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Ep 149: Ep 149: Pre Pinball Expo 2024 with Colin MacAlpine
13 Plays5 months ago
Colin MacAlpine joins us the talk what's happen at the 40th Pinball Expo and also about his role in Mulimorphic's latest creation, Princess Bride. We also talk about Dutch Pinball's Alice in Wonderland, Stern's Xmen, and JJP's Avatar!
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Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 149.
00:00:11
Speaker
I didn't realize we're almost to 150, Scott.
00:00:13
Speaker
That's kind of crazy.
00:00:14
Speaker
Actually, that's what I noticed too.
00:00:15
Speaker
I was like, oh, did we miss like an anniversary?
00:00:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:00:19
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.
Pre-Expo Game Discussions
00:00:33
Speaker
Anyway, but this isn't our 15th anniversary.
00:00:36
Speaker
This is episode 149.
00:00:38
Speaker
Exactly.
00:00:39
Speaker
And we're doing pre-expo today, and there is a ton of games now available.
00:00:44
Speaker
If you're buying one of these games, Scott, who are you buying it from?
Exciting Pinball Purchases
00:00:47
Speaker
Zach and Nicole Minniet flipping out pinball.
00:00:49
Speaker
And you know what I've really been eyeing is the speaker lights.
00:00:53
Speaker
And I know right now it's been really nice because they've been, you know, Stern's been releasing those out.
00:00:58
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.
00:01:07
Speaker
And I'm trying to debate.
00:01:08
Speaker
You guys are going to have to let me know.
00:01:10
Speaker
Should I get the speaker lights from Stern for Godzilla or should I get the flame ones?
00:01:14
Speaker
No, just something to think about.
00:01:15
Speaker
But also, if you want to pick up any game, reach out to them.
Colin McAlpine Joins the Podcast
00:01:20
Speaker
I know they were actually looking at possibly a show discount.
00:01:23
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.
00:01:28
Speaker
And today we're going to be talking about Expo, and we have an awesome guest on.
00:01:32
Speaker
This is not his first time on Loser Kid.
00:01:35
Speaker
He is a champion amongst men with the Papa Championship trophy.
00:01:41
Speaker
We got Colin McAlpine on today.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
00:01:45
Speaker
I'm excited to talk about Expo and just to, you know, I like to correct, make sure it's accurate.
00:01:50
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.
00:01:59
Speaker
It is a huge trophy.
00:02:00
Speaker
Whatever it is, it's massive.
00:02:02
Speaker
It is.
00:02:03
Speaker
And you dominated on high hand, wasn't
Pinball Strategies and Scoring
00:02:05
Speaker
it?
00:02:05
Speaker
Wasn't that the game you took it over the top on?
00:02:09
Speaker
Yeah, that was part of it.
00:02:10
Speaker
That was the second out of four.
00:02:11
Speaker
But ironically, that was the one game that I actually took first on in that four.
00:02:17
Speaker
And then the rest of it was just not performing well, but not first.
00:02:23
Speaker
But yeah, I'm excited to be here for the pre-150th episode, for the pre-Expo episode here.
00:02:32
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.
00:02:41
Speaker
don't invite them over to your house if you want any of your high scores to remain intact.
00:02:47
Speaker
Do you still have my initials up there?
00:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, I do.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, Attack for Mars.
00:02:52
Speaker
There's no way I'm going to catch that.
00:02:54
Speaker
And I think Simpsons, I've currently put Simpsons in storage because I need a break.
00:02:59
Speaker
But yeah, basically Colin played all my games for about two, two and a half hours.
00:03:04
Speaker
And each one had like a GC from Colin on it now.
00:03:08
Speaker
And so now I have to look at his face.
00:03:10
Speaker
or at least his initials every time I play my game knowing.
00:03:13
Speaker
It's just showing exactly how absolutely, exceptionally mediocre I am at playing pinball.
00:03:21
Speaker
Okay, what did he set your high score on Attack for Mars at?
00:03:26
Speaker
I think it was like 13 billion or, I don't know.
00:03:30
Speaker
What is that?
00:03:31
Speaker
Is that like you, you go higher.
00:03:33
Speaker
I don't know, Josh.
00:03:35
Speaker
I'm just saying that's, that's a pretty good score.
00:03:37
Speaker
Legitimately.
00:03:38
Speaker
I think he played it once too.
00:03:40
Speaker
That's the problem.
00:03:40
Speaker
That wasn't even a warmup.
00:03:41
Speaker
That wasn't a, let me get used to your game.
00:03:43
Speaker
It's you know, I'm just going to step up and see what I can do.
00:03:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:47
Speaker
I'm lucky to crack like 1.8 billion on attack from Mars and Collins like doing that one handed.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:53
Speaker
It was a, it was a good, it was a good run there.
00:03:55
Speaker
And yeah, I think that was the first game.
00:03:57
Speaker
Ruled the universe on that game.
00:03:59
Speaker
So yeah.
00:03:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:01
Speaker
Maybe you just have it set up too easy, Scott.
00:04:02
Speaker
Maybe you should have made it a little harder for him.
00:04:04
Speaker
Maybe.
00:04:05
Speaker
He has it set up perfectly for Scott.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:04:10
Speaker
So legit, Colin is one of the nicest guys on the planet.
00:04:13
Speaker
He also is an amazing rules guy.
00:04:17
Speaker
He knows all the things.
00:04:19
Speaker
Don't you have like a little app that you have like all the things typed out for yourself?
Evolution of Pinball Game Rules
00:04:25
Speaker
So when you're playing a game, you can look it up.
00:04:27
Speaker
It's like, okay, I'm remembering what I need to do on this game.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, I can't keep it all straight up in my head anymore.
00:04:34
Speaker
And also because there's so many games out there over the years and also new ones coming out.
00:04:40
Speaker
So yes, it's not a cool app though.
00:04:42
Speaker
I'm not that high tech.
00:04:43
Speaker
It's just a Google sheet.
00:04:44
Speaker
And yeah, but it's over 800 lines long now.
00:04:49
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of little stuff that I pick up over the years that I put in there.
00:04:55
Speaker
And so that way,
00:04:56
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.
00:05:04
Speaker
What makes me chuckle is like the newest games have pretty much like made pin tips obsolete.
00:05:08
Speaker
Like pin tips is good for like nineties and prior.
00:05:12
Speaker
Cause it's like even two thousands.
00:05:14
Speaker
Cause it's like, Oh, theater of magic left, left orbit slash ramp.
00:05:17
Speaker
Okay.
00:05:19
Speaker
That's because the code is like one 10th of what all the code is now.
00:05:23
Speaker
I know, but it's like, I bet if you were on pin tips for Godzilla, it's like, just don't.
00:05:29
Speaker
Shoot the wamps.
00:05:32
Speaker
But that is important.
00:05:35
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.
00:05:44
Speaker
Just three things to do.
00:05:45
Speaker
Because most people are not going to play a game that long anyway.
Princess Bride Pinball Discussion
00:05:50
Speaker
If they have just a couple things to focus on, then
00:05:54
Speaker
First off, it kind of gives you purpose as you play as opposed to just trying to stay alive.
00:05:59
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.
00:06:08
Speaker
And I think I see a rush behind you there, Scott.
00:06:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:12
Speaker
Which are just redonkulous.
00:06:13
Speaker
And there's so many deep and nuanced things you can do.
00:06:16
Speaker
But for the average player, they're not going to scrape, you know, the surface of that.
00:06:20
Speaker
So just give them three things to work on.
00:06:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:06:23
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.
00:06:27
Speaker
That is kind of the strategy.
00:06:29
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.
00:06:35
Speaker
And if it's not working out, you just go to plan B, which is another two or three things.
00:06:38
Speaker
And so it seems to work very, very well for the high end players.
00:06:42
Speaker
There's the trade secret right there.
00:06:43
Speaker
If you want to go win some big tournaments, do it.
00:06:45
Speaker
And you're typically not really, okay, you're not shooting for Volanor if you're in a competitive setting.
00:06:51
Speaker
You're basically looking at which things can I maximize my points on because that's really what you're competing against.
00:06:58
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.
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:06
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.
00:07:19
Speaker
Let's be real.
00:07:20
Speaker
Everybody is always competing.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah, you're always competing.
00:07:23
Speaker
If you're playing by yourself, you're competing against whatever high score.
00:07:28
Speaker
In Scott's case, he's competing against the high score I left him.
00:07:33
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.
00:07:41
Speaker
Hey, I want to try to get 50 million on this particular mode this time around.
00:07:45
Speaker
And so it's not so much of like thinking, oh, well, that's only for tournament players.
00:07:50
Speaker
The scoring stuff is actually for everybody.
00:07:53
Speaker
It's just what can you and what does everybody really want to comprehend and take the time to learn?
00:07:58
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.
00:08:10
Speaker
And that helps me in competing with myself or the three friends I'm playing with at my house.
00:08:14
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.
00:08:23
Speaker
It's for everybody.
00:08:24
Speaker
It's just a matter of who you're competing against.
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:27
Speaker
And that's true.
00:08:28
Speaker
My son, he's always super excited when he enters his name in a game.
00:08:33
Speaker
For sure.
00:08:34
Speaker
And it's totally interesting.
00:08:35
Speaker
Now, I do want to...
00:08:38
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?
00:08:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:08:52
Speaker
Because he is.
00:08:56
Speaker
Now, are you the main rules guy for Princess Bride?
00:08:59
Speaker
Is that do I have that correct?
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's correct.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
So Princess Bride.
00:09:04
Speaker
So this is a multimorphic game.
00:09:05
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?
00:09:19
Speaker
But either way.
00:09:21
Speaker
I call it the cabinet or the platform.
00:09:25
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:26
Speaker
You buy the platform, which is the cabinet.
00:09:29
Speaker
And then, yeah, you can go from there.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:32
Speaker
And then you buy these little game modules that you can slide in and out.
00:09:36
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.
00:09:48
Speaker
That's it.
00:09:48
Speaker
But if you're buying a P3, then you can buy the P3 and then
00:09:52
Speaker
They have lots of different modules, which are a fraction of the cost of what a standard game is.
00:09:59
Speaker
And so the game, the latest game they have out is Princess Bride.
00:10:04
Speaker
So we want to talk about Princess Bride because the game looks fantastic.
00:10:08
Speaker
But not only that, it's starting to ship.
00:10:10
Speaker
People are starting to get these into their homes or on the line.
00:10:13
Speaker
And it's going to be at Pinball Expo to play.
00:10:16
Speaker
It sounds like there'll be at least one there, right, Colin?
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah, correct.
00:10:19
Speaker
They'll have one at the... Oh, shoot.
00:10:24
Speaker
I'm blanking on the booth.
00:10:27
Speaker
I'll come up with it later or remember later.
00:10:29
Speaker
But they'll be at the Chicago Expo.
00:10:32
Speaker
And also Josh Kugler, who is the...
00:10:36
Speaker
lead software developer.
00:10:37
Speaker
So he did a lot of the coding and continues to work on coding for other P3 games.
00:10:44
Speaker
He will be there giving a seminar at the expo.
00:10:47
Speaker
So you can go and check that out.
00:10:49
Speaker
And then also he will probably be at the booth.
00:10:53
Speaker
Oh, it's Justin Wise's booth.
00:10:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:57
Speaker
So he will be, he will be presenting the P3.
00:10:59
Speaker
So he'll have his there.
00:11:00
Speaker
And I think Josh might have his whitewood that he's going to bring there.
00:11:03
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:04
Speaker
I'm not exactly sure.
00:11:05
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.
00:11:13
Speaker
It's, it's, it's just super fun to play.
00:11:16
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,
00:11:25
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.
00:11:33
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.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:40
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.
00:11:52
Speaker
Great to,
00:11:53
Speaker
Great podcast, great video, and you're going through it with Kevin and you're walking through the gameplay.
00:12:01
Speaker
And so that's just a side note if you want to go check that out.
00:12:05
Speaker
The one thing that I do have a question when you're approaching something like the Princess Bride,
00:12:11
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:11
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.
00:12:20
Speaker
It really is so great.
00:12:24
Speaker
But the challenge is when you have a movie, there's always a risk of it getting stale.
00:12:31
Speaker
And I think of Ghostbusters where it, you know, the first thing, the early code was you always did.
00:12:37
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:38
Speaker
Who brought the dog?
00:12:40
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?
00:12:55
Speaker
Excellent question.
00:12:56
Speaker
So yeah, actually, there was a lot of thought put into that by myself and also the rest of the
00:13:03
Speaker
So the cool part wasn't just me developing the rules, but I was working also with Steven Silver, the creative director.
00:13:09
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.
00:13:15
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.
00:13:27
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.
00:13:35
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.
00:13:50
Speaker
In this case, I wanted to give the player complete control.
00:13:55
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.
00:14:02
Speaker
So there are different shots around the play field that you get to select from three different groupings of three different story modes.
00:14:09
Speaker
So there are nine in total.
00:14:11
Speaker
And then there are mini wizard modes attached to each one of those.
00:14:13
Speaker
So each little grouping, the castle, Gilder, and Florin, have four in total.
00:14:18
Speaker
So three modes and one mini wizard mode.
00:14:21
Speaker
and you can play them.
00:14:22
Speaker
You can't play the mini wizard modes, obviously.
00:14:24
Speaker
You can't choose those up front.
00:14:25
Speaker
You have to unlock those.
00:14:27
Speaker
But the other nine, you can bounce around and play whichever order you want to play them in.
00:14:33
Speaker
And I wanted to incentivize players to explore both playing them in completely different ways each time they play it.
00:14:41
Speaker
And also I wanted to incentivize them to explore playing modes in the actual order of the story.
00:14:47
Speaker
So the first one I'll explain is where you kind of pick and choose is because we also have shot features.
00:14:54
Speaker
And so there are features like our little kind of mini modes based on if you shoot a certain shot enough times.
00:15:00
Speaker
And that can stack and overlay with modes and multiballs.
00:15:03
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.
00:15:17
Speaker
So you can then choose and say, okay, well, do I want to play this Buttercup's Nightmare mode right now?
00:15:24
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?
00:15:32
Speaker
So you can explore the game that way.
00:15:34
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.
00:15:39
Speaker
But there's a lot of breadth in terms of how you approach it.
00:15:42
Speaker
And then the other thing that's... I think there are a number of games that do that already.
00:15:45
Speaker
And so I have no problem with borrowing cool concepts and ideas from other games out there.
00:15:51
Speaker
So the other element that you talked about, Scott, as far as when playing games and playing modes in order.
00:15:56
Speaker
So I wanted to incentivize players to...
00:16:00
Speaker
consider playing modes in order, but you don't have to start from the beginning.
00:16:04
Speaker
So you could start from the very first mode, which is the Shrieking Yields.
00:16:07
Speaker
That's the one, the very first mode that we have in the story.
00:16:10
Speaker
Or you could start from, you know, something that's, you know, partway through with, you know,
00:16:17
Speaker
There will be blood tonight if you wanted to.
00:16:20
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.
00:16:30
Speaker
And so a percentage of your mode points gets added into your end of ball bonus.
00:16:36
Speaker
And that mode, that percentage grows the longer you make your streak.
00:16:41
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.
00:17:02
Speaker
I wanted to do something in that vein, so that way you have a reason not to tilt.
00:17:07
Speaker
It kind of reminds me, it's like an expanded version of...
00:17:11
Speaker
Creature from the Black Lagoon, if you're not familiar with that game and you're listening, you have to spell film.
00:17:17
Speaker
And if you spell it in order, F-I-L-M, you get an extra bonus on top of that.
00:17:23
Speaker
So it sounds like you've taken that and just expanded it into this narrative sequence bonus.
00:17:29
Speaker
That's a really cool concept.
00:17:31
Speaker
I like that.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm excited for players to explore that.
00:17:36
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.
00:17:44
Speaker
And so I wanted to specifically have that.
00:17:46
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.
00:17:52
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.
00:18:05
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.
00:18:11
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.
00:18:26
Speaker
And the,
00:18:26
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.
00:18:39
Speaker
And because the P3 is dynamic and screen and those targets, we can change those targets and how they look.
00:18:45
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
00:18:54
Speaker
code it and create the, the, the, you know, the icons that are dynamic that change as soon as you beat marriage.
00:19:02
Speaker
Is there a to believe?
00:19:03
Speaker
It is in there.
00:19:05
Speaker
Obviously.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:07
Speaker
To, to blade is in the miracle max mini wizard.
00:19:11
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:11
Speaker
I do want to go through, so I counted these up.
00:19:13
Speaker
So see if I have these, right.
00:19:16
Speaker
We have,
00:19:18
Speaker
the farm boy skillshot sequences.
00:19:20
Speaker
We have Shrieking Eels, the Cliffs of Insanity, Battle of Steel, Battle of Strength, Battle of Wits.
00:19:26
Speaker
So obviously the, you know, that's the physics, Indigo, and Vecini.
00:19:31
Speaker
Fire Swamp, Buttercup's Nightmare, There Will Be Blood Tonight.
00:19:36
Speaker
Guide My Sword, Miracle of Magic.
00:19:38
Speaker
By the way, I love that marriage is spelled M-A-W-I-D-G-E.
00:19:43
Speaker
And Storming the Castle.
00:19:45
Speaker
And
00:19:46
Speaker
When you're designing modes.
00:19:48
Speaker
Into the pane.
00:19:49
Speaker
Exactly.
00:19:50
Speaker
I'm not sure I'm familiar with that.
00:19:53
Speaker
When you're designing modes, typically coders will intentionally say, these are the easy modes.
00:19:59
Speaker
These are the middle modes.
00:20:01
Speaker
These are the hard modes.
00:20:02
Speaker
Did you take that approach in this?
00:20:06
Speaker
Not necessarily.
00:20:07
Speaker
We didn't go into it thinking that we wanted to have certain modes be harder than others.
00:20:12
Speaker
Some of them do.
00:20:13
Speaker
And the one exception to that is Cliffs of Insanity.
00:20:16
Speaker
Cliffs of Insanity is intentionally designed to be very easy.
00:20:20
Speaker
because we don't want people to miss out on the battle modes.
00:20:27
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.
00:20:40
Speaker
But the rest of the modes are all pretty well balanced.
00:20:44
Speaker
There's a lot of difference to them though.
00:20:46
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.
00:21:00
Speaker
There's rhyme and reason to each one of the modes and why we chose to make them the way they do.
00:21:06
Speaker
And we are able to take advantage of some of the
00:21:10
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.
00:21:28
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.
00:21:38
Speaker
And you have to do that three times.
00:21:40
Speaker
And so the first one is it's a gimme.
00:21:42
Speaker
The sword's already pointing at the scoop.
00:21:44
Speaker
But if you flail and miss and bump into those walls, then your sword's going to move off of it.
00:21:48
Speaker
So unique stuff like that.
00:21:50
Speaker
And then the other thing that's kind of a cool little mode that I hadn't ever seen anybody do before.
00:21:56
Speaker
So Shrieking Eels is where Buttercup is in the lake or river or whatever.
00:22:02
Speaker
And there's these eels that are swimming around her and trying to eat her.
00:22:05
Speaker
And it's a very short mode, a short scene in the movie.
00:22:09
Speaker
It's not long.
00:22:10
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?
00:22:18
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.
00:22:30
Speaker
And so
00:22:31
Speaker
you have a certain number of shots that are lit and you only have like a 15 second timer to hit one shot.
00:22:37
Speaker
But when you hit one shot, then it adds on quite a few seconds onto that mode timer.
00:22:41
Speaker
And then the shots move around, they have to hit another one.
00:22:44
Speaker
And so if you hit some shots in sequence, you can actually see your mode timer increase up to like 30 seconds.
00:22:50
Speaker
And now you have a lot of time.
00:22:52
Speaker
But the flavor of it is some people get frustrated because they're like, oh man, that mode felt really short.
00:22:57
Speaker
It's like, well, yeah, because you're surrounded by a bunch of eels that are trying to eat you.
00:23:00
Speaker
They don't give you a bunch of time.
00:23:02
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.
00:23:12
Speaker
How do you, so I'm thinking about, and sorry to Tim Sexton, but I'm thinking of WIC.
00:23:21
Speaker
In that game, it feels like some modes, like four shots and you're done with the mode.
00:23:25
Speaker
And some of it's like 18 shots and you're still playing.
00:23:29
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.
00:23:45
Speaker
How are you doing that?
00:23:48
Speaker
So each of the modes you can generally complete somewhere between, I'd say, in four to six shots in that range.
00:24:02
Speaker
But there's also the opportunity for the player, if they play it skillfully enough, to
00:24:08
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.
00:24:19
Speaker
So that way it's not just feeling like the same.
00:24:21
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.
00:24:31
Speaker
But for your most, I would say 90% plus of players out there,
00:24:35
Speaker
You know, it's just, hey, they want to get through the mode and enjoy that.
00:24:39
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.
00:24:46
Speaker
And so in that case, we didn't want to have any of them feel overly long.
00:24:50
Speaker
So I'd say anywhere between four and six shots.
00:24:53
Speaker
Awesome.
00:24:55
Speaker
This game, I'm excited.
00:24:56
Speaker
I'm excited to play this at Expo.
00:24:59
Speaker
What was the Gentleman's Booth
Multimorphic Platform Insights
00:25:00
Speaker
again?
00:25:00
Speaker
It just...
00:25:02
Speaker
This is at Justin Wise's booth.
00:25:05
Speaker
And I apologize.
00:25:06
Speaker
I don't have his business's name up in front of me.
00:25:09
Speaker
I'm looking at a post from Jerry's monthly update post.
00:25:13
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.
00:25:24
Speaker
I don't know.
00:25:25
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.
00:25:33
Speaker
It's not as loud as Texas.
00:25:38
Speaker
It actually was quite nice.
00:25:41
Speaker
The environment was like Texas, but maybe a little more of a vendor feel.
00:25:46
Speaker
Well, in this year, they've opened up the whole convention area.
00:25:49
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.
00:25:55
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.
00:26:02
Speaker
I'm excited.
00:26:02
Speaker
And so one thing I just want to interject here as far as Princess Brides, I'd love everybody...
00:26:09
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.
00:26:19
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,
00:26:28
Speaker
considering their next purchase for their pinball collection.
00:26:33
Speaker
A lot of different people fall into different camps or different categories as far as they're considering something like the P3.
00:26:41
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.
00:26:53
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
00:27:00
Speaker
convince any of you.
00:27:02
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.
00:27:07
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.
00:27:16
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
00:27:28
Speaker
you know, what Weird Al's done and now what we have in Princess Bride.
00:27:32
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.
00:27:41
Speaker
And anybody who did play on those old flippers and had a problem with them, I agree with you.
00:27:45
Speaker
I was one of those.
00:27:47
Speaker
I did not like how the old flippers played.
00:27:49
Speaker
But the new flippers are a world of difference.
00:27:51
Speaker
And that's the most important aspect for any pinball player is how the flippers interact.
00:27:56
Speaker
So try it again.
00:27:57
Speaker
And on the quality, I also say, man, Jerry and his team have done an amazing job.
00:28:03
Speaker
They listen to the community.
00:28:05
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.
00:28:12
Speaker
And Jerry went back to the drawing board and went to an intensive discussion with lots of different people internally and externally and
00:28:19
Speaker
And they've come out with the quality update kits.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so if you're worried about the quality, go talk to somebody who has their quality update kit.
00:28:27
Speaker
There have been zero reports of failures since that's taken place.
00:28:31
Speaker
So give it a chance if for some reason you had a quality thing.
00:28:34
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.
00:28:38
Speaker
Because it's like it is absolutely real pinball.
00:28:42
Speaker
It is pinball.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:45
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.
00:28:53
Speaker
And I think you will be not just pleasantly surprised.
00:28:56
Speaker
I think you will be overwhelmed with how much you enjoy playing it.
00:29:00
Speaker
No, I'll jump in a little bit because I was more concerned about having a system, a platform that becomes dated.
00:29:11
Speaker
And so if you buy the cabinet...
00:29:15
Speaker
And then you're buying new games.
00:29:16
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.
00:29:31
Speaker
My concern was, well, if you buy this, are you always locked into that?
00:29:35
Speaker
The one thing we found out is that they have incorporated the ability to upgrade your system with reverse compatibility.
00:29:43
Speaker
And so,
00:29:44
Speaker
That has taken a lot of concern.
00:29:46
Speaker
That was my major concern with it.
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's a valid one.
00:29:49
Speaker
If you buy this and say, well, 15 years later, the technology has advanced.
00:29:55
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.
00:30:10
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.
00:30:19
Speaker
And also there's, they're now doing front coin door.
00:30:23
Speaker
border artwork.
00:30:23
Speaker
So, you know, little things like that side target and a slingshot artwork is now magnetized.
00:30:31
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.
00:30:45
Speaker
You don't have to get out your screwdriver or
00:30:46
Speaker
and, you know, take off the plastic and put the new plastics down.
00:30:49
Speaker
So things like that, it keeps, it keeps innovating.
00:30:53
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.
00:31:09
Speaker
And yeah.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:11
Speaker
That's all I'll say about that.
00:31:12
Speaker
So I interrupted you, Josh, as you were talking about getting excited about Expo.
00:31:15
Speaker
So sorry about that.
00:31:16
Speaker
You're good.
00:31:16
Speaker
I'm excited for Expo.
00:31:18
Speaker
This is what I love about Expo.
00:31:20
Speaker
You go out there, there's tons of games, whether it's old or new.
00:31:24
Speaker
There's just a ton to play.
00:31:26
Speaker
And I'm excited.
00:31:27
Speaker
This is one of those games I always look forward to Chicago.
00:31:30
Speaker
This is where I get my P3 fix.
00:31:33
Speaker
This is where I play Weird Al.
00:31:34
Speaker
And I think Weird Al is a wonderful game.
00:31:37
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.
00:31:44
Speaker
That's one of those things.
00:31:45
Speaker
I've only played a couple of games on it.
00:31:46
Speaker
And so I think maybe if you get more used to it, it becomes more natural to hit with those flippers.
00:31:52
Speaker
And the new, which there's different versions of the upper flipper kits.
00:31:57
Speaker
That could have been an older version, Josh.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:58
Speaker
The upper flipper kits now, because yeah, you're right.
00:32:00
Speaker
The first ones were, they were like completely hidden.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:04
Speaker
And it's difficult to then judge when am I going to flip because you can't see the flipper.
00:32:09
Speaker
And so those, so they, they incorporated that feedback.
00:32:11
Speaker
And so, yeah, give it the, the one that Justin Wise will have, will have, I think the newer upper flipper kits.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:18
Speaker
Awesome.
00:32:19
Speaker
I'm excited.
00:32:20
Speaker
And the one thing to consider to this is I just pulled up, so pull up Multimorphic.
00:32:25
Speaker
And really, there are 13 game options that are directly from Multimorphic.
00:32:31
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.
00:32:39
Speaker
And then you have some extra ones that use existing play fields like Sorcerer Apprentice, Scoop and Shoot, Lexi Lightspeed, Secret Agent.
00:32:46
Speaker
You know, so you have these things.
00:32:47
Speaker
Barnyard.
00:32:49
Speaker
There's also some third party things.
00:32:50
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.
00:33:09
Speaker
So there is certainly something to be said about, you know what, if you,
00:33:14
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.
00:33:26
Speaker
That gives a different flavor, really.
00:33:29
Speaker
silly question.
00:33:29
Speaker
I don't know if you know this, Colin, or not, but is there like a tester mode?
00:33:33
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?
00:33:42
Speaker
Like a homebrew?
00:33:43
Speaker
Like Josh, like you making your own, you making your own for a third and
00:33:49
Speaker
I don't know how, because I know that, I think it's Nick Baldridge that did the drain.
00:33:55
Speaker
Yeah, Nick Baldridge did.
00:33:56
Speaker
Yeah, he did drain.
00:33:57
Speaker
I don't know exactly how he started in terms of making that.
00:34:02
Speaker
He then also manufactures that himself or whatever contract manufacturer he uses to make that.
00:34:07
Speaker
So if you've ever seen the upper third modules,
00:34:13
Speaker
they're substantial.
00:34:15
Speaker
There's a lot going on with any pinball machine, both above the wood play field and below it.
00:34:23
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.
00:34:40
Speaker
basis to goof around and try to design your own module if you wanted to go the Nick Baldrige route.
00:34:46
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.
00:34:55
Speaker
So actually, his game works
00:34:57
Speaker
on I think three or maybe it's four different P three modules.
00:35:01
Speaker
So if you buy the birdwatcher game, you can play it on a number.
00:35:05
Speaker
He's he's he's ported the code and, and tweak the, the, the rule.
00:35:08
Speaker
So it works on all, you know, four different modules.
00:35:11
Speaker
It's really, it's really cool.
00:35:13
Speaker
That is cool.
00:35:13
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:14
Speaker
I, we're, we're going to transition, but I do want to bring this, this up.
00:35:19
Speaker
Talk about the theme integration.
00:35:22
Speaker
like the assets that come into princess bride.
00:35:24
Speaker
So doing the call outs, like, are they, are they captures from the movie?
00:35:30
Speaker
You have a big screen, so you're going to be using a lot of these movie clips.
00:35:34
Speaker
And I know you specifically, you guys wrote the code for, you know, the scene, the battle of wits, you did it.
00:35:41
Speaker
So you could get that whole code.
00:35:42
Speaker
You didn't want to, to clip that scene at all, which is, it's a pretty memorable scene in the entire movie.
00:35:48
Speaker
I would say that most people can quote it.
00:35:50
Speaker
So tell me about the asset integration and how does that bring you into the pinball world of Princess Bride?
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think it does what only the P3 platform can do.
00:36:03
Speaker
So in terms of
00:36:05
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.
00:36:27
Speaker
So all of that is fully integrated.
00:36:30
Speaker
The team did an amazing job of
00:36:33
Speaker
painstakingly integrating and, and the timing of things.
00:36:36
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.
00:36:47
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.
00:36:59
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.
00:37:10
Speaker
They've didn't, they've done all the shots, they've hit all the things.
00:37:14
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.
00:37:23
Speaker
And then we're going to cut to another part of the scene that kind of gets to the,
00:37:28
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.
00:37:38
Speaker
And so finding a way to balance that is really masterfully done.
00:37:43
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,
00:37:53
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.
00:38:00
Speaker
And so that type of thing is something that is absolutely integrated, you know, unlike any other game out there.
00:38:07
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.
00:38:18
Speaker
And I have a Weird Al sitting.
00:38:19
Speaker
I'm looking at it over here.
00:38:20
Speaker
You can't see it.
00:38:20
Speaker
But that was all, you know, coming up with graphics and stuff, except for one.
00:38:25
Speaker
There's one mode that actually uses the video assets from the music video.
00:38:30
Speaker
but all the rest of it was conceived out of whole cloth, which is awesome.
00:38:34
Speaker
But it's also not like something that's memorable for somebody.
00:38:37
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.
00:38:48
Speaker
It's just really cool graphics that are associated with that song.
00:38:50
Speaker
In this case, this is the full blown in your face nostalgia.
00:38:56
Speaker
And so you're going to get all of that and you get all the lines and the,
00:38:59
Speaker
it's not just also the playing the lines, you know, in, in perpetuity for every single mode.
00:39:04
Speaker
Like I know like guardians of the galaxy does that for instance, the start, right.
00:39:07
Speaker
This, as you progress, as you hit shots, it then cues the next line.
00:39:13
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.
00:39:27
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:39:29
Speaker
Stop saying that.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:31
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.
00:39:43
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.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yep.
00:39:49
Speaker
It's awesome.
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's great.
00:39:51
Speaker
And just a quick plug, if you are a big fan of Princess Bride, which why wouldn't you be?
00:39:57
Speaker
There's an audio book and that's great.
00:40:00
Speaker
I highly recommend it.
00:40:01
Speaker
It's called As You Wish.
00:40:03
Speaker
It's Cary Elwes and he actually got a lot of people who are behind the scenes.
00:40:06
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,
00:40:19
Speaker
It's a great book.
00:40:19
Speaker
I highly recommend it.
00:40:22
Speaker
So I can't wait to play Weird Al.
00:40:24
Speaker
I can't wait to play Princess Bride and get
Expo Plans and Attendance
00:40:27
Speaker
more time on it.
00:40:27
Speaker
I'm really excited to see how P3 has taken it to the next level.
00:40:32
Speaker
So that's why I am super excited for Expo this year.
00:40:37
Speaker
Josh is getting there.
00:40:38
Speaker
Josh is getting there a little earlier than I am.
00:40:41
Speaker
I may...
00:40:42
Speaker
It depends.
00:40:43
Speaker
I still, I'm on possibly getting Wednesday or Thursday off.
00:40:48
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.
00:40:58
Speaker
And Josh, you are going to be there Wednesday for sure.
00:41:01
Speaker
I'm flying in Wednesday afternoon.
00:41:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:04
Speaker
I land at like four.
00:41:06
Speaker
So yeah.
00:41:07
Speaker
And Colin, you said you're flying in for the pro circuit, right?
00:41:11
Speaker
But you're not going to be able to be sticking around for most of the festivities, right?
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately, it's yet another time where I have to miss it.
00:41:20
Speaker
I will eventually get to go one of these days, but I have kids involved with various school activities.
00:41:26
Speaker
And my son is in marching band.
00:41:28
Speaker
It's lovingly referred to as Bantober for the month of October because there's a competition going on every single weekend.
00:41:34
Speaker
And guess what?
00:41:35
Speaker
We're in October.
00:41:36
Speaker
So yeah, I'm flying home after Stern Pro Circuit and the customer meeting.
00:41:42
Speaker
And then flying back so I can be a part of my son's and my family's life here back in Texas.
00:41:49
Speaker
But one of these days, I'm going to get to Expo and enjoy that and also hang out with you guys there.
00:41:54
Speaker
So I'm very jealous that you guys get to go back again and enjoy Expo again.
00:42:01
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.
00:42:11
Speaker
for charity.
00:42:12
Speaker
That's also been really cool.
00:42:13
Speaker
I'm proud of you guys for what you did with that year.
00:42:16
Speaker
Thank you.
00:42:17
Speaker
That was, that was a big, that was a lot of effort.
00:42:19
Speaker
And that was all Josh, by the way, I was definitely his sidekick.
00:42:24
Speaker
I said, Josh, you tell me what to do, but that was really spearheaded by Josh.
00:42:28
Speaker
Okay.
00:42:30
Speaker
Josh, what are you looking forward to at expo this year?
00:42:33
Speaker
There is a ton of games that I'm excited to see one though.
00:42:37
Speaker
I'm really curious.
00:42:38
Speaker
Like I'm intrigued.
00:42:40
Speaker
I don't know if I'm excited for it.
00:42:41
Speaker
I don't know if I'm appalled by it.
00:42:43
Speaker
It is the goof.
00:42:44
Speaker
This is okay.
00:42:45
Speaker
This has got to be the weirdest reveal we've seen in the last, uh, what
Alice in Wonderland Pinball Controversy
00:42:50
Speaker
I can remember.
00:42:50
Speaker
I don't remember anything like this.
00:42:52
Speaker
If you don't, if you've been living under a rock, Alice in Wonderland has been released by DPX Dutch pinball.
00:42:58
Speaker
It's not extreme.
00:42:59
Speaker
I know that's what, that's what some of the other podcasts have been saying.
00:43:02
Speaker
And now I've got that stuck in my head.
00:43:03
Speaker
Exclusive.
00:43:05
Speaker
And they're bringing at least three of them to Expo.
00:43:09
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.
00:43:19
Speaker
For me, it did not.
00:43:20
Speaker
I don't like seeing one tiny corner of the game every week for the next eight weeks.
00:43:26
Speaker
It was annoying to me.
00:43:29
Speaker
And then when it finally showed, I felt like the trailer was
00:43:33
Speaker
not showing the game, which it's like you're trying to sell a game, right?
00:43:37
Speaker
Like I don't understand fully why you're not showing the game.
00:43:40
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.
00:43:52
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.
00:44:01
Speaker
Circus Voltaire.
00:44:02
Speaker
These are like very classic games that people love.
00:44:05
Speaker
Didn't you do tales also?
00:44:06
Speaker
Details of the Rabian Nights.
00:44:08
Speaker
But a lot of the thing was...
00:44:10
Speaker
When you hear designer, you think like Elwin.
00:44:13
Speaker
He is the leader of a team, right?
00:44:15
Speaker
He is the director.
00:44:17
Speaker
He has constantly got his fingers in, helping with code, stuff like that.
00:44:21
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.
00:44:31
Speaker
Like with World Cup soccer, if you missed our interview with Larry DeMar last year,
00:44:35
Speaker
John Papaduke's dad had some health issues, had to step away.
00:44:39
Speaker
Larry DeMar finished that game.
00:44:40
Speaker
So it's more, in my opinion, it's more of a Larry DeMar game than it is a John Papaduke game.
00:44:46
Speaker
You can fight about it.
00:44:47
Speaker
I don't care.
00:44:48
Speaker
That's my feelings on that.
00:44:49
Speaker
Here's the problem.
00:44:51
Speaker
John Papaduke decided to make these games after the fact.
00:44:54
Speaker
No one's ever been able to reign them in.
00:44:56
Speaker
We've had atrocities like Magic Girl.
00:45:00
Speaker
And if you don't know anything about that, go Google that stuff.
00:45:04
Speaker
We're not going to go down that rabbit hole.
00:45:06
Speaker
No, we're not.
00:45:07
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.
00:45:20
Speaker
And then they tried to make Houdini a part of American Pinball.
00:45:24
Speaker
And then that didn't work out.
00:45:26
Speaker
Then he was picked up.
00:45:28
Speaker
by Deep Root and everybody knows my undying love for Deep Root.
00:45:32
Speaker
Yes.
00:45:33
Speaker
And, and what happened there.
00:45:35
Speaker
And now his designs have kind of been floating around and ended up
00:45:41
Speaker
getting picked up by Dutch pinball.
00:45:44
Speaker
Um, and, and this was for, this is for companies.
00:45:47
Speaker
So yeah, so he's, he's like tangentially involved in like an upstart.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:52
Speaker
It's four companies though.
00:45:53
Speaker
That's four companies.
00:45:54
Speaker
Granted, deep root never really made anything.
00:45:56
Speaker
They just took money and ran.
00:45:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:58
Speaker
But, but the pin pot, the pit,
00:46:01
Speaker
No, the pin bar.
00:46:02
Speaker
Where's the pin bar?
00:46:03
Speaker
The pin bar, yeah, yeah.
00:46:04
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.
00:46:13
Speaker
Okay, so... Papa Duke seems to...
00:46:17
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:46:17
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:46:18
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.
00:46:27
Speaker
And the games that actually do get made are not really fantastic.
00:46:31
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.
00:46:36
Speaker
And then,
00:46:37
Speaker
if you've ever played Arasa, there's aspects of the games that just don't work.
00:46:43
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.
00:47:00
Speaker
There should be more in the game that should be like that, not aspects of the gameplay.
00:47:04
Speaker
And you look at this game and the first thing is
00:47:08
Speaker
Okay, first thing to me is it's so sexualized.
00:47:11
Speaker
I didn't know that that was actually Alice.
00:47:14
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.
00:47:19
Speaker
Because traditionally, Alice in Wonderland is based off of a seven-year-old girl that goes into Wonderland.
00:47:27
Speaker
That's what has been in the book.
00:47:29
Speaker
This Alice is obviously not seven years old.
00:47:31
Speaker
She is not seven years old in this one, that's for sure.
00:47:34
Speaker
And she's not wearing much of a dress.
00:47:37
Speaker
This is a different take on it.
00:47:39
Speaker
This is like Jessica Rabbit went into some odd cosplay mode.
00:47:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:47:46
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.
00:47:59
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.
00:48:09
Speaker
Well, okay.
00:48:10
Speaker
Now, now I'll push back a little bit.
00:48:14
Speaker
The Alice in Wonderland series with it's Lewis Carroll, right?
00:48:18
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:18
Speaker
Correct.
00:48:19
Speaker
You do the original book.
00:48:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:20
Speaker
I've never read the book.
00:48:23
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.
00:48:31
Speaker
But the challenge is a lot of our framing of Alice is the Disney version.
00:48:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:38
Speaker
Right.
00:48:39
Speaker
And so that could be a little different.
00:48:42
Speaker
Full context, I don't know how the Lewis Carroll book is.
00:48:48
Speaker
It's not adult, but it's definitely not child.
00:48:51
Speaker
It's solidly in the middle, but it's about a seven-year-old girl that goes down in the winter.
00:48:56
Speaker
And there's a lot of drug themes and stuff like that, which kind of present in the Disney version.
00:49:01
Speaker
I'm so confused by like, even there are stand-up targets with Alice's muffins on them that say, eat me.
00:49:12
Speaker
I mean, come on now.
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's not cool.
00:49:16
Speaker
I'm just like, this is a little much.
00:49:18
Speaker
Wow, I didn't see that part.
00:49:20
Speaker
You didn't see that part?
00:49:22
Speaker
Okay, well, there's so much to see, Josh.
00:49:26
Speaker
And here's the genius, quote-unquote, of Papa Duke.
00:49:30
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.
00:49:38
Speaker
Oh my gosh, don't get me started on that.
00:49:39
Speaker
Don't get me started on that.
00:49:41
Speaker
And then you put an upper play field that takes up, what, the top half of the game?
00:49:46
Speaker
It's more than a third.
00:49:48
Speaker
And then, don't get me wrong, I love Twilight Zone.
00:49:52
Speaker
I love the playfield of power, you know, the power.
00:49:55
Speaker
But it's also a wide body, and so it doesn't take up as much percentage-wise.
00:50:00
Speaker
So I'm assuming this is a standard body, and then they've taken the power playfield and made it huge.
00:50:07
Speaker
Oh, four times its size.
00:50:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:50:10
Speaker
And for some odd reason, like...
00:50:11
Speaker
They want you to hang out up there.
00:50:14
Speaker
So they've made the whole bottom a rubber band.
00:50:16
Speaker
So that way you can keep the ball up there.
00:50:18
Speaker
But I'm just like, I don't know.
00:50:21
Speaker
Just play other Papa Duke games after Bally Williams.
00:50:24
Speaker
And you'll realize none of these work.
00:50:26
Speaker
So why did Dutch take a chance on Papa Duke when it's been proven time and time and time again?
00:50:35
Speaker
It doesn't work.
00:50:37
Speaker
And people are just frustrated.
00:50:39
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.
00:50:46
Speaker
I know I've been ranting for a while.
00:50:47
Speaker
There's one idea, what you just mentioned.
00:50:50
Speaker
So let's answer the question first.
00:50:52
Speaker
Why would a business like Dutch Pinball choose to do this?
00:50:57
Speaker
And I think there's, in my opinion, it's either one of two things.
00:51:00
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.
00:51:13
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.
00:51:27
Speaker
And they're doing this because similar to Papa Duke's companies, he was very good at fundraising.
00:51:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:37
Speaker
He could raise funds.
00:51:38
Speaker
And so if I'm Dutch pinball, if I'm a business, it may not be a bad business play.
00:51:45
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.
00:51:59
Speaker
very quickly on a certain few hundred.
00:52:01
Speaker
They're not a big company.
00:52:03
Speaker
It's kind of funny they have DPX.
00:52:04
Speaker
It's even like a boutique of a boutique.
00:52:08
Speaker
So it could very well provide them with the influx of money that they need
00:52:16
Speaker
in order to keep their business going and their business running.
00:52:19
Speaker
So I can't fault them for that.
00:52:21
Speaker
However, to your point on this, it's just, oh my gosh, they could have gone a different direction.
00:52:26
Speaker
I mean, let's be honest.
00:52:28
Speaker
There's certainly a market in the pinball community to sell sexualized art and product to.
00:52:37
Speaker
Okay?
00:52:37
Speaker
Let's be real.
00:52:39
Speaker
That exists.
00:52:40
Speaker
Well, it's what's based off of.
00:52:41
Speaker
Look at the 60s and 70s art.
00:52:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:45
Speaker
They know their demographic and there's nothing wrong with it.
00:52:47
Speaker
Even back in special when lit, I mean, that the guy definitely pushes the sex cells.
00:52:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:56
Speaker
And, but to your point is it doesn't, there's so many other ways they could have gone.
00:53:03
Speaker
And still had that element of a sex appeal element to the art.
00:53:09
Speaker
But instead they went like way out in right fields.
00:53:12
Speaker
Like where did that come from?
00:53:14
Speaker
That doesn't look anything.
00:53:15
Speaker
That doesn't evoke any type of imagery of like, oh yeah, that's Alice in Wonderland.
00:53:19
Speaker
Except for some ridiculously...
00:53:22
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.
00:53:30
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.
00:53:38
Speaker
To me, the main thing looking at this is the play field is so compressed and
00:53:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:46
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.
00:53:54
Speaker
There's one, and that's the ramp.
00:53:58
Speaker
The rest of them, based on seeing just what I've seen so far, they're not kinetically, aesthetically satisfying.
00:54:05
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.
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:16
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.
00:54:28
Speaker
And he's also telling us this is all sold out.
00:54:31
Speaker
And there's plenty of distributors you can still go to that you can buy these from.
00:54:36
Speaker
Sold to distributors versus sold out are different.
00:54:42
Speaker
Correct.
00:54:42
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.
00:54:51
Speaker
That's what you're getting at, Josh?
00:54:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, not only that, but you're cutting the legs out from underneath your distributors by saying none of these are available.
00:54:59
Speaker
Because then people go and they're like, oh, they're still available?
00:55:02
Speaker
What's going on here?
00:55:03
Speaker
Are you trying to pull a fast one?
00:55:05
Speaker
Is there some FOMO you're trying to imply?
00:55:06
Speaker
Everything about this, even the trailer, oh, the trailer, like...
00:55:15
Speaker
Travis Murie pointed out to me, I didn't notice this.
00:55:18
Speaker
You don't see a single ball to the flipper till about a minute and 10 seconds in.
00:55:22
Speaker
It makes no sense.
00:55:24
Speaker
And then on top of that, it's like, I just, it's all this artwork.
00:55:31
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:55:31
Speaker
Here's the thing that drives me the most nuts.
00:55:32
Speaker
This is the first thing, the first thing that just made me cringe.
00:55:34
Speaker
You ready for this?
00:55:36
Speaker
And, and congrats to Colin from Kinesis to, to loop this.
00:55:40
Speaker
But the fact that,
00:55:41
Speaker
that airy, weird, like, Mad Hatter, Jackpot!
00:55:48
Speaker
Jackpot!
00:55:49
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.
00:55:57
Speaker
It's just, it's terrible.
00:55:58
Speaker
It's just all around.
00:56:00
Speaker
The sound's atrocious.
00:56:01
Speaker
Why?
00:56:02
Speaker
Why?
00:56:03
Speaker
Why?
00:56:03
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.
00:56:10
Speaker
You've had over a decade to perfect this and make this right.
00:56:14
Speaker
But you didn't.
00:56:16
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?
00:56:20
Speaker
Because based off the foam core, it's not going to work.
00:56:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:26
Speaker
I'll play.
00:56:29
Speaker
I will give you guys a case for why people would buy this.
00:56:34
Speaker
Okay?
00:56:35
Speaker
So, yes, there are certain issues with it.
00:56:39
Speaker
What I will start with
00:56:41
Speaker
is what sells people initially on games?
00:56:47
Speaker
Theme.
00:56:48
Speaker
Theme and art, right?
00:56:50
Speaker
Like how it looks.
00:56:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:53
Speaker
Now, it almost seems like they go through different phases.
00:56:56
Speaker
One, it's theme and art.
00:56:57
Speaker
And then you go into the gameplay area.
00:57:01
Speaker
And yes, an experienced gamer will be able to look at it.
00:57:05
Speaker
and say, you know, a pinhead will say, yeah, that looks like a fun game to shoot.
00:57:09
Speaker
And so they will assess it maybe on that.
00:57:13
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.
00:57:28
Speaker
Right.
00:57:29
Speaker
And people bought, like, that was an amazing success for them.
00:57:33
Speaker
So if I'm just looking at this from that standpoint, okay, visually, the art actually looks really good.
00:57:43
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.
00:58:01
Speaker
Like the art is it's, it's eye popping.
00:58:05
Speaker
The Cheshire Cat looks thematically consistent with it, even though it doesn't have that little weird claw that Dennis Greasel brought up.
00:58:15
Speaker
I do like the eyes moving too in that topper.
00:58:17
Speaker
That's cool seeing those eyes.
00:58:18
Speaker
It is really.
00:58:19
Speaker
Okay, so visually, if I walked by this, it would catch my eye.
00:58:23
Speaker
And really, John Papaduke's games have done that.
00:58:27
Speaker
So if I look at it and say, well...
00:58:30
Speaker
So on art, I would actually rate it pretty high.
00:58:33
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.
00:58:43
Speaker
So you could argue it on that.
00:58:48
Speaker
Sorry, dying here.
00:58:50
Speaker
And the color wise, it does look really interesting.
00:58:54
Speaker
Like the way they've done the lighting, I would say it's very interesting.
00:58:59
Speaker
very good that way too.
00:59:01
Speaker
Now, what the truth will always be in, can you play it?
00:59:05
Speaker
And is it going to be any fun?
00:59:07
Speaker
But this could be an option where you're like, well, maybe.
00:59:12
Speaker
And then, you know, the, the call outs, how are the call?
00:59:15
Speaker
It's going to be all that kind of stuff.
00:59:16
Speaker
But I would argue there is going to be a market for this game.
00:59:20
Speaker
It may not be me.
00:59:21
Speaker
It may not be Josh and it may not be Colin, but
00:59:24
Speaker
But it does look interesting.
00:59:26
Speaker
Now, is this a small run to get capital?
00:59:30
Speaker
Sure.
00:59:31
Speaker
It may be.
00:59:33
Speaker
But there are people who really go for that.
00:59:34
Speaker
There are people who go for the limited pretty things because they can have it.
00:59:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:41
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.
00:59:48
Speaker
I really think they're going to keep trying to milk the John Papaduke train.
00:59:52
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.
01:00:00
Speaker
The same guy that's been running DPX, did he also buy the Magic Girl assets as well?
01:00:07
Speaker
I'm not for sure, so don't quote me on it, but it wouldn't shock me if he has.
01:00:13
Speaker
You guys would at least agree that you may not agree with what he has drawn, but the art does look good.
01:00:19
Speaker
Right?
01:00:20
Speaker
Some of it.
01:00:21
Speaker
Artistic style is pleasing to the eye.
01:00:23
Speaker
I'll put it that.
01:00:26
Speaker
There's a lot of attention to detail, but there's also... It's very condensed, too.
01:00:33
Speaker
And that's the thing.
01:00:33
Speaker
It wasn't
01:00:35
Speaker
Zombie Yeti is the one that originally did the art for Alice, right?
01:00:38
Speaker
And then he never got paid for.
01:00:41
Speaker
I think he did the initial one and also for Magic Girl.
01:00:45
Speaker
Now, there's always going to be the line.
01:00:47
Speaker
And we've talked about this before.
01:00:48
Speaker
And this is a hard subject for us to talk about because we're middle-aged white dudes, okay?
01:00:54
Speaker
So it's not like we typically have the high moral ground when you're talking about
01:00:59
Speaker
Can you can you be attractive and sexy and still walk that line that doesn't cross into inappropriate?
01:01:06
Speaker
Okay, Ryan Reynolds does it.
01:01:08
Speaker
Why can't we?
01:01:08
Speaker
He is he is way better looking than I am.
01:01:12
Speaker
Okay.
01:01:12
Speaker
He's also a lot funnier.
01:01:14
Speaker
Um, but you know, there are ways that have successfully done that.
01:01:18
Speaker
And you could, you could argue Elvira too.
01:01:20
Speaker
And Elvira is one of those where it raises my eyebrow, but it seems to work for a lot of the pinball audience.
01:01:27
Speaker
Now, is this going to fall into that category?
01:01:30
Speaker
Maybe, but, uh, it's, it is something to consider.
01:01:34
Speaker
It's also, it is European style.
01:01:36
Speaker
And really, when you go to Europe, there are a lot of, um,
01:01:40
Speaker
there are a lot of choices that Europeans will make that are, would be considered crossing the line in, in the United States.
01:01:48
Speaker
What's the game Expo that's the Spanish game?
01:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, was it Nemesis?
01:01:53
Speaker
Something like that.
01:01:55
Speaker
It was like in the 70s, the scantily clad chicks riding dragons.
01:01:59
Speaker
I don't even know if they're clothes there, Scott.
01:02:03
Speaker
Okay, well, that would be scantily clad.
01:02:06
Speaker
And they're riding a very suggestive dragon.
01:02:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:10
Speaker
Well, there's three of them, so...
01:02:11
Speaker
Okay, but hold on.
01:02:12
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.
01:02:21
Speaker
And to me, art is not near the top for me, you know.
01:02:26
Speaker
At its base, at its core, why I love pinball is the physicality.
01:02:31
Speaker
It's not the rules and the scoring.
01:02:33
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.
01:02:48
Speaker
Because something changed in the game.
01:02:49
Speaker
And so it kind of surprises me.
01:02:50
Speaker
It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, but I'm in control of it.
01:02:55
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.
01:03:04
Speaker
Then I saw the trailer of it and they didn't really show much in terms of ball paths.
01:03:08
Speaker
And then I saw them playing it live.
01:03:11
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.
01:03:21
Speaker
And this, and this pin, I'm sorry.
01:03:24
Speaker
It's just, like you said, it's, it's, if they would have taken the original foam core design and tweaked it,
01:03:31
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.
01:03:43
Speaker
But the way it's set up now, and I'm assuming this is how it's going to get produced.
01:03:47
Speaker
I don't see them changing that.
01:03:50
Speaker
It's pretty locked in.
01:03:52
Speaker
And it just, I'm sorry, it didn't look good.
01:03:55
Speaker
And I hate to say it because I always want to wait until I play the game myself.
01:04:00
Speaker
to make that kind of assessment to it.
01:04:02
Speaker
But man, it was, it was a struggle for me to find something aesthetically, kinetically appealing about this game.
01:04:10
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:11
Speaker
I, I would argue that Keith Elwin's Avengers infinity quest is a better modern day John Papa Duke style game than anything.
01:04:23
Speaker
Papa Duke has released in the last three years or 30 years.
01:04:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:28
Speaker
It certainly has the ball paths and we've talked about this, right?
01:04:31
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.
01:04:40
Speaker
And Keith Elwin's a master of doing those interesting shots that keep the ball moving.
01:04:46
Speaker
And visually it is, it is attractive to see the ball moving around.
01:04:51
Speaker
I totally agree with you, Colin.
01:04:53
Speaker
And by the way, by me,
01:04:55
Speaker
by me defending why people would buy Alice, I'm still not a buyer of this game.
01:05:02
Speaker
12.5, no way.
01:05:02
Speaker
Right.
01:05:03
Speaker
But when we did talk about, okay, what other games have people done to try to raise money?
01:05:11
Speaker
Remember Dutch Pinball also did Bride of Pinbot 2.0.
01:05:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:16
Speaker
And they had the Big Lebowski.
01:05:19
Speaker
And so they have always made some interesting choices.
01:05:23
Speaker
Maybe not the most financially savvy choices, but they've made some interesting choices.
01:05:28
Speaker
I'm still surprised they're around.
01:05:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:32
Speaker
And Big Lebowski, I mean, I've played that one.
01:05:35
Speaker
I played it quite a bit at the wormhole in Houston.
01:05:40
Speaker
And when it's working, it's a fun game to play.
01:05:43
Speaker
Right.
01:05:44
Speaker
I really enjoyed it.
01:05:45
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.
01:06:00
Speaker
And physically and kinetically, the shots felt good.
01:06:05
Speaker
And that's what I'm looking for.
01:06:07
Speaker
And so I hope I'm wrong.
01:06:08
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.
01:06:14
Speaker
Because I always liked New Pinball.
01:06:16
Speaker
I enjoy the kinetic and physicality of John Papaduke older design games.
01:06:22
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.
01:06:31
Speaker
And I love that.
01:06:33
Speaker
And so I hope I'm wrong, but it's – man, we'll see.
01:06:36
Speaker
So I think one thing – as I was sitting here, I think there's one thing that –
01:06:41
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.
01:06:52
Speaker
I mean, even though like World Cup soccer, it's very basic.
01:06:54
Speaker
It's a really wide open shop.
01:06:56
Speaker
It's one of my favorites with the goalie moving back and forth on a stick.
01:06:59
Speaker
It's a perfect mech.
01:07:00
Speaker
You've got Theater of Magic.
01:07:02
Speaker
That chest is super cool.
01:07:04
Speaker
That is one of the coolest mechs in pinball.
01:07:08
Speaker
Circus Voltaire, the...
01:07:11
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.
01:07:17
Speaker
It does multiple layers of things, right?
01:07:20
Speaker
The chest does multiple layers of things.
01:07:22
Speaker
The genie, you hit him in the stomach and he kind of clenches up.
01:07:25
Speaker
And then when you hit it enough, the magnet in front of it catches it and drops the ball into the play field.
01:07:30
Speaker
It just disappears.
01:07:32
Speaker
I love disappearing.
01:07:33
Speaker
And the fireball magnet on the ramp.
01:07:35
Speaker
Yes.
01:07:37
Speaker
We're missing that from these John Papadou games.
01:07:39
Speaker
And I feel like
01:07:41
Speaker
it's got the swoop.
01:07:41
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.
01:07:49
Speaker
And I think you're missing the heart.
01:07:50
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.
01:07:56
Speaker
So I, I'm interested to try it and I'm interested to see how it is.
01:08:01
Speaker
Magic Girl was not that fun for me when I played it.
01:08:05
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.
X-Men Pinball Game Analysis
01:08:16
Speaker
And that brings us to our next topic is X-Men.
01:08:20
Speaker
So X-Men was revealed.
01:08:23
Speaker
Everybody looked at it and said, well,
01:08:25
Speaker
wow, this looks really interesting.
01:08:28
Speaker
This is different.
01:08:29
Speaker
This is their departure.
01:08:31
Speaker
Jack talks about bringing weirdness back into pinball.
01:08:34
Speaker
Okay.
01:08:35
Speaker
And then people saw the gameplay that they did, the stream.
01:08:41
Speaker
And there were people who pulled their orders from that gameplay.
01:08:46
Speaker
Because it didn't, it looked hard.
01:08:49
Speaker
It looked, and they're like, these are good players.
01:08:52
Speaker
And if they're just draining all the time,
01:08:55
Speaker
It unsold LEs, which you always want to do, right?
01:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, it unsold games.
01:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, it was the marketing kryptonite that helped out.
01:09:04
Speaker
However, afterwards, I have actually played it.
01:09:07
Speaker
And Colin, you have played it too.
01:09:10
Speaker
This game played nothing like that stream showed.
01:09:13
Speaker
I want to hear what you found when you played X-Men because I'm not a top tier player, but you are.
01:09:20
Speaker
So tell me about it.
01:09:22
Speaker
So, yeah, to your point, the shots are tight.
01:09:29
Speaker
There's not a single wide shot on the game.
01:09:32
Speaker
I thought there was going to be a wide shot with going back to the ringmaster.
01:09:36
Speaker
I thought the sentinel head...
01:09:37
Speaker
was actually going to drop all the way down like the ringmaster does on Voltaire, but he doesn't.
01:09:42
Speaker
It goes around it, yeah.
01:09:43
Speaker
His crown or whatever stays raised, and so you actually are hitting that still.
01:09:48
Speaker
And that's because there's really nothing behind it.
01:09:51
Speaker
And so it makes sense after seeing it in person why that choice was made.
01:09:55
Speaker
But each ramp shot, and there's seven of them.
01:10:00
Speaker
There are seven ramp shots in that game, if I'm not mistaken.
01:10:04
Speaker
That's ridiculous.
01:10:05
Speaker
Just full stop right there.
01:10:07
Speaker
But the, to your point, Scott, it is, it is difficult in that those, all the shots, the major shots are tight.
01:10:16
Speaker
And there's not a single one of them that would go, oh, well, hey, there's the gimme shot.
01:10:20
Speaker
There's the easy shot.
01:10:21
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.
01:10:27
Speaker
But they're all difficult to hit.
01:10:29
Speaker
But man, once you hit them, oh my gosh.
01:10:34
Speaker
To what I was making, one of my highest prioritizations criteria, it is so...
01:10:40
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.
01:10:51
Speaker
It's a double hairpin turn.
01:10:54
Speaker
It's fabulous.
01:10:55
Speaker
It's fantastic.
01:10:56
Speaker
It looks great.
01:10:57
Speaker
The design, I give major kudos to Jack and how he designed it and able to pull it off correctly.
01:11:03
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.
01:11:30
Speaker
That sequence and how that's designed is masterful.
01:11:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:35
Speaker
It's the Katana shot 2.0.
01:11:37
Speaker
That's how I say it's like the Katana shot.
01:11:39
Speaker
You look at that and say that shouldn't work, but it does.
01:11:42
Speaker
When you hit it right, it hits it.
01:11:44
Speaker
And with the danger room shot, you are exactly right.
01:11:47
Speaker
You shoot it from the right flipper.
01:11:49
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.
01:12:00
Speaker
It doesn't actually do it in a, in a, in a dangerous way.
01:12:03
Speaker
It's like, Oh, well that,
01:12:05
Speaker
it looks like it was meant to be.
01:12:07
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.
01:12:16
Speaker
You're like, that shouldn't work as consistently as it does, but it does.
01:12:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:23
Speaker
And so it's, but yeah, I,
01:12:26
Speaker
The bones and the most part of the physicality of it is there because you can't change that.
01:12:32
Speaker
You can change the code.
01:12:34
Speaker
You can change the mechanics, the game logic.
01:12:38
Speaker
You can do and mess with all those things.
01:12:40
Speaker
You can't change the physical nature of the shots.
01:12:43
Speaker
And the physical nature of the shots felt great.
01:12:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:46
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.
01:12:58
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.
01:13:08
Speaker
But you have to find those shots and they are really tight.
01:13:11
Speaker
So only those cyborg like players can probably keep playing this thing over a long period of time.
01:13:16
Speaker
Right.
01:13:17
Speaker
But it is like playing a video game.
01:13:19
Speaker
If you get dialed in, like that's one question.
01:13:22
Speaker
There should be at least a dangerous shot.
01:13:25
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.
01:13:32
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.
01:13:42
Speaker
I'm not sure there's a lot of that in here.
01:13:45
Speaker
Um,
01:13:46
Speaker
maybe hitting the Sentinel head and when the, the mouth opens and, Oh yeah, he kills you.
01:13:51
Speaker
Did you play the LE version or?
01:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, I did.
01:13:53
Speaker
I played the LE.
01:13:53
Speaker
I think that's the only one that's out right now.
01:13:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:55
Speaker
Well, that's the, they manufactured that first.
01:13:57
Speaker
So I haven't even played the, the pro one.
01:14:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:00
Speaker
Me neither.
01:14:00
Speaker
But that Sentinel head, his little mouth, the one that, that kicker, it killed me at least three times.
01:14:06
Speaker
So, so that is the dangerous shot, but there's so many options that it may not be that much of a factor.
01:14:13
Speaker
So that does,
01:14:15
Speaker
make me wonder, you know, how would you adjust it?
01:14:19
Speaker
And it was interesting because when we talked to like,
01:14:22
Speaker
I think, I think we were talking to Elwin, wasn't it?
01:14:24
Speaker
When we were talking about lifting, like making the, the game steep.
01:14:29
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.
01:14:42
Speaker
Yep.
01:14:43
Speaker
Yep.
01:14:43
Speaker
It does one other thing too.
01:14:45
Speaker
It makes it so you can actually control and cradle the ball easier.
01:14:49
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.
01:14:57
Speaker
So if you're worried about somebody over-controlling the game, steeper is actually better for control.
01:15:03
Speaker
But the other thing I'll say about this, I was very pleased with how the danger room area turned out.
01:15:11
Speaker
Yes, you're right.
01:15:12
Speaker
That was fantastic.
01:15:14
Speaker
I was concerned that it was going to be a drain monster down there.
01:15:17
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.
01:15:31
Speaker
You could reasonably get back and forth without too much difficulty.
01:15:36
Speaker
I find it funny, too, that I look at this game and I'm like, how did he ever get it approved?
01:15:42
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.
01:15:48
Speaker
My stupid cat just started Rush.
01:15:50
Speaker
I don't know if you heard that.
01:15:52
Speaker
Nice.
01:15:53
Speaker
Ah, cat.
01:15:55
Speaker
That's hilarious.
01:15:56
Speaker
We saw your cat climbing around in the back.
01:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, well, he hit the... Can you hear Rush in the background?
01:16:02
Speaker
It's singing Working Man right now.
01:16:05
Speaker
Just a little bit.
01:16:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:07
Speaker
Just barely.
01:16:07
Speaker
Okay.
01:16:08
Speaker
Well, then I, but yeah.
01:16:09
Speaker
So Josh, you were talking about the bill of materials and what Gomez.
01:16:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:12
Speaker
I don't know if it was the bill of materials, but there's just so much in this game.
01:16:15
Speaker
They're like, you, we probably should have pulled the restraints a little bit.
01:16:18
Speaker
And, and I know that like, even Gary has stepped down.
01:16:22
Speaker
He's not like the head and like, he's still in charge.
01:16:25
Speaker
Like, but it's, you know, Seth Davis is, is definitely the man that's giving the green light.
01:16:29
Speaker
He's not a day to day guy anymore.
01:16:31
Speaker
Correct.
01:16:32
Speaker
He's like a, he's like a load star.
01:16:33
Speaker
He's like the, uh,
01:16:35
Speaker
the aspirational star, so to speak.
01:16:38
Speaker
Correct.
01:16:39
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.
01:16:49
Speaker
It goes to show that Jack is definitely pushing the bounds and somehow breaking through to make things like this work.
01:16:55
Speaker
And I'm excited.
01:16:56
Speaker
I'm excited to hear that it works because Gold Wings, in my opinion, does not.
01:17:01
Speaker
It's a fun game.
01:17:03
Speaker
No, Gold Wings is not a fun.
01:17:05
Speaker
I mean, Gold Wings is a snooze fest.
01:17:08
Speaker
Let's be honest.
01:17:09
Speaker
Okay, it is a snooze fest.
01:17:12
Speaker
And this takes that cool, it takes the best elements of Gold Wings and reimagines them and it makes it fun to play.
01:17:25
Speaker
There's no other way around it.
01:17:26
Speaker
It's true.
01:17:27
Speaker
It takes Gold Wings and I almost feel like it gives it a radical touch.
01:17:31
Speaker
Radical is just all those loops and all the fancy paths and everything.
01:17:36
Speaker
It's like Radical and Gold Wings had a baby and it just
01:17:39
Speaker
But instead of Plastic Ranch... It plays way better than Radical and Gold Wings, though.
01:17:44
Speaker
And I do... Don't get me wrong.
01:17:45
Speaker
I enjoy Radical, but I think that it's too tight.
01:17:48
Speaker
Like, the shots... It's too, like, forced of, like, this is how you're going to play this game.
01:17:53
Speaker
Whereas... I'm excited to play X-Men.
01:17:55
Speaker
Because, like, everyone that's played it has just loved it.
01:17:57
Speaker
And the only complaint is code.
01:17:59
Speaker
But code is...
01:18:00
Speaker
It is what it is.
01:18:02
Speaker
It's a steering game.
01:18:03
Speaker
And I will say this.
01:18:04
Speaker
I think, this is me personally, I think Elwin should be the standard.
01:18:08
Speaker
Like when his games come out, I feel like there's enough meat on the bone.
01:18:12
Speaker
You don't really, like, you don't notice that the final mode's not in there.
01:18:16
Speaker
Correct.
01:18:17
Speaker
There needs to be enough meat on the bone when these games come out.
01:18:21
Speaker
Like the Elwin should be like the base standard, in my opinion.
01:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think so.
01:18:28
Speaker
you get X, X-Men and you love it, but it's like the coach is so bare.
01:18:31
Speaker
It feels like you're just waiting for the, the, the brownies to finish cooking in the oven.
01:18:36
Speaker
Right?
01:18:36
Speaker
Like, yeah, this is great.
01:18:37
Speaker
It smells wonderful.
01:18:38
Speaker
They look wonderful, but they're still, they're still raw in the middle.
01:18:41
Speaker
Like I,
01:18:42
Speaker
One raw brownies are awesome.
01:18:45
Speaker
You do not want to overcook your bounty to now.
01:18:47
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.
01:18:54
Speaker
So Wason didn't have as much time on the code as you pot, you would have.
01:18:59
Speaker
So give another, you know, three months or so, or we'll see now.
01:19:03
Speaker
However, this is, you know, the last time Wason's done games, it's been a while.
01:19:10
Speaker
You know, he did WWE and didn't he do the original X-Men or at least part of the original X-Men?
01:19:17
Speaker
Yeah, he did.
01:19:18
Speaker
So it takes a while for them to evolve.
01:19:21
Speaker
But I will say playing the game with Wason, he was super excited about where he's going to take this.
01:19:29
Speaker
So I'm optimistic that he can do that.
01:19:33
Speaker
And considering...
01:19:35
Speaker
we have next level coders now, like game designers.
01:19:39
Speaker
So like what Raymond has added to the mix of being a top level player and being able to do that.
01:19:47
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.
01:19:58
Speaker
There's enough there that
01:20:00
Speaker
weren't there when he has done his last games.
01:20:02
Speaker
And so I'm optimistic that this will all come together as a beautiful machine, but this does take a little time.
01:20:11
Speaker
You're right.
01:20:11
Speaker
It's going to take, I, it was a blast to play though.
01:20:15
Speaker
Right, Colin, you agree with that?
01:20:17
Speaker
Oh, absolutely.
01:20:18
Speaker
I had a fun time shooting it and exploring it.
01:20:21
Speaker
It was, it didn't feel, the first couple games I played on it, I got crushed.
01:20:29
Speaker
I mean, it was hard.
01:20:30
Speaker
So I'm not surprised at all by that gameplay footage that we saw when they were doing their release.
01:20:37
Speaker
Once you found the shots, then you were able to kind of, you can get in the flow.
01:20:41
Speaker
But to you,
01:20:42
Speaker
You guys are talking about, I think, one of your previous episodes, a couple, was it one episode ago, two episodes ago?
01:20:47
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.
01:20:51
Speaker
That pop bumper that's above the little horseshoe area or whatever on the left-hand side.
01:20:58
Speaker
The stargazer side or whatever.
01:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, the stargazer right above that.
01:21:02
Speaker
That thing will kill you.
01:21:05
Speaker
And the other pop bumper will kill you.
01:21:06
Speaker
There's two pop bumpers that are in lower playfield area.
01:21:10
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.
01:21:19
Speaker
This one has two of them.
01:21:22
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
01:21:45
Speaker
I mean, it's got some potential too as far as how the code and the gameplay works.
01:21:50
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.
01:22:03
Speaker
So I think that's a really cool game element if they kind of – if they dive into that.
01:22:07
Speaker
and really explore that aspect of it.
01:22:10
Speaker
It's got some cool, you know, mechs to it.
01:22:13
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.
01:22:20
Speaker
It's such a simple design and it comes across so well.
Rumors and New Releases at Expo
01:22:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:27
Speaker
So Stern has been, I guess they haven't been teasing.
01:22:30
Speaker
We've heard rumors that Metallica is being re-released as a fresh take of,
01:22:37
Speaker
And supposedly before expo, we're getting down to the minutes before expo.
01:22:41
Speaker
Maybe.
01:22:41
Speaker
And we're, we're what four days.
01:22:43
Speaker
Do you think it happens?
01:22:45
Speaker
Do you think code stays the same?
01:22:47
Speaker
Well, what do you think?
01:22:49
Speaker
What do you think we're going to see?
01:22:50
Speaker
Is that what your question is?
01:22:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:51
Speaker
I want to know if you think we see this by expo or at expo.
01:22:55
Speaker
I know way.
01:22:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:57
Speaker
Why would you want to short circuit your, your uncanny expense sales?
01:23:01
Speaker
I mean, they kind of did to Venom last year with Jurassic Park 30.
01:23:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:03
Speaker
True.
01:23:04
Speaker
Um,
01:23:07
Speaker
And Elvira blood red kiss the year before.
01:23:14
Speaker
I, I suspect that something is going to happen.
01:23:19
Speaker
The question is, what will that be?
01:23:22
Speaker
So if I were looking at Metallica, Metallica was a huge seller.
01:23:26
Speaker
Okay.
01:23:26
Speaker
Sure.
01:23:27
Speaker
But still is challenge right now is, are you going to go like full LCD on this?
01:23:35
Speaker
Or are you going to do like a CGC with an expanded DMD but a colorized version so it still maintains?
01:23:46
Speaker
No way.
01:23:47
Speaker
Okay.
01:23:47
Speaker
So you don't think that?
01:23:48
Speaker
No.
01:23:48
Speaker
If I'm running a business, it is a manufacturing business.
01:23:52
Speaker
Okay?
01:23:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:53
Speaker
So I work at a manufacturing company.
01:23:55
Speaker
I grant we manufacture chemicals.
01:23:57
Speaker
But there's still – this is all about standardization.
01:24:00
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.
01:24:10
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.
01:24:16
Speaker
Okay.
01:24:18
Speaker
So CD Metallica footage.
01:24:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:20
Speaker
So is it going to be like concert stuff?
01:24:22
Speaker
That's what I'm assuming.
01:24:23
Speaker
I'm assuming it'll be concert stuff as opposed to like animation stuff, because it's,
01:24:28
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.
01:24:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:51
Speaker
But do you think they'll, they'll tweak the layout at all though?
01:24:54
Speaker
Or do you think they'll leave the layout the same?
01:24:56
Speaker
Cause Metallica is a well-respected game.
01:24:59
Speaker
I don't think you need to tweak it.
01:25:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:01
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.
01:25:07
Speaker
Beatles.
01:25:08
Speaker
They tweaked it a little bit just so it flowed a little better.
01:25:10
Speaker
Right.
01:25:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:11
Speaker
But that was like polishing the rough edges.
01:25:14
Speaker
So do you think this is like a vault version of Metallica with an LCD screen?
01:25:20
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.
01:25:29
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.
01:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, no.
01:25:39
Speaker
And honestly, I mean, I don't want to, because like you said, they've done it.
01:25:43
Speaker
They've remade, granted, as though these are Stern Electronics games, you know, like Sea Witch to Beatles.
01:25:50
Speaker
It's...
01:25:52
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.
01:26:10
Speaker
And I think to your point, there's no deficiency in the physical design of that pinball machine.
01:26:18
Speaker
Okay.
01:26:19
Speaker
And I agree.
01:26:20
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.
01:26:31
Speaker
So I, I guess, okay, this is me just looking into the future and you guys can all mock me.
01:26:37
Speaker
I think it is going to be the same layout, the same rules with an LCD screen with
01:26:45
Speaker
the premium body.
01:26:47
Speaker
So maybe they fix the hammer so it's less of an issue.
01:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:26:55
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.
01:27:04
Speaker
But who knows?
01:27:05
Speaker
I guess that would be my take on it.
01:27:07
Speaker
And maybe they'll do like a limited run on it.
01:27:09
Speaker
There's tons of Metallica games out there.
01:27:11
Speaker
If you want to buy a Metallica, they probably made 10,000 of them, I'm guessing.
01:27:15
Speaker
One just went up for sale here in Utah.
01:27:16
Speaker
I mean, they're available.
01:27:19
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.
01:27:34
Speaker
Okay, would you risk taking the PR hit on undoing a Lyman code?
01:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's where I would not go there.
01:27:45
Speaker
I wouldn't go there from my personal connection with Lyman as limited as it was.
01:27:54
Speaker
Sadly, I didn't get to know him until very close to when he sadly took his life.
01:28:01
Speaker
Plug here for 988 in the suicide hotline and mental health.
01:28:05
Speaker
Take care of each other.
01:28:05
Speaker
Take care of your friends.
01:28:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:07
Speaker
But I don't, yeah, I don't think you should, you should mess with it.
01:28:11
Speaker
I don't think that's a good decision from a legacy standpoint.
01:28:14
Speaker
I think it'd be a foolish decision from a business standpoint as well.
01:28:18
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,
01:28:36
Speaker
Maybe some little extra mini wizard mode or topper mode or something like that.
01:28:41
Speaker
But the basics of that game, I think, are amazing.
01:28:45
Speaker
The one thing they could do to add using an LCD screen is make communication better.
01:28:54
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.
01:29:03
Speaker
You're like, how is this working?
01:29:05
Speaker
What does this mean?
01:29:06
Speaker
And you have to kind of solve the puzzle and delve into the world of Lyman's mind now.
01:29:12
Speaker
as you're playing the game.
01:29:13
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.
01:29:22
Speaker
And this is going to, you know, somehow communicate better with the player.
01:29:25
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
01:29:28
Speaker
I agree.
01:29:29
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.
01:29:40
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.
01:29:49
Speaker
I don't know if you could do that without messing up the code.
01:29:52
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
01:30:10
Speaker
Other than that, man, Expo, there's a ton of stuff.
01:30:13
Speaker
Avatar, I wasn't as fortunate as Scott to go to Chicago last month.
01:30:19
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.
01:30:29
Speaker
But, you know, just I'm excited.
01:30:32
Speaker
It's that time of year.
01:30:35
Speaker
And I kind of...
01:30:37
Speaker
I kind of put, I don't know, I kind of live for this time of year.
01:30:41
Speaker
I doubled down on everything else so that way I could come out and join.
01:30:45
Speaker
You know, one thing I want to talk about before we wrap this all up, though, and it kind of blows my mind.
01:30:50
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.
01:30:55
Speaker
And I think, I know, it made me laugh when Eric Meniere of JJP showed up
01:31:03
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
01:31:29
Speaker
to have fun and get some, some giveaways and stuff like that.
01:31:33
Speaker
If I come early enough, I will love to crash the party.
01:31:37
Speaker
I'll sneak in under the table or something.
01:31:39
Speaker
Well, it's Thursday night.
01:31:40
Speaker
So if you can get in there before five, it's five to eight.
01:31:43
Speaker
So, um,
01:31:45
Speaker
But congrats to Colin for putting this on from Kinesis slash This Week in Pinball.
01:31:49
Speaker
Erica's Pinball Journey for stepping up.
01:31:51
Speaker
She's gotten a lot of the sponsors too.
01:31:53
Speaker
I've helped a little bit, just not a bunch.
01:31:55
Speaker
And I apologize to them.
01:31:57
Speaker
And Colin's like, you know, sometimes it's just the push.
01:32:00
Speaker
Like the Joker says, right?
01:32:02
Speaker
Insanity is just a little push off the cliffs.
01:32:04
Speaker
It just takes a little... Anywho, sorry.
01:32:06
Speaker
I like this dark night.
01:32:06
Speaker
And speaking of the cliffs of insanity, I'm excited to play Princess Bride coming up.
01:32:11
Speaker
So this will be my first hands on it.
01:32:12
Speaker
And it'll be fun to touch base with Colin.
01:32:16
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.
01:32:23
Speaker
I think that would be... That's just side tangent.
01:32:27
Speaker
You're going down another rabbit hole, Alice.
01:32:29
Speaker
Exactly.
01:32:31
Speaker
Well, at least I'm an adult, Alice, then.
01:32:34
Speaker
I'm of consenting to wear that fabric.
01:32:39
Speaker
The tattered towel.
01:32:40
Speaker
Just move on.
01:32:40
Speaker
Just move on.
01:32:42
Speaker
The joke's not landing.
01:32:43
Speaker
We need to go.
01:32:45
Speaker
Well, cool.
01:32:46
Speaker
Colin, is there anything else that we should have asked that you want to emphasize on Princess Bride?
Community Interactions and Merchandise
01:32:54
Speaker
No, I don't think so.
01:32:55
Speaker
I mean, Josh, you talked about it before.
01:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, the production is going strong right now.
01:32:59
Speaker
They're on batch two of five, I think, in terms of they batched the orders.
01:33:04
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.
01:33:11
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
01:33:26
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
01:33:45
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
01:34:00
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.
01:34:13
Speaker
I found this fun little trick.
01:34:16
Speaker
I would love to start hearing those types of stories.
01:34:18
Speaker
And this is arcade ready.
01:34:21
Speaker
It has a coin box.
01:34:22
Speaker
It has the ability to put on location.
01:34:24
Speaker
So this could be something that a...
01:34:27
Speaker
like a route runner could really buy because you don't have to buy a new game.
01:34:32
Speaker
You can just swap it out.
01:34:35
Speaker
Correct.
01:34:35
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.
01:34:44
Speaker
All the customers are loving it and amazed with the, with how it plays and the experience of it.
01:34:50
Speaker
So yeah, I just,
01:34:52
Speaker
I put so much into lots of little nuance into the, the rules.
01:34:58
Speaker
I'm excited for people to discover that and, and, you know, talk about that and post about that.
01:35:03
Speaker
So I'm just going to, I'll let, I'll let people discover all those things that I haven't talked about.
01:35:10
Speaker
Thanks, Colin.
01:35:10
Speaker
Thank you so much.
01:35:11
Speaker
If people want to get ahold of you, how can they do that?
01:35:15
Speaker
You can find me on, on, on Facebook and also on Ray days discord.
01:35:21
Speaker
I'm on there quite a bit as well.
01:35:23
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.
01:35:30
Speaker
You can find me on there.
01:35:32
Speaker
Awesome.
01:35:33
Speaker
And if you want to get ahold of us and you're not at expo well, you can do it via Facebook.
01:35:40
Speaker
You can do it via Instagram.
01:35:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:42
Speaker
at our Gmail at LoserkidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
01:35:46
Speaker
There's multiple ways via the socials.
01:35:48
Speaker
Those that ordered hats, I am picking them up Monday, and I will contact you on shipping and stuff like that.
01:35:54
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?
01:36:03
Speaker
Like, what is with all these hats?
01:36:05
Speaker
I got to say, though, it impresses me every year how many hats I have to take to expo because they just...
01:36:12
Speaker
And I have to thank Scott, too, because he does give away a good amount of hats to manufacturers and stuff like that.
01:36:19
Speaker
But I was doing the math, and we've sold or given away more than, I think it was like 300 hats.
01:36:27
Speaker
It's insane.
01:36:28
Speaker
Nice.
01:36:29
Speaker
I always smile when I see him floating around, though.
01:36:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing.
01:36:34
Speaker
So thank you for all your guys' support.
01:36:36
Speaker
And don't be afraid to come up and shake hands and talk to us.
01:36:41
Speaker
Give us a fist bump and play a game.
01:36:44
Speaker
Yeah, and pull Doug Puerta because now he had the shoes and
01:36:48
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