Transcript
Speaker: Thanks for tuning into the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
Speaker: I am Josh Roop.
Speaker: With me, my co-captain.
Speaker: Scott Larson.
Speaker: And Scott, we have a special episode today.
Speaker: I'm excited for this.
Speaker: This is something new and interesting we've never done before.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But before we dive into that, let's talk about our sponsor just for a split second.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We have Zach and Nicole Minney at Flippin' Out Pinball.
Speaker: So they've always been really good to me.
Speaker: My friend just got his Godzilla 70.
Speaker: So, you know, I was able to set that up through them.
Speaker: I also was able to help facilitate two people buying the CE avatar through them.
Speaker: So they've always been really friendly, really good to work with.
Speaker: And if you're not looking for the new game, they actually have a pretty interesting back catalog of used games that people trade in.
Speaker: And so just whatever you're looking for, I'm sure they can help you out.
Speaker: Zach and Nicole, many flipping out pinball.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we're going to move on to our guest right now.
Speaker: This is a duo that is making some waves in the hobby.
Speaker: I've been setting up a nose scene ever since they did the Godzilla topper.
Speaker: And it was insanely cool.
Speaker: And it was like, what's Stern going to do to match this?
Speaker: Because this was pretty out of bounds.
Speaker: This was insanely cool.
Speaker: If you haven't heard of the Electric Playground, you need to check them out because they are doing some amazing things.
Speaker: Speaking of which, one thing we're going to talk about today is the new Attack from Mars topper.
Speaker: Before we dive into that, I want to welcome our guest, Alec and Rob.
Speaker: Thank you for coming on.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker: Appreciate it.
Speaker: Great to be here.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: First off,
Speaker: Attack from Mars, the topper on that has been heralded as one of the best ever made, right?
Speaker: What made you guys, what convinced you to be like, you know what?
Speaker: Challenge accepted.
Speaker: We're going to one-up this.
Speaker: I think...
Speaker: You'll sense a theme in a lot of how we choose the toppers we want to work on is just games we love.
Speaker: And Attack is one of those games I cannot walk by and not put 50 cents in.
Speaker: It's impossible.
Speaker: No doubt CGC made an amazing topper.
Speaker: We love it ourselves, but we love to make something really unique and put our own spin on it.
Speaker: I think the thing that makes ours a little bit different is the interactivity that comes along with it, but we can get all into that when we get into specifics.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Definitely love making toppers for games that we love.
Speaker: You had it.
Speaker: It was one of your early games.
Speaker: I remember playing at your house.
Speaker: We also get asked for it a ton.
Speaker: Yeah, they made an amazing topper, but everybody that still wants it can't get it.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: It's not always available.
Speaker: That's part of the issue is supply and demand.
Speaker: I have the CGC one because it came with my LE.
Speaker: Definitely, there is a limit of
Speaker: Sometimes what you want is mainly not available.
Speaker: And so you have to look for alternatives and, uh, and actually sometimes the alternative can be a different slice.
Speaker: So for example, on my medieval madness back, back glass, um, I, I looks like you guys are working with Brian Allen, right?
Speaker: So not, not officially yet.
Speaker: This one was with Brad Albright.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Go ahead and cut that Josh.
Speaker: We love the word for Brian.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, but I have, I have some alternative back glasses and some, some of my games and it does mix it up.
Speaker: It shows different things.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker: I mean, with people who have customized their back glass, like with Brian Allen, and there's maybe some different things that they're looking for in it.
Speaker: So I think that, like Alex said, the interactivity on this is definitely above and beyond what CGC did.
Speaker: So we're hoping if we're not converting people, we're definitely getting those who wanted the topper originally back excited about their game with our topper.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, the reality is I don't know that we're going to get many people like you, Scott, to take off that awesome topper and put ours on.
Speaker: But our topper works with both the original and the remake.
Speaker: So there's a lot of people with that original that have wanted to put something on top maybe, and they haven't been able to.
Speaker: And I think ours is kind of like that perfect cherry.
Speaker: What if you haven't checked these toppers out yet?
Speaker: Like behind you two, you've got the big Lebowski.
Speaker: You got the new attack from Mars.
Speaker: You've got Godzilla.
Speaker: And you did a Twilight Zone, which you were showing off at Expo last year, which was insane.
Speaker: I mean, these are some really cool toppers.
Speaker: And if I'm not mistaken, I'm looking at the Godzilla topper.
Speaker: You've got some screens in that now with –
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: So we debuted the Godzilla Topper at Expo last year.
Speaker: This will be our second Expo.
Speaker: And it was awesome to get the feedback.
Speaker: We ended up getting best mod of the show, which was cool to just get an award for the Topper.
Speaker: Clearly, it's very different than the Godzilla Topper.
Speaker: But when we announced it, we said our ultimate vision was to basically...
Speaker: bring four screens to that topper.
Speaker: So we released that officially as far as shipping about a month ago.
Speaker: We've shipped about 10 of them so far.
Speaker: It literally has four 3.2 inch LCD screens on them.
Speaker: There's five interactive modes, but you can also customize these screens to whatever you want.
Speaker: So
Speaker: It comes with some amazing artwork, highlighting, collecting the monster monitors, heat ray, destruction jackpot, Rodan, and then the saucer, which is a saucer that goes up and down.
Speaker: But you can actually replace all that with classic GIFs from the movie, which is really cool.
Speaker: So the feedback's been amazing.
Speaker: And we've also got a black and white one, of course, because everyone's doing black and white stuff now.
Speaker: But there's actually a different paint job for the black and white versus the color.
Speaker: One of my favorite parts about the business and watching, honestly, Rob's skills grow and everything grow along with it.
Speaker: You know, we concepted what we wanted this topper to be before we had any idea how the hell we were going to do it.
Speaker: And but we had to get something out there.
Speaker: So the first version of the topper was an amazing step up from what we've done, you know, technologically speaking from from Twilight Zone.
Speaker: It's a huge leaps and bounds to where Godzilla is.
Speaker: But where we had to get to make the Conqueror's upgrade is even leaps and bounds beyond that.
Speaker: And we've been able to do this in such a short amount of time.
Speaker: It kind of blows my mind to see where we are today versus where we started.
Speaker: And I think Attack from Mars is a great example of that too, because we could have made that topper really early on, but we didn't have the skills to really do it justice until where we are in the iteration of the company.
Speaker: So having it be kind of the fourth generation topper
Speaker: It takes all the lessons learned from topper one, topper two, topper three, and puts it into kind of a complete package to where we are today.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We've got a bunch of attacks going already.
Speaker: This will be the first time we've released a product where we've got actually 50 ready to go, which is exciting.
Speaker: But lots to talk about on attack.
Speaker: So we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: Attack for Mars.
Speaker: I know you guys said you're making these because it's games that you love, but this is your first official license topper.
Speaker: How did you, how did you convince Rick from Planetary Pinball to sign on to this?
Speaker: Well, I mean, you know, Rick's been great to work with as far as like giving us access to the license.
Speaker: Like in our promo video, we've got a ton of like audio clips and stuff, which we're not actually using on the topper, but he's been great.
Speaker: kind of opened it up to us.
Speaker: We always wanted to do stuff that was officially licensed.
Speaker: We really try to toe the line in terms of how blatantly we use intellectual property that we don't own.
Speaker: So you're not going to see blatant use of intellectual property on Godzilla.
Speaker: You don't see it on Twilight Zone.
Speaker: You don't see it on...
Speaker: Lebowski, but you do see it on Attack from Mars and because we wanted to get the license.
Speaker: So it was really a timing thing for us to like build some notoriety and some credibility.
Speaker: And also we wanted to go to Rick and be like, hey, we're the real deal.
Speaker: You know, we can make these things like
Speaker: It's not just a pipe dream idea.
Speaker: So we've been in touch with Rick for a while now, and this seemed like the right time to kind of make this happen.
Speaker: And also we wanted to be able to build up some inventory.
Speaker: So we've really been able to build our team.
Speaker: We actually just moved into a new space.
Speaker: So this is a new space like three times as big as where we were so that when we launch this thing, it doesn't take us 18 months to build them.
Speaker: We want to ship some right away.
Speaker: We really want to build the whole business the right way.
Speaker: We're not doing this as like a pipe, like whatever, he's flashing the pan.
Speaker: We really want to give the artists the credit where it's due.
Speaker: We want to make sure that they're getting paid with their work.
Speaker: We both come from creative backgrounds.
Speaker: We've been on the other side of this.
Speaker: So we want definitely to pay the artists what they're worth, but also do, like I said, put our big boy pants and grow the business in the right way and do it.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that was a big step for us, for sure.
Speaker: I was just going to say you chose Brad Albright, which Josh and I have worked with.
Speaker: And Brad's always been great to work with.
Speaker: He, he did our goat shirt and he did, he did all the, that montage.
Speaker: If you get the shoes, like that, that was from Brad Albright too.
Speaker: So how'd you choose Brad?
Speaker: I mean, I know that he's been great to work with for us, but it's.
Speaker: Brad's an amazing guy, you know, super easy to talk to, you know, he's at all the shows.
Speaker: Not that we've been doing this for a real long time.
Speaker: This will be, we've done two TPS and an hour, a second expo, but talking him up, I mean, his stuff is amazing.
Speaker: He, along with, you know, some other known artists in this space, like just really have this amazing style that works for pinball.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And kind of like with Rick, it was like we talked to him for a while and we're like, let's do this.
Speaker: You know, now's the right time.
Speaker: And he was, I mean, attack for Mars.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: You know, he was he was definitely ready to jump in.
Speaker: So we kind of worked out the specifics pretty quick and off to the races.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I've decorated my game room and my movie room as pretty much all Brad Albright.
Speaker: He gets me.
Speaker: We didn't know each other, but we knew each other.
Speaker: It was a bro-ship at first sight, right?
Speaker: To know Brad is to love Brad.
Speaker: It's easy.
Speaker: He's a great guy.
Speaker: He is a great guy.
Speaker: And his other stuff, if you guys have not checked out his other stuff, Motorhead and Led Zeppelin, he did these both as homebrews.
Speaker: If I remember correctly, it was David Peck that hit at these.
Speaker: Insanely cool.
Speaker: I'll put some pictures in the video.
Speaker: Which, by the way, if you're not watching YouTube, it's fine.
Speaker: You're watching the podcast.
Speaker: It is whatever.
Speaker: But we're trying to do something a little different.
Speaker: So as you're watching and following along, we're going to have the picture and the video going along as we talk about it.
Speaker: at least i hope so if not well it is what it is you see our beautiful faces exactly so okay this is a really in my opinion this is a very competitive price point you guys are coming at 1279 uh as toppers go that's actually pretty good and you're limiting limiting this to 300 what what made you to do both those things
Speaker: Yeah, so Twilight, we didn't do limited.
Speaker: Lebowski, we did limited.
Speaker: We did 100 of those.
Speaker: They went pretty quick, I think like two or three days.
Speaker: And I really felt like what that did for us as a business is allow us to focus on a single product and build it and build it well, optimize margins around some of the materials, which continue to go up in terms of costs and stuff.
Speaker: And we wanted to just, we want to build this thing.
Speaker: We want to build however many we can sell and get it out there and move on to the next one.
Speaker: I mean, we've got more ideas with Planetary.
Speaker: We've got more ideas for other games.
Speaker: And also, you know, we want people to know
Speaker: like we're going to build this thing for you now, you know, it's not going to drag on.
Speaker: We can get it for you if you want it.
Speaker: And then we're going to move on to the next one.
Speaker: So there's a lot tied up with like choosing to go limited.
Speaker: I know some people don't necessarily love it, but as a business, especially in our current position, like getting the parts, building the thing and moving on to the next one is really important.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: I think what's the timeframe you're aiming for here?
Speaker: Yeah, so we're going to have 50 available to ship within two to four weeks of the initial sale, which will be early in October.
Speaker: And then we're going to move through the 300 if we hit that many or however many we hit within, well, by the end of 2025, I'd like to say within nine to 12 months is definitely realistic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Alec.
Speaker: What were you going to say?
Speaker: I was going to say, I think an important point too is, you know, we're consumers just like everybody else and we see the price of things.
Speaker: And of course...
Speaker: Even when we started this business, we're looking at the price of toppers as they were back then and wondering who's paying this?
Speaker: Who are these people that are paying $1,000 for these things?
Speaker: And when you come to actually build and really mass produce a product, you quickly learn what goes in to actually making something like this.
Speaker: And everything is getting more expensive.
Speaker: we're still trying to find ways to create toppers at a lesser price point to make them accessible to all people.
Speaker: So we're not, this is where we are with Attack from Mars, but we're with the next iterate, whatever the next topper is going to be.
Speaker: We're always trying to see if there's a way that we can create an entry point that's more accessible for other people too.
Speaker: Now, there's also some element of integration.
Speaker: And so that's what I do want to talk about with the Attack from Mars topper.
Speaker: I have some toppers who, you know, we found I found them off the market that, you know, I got a Simpsons one because obviously back in 2003, they weren't making toppers.
Speaker: So I got one of those.
Speaker: Basically, it just lights up.
Speaker: So it's kind of fun.
Speaker: You see it, but that's pretty much it.
Speaker: Now your topper, you were talking about integration.
Speaker: So tell me about that process because you actually have to take that to a next level where you are connecting it to the game.
Speaker: The topper has to know what mode you're in.
Speaker: It has to know what is going on with the game.
Speaker: So you really have to figure out how to splice and dice that into the game itself.
Speaker: Not only that, you're doing this between CGC's models and Valley Williams models too, where you're bridging the gap for almost 20 plus years of circuitry.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a lot that goes into that.
Speaker: I do want to celebrate some of the companies that have recently announced that they're doing more for mod makers.
Speaker: Dutch Pinball with their Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Speaker: They're working to open it up so that you can connect directly into it.
Speaker: But we don't have that convenience.
Speaker: There are some ways that you can kind of tap into like the cat five cable, call it like a serial sniffer where you can kind of like try to infer what's going on.
Speaker: And some platforms like Pinsound do that.
Speaker: But what we decided to do because we didn't want to be reliant on like code updates, possibly bricking our topper for customers is we wanted to go a little bit more old school with it.
Speaker: So the way our system works is that
Speaker: there's a series of light sensors that you mount in various places throughout the game.
Speaker: And in some cases where that's a little bit of a tighter area, we actually build an entire harness that sits behind one of the boards in the game.
Speaker: So for with Godzilla, there's actually about 12 sensors of light that then gets processed by our own central computer on the topper.
Speaker: And then we do a light show based on which of those lights are on or off.
Speaker: And there's combinations of those that allow us to know different situations and different modes happening in the game.
Speaker: But essentially you're running a node board that comes with our topper underneath the play field.
Speaker: It's connected to the topper via cat five cable and ethernet cable.
Speaker: And then that node board has a bunch of sensors that kind of spider out into the game and pick up that light.
Speaker: So in the case of attack, we wanted to make it a little simpler than Godzilla because Godzilla has a lot of them.
Speaker: So there's only, I think, six sensors on attack.
Speaker: The topper is going to take you probably 45 minutes to install.
Speaker: It's not like a stern where you're just plugging it in and it goes.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, it does do all the things that you would want a topper to do in the modern age, different than like the Simpsons game you were talking about, where, you know, we've got about eight different light shows that play out on attack.
Speaker: And of course, we've got some articulation in the alien that shakes.
Speaker: So all those things kind of happen through this.
Speaker: not proprietary platform, but a platform that we've developed that we're now reusing across each topper that we release.
Speaker: But without making any major modifications of the game.
Speaker: Yeah, no cutting, no soldering of any kind.
Speaker: We really do want to focus on making it easy, but at the end of the day, we are picking up a lot of information through these light sensors.
Speaker: Well, and I like how you guys have taken Attack for Mars and you've taken some of the biggest moments from that game and somehow fit it all into one topper, right?
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: If you've seen, I don't know exactly how it's going to work if you guys are releasing the video before we release this or whatnot.
Speaker: But if you guys have seen this video, it's insanely cool.
Speaker: Like the big old beam, like you've got spots on the sides where they're sucking up the cow and the chicken because they've turned them big.
Speaker: And you've got, you know, extra ball.
Speaker: The whole thing's flashing orange.
Speaker: And that's the thing about the original CGC topic that was made was the articulation.
Speaker: It tied into like it was kind of harassing you, right?
Speaker: Well, you guys have a spaceship and an alien on here.
Speaker: They're both articulating and harassing you.
Speaker: It's like you've just kind of taken it to like level 11 or not.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, we talked about price earlier.
Speaker: I mean, to be able to build movement and, you know, kinesthetic things into a topper, it does require a lot of prototyping and then building out.
Speaker: So like we were trying to always have something that's highly interactive in the game.
Speaker: I mean, with the Twilight Zone, we had the ball like literally going around a habit trail.
Speaker: So we try to pull that in.
Speaker: So with Godzilla, you have a raising thing with attack.
Speaker: You've got movement.
Speaker: We didn't have movement in Lebowski, but we also wanted to make that kind of an art piece.
Speaker: So that kind of has its own kind of artistic style to it.
Speaker: But yeah, movement is awesome to have and it's not not easy to do for sure.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, it's easy when you pick games you love.
Speaker: You just want to design it to be, like you said, kind of that homage to the title, you know?
Speaker: Attack from Mars is like the game I grew up on.
Speaker: It's the first game I played that made me love pinball.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: talk enough about it my dad used to put me down on a bar stool when he was playing his band jobs and that was the game i got to play um and it's the first one where pinball made sense to me there was a mission you know destroy the saucer it just finally clicked in my head to what i was doing and i got the bug ever since so yeah being able to do something for attack has always been kind of a dream or whatever
Speaker: You also took it to integrating some of the rarer modes.
Speaker: Like I noticed you even connected it to the video mode, which I've been playing.
Speaker: I have Attack from Mars and I've been playing it.
Speaker: And there are times when I totally forget there's a video mode in it because it's not that common.
Speaker: It doesn't come up that often.
Speaker: That's like a guaranteed extra ball.
Speaker: That's always part of the strategy.
Speaker: Paint the side to side, baby.
Speaker: Just paint side to side.
Speaker: Yeah, we like to.
Speaker: I mean, we love pinball.
Speaker: We're deep players like we don't have huge collections, you know, four or five machines.
Speaker: So when we have machines, we go deep on them and we certainly like to celebrate those moments.
Speaker: So that those are a little bit of icing on the cake for those that are, you know, looking to really get excited about the game again, too.
Speaker: You know, it's like, hey, you know, pick up our topper and.
Speaker: see this cool light show and remember, you know, why you love this game.
Speaker: I remember though, I was like this year's old whenever like someone finally taught me that if you hit that start button, you get like one free, like swipe the screen on the video mode.
Speaker: I didn't know about that when I owned the game.
Speaker: I didn't know that until right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what they're talking about, if you're in video mode and as the saucers are coming down, if you feel like you're too much, like someone's going to touch down, you press the start button or the launch button and it wipes the whole screen.
Speaker: It's a combination of missile command and space invaders.
Speaker: That's kind of how it seems like it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Have you seen the cow mode?
Speaker: I don't think I have.
Speaker: What's the cow push?
Speaker: There's a way.
Speaker: I don't know exactly how you get it to go, but there's a way that instead of whatever they're dropping, instead of saucers dropping, they're cows.
Speaker: Every time the cow does, it moves.
Speaker: There's a video mode, but it's cow mode.
Speaker: Okay, so there's got to be someone out there.
Speaker: There's someone out there who knows how to do cow mode.
Speaker: I've only seen it one time.
Speaker: Where's Bo and Karen's?
Speaker: Because I guarantee... The bullfrog, the WB frog, hello, my... You know, that one's from the B.A.
Speaker: Jones.
Speaker: Hello, my baby.
Speaker: It takes a certain path through the tunnels and actually pops you out to the bullfrog instead of... Yeah, anyhow.
Speaker: Hilarious.
Speaker: I love those little Easter eggs.
Speaker: Yeah, I love the Easter eggs.
Speaker: I'm not sure that I...
Speaker: I have the talent to get consistently the Easter eggs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a bunch of them.
Speaker: There's some, there's like a dirty pool thing on attack.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dirty pool.
Speaker: So if you, if you get the ball behind the, the attack target and then you shoot it in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also, you know, you have strobe light multi-ball, which I really, I've had the game for eight years and I think I've had it like five to 10 times.
Speaker: This is making me so sad.
Speaker: Like, I feel like we need to move on.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: It's possible.
Speaker: No, but it's just kind of funny.
Speaker: Like, no, it's to be, I also rotate from games to games.
Speaker: So I've been playing a lot of cactus Canyon, been playing a lot of Godzilla and,
Speaker: I was just back on attack for Mars, which I haven't played in a while.
Speaker: So that's part of the problem of having a lot of games is that you find a hard time of sticking with one.
Speaker: And so that's probably because my, um, my rules knowledge is not as deep as it would be if you only had five games, cause you would know them very well.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Well, they're both in Stroke of Luck, which is the mystery.
Speaker: Just got to get deep into those, and you'll find both the video mode and Stroke, which we have modes in our topper for that.
Speaker: So definitely check those out.
Speaker: You know, the thing that I love, and I think everyone loves this, the late Great Lyman knew when you were close to something, he was willing to give it to you via Stroke of Luck on Attack from Mars.
Speaker: I think it's brilliant because it's like –
Speaker: I really need this.
Speaker: I need it.
Speaker: I need it.
Speaker: It always seemed to be there in stroke of luck, and it was willing to give it to you.
Speaker: It's like Mario Kart.
Speaker: You're in eighth place.
Speaker: Blue Shell.
Speaker: Blue Shell.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was just wonderful.
Speaker: It's what made Lyman great.
Speaker: He knew what the player wanted or needed at that moment, and it was like, boom, here you go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cows from heaven, not manna.
Speaker: Cows from heaven.
Speaker: So I've got on here.
Speaker: There's some people like me who don't have a tall enough basement.
Speaker: Well, I guess mine's tall enough to have toppers.
Speaker: But like I saw, I think her name was Jamie Murray, one of our listeners.
Speaker: They cut out the ceiling just so they could have the labyrinth topper.
Speaker: But they like built in into the ceiling.
Speaker: Basement around it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I can't wait to see how that like when they list that house for sale.
Speaker: What's that one spot right there?
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Now Vic did the same thing.
Speaker: Well, he didn't cut a hole in the ceiling, but because he had the Godfather and he couldn't put the topper, didn't he put it on the side?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so on this topper, you can adjust the height.
Speaker: So the overall height is 12 inches, but you can go down to 10 and a half and it's 24 wide.
Speaker: How do you get to adjust?
Speaker: I'm slightly confused.
Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty simple.
Speaker: I mean, we, we didn't plan around it, but obviously this making toppers, you've got this issue that comes up a lot.
Speaker: So whenever you get it, the aliens mounted on the back and there's actually like four holes.
Speaker: So it's a pretty typical system where you're just moving it down notches based on the height of your basement.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, we put a lot of thought into this, both on the installation side and on the product itself.
Speaker: And this was one where it was clear we could do it.
Speaker: So we did it.
Speaker: So yeah, it goes down a little bit if you're tight on headroom.
Speaker: We only need that quarter of an inch.
Speaker: I can adjust it right here.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So this is going to be available.
Speaker: Well, how do they get it?
Speaker: How do they get it?
Speaker: This will be available on October 9th, which is a week from the start of Expo.
Speaker: We're going to be having an Expo.
Speaker: But on the 9th, you're going to be able to go to our website.
Speaker: You're going to be able to put down a deposit of just a hundred bucks that gets you your official spot.
Speaker: We're going to fulfill orders based on how the orders come in.
Speaker: We've got about 50 ready to go or well, technically we had exactly 50 ready to go within the first two to four weeks of your order.
Speaker: Once it's ready to ship, we'll send you a payment link to complete the full payment and you'll have it.
Speaker: So yeah, this is unlike other toppers.
Speaker: We've got a bunch in motion.
Speaker: And then for the rest of them, we'll be working on them throughout 2024 and into 2025 and hopefully have most of them out by mid 2025.
Speaker: And say that website again.
Speaker: Where do we go to order this?
Speaker: Yeah, so the topper is at TEP Pinball.
Speaker: So TEP, the electric playground, pinball.com, TEP Pinball.com.
Speaker: That's the exclusive place to get it.
Speaker: So on our website.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Looking over some of the stuff too, one of the most, one of the coolest modes that is in this game is strobe multiball.
Speaker: You get this going.
Speaker: It's nervous.
Speaker: Especially in a dark room.
Speaker: Especially in a dark room.
Speaker: And watching the video coordinating with this mode is insanely cool.
Speaker: I'm assuming the whole room, if you've got a dark room, it's going to turn into a disco ball all of a sudden.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: was it just one of these things like it's a must have to do with the top or what how'd you do that you know yeah it was like we can make we can make it flash uh sorry if you have epilepsy with this one because this one's not gonna help uh yeah but uh this one was actually kind of interesting to get to work too because like again we don't know the data on the system so
Speaker: There's there's two unique situations with the lighting for both strobe and video mode with strobe.
Speaker: Only the lights in front of the attack wave, which is that thing that goes up and down, is lit and then no other lights are on.
Speaker: Uh, so we basically are looking at capture one, which is one of the orbit lights.
Speaker: If we see that's off, but we see the lights in front of the, uh, the up and down thing is on, we know you're in strobe multiball.
Speaker: That's the only time that the lights are set up that way.
Speaker: Um, and then we, we make the topper flash like in sequence with the light that is underneath the UFO.
Speaker: So you're, you're definitely adding to the effect.
Speaker: Uh, we've had a couple of people actually say like, Hey, you're lighting up my play field a tiny bit more.
Speaker: So I appreciate that.
Speaker: I can actually see.
Speaker: a little bit better, but it's a cool mode and it certainly is way more impactful with the topper.
Speaker: It's another one of those.
Speaker: Give me an extra ball mode.
Speaker: If you can do it right, you can get that extra ball.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: 10, 10 hits on that, that bar in the front and you've got an extra ball.
Speaker: So definitely Scott,
Speaker: Don't skip over that one.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: You know, one of my favorite moments ever in a pinball tournament, we were playing Attack for Mars, and I lined up all the shots, and I did the big billion hurry up.
Speaker: For those that don't know, the ramps and the orbits, if you hit them so many times as you're stacking them up, you know, every time you hit that final shot, it starts that, like, big O-beam.
Speaker: and you hit it and it gives you like 100,000 points.
Speaker: But if you're able to stack the four modes, the four or five, and you successfully hit each shot as each one's running, a billion hurry up.
Speaker: It's an insanely cool little Easter egg.
Speaker: And I was able to do this in a pinball tournament.
Speaker: And the person behind me, I did it.
Speaker: And obviously, all of a sudden, I went straight to first because I just got a billion points.
Speaker: And then I'm feeling like King Kong on steroids, right?
Speaker: And I walk away from the machine.
Speaker: And one of the competitors is like, what the heck did you just do?
Speaker: What did you do?
Speaker: What's the big bill?
Speaker: It's the big bill.
Speaker: And hurry up.
Speaker: And he's like, OK, walk me through this.
Speaker: I'm like, sure.
Speaker: Anyhow, yeah.
Speaker: This game is just so great for so many reasons.
Speaker: Now I'm wishing I had my limited edition.
Speaker: Why did I do that?
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: So we had a lot of fun with our promo video in terms of like bringing in audio.
Speaker: I downloaded like the ROM and I extracted it and like got all the audio.
Speaker: There's a ton of stuff in there that I don't think ever made it into the game.
Speaker: But there is one where the alien goes five billion.
Speaker: And I don't even know what that is tied to.
Speaker: But apparently there's a five billion call out as well.
Speaker: So that's a super deep one.
Speaker: But maybe it never made it in.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: man, they did have it in.
Speaker: And then the code was just like, everyone's just going to go for that.
Speaker: This is all this is going to be.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Like, like, I'm probably the pin bot, you know, everyone goes for the billion shot.
Speaker: And it's like, that's the thing you do with that game.
Speaker: That's what's known for.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: So I want you to walk me through constructing your topper.
Speaker: Like, how do you go about and saying, Hey, there's always, there's, there's a lot of toppers, some of them better than others.
Speaker: And some of them you can see behind me that are
Speaker: better than others.
Speaker: You can actually see like what goes into it to say, you know what people, if they're going to spend, you know, X amount of money.
Speaker: So it's, if it's 500, if it's a thousand, if it's 1200, 1300, what is it about the topper that you want to bring to the, to the environment, to the game experience?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Man, that's a great question.
Speaker: I mean, we've kind of dove at this into different ways and we usually prepare ourselves to answer this question because there is a lot.
Speaker: What do you start?
Speaker: When you look at the like just the how we started, we literally started with the games that we owned.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So Twilight was a game that I own is, again, just one of my favorite games ever.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: We had access to it.
Speaker: So, you know, we were looking at it and thinking, what if, you know, if we were to design something, what could we do to make it really cool and unique?
Speaker: And that whole idea came from just sitting in my basement, staring at the top of that game and staring at the play field.
Speaker: Kind of happened because Godzilla is Godzilla, you know, is the most popular game is just absolutely blowing down doors.
Speaker: We both owned it.
Speaker: We loved it.
Speaker: We got sick of waiting to see what Stern was going to do.
Speaker: And we want to make something for ourselves and then came up with a really cool concept that kind of took on a life of its own.
Speaker: Lebowski is just, you know, it's one of the greatest themed games of all time.
Speaker: And we both love the movie.
Speaker: So there's one to pay an homage to that attack kind of the same thing.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, we look at the markets for the games, right?
Speaker: Like, you know, how much is the game moving is important, right?
Speaker: Like, you want to pick a game that people are excited about in general because, therefore, that's going to translate to them being excited about the topper.
Speaker: And then we try to create – we don't use the term topper moments, but we try to create, you know, the pinball moments of toppers.
Speaker: So, like, now it's less, of course, about what games we own and it's more about, like –
Speaker: How much does the market care about the game and whatever capacity that is?
Speaker: So like with Lebowski, it was obvious.
Speaker: We were kind of nervous about that one because of the volume.
Speaker: So we do look at volume pretty closely.
Speaker: Like that obviously hit the mark for attack.
Speaker: We look at the options.
Speaker: So with Twilight, there were no well-known options.
Speaker: So that was easy.
Speaker: We also don't probably we're probably not going to try to compete with Stern stoppers too much going forward.
Speaker: I mean, it's just like really tough to compete with, like having a mode, the simplicity of install, you know, that type of thing.
Speaker: I mean, we get asked about JAWS like all the time, right, because that one kind of is underwhelming.
Speaker: I guarantee you could make a more impressive one.
Speaker: I guess I'll put it that way.
Speaker: We could, but it's like how many people are really going to move on it after getting what they have?
Speaker: We kind of got that with Godzilla a little bit.
Speaker: I mean, I think we thought there would be just like way more interest than what we... I mean, we've done a ton of them.
Speaker: I think the Conqueror upgrade is going to go a long way, but it's like what we heard over and over again is like, I love your stuff.
Speaker: I love my Twilight Zone.
Speaker: I love my Lebowski, but I've already got the Stern topper.
Speaker: So we look at a lot of different factors, but I think the most important one is like, how can we create a really cool moment with it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then if we can tie those two things together, the business and the idea, then we're off to the races.
Speaker: There's been plenty of times where, again,
Speaker: to my earlier comment where, you know, our skills kind of evolved over the, over the course of the business.
Speaker: And now that we know what we know now, what, what moments could we create?
Speaker: And then you start thinking about, okay, what, what games lend themselves to those, that type of, you know, that type of moment, you know, so,
Speaker: Twilight Zone's got the ball rolling around.
Speaker: Obviously, it'd be really easy to make the ball a boulder, and Indiana Jones could all of a sudden come in the mix.
Speaker: A lot of people have always said, why don't you just do the same thing for Indiana Jones?
Speaker: But we don't want to be like the...
Speaker: do the same thing over and over again and be a one trick pony, you know, like that's, we're not, we don't want to be the topper guys that just have the ball rolling around.
Speaker: That's not the goal.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But we know how to make that type of, of interactivity.
Speaker: Is there a way to make it unique for something, you know, a game like Indy or, or whatever, and, you know, allow that moment to shine that then that's kind of like something that we think about as well, of course.
Speaker: Well, on the notes you sent over, speaking of these different titles that you've been speaking about, you have on here that you're going to be doing more licensed series toppers.
Speaker: Can you give us a little more insight in that?
Speaker: How many toppers you're doing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, we haven't firmed up a specific plan yet.
Speaker: We actually are doing another topper that we're announcing at Expo.
Speaker: It's actually going to be the first commercially available
Speaker: interactive em topper uh so we are doing another pinball topper with planetary here in a couple weeks um that'll be announced that's going to be a lower price point so we're excited about bringing something different to the market but getting back to the kind of mainstream you know valley williams titles we're of course going to be looking closely at what they did with cgc because those are the titles people want you know you got
Speaker: a bunch of other games with really good toppers.
Speaker: And you've got a bunch of games that are being possibly remade or being entered in the pipeline for the first time.
Speaker: So we're looking at all of those.
Speaker: We're looking closely at like what Brian Allen has done, looking at like why he made some of the decisions he made and how to augment that experience for people where they've really taken their game like up a notch in a couple of different levels and tap into that type of buyer.
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, not everybody's into mods.
Speaker: Certainly not everybody's into toppers.
Speaker: And we need to be mindful of why they're doing things to their game and really give them what they're looking for.
Speaker: So we're definitely going to be doing more planetary stuff in the mainstream market.
Speaker: I just haven't really decided exactly which one
Speaker: yet and and we are a company of the people so come to us please come to the booth at expo talk to us like yeah if you want to see something we love to talk to you about it and explain to us why that should be our next topper yeah i mean what do you guys do you guys have any uh recommendations like among these titles because we're certainly like curious what people think they would like to see well i can't just off the top of my head uh
Speaker: I think of the ones that have great toppers already.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I guarantee there's something you could do with something like whitewater.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Where you could definitely, and it has the cool effect, but there's a lot of those you can't get at all.
Speaker: And there's a lot of people who are looking at, okay, what else could we do with Whitewater?
Speaker: Whitewater is such a great game that that would be my suggestion is to consider how to do that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'll put it this way.
Speaker: And this is actually what we were getting down with on current companies that are releasing things.
Speaker: What makes a great game?
Speaker: Because a lot of times it's just whatever connection people have, whatever experience people have when playing it.
Speaker: Some people, a great game means a competitive layout, balanced scoring and something tournament ready.
Speaker: Well, there's a lot of games that don't fit that category that people still like having in their house.
Speaker: And so what is it about that that makes them fun and be able to keep them around?
Speaker: Yeah, you know, Whitewater is an interesting one.
Speaker: We've talked about Adams quite a bit, you know, which obviously tons of those toppers out there came with a topper.
Speaker: It would be an interesting business decision to try to compete with that.
Speaker: But I mean, imagine if we took the house to another level where it's almost like a cuckoo clock and like interactive things are happening in the windows and it's a $5,000 topper is where I'm getting at.
Speaker: No, but I mean, like there's, you know, we have a lot of fun with like,
Speaker: all these ideas.
Speaker: We have to think about licensing, even in the case with working with Planetaria, like we can't with Monster Bash, we have to work around all the different characters.
Speaker: Adams is probably going to be very difficult to do, even with the license.
Speaker: Whitewater is cool.
Speaker: I mean, in the sense of it's open from a licensing perspective in terms of a third party license, it would really come down to like, how can we tie a moment in the gameplay?
Speaker: So we would, if we did pursue that one, we'd probably sit down with someone like you, Scott, and be like, Hey, like, what is, what do you get excited about achieving in that game?
Speaker: And then how can we augment that?
Speaker: And then is that special enough to build a topper for?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think the one that comes to my mind, I mean, it's because I've owned it for the last decade, is World Cup soccer.
Speaker: And I know from a third-party standpoint, FIFA is a pain in the butt to deal with.
Speaker: But just some of the moments in that game, when you score a goal, if you have the giant TV over the stands, it doesn't have to be the topper itself, but in the corner, if it just did goal on the back, they have fireworks incorporated in that thing.
Speaker: If you can make it look like fireworks... I know you're not going to have actual fireworks going off, but if you could do plastics...
Speaker: with the lights trailing up so it looks like they're fireworks going off, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A little crowd articulating.
Speaker: Every time you make a goal, they pop up and they cheer, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just stuff like that.
Speaker: You almost make it like you're looking in on the stadium.
Speaker: You know, the jumbotrons in there and the, yeah, you can make the characters kind of come to life.
Speaker: And that one, we wouldn't really need to, to work with FIFA.
Speaker: You know, it's like with Adams, it's like, okay, you got to do some things to make it an Adam stopper.
Speaker: But with like world cup, you wouldn't have to like, you don't have to have the dog up there, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: For example.
Speaker: So yeah, I like that one.
Speaker: I mean, that was my attack for you.
Speaker: You know, you said attack like that game was the one where it was like, okay, I get this.
Speaker: I'm scoring goals.
Speaker: I'm a kid and pinball is awesome.
Speaker: So certainly have a soft spot for that one.
Speaker: Well, even like Tim Kitzrow would probably even still be up for doing some more call outs.
Speaker: Because you said you did more like you did sound clips for the topper for Attack of the M. Well, that was for the promo video.
Speaker: So there's nothing in the topper, just to be clear.
Speaker: But there's a ton of great sounds.
Speaker: And we have talked about, you know, for some even classic EM games, we're not doing that.
Speaker: But like, how could you possibly build some sound stuff into it?
Speaker: We still want to build a topper with some smoke one way or another.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That would be interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so here's what I did.
Speaker: I just pulled up Pinside Top 100 and just going down and seeing the games.
Speaker: So what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of focus on games that are maybe the DMD, like pre-2010.
Speaker: And so I'm looking at games that I'm like, how could that take it to the next level?
Speaker: Okay, Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Don't start.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I know there's a lot of options, but there's also a lot of fantasy options that you could dance around and incorporate.
Speaker: We react that way because we've got an idea already that we're going to build at some point.
Speaker: I think it's pretty over the top.
Speaker: And it's we actually so we do a lot of collaborating with other mod makers.
Speaker: I'll give a shout out to Jimmy Lifham with 86 Pixels who builds.
Speaker: They did the screen on that for the back box of Twilight Zone.
Speaker: You know what I'm talking about?
Speaker: Oh, yes, I do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pin Vision.
Speaker: Is it called Pin Vision?
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Okay, it may be called pin vision.
Speaker: So anyway, he made this like screen that sits in the back box of Twilight Zone and he may have done it for another.
Speaker: And it's really cool because it does it shows like different modes.
Speaker: And shout out to him.
Speaker: He spent a ton of time on the white star system, which is for Lord of the Rings, because we want to do some stuff with like jackpot one, jackpot two, jackpot three, because that's like a huge moment in that game.
Speaker: And we want to know that that's happening.
Speaker: And that's that's a difficult piece of information to know is happening in that game.
Speaker: So with Lord of the Rings, for example, it's like we know what we want to do.
Speaker: Now we got to figure out how to do it.
Speaker: And we've just got to kind of spend some time with him to kind of get there.
Speaker: But that that that's the type of game where we do like targeting that because we know people take that game really far.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like we want to.
Speaker: That would be one of my issues with World Cup is like how many people out there are really taking that game to the ultimate destination, its ultimate self, because we need a lot of people doing that from a business perspective to build a top.
Speaker: You're saying buy the game, mod it, clean it.
Speaker: like who's doing that for what games?
Speaker: Cause they're not doing it for world cup.
Speaker: I mean, Circus Voltaire, I'll talk about it a little bit because it is on our radar.
Speaker: Like people do do that with Circus Voltaire.
Speaker: Like it is an amazing title for a lot of different reasons.
Speaker: People invest money.
Speaker: If you put the led option in the back box, it looks really good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: That's one to where the volume wasn't crazy high, but the passion is there.
Speaker: It seems like an easier choice.
Speaker: They're not going to remake it, I wouldn't think.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: They made Funhouse.
Speaker: That would be a factor, too.
Speaker: Even with...
Speaker: thinking about doing something for Medieval Madness, they're going to re-release that game and they're going to make those toppers.
Speaker: We don't need to compete with that.
Speaker: But there's also Tales of the Arabian Nights.
Speaker: There's a lot of really good options there.
Speaker: Theater of Magic.
Speaker: Keep going down your list.
Speaker: You'll get to those.
Speaker: Yeah, let's see.
Speaker: Other things that popped up, and you could even throw up like ACDC because ACDC didn't have a lot of great options.
Speaker: I know you'd have to deal with licensing in the band, but you could also do a lot of hell themed on that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Simpsons again.
Speaker: That would be kind of fun.
Speaker: Simpsons would be cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tron doesn't have a lot of options, but you could do things again.
Speaker: I know you're dealing with Disney.
Speaker: You're dealing with that kind of stuff, but that is a game that if it's, I actually had one of the prettiest Trons out there that was custom modded.
Speaker: And it was amazing.
Speaker: And so, like, someone who's really into Tron, they would definitely do that.
Speaker: Well, in that game, I swore that game's probably the top modded game of all time.
Speaker: Could be, yeah.
Speaker: There's so many different mods for it, and everyone has to have that.
Speaker: I didn't realize.
Speaker: That's interesting because, like, obviously Twilight and Godzilla would be thrown into that comment.
Speaker: But we would put Tron there, too.
Speaker: That's good to know.
Speaker: I mean, if we did, like, the light cycle races where it's just literally the topper is just, like, doing almost like that centipede game where the lights are following each other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And if we did Tron, it would have to be, like, over the top.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like the challenge.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, let's see.
Speaker: Okay, now we're kind of getting into some other stuff.
Speaker: Funhaus, again, they're doing stuff.
Speaker: Whirlwind.
Speaker: Everyone always... Whirlwind's like gargling, right?
Speaker: Whirlwind put a leaf blower up there and just blow their hair back.
Speaker: They're going to put one of those fans you put on your floor when you've got to dry it out.
Speaker: That's what they're going to put as their topper, right?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: We're going to do three fans.
Speaker: Or underneath, so it blows your legs.
Speaker: Like, whoa!
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I get away.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I guess you're kind of getting down into the weeds here.
Speaker: And a flash.
Speaker: Get away.
Speaker: Could be a good one too.
Speaker: Get away.
Speaker: Could be a fun one.
Speaker: The siren was a thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's like, if you could take that to the next level, I think people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is there a deeper title that we've considered that would surprise these guys?
Speaker: I'm trying to think.
Speaker: A deep root title?
Speaker: No, no, a deeper title.
Speaker: I was like, a deep root title?
Speaker: Did they make any?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: They were on the Raw zone originally.
Speaker: How about the Evaporating Money topper where you just pay for it?
Speaker: Dracula would be a great example of a deeper title that we would love.
Speaker: I mean, that was definitely modded a lot too.
Speaker: When you put a game in an actual casket.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: That was good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We had some good ideas for TNA.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I can see that.
Speaker: That would be cool.
Speaker: We did a panel at Expo and bounced around a bunch of ideas.
Speaker: I think that indie comes up a ton.
Speaker: Ghostbusters.
Speaker: You look at the toppers that I would say significantly underperformed.
Speaker: You can put Ghostbusters up there.
Speaker: You can definitely put Star Wars.
Speaker: There's like a billion better mods than having R2D2 up there.
Speaker: I will say, hands down, our number one request is Monster Bash.
Speaker: And I think that kind of played into our decision to do Attack because it's like that many people want that topper and they had it available to them.
Speaker: Like, clearly they didn't hit enough with their toppers for their games.
Speaker: No, and they didn't.
Speaker: And the difference between that one and Attack from Mars, like the.
Speaker: There's some articulation.
Speaker: So you got into it with articulation, something that connects with it.
Speaker: With the Monster Bash one, it's okay.
Speaker: I could probably make a similar one by buying some dolls and gluing them up there.
Speaker: So there's not enough connection with the game to make it worth a lot of money.
Speaker: That's why I'm saying medieval madness would still be fine because it's a great topper, but it's just, it's just like monster bash.
Speaker: It's some sculpts that set there, which is fine.
Speaker: I think it does great, but it's, I think if you took it to the next level, people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, definitely like replicating the castle up top and making that articulate.
Speaker: I think it would, it would be, it'd be a hit for sure.
Speaker: I think, you know, we look at the sculpts and every, you know, from the CGCs and, you know, of course we love the molded pieces as much as anybody else.
Speaker: But I think we look at the toppers more as a light show as much as it is, you know, the molds and sculpts themselves, right?
Speaker: So, you know, what's it going to look like in your arcade room?
Speaker: And I think a lot of our...
Speaker: Business is really built around like how can we make people's game rooms more, you know, and, you know, more personable than themselves.
Speaker: Like, like, how can you mod your game room just like you can mod your game?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the light show that comes off Attack from Mars, if you play in a dark setting, which I do, but if you play in a dark setting, that thing just takes things to another level.
Speaker: Like we're talking about with the strobe multiball and when the topper is going off with it.
Speaker: yeah, it, it, it takes it up just a whole nother notch and yeah, you might have an epileptic seizure, but it's worth it.
Speaker: You know, the other game that really gets modded a lot is a creature from the black lagoon.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We've, we've definitely spent some time talking about that one, not idea wise, but just like getting that on the radar.
Speaker: I mean, it's so loved.
Speaker: We're, we're big mod guys.
Speaker: I mean, we,
Speaker: we do pin sound on a bunch of our games and we, we, we take it various degrees when we have the time.
Speaker: Alec has a T2 that is hands down like the baddest ass T2 I've ever seen.
Speaker: And it's, it's like the amount he's put into that.
Speaker: So yeah, creature is, is right there, right?
Speaker: It's like people put a lot of time into that one.
Speaker: So that would be a good fit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We've owned that game in our, in my family's history, I should say, I'd have known to my brother, it did, but yeah,
Speaker: Spent a lot of time on it.
Speaker: I was happy when he got rid of it.
Speaker: Eventually, you're like, okay, I'm done.
Speaker: How long have you guys been doing this?
Speaker: Everybody tells their pinball origin story.
Speaker: How long have you guys been really interested in pinball?
Speaker: When did you start getting the bug for modding?
Speaker: And when did you say, you know what, we can take it to the next level and actually start making things to sell?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You want me to take this one?
Speaker: You want to start it off with a comment?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of, it's kind of interesting one.
Speaker: I mean, well, I, I've been in the hobby off and on for a while.
Speaker: Alex been really into it for, for longer than I am of recent.
Speaker: I used to go over to his house and kind of joke about how he would have these amazing machines.
Speaker: I think you had like X-Men, which was like five or 6k.
Speaker: And then you had Lord of the Rings and he would put like
Speaker: a couple thousand dollars worth of stuff into it.
Speaker: And I'd be like, it doesn't make any sense to me why this needs more stuff.
Speaker: It's already freaking amazing.
Speaker: And then I got a medieval madness standard CGC and like turned it into a Royal.
Speaker: And I was hooked, you know, I was like, Oh my God, it's so much better.
Speaker: And I had so much fun doing it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: And you did the lights underneath because, man, that was a pain.
Speaker: That was like a six hour.
Speaker: Oh, my gosh.
Speaker: That was painful.
Speaker: I still have that harness because it's like it's just like it was so difficult to get out of there.
Speaker: Well, basically, the standard version didn't come with RGB lights.
Speaker: You had to take out all the.
Speaker: Is that what you're talking about, Scott?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I did exactly the same thing about the standard.
Speaker: And so I got the, you know, the.
Speaker: It didn't have RGB lighting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you had to take out this crazy ass GI line that goes throughout their entire thing and replace it with a replacement GI.
Speaker: So big screen.
Speaker: So anyway, so we got our both got our Godzilla on the same day.
Speaker: Premiums is about 12 months into the run.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Here's a quick question, though.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: On your back on your speaker light panel, yours change color or do they just have one color?
Speaker: Just one color.
Speaker: That was, that is the non-royalness of my royal.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You can actually do it so it can change color.
Speaker: And I did it.
Speaker: Well, I don't have it anymore.
Speaker: I saw it to make another topper.
Speaker: You could have done it.
Speaker: It was kind of fun.
Speaker: I was able to figure out how to do that.
Speaker: There's a very unique story about my medieval madness.
Speaker: It's not appropriate for this conversation, but I'll have to tell you about it at some point.
Speaker: Well, that's coming up.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So some people out there... Sign up to the Patreon and you can get exclusive access.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But anyway, we got our Godzilla on the same day.
Speaker: We joked about who was taking which one.
Speaker: Alec ended up having a major playfield issue with his Godzilla.
Speaker: They got the turd out of the tube.
Speaker: It shipped right below the Magna save.
Speaker: So it literally started coming apart.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: So now he's got...
Speaker: Now he's got a play field that'll never get installed, right?
Speaker: No, I got a play field mounted on my wall.
Speaker: We fixed the play field.
Speaker: Rob and I were able to actually fix the play field.
Speaker: Yes, it was fixed and then he got a play field out of it.
Speaker: But anyway, yeah.
Speaker: So like I come from the toy space.
Speaker: So I've done a ton of prototyping with like toys as part of another business.
Speaker: Alec and I used to work together.
Speaker: We're good friends now and we're both into the hobby.
Speaker: Got these machines.
Speaker: and there was no timetable for the Godzilla topper.
Speaker: So I was like, I'm going to make something.
Speaker: He made one too.
Speaker: It wasn't nearly as cool what I ended up making, which was layered plastic that originally was based on a photograph of the side of the premium cabinet.
Speaker: And ultimately I wasn't happy with like the color density of the photograph.
Speaker: So I ended up hiring an artist to like recreate the,
Speaker: the side cabinet artwork for Godzilla and I made it and it looked fantastic.
Speaker: I mean, it's basically the layout of the premium cabinet.
Speaker: And Alec was like, I want one because my like has toys on top of my not so great toys on top of my Godzilla.
Speaker: So we ended up like getting that information out there and we ended up selling a handful of these things because it was like it was pretty expensive to make.
Speaker: And that was prior to like officially forming the company.
Speaker: So that was not compliant with licensing.
Speaker: And so this was basically a homebrew.
Speaker: This is like a family.
Speaker: Yeah, it was you just doing stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The people I mean, we made less than I think we made like 25 of them.
Speaker: You can see them pop up on Pinside every once in a while.
Speaker: And we decided to do this, you know, in that capacity.
Speaker: And then eventually we, Alec challenged me to make the most packed pinball machine in pinball, Twilight Zone, a topper that would do that justice.
Speaker: And that's kind of how we went off to the races was making that topper.
Speaker: I'd never seen anything in the market that I felt like really was worthy of, you know, Twilight Zone.
Speaker: People were taking that thing off the slot machines, you know, and that was kind of like the biggest, like the coolest topper that became the unobtainium thing.
Speaker: But these things are selling for like $2,000, $3,000.
Speaker: And even then, I didn't understand it.
Speaker: It just didn't make sense to me for the price point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: when we were in that basement, just staring at the game, like what's the best moments of these, this game, you know, like, like we kind of just mapped out what our favorite parts of that game were.
Speaker: And then of course, like, wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be cool if like, what if, what if the gumball actually had a gumball come out?
Speaker: Like what if we were actually able to make this thing go around?
Speaker: And then that just kind of like push things to another level.
Speaker: So, yeah, so we launched that at TPF 2022.
Speaker: We kind of got things ready.
Speaker: We took it to the show.
Speaker: We started to reach out to media.
Speaker: Kerry Hardy ended up doing our install video for us.
Speaker: I used to think Kerry was the creator of Penn Stadiums because I would watch this video of him installing Penn Stadiums.
Speaker: Like, oh, that's the guy that made Penn Stadium.
Speaker: So I learned that he did install videos as part of his content.
Speaker: And it was universally praised from the beginning.
Speaker: I mean, despite being $1,600, which is crazy amount of money to spend on a topper, like people were like, I'm rebuying Twilight Zone because I want this topper.
Speaker: And that was, of course, for entering the hobby brand new and fresh.
Speaker: That was the ultimate compliment for sure.
Speaker: That is.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: That's actually my origin story is I've re-bought Twilight Zone because I saw American Pinball's black and white version that they made.
Speaker: Yeah, that was cool.
Speaker: I didn't realize you could do something like that.
Speaker: I'm like, well, now I need to go buy that again.
Speaker: It was right when COVID started.
Speaker: We just had time on our hands and I was able to source a game right before the prices all went up and had an awesome project.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm excited for this topper.
Speaker: This, this attack from Mars topper is insanely cool.
Speaker: If you're going to pinball expo, you need to check it out.
Speaker: So Joel reminded me when you guys did TPF this year, you had a peephole at your booth.
Speaker: So you can kind of see what the next little secret was coming.
Speaker: Are you going to have something like that at the booth this year for expo?
Speaker: I do remember Joel coming by.
Speaker: We did a little highlight reel and I think I, uh, mistyped his last name.
Speaker: So Joel, I apologize for writing your last name wrong, but he was super excited about it.
Speaker: Um, we had a people, so people could get a little glimpse at it.
Speaker: We do not have that at this show, but we are going to be revealing another topper.
Speaker: As I mentioned, we're going to have a homebrew section within our booth.
Speaker: So we're going to have, uh,
Speaker: Brad, I forget his last name, but we're gonna have Friday the 13th in our booth, which is a huge title at one best of show at TPF.
Speaker: And then we're going to have another title from a St.
Speaker: Louis homebrew guy who's brand new to the scene.
Speaker: And this thing is crazy.
Speaker: Yeah, you're going to love it.
Speaker: So we got a 10 by 30 booth.
Speaker: Thank you, Rob Burke, for hooking us up.
Speaker: We got a homebrew section.
Speaker: Then we're going to have attack and this new topper.
Speaker: And then we're going to have our color Godzilla.
Speaker: topper and our black and white Godzilla topper.
Speaker: So we're going to have both those on display with the screens at Expo.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I will say that people thing, that was my favorite part of TPA.
Speaker: Just watching the people have to bend over.
Speaker: And some people that literally probably haven't been over and like got down on one knee in like maybe 30 years, try to get down to watch, you know, see what the heck they were looking at.
Speaker: Everyone thought they were going to be getting an eyeful of something else.
Speaker: And then when they actually saw there was like an actual topper, we weren't trying to just like, you know, joke, pull joke on them.
Speaker: That was my favorite.
Speaker: That was my favorite part of the show.
Speaker: And that was his brain shot.
Speaker: Yeah, it's on Instagram.
Speaker: Go back to March for the electric playground.
Speaker: You'll probably see Kerry Hardy with a big cheese on his face when he sees what's inside that hole.
Speaker: When you're chained to a booth and you got to sit there for hours, you need entertainment.
Speaker: I can only play so many games of Twilight Zone and Godzilla.
Speaker: So that peephole gave me so much just relief.
Speaker: I just watch this.
Speaker: I encourage everybody that was like, hey, you need to come look at our peephole.
Speaker: It was called the glory hole by the end of it.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: that's a that's a that's a little different context the uh okay so legit i have a twilight zone and i do have like a pyramid on top but dang your your one looks so good it's like uh yeah that that looks like something i would do it yeah we're on a bit of a hiatus on that one right now we're building other things okay but there's a wait list it says join wait list so i we'll build it again we'll build it again
Speaker: Did you see the silver screen edition on there?
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: I was actually, I was there.
Speaker: We haven't, we haven't really promoted it.
Speaker: So we did end up making, I guess I'll give a shout out to great American gaming.
Speaker: They made five,
Speaker: Well, they're making some black and white toppers for sale and they acquired five toppers from us.
Speaker: They're black and white additions.
Speaker: They're going to be coming with that game when you buy it.
Speaker: It'll be expensive, I'm sure, but we've got some available.
Speaker: We actually have a wall version that has actually a working clock and you can flip a little switch and make the ball go.
Speaker: So we sell quite a few of them to just collectors who used to own the game.
Speaker: Oh, the wall art thing.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: if you don't have twilight zone and you want to pay homage to the amazingness of that game, you can get a wall version of our topper.
Speaker: It's really, and you actually, the big Lebowski too.
Speaker: I saw there's a wall art version of the big Lebowski.
Speaker: So, so you can, you can definitely experience your stuff if you don't have the games.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Is there anything we didn't cover that you guys are just like this?
Speaker: You got to know about this before we shut this down.
Speaker: No, I mean, I think we got most of it.
Speaker: I would say, you know, the EM topper that we're going to be doing, I think it's fun to throw a shout out to Rob Burke.
Speaker: This is – he's been pushing for two years for us to do an EM topper.
Speaker: And if you know Rob, you can imagine how those conversations went.
Speaker: Yep, yep.
Speaker: He is like the epitome of why I love this hobby so much.
Speaker: He's just such a crazy eccentric guy.
Speaker: Just never afraid to share an opinion, especially when you don't ask for one.
Speaker: And he really pushed us to do this EM topper.
Speaker: And I think it came out amazing.
Speaker: I just can't wait for him to see it and to be there when he gets to see it and actually show that we did this for him.
Speaker: And, you know, we'll see if it actually sells, but we'll, you know.
Speaker: it'll be, it's going to be a fun reveal at the very least.
Speaker: So make sure people come by the booth to check that out for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Well, some of the old school things are great.
Speaker: Like I, and I totally forgot about this, but I remembered it when I, when I saw the clip at the end of Superman too,
Speaker: when he goes in and attacks the bully.
Speaker: Do you guys remember this scene?
Speaker: He puts him on a tray and then throws him down the bar, and the guy crashes into a pinball machine, and the back of the pinball machine is the donkey kicking his head.
Speaker: I'm like, that's the kind of stuff that you want to see.
Speaker: You want to see that kind of stuff.
Speaker: How come they haven't made a classic Superman game?
Speaker: That is just like...
Speaker: criminal it's criminal that is perfect word yeah yeah you know all you need is you need the music and you need christopher reeve that's pretty much it you hit that start button that soundtrack hits like that would i'm in just get i'll slide a blank check across the table yeah a number feels fair
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So our audience has been listening this whole time.
Speaker: If you want them to get a hold of you for their topper ideas or for questions or even buying, how do they get a hold of you guys?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, we're on all the stuff, right?
Speaker: Pinside, of course, our website, we've got a contact form.
Speaker: A lot of people will get a hold of us there if they've got like a special request.
Speaker: We don't do like one-off toppers.
Speaker: But if you've got an idea, you know, we'd love to hear about that.
Speaker: Instagram.
Speaker: We've got quite a bit going on there and Facebook as well.
Speaker: So anywhere, but mainly you can find all that through the electric playgrounds website, which is T P pinball.com.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And if you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: You can get ahold of us on all the socials, Facebook, Instagram, X, Twitter, Twitch, I guess X and Twitter, the same thing.
Speaker: Also, if you haven't been noticing, we've been sporting our Loser Kid gear in support of Attack from Mars.
Speaker: We got the Loser Kid Attacks, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so you want to get that?
Speaker: SilverballSwag.com slash Loser Kid.
Speaker: Shoes, all that jazz.
Speaker: The hat list is now officially closed.
Speaker: We're no longer taking orders for that.
Speaker: We might have some extra expo.
Speaker: So if you missed out, run into us.
Speaker: Say, hey, I want a hat.
Speaker: See if we can get one.
Speaker: You can still get hats.
Speaker: We can send them to you.
Speaker: But we just won't have them ready for expo.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So Scott, give us our last word.
Speaker: You know, I'd like to thank Rob and Alec for coming on and absolutely go check out this attack from our topper.
Speaker: And if you want to get a better Godzilla topper, check out their Godzilla topper and we'll see you guys at Expo.
Speaker: This just soon reports are coming in from all over the world.
Speaker: Greetings, Earthling!
Speaker: Ah!
Speaker: Germany is victorious!
Speaker: Watch out, men!
Speaker: They've got a big ol' beam!
Speaker: Look out!
Speaker: Martian!
Speaker: Jackpot!
Speaker: Go for the extra ball!
Speaker: Extra ball!
Speaker: Get the troops ready!
Speaker: You cannot defeat our force field!
Speaker: Well done, soldier!
Speaker: Total annihilation!
Speaker: Woohoo!
Speaker: Get every available man!
Speaker: The fate of the world is in your hands!
