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Pokemon by Stern Pinball | Reveal Podcast
1.3k Plays4 days ago
Pokemon by Stern Pinball is Here! Jack Danger, George Gomez, Tanio Klyce, Andrew Wilkening, and Josh Henderson are here to talk about everything that went into this game!
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Transcript
Introduction and Excitement for Pokémon Pinball Reveal
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the loser kid pinball podcast. It's a reveal day. Everyone's excited. I'm excited. This is like a dream come true. Scott is with me. My co-captain is always right.
00:00:18
Speaker
Yep. I'm here. I'm so excited. you other People here too. Yes. I'm messing up intros. If you want Pokemon, cause I know you want this game. Who are you reaching out to Scott? So I'll reach out to Zach and Nicole mini at flipping out pinball. I am super excited for this game. And I actually have told people I have a rental property that I rented an Airbnb and I'm planning on putting this in the property so this will be featured prominently in my rental yes bring bring all those new people into pinball right fantastic speaking of bringing people into pinball we're going to start with the design team we've got quite the eclectic group of people here let's start with the lead designer jack will you introduce yourself and kind of guess pass us around the table
Meet the Design Team: Jack Danger and George Gomez
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. ah My name is Jack Danger. I'm new to pinball, but I'm excited to be here. um It was a really awesome project to work on. I got to kick this off and um I'm co-designing it with the illustrious George Gomez.
00:01:16
Speaker
Hello, everybody. I'm George Gomez and I help Jack with the game. And with us, we have Tanya Kleiss, who is the lead developer, and a couple of his ah close cohorts on this project, um Andrew Wilkening and Josh Henderson.
00:01:35
Speaker
Hi, everybody. How's it going? Awesome. Thanks everyone for joining. Like I really appreciate I know right now is like it's it's down to the wire. It's game time. we're We're recording right before reveal. And so I know that there's a lot on your plate. So first off, thank you for taking time out of your day to join us on the show. um But first, okay, Jack, I've known you for a while now, since you've been streaming and everything like that. You've talked about Pokemon as long as I can remember. So tell us how this came about and how it was working on this license for you.
00:02:07
Speaker
ah This came about by complaining and asking over and over and over and over and over and over again. um Yeah, this was sort of a no-brainer license. Obviously, that's why I talked about it so much back in the
Designing the Pokémon Pinball Machine: Inspiration and Challenges
00:02:20
Speaker
day. But um yeah, as far as like um getting this license, if you talk to Jody, our lead licensing guy, he'll say like he had to work on this for quite some time to get our hands on this. um And when he did, you know it was just like this...
00:02:36
Speaker
it's It's wild that this didn't already exist as a pinball machine because they do have a history with pinball. um But there's also like so many, there's like a million different ways you can think of approaching a Pokemon pinball machine, right? um So, you know, starting a a game design doc with just ideas with the rest of the team, you know, sitting with Tanya and ah Josh Henderson and just trying to like flush out like what are all the things, like shoot for the shoot for the moon, like what what can we do here?
00:03:06
Speaker
um And trying to, you know, think of like, what kind of integrations we can take from or inspirations we can take from like other avenues of the Pokemon world and ah understanding like talking to Pokemon.
00:03:23
Speaker
They didn't say no to anything up front. They just said like, we don't want to stifle any of your creativity. Just throw everything at us and like, what do you got? And yeah, Tanya, if you want to talk a little bit ah ah about like how that process went, the daydreaming process.
00:03:39
Speaker
but Well, we dreamed a lot of dreams. um Yeah, so we we we knew that this game was was going to be something we we hoped very much that it's going to introduce a lot of new people to to pinball.
00:03:55
Speaker
And so um we definitely wanted to keep it very easy to learn, difficult to master kind of style. I know um and took a lot of inspiration.
00:04:07
Speaker
But so, so the, some of the key elements were, uh, you know, like what are the the key things you need for a Pokemon machine? One is a Pokeball. Uh, you need, you need Pikachu at the very least. And you you need, uh, you need what we want. We like to have in pinball, at least I, um, there is, is some sort of adversary, some sort of big bad guy that you're going to be battling. And, um,
00:04:32
Speaker
And the the character Meowth, who's the only talking Pokemon, is is the the person, is the the character that came to to mind. And so, and that's that's who who we have. it's team It's Team Rocket, led by, you hear the voice of Meowth, you also will hear the leader of Team Rocket is is Giovanni, and he's the real leader behind the whole thing, the dastardly or he's not so dastardly, but yeah, he's the one that's that's it's trying to take your Pokemon and use them for business purposes.
00:05:03
Speaker
And it's so so those are the sort of the key things. And then we also talked a lot about like which there's so many different Pokemon, how to ah how to how to pick like which ones we're going to focus on. um and And we definitely, as um we we focused on the first generation as far as your team, um And so we we went through that and decided to to pick Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur since they're all the starter, ah all the pokemon first partner Pokemon from the first generation.
00:05:38
Speaker
that everybody I think knows. um as hundred and There's 180 of them in the game and there's more coming. Yeah. yeah Yeah. yeah the The initial like like paper and pencil idea was, you know, the Pokemon that I think everyone will remember is the original 151. Right. So um if you're new to Pokemon or if you're like you grew up with it, everyone remembers like that first gen chunk of Pokemon. So ah we lean heavily into that sort of Kanto region collection of Pokemon. um But we, with our game, we're told we had to be region agnostic. So even though we're leaning heavily on those original 151 with a smattering of like all generations,
00:06:22
Speaker
Our area is our own area in this Pokemon game, um which allows us a lot more freedoms to integrate hecking everybody from the Pokemon universe, Pokemon catalog there.
00:06:34
Speaker
By the way, referencing something Jack mentioned earlier, um the actual name of the game is Pokemon by Sturm Pinball. It is not Pokemon Pinball.
00:06:46
Speaker
um for obvious reasons, because that title existed as a product um a long time ago. And so um so the the game is, you'll see it referred to as Pokemon by Stern Pinball.
00:07:00
Speaker
ah It's not, you know, it's like, I think ah on all the official stuff, it says Pokemon by Stern Pinball. It will never say Pokemon Pinball or poke the Pokemon Pinball Machine, et cetera.
00:07:12
Speaker
True, true. Because there was there was two or three games back on the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, which which is amazing. Like, I love that because that was one of the biggest questions. Well, I guess two of the biggest questions when you come to a Pokemon game, right? There was originally video games. It came as a video game, then as an animated series. And so I know that like um your teams have spoke before, like it's really hard to do 8 bit because it's just very exhausting when it comes to software, when it comes to animation and stuff like that. And so I think it was smart going with the actual animated series because then you get those clips, you get the voice actors and stuff like that as well, but also be able to include all the Pokemon. I agree that the one first 151 is the most iconic, but it is cool that they were like, hey, you need to include everything that we've got.
Game Mechanics and Design Evolution
00:07:56
Speaker
They were, um they're very interested in and in the game being evergreen. So um they didn't want us, they specifically didn't want us stuck in some ah sort of ancient history of Pokemon. So they wanted us to be,
00:08:13
Speaker
able to kind of like they're going there you know they're they're ah always moving right they're always doing stuff and so they kind of wanted us to feel that way yeah totally like this not being ash's journey means that it allows us to for the foreseeable future keep adding pokemon as pokemon are developed and come out and like um again, just affords us a lot of freedoms to do some cool stuff that otherwise we would be handcuffed to region specific storylines and ideas and such.
00:08:46
Speaker
um So yeah, there's there's a lot of cool... well What's also awesome is on top of like... the all all the rules and stuff they have in place like they're very meticulous about their ip and they should be they're like the biggest ip ever um one of the cool freedoms they did afford us is when you look at a pokedex the the object that keeps track of all your pokemon every region uh as we come to find out had their own specific pokedex and we weren't since we're region agnostic we couldn't use any of those specific Pokedexes. So they let us create our very own Pokedex for this game, so which is wild. So when you look at the game and look the Pokedex comes up on screen, you'll see this very unique to Stern Pinball Pokedex. It's got like flippers for buttons and stuff. It's pretty cool.
00:09:36
Speaker
They also and and that's mirrored on the on the the play field as well. the the The captive ball that's right to the right of the center is the Pokédex. So you do smash that to to use your Pokédex to scan Pokémon.
00:09:48
Speaker
Can you guys talk about how the the team approach to this game came about and and tell people more about the process? Yeah, i mean, I think so, Jack, um Jack and Tanya started down the path as in very in a very conventional fashion to how teams work at Stern.
00:10:10
Speaker
um I think at that time, ah you i'd forget, i think I know Andrew was on Star Wars. I don't know, Josh, were you were you with us when they started or did you join? He was very early on transitioning on to the project. Yeah. So my previous game that I worked on was King Kong with the Terra Island.
00:10:30
Speaker
Right, right. So our time frame, I think, or March or April. Yeah. So so i Jack and Tanya started down the path um in very in very conventional fashion.
00:10:42
Speaker
I think um as as the company determined the need for Jack in this other role, it's ah it's a role that only Jack can fulfill. Right. We don't have anyone else that has that combination of talents.
00:10:55
Speaker
and skill that can do the you know some of the community folk facing up stuff that we want him doing. So there were a couple of things were happening. um They were struggling a little bit with, with they were like, i don't know, was it Whitewood 2 or something?
00:11:13
Speaker
and and It might have been Whitewood, yeah. Yeah, I don't remember. but but And and and i think I think the right side, you guys were going, there was a lot of back and forth on the right side of the game. um and and And time was time was ah was ticking. And so we became you know concerned that, hey, time's ticking.
00:11:36
Speaker
Jack's got a ah pretty full plate and the marketing guys are throwing stuff at him you know with a fire hose. And so what do we do here? And and and you know i think I think a lot of what I did is refine the architecture.
00:11:53
Speaker
Um, so I took, you know, I mean, you'll recognize a bunch of my signature stuff, but the reality is that it's Jack's layout. um I basically, i you know, I might have flipped some stuff and switched some things. um i took ah I took a ah pretty heavy hand in some of the ramp designs on the right side um of the game when you see it.
00:12:14
Speaker
um But the toy concepts came from Jack and Tanya and the layout came from Jack and Tanya. It's interesting. Yeah. people are saying that Jack had an amazing layout and that I, basically, uh, you know, chopped it down to my style or whatever. I don't, um I don't know. I saw something. on Someone tried overlaying like some of your old designs on top of this. And they're see George, this is a one-to-one transformers. performers it just This is just transformers. read i'm yeah yeah so yeah it's not it' And so, um cool so interesting is, is that, um,
00:12:52
Speaker
ah You know, and um Jack will tell you the layout is, was it was a fan. um It was a fan style layout with with a you know with ah with, you know, the the battle arena was always in the center.
00:13:05
Speaker
ah i mean, i know that the stuff I did to it did not change the um conceptual direction ah of the game and at all. And I also think it's, i mean, i think it say its real it it does,
00:13:20
Speaker
um It has a bunch of signature stuff, which Jack chose to do. I had nothing to, with I didn't tell him, you know, ah put the put the sneaky, you know, put the side duck sneak on the left side, which is going to fire the ball across the play field like the bond scoop.
00:13:39
Speaker
I didn't say anything like that. I just like, I didn't, you know, what what's cool. What's cool is, uh, I forget who posted it, but there was a Reddit post where someone took a screenshot of the leak and they were dissecting every area of it to show like where I might've pulled inspiration from for this like layout.
00:13:59
Speaker
And while it is a fan, they, they were dead on. It's like a lot of the things that I was inspired by with like, you know, you know, game show and junkyard and judge dread and Elvira's house of horror, like all of that stuff was sort of like, you know, callbacks to a lot of that cool stuff. And it just happened to create a layout that looked like something George george would have done. It was awesome. think that You know, you, when you see the, the, the right side ramps, the combination of the back, that, that out that outside back shot. I mean, I did that on NBA fast break, right. The, ah the outer orbit going up the ramp and coming around, know, And that, you know, I like the steel ramps.
00:14:39
Speaker
And so I created that that entire array on the right side. Originally, Jack had the, he had the captive balls to the right of the ramp. Yeah.
00:14:52
Speaker
and going underneath the ramp. And I, and the one thing I didn't like is that it, so much of it was hidden. So I sort of, I've, I swapped them. Um, the other, the other, uh, issue was that right orbit was super tight. And, and so I, I did some, you know, I did some gymnastics to get that to work better.
00:15:15
Speaker
And I'm actually super happy with the way the thing shoots. Yeah, the entry turned out fantastic. you know and i was like Tweaking is like 70% making. we you know we had us We had an issue with that center shot. The center shot was not working. yeah we got We got that working. And then I think you had a single lane into the pops.
00:15:39
Speaker
Yep. I had her a second lane and i i I spent a lot of time with one of the engineers, um Mason Dooley. i We turned that whole area into Swiss cheese, trying to get the pop-pumpers to work and we did we got it. um the other thing the The other big architectural change that I made was I killed your rollover buttons. Yeah, so the rollover buttons that are on Walking Dead, we we were, i don't know how to say this, we were allowed to move forward with like experimenting with those because we wanted them on Pokemon, but they're like, oh, we could also use these on Walking Dead. And so Walking Dead got in front of us and they got to use it. And then when we tried to put it on our game, all of them were like in sort of like a power stroke and it was messing up all the shots. Yeah.
00:16:28
Speaker
Jack, your your your initial intent was that people were just going to randomly roll over them or something. Exactly, yeah. Right? You guys had, Tanya, you guys had talked about there was some rule tied to that, right?
00:16:38
Speaker
kind of Kind of similar to like World Cup soccer. Exactly. okay Yeah. Yeah. Like the thing like diglets popping up or ia who knows what like we had a couple of ideas. I'm sure imagining older school like Xenon has those little rollers over the top like ah the little buttons or like roll over array there and like tic-tac-toe type games. But with the power light hurts it's like a whole different thing you know from yeah mechanical it's like zap and bow ping you know.
00:17:03
Speaker
Yeah, i was they were they were killing every shot. So I was just like, okay they I mean, the they were lofting the ball, they were creating wild, you know, wild reactions. And said and I tried everything. Yeah. And then i and one day i went to see Jack and i said, guess what? I'm killing these rollers. It's funny because like looking like I love to pull inspiration from older games.
00:17:27
Speaker
um But sometimes when you try to take that stuff and you bring it to a more modern powered game, some of that stuff just doesn't work because our flippers now compared to what like Bally and Williams were using like.
00:17:39
Speaker
We have like rocket ships, man. These things are like cruising the ball. So the tiniest little bumps that they're hitting, instead of just casually rolling over it, now they're just like shooting to the moon.
00:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And i mean to the advantage of this game, that all turns into like really awesome combo systems. And like the the game's got really cool flow. And then the area right in the middle, of the arena area where the Meowth Bloom comes down, the geometry is really cool. like it It bounces around in there. On the premium LE, we have a magnet, so you get even more random bouncing. But you've got some really cool ricochets. like You shoot up there, and it let one side of the target go right across and hit the other side, then come down.
00:18:18
Speaker
And it usually is a pretty nice feed. like yeah, and i left ah the pop bumper exposed up there too, so there's even more like weirdness. Even if like on the Pro you don't have the magnet to generate more chaos, that pop bumper is still exposed in there, so you're still getting all sorts of like wild interactions. yeah um The other thing is the Meowth balloon, while the you know Jack may have been looking at at Junkyard, the reality is that the functionality of it um came from the Batman crane.
00:18:48
Speaker
So there's a spring in there inside of Meowth. And when you hit the underside of the balloon, you know, he he can react in all these different ways. The mechanical engineers, ah Tom Malcolm, did ah an amazing job of that thing senses motion in every direction with a single sensor and um really super clever. it's ah and And it was all done with the arrangement of the geometry.
00:19:16
Speaker
And there's the spring in there. Actually, what's interesting about it is that when you, when you hit it, it has that Batman crane thing where it'll fire the ball back at you. So there's, you know, you it, it absorbs some energy and it puts some back.
00:19:29
Speaker
Um, and so it, it feels great. Um, and plus, you know, these guys have got me out chattering, chattering away. So, um, yeah, that's a lot of fun.
00:19:44
Speaker
So, um, Tanya, you've made a bunch of like, all your codes are great. I don't, I don't look at a single one of the games that you've touched and it's like, like, uh, I don't like playing that game. Like every game I walk up to, it's, it's, it's amazing.
Rules, Artwork, and Authenticity in Pokémon Pinball
00:19:57
Speaker
I've got to ask, have you used any rules from those previous games or been inspired by them to, for Pokemon?
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't, I mean, I take inspiration from, mean, probably both, um, both Deadpool and Foo Fighters, I generally start with Monster Bash rules like and and everything goes from there. So I'm more of a Yeah, I like simple stuff. So personally, like the structure, especially for this game to be accessible, like that that golden era of Medieval Madness, Monster Bash and Attack from Mars is definitely what we all agreed was was the way to go. so each each of the four shots for your team members has, you know, you shoot it twice, it lights mode, you shoot it again and it starts it. And then and same thing. It's very simple kind of stuff that's very accessible for someone who had had no idea what they're doing.
00:20:46
Speaker
But then on top of that, we we we've added some combo systems, and and some of that took inspiration both from like the from Deadpool, though the weapons in Deadpool, leading up to a big mech suit multiball. We're not going to have any mechs in this game, but but the combo system, the Pokeball combo, will you collect Pokeballs and eventually in later code will lead to some cool stuff.
00:21:07
Speaker
um And on top of that, we have Josh talk about we have another combo system as well the ev you know the evolution combos yeah there's like eight secret combos i mean i like secret combos in games like you i did all the banana combos and kong so it's just a it's just a fun little you know side quest if you will to go for so there's eight of them and um there's some cool stuff that we have planned once you get through all of them which is really cool that's like really theme integrated to me like those that are not aware of an evie it's similar to imagine like a corgi puppy i think that's the closest you could say but it can involve like eight different ways so that's really cool like thinking of combos because you can definitely combine evie into multiple different things so
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, the thing that I learned from Kong is like when I'm so in general, when I'm working on rules of the game, I just like to flip the game. And that's where I usually just kind of organically come up with rules. And many of the combos I found on Kong, I just found from just playing the game, like left orbit to the river shot. That's cool. And I felt like the game should acknowledge you for doing something cool like that. So that's kind of how the ah the different combinations for the EV evolution combos came to be just from playing the game.
00:22:20
Speaker
I mean, as you you can see here, like I rely on ah you know other other people for for like the deeper rule sets and things like that. I mean, both on Deadpool and, ah you know, we had Timmy and Mike Vindicore both contributed quite a lot to the rules. And then on Foo Fighters, mean, it was both Jack and me, but also Raymond Davidson was quite involved in the and the rules on that.
00:22:40
Speaker
um So i'm sort of like the I set the vision of like what you know what the overall structure is going to be, but but like then Josh came on and started really flushing it out into into deeper deeper pinball stuff. And then Andrew came on even later and started flushing out. We have a separate component that's even more Pokemon-ish kind of gameplay.
00:23:00
Speaker
So, you know, one thing, super high level, we, like Jack mentioned in the beginning, one of the things that's really important is it's obvious that this game is going to touch a lot of people that maybe don't know pinball or maybe new to pinball, or it's going to attract people that are playing for the first time. So I think we all felt it had to be super approachable.
00:23:25
Speaker
And, and so the the, you know, the architecture was about making it super approachable and the, you know, the rules can, can give, you know, the, the, the more advanced players, uh, the interest, uh, beyond, you know, beyond the the stuff on the play field. So, um, the other thing that was like really key was the notion of being true to the franchise. And so for example, one ah hundred percent of the Pokemon drawings on the game,
00:23:56
Speaker
are by the Pokemon company. So we didn't illustrate, we didn't interpret, um and their attention to detail is beyond anything i've ever encountered with any licensor so the line weights the scale of one pokemon relative to another when you overlap them the body positions ah in the composition um not to mention color palettes not to mention this color next to that color i mean the amount of detail that went into this they were looking at our stuff with the magnifying glass
00:24:33
Speaker
um You know, Jeremy Packer led the art charge and him and his daughter did the bulk of the art and Haley. And they, um you know, they did an amazing job at compositing material that they could not alter.
00:24:50
Speaker
in such a way that it still fits and works into the layout of a pinball machine. Right. So um and that was I mean, that was an effort that i it's really hard to ah explain to you how complicated that is.
00:25:09
Speaker
But the reality is that you know when you see it, it's a Pokemon pinball machine and it's it all makes sense. It all looks like it belongs. um and But he it was torturous work.
00:25:27
Speaker
I say I gotta say it does look like you literally pulled it from the Pokemon universe, which it makes sense if there was that much restriction or ah oversight when it came to the. Yeah, so you guys hit it spot on. I gotta say I personally and it feels the artwork for Pokemon feels kind of childish, but hey, this is a child's game, right? Like, yeah, but but it very much. This looks just like if you set it up next to any other Pokemon product.
00:25:52
Speaker
I think you guys nailed it right on the head for their franchise. Absolutely. I want to kick it back to Jack for a second. um One of the things that convinced me so solid of this too, you'd said on stream, like Pokemon is the top grossing franchise. And you threw out, this is like a four or five year old number, 92 billion at the time. Like, oh no, it's 288 billion. Oh my goodness. So i mean this is insane.
00:26:16
Speaker
There's no, um there's no franchise even close to it. i yeah like I think Potter was 50 billion. i think yeah um i think Seth has a slide in the presentation that the dealers and maybe the influencers got that where he added like Star Wars, Marvel and a bunch of others. And the combined addition of all of the other big franchises doesn't touch Pokemon. Yeah. ah It's still smaller. So I got to applaud you guys for getting this franchise because this this is an amazing stepping stone for people that are in Pinball to bring them in.
00:26:53
Speaker
um Was there anything specific, Jack, that you wanted? You're just like, it's Pokemon. I've always thought of this ever since I thought Pokemon. um I wanted it to spit cards out, but boy, that that's not a thing. and You never know. That may still happen, Jack. the Just from a pure logistics standpoint of security, people that fill up those Pokemon vending machines have security guards with them, and we don't need pinball operators needing a security detail to refill their pinball machines. You never know, Jack.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah, instead of the coin deposit on the coin door, the ah the dollar bill, you just shoot out a card. Yeah, exactly. Well, that was one of the rumors, though. like You have like 100 or 1,000 because there's 1,025 Pokemon. Your LEs all be 1,025 and then have a specific card and that addition to that. I was like, that's a lot of a lot of work, though. The numbers, even even the numbers, that the conversation came up because we published...
00:27:52
Speaker
the numbers of each Pokemon. And so everybody was assuming that the, that the LEs were a a specific Pokemon and mc branded yeah yeah. And the Pokemon company um warned us not to do that because that would be, enough you know, it it really, it creates chaos for the ones that people want. Right. And so um I think, and they've had, they've had some extreme cases that they just don't want us to do that. There's also the case for like, you know, we spoke about ideas on like how to do LE packages or
Collaboration with Pokémon and Marketing Strategies
00:28:26
Speaker
even blind bags. So when you opened up your e LE, you don't know which one you got sort of thing, like very Pokemon card opening. But at the end of the day, if you're spending $13,000 on something, you better frickin' know what you're getting. know You don't want to open this up and like, frick. The conversation did come up, right? And and at one time we were we played we also considered playing up the colors more.
00:28:49
Speaker
And um we we considered, you know, they different color LEs. um ah We had all those conversations, guys. we We landed where we landed for a whole host of reasons after really, really kind of thinking through it.
00:29:06
Speaker
This is such a huge license. how does it How does it come apart getting all of these people together lined up to do a pinball machine? It was super hard. was like just you know It was a lot of work.
00:29:22
Speaker
um I think it was a lot of work. I think these guys will tell you that we had we had a lot of a lot of... It was a roller coaster ride for the development team.
00:29:34
Speaker
I think that, you know, in, in um, uh, things we, you know, maybe things we, we thought we were going to be able to do things that, you know, um the, the franchise is, very, um, designed and like their strategy is very, um,
00:29:57
Speaker
cohesive, laid out, you know, and so, you know, we fit in a place and, and I think the challenge is to execute on this game within the place that you fit.
00:30:10
Speaker
Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'd like to add onto that. I mean, part of a lot of the complexity, I mean, we we did so the development team spent a tremendous amount of time um working with the Pokemon company on this, and they spent um I mean, they put a lot of time and effort. They have a very large organization of of people who who handle the licensing and of of every aspect of Pokemon. And so we we've sort of pushed that. Well, not sort of we pushed them there. the The group we started with was was toys and and and merchandise and physical physical stuff. But
00:30:44
Speaker
um They'd never made a pinball machine before. And a pinball machine is a lot more complicated than anything that this particular, ah the the first, you know, the group that we worked with. And we ended up, they ended up learning a lot, um like reaching out to their AV department, to their sound people. and and And like all like all the way through the organization um sort of pushing like like how they there's the first time they've done like sound music licensing. But i mean, they other people in the building have. And so they they sort of did a lot of cross department talking.
00:31:16
Speaker
Nothing, nothing they've ever um nothing they've ever worked on is as complex as the pinball machine. We may have also like helped Pokemon in a way expand what they're capable of doing in some of these avenues because they they had to branch out so much to like ask permissions for things. And when it came to like permissions, it was like we had to ask our team at Pokemon. They had to ask their team and then that team had to go to Japan.
00:31:43
Speaker
And it was this like, did we make it all the way up? OK, is it coming back down with a yes? If it was a no. We got to he we got figure this out. so but there was There was a form to fill out for if you want Pikachu speaking in the game, it can't come from the TV show and it can't come from a spend like. You have to have the original voice actor from Japan doing the voiceover. So there's a form that we filled out and like you know we wrote about 80 different lines and it all comes out saying saying the words, the syllables, Pika, Pikachu, that kind of stuff. But each one of them has a different emotional content.
00:32:18
Speaker
And it was a form that we submitted. And then that went to their group. They approved everything. They said, hey, come back and give us some time. you know, like, should this be three seconds or two seconds? And then that resubmitted. Then they scheduled the the the recording session. And then about a month later, we got back this incredible sound package from them. So think about think about the um the breadth of stuff in the pinball machine. So the sculpts had to be approved by the same people that approved toys.
00:32:44
Speaker
Right. And and things like printed materials, ah two twodi dimensional printed materials were approved by people that approve those kinds of things. And then, of course, you've got the video components and the audio components. They had never, ever had to marry all this stuff.
00:33:03
Speaker
Right. um You know, a toy goes in a box. um with some printed material, but it doesn't contain video. And, you know, it may contain audio, but it it doesn't contain video, right? Or live updates for that. Right, right. Or any speech calls from Meowth, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So um one thing, Tanya, I think one thing you you should talk about is you and Andrew should talk about like just things like the battles and, you know, just how we had, to you know, ah some of the things, of the environments and how we had to handle some of that stuff.
00:33:37
Speaker
Um, just the notion of, you know, uh, discover train, um you know, that, that whole thing. Sure. Sure. So, yeah, I mean the, there I'll start and I'll hand it off to Andrew, but, but the, um,
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah, you'll see there's the discover, catch, train, battle mechanic, which is which is a whole other mechanic going on that happens in main play. You explore the play field. I mean, basically you hit switches and you make progress and a a Pokemon will spawn.
00:34:04
Speaker
Like 182 different Pokemon can spawn in our And coming.
00:34:08
Speaker
we're coming And more coming. Yeah. And and there's there's four different areas in our in our game. You'll see a map on the playfield of forest, lake, mountain and desert. And each one has their own characteristics of who spawns there.
00:34:22
Speaker
And um I mean, I have all the books here. You know, I've got I've got this one and I've got this one. But what it took, it took. What it really takes is a real Pokemon master to to really give advice. And that's that's when Andrew came on, both both like an awesome pinball player, but also like a Pokemon card game and video game and and just a Pokemon you know dude. so So he helped a lot.
00:34:46
Speaker
go all sort to yeah i well I joined Stern just this past June and I got straight to the Star Wars project. But as soon as I heard that we were tackling Pokemon, I was like, I need to be on this this project. I mean, speaking of dream themes, this is it for me, right?
00:35:01
Speaker
So it was really exciting to try and merge the intuitive sense that comes to a pinball player with the intuitive sense that comes to a Pokemon, you know, enjoyer, player, consumer, et cetera.
00:35:13
Speaker
So trying to merge these two worlds into things that make sense for both worlds was really the challenge. So with catching, for example, you're just navigating the playfield as you would, like walking through the tall grass or just in Pokemon Go, just kind of exploring new areas.
00:35:29
Speaker
And eventually you get an encounter chance and you decide, well, let me take this on, let me not. So by that, we hit the captive ball stack. Once you're there, then you're chasing after this Pokemon and trying to, you know, chase it until you can catch up to it. And you can use berries on the playfield to kind of yeah you know, from a pinball sense, enhance your hurry up, start over your hurry up.
00:35:48
Speaker
But in a Pokemon sense to, you know, try and slow it down so you can catch up to it, right? And eventually it ends at that Pokeball mech. um on the premium le of course we go into the subway on the pro you go up through the ramp and we have an up post that'll hold it so you can enjoy you know this light show and then then again on the premium le the you know animations with the pokeball um that you know i think a pokemon fan will really appreciate and kind of a you know enjoy seeing and then of course besides catching there's battling and trying to merge kind of what a Pokemon player would expect with what a pinball player expects.
00:36:24
Speaker
you know And we can lean a little bit on what people are familiar with in Deadpool, which had its own fighting mechanism, right, or a mechanic system. um Merging those two worlds together with all the typing, which we've kind of simplified to you know spare the pinball world from having to learn the massive 18 by 18 grid of type matchups.
00:36:44
Speaker
um But communicating some of that information to pinball players with faster flashing and slower flashing for typing, advantaging, and you know extra points.
00:36:55
Speaker
But then something that I think a Pokemon player can walk up and kind of intuit just, oh, green and purple when I'm playing Bulbasaur, that's grass and poison. And like, oh, the guy on the screen is a water type.
00:37:07
Speaker
I'm going to hit the green shots and do extra grass damage, right? you know That's just out of the box for a Pokemon player, but for a pinball player who's never touched the stuff, they just see a faster flashing and a slower flashing light, so hopefully that gets them through that.
00:37:21
Speaker
And they can both you know move through this game in the same way, but with a different knowledge base and with a different experience walking up to it.
Community Engagement and Future Designs
00:37:31
Speaker
um And that's my goal.
00:37:33
Speaker
trying I think we go i think you did ah you did a remarkable job with the colors on the lighting. Totally. The insert lighting colors throughout the game and the integration with the expression lights on the LEDs, both on the speaker panel the
00:37:52
Speaker
on the cabinet lights and all all the stuff is like really seamlessly put together and um i mean i i play the colors right as i go i know what i'm doing because i'm playing i play the colors and i so i think more so than in anything i've seen recently even from us you know i play the colors Appreciate it. Yeah.
00:38:15
Speaker
So Andrew, um do you get to pick a Pokemon that you use to battle or is it is it kind of assigned to you? How does that work with the battles? So you start the game off and you've got the four Gen 1 starter Pokemon out of the box. So you've got Bulbasaur, Squirtle, Charmander and Pikachu.
00:38:32
Speaker
So you've really got the tools at your disposal to take on basically anybody um as you kind of move from the forest, which has the bug and the grass types, So the lake, which has a lot of water types featured.
00:38:44
Speaker
So you have the tools at your disposal from from the start button to really kind of make your way through the Pokemon world. Can you evolve them too? We're still working with Pokemon to figure out exactly how deep we're going to get into that space.
00:38:59
Speaker
But you know coming from the Pokemon world with, you know i mean, I learned how to read playing Pokemon Yellow. So like i you know I wish I could just drag and drop all of that straight from the Pokemon games into it.
00:39:13
Speaker
But like we've discussed before, you know Pokemon's a really complex license with a lot of stakeholders on their end. So we're working with them. Yeah. One cool thing is you're going to be able to collect them on i see So there's going to be a collection. So as you collect them in the game, they'll show up in the IC app and you're when you're logged in. Tanya, can you show your, there it is. There it Pokemon collection. yeah so And there's like, I can ah hit that button just to see just the ones I've collected so far. o And then of course, when you, when you, when you click it, you know, he'll zoom into it and then you get, and you'll hear, you'll, you'll read all about him.
00:39:53
Speaker
Right. Is that a separate app or is that included in your insider connected? it's That's insider. yeah an Insider. That's in in your site. Your insider. Yeah, so that sub insider.
00:40:04
Speaker
So with 180 Pokemon, are you be able to build to somehow narrow down which ones you want to go after? Or is it all random encounter? it's It's up to the biomes right now, um but like everything else, the conversation is still developing a bit for us.
00:40:18
Speaker
you know As we approach 1.0 down the road, um you know we'll be tidying up that vision, but we've got a lot of different ideas. um you know like From the video games, they have the route system where each different, very specific region ah really narrows down that focus.
00:40:35
Speaker
We're exploring a lot of different options um because i have the video games, it's There's Pokemon Go, there's the card games which come in series, right? There's TCG Pocket. And they all have their own way of kind of targeting.
00:40:47
Speaker
And so we're still narrowing in on how do we let a Pokemon player really run through that collection as fast as they you know want to, besides just enjoying, of course, the random encounters that come up.
00:41:01
Speaker
I had a guy, you know, I was at Pinball at the beach last weekend and I had a guy come up to me and he goes, he goes, I am going to be able to have my Pokemon collection on. I see. Right.
00:41:14
Speaker
was like, I think probably a good idea. Probably a good idea. Absolutely. So do you, do you have to take your machine to different locations to catch different Pokemon? So like load up the game and drive it around town. Cause the specific Pokeball off of your game, remove it. and Oh my gosh. Yeah. very early on we had a geolocation concept um associated to where your machine was.
00:41:43
Speaker
um And we we you know, it's like we, ah I think, I think a Pokemon company discouraged us from it. yeah Jack, I've got to say, i i think every game you've put out so far, it's been amazing.
00:41:57
Speaker
Thank you, brother. It's been great. X-Men's been great. This looks fantastic. I know like there was a lot of heartbreak when you said you were stepping back. Are we going to be able to see Jack making more cornerstones as we move forward, maybe when life gets not so chaotic?
00:42:10
Speaker
um I am in a new role now with marketing, but I'm not saying I'm done with designing, especially from like a marketing standpoint. um We're trying to develop a game, but in that universe of developing that, we're going to sort of like humanize every single person that is associated with every part of making something there. So we'll be, I'll be bugging George to ask him for some trade secrets on how does he prototype a ramp?
00:42:36
Speaker
Cause he's got this like secret way of like melting plastic together with like super glue and like baking soda. um Or, you know, like talking to the different electrical engineers, like how would you approach a game like that? So I want at like every single human that would put their hands on a game to be highlighted in like a project that we're doing. And then at the end, if a game shows up, it shows up and you get to jam on it.
00:42:59
Speaker
Um, but like, I love designing. Um, it's like, even when I'm like off duty, I'm here in my studio, still bending metal and doing stuff. So you never know what the future holds. i don't know. Well, i was going to say with this design, i think what you do great with all of your designs is you take really good essence of what people love about certain pinball machines and you're able to meld them together to make a very cohesive, fun playing game. Um, Is that just kind of how you started this process as a designer or is it kind of something you learned as you went on?
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah, i I love looking back at things that I enjoyed from different games and trying to figure out how I can bring that forward. You know, like um laying out a pinball machine, um infinite possibilities. So why not choose the things that you loved the most from all those different things to try to like bring them into this you know new world that you're trying to develop? And it's worked out so far. So.
00:43:54
Speaker
This is a ah huge license. Now you're going to dip your toe into the water on other licenses that people have been clamoring for for a long time, including a lot of Nintendo licenses.
00:44:09
Speaker
And so is is this possibly something that we can see in the future where you're dipping the toe into the water on these behemoth themes that haven't had a lot of pinball overlap, but there's certainly the desire there.
00:44:23
Speaker
You're talking about other video game IP or something? Yeah. Basically, everybody's been talking about Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, Metroid. All these awesome things. You're not off the mark. the things you We'll see how we we see the same things you see right so we'll see how we do but i think i think we're and i think there's a lot of i said
00:44:54
Speaker
on the staff, there's a lot of people who play games, all kinds of games, not just pinball games. So, um you know, you you never know, but I think it's it's, there's obvious, there's obvious entertainment stuff in those franchises that um could apply. Awesome. Anything's possible. Never say never. you know You never know. Okay. Josh, I want to know about your favorite part of this game coming up. And what are the things that you're like, this is awesome. I'm glad we put this in the game.
00:45:27
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, i think really just the highlight of the project for me was just being able to, I knew the license was huge. I wasn't familiar with it myself. So I just focused on, you know, the basic pinball rules like modes and multi balls, because i I, felt like this game really should not have any kind of barrier to entry. Like it's, everyone should be able to enjoy it regardless of their familiarity with pinball or not, or with a pinball or not, ah but,
00:45:53
Speaker
Pokemon or not, excuse me. um But, you know, I think it was, I think the highlight of the project was just, I think I really liked the Team Rocket multiball because I mean, we knew right from the beginning, like it was this, it's right up the middle. It's one of the first things you notice when you approach the game. And it was just, you know, it was important for that multiball to be very approachable for the casual player. And the Meowthmeck itself is fun.
00:46:20
Speaker
Um, and it's fun to hit that around. So it was really cool. I think probably to get that in, um, get that playable. i If I can piggyback, I know Junkyard's not everybody's favorite game, but to see the Meowth balloon from the show merged with such an iconic mech as the Junkyard mech, I thought that was genius.
00:46:41
Speaker
Like when I saw that the first time, Jack, close your ears, look at your dont head, get too big. I thought it was great. I saw it and I was like, this is going to be great. People are going to love this.
Interactive Gameplay and Player Feedback
00:46:50
Speaker
That Meowth balloon is is killer.
00:46:52
Speaker
And it's it's right where it needs to be for a pinball player. who doesn't know pinball or a Pokemon player who doesn't know pinball. So just walk up and whack at it, right? And you're going to have a good time. Meowth's going to pop up, call you a twerp, and then you're to have a good time. So I think.
00:47:07
Speaker
It's interesting because I, you know, you guys, you guys keep referencing Junkyard, but when I think of Junkyard, I think of the ball hitting those targets. So I don't see it the same way. Yeah, Dwight doesn't either. Dwight's like, that's not a target. Dwight said to me, he goes, what do what are they talking about? I said, I don't know either, Dwight. yeah I guess another another ah close example of that layout, but without something dangling in there is fire had the same sort of like triangular area inside of there. So the kinetics of that, you know, those angles. And and it's funny because when I started messing with the play field, Jack was really scared I was going to break it.
00:47:46
Speaker
I would too. So these guys are like, these are now you got to you got understand, I've done this so many times, and to me this was not a big deal. So I moved the entire right side of the play field.
00:47:58
Speaker
And Jack's like, is that center section? That's still got to work. Dude, relax. It's going to work just fine. I love the movement of the balloon because it's not like just back and forth. it's It's like you're hitting and it's it's it's just chaotic, right? Yeah. um One thing I wanted to point out that Tanya had said is you said that you had to send in like 80 lines for Pikachu. So those aren't familiar with Pokemon.
00:48:27
Speaker
Pokemon only speak in their name, the syllables of their name. thought they just said Pokemon. Like, help me out here because I don't play Pokemon. So Pikachu says Pika, Pikachu, you know, Snorlax, Snore, Snorlax, you know. So how the heck do you come up with 80 lines worth of dialogue when you only have the word Pikachu to work with? Well, there's a lot of emotion in the game. Yeah, yeah. what I mean, it's...
00:48:51
Speaker
It was an interesting exercise. um I guess I can tell you the secret. which i mean First, we identified, you're thinking about how is Pikachu going to react, like what events in the game like you did something awesome, or the ball drained, or you tilted, you know so and like what emotion does that? What we ended up doing was writing small English sentences that peak you know you want to say, like hi, I'm Pikachu, I'm really happy to meet you, and then just, like here, make that in into Pikachu speak, and then the... the the voice actress that's been doing this for years just knows how to do that like like express like how do you express this particular utterance by only saying these syllables pika chew right or pika pika um it it but it worked like we basically put little english sentences together um and and then said and and talked about the emotion that was being or what you're reacting to and then
00:49:42
Speaker
You send it off into the Pikachu cloud and it comes back and it's it's perfect. Full Pikachu. Yeah, even the Pokemon company said she has the best ah contract in the world for any talent and because you're not allowed to use pre-recorded clips of her saying Pika for anything.
00:50:00
Speaker
Anything that goes into a new product, she has to record fresh new right now. So she for as long as Pokemon products will come out, she's got paychecks rolling in. So um we did have the Pokemon company at all the recording sessions to make sure all the pronunciations were correct.
00:50:21
Speaker
and And one of the funny things that happened is when Jack and I did the intro video, which you're going to see tomorrow, i don't know if you've seen it. Have you already? have you got Did you guys get a? Yes. Yeah, we we got a preview of it. Yeah.
00:50:32
Speaker
Right. So in that video, um like ah when they when it went in for marketing approvals, one of the comments was both George and Jack mispronounced. folks saying So now now Zach Sharp was, you know, like directing the shoot and he had us say he had us both say Pokemon like 10 different ways and And it's a good thing he did because he knew that they might have something to say with the pronunciation. So the final video that the world will see tomorrow has the correct...
00:51:13
Speaker
Dubbed in Pokemon. Okay. Well, what is the correct way of pronouncing it now? I, I, I, okay. Go, go. I, so it's, it's hard. I mean, it's like, we say Pokemon, but the, the, somebody apparently we I don't know whether we did one of us say Pokemon or I don't know what we said. It's like, you've been, you've been saying it a certain way for 30 years. Like, how do you train your brain? Not to say that. The main, yeah, it's Pokemon. Yeah.
00:51:42
Speaker
Right. mom. Wow. It's Pokemon. yeah Okay. pun Yeah. Yeah. used to say it the wrong way. Well, the way I used to say it was Pokemon. That's how said it. Yeah. And I probably said Pokemon. The plural of Pokemon is not Pokemon. Yeah. We definitely don't, we don't make that mistake, but of course you have, there are, there are, uh, the, the, the old CFO, Michael Donald, like we make fun of him cause he says Pokeman. Yeah. Wait, what is there a plural of Pokemon? Is it Pokemon? Pokemon.
00:52:18
Speaker
pokemon Yeah. it is Yeah. It actually translates from Japanese pocket monster. So there you go. That's what Pokemon means. Yep. Right. Interesting. um So you have voice actors from Pikachu and from Giovanni, but you have spoke about Meowth and some of the other characters. So Giovanni is obviously custom language is like Jesse and James in it, but it's, it's speech from the animated series. Yeah.
00:52:41
Speaker
where else are we not in it but yeah we have we have Meowth and Giovanni and Giovanni Meowth was was all um so sadly the the voice actor did Meowth and the show passed away this last year so all the voice that's in the game is is is from the tv show uh that we've we've harvested from like episodes from seasons 10 through 25 um but there's there's a ton every episode he talks and he's he's funny and he's um But then for Giovanni, we we have that we we wrote a custom speech for Giovanni, who's the and the voice actor was the original was Giovanni from the TV show and from the movies.
00:53:16
Speaker
um We also have the announcer. he The same voice actor is doing the announcer voice for the battle. When you go into a battle, you hear the announcer voice. um And he's he's done announcer voices in the TV show and also some of the video games.
00:53:31
Speaker
We have the narrator. The narrator introduces everything for you. And and um he was the original voice actor from the TV show. He was on the show for about 12 to 14 years. Something like that, yeah.
00:53:43
Speaker
So and then we have and then the Pokédex also has a voice. The Pokédex is, you whenever you're learning about Pokemon, the Pokédex speaks and and also gives you instructions and prompts on what to do and pinball as well.
00:53:56
Speaker
So who's the voice of the Pokédex? Because it's obviously a stern Pokédex. Did you get to get pick your own voice? Yeah, we we did. Yes, we it's one of our... um I wish I could, can't ah Jerry will be, Jerry Thompson, who's our sound guide, yes founder. and It's not him.
00:54:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's not him. Yeah, but he found her and and she's she's great. um I apologize to her right now that I don't remember her her name is. we We actually went through, we had about four different Pokedex speakers. We did, yeah. After auditions and we we we picked a couple and then we submitted to them and we we narrowed down on the perfect one for this game.
00:54:31
Speaker
Jack's not yelling flippers and butts babies. It's time. to thatll be interesting god it wasn't he and okay we the battles as like a big call Okay. We, we did talk to Josh about this, but I actually want to get, ah you know, George, Daniel, Andrew and Jack. So I walk up to the game.
00:54:49
Speaker
My first time I'm looking at it and what's the one thing that you're going to tell me about the game. You're like, do this. It's really cool. work the middle, work work that triangle, up ah you know work that the diamond at the top.
00:55:04
Speaker
um That'll get Meowth down. um bang me mouth ah you know Bang on Meowth and then make that center shot and you're into Team Rocket multiball almost right away. lots chaos. the the The beauty of that multiball is it actually really shows off the ramp system.
00:55:25
Speaker
And I'm really proud of the ramp system. I think that, that all of that, all those combinations, you know, um it really worked really well. And so I think if you work the middle, when you get that multi-ball, the jackpots are out throughout. So that'll force you to shoot around the play field.
00:55:47
Speaker
And I think it's a, it's a quick fun chaos moment and, um, with a lot of energy. David Price- i'll tell you go catch a Pokemon and then and then go do a cook Pokemon battle let's it's a little more advanced but but um but you want to, but the more Pokemon you catch them more battling the more you'll you'll. Price- you'll score points there actually there's lots of ways to score points but like going up the middle and doing the office is awesome but.
00:56:14
Speaker
You can also explore each one of the different features like the Squirtle Squad mode if you go up the Squirtle ramp or the Charmander Bulbasaur. But but um the more subtle thing just happening in main play is you just go hit some pop-upers and switches and eventually a Pokemon pops up.
00:56:31
Speaker
You hit the Pokédex to scan them and then you chase them and then you go and and you catch them. And then once you've you've done just one, you can do you can go into the Town Scoop on the right to start a battle. it's some The other thing is listen. and listen it It's really great to be able to play the game where it's not a big noisy environment because we're we're putting a lot of instructional speech in it. So hopefully just see you just go up and play the game and you'll start learning the you know all the different things you can do.
00:56:55
Speaker
Yeah, I'll go for more of a deep cut. i'm On my game specifically, and I haven't done this on the other ones yet, when I shoot up into the middle area, I can actually bounce it all the way around the battle arena and hit the sneak in on purpose.
00:57:09
Speaker
Really? Well, if you if anyone else can dial that shot in, we can go off those, off those, off the 10 point, and then it will fly into the sneak in. I'm wondering if but anyone else can pull that one off. That was intentional. That was designed like that. Okay. I didn't mean to steal your thunder then, Jack.
00:57:25
Speaker
ah trip Triple captive ball stack. That's what I'm going to do. You know, ah just a small aside. So there were, there's probably, there's been about, besides the games in the programmers' offices, there's probably been like three games floating around the studio.
00:57:46
Speaker
and um and and the games are in this room we call the test room where the testers hang out. And um every time i walk past that room, there is someone playing the games. And I mean, and I'm not kidding. And to the point where to work on the game, I've had to kick people off the game.
00:58:06
Speaker
Now that more than anything, tells you that the game is something special because a lot of times you're actually having to like create like playlists and say, okay, everybody you're playing at 10, you're playing at 11. I don't think you to do that with this game.
00:58:27
Speaker
And the people just like, gravitator to on the game. Yeah. I love seeing the the things move, right? So shooting up the middle, getting all those cool ricochets when that magnet takes over in that battle arena and it starts generating that chaos every once in a while. It'll surprise you by like throwing it up into the the shot straight up the middle.
00:58:47
Speaker
um When the Meowth balloon comes down and you're bashing that, as George was saying, like that spring action, it sort of fights back a little bit. And every once in a while, also you'll like get a weird sneak in in the back. It's just like ah a really fun area to battle in.
Premium Versions and Market Success
00:59:01
Speaker
But I mean, if I had to pick something else that we haven't talked about, you know, we got a bowl on this game. And yeah the when you shoot the left ramp, once it's lit and it diverts into the bowl above the left flipper, um bowls are interesting because if your tilt isn't set,
00:59:17
Speaker
tight you could sit there and probably keep that thing in there forever uh but we've gone to great lengths to make sure that that is not the case but it's fun to like shoot that on repeat and try to see how many revolutions you can get to just really start racking up points on those uh squirtle squad modes there yeah that squirrel bowl was a um it was a bit of a pain because uh the initial design kept the ball in there for six years and So we had to like, and I've seen this over the years. I've seen every time somebody's tried a ball, it's feast or famine.
00:59:55
Speaker
So some, um you can't get them to work. Right. And other times they work too good. And this, one this one happened to work too good. So too well. And, um, and Mason Dooley did, uh, a lot of work to get, um, uh, Mason duke Mason and, and Mason Dooley and Thomas Malcolm were the two mechanic engineers on the game. And they did, um, uh, amazing, remarkable work. Um,
01:00:21
Speaker
ah you know I talked about the Meowth mech, and um you know ah Mason chased a lot of details on things like that, that the Squirtle Bowl, and um you know that ramp system on the left side. yep That's one that I actually had. I didn't touch that rh that that left ramp.
01:00:43
Speaker
That was all Thomas and and Jack, and um and that works that works great, too. Yep, yep. It's fun ramp. And like the the catching mechanism on that ramp as far as like the Pokeball will like rock back and forth when you're ready to catch, and you shoot it, and the ball just disappears. Objectively, you just put the ball inside the Pokeball. You don't know. it just vanished. But then it plays this animation, kicks out of the the side there. um Yeah, there's a lot of cool little fun things hidden all over this game that um I think people are going to appreciate.
01:01:19
Speaker
I'm i'm a home buyer. I'm looking at buying different games. Tell me about the different upgrades that I get by getting the the premium and and the l LE and the the things that would enhance the entire game experience for me.
01:01:34
Speaker
So my i mean my feeling is if you can get an LE, there's 750 them. And by the way, this is the 30th anniversary year of the franchise and we are not doing a 30th anniversary game.
01:01:47
Speaker
This is the 30th. So this is the 30th anniversary game. um And, and, and, you know, a small aside about that is that all the places that that Pokemon is doing all kinds of things and all kinds of places and to celebrate the franchise on this year. And, on and you'll see the pinball machine in a lot of places.
01:02:09
Speaker
um because you know it's it's just going to fit in. But I think if you can afford and if you can afford one and you can get one, the alley is a stunner. I mean, it's just a beautiful, beautiful game.
01:02:23
Speaker
um Especially, you know, the mirror came out great. the The side armor, by the way, the you know the the armor system now is modular, so you can buy just the inside lights. You can buy the inside and the outside lights. You can buy just the armor with no lights.
01:02:41
Speaker
um So it's it that's intended to make it affordable and um and also let you sort of customize your game however you want. And that's going to be the same for the, you know, that's, that fits the pros and the premiums.
01:02:58
Speaker
But I would say if cost is no object and you can actually get one, cause like I said, there's only 750 of them get the LE. If you can't, the, the, the magnet, which is missing from the pro and the sneak in um and the lock on the left ramp um that and underneath the poke ball, which makes the makes the pinball disappears.
01:03:20
Speaker
um I think it's worth it. um That said, i think those pros, you know, they're going to kill on location. ah You get all the all the flow. You get, um you know, you get Meowth.
01:03:34
Speaker
You get, um you know, you get basically... a lot of the game with the pro. So it's a super high value pro. You look inside and it's got a poke ball.
01:03:46
Speaker
It's got me out. Um, and it's got Pikachu Pikachu doesn't, you know, his his head doesn't track the action and stuff like that, but on the pro, but so I mean, those are the differences I'd say.
01:03:59
Speaker
I'm i' a big fan of premiums. So. i would say the same thing that the what the premium has is magic. Like it's got, hidden magic, like the magnet, it has the ball that disappears underneath the Pokeball, and it also has the Pokeball animating, it has Pikachu animating.
01:04:16
Speaker
um Those are, especially the and the the magnet is just, it's it's a lot of fun. um It's just another level of of interaction. what What you can't tell until you play it is that the combination of the magnet, the target array, Meowth, and the exposed pop bumper creates all kinds of really cool stuff up there. Yeah. Definitely. Well, it's, uh, we've taken plenty of your time. Thank you so much for you guys coming on. I just, I really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to talk about this amazing franchise, this amazing pinball machine. And, and George, I know where the day before, but I heard these are already all sold out for the Ellie. So if you're listening to this, good luck. I don't know what's to
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
01:05:02
Speaker
tell you. Like it's, I did. I heard the same thing. I heard, I heard the same thing, man and I kept telling Seth, i was like, maybe that 1025 wasn't such a bad idea. i don't think it was. Oh, my goodness. um No, thank you again for coming on. ah if there There's five of you. If you want to get hold of them, I'm just going to say reach out to Stern. I'm not going to have you all throw your deets on here. I'm good.
01:05:27
Speaker
Everybody play Pokemon Pinball. Yes. I'm sorry. go ahead. Pokemon by Stern Pinball. Pokemon by Stern Pinball. If you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserkidPinballPodcast at gmail.com, at LoserkidPinball on all the socials.
01:05:44
Speaker
Seriously, this game is amazing. If you want to get one, call Flippin' Out. And if you want some of swag, silverballswag.com slash Loserkid. Scott, give us our last words. You want to unmute your mic? Oh gosh, I'm the worst. Okay. All right, we'll try it again. Go ahead, Jeff.
01:06:01
Speaker
Scott, give us our last words. You got to catch them all.