metallica footage.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So is it going to be like concert stuff?
Speaker: That's what I'm assuming.
Speaker: I'm assuming it'll be concert stuff as opposed to like animation stuff, because it's,
Speaker: really rush is a little more interesting to play than some of the other LCD, because the, if you're going to say that Stern has a deficiency, I would say their LCD game could step up because the animation department is not quite as, as interesting as other games that are out there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But do you think they'll, they'll tweak the layout at all though?
Speaker: Or do you think they'll leave the layout the same?
Speaker: Cause Metallica is a well-respected game.
Speaker: I don't think you need to tweak it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think there's something that sets in my mind that you're like, Oh, I'm trying to think of like, like see which a.k.a.
Speaker: Beatles.
Speaker: They tweaked it a little bit just so it flowed a little better.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that was like polishing the rough edges.
Speaker: So do you think this is like a vault version of Metallica with an LCD screen?
Speaker: So they fixed like the little things that hang up, you know, like in Spider-Man, when they did the vault, they fixed the magnet and they fixed some other stuff, but it was basically the same game.
Speaker: But I can't think of anything in Metallica that I just, I shoot and I go, you know, I wish they'd do that a little bit better if they ever made this game.
Speaker: Yeah, no.
Speaker: And honestly, I mean, I don't want to, because like you said, they've done it.
Speaker: They've remade, granted, as though these are Stern Electronics games, you know, like Sea Witch to Beatles.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: I guess I'm going to be maybe a little bit biased in terms of being a huge Lyman fan that I think it would be a disservice to Lyman and his legacy to try to mess with how that game is, how the rules work.
Speaker: And I think to your point, there's no deficiency in the physical design of that pinball machine.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I agree.
Speaker: Once you start changing layout, even a little bit, you're going to affect rules too, just because the shots are going to feel different and they're going to.
Speaker: So I, I guess, okay, this is me just looking into the future and you guys can all mock me.
Speaker: I think it is going to be the same layout, the same rules with an LCD screen with
Speaker: the premium body.
Speaker: So maybe they fix the hammer so it's less of an issue.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: But, you know, kind of like a road case version of Metallica where it's a little bit, you know, it's more of the live stuff.
Speaker: But who knows?
Speaker: I guess that would be my take on it.
Speaker: And maybe they'll do like a limited run on it.
Speaker: There's tons of Metallica games out there.
Speaker: If you want to buy a Metallica, they probably made 10,000 of them, I'm guessing.
Speaker: One just went up for sale here in Utah.
Speaker: I mean, they're available.
Speaker: My other question, too, is so you guys say, so you do feel like Lyman code, it still holds up to this day for a modern, for a 12 years later community and buying demographic.
Speaker: Okay, would you risk taking the PR hit on undoing a Lyman code?
Speaker: Yeah, that's where I would not go there.
Speaker: I wouldn't go there from my personal connection with Lyman as limited as it was.
Speaker: Sadly, I didn't get to know him until very close to when he sadly took his life.
Speaker: Plug here for 988 in the suicide hotline and mental health.
Speaker: Take care of each other.
Speaker: Take care of your friends.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I don't, yeah, I don't think you should, you should mess with it.
Speaker: I don't think that's a good decision from a legacy standpoint.
Speaker: I think it'd be a foolish decision from a business standpoint as well.
Speaker: If anything, if they do something different would be maybe they, maybe they add something on as like an additional, like a challenge mode type of thing that they add on, or, or if they wanted to add on some type of, you know, side mode or, you know,
Speaker: Maybe some little extra mini wizard mode or topper mode or something like that.
Speaker: But the basics of that game, I think, are amazing.
Speaker: The one thing they could do to add using an LCD screen is make communication better.
Speaker: Because those rules are really cool, but you don't know them by playing it until like many plays later until somebody else tells you about them.
Speaker: You're like, how is this working?
Speaker: What does this mean?
Speaker: And you have to kind of solve the puzzle and delve into the world of Lyman's mind now.
Speaker: as you're playing the game.
Speaker: And so it would be very helpful if they would use the LCD screen to tell people of like, oh, hey, you have a shot selector right now on this shot.
Speaker: And this is going to, you know, somehow communicate better with the player.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: And that's my thought process is even if they do alter the code a little bit, I think the way you keep the main lineman stuff, but like you said, maybe add an extra mode or add some underlining.
Speaker: I just think of like Keith code where you have all the main modes, but there's like with Jaws, you've got a shark hunt running in the background, the bounty or something like that.
Speaker: I don't know if you could do that without messing up the code.
Speaker: it does help that borg i assume borg's back on this i don't know why you'd have someone else do if you're making a remake you have the designer that made it tap him as the resource you know i'm saying yeah so i'm excited i'm really excited to see where this goes if the rumor is true um
Speaker: Other than that, man, Expo, there's a ton of stuff.
Speaker: Avatar, I wasn't as fortunate as Scott to go to Chicago last month.
Speaker: I'm excited to get my hands on Avatar and try that out and see if the code is as convoluted as some has alluded to.
Speaker: But, you know, just I'm excited.
Speaker: It's that time of year.
Speaker: And I kind of...
Speaker: I kind of put, I don't know, I kind of live for this time of year.
Speaker: I doubled down on everything else so that way I could come out and join.
Speaker: You know, one thing I want to talk about before we wrap this all up, though, and it kind of blows my mind.
Speaker: We're doing Media Mixer again this year, and last year was a blast, and they had a ton of stuff to give away.
Speaker: And I think, I know, it made me laugh when Eric Meniere of JJP showed up
Speaker: and gave a bunch of jjp stuff to give away and he won a jjp hat it's like uh he's like someone else can have this but this year it's all sold out and there's it's weird it's cool but it's a weird concept to me that people want to pay to come hang out with well okay it's a party come on it's a party okay everybody wants to come okay it's an exclusive party
Speaker: to have fun and get some, some giveaways and stuff like that.
Speaker: If I come early enough, I will love to crash the party.
Speaker: I'll sneak in under the table or something.
Speaker: Well, it's Thursday night.
Speaker: So if you can get in there before five, it's five to eight.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: But congrats to Colin for putting this on from Kinesis slash This Week in Pinball.
Speaker: Erica's Pinball Journey for stepping up.
Speaker: She's gotten a lot of the sponsors too.
Speaker: I've helped a little bit, just not a bunch.
Speaker: And I apologize to them.
Speaker: And Colin's like, you know, sometimes it's just the push.
Speaker: Like the Joker says, right?
Speaker: Insanity is just a little push off the cliffs.
Speaker: It just takes a little... Anywho, sorry.
Speaker: I like this dark night.
Speaker: And speaking of the cliffs of insanity, I'm excited to play Princess Bride coming up.
Speaker: So this will be my first hands on it.
Speaker: And it'll be fun to touch base with Colin.
Speaker: I would like to see a remake of The Dark Knight tweaked and then the footage put in from the movie and a whole new art set.
Speaker: I think that would be... That's just side tangent.
Speaker: You're going down another rabbit hole, Alice.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Well, at least I'm an adult, Alice, then.
Speaker: I'm of consenting to wear that fabric.
Speaker: The tattered towel.
Speaker: Just move on.
Speaker: Just move on.
Speaker: The joke's not landing.
Speaker: We need to go.
Speaker: Well, cool.
Speaker: Colin, is there anything else that we should have asked that you want to emphasize on Princess Bride?
Speaker: No, I don't think so.
Speaker: I mean, Josh, you talked about it before.
Speaker: Yeah, the production is going strong right now.
Speaker: They're on batch two of five, I think, in terms of they batched the orders.
Speaker: And so there's a big line of people right now that are going to be getting their games here over the coming months.
Speaker: months so yeah if you if you want you know after you play it at expo because i'm a big fan of advocating for people to play a machine uh you know before you buy uh because that's just me personally i don't buy machines you know without playing them so
Speaker: play it and there's also there's they're starting to pop up at the locations i know there's one that has it out in new hampshire uh so and ask your ask your location ask your uh your favorite uh barcade or uh arcade to to consider getting one and if they don't you know if they don't have a p3 platform
Speaker: They can get in touch with Jerry and he can answer all their questions as far as what that'll look like because it's different parts than maybe some of your traditional parts that you would find for Sterns, but all those fears can be
Speaker: But I would just love to start having the buzz and hearing people getting to play it and experience it and having questions like, oh, I found this cool thing about the game and playing it.
Speaker: I found this fun little trick.
Speaker: I would love to start hearing those types of stories.
Speaker: And this is arcade ready.
Speaker: It has a coin box.
Speaker: It has the ability to put on location.
Speaker: So this could be something that a...
Speaker: like a route runner could really buy because you don't have to buy a new game.
Speaker: You can just swap it out.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: So yeah, I just, I'm, I'm hoping to hear more and more stories of people and the feedback we've been getting also in batch one has been great.
Speaker: All the customers are loving it and amazed with the, with how it plays and the experience of it.
Speaker: So yeah, I just,
Speaker: I put so much into lots of little nuance into the, the rules.
Speaker: I'm excited for people to discover that and, and, you know, talk about that and post about that.
Speaker: So I'm just going to, I'll let, I'll let people discover all those things that I haven't talked about.
Speaker: Thanks, Colin.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: If people want to get ahold of you, how can they do that?
Speaker: You can find me on, on, on Facebook and also on Ray days discord.
Speaker: I'm on there quite a bit as well.
Speaker: And then if, if you want to, you can reach out if you want to, you know, there's a, there's also a multimorphic P three discord.
Speaker: You can find me on there.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And if you want to get ahold of us and you're not at expo well, you can do it via Facebook.
Speaker: You can do it via Instagram.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: at our Gmail at LoserkidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: There's multiple ways via the socials.
Speaker: Those that ordered hats, I am picking them up Monday, and I will contact you on shipping and stuff like that.
Speaker: We're going to get you taken care of, and I'm going to stuff, like every expo, I'm going to stuff my backpack with so many hats, and security's always like, what are you doing with so many hats?
Speaker: Like, what is with all these hats?
Speaker: I got to say, though, it impresses me every year how many hats I have to take to expo because they just...
Speaker: And I have to thank Scott, too, because he does give away a good amount of hats to manufacturers and stuff like that.
Speaker: But I was doing the math, and we've sold or given away more than, I think it was like 300 hats.
Speaker: It's insane.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I always smile when I see him floating around, though.
Speaker: Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker: So thank you for all your guys' support.
Speaker: And don't be afraid to come up and shake hands and talk to us.
Speaker: Give us a fist bump and play a game.
Speaker: Yeah, and pull Doug Puerta because now he had the shoes and
Speaker: the shirt and the hat and now we have joggers so if you show up in full regalia from from head to toe Scott will give you something the loser kid jersey is awesome by the way it really is the hockey hockey sweater so I'm definitely wearing so thanks again Colin thank you uh check us out and we'll see you at expo
