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Ep 36: Hot Wheels with Josh Kugler
40 Plays5 years ago
Let's talk some Hot Wheels with the one and only Josh Kugler! Not only does Josh answer all our questions about Hot Wheels, he also tells us what got him to American Pinball and the fun adventure it's been so far. Enjoy!
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsors
00:00:06
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 36.
00:00:11
Speaker
With me, my co-captain as always.
00:00:13
Speaker
Scott Larson.
00:00:14
Speaker
And Scott, before we get going into this, let's thank some of our friends of the podcast.
00:00:19
Speaker
Brad Hunter with Lit Frames.
00:00:20
Speaker
If you haven't checked them out yet, they are a fantastic product.
00:00:24
Speaker
You definitely want to go check out some of the special translates that are made specifically for his frames.
00:00:29
Speaker
There are limited quantities there.
00:00:31
Speaker
And also, Zach and Nicole Menny with Flipping Out Pinball.
00:00:35
Speaker
I know that new machines are going to be coming off the line, and you're going to want them.
00:00:39
Speaker
So give Zach a call.
00:00:41
Speaker
Give him a text.
00:00:41
Speaker
Give him an email.
00:00:42
Speaker
He doesn't care how you get it.
00:00:43
Speaker
Especially one of the games we're going to be talking about a lot today is Hot Wheels, and you can get that from him.
00:00:48
Speaker
Just shoot him a text.
00:00:50
Speaker
Right, Scott?
Impact of COVID-19 on Game Release
00:00:51
Speaker
That's correct.
00:00:51
Speaker
So today we are going to welcome from American Pinball, Josh Coogler.
00:00:55
Speaker
How are you doing today, Josh?
00:00:57
Speaker
I'm doing great, guys.
00:00:58
Speaker
Thanks for having me on the show.
00:00:59
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:01:00
Speaker
So it's been a little strange there in Chicago with everything frozen out.
00:01:05
Speaker
It probably throws a little wrench into your release timeline.
00:01:09
Speaker
Well, certainly the timing of COVID-19, obviously devastating for everyone, but the timing was obviously pretty harsh on us as we had a
00:01:20
Speaker
mini reveal for Lack of a Veteran was an unintended reveal when the game was seen at Amusement Expo with our real reveal scheduled a couple weeks later at TPF.
00:01:33
Speaker
And between those two things, the world changed and everything came to a screeching halt.
00:01:38
Speaker
And that certainly was unfortunate and disruptive.
00:01:43
Speaker
So it sounded like you guys had a big reveal planned.
00:01:46
Speaker
I heard on your other interview on the Super Awesome Pinball Show, again, another friend of the show, you talked about that you had two, I think two or three full-size Hot Wheel replicas that people had built to basically show that there's enthusiasm for the Hot Wheel brand and how this is how kids and adults connect to the brand.
00:02:09
Speaker
But that obviously went sideways when we decided we couldn't do it.
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, you know, Hot Wheels is a lot like pinball in the fact that you have some very serious hardcore enthusiasts out there.
00:02:22
Speaker
And there are guys who have taken Hot Wheels originals and turned them into full-size real vehicles.
00:02:28
Speaker
And, you know, obviously we're working with Mattel and they put us in contact with a couple of folks and we had arranged for one guy who was bringing the cars all the way from California to Texas, right?
00:02:38
Speaker
And we had two of them because that's what he fits on a trailer.
00:02:41
Speaker
And I want to say it was a riprod and a bone shaker, which actually, you know, are two of the most noteworthy, famous, whatever the word I want to get in there, a Hot Wheels car.
00:02:53
Speaker
So we were really excited because I'm living with these things all the time now to the thought that we're going to get to see full size ones.
00:03:00
Speaker
It was going to be pretty exciting.
00:03:01
Speaker
So we had gotten a pretty big booth space with Ed from TPF.
00:03:05
Speaker
One of the things that I wanted that we were going to have was just a lot of Hot Wheels tracks set up for people to play with.
00:03:10
Speaker
I was going to say kids, but let's face it, you know, there'd be plenty of adults be playing with it as well.
00:03:15
Speaker
And we had eight games planned to be there.
00:03:18
Speaker
So we had, you know, planned for a really big release.
00:03:21
Speaker
Because one of the things, too, that we really strived for on this game was to be starting production when we show the game.
00:03:29
Speaker
so that games would be available.
00:03:30
Speaker
So here we were literally starting production when, you know, the governor, you know, said, okay, let's everybody go home.
00:03:39
Speaker
Let's be safe.
00:03:40
Speaker
So we're very, you know, looking forward to that being changed, which is hopefully going to happen in a couple of weeks and we can flip the switch and, you know, the games will be coming off the line.
00:03:50
Speaker
So I'm pretty excited about that.
00:03:53
Speaker
You know, at least the, the end is in sight.
Journey into Pinball Industry
00:03:56
Speaker
Well, before we get the cart before the horse, Josh, I want you to kind of introduce yourself and can you kind of tell us your background a little bit and how you end up at American Pinball?
00:04:08
Speaker
Sure.
00:04:10
Speaker
I'm actually relatively new to the pinball industry.
00:04:13
Speaker
I've been a pinball player since I was nine years old.
00:04:16
Speaker
I actually had a friend in elementary school whose dad sold pinball retail.
00:04:21
Speaker
He had a retail store and he always had a couple of machines in his basement.
00:04:25
Speaker
So when I was
00:04:27
Speaker
10, 11 years old, he had a brand new fireball in his basement.
00:04:31
Speaker
So I was hooked from pinball from a pretty young age.
00:04:34
Speaker
And I built a game back when I was a kid out of rubber bands and nails and stuff.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I played pinball forever.
00:04:41
Speaker
And I'd always thought about building my own machine.
00:04:43
Speaker
And every once in a while I would think about it.
00:04:45
Speaker
And it's a pretty daunting thing.
00:04:48
Speaker
And
00:04:49
Speaker
It was actually through work where I always brought pinball machines to wherever I worked.
00:04:55
Speaker
I always had brought in machines.
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Speaker
Everybody knew I was a pinball guy.
00:04:58
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And one of the guys came in and said, have you ever seen this?
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Speaker
And he had printed out a page about the P-rock.
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Speaker
which I had never heard of at that point.
00:05:07
Speaker
And so the P-Rock is what then allowed me to finally fulfill that dream of building my own pinball machine.
00:05:15
Speaker
And I did two custom pinball machines that were shown at Expo for a couple of years.
00:05:21
Speaker
And that's ultimately what led me to American Pinball.
00:05:24
Speaker
American Pinball had its rough start at first with John,
00:05:30
Speaker
And then they brought in Joe to kind of let's shift gears and let's start over.
00:05:34
Speaker
And Joe was in need of a programmer and pretty much everybody he knew was already working.
00:05:40
Speaker
So American People was pretty desperate.
00:05:42
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And somebody said, oh, you know, there's this guy in Chicago did a custom game.
00:05:46
Speaker
Maybe you should talk to him.
00:05:47
Speaker
And so...
00:05:48
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They got in contact with me.
00:05:50
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I was basically doing consulting work at the time.
00:05:52
Speaker
Most of my career has been as an executive with technology companies here in Chicago.
00:05:57
Speaker
And I just left one about a year before that.
00:06:00
Speaker
It was just doing consulting.
00:06:01
Speaker
So I was like, why not?
00:06:03
Speaker
And that's how I ended up programming for American Pinball.
00:06:08
Speaker
That's way cool.
00:06:09
Speaker
Like, I don't think I've honestly ever heard that story.
00:06:12
Speaker
I guess my biggest concern, though, I mean, you started out as a hobbyist and you have a love for this hobby and that's what brought you into it.
00:06:18
Speaker
Has it become one of those situations, though, where, you know, where people say never do your hobby is your job because you'll end up hating your hobby?
00:06:26
Speaker
Well, you know, some people mentioned that to me early on.
00:06:30
Speaker
You know, the custom pinball group, especially here in Chicago, is really strong.
00:06:34
Speaker
And reality, you're seeing, you know, that impact the professional ranks.
00:06:38
Speaker
You know, Scott Denise, he was a custom builder.
00:06:42
Speaker
And Eric Pripke, who's now working for Spooky, is a custom builder.
00:06:46
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Eric had said, the first thing he said to me when I took the job was, he goes, you think you're going to end up hating pinball now?
00:06:51
Speaker
And I always joke with him along the way about it.
00:06:54
Speaker
Now that he's working in the industry, I asked him that.
00:06:57
Speaker
He really had no memory of him commenting that to me.
00:07:00
Speaker
I'd say the big difference is I play very little pinball at home now.
00:07:05
Speaker
You know, when you're working on it all day and I'm usually so focused on the game that I'm working on that my games at home get very little play at this point.
00:07:14
Speaker
And I think that's the big change.
00:07:16
Speaker
And there's actually just a local open league here that I've started to go to monthly just to make sure I got out and played some things other than Hot Wheels or Houdini or Oktoberfest or whatever I'm working on.
00:07:28
Speaker
So to me, that's the downside.
00:07:30
Speaker
So I always enjoy when I get somebody's having an event or a party because it means, oh, you know what?
00:07:35
Speaker
I'm going to get to play a bunch of stuff because usually it shows I don't get to play very much either.
00:07:40
Speaker
So I actually probably play less now other than the game I'm working on than before I was doing this as a job.
00:07:50
Speaker
So when you transition to doing, you know, programming and helping orchestrate the rules, what is your philosophy?
00:07:58
Speaker
Maybe a better way of doing is that walk us through the Hot Wheels game.
00:08:04
Speaker
And I see you at a show.
00:08:06
Speaker
I'm standing next to the game and I turn to you and I say, Josh, what am I supposed to do and how can I do it?
00:08:12
Speaker
Okay, well, so I'm not sure where we're going with the question.
00:08:16
Speaker
So on Hot Wheels, one of the things we tried to do on Hot Wheels was make sure that the objectives are very clear and obvious to a player when they step up to the game.
00:08:27
Speaker
We tried to make sure we did that with some of the inserts and in the way we structured the rules.
00:08:32
Speaker
So, you know, the feedback we got on Houdini and Oktoberfest is it could be a little daunting at first because they're games that are very deep and there's a lot going on and some people find that a little intimidating at first.
00:08:44
Speaker
So we want to make sure that this game was super approachable given that we want to try to
00:08:51
Speaker
have our games be successful on location so more people get to play our games.
00:08:56
Speaker
To me, that's one of our frustrations as a new company is getting our games out there for people to play them.
00:09:01
Speaker
I'll get emails from people or see postings where somebody's finally gotten to play one of our games and like, wow, this is great.
00:09:07
Speaker
I haven't gotten to play this before.
00:09:11
Speaker
But when we approached the rules for Hot Wheels, that was something we wanted to make sure that it was clear and straightforward what to do and that the complexity is still there for those who want it.
Designing Hot Wheels Game Rules
00:09:22
Speaker
And when we looked at Hot Wheels, so each time I've done a game, you have to kind of really look at the theme and the story and what it's all about to figure out where the rules need to go.
00:09:33
Speaker
And you kind of look at that in conjunction with the layout.
00:09:36
Speaker
You kind of try to fit those things together.
00:09:39
Speaker
And how do those things come together?
00:09:42
Speaker
So on Hot Wheels, Joe had been working on the layout and there's some key elements we knew were going to be in there.
00:09:48
Speaker
But then we looked at it from the perspective of what is Hot Wheels to you?
00:09:51
Speaker
What is Hot Wheels to me?
00:09:53
Speaker
You know, I grew up when Hot Wheels first came out.
00:09:56
Speaker
I remember getting them when they were, you know, I had some of the original cars, wish I still had them.
00:10:01
Speaker
So to me, a lot of it was about, you know, we used to race the cars down the track and the imaginative play.
00:10:06
Speaker
And we obviously knew there's a lot about collecting, so we want to incorporate that in the game.
00:10:11
Speaker
Building tracks was always one of the things I loved as a kid, right?
00:10:14
Speaker
You'd try and create these complex tracks.
00:10:16
Speaker
Of course, what they have today is so much cooler than when I was a kid as far as the ability for these modules that'll keep accelerating the car so you can do these really complex tracks.
00:10:28
Speaker
We really want to incorporate all of those things.
00:10:30
Speaker
When you approach the game, it talks about car collecting, track building.
00:10:34
Speaker
And then, of course, we have this element of battling creatures, right?
00:10:40
Speaker
Which was a new thing to me with Hot Wheels because we didn't battle creatures when I was a kid.
00:10:45
Speaker
But now with Hot Wheels, that's a big part of it for young kids to play is they have all these really cool play sets with these elaborate things where they fire the car and shoot the cars.
00:10:54
Speaker
And so that was something else we wanted to incorporate into the game.
00:10:59
Speaker
So Josh, when you go to start coding a game, do you have a specific philosophy that you follow when you are trying to make a rule set?
00:11:08
Speaker
Or is it kind of more Joe helps you push along that way?
00:11:13
Speaker
Well, Balser gets involved zero in the rules.
00:11:18
Speaker
Joe's a guy who's very focused on the layout.
00:11:20
Speaker
He'll have a few thoughts, some things he thinks might be cool, but Joe doesn't get very involved in the rules.
00:11:27
Speaker
And Joe Schober and I on Oktoberfest, now on Hot Wheels, develop the rules together with input from other members of the creative team and
00:11:35
Speaker
We had Jim Pat on board who had some thoughts.
00:11:39
Speaker
Roger Sherp, who was doing the licensing with us.
00:11:42
Speaker
You know, he's given us some thoughts along the way.
00:11:46
Speaker
And so we've had some input from others, but Joe and I kind of craft those rules.
00:11:50
Speaker
But what we look at that's really important is we want to make sure that there's something in there for the three different types of pinball players.
00:11:57
Speaker
You have the...
00:12:00
Speaker
I'll start with the middle group, which is the collector and the enthusiast, which makes up the largest portion.
00:12:04
Speaker
These people are going out and playing all the time.
00:12:06
Speaker
They're seeking out pinball on location there and they're collectors.
00:12:10
Speaker
Then at the one end of the spectrum, you have the tournament guys, the super competitive who study the rules, who know everything, who practice their skills and all the rest.
00:12:20
Speaker
And then there's the third group, which are the novices, the people who, when you mention you have a pinball machine, they say, oh, they still make pinball machines.
00:12:28
Speaker
There's those people or people who are just getting familiar with it on location.
00:12:32
Speaker
And you always want to make sure when we're developing the rules, we want to make sure there's things in there for all three of those groups and that we're trying to balance those things.
00:12:40
Speaker
And so Houdini was an example of that when I looked at the layout the very first time and I saw that Joe had put stand up targets between all the shots.
00:12:52
Speaker
And I said, sure, that's what I'm going to be hitting all the time.
00:12:54
Speaker
I said, oh, we're going to make that a multi ball, because if you're not making the shots, you're going to hit all those little stand ups.
00:13:00
Speaker
And that's what's going to happen to the novice.
00:13:02
Speaker
So let's make sure that gets you a nice payoff.
00:13:05
Speaker
So there's something fun for that novice in that case.
Game Mechanics and Strategy
00:13:09
Speaker
The other end of the spectrum is the stuff for the advanced player.
00:13:12
Speaker
And in Oktoberfest, some people might say we went way overboard on that because there's just so much there strategy-wise for an advanced player.
00:13:22
Speaker
So it's really trying to find the balance to make sure we have all three of those things in there.
00:13:29
Speaker
So I'm looking at the play field and it looks like a basically a fan layout layout.
00:13:36
Speaker
And I'm trying to see all the different shots.
00:13:39
Speaker
And I so anything anything that's interesting about it, it looks like there's one in the middle where it's is that the bone crusher car?
00:13:48
Speaker
I don't know the names of these cars, but it's it looks like a hot rod car that spins around in the middle.
00:13:52
Speaker
Tell me about that one.
00:13:53
Speaker
Right.
00:13:53
Speaker
So it is the bone crusher.
00:13:54
Speaker
So when we started to work on the game, you know, the idea was, okay, this game needs to have speed.
00:14:00
Speaker
It's got to be a fast flowing game.
00:14:03
Speaker
You know, so it is a fan layout because obviously those can lend themselves to that.
00:14:09
Speaker
And it's got what I call the inner loop, which is not quite the inner loop because actually the ramp is to the left of it, the way it's laid out, which gives you some nice speed back and forth to the flippers and the left orbit shot actually feeds into a ramp.
00:14:25
Speaker
And then probably the most interesting thing in the game, and it's just funny how these things can evolve, is there's a set of stand-up targets right in the middle of the play field.
00:14:36
Speaker
which is where that spinning car is.
00:14:38
Speaker
And at one point, originally those were set up in a very traditional way.
00:14:41
Speaker
And then Joe came into my office one day with a layout.
00:14:44
Speaker
He actually kind of
00:14:47
Speaker
It was actually three layouts on a giant, giant printout that he was playing around with.
00:14:51
Speaker
They were all just about changing that middle area.
00:14:53
Speaker
He was trying different ideas for that middle area.
00:14:56
Speaker
So I actually just came across this printout when I was cleaning out my office the other day.
00:15:00
Speaker
And one of these was this idea of these stepped stand-up targets.
00:15:05
Speaker
Rather than kind of next to each other, they're in a tiered shape.
00:15:10
Speaker
And I don't think I've ever seen that before.
00:15:12
Speaker
I'm not one of these guys with the encyclopedic knowledge of games and layouts and rules like some guys, but I don't think I've ever seen that before.
00:15:20
Speaker
And it really creates a very interesting risk-reward challenge in the game with those shots, because they act a little bit differently than when they're kind of lined up right next to each other.
00:15:32
Speaker
So it creates a very different feel in the game, and that's sort of an interesting aspect of it, and the
00:15:38
Speaker
The key thing about Hot Wheels, and this is something Joe Schober wanted to do as soon as we started, he's like, this is something I've wanted to do for years, and this is the perfect game to do it.
00:15:49
Speaker
And what it is is the tachometer, which is very prevalent right in front of the flippers, is basically indicating the scoring level of the game.
00:15:59
Speaker
You can think about it as your playfield multiplier.
00:16:02
Speaker
And as the tach goes up, all the scoring in the game goes up.
00:16:06
Speaker
and you raise the tack by hitting those standup targets in the middle, those RPM targets.
00:16:12
Speaker
So it really creates an interesting risk reward because shooting those kind of targets, especially with them being step, it was gonna create some randomness with the ball, but it's pretty key to, if you want high scoring, to get that RPM value up.
00:16:27
Speaker
So it's a basic concept, but it really creates a lot of interesting activity in the game and strategy in the game.
00:16:36
Speaker
So when you increase the RPM, is it time-based or does it stay that high until you drop the ball?
00:16:43
Speaker
It is time-based, so it's always moving.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's always moving down.
00:16:47
Speaker
Every time you raise it up, it'll hold for a little bit, and then it'll slowly start to come down.
00:16:52
Speaker
So the tax starts at, let's say, $100,000.
00:16:56
Speaker
And so all your points are based on that in some form.
00:17:00
Speaker
So now it's $200,000, $300,000, $400,000.
00:17:01
Speaker
Every time you hit it and it moves up, it slowly starts to come back down.
00:17:09
Speaker
if you can raise it all the way up where you redline it, we kick you into a very cool multiball.
00:17:15
Speaker
And once you've completed that multiball, now the tachometer is at gear higher.
00:17:19
Speaker
So now your scoring is permanently raised where that'll maintain throughout.
00:17:25
Speaker
So if I was at 100K in the first gear, now in gear two, my lowest shot is at 200,000.
00:17:33
Speaker
And then again, I can raise it all the way up and I can repeat that all the way up into fifth gear.
00:17:38
Speaker
And if you can actually pin it in fifth gear, which would be very hard to do because it gets harder to advance the tack in each gear.
00:17:46
Speaker
Each time you move up a gear, it's a little bit harder to move it up.
00:17:50
Speaker
But there's a lot of strategy about getting your tack up before starting a multiball or before starting a mode.
00:17:56
Speaker
And the spinning car,
00:17:58
Speaker
spins at a couple of different speeds.
00:18:00
Speaker
Originally, it would always adjust.
00:18:02
Speaker
Now we kind of have it tiered.
00:18:04
Speaker
So it'll start to spin once you get to fourth or fifth gear, and then it'll start to spin faster at eighth gear, and then it'll go crazy once you get it close to redline.
00:18:13
Speaker
And that just becomes a good indicator to help you recognize, ooh, you know what, I got to get my RPMs back up if I care about scoring.
00:18:21
Speaker
if you don't care about scoring, if you're more about, Hey, I just want to get through the modes or I just want to collect all the cars so I can get to some of those modes, you know, then you don't have to worry much about the tax.
00:18:30
Speaker
So again, depending on your approach and you know what you're trying to accomplish.
00:18:36
Speaker
So one thing I have been hearing that you have been talking about, um,
00:18:42
Speaker
unlike the super awesome pinball show was the red line mania and when i hear that name i parallel it directly to the getaway because you know that's like the final mode once you get to the fifth was that kind of where it came from was it just something totally separate that just came along with the hot wheels thing is there any inspiration from other racing games
00:19:02
Speaker
Redline's a big Hot Wheel term in general.
00:19:06
Speaker
So certainly that was part of it.
00:19:09
Speaker
That's a case where I was not familiar with Redline Mania.
00:19:12
Speaker
So when it first came up, and then Joe was, he's like, oh yeah.
00:19:15
Speaker
And then we thought that was even a better reason to do it, just because it's a great name and it's always great to have a call out to an old game.
00:19:24
Speaker
But the original cars are called redline cars because they had a redline tire rather than a whitewall.
00:19:30
Speaker
And then there's a redline club, which is a very prestigious club among Hot Wheels collectors.
00:19:36
Speaker
So redline was a term we wanted to use, and it fit well to, you know, so it's a little bit of using it in a couple of different ways as associated with the TAC.
00:19:44
Speaker
So that's where it came from.
00:19:47
Speaker
You had also mentioned about the ability to customize, which I think is brilliant.
00:19:52
Speaker
Tell me a little more about your ability to put whatever cars you want in the game.
00:19:58
Speaker
So that was something Balser wanted to do right from the start was, you know, he wanted to put cars around the game and he wanted them to be able to, that you could swap in your own so that if you're a collector, you have cars from when you were a kid or just you have certain kind of cars you like to be able to replace them.
00:20:16
Speaker
So when he designed the holders for those, they're just using some kind of a locking Velcro.
00:20:23
Speaker
It's not normal Velcro, it's like the, you know, the
00:20:25
Speaker
the stronger stuff.
00:20:26
Speaker
And we'll include some of that in the coin box.
00:20:29
Speaker
So you can swap out any of the cars.
00:20:31
Speaker
There are five cars on the game.
00:20:34
Speaker
Um, so you can swap them out for whatever car you want.
00:20:37
Speaker
And it was, uh, you know, funny cause I was, um,
00:20:41
Speaker
At a pinball event, I was talking to somebody, and they were asking about Hot Wheels.
00:20:45
Speaker
And I said, well, you know, I don't know if that's a game anybody's doing that game.
00:20:49
Speaker
But, you know, he had mentioned he was a collector and he had all of the original 16 cars.
00:20:53
Speaker
And he goes, yeah, it'd be great if I could, you know, show off my cars.
00:20:57
Speaker
And I said to him, I said, you know, if somebody was designing a Hot Wheels game, you know, the designer might plan for that.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:04
Speaker
So that's something Joe did.
00:21:06
Speaker
I think, you know, a lot of people will enjoy getting to do that, whether it's a car brand they like or just cars from their own collection.
00:21:15
Speaker
So Hot Wheels is the very first officially licensed game from American Pinball.
00:21:21
Speaker
What made you guys decide to go the licensing route and why Hot Wheels is your first one?
Choosing Hot Wheels Theme
00:21:28
Speaker
Well, we've been looking at licensing pretty much from the time we started, but there's a couple of things we knew, and obviously Joe Balser's been around.
00:21:36
Speaker
So we recognize that licensing takes longer to do.
00:21:41
Speaker
It's a longer process in getting the license and working through all the logistics around it, working through assets, approvals, and all of that.
00:21:50
Speaker
And so that wasn't really something feasible for our first couple of games because we needed to be pretty nimble and move quickly.
00:21:56
Speaker
I mean, we did Houdini in four months.
00:21:58
Speaker
I mean, there's no way you do a licensed game in four months.
00:22:01
Speaker
And what's nice about an unlicensed theme like Houdini Oktoberfest is you get to do whatever you want.
00:22:07
Speaker
So I was pretty happy doing the non-licensed.
00:22:10
Speaker
But a license also has some huge benefits.
00:22:12
Speaker
It gives you name recognition.
00:22:14
Speaker
It gives you interest in that regard.
00:22:17
Speaker
depending on the license areas, assets, things you get.
00:22:21
Speaker
And that's one of the things you look at with a license.
00:22:23
Speaker
Am I getting assets?
00:22:24
Speaker
Am I getting a story?
00:22:25
Speaker
Am I getting characters?
00:22:26
Speaker
What are we getting out of it?
00:22:30
Speaker
So we looked at a bunch of licenses.
00:22:33
Speaker
And what we liked about Hot Wheels was
00:22:37
Speaker
was I'm very big on timeless themes.
00:22:41
Speaker
Houdini is a timeless theme.
00:22:43
Speaker
Oktoberfest is a timeless theme.
00:22:45
Speaker
And Hot Wheels is a timeless theme.
00:22:47
Speaker
Hot Wheels has been around for 50 years.
00:22:50
Speaker
It is the largest selling toy of all time.
00:22:55
Speaker
We've been talking for, what, about 25 minutes now?
00:22:59
Speaker
So in the time we were talking, they just made 25,000 Hot Wheels cars.
00:23:07
Speaker
while we were talking.
00:23:08
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:23:10
Speaker
When they shared some numbers with us on the number of cars they make, it was mind-boggling.
00:23:16
Speaker
And, you know, literally, it's 25 minutes, 25,000 cars they make.
00:23:22
Speaker
It's a mind-boggling number.
00:23:24
Speaker
You know, they're...
00:23:26
Speaker
They're all around the world.
00:23:27
Speaker
And what's funny was until I started on this, I didn't realize there are Hot Wheels cars everywhere.
00:23:34
Speaker
When I'm at the gas station, there are Hot Wheels cars.
00:23:37
Speaker
I was at a Michael's craft store.
00:23:39
Speaker
On the shelves were Hot Wheels cars.
00:23:41
Speaker
I was at the supermarket.
00:23:42
Speaker
They had bins of Hot Wheels cars at the checkout aisle.
00:23:46
Speaker
I just wasn't really noticing them before.
00:23:49
Speaker
They're everywhere.
00:23:50
Speaker
And so it's a huge brand and it's a huge name.
00:23:56
Speaker
And it's something that we felt had a lot of the elements.
00:24:00
Speaker
Again, we wanted to increase our presence on location.
00:24:04
Speaker
So we wanted something that was very family friendly.
00:24:06
Speaker
That would be good in family entertainment centers.
00:24:10
Speaker
And it really checked off a lot of those boxes.
00:24:14
Speaker
Well, and the cool part too is, you know, bringing up all these numbers, I think a lot of people from the outside, especially the enthusiasts in this hobby, look at Hot Wheels and they go, really Hot Wheels?
00:24:25
Speaker
But when you start spouting off numbers, 25,000 cars made in the last 25 minutes and it's a worldwide recognized brand.
00:24:32
Speaker
And there's a lot of name to the brand that really brings power to this pinball machine.
00:24:38
Speaker
And I think people forget that.
00:24:40
Speaker
They look at it and they kind of just go, they dismiss it because it's not exactly what they want.
00:24:44
Speaker
And so it's a wake-up call to those people that might be a little too far with their head in the sand maybe to this.
00:24:53
Speaker
Well, I think the thing with theme is, you know, I look at the themes that have come out over the last couple years.
00:24:59
Speaker
There aren't too many themes that I'm like, oh my God, I have to have it, right?
00:25:03
Speaker
I mean, there's only a few themes that come along for any of us where it must have theme.
00:25:07
Speaker
And then the other end of the spectrum are the themes where there's no freaking way I'm having this in my house.
00:25:14
Speaker
Right.
00:25:14
Speaker
So those are the two extremes.
00:25:16
Speaker
So the reality is most of us fall somewhere in between.
00:25:18
Speaker
And, you know, some themes are going to be a little more interesting to us than others.
00:25:22
Speaker
But at the end of the day, it also really comes down to gameplay.
00:25:27
Speaker
Right.
00:25:28
Speaker
Let's be honest.
00:25:30
Speaker
Would Iron Maiden have been the hit that it was, you know, based on the theme or is it based on the layout and the gameplay and the rules?
00:25:38
Speaker
Right.
00:25:40
Speaker
Honestly, yeah, it's the gameplay and the rules.
00:25:42
Speaker
It's obviously the band because the band is the biggest band on the planet.
00:25:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:25:46
Speaker
So there's no talking with you then about it.
00:25:50
Speaker
But, you know, if you think about it, going in when you said, okay, Iron Maiden, the number of people who are like, I don't care about Iron Maiden, whatever, who then became interested once, you know, they played the game or saw the game and learned about the game, right?
00:26:05
Speaker
So I think the key with any theme is certain things are just going to be a complete turnoff for people.
00:26:09
Speaker
I get that.
00:26:10
Speaker
But,
00:26:11
Speaker
Hopefully, it's what you're able to do with the theme and how you incorporate and how you tie it together and bring it to life, I think is what matters.
00:26:19
Speaker
Because if it's well done, you can make anything into a great pinball machine if you put all the pieces together the right way.
00:26:27
Speaker
But I was really happy with Hot Wheels as a theme.
00:26:30
Speaker
Again, we want to do something that's fast, moves quickly.
00:26:33
Speaker
The
00:26:34
Speaker
The thing with the creature battles was sort of a happy coincidence or happy bonus, as it turned out, when we were sitting down working through developing the game.
Game Features and Modes
00:26:45
Speaker
We came across this YouTube series called Hot Wheel City.
00:26:49
Speaker
And the first time you watch an episode, you're thinking, oh, my God, this is really goofy.
00:26:53
Speaker
And then you watch a few more, and it very quickly grows on you.
00:26:56
Speaker
There's just something fun about it, the way they do it.
00:26:59
Speaker
And the production values on it are actually surprisingly high, having...
00:27:04
Speaker
gotten all the gory details of the assets, really quite impressive, the production values behind what they did with this.
00:27:11
Speaker
So it was really a great series.
00:27:12
Speaker
And we said, hey, can we use this?
00:27:14
Speaker
Because we'd love to maybe figure out a way to incorporate it.
00:27:17
Speaker
And we were actually pleasantly surprised when they said, yeah, we own the rights to it.
00:27:22
Speaker
You guys can use it.
00:27:23
Speaker
And it really gave us another element we could add in addition to the racing and track building and collecting this idea of battles.
00:27:33
Speaker
And it worked very well for us to create modes in the game based on battling these creatures.
00:27:39
Speaker
And it's just really fun animation.
00:27:41
Speaker
And it really kind of added a nice variety to the game where we have these very distinct elements within the game.
00:27:49
Speaker
Although the primary focus, we like to think, is the race itself.
00:27:52
Speaker
There's four main shots in the game.
00:27:56
Speaker
Well, there's seven shots, but there's four that are kind of the looping, orbiting shots that advance you through the race that gets you to kind of the biggest of the multiballs.
00:28:06
Speaker
And Hot Wheels is a very multiball-heavy game.
00:28:09
Speaker
So if you like multiballs, you're definitely going to like Hot Wheels.
00:28:13
Speaker
Are you going to have something where you get bonuses for having two balls collide like those X Hot Wheels road or whatever the tracks that they used to have where you'd speed them up?
00:28:24
Speaker
And of course, that was what I always did.
00:28:27
Speaker
Right, so, well, one of the multiballs is called loop crash multiball.
00:28:32
Speaker
You earn it by hitting the primary loops in the game.
00:28:35
Speaker
One of the two loops is lit throughout play.
00:28:39
Speaker
Once you've collected enough, we light the left orbit shot for it.
00:28:43
Speaker
And we hit the left orbit shot, we grab the ball on a magnet.
00:28:46
Speaker
So at the start of the mode,
00:28:48
Speaker
We do a crash like that for you.
00:28:50
Speaker
After that, you have to collect pops.
00:28:52
Speaker
And once you've collected enough, we light that left orbit again.
00:28:56
Speaker
You shoot the left orbit.
00:28:57
Speaker
We hold that ball for you.
00:28:59
Speaker
And now you have, I want to say it's 10 seconds to shoot one of the other balls and knock it off the magnet and crash into it for the super jackpot.
00:29:10
Speaker
Now with Hot Wheels, a lot of people have, and I see all over your play field, the iconic thing that you always think about in play wheels is a loop.
00:29:19
Speaker
Now they have done loops in the past, such as Pinball Magic, where they did it off the shooter.
00:29:25
Speaker
Why did you decide not to incorporate that into the play field?
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah, we wanted to get a loop in there, but the feeling was to have a loop that you're not, the player's not really interacting with from a flipper standpoint.
00:29:39
Speaker
You know, we thought it just made it sort of there.
00:29:42
Speaker
So the idea of doing it off a shooter, we looked at it doing it off of a kicker, you know, and...
00:29:48
Speaker
We just didn't feel that we didn't do it.
00:29:50
Speaker
And then Joe tried to figure out, could we do it someplace else and not create ball hangups and not do all that?
00:29:55
Speaker
And he just found that there was no way to really do it that made it special.
00:30:00
Speaker
And he goes, I don't want to do it where it's sort of this meaningless aspect of the game.
00:30:06
Speaker
So that's why it did not make the final cut.
00:30:09
Speaker
He tried in a few places and just wasn't happy with it.
00:30:13
Speaker
It probably would also be challenging because if you did the loop, you would want it in that iconic orange color.
00:30:19
Speaker
And I believe the other places that have done something similar, it's more of a wire form.
00:30:23
Speaker
So there's certainly less opportunity for the ball to hang up and it's easier to guide it under a tight turn.
00:30:30
Speaker
So...
00:30:30
Speaker
Right.
00:30:31
Speaker
I mean, I think that some of that could, you know, be resolved.
00:30:35
Speaker
But again, not if you're trying to make it so you're shooting it off a flipper to be able to do the loop.
00:30:40
Speaker
And that's sort of how we wanted it.
00:30:42
Speaker
You shoot it someplace and then there's a kicker that fires it through because the problem is if it doesn't make it around, now the ball is going to get all sorts of places.
00:30:51
Speaker
And that becomes a big concern relative to trap balls.
00:30:55
Speaker
So that's what we're always very cautious about is, okay, is this ball going to get stuck?
00:31:00
Speaker
Is it going to get trapped?
00:31:01
Speaker
And Joe tried a few things and just wasn't happy with it and said, nope, we're not going to do it.
00:31:07
Speaker
So I want to talk about one of the things I find impressive about this game.
00:31:10
Speaker
I know you guys have sent out a video and some pictures that we can see that you're able to release and whatnot.
00:31:17
Speaker
But the thing that really impresses me about this game
00:31:20
Speaker
is this base game comes with a shaker motor, internal side art blades, this whole package of a game, and you guys are doing this at $62.95 MSRP.
00:31:31
Speaker
That is on par with a pro, but you're getting so much more packed into a game.
00:31:37
Speaker
How were you able to do that?
00:31:38
Speaker
And was that kind of the point at the beginning of this journey when you started making Hot Wheels?
00:31:44
Speaker
Our goal was, so right from the start, we did want to try and come in at a lower price point than our last two games.
00:31:51
Speaker
And our goal has always been to let's make a complete game at the best price we can do it at.
00:31:57
Speaker
And the Oktoberfest came a little pricier than we would have liked.
00:32:00
Speaker
There's just so much in that game.
00:32:03
Speaker
That game is so loaded with the ramps and the locks and the 22 stand-up targets and all the rest.
00:32:12
Speaker
And so that was our goal.
00:32:13
Speaker
So we went into it with that in mind and how do we get the most bang for the buck and spend that money wisely.
00:32:19
Speaker
And again, it kind of gets back to that loop.
00:32:21
Speaker
Do you put a lot of time and money into that when it's going to be sort of an afterthought or something else?
00:32:27
Speaker
And we put a lot of the money actually is in one place we did budget a decent amount of money is in the LEDs.
00:32:34
Speaker
The game has over 140 RGB LEDs in it.
00:32:40
Speaker
which is pretty much rivals it, I think, with anything else that is out there.
00:32:44
Speaker
And we really do a lot with trying to use those colors and bring that to life.
00:32:49
Speaker
And that's something you typically won't find in a Stern Pro.
00:32:54
Speaker
The side art thing, we did it on Houdini.
00:32:57
Speaker
It was an add-on.
00:32:59
Speaker
And we found people loved it.
00:33:00
Speaker
People were buying it.
00:33:01
Speaker
They really were beautiful.
00:33:02
Speaker
And I had personally never been a huge side art guy until...
00:33:06
Speaker
I saw it on Houdini and then I was like, you know what, it really does bring a lot to the game.
00:33:11
Speaker
And so it's really been our goal to include it in our game since.
00:33:14
Speaker
And it was a little trickier to do it on this game, but we really felt that was a key thing to really, you know, give that game the complete look.
00:33:21
Speaker
And one of the things this game has that I don't think has been done before is the back panel is actually a lenticular image.
00:33:28
Speaker
So it sort of has like a 3D, you know, effect to it.
00:33:32
Speaker
And with the lighting we do on that, it's kind of cool.
00:33:35
Speaker
It really brings it to life.
00:33:37
Speaker
It gives it just a little more dimension to it.
00:33:39
Speaker
So there were some things we did like that to also add value into the game.
00:33:46
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually been a big fan of side arts.
00:33:48
Speaker
I randomly bought it for my Simpsons pinball party.
00:33:51
Speaker
And it's just amazing how it seems to tie the entire field together.
00:33:58
Speaker
And so it gives you a little more of an environmental experience for lack of a better term.
00:34:02
Speaker
It kind of brightens things up.
00:34:05
Speaker
It really does add something.
00:34:06
Speaker
I'm just sitting here looking across.
00:34:08
Speaker
And the Hot Wheels machine I have in my house right now, first of all, it's in an Oktoberfest prototype cabinet.
00:34:16
Speaker
And it's got some Houdini stuff on it.
00:34:19
Speaker
But the next to it, I have my Houdini.
00:34:21
Speaker
And just looking at the side art, it's just that color on the inside.
00:34:24
Speaker
We actually have side art on the inside of the apron, too.
00:34:28
Speaker
Not sure anybody ever sees that, kind of looks cool when you notice it.
00:34:31
Speaker
But it does enhance to the look of the game.
00:34:35
Speaker
And the shaker motor was not our plan originally to include it.
Future of American Pinball
00:34:39
Speaker
And I think we're only including it on the first X number of units, the first 200 or 300 or whatever the number is, I forget.
00:34:46
Speaker
And that came from two things.
00:34:47
Speaker
One is Jim Patla just loved what we were doing with the shaker motor in the game.
00:34:53
Speaker
He just thought it was great.
00:34:55
Speaker
And so he really wanted to include it.
00:34:57
Speaker
And then we basically said, you know, we can't afford to squeeze it in.
00:35:00
Speaker
And we said, you know what, we're not going to do some of these shows.
00:35:03
Speaker
Can we divert those marketing dollars into shaker dollars?
00:35:07
Speaker
And that's basically what we did is we took marketing money from the shows we weren't going to be able to go to and,
00:35:14
Speaker
Turn that into shaker motors.
00:35:17
Speaker
So are you guys planning on doing maybe a topper with this as well?
00:35:20
Speaker
Or is it something that's not really in the works?
00:35:23
Speaker
I think it includes like a plastic topper, but I don't think there's any work underway for a fancy topper.
00:35:30
Speaker
I think Joe's too focused now on the next game and the game after that.
00:35:35
Speaker
Wow.
00:35:35
Speaker
So you guys already have two more games in the pipeline going on.
00:35:38
Speaker
Well, I think we're always working on a couple of things in varying degrees.
00:35:42
Speaker
So I know Joe's working on a couple of different play fields.
00:35:46
Speaker
Being a hobbyist and then coming into this hobby, how is it?
00:35:50
Speaker
I assume you played Joe Balser's games throughout the hobby and whatnot.
00:35:54
Speaker
How is it now working alongside him?
00:35:57
Speaker
Well, yeah, it was interesting because, you know, I knew nothing about how real pinball companies operate.
00:36:04
Speaker
I only know how a custom homebrew guy does it, which is you do everything.
00:36:07
Speaker
All right.
00:36:09
Speaker
So when I showed up to work the first day, so yeah, I met Joe once before I started the job when I
00:36:15
Speaker
They had made me an offer.
00:36:16
Speaker
I reached out to Joe directly and said, I'd like to take you to lunch.
00:36:21
Speaker
You want to pick your brain?
00:36:22
Speaker
I wanted to talk to him about what was going on and what his experience had been so far.
00:36:26
Speaker
You know, I wanted to do my due diligence.
00:36:28
Speaker
Something, by the way, I'll make fun of that he did not do, which is a story for another day.
00:36:32
Speaker
You'll have to ask him that sometime.
00:36:34
Speaker
We will definitely do that.
00:36:36
Speaker
About not doing your due diligence.
00:36:38
Speaker
And so I came in the first day and Joe had just finished the first cut at the play field for Houdini.
00:36:47
Speaker
And he printed it out on a full size sheet and he hung it on the wall.
00:36:51
Speaker
And he kind of walked me through the layout.
00:36:54
Speaker
Okay, we got a ball lock here.
00:36:55
Speaker
We're going to have the catapult throw in the ball here.
00:36:58
Speaker
And, you know, Houdini always did his axe on the stage.
00:37:01
Speaker
So we're going to have a stage and that's where he does his axe.
00:37:03
Speaker
And there's this target here because he always used to hide key.
00:37:07
Speaker
So this is the key target.
00:37:08
Speaker
Okay, there you go.
00:37:10
Speaker
And that was the extent of it.
00:37:12
Speaker
So Joe was like, okay, go create, go do what you do.
00:37:16
Speaker
So I'm like, okay.
00:37:17
Speaker
And I was, you know, because I had no idea.
00:37:19
Speaker
Do I do the rules?
00:37:20
Speaker
Does he create the rules?
00:37:21
Speaker
Where does that go?
00:37:22
Speaker
So it became pretty clear right from the start that from Joe, like you go do the rules and I'm going to do the layout and the mechanical and, you know, hopefully everything comes together.
00:37:32
Speaker
And so, you know, it took me a little while just to get the feel for that.
00:37:35
Speaker
But having done a homebrew game, that was fine with me because I was used to, you do everything.
00:37:41
Speaker
So it worked out pretty well.
00:37:42
Speaker
So Joe and I have had a really good working relationship.
00:37:44
Speaker
You know, I'll give him some thoughts and some suggestions when he's working on the layout for things I'd like to see or minor changes I want.
00:37:53
Speaker
So in each of the games, usually there's a few tweaks I'll ask him to make to
00:37:57
Speaker
make the rules work better, things of that nature.
00:38:00
Speaker
He usually doesn't have a lot of requests on the rule side.
00:38:04
Speaker
On Houdini, he wanted outlane modes because he really liked those on Wizard of Oz, which is obviously one of his games.
00:38:10
Speaker
So he wanted a video mode, which was something Keith Johnson refused to do.
00:38:16
Speaker
So Joe was happy that I was open to doing a video mode.
00:38:19
Speaker
And so I think those were his two big asks.
00:38:22
Speaker
And other than that, he kind of let me do my thing.
00:38:25
Speaker
That's pretty cool.
00:38:26
Speaker
I think we've lost Scott.
00:38:29
Speaker
I was coughing and I was trying not to interrupt the response.
00:38:35
Speaker
So, you know, what's interesting is I was chatting with Dwight Sullivan at one of the shows and he commented how he'd love to do a game with Balser.
00:38:45
Speaker
And I could understand that because, you know, Joe kind of gives you this canvas to work with, but he kind of lets the programmer, you
00:38:55
Speaker
do his thing.
00:38:56
Speaker
And I think that's probably why Joe's had some very successful games with that partnership.
00:39:01
Speaker
Obviously, he and Keith Johnson had a couple of great games together.
00:39:06
Speaker
So I've really enjoyed working with Joe in that regard.
00:39:10
Speaker
I have two of his games.
00:39:11
Speaker
I have Simpsons Pinball Party and I have Wizard of Oz.
00:39:13
Speaker
So they certainly aren't leaving anytime soon.
00:39:16
Speaker
So I was excited to hear that he was coming out with a new game with you guys and that he has been able to develop games with American Pinball and continue his tradition.
00:39:27
Speaker
What's amazing about Joe is his layouts are all so different.
00:39:33
Speaker
Occasionally, if you look, you'll find, oh, here's an element he's used in some other game.
00:39:37
Speaker
But he's not, they're all different.
00:39:40
Speaker
Some guys, you can walk up to a game and you immediately know who the designer was, all right?
00:39:45
Speaker
And with Joe's games, you look at the game and you're like, who the hell designed this?
00:39:48
Speaker
Because there's no set pattern to how he does things.
00:39:52
Speaker
And so for us, that's been pretty key because we're obviously a small company.
00:39:55
Speaker
And it's been great for me because, you know, I don't want to just keep working with the same layout.
00:40:00
Speaker
You know, that's really hard to be creative if you've got the same basic thing.
00:40:04
Speaker
So we've really had three very different layouts.
00:40:08
Speaker
You know, Hot Wheels, you know, a little more similar to Houdini than Oktoberfest is to either of the games.
00:40:16
Speaker
Truly a really unique layout, really interesting stuff on that.
00:40:20
Speaker
But that's been fun with Joe, too, is he kind of gives you interesting stuff to work with.
00:40:25
Speaker
The Oktoberfest, we really had a lot of fun with all the stand-up target banks he created and creating rules to be able to incorporate those in different ways.
00:40:36
Speaker
Hot Wheels is a little more of a straightforward, given the fan layout of how you approach the game.
00:40:44
Speaker
Well, and that's what I love about Joe Balzer games.
00:40:46
Speaker
I mean, like you said, there's certain designers, you don't want too many of their pins in your collection because they feel repetitious.
00:40:54
Speaker
You put four or five of Joe's games in your collection and they're all unique.
00:41:00
Speaker
And so it must be refreshing, like you said, to be working with that because you don't feel like you're working on the same thing over and over again.
00:41:07
Speaker
Right.
00:41:08
Speaker
And for our company, that's important too.
00:41:11
Speaker
Since Joe's designed all three of our games, it's good that they have that variety, that it's not the same game.
00:41:18
Speaker
And it's funny because I was reading a comment earlier
00:41:22
Speaker
Somebody was talking about the rules, and they were projecting, oh, Hot Wheels, it'll be like Oktoberfest where you collected steins, and now you'll collect cars that give you different capabilities.
00:41:31
Speaker
I had to bite my tongue from typing.
00:41:34
Speaker
What are you, crazy?
00:41:34
Speaker
That's the last thing we would do is just replicate what we did on the last game.
00:41:40
Speaker
You know, if anything, as we're going through the rules, if something even seems similar to what we just did, we're like, no, no, we just did that.
00:41:45
Speaker
We can't do that.
00:41:46
Speaker
Or that's close to what we just did.
00:41:48
Speaker
Our goal is to make sure each game is really different and unique.
00:41:53
Speaker
And if you have all of our games, they're completely different games, different rules, different layouts.
00:41:59
Speaker
There's very little similarity between them, surprisingly so.
00:42:03
Speaker
And it's awesome.
00:42:04
Speaker
And it is funny when people start speculating and start making claims and stuff like that.
00:42:10
Speaker
You know, I've talked to multiple people in this industry and there's a couple different reaction.
00:42:14
Speaker
You know, there's the there's the people like, please just shut up.
00:42:16
Speaker
And there's people that just laugh because they make it like a drinking game.
00:42:19
Speaker
Like every time they're wrong, they take a shot, I guess.
00:42:24
Speaker
But that's what's wonderful about this hobby.
00:42:26
Speaker
There's so much wild speculation that even when rumors start popping up, you don't know if they're true or not.
00:42:31
Speaker
You have to take it all with a grain of salt because you honestly don't know what's the truth
New Facility and Production Plans
00:42:38
Speaker
behind it.
00:42:38
Speaker
Well, and I have to laugh about rumors because sometimes something is this breaking story and it's like, yeah, a lot of people have known about that for months and months and months.
00:42:47
Speaker
So it's not really breaking.
00:42:48
Speaker
Maybe you're just the first person who felt that it was your place to tell the world about it.
00:42:53
Speaker
But-
00:42:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty funny stuff that goes on.
00:42:56
Speaker
And, you know, Pinside's hysterical with people, you know, telling you how things work behind the scenes at these companies.
00:43:01
Speaker
And you read some of it and it's, you know, completely wrong about how things operate.
00:43:06
Speaker
And so, you know, I don't know how much what goes really goes on at Stern, but I know enough to know that most of what I read about people say is going on at Stern.
00:43:14
Speaker
It's not what's really going on at Stern.
00:43:17
Speaker
Well, you guys are moving to a new facility right now.
00:43:21
Speaker
You actually mentioned you were cleaning up your office.
00:43:23
Speaker
I'm assuming that's to transition to the new facility.
00:43:26
Speaker
Tell me about the reason why you're moving to a new facility and what will that allow you to do?
00:43:31
Speaker
Well, yeah, this move is taking forever.
00:43:33
Speaker
We were supposed to move over a year ago and through a variety of delays.
00:43:37
Speaker
First, we couldn't get the current tenant out of the building to even start demolition or because they basically had to gut the place.
00:43:45
Speaker
And then one of our sister companies, they needed to move in first because of their lease was expiring where they were.
00:43:52
Speaker
So we've had multiple, multiple delays.
00:43:54
Speaker
And so we're finally ready to move in and start.
00:43:57
Speaker
I was actually at my old office this past weekend.
00:44:00
Speaker
I went in when I could be alone to pack up my stuff.
00:44:04
Speaker
So we were crammed in like sardines in our old place.
00:44:08
Speaker
So my office, and you can't see that I'm doing air quotes, was also the conference room.
00:44:15
Speaker
And throughout the time I've been there, more often than not, I've had other people camped out in there, which is really not much fun for them when I'm working on the machine all the time.
00:44:24
Speaker
But I've had salespeople camp down there.
00:44:27
Speaker
I had marketing people camp down there.
00:44:29
Speaker
Jim Patla, who's our COO, he was camped out in there for two or three months.
00:44:36
Speaker
So we're sitting on top of each other.
00:44:40
Speaker
So the first thing, we're actually going to finally have enough space to spread out and have offices and be able to have a better work environment.
00:44:47
Speaker
And more importantly, our factory was similar in that regard.
00:44:50
Speaker
We really had to cram everything in.
00:44:53
Speaker
I felt bad for the guys who work on the loading dock because they spent half the day just moving stuff around to get to stuff because there just wasn't enough room for everything.
00:45:02
Speaker
We would store stuff at off-site and have to bring it back and forth all the time.
00:45:07
Speaker
So the new place is brand new.
00:45:11
Speaker
I mean, they've gutted the whole building, so it's been built from scratch.
00:45:13
Speaker
It's huge.
00:45:14
Speaker
It's beautiful.
00:45:15
Speaker
Lots of room for us to grow.
00:45:16
Speaker
Plenty of room for everything.
00:45:19
Speaker
So I'm very excited that we'll be moving there as soon as they lift the stay-at-home.
00:45:26
Speaker
So like I said, I was in, packed up my stuff so it could be moved, and hopefully in a week or two when they open things up, we'll actually have a bit of come to the new office, and that's where the line's been set up, and we'll be cranking games.
00:45:40
Speaker
Awesome.
00:45:41
Speaker
Well, and I can't remember if you mentioned this at the beginning, but when do you hope to see Hot Wheels start going into people's homes?
00:45:49
Speaker
Well, assuming – I should pull up my calendar here.
00:45:53
Speaker
I didn't call the governor before we got on the call to check, so I'm not sure.
00:45:58
Speaker
Maybe JB's emailed me.
00:45:59
Speaker
I'm just joking.
00:46:01
Speaker
Well, we know you have them on speed dial, so.
00:46:04
Speaker
My wife does.
00:46:06
Speaker
But my wife has pretty much every congressman center you can think of on speed dial.
00:46:10
Speaker
She's very politically active.
00:46:12
Speaker
Anyhow, so we're supposed to open –
00:46:15
Speaker
Like next week, they're supposed to allow businesses to resume again.
00:46:19
Speaker
And I think if that occurs, as we're expecting, then we'll be shipping games by middle of the month.
00:46:26
Speaker
Awesome.
00:46:26
Speaker
So the games are, you know, we're ready to go.
00:46:29
Speaker
All the parts are in.
00:46:30
Speaker
Everything's ready.
00:46:31
Speaker
We just got to tell people to come back to work.
00:46:33
Speaker
And, you know, it'll ramp up a little bit.
00:46:35
Speaker
You know, they won't be cranking out 50 games the first day, but they'll ramp up pretty quickly.
00:46:41
Speaker
Joe does a pretty good job of trying to design the games to be easy to build, easy to assemble.
00:46:47
Speaker
That really was not the case on Oktoberfest, and he got a lot of grief about that from people because it was a really hard game to build because of that huge left ramp and the way that had a mount was extremely difficult.
00:46:59
Speaker
This game a lot easier to build, so I think we'll be cranking them out pretty fast.
00:47:03
Speaker
And we'll...
00:47:06
Speaker
Basically, once we know that we're starting back up again, in fact, Joe and I, Joe Schober and I were talking today.
00:47:13
Speaker
It's, you know, final punch list time to go through on the code, final tweaks, improving things, cleaning some things up.
00:47:22
Speaker
And so we're pretty excited to finally for people to finally get to play the game because it's a it's a really fun game.
00:47:28
Speaker
I was just saying, and we're excited to see this game.
00:47:30
Speaker
I mean, we were expecting to beat out Texas pinball festival with everyone else and getting our hands on this game.
00:47:35
Speaker
And it just, it stinks that we've, we've had to delay for at least two months now and hopefully everything starts working out better now.
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:44
Speaker
And, you know, obviously we're all going to be staying at home a lot.
00:47:46
Speaker
You know, location play is not going to happen for a while.
00:47:49
Speaker
And, you know, the nice thing with the price point on this game is it's an affordable game in relative new in box terms with a lot going on.
00:47:56
Speaker
It's a family friendly theme and it's a fun shooter.
00:48:01
Speaker
I think people are going to really enjoy.
00:48:05
Speaker
I know I have.
00:48:06
Speaker
I've enjoyed playing it a lot.
00:48:08
Speaker
So Josh, if someone wants to find out more information about the game and also if they want to get that in their house as soon as possible, what's the best thing for them to do?
00:48:19
Speaker
Certainly if you're interested in Hot Wheels, you want to get with your distributor, you can find a list of our distributors on our website.
00:48:24
Speaker
So American-Pinball.com.
00:48:27
Speaker
And you certainly want to get in contact with them because even at this point, if you're not already on a list with your distributor, you're
00:48:37
Speaker
you know, you're probably, you know, into early July at the best, just based on I know how many that have already been sold.
00:48:47
Speaker
So you want to get with your distributor quickly.
00:48:48
Speaker
Now, in some cases, distributors will slot you in because there are some of them are smart enough to buy a bunch, knowing they'll get the sales.
00:48:55
Speaker
But get with your distributor right away to get on the list.
00:48:57
Speaker
Because games, like I said, should be shipping in a few weeks.
00:49:02
Speaker
Awesome.
00:49:03
Speaker
Well, we want to thank you for coming on, Josh.
00:49:04
Speaker
It's been super informative, especially for those that have been stuck in their homes and more intrigued about
Marketing and Community Engagement
00:49:11
Speaker
this.
00:49:11
Speaker
I mean, there's plenty of collectors out there that are salivating at a Hot Wheels pinball machine.
00:49:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:17
Speaker
I want to hear more for them, too.
00:49:18
Speaker
Well, hopefully we'll get to do some streams soon of gameplay.
00:49:24
Speaker
I've actually recorded a bunch to share internally with people.
00:49:27
Speaker
So I'm looking forward for folks getting to see it.
00:49:29
Speaker
We haven't finished getting all of our approvals yet with Mattel because we're getting more into the game while we can.
00:49:36
Speaker
So we're kind of keep delaying that or saying, OK, hold on.
00:49:39
Speaker
We're going to get some more stuff in there.
00:49:41
Speaker
We want to load it up as much as we can while we have this extra time to do so.
00:49:47
Speaker
But until they give us their blessing on everything, we really can't show anything.
00:49:52
Speaker
It's kind of a...
00:49:53
Speaker
It's a mixed bag, obviously.
00:49:54
Speaker
However, if you have interest, again, reach out to your distributor.
00:49:59
Speaker
It's always good to be certainly on their interested list.
00:50:02
Speaker
And so you can get the game sooner if you are so inclined.
00:50:07
Speaker
Again, thanks again.
00:50:08
Speaker
We wish American Pinball all the best.
00:50:11
Speaker
All pinball is good.
00:50:12
Speaker
And we wish you, I guess, continued success because the more we have competition in the market, the more it drives the product.
00:50:24
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:50:24
Speaker
Competition has, I think, been great for pinball.
00:50:28
Speaker
We have an awful lot of companies out there.
00:50:30
Speaker
Hopefully they all can survive and find their niche in the market because there's been some great stuff going on out there in pinball.
00:50:37
Speaker
You know, for those of us who have been in the hobby for a long time and kind of saw the post-Williams era and what went on there and you looked like pinball was going to die a quick and painful death, you know,
00:50:53
Speaker
Thankfully, Stern kept it alive, and now others have all stepped in to kind of take it up to a higher level than where it's been before.
00:51:01
Speaker
Totally agree.
00:51:01
Speaker
At least as far as the games themselves, obviously.
00:51:05
Speaker
We'd still like to get a lot more players out there.
00:51:09
Speaker
So if you want someone, do you prefer people just leaving you alone?
00:51:13
Speaker
If someone wants to contact you, do you want them to...
00:51:17
Speaker
People are welcome to contact me.
00:51:19
Speaker
As you guys know, I'm pretty visible on Pinside.
00:51:23
Speaker
I put my email address on Pinside, so certainly I'm always willing to email me with ideas, thoughts, or whatever.
00:51:32
Speaker
It's josh at americanpinball.com, american-pinball.com.
00:51:38
Speaker
I'm not that popular.
00:51:40
Speaker
I get that much email that it's a problem for me.
00:51:43
Speaker
You're just signing stuff by the bucket load, right?
00:51:47
Speaker
Exactly.
00:51:48
Speaker
Although the first time I was asked to sign something, it was a little bit of a take back.
00:51:53
Speaker
I was like, really?
00:51:56
Speaker
But having been somebody who was on the collector side, the enthusiast side, I
00:52:02
Speaker
I always like getting information from the inside or learning about pinball.
00:52:06
Speaker
So I've tried to make a point of being engaged with the community, uh, you have to answer questions, share what I know, help people when I can.
00:52:15
Speaker
Um, and part of that's, you know, the whole homebrew thing, um, that's out there.
00:52:18
Speaker
You know, the first time I met, uh, Keith Elwin, uh, first thing he said to me was, Hey, thanks for helping, you know, my brother and I on Archer.
00:52:27
Speaker
And I'm like,
00:52:28
Speaker
I don't remember what I did to help, but if I helped you, that's great.
00:52:31
Speaker
And that's part of the homebrew community.
00:52:34
Speaker
So it's been great to see Scott and Keith and others from that, Michael Ocean, who's doing work for Multimorphic.
00:52:41
Speaker
People came out of that community now becoming part of the industry.
00:52:45
Speaker
So it's a nice trend.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah, and that's basically where we're going to find the next designers.
00:52:50
Speaker
I'm sure people are just going to be tinkering in their basements and doing homebrews as their resume because that's the way we're going to see the next generation of pinball designers come about.
00:53:01
Speaker
Certainly might be.
00:53:02
Speaker
And, you know, and even if that's not your aspiration, the, you know, with what's out there today between, you know, the P-Rock system and 3D printers and just the availability of parts and the support of people in that community, there's some really great homebrew projects going on out there.
00:53:21
Speaker
And I love when I go to shows and I get to play some of these games and there's a
00:53:26
Speaker
an active online community of the guys who build machines.
00:53:29
Speaker
And there are people there from pretty much every one of the manufacturers who, who participate and pipe in or answer questions or whatever.
00:53:38
Speaker
And, you know, that's a great part of pinball.
00:53:39
Speaker
A lot of people aren't aware of it.
00:53:41
Speaker
It's just great seeing some of the games that people are doing, the creativity, the elaborateness, you know, the, the, the Amigos doing their crazy mansion pinball on Pinside.
00:53:52
Speaker
I don't know if you follow that thread.
00:53:54
Speaker
It looks, it looks a lot of fun.
00:53:56
Speaker
And what I love about that, not just that the game itself looks fun and spectacular, but to me what's great about that is you've got three guys with very different skill sets coming together every single Friday, having a good time together, building a pinball machine.
00:54:11
Speaker
And you know what?
00:54:12
Speaker
I'd love to figure out a way to help more groups of guys get together with the right skill set to do that type of thing because they're having so much fun.
00:54:19
Speaker
I love that they post as much as they do, that it allows the rest of us to go along on the ride with them.
00:54:26
Speaker
And there's a bunch of great threads on Pinside with folks doing games.
00:54:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:50
Speaker
And I think that's what I'll miss.
00:54:51
Speaker
One of the things I'll miss most about no shows for the next, you know, three, six, nine months is not getting to see games like, you know, Spaceballs and Doom.
00:55:01
Speaker
And there's somebody working on a really cool looking Mad Max right now that I'm interested to see.
00:55:06
Speaker
And there's somebody doing a Sonic hedgehog game.
00:55:09
Speaker
And this is some really fun and great games out there.
00:55:12
Speaker
There really are.
00:55:13
Speaker
And my hat's off to the whole homebrew community because those games just look fantastic.
00:55:18
Speaker
And you know it's doable if Jack Danger's even attempting to make his own game.
00:55:24
Speaker
Right.
00:55:24
Speaker
So if Jack can do it, anybody can do it.
00:55:30
Speaker
But I think he's been publishing along the way what he's been doing.
00:55:33
Speaker
And Haggis Pinball, which is – I guess he's not homebrew because he's looking to sell and make the games.
00:55:39
Speaker
But he's sorted off a little bit in that way as a guy in a garage.
00:55:43
Speaker
And he did a nice job documenting along the way his journey in doing that.
00:55:48
Speaker
So I just, you know, I always like to encourage people, you know, to give it a try.
00:55:52
Speaker
You know, a lot of people will start.
00:55:53
Speaker
They may not get very far.
00:55:55
Speaker
But, you know, if you're really willing to try and keep working at it, you know, there's ways to do it.
00:56:01
Speaker
And it's a fun activity to do.
00:56:03
Speaker
And you never know.
00:56:03
Speaker
You might be the next Keith Elwin or Scott Denisi or Josh Coogler.
00:56:08
Speaker
There you go.
00:56:09
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:56:10
Speaker
There's no better way to end it than saying that.
00:56:13
Speaker
That is awesome.
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's a perfect way to go out.
00:56:17
Speaker
So if you want to get a hold of us, you can contact us at LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
00:56:22
Speaker
We're also on Facebook and Instagram.
00:56:25
Speaker
Scott and I are pretty open to conversation.
00:56:28
Speaker
And so is Josh here.
00:56:29
Speaker
You want an autograph?
00:56:30
Speaker
You know, his inbox is just going to be flooded now for Hot Wheels autographs.
00:56:35
Speaker
Do it.
00:56:36
Speaker
Exactly.
00:56:39
Speaker
So, Scott, anything else I'm missing?
00:56:41
Speaker
No, we just need to make sure that Josh gets the Loser Kid Pinball hat and we can send that out to him.
00:56:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm expecting that.
00:56:48
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:56:49
Speaker
I'm looking forward to styling, especially with my hair being so crazily long right now.
00:56:54
Speaker
Hats are going to become my thing because I haven't had a haircut in three months.
00:56:57
Speaker
Okay, well, I'm bald, so I don't really feel anything.
00:57:01
Speaker
Only slightly jealous.
00:57:03
Speaker
I'm on my way there, my friend.
00:57:07
Speaker
Yes, we'll make sure we get that hat out to you.
00:57:08
Speaker
And I want to thank you again, Josh, for coming on.
00:57:10
Speaker
It's very awesome for you to come on.
00:57:12
Speaker
And I know that you said that we need to talk to Michael about getting our free Hot Wheels pinball machine or something like that.
00:57:18
Speaker
Exactly.
00:57:19
Speaker
Yes.
00:57:20
Speaker
You talk to Michael.
00:57:21
Speaker
And if that works out great, let me know how that goes for you.
00:57:24
Speaker
I'll just borrow it.
00:57:24
Speaker
I'll be a play tester for you.
00:57:26
Speaker
Alrighty.
00:57:27
Speaker
Well, that's, I'm stopping it there.
00:57:29
Speaker
So you want to send us off, Scott?
00:57:32
Speaker
Uh, check us out at, uh, loser kid pinball.com coming soon.
00:57:37
Speaker
And also, uh, just reach out to us.
00:57:39
Speaker
If you want to start the conversation, we are trying to, uh, put a little more shows out right now, just because we want to give someone, everybody a break since they're not going out and playing pinball.
00:57:49
Speaker
But if you have ideas of things that you want to talk to us or even, uh, suggestions for us, we're always open to that.
00:57:57
Speaker
either a lot of times if you just message us on Facebook we get it right away awesome alright thanks again