Ep 136: John Wick Pinball is here! With Davey Price

Transcript

Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast episode one 36.

Speaker: I am Josh Roop with me.

Speaker: My co-captain is always Scott Larson and Scott and John.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: I don't see your pinballs behind you.

Speaker: Where are you?

Speaker: Oh my God.

Speaker: I'm at work.

Speaker: So you can't even show off your new, uh, your new purchase.

Speaker: What did you get?

Speaker: I got jaws baby.

Speaker: And it is amazing.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: obviously we did flipping the script on autism about two years ago.

Speaker: And main reason we did it is cause I, a company helped my child so much and he's doing great.

Speaker: Like, honestly, it's amazing.

Speaker: The strides that he's made that, um,

Speaker: They've actually told us he doesn't need to be in special ed classes for school and he's going into kindergarten.

Speaker: So to go into regular school, to be able to control his emotions, to be able to actually talk without screaming, it's amazing.

Speaker: And so we did that, right?

Speaker: And he loves Jaws because he loves sharks.

Speaker: And he's every day.

Speaker: Dad, can we play shark pinball?

Speaker: He knows how to turn it on.

Speaker: He goes down.

Speaker: I've made him an account.

Speaker: He's learned how to log himself in.

Speaker: No, I will not share his account with you guys.

Speaker: But no, it's amazing.

Speaker: It's shark pinball.

Speaker: Even just every day, it's shark pinball, shark pinball.

Speaker: And I want to give a major thank you to Flippin' Out Pinball for giving us this pinball machine.

Speaker: I'm not giving it.

Speaker: I obviously had to pay for it.

Speaker: You bought it from him.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: But also they were a major sponsor with flipping the script on autism.

Speaker: Even they, they actually matched Stern in donations.

Speaker: And so Zach and Greg and Nicole are amazing people.

Speaker: You know, you don't buy a product just for the product itself.

Speaker: You buy it for the company and the company service.

Speaker: And the company service has been above and beyond with Zach.

Speaker: So if you're looking for the new John wick or a jaws premium,

Speaker: whatever it may be, hit up Zach and Nicole Mini at Flippin' Out Pinball.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And if you're looking to make your Jaws pinball machine even cooler... Oh, yes.

Speaker: So today we have...

Speaker: the mind behind Stumbler Pinball.

Speaker: This is Davey.

Speaker: And if you have not checked it out, we've actually talked about it on the show before.

Speaker: I have now, I need to increase my catalog of Stumbler mods because right now I just have the Tokyo neon sign.

Speaker: but I have Godzilla and I also need to get the lollipop mod for the UFO.

Speaker: I need to get the subway mod.

Speaker: I need to get the noodle bar mod.

Speaker: And he, okay, these are not basic mods.

Speaker: These are award winning.

Speaker: These are not LE mods.

Speaker: These are like signature edition mods.

Speaker: And so we want to welcome Davey from Stumbler Pinball onto the show because we want to talk about modding out your machine and making it look even better.

Speaker: Hey guys, how are you going?

Speaker: That was quite an intro.

Speaker: Thanks, Scott.

Speaker: I appreciate that.

Speaker: And a lovely story, too, about your son, Josh.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: I'm now going to call Jaws Shark Pinball from now on.

Speaker: Yeah, it's always Shark Pinball.

Speaker: It's always Shark Pinball.

Speaker: From now on, yeah.

Speaker: How are you guys?

Speaker: You all right?

Speaker: Hey, we're doing great.

Speaker: Now, we're grateful that you stayed up.

Speaker: We're recording in the afternoon, but you are not, if you can tell by the accent,

Speaker: You are not from the continental US.

Speaker: So where are you from?

Speaker: I'm not from the continental US.

Speaker: I live in London, but I'm not from the UK either.

Speaker: I'm from Australia.

Speaker: So it's all very confusing.

Speaker: Even Rob, who I do a podcast with, at the same time, 10 o'clock in the UK, 4 p.m.

Speaker: Eastern Standard Time, even he gets confused about where I am from one day to the next.

Speaker: But yeah, I'm from Australia originally.

Speaker: And moved over to London about 17 years ago, just on a working holiday was what I was planning.

Speaker: I planned to come over here and make a bit of money and then go home again.

Speaker: And then I think within about three weeks, I'd met my lovely wife and 17 years later, here I am.

Speaker: Oh, there you go.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: This is the first I've heard about your other podcast.

Speaker: So tell me about your other podcast.

Speaker: Oh, well, yeah, it's not really a podcast.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: Can we just call them all podcasts?

Speaker: I find it so confusing calling them streams or podcasts.

Speaker: We just call it a podcast.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah, it's with Rob from Tet Pinball who does toppers and it's called In Before the Lock.

Speaker: We do it fortnightly and stream it live, stupidly, on Twitch and YouTube and Facebook.

Speaker: And we basically just spend the whole time talking about the mod scene and all the new mods that have come out.

Speaker: And we're sort of getting a bit deeper into...

Speaker: talking about what it means to make mods and all the tools you need at your disposal, all the skills, the companies that you can lean on in order to produce 3D printing and circuit boards and that kind of thing.

Speaker: Initially, it was just a way to promote the scene and to promote other mod makers who might not have been getting as much exposure.

Speaker: you know, they deserve.

Speaker: And so we're still sort of doing that and trying to promote people as much as possible.

Speaker: We're also trying to sort of use it as a platform to, I guess, pull back the curtain on what it means to, to make mods.

Speaker: And you've definitely went above and beyond on that.

Speaker: I mean, yeah, if you have not looked at Stumblr pinball mods, I know we talked about this last episode.

Speaker: Seriously, if you haven't went to his page,

Speaker: It's insanity.

Speaker: Like, this is just next level.

Speaker: I don't know where the heck you came up with these.

Speaker: Thanks, man.

Speaker: Thanks.

Speaker: Holy crap.

Speaker: I'm not a believer in mods.

Speaker: Like, you've converted me because I'm like, eh, like, take them or leave them.

Speaker: I always feel like, you know, the person that's selling their used pinball machine that has a list of mods that they're about to hit you with.

Speaker: Well, it's worth more because I have the, because I put this rinky dink golf cart in it.

Speaker: And you're like, no, you got it off of a cake.

Speaker: I have a golf cart with an led that's attached with alligator clips on the bottom, but your, your freaking mod ties in.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Let's talk about buoy of death for a second.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It ties into the actual jaws gameplay and relays information to you via a DMD screen on the mod itself.

Speaker: I don't know any other mod that does this.

Speaker: This is insane.

Speaker: This is how, how it's one of those situations where it's like, you know, like from Jurassic park where they go, you know, they didn't stop to think whether they should do it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: You know, it was one of the, one of those kinds of situations I think.

Speaker: And, uh, look, I've copped a little bit of flack for that DMD.

Speaker: You know, there's certain people, uh, on pin side who aren't impressed with that DMD.

Speaker: And look, in some ways, um,

Speaker: where that all came about was that originally I was just going to replace the sign that's in Jaws because it's a pretty, you know, it's not great.

Speaker: And CRK has done a pretty good update on that since.

Speaker: But before sort of he announced that, I was going to have a crack at doing that.

Speaker: And so I was talking to Joel Engelberth just on WhatsApp or whatever, and we were just kind of hashing out sort of,

Speaker: and I was just kind of throwing stuff to the wall and seeing if it stuck.

Speaker: And one of the big problems with that sign is that it's in two different places on the Pro and the Premium LE and it's like wafer thin.

Speaker: And now sort of for me to do what I need to do, you know, you need to have sort of at least sort of that amount of space for your circuit board and your LEDs and enough sort of diffusion material in between so the LEDs don't look spotty and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker: And it just wasn't coming together.

Speaker: So I started thinking about other ways to convey that information that's on that sign.

Speaker: And then I kind of just started thinking about a buoy sort of rocking back and forth in the water and how crazy and stupid an idea that was and could I do it?

Speaker: Would it be possible?

Speaker: sort of i don't know you know usually with these things you usually just jump on youtube and start like uh researching uh linkages and mechanical movement and everything and um then you lose like days looking at people's lego contraptions and the amazing things that people do with that stuff with techniques and um

Speaker: And a lot of the time, Paul, one of my mates, he builds a lot of his stuff out of Lego first to prove that the linkages and the motors and stuff work and then converts that into something that's a bit more, I guess, robust for a pinball machine.

Speaker: But that's how I sort of came across the offset cam, which is a motor.

Speaker: So the motor spins really slowly and then there's an offset cam that turns around like that, basically.

Speaker: And then there's an arm attached to that cam.

Speaker: So it sort of goes like that.

Speaker: And then that's attached to the buoy.

Speaker: And that's what makes it go back and forth.

Speaker: So it's a fairly simple sort of little thing once you know how it's done.

Speaker: It's a windshield wiper.

Speaker: That's what it is.

Speaker: It's a windshield wiper.

Speaker: It's a slow windshield wiper.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: My background is mechanical engineering.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: So that is a, yeah, it's when I saw it, I'm like, I know how you did that.

Speaker: I it's, it's a great idea for this and it's a simple mechanism.

Speaker: So that's perfect.

Speaker: Oh man.

Speaker: I mean, or cause yeah, I never did any mechanical engineering.

Speaker: I did a little bit of electrical engineering and then loads of software engineering, which is what I, you know, that's kind of my bag is the programming side of things.

Speaker: But yeah, I'm fascinated by it, you know, all of the different, you know, names for different linkages and movement.

Speaker: You know, the fact that somebody just came up with it and then,

Speaker: You know, you sort of do a little bit of, what was I looking at recently, a way to convert sort of horizontal movement into vertical movement.

Speaker: Because I was trying to get a seagull's wings flapping.

Speaker: And I don't know if that's going to go anywhere, but that was kind of what I was researching anyway.

Speaker: And then you sort of, you find, I can't remember the name of the linkage.

Speaker: It's like Watts linkage or something like that.

Speaker: But then you find out just by jumping on Wikipedia and stuff that that same linkage is the thing that's used on trains to move pistons up or pistons move the wheels forward or whatever it is.

Speaker: But all these things that you look at every day and you just think, oh, yeah, well, that works.

Speaker: But you don't really think that somebody invented that and now their name is attached to that.

Speaker: And then...

Speaker: You know, just by virtue of that invention, you know, you've got trains and you've got people building flapping seagulls and bimble machines, you know.

Speaker: So, yeah, I'm fascinated by it.

Speaker: I think it's something that's really, really interesting.

Speaker: Well, and I'm fascinated with, like, I know you were saying it's very simple mechanic, but looking at the YouTube video and stuff of the buoy of death,

Speaker: it really does look like it's rocking in an ocean.

Speaker: Cause you know, it's not just a steady, a steady movement.

Speaker: It looks like it slows down as it tries to transition back.

Speaker: It's like, it's actually in the ocean.

Speaker: And I like the idea of the DMD.

Speaker: I don't know why some people would be upset with it.

Speaker: I don't know, but I still think it's cool.

Speaker: Like that you were able to integrate that in the game with the jackpot and with,

Speaker: You know, yelling shark.

Speaker: And well, I guess it doesn't yell, I guess, as much as you can.

Speaker: It texts shark.

Speaker: It does.

Speaker: It does.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But I mean, yeah, I like it too.

Speaker: I mean, I get, look, the beauty of sort of, I guess, what I've been able to create with the software side of things is,

Speaker: is that and it's it's difficult to convey this stuff in a in a thread you know when somebody's bagging you out you know you're like talk to me like i'm five but um but essentially you know like if people don't like that dmd yelling shark at them they can just change it you know they can just turn that bit off they can just keep it as eight if they want right um

Speaker: they can make it display something else when the shark is, you could animate a shark going across it.

Speaker: That DMD, the great thing about it is the text ticker are actually coded, but the blood that sort of drips down it when you hit the chum bucket, that's an animated GIF.

Speaker: So I just pulled that animated GIF off, like tenor GIFs or whatever, scaled it down to the right dimensions, which is,

Speaker: tiny it's like seven pixels by 21 pixels and then just stored it in the flash memory of the board and it just plays then like whenever that's hit so that's just an arbitrary blood dripping gif it could be anything it could be a shark moving across the screen or you know something fun for christmas or whatever you know but it's kind of a proof of concept um that we can that we can do that because

Speaker: You know, the screen size, the pitch of it is sort of one mil by one mil for every pixel.

Speaker: So we can now put screens of that size in anything that we're doing and play GIFs that are played in reaction to things happening in the game.

Speaker: So Paul, who did the Atomic Godzilla and myself working on something for Foo Fighters at the moment that uses that same concept.

Speaker: has a screen and things happen in the game and then things change on the screen as a result of that.

Speaker: So it's kind of just like adding more tools to your arsenal in a way.

Speaker: And when it came to the DMD and the boy, Bui,

Speaker: I, you know, I kind of knew that there was always going to be a certain contingent of people who just wanted to see the original Jaws Bowie, you know, the one that Chrissy hangs on to.

Speaker: And, you know, you know, but for me to fit that screen in there, I had to change it a bit just because I had to, you know, just size constraints and stuff.

Speaker: I knew there was always going to be a contingent who wouldn't like that I was changing things to that degree.

Speaker: But, you know, I wanted to put it in and I wanted to test out like the flexible PCB sort of material that it sort of is printed on.

Speaker: And, yeah, I'm just really happy that I got it all working because it was tricky.

Speaker: It was tricky.

Speaker: You know, I think the buoy is kind of about that width, circular width.

Speaker: So we weren't sure whether the flexible sort of PCB material would sort of, you know, the LEDs would sort of snap off if it was made to curve around that sort of smaller surface.

Speaker: But it was all right, you know, after we worked through a couple of iterations and put the connector in a different place and a bunch of things like that.

Speaker: But yeah.

Speaker: Um, yeah.

Speaker: So what I'm hearing is we could put loser kid in the DMD with our little logo.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Absolutely good.

Speaker: Absolutely good.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Like I want to give that power to people, you know, like, yeah, it increases the fun, doesn't it?

Speaker: Like, yeah, maybe my design decisions, you know, weren't right.

Speaker: Maybe the colors that I chose weren't right.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: And, you know, with the noodle bar and Tokyo Neon and stuff, you know, I'm constantly seeing, you know, them out in the wild.

Speaker: People post a picture of their Godzilla on the Facebook page or whatever.

Speaker: And I'll say, oh, there's Tokyo Neon and they've changed the colors on it.

Speaker: And, you know, I see it and I'm like, oh, you didn't change them that well.

Speaker: But...

Speaker: But they did, and they got it to the way that they wanted it.

Speaker: And that's the important thing.

Speaker: They made it their own, and they made it unique, and I love that.

Speaker: And that's why I did it.

Speaker: That's why I created that interface for people to be able to do that.

Speaker: Now, do you assemble these?

Speaker: Oh, sorry.

Speaker: Go ahead, Josh.

Speaker: I was going to say, just to say what Dave is saying, I really think that's what takes us to the next level, too, is the amazing amount of customization that

Speaker: that you do with your your mons and it's not just on the face of it i know that you can send you send extra papers and stuff like that to switch out with the neon tokyo sign or whatnot but it's literally going into the interface and changing it exactly color wise and you even have several options so that way it's like i don't know if i feel confident enough to make my own color scheme but there's several different color schemes here as well go for it scott yeah

Speaker: Yeah, and well, Scott, to answer your question, yeah, I don't, no.

Speaker: I've got somebody assembling for me, thank God, because I would go bonkers if not.

Speaker: No, I've got a lovely woman by the name of Danny who does all my assembly for me.

Speaker: Yeah, Danny, we sort of got the house cleaned a couple of times and sort of just called the company and Danny came over and she was just a lovely person, really easy to be around and then she, you know, cleaned the house and left and

Speaker: And then when I sort of was thinking about getting somebody to do assembly for me, I was just like, oh, you know, she's really good.

Speaker: She was really thorough.

Speaker: And she was, you know, easy to be around.

Speaker: You know, if I'm going to be working with somebody constantly and stuff, you just want it to be easy and stuff.

Speaker: And, you know, it was the best decision I ever made.

Speaker: She's fantastic, you know.

Speaker: like really accurate, you know, reminds me of things that I've forgotten about, that I've sort of mentioned to her, you know, and then two weeks later she'll remind me that we need to do it this way or that way or something.

Speaker: And so, yeah, it's great.

Speaker: And

Speaker: know and she sort of said to me how much she enjoys it and loves it and um you know the fact that she you know you know enjoys this kind of work so much more than she did cleaning um you know and i think that's that's that's awesome that you know she's she's really enjoying it and and uh you know i'm certainly lucky to have her um and we'll probably be expanding the team this year as well moving to a new workshop soon and getting all that set up and

Speaker: you know, trying to, trying to get through the big old lists as quickly as possible.

Speaker: That's kind of the focus, focus for this year.

Speaker: What is your, well, there's a couple of questions I have and you can take them in whatever order you want.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: How did you one decide that this is something you're going to do?

Speaker: That's, that's my, one of my first questions.

Speaker: The second question is what was your first mod?

Speaker: And third is what is currently your best selling mod?

Speaker: Okay, yeah, all right.

Speaker: So in terms of making mods and how I got into it, I bought a dilapidated creature from Black Lagoon off eBay with the view that I was going to turn it into a virtual pinball machine.

Speaker: And this is when I wasn't in the pinball.

Speaker: Well, I was in the pinball, but I wasn't in pinball, if you know what I mean, you know.

Speaker: So I bought it, turned it into a virtual machine.

Speaker: It was really fun.

Speaker: I learned that I loved Dino and I learned that I loved Robo Wars and a bunch of other games that I probably never would have discovered at that time at least had I not played them virtually.

Speaker: Dino in particular, I absolutely loved.

Speaker: So I sort of had it in my head, oh, I want to get a Dino.

Speaker: and I want to get a real machine too.

Speaker: So I started hunting around for one and picked one up.

Speaker: And then around about the same time as that all started happening, I decided that I didn't want the virtual machine anymore.

Speaker: I was going to rebuild a creature.

Speaker: And that machine was absolutely toast.

Speaker: You know, the playfield was destroyed, water damage, all the screws underneath were rusted into the playfield and stuff.

Speaker: And I thought, oh, I'll just drill them out.

Speaker: It'll be fine.

Speaker: And obviously it wasn't fine at all.

Speaker: It was a massive endeavor.

Speaker: But as a, you know,

Speaker: Eventually it became a beautiful, beautiful machine.

Speaker: I really enjoyed the process.

Speaker: But during that process, there were boards that were broken in Creech, namely the chase board, which manages the ramp lights.

Speaker: They sort of flash on and off like a chase light pattern.

Speaker: And I contacted Bill Ung, who runs UFO Pinball,

Speaker: who builds like a replacement chase board and just got chatting with him about it and chatting about how the original board and his board still don't work with LEDs properly for various reasons.

Speaker: And so I thought, oh, you know, and he said somebody needs to rebuild it so that it does work with LEDs.

Speaker: And so I was like, oh, I should give that a go.

Speaker: And then just started researching Arduinos and

Speaker: building things on breadboards and got a version working that could play patterns rather than just the chase light stuff.

Speaker: And it was all based on sine waves.

Speaker: You just do a sine wave calculation, y equals x squared plus four or whatever, and you create your sine wave and then you use that sine wave

Speaker: to control which LEDs are lit along a light strip or along the ramp.

Speaker: So if you're at the bottom it's off and if you're in the middle it's 50% on and if you're at the top it's fully on.

Speaker: So you can create like a blend of LEDs just doing that.

Speaker: And then alongside that I was like oh and what if you could then move them using sine waves as well.

Speaker: The sine wave then controls how much spin the thing's got.

Speaker: So like you were saying about the buoy sort of looking quite natural in the water, it's because it's sort of parabolic.

Speaker: Sine waves, they sort of taper off and they go.

Speaker: So it sort of gives that natural feel to the way things are moving.

Speaker: And then by combining all these sine waves in different ways and using different types of waves, I could really easily create sort of these really interesting patterns along the ramps.

Speaker: And I went through a bunch of iterations and that ended up being my first mod.

Speaker: It was a chase.

Speaker: It was called the Chase Echo.

Speaker: And that was my first mod that I released.

Speaker: But it's that exact same code that I wrote for the Chase Echo that's now being used on every mod that I do.

Speaker: It was originally on the Arduino and then I ported that code to a chip called the ESP8266.

Speaker: The ESP32 is probably the better known one, but the beauty of that chip is it has Wi-Fi and it can set up its own web servers.

Speaker: So that enables you to hook into the mod with your phone and change all the settings on the phone.

Speaker: So that opened up

Speaker: just so many doors in terms of what the configuration options were.

Speaker: Before that, it was all dip switches on the board and stuff because there was no way to control what was going on internally.

Speaker: But as soon as you've got a webpage, then you can just change everything.

Speaker: So, you know, having that code then on the web and all the color options that RGB light strips offer just added, you know, a whole bunch of different dimensions.

Speaker: And it's just, you know, just added more and more functionality on top as time has gone on.

Speaker: But yeah, like in terms of,

Speaker: When did I know that it was going to be like it is now?

Speaker: You know, I mean, Chase Echo, I think I sold maybe 30 or something initially and then sort of trickled in orders.

Speaker: It possibly got up to around sort of 50 or 60 or something like that.

Speaker: Um, so, you know, I was, I was quite happy with that and that it wasn't going to, you know, replace my day gig or anything like that.

Speaker: Um, and it wasn't going to justify the amount of time I was spending playing pinball to my wife at that point.

Speaker: Um, and then I did a bunch of mods after that as well.

Speaker: I did, uh, um, a mod of one of Swinx's mods.

Speaker: Uh, so it was, uh,

Speaker: a lighting rig for his snack bar for Creature as well.

Speaker: And then I did the Lollipops, which you probably know the name.

Speaker: It's sort of filtered through other products as well.

Speaker: But initially that was just to control pop bumpers, the LED rings in pop bumpers, and sold a bunch of those as well.

Speaker: But it was all sort of on the same level.

Speaker: started producing HD PIN2DMDs as well, and they were quite popular to the point where I was getting a little bit of pot of money together, enough so that I could start thinking about, oh, maybe I could buy a new inbox, because that just wasn't really available to me at that time, money-wise.

Speaker: And so Godzilla was that machine that the revenues from the PIN2DMDs paid for,

Speaker: And then John, J85M on the forums, contacted me and said, you know, I really think you should have a go at, you know, changing the sign on Godzilla.

Speaker: You know, something neon would work really well there, you know, in a Tokyo neon star.

Speaker: And so it was his idea originally.

Speaker: And I sort of took that and ran with it and

Speaker: And I've told this story a bunch of times, so apologies for anybody listening.

Speaker: But I'd done all the work, I produced the mod, I sort of filmed it and released it on Pinside in exactly the same way I'd done all the other ones and kind of expected it to be good, but not like anything more than 50 or 60 or whatever that I'd done in the past.

Speaker: I think I had parts for 20 at the point of release.

Speaker: And then that was about five o'clock.

Speaker: I was going into town to meet up with my wife for dinner with the kids.

Speaker: So we jump on the tube, central line.

Speaker: So you're in tunnels and stuff.

Speaker: going through, no reception.

Speaker: And so I jump in, I'll be like, I'll just check inside and see how the threads do it.

Speaker: And it was just blowing up.

Speaker: Like there was maybe a hundred replies already, you know, loads of people on the list.

Speaker: I think by the end of that night, it was sort of closing in on 200 people on the list and stuff.

Speaker: And so it was just, yeah, it was bonkers.

Speaker: And it's pretty much been bonkers ever since.

Speaker: Um, so yeah, it was, it was pretty much, it was pretty much at that point that I knew that it was something, I guess.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Something that could, uh, you know, turn into something quite special.

Speaker: Like it could actually quit my day job.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And, uh, yeah, it's, it's been, it's been great, man.

Speaker: It's been really, I've, I've been very fortunate and, um,

Speaker: You know, met so many great people and, you know, doing Expo and Texas, you know, every year now.

Speaker: And just met, you know, so many wonderful people and so many great experiences on the back of Tokyo Neon.

Speaker: So, yeah, the biggest seller.

Speaker: Take any on by far.

Speaker: Closing on 2,000 orders, I think, now.

Speaker: 2,000?

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That is really impressive.

Speaker: Holy crap.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's nice, isn't it?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: When you have 1,000 LEs and you have doubled the LE sale, I guess.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I would love to know how many Godzillas...

Speaker: like what are the sales figures of Godzilla?

Speaker: I would love to know that data, mainly just because I could then correlate that with how many Godzillas then, you know, what percentage of Godzillas actually have taken on them.

Speaker: Well, even if you say 10,000, that's one in five.

Speaker: I mean, that's crazy.

Speaker: So Colin Alzheimer with Kinesis and This Week in Pinball, he did –

Speaker: Granted, they're all real rough numbers, but he was doing some real in-depth research.

Speaker: His guesstimate was closer to about 5,000 watts out in the wild for Godzilla.

Speaker: I don't know how much truth there is to that, but he could at least confirm there was like 5,000 out there.

Speaker: Well, I would say that all our estimates are probably low.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's what I'm guessing because you're not going to capture random person who bought a Godzilla and put it in their house.

Speaker: And my friend is one of them.

Speaker: My friend, he...

Speaker: He just barely, he talked to me a year ago and was wondering about pinball machines that he ended up getting a Godzilla for Christmas.

Speaker: It's just, it's a, it's going to be an Adams family type game in time.

Speaker: I think it's just never going to, and to be honest, like I was doing, I've started work on the subway tonight and I haven't played Godzilla for ages just because I do so much work on it that it's just constantly glass off, play field art class.

Speaker: And so you sort of like, ugh.

Speaker: But I played it tonight and I was just like, man, it's such a good game.

Speaker: Like, it really is an absolute cracker.

Speaker: And it's nice to go back to it after playing, like, you know, I've been playing a lot of Foo Fighters.

Speaker: I've been playing a lot of The Big Lebowski.

Speaker: I've been playing a lot of Jaws.

Speaker: So, yeah, it's nice to go back to Godzilla.

Speaker: And it feels different, too, from all those games, weirdly, you know.

Speaker: I kind of expected it to feel the same, but it didn't at all.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But yeah, it's an absolute cracker.

Speaker: And I don't think I'll ever get rid of mine just because, you know, I feel like I owe it so much, you know, for what it's given me, the life opportunities that it's given me.

Speaker: Like, I'll never be able to pay that back.

Speaker: So, you know, I'll just keep it on a pedestal for all time.

Speaker: There's a reason why it has displaced Medieval Madness as number one.

Speaker: And there's a reason because it is a...

Speaker: it's a better game.

Speaker: And it's hard to imagine the, since medieval madness was basically the pinnacle for years and you're able to find this thing.

Speaker: So, I mean, that's why it makes sense to invest the money into all these mods that really take it to the next level.

Speaker: Hmm.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And look, I think it's, it's one of those ones, isn't it?

Speaker: Because

Speaker: You know, I've commandeered that game for good or bad.

Speaker: Good for me, obviously, but not so good for other mod makers who, you know, feel like they could have, you know, had more of that, I guess.

Speaker: They still can.

Speaker: Yeah, no, that's absolutely true.

Speaker: That's absolutely true.

Speaker: They can.

Speaker: And in some ways it was just right place, right time, you know, and right technology.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I guess I'd sort of been working on all this stuff up until that point and then just kind of dropped it, you know, dropped the, you know, probably one of the best ones I'll ever do, you know, in Godzilla, which is one of the best games and the biggest selling game.

Speaker: And, you know, mod making wasn't quite at that, I guess, that point yet.

Speaker: You know, Lior was still doing his thing and doing it very, very well.

Speaker: But, you know, and, you know,

Speaker: Obviously, it was very beautifully made from a making point of view, but not as technical, sort of, you know, there's different approaches, of course.

Speaker: But kind of nobody was doing that stuff.

Speaker: So it kind of created even bigger waves because of that fact.

Speaker: um so you know i obviously it takes a lot of hard work and i'm very proud of what i've done and all that stuff but i do also count myself very lucky that the stars aligned in in such a way and for that game you know i'm very fortunate yeah well i've got to ask i'm going to pivot a little bit because sure yeah

Speaker: A new game got released and apparently it has no guns in it.

Speaker: So my question to you is, are you going to revive John Wick with a couple of guns?

Speaker: Not with any guns, no.

Speaker: I'm not going to 3D print any crap-looking guns so that people can stick them in their game.

Speaker: No, sorry.

Speaker: I am steering it all well clear of that.

Speaker: Look, if we're going to talk John Wick and modding, mate, that back skyline just looks like it, you know, I could do a lot with that.

Speaker: That for me just looked like,

Speaker: I mean, I think it looks really good as is, but imagine turning that into a, you know, a neon nightscape in proper John Wick style.

Speaker: You know, even the three-ring nightclub thing, you know, you could do a lot with that too.

Speaker: And, you know, the only thing that I'm concerned about is I think it might be...

Speaker: I'm just not sure about sales at the moment.

Speaker: And I'm not sure how much a time investment would be worthwhile, unfortunately.

Speaker: Yeah, let's talk about it.

Speaker: So let's pivot.

Speaker: Let's talk about John Wick.

Speaker: So we are recording this shortly after John Wick was announced.

Speaker: A little more than 24 hours.

Speaker: Yeah, about 24 hours.

Speaker: Ben Shaw.

Speaker: So this is something that, uh, okay.

Speaker: I know that Josh just watched the first three movies.

Speaker: I watched the first one today.

Speaker: I, I know it's 10 years old, but I, I haven't watched it.

Speaker: Um, and I, Davey, have you, have you seen the John?

Speaker: I haven't.

Speaker: I haven't.

Speaker: Um, shamefully, I haven't.

Speaker: Um, we've got a UK sort of WhatsApp group and, and all of those guys have seen it.

Speaker: All those guys love it.

Speaker: Um, I've,

Speaker: been sneaking little clips on YouTube just to see certain scenes and stuff.

Speaker: And I think I'd enjoy it.

Speaker: So I want to hurry and insert this before you go off, Scott.

Speaker: If you're looking to watch these movies, you can actually watch them for free via Tubi, T-U-B-I.

Speaker: It's an app.

Speaker: Um, it does have commercials, but I, that's how I watched the first three, the fourth one, you're going to have to rent because it's too new.

Speaker: But if you're looking to watch these movies, cause there has been multiple people like, yeah, we haven't seen this.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So ironically I was, I was doing that today and the guy from, uh, I don't know if you, you probably don't have this ad, but the guy who, uh, plays the mayhem guy for the all state commercials, he's in the movie.

Speaker: And he's always doing is just doing stupid stuff in these commercials and that.

Speaker: But in the movie, he's like, you know, one of the henchmen.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But that that kept coming up for the advertisement, which I thought was hilarious that it was it just made it even more comical.

Speaker: OK, so the question I have is.

Speaker: Okay, we are going to put on our marketing hats.

Speaker: Okay?

Speaker: Is this a movie that you think warranted or would have been a good idea to build a pinball machine around?

Speaker: Josh, do you want to go first?

Speaker: I'm going to say no.

Speaker: No, at this point.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Maybe later down the road.

Speaker: I don't want just yes or no.

Speaker: I want to know, okay, why do you think it would be a good idea or why do you think it would be a bad idea?

Speaker: I think before Kerry hardly went off on his rant, he did a video about how that John Wick doesn't have nostalgia going for it yet.

Speaker: And that's the thing.

Speaker: Like you look at Johnny Mnemonic and a lot of people don't like the movie, but the actual game itself has nostalgia for it.

Speaker: And so I just, I have a hard time with this hits kind of a specific group of people when it comes to the, to John wick.

Speaker: I know it's a billion over a billion dollar franchise.

Speaker: Uh, it's Keanu Reeves.

Speaker: It's 4 billion.

Speaker: That's unbelievable.

Speaker: It's grossed over 4 billion worldwide.

Speaker: Oh, all the movies combined.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: What have I been doing?

Speaker: What have I been doing?

Speaker: I just completely missed this.

Speaker: It's crazy because, I mean, this has, it's one of those weird ones where I feel disconnected.

Speaker: Like you and I, Scott, we talked about this last episode.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And thanks, Zach, many for shouting us out and talking about that episode on the episode you and Greg just released this week.

Speaker: But neither one of us had seen this.

Speaker: And we both had agreed it's overly violent for what kind of demographic pinball usually goes to.

Speaker: But there's nothing wrong with that because Elvira is not the usual.

Speaker: They have done this before, though.

Speaker: They've done Sopranos.

Speaker: They have done Pulp Fiction, which is a huge seller.

Speaker: They've done Walking Dead.

Speaker: I'm just talking like pinball themes.

Speaker: So they've done The Walking Dead.

Speaker: They've done that.

Speaker: Stern even made Playboy.

Speaker: And so they have veered into...

Speaker: adult themes that aren't you know okay you and i are solidly in the we're raising kids phase like yes we're in the pg maybe pg 13 just because that's uh that's what we have chosen to do so so i i get that but walking dead's walking dead's never going to appear in your lineup until the kids are out of home yeah like well okay i i was wondering about iron maiden appearing because it's kind of funny yeah yeah

Speaker: The animation, but the funny thing is, I don't think my kids have ever played Iron Maiden, so they've never really looked too closely at it.

Speaker: It's kind of funny.

Speaker: I'm well into the monster themes.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: To be honest, when kids have come over to my house to play games, people have been far more scared of Rudy in Funhouse than they have been by Creature or Dracula or Iron Maiden or any of those ones.

Speaker: Rudy is far more terrifying than anything.

Speaker: Rudy's creepy.

Speaker: He is.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I had a little kid run out of the arcade.

Speaker: I felt really terrible for laughing.

Speaker: So Josh, you're saying, okay, like it, it doesn't seem like a good idea.

Speaker: Is that, is that a take I'm getting from you, Josh?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I wouldn't be something you would choose.

Speaker: Yeah, I just don't think there's – Not necessarily – maybe the violence.

Speaker: I don't know what it is about John Wick.

Speaker: I mean, yeah, Pulp Fiction is a cult classic.

Speaker: That also came out in 90-something.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: yeah a lot of dialogue john wick's got hardly any dialogue yeah yeah we googled this the other day uh the first john wick film there's a total like keon reeves has a total of like 380 words and the hard part is i think half of them are in russian so you're really not getting much context there uh and i think even the final film he says the most and it's like 480 words

Speaker: There's not really much you can quote from the movie.

Speaker: I mean, there's some really great quotes watching that first film.

Speaker: Do you know who Baby Yaga is?

Speaker: Is what he says to his son, the boss guy.

Speaker: He's like, yeah, the boogeyman.

Speaker: I'm not afraid of the boogeyman.

Speaker: He's like, this is who you send to kill the boogeyman.

Speaker: And it's like, oh.

Speaker: It's a really good line, but it's funny because a lot of these lines didn't come from Keanu.

Speaker: It was mostly the villains and stuff.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: It's one of those things like I guess when they were making this movie, they cited The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Point Blank is both inspirations for this movie.

Speaker: I look at those two movies as well, and they're not movies I would be like, oh yeah, we need to have

Speaker: pinball machines of those, but they do.

Speaker: It's kind of the same context, right?

Speaker: It's kind of more of it's action driven with story that kind of takes a backseat.

Speaker: That's still there, but you know, how does that translate to a pinball machine where, um,

Speaker: thinking of jaws i mean jaws yeah it's violent there's a lot of blood in that game and they've done an amazing job okay josh is not remotely as violent as john wick is true very true okay very true but i mean they could have went the same level with jaws as they did with john wick i i just don't know okay marketing wise i don't know where they got their metrics for this i think i thought it was a bad idea so i think it was it was a miss marketing wise okay all right all right davy you have the floor

Speaker: Okay, so I think it's always hard to translate dark and moody themes into pinball because pinballs are boxes of lights.

Speaker: So how do you go dark and moody when you've got like RGB LEDs flashing everywhere?

Speaker: I think purely from an aesthetic point of view, it's quite difficult.

Speaker: So John Wick in that regard is a very sort of stylized neon artist

Speaker: You know, you know, there's there's, you know, breakdowns of the color choices they've made in certain scenes that, you know, I was reading recently and it's really fascinating.

Speaker: You know, they do like greens and yellows and then they do blues and reds and, you know, it's very.

Speaker: well thought out in terms of its color palettes um so on on on that scale aesthetically you know that that would translate well to a pinball machine if you followed if you followed that lead i'm not sure that they have entirely on that on that one um

Speaker: I thought Jaws was going to have the same problem.

Speaker: You know, it's kind of dark and moody and, you know, it's all out at sea.

Speaker: But the fact that they sort of leaned into the water aspect of it, you know, I think saved in that regard.

Speaker: For me, it's still not the most beautiful of games, Jaws.

Speaker: I think it's sort of...

Speaker: um you know just doesn't quite sort of gel together for me uh from a from a looks point of view um and but for john wick as well like i think i don't think cars work in pinball at all like hot wheels corvette uh nascar yeah nascar mustang like they're all just terrible and

Speaker: and it's not, you know, I think it's the, I think it's cars themselves.

Speaker: Like I just don't, you know, I think Grand Prix and games like that is probably the exceptions where, um, and, uh, getaway high speed, good game.

Speaker: High speed getaway is probably the best car game we've got, but there's no car on that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: On that game.

Speaker: If you know what I mean, it's got an engine, it's got sort of loops and stuff.

Speaker: It's, it's not the car itself.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: any game that's got like a matchbox type matchbox, uh, hot wheels type or model car.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like it just, it just kind of looks too tall.

Speaker: I mean, I know we're all playing with toys and that's why we love these things so much.

Speaker: What about me?

Speaker: It just has the, has the truck thing that, or the, whatever that, I don't even think.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I like that's for me.

Speaker: That's the least best bit of Jurassic park is that spinny car thing.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: But probably, you know, yeah, I just don't know.

Speaker: Cars just don't do it for me.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker: I mean, I think somebody was saying on Pinside that they should have

Speaker: And I know that they couldn't because of all the licensing and stuff and whatever, but what they should have leaned into is like, you know, the reloading of the shotgun, you know, with cartridges and stuff, you know.

Speaker: And, you know, I mean, imagine if they'd sort of done that with, you know, balls in the lock and things like that.

Speaker: Like there could have been some really interesting choices they could have made that were very John Wick that weren't.

Speaker: Like what's that?

Speaker: What's that?

Speaker: I mean, I'm not saying it, Sam.

Speaker: I don't know whether he goes, but the amulet thing on the left, like, I'm just like, what is that?

Speaker: That's gotta be in the next ones.

Speaker: Cause I only saw it's a big part of, yeah, it's a big part of the second and third movie.

Speaker: It's called a blood, a blood amulet.

Speaker: Essentially.

Speaker: Like you, you still, you're,

Speaker: You seal it with your blood saying that like you owe someone a favor regardless of what they ask.

Speaker: And then once you call in that favor and they complete it, you, the person that owes the favor seals it with blood.

Speaker: And so, yeah, John wick is asked to do something impossible in the second one.

Speaker: And it, it, it revolves around that.

Speaker: And then he plays it into the third one as well.

Speaker: So, yeah,

Speaker: Okay, so it actually needed its own toy.

Speaker: I'm not entirely convinced.

Speaker: But I can understand why.

Speaker: I'll get to that in a little bit, but I can understand why they would use that and I'll tell you why.

Speaker: From a theme standpoint, I would argue that this is actually a good pinball theme.

Speaker: The way I'm looking at it is because it is definitely an action movie.

Speaker: And if you look at the fight scenes, okay, I'm going to say this and you can tell me if I'm wrong.

Speaker: The fight scenes seemed like it was a combination of the matrix and blade had a love child.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like the visuals, the vision, when you were talking, David, when you're talking about the colors, that is exactly what the matrix did in the, in the matrix world, everything had a green hue.

Speaker: And so that's immediately what jumped out at me.

Speaker: I also loved the color vibe because it felt a little bit like,

Speaker: kind of that 80s you know we're talking total nuclear annihilation you're talking if you're in a muse fan you're talking simulation theory you know that type of of color palette it does work for pinball and because it has that sort of you know that that sort of rock and roll feel i totally understand that

Speaker: Now what I'm going to say is we, okay.

Speaker: We know because this has been a dust up over the last 24 hours that Stern has actually, well, okay.

Speaker: I'll, I'll put it this way.

Speaker: When people saw that there were no guns now,

Speaker: In the artwork.

Speaker: In the artwork, right.

Speaker: Now, there's plenty of shot.

Speaker: Like, apparently, there's going to be a lot of footage.

Speaker: Okay, this seems to be a little bit like Jaws when they didn't get Roy Schneider.

Speaker: It's not... Schneider, yeah.

Speaker: When they didn't put him on the play field and people were like, why didn't you put him on the play field?

Speaker: And they're like...

Speaker: Um, because his, his estate never got back to us.

Speaker: Like we couldn't put them on the play field because he did.

Speaker: So, but when I play jaws, it doesn't feel like a big deal because he's on the screen all the time.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So is it a big deal that there are no guns, at least in the art?

Speaker: Because from what I'm guessing, I don't know how you can cut together John wick without having him shoot things.

Speaker: And you're actually going to have to limit how many times you see someone's head explode.

Speaker: Because I counted like 50.

Speaker: Which none of us want to do that.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: None of us want to limit that.

Speaker: No, no.

Speaker: You don't want to limit that.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: I just.

Speaker: So with those design constraints.

Speaker: So obviously Stern came out and basically, you know, George Gomez came out and said, hey, just so you guys know, there are, this was a request from the licensor.

Speaker: Therefore, we, we had to work with constraints.

Speaker: We had to work with limitations and because that's just what we had to work with.

Speaker: And he even brought up, which has been a longstanding confirmed rumor now that bond had a lot of issues too.

Speaker: with licensing issues.

Speaker: Now, given that, would you take this on knowing that the licensor is going to say, Hey, we have these design constraints, especially when it seems quite fundamental to the storyline of John wick.

Speaker: Well, and the interesting part too, he, not only did he talk about bond, I've got the quotes here.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: He also talks about, okay.

Speaker: So he talks about, go ahead and read it.

Speaker: We'll, we'll give George the mic.

Speaker: Go ahead and read this from George.

Speaker: So he says, there's no toy guns thing was a brand mandate.

Speaker: It was, it was brought down, not something we could control.

Speaker: We didn't worry too much about it because there's plenty of guns in the film clips and,

Speaker: and from all four films like you said scott and then he goes on to iterate too like you're saying all the bond artwork had to be based on existing poster artwork so they couldn't draw any guns or or design a toy around the walter ppk which is the iconic gun for bond that that is similar that is what i meant by similar on deadpool a character known for weapons like guns and everything

Speaker: All the guns had to be stylized to be fantasy blasters and cannot resemble real weapons.

Speaker: It's not uncommon for brands to have sensitivities to how guns are portrayed on WEC.

Speaker: A hundred percent of the art had to be created from scratch.

Speaker: So none of this is actually post artwork or anything like that.

Speaker: Randy Martinez did a great job in making all this artwork from scratch.

Speaker: And when you do that, that's when the brand mandate says, Hey, you can, if you're doing this all from scratch, no guns.

Speaker: Now, if they did poster artwork like they did with Bond, then it can be in there.

Speaker: It's really, really weird, but this is a thing that- This is licensing.

Speaker: We've talked about licensing issues in the past.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So, Davey, you're working on these things.

Speaker: Would you say, you know what, that's something I can work with?

Speaker: Because obviously Stern made that argument or that agreement to say, yeah, this is what they're asking of us, but we can work with this.

Speaker: I guess it depends on how far along in the process you are before they drop a bomb like that.

Speaker: If it's very early on in the process and you haven't actually started any R&D or

Speaker: You know, there was conversations that Avengers Infinity Quest was a different game before it became Avengers Infinity Quest, wasn't it?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, yeah, I mean, it's possible that, you know, you could do all the R&D and then just switch out the theme to something else.

Speaker: I know nobody likes hearing that, and obviously you'd prefer that all pinball designers designed a layout specifically for the theme in question, but the reality is they probably don't.

Speaker: I would struggle, I think.

Speaker: I just, the whole, I know you guys talk a lot more knowledgeably about license constraints and the roadblocks that people have come up against when working with particular licenses and the stories that you've heard in the industry of people who have come across

Speaker: these problems and we've got people over in the UK as well who have experience in these areas too.

Speaker: It's not something that I've ever had to do in any of my industries is work with a license holder.

Speaker: But it just, for a brand like John Wick, it just boggles my mind that the license holder would then say that they didn't want to depict them

Speaker: exactly the thing that they're known for like even even deadpool right like i would argue that deadpool's known for his sarcastic humor and quick wit like that's that's what you would say about doing his red suit and ryan reynolds like you know there'd be plenty of things that people would list before um you know guns and weapons and stuff of which that's a part of his character but

Speaker: But with Deadpool, they ended up going with the cartoon version and the guy who does the cartoon voice, and it ended up working.

Speaker: So I know that people said, hey, how can you have Deadpool without Ryan Reynolds?

Speaker: Because that is what people are associating with it.

Speaker: I own Deadpool, and it's great.

Speaker: It's funny.

Speaker: And I don't really care that Ryan Reynolds isn't in it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: I would argue though his guns are pretty iconic though.

Speaker: Cause like looking at the new movie and on the end of his gun, it says, smile, wait for the flash.

Speaker: And that's to me, that's iconic because of that gun.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I get what you're saying, Davey.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, so is the whole, can we, can we, can we distill it down to the fact that a pinball machine is a toy and you can't put guns on toys?

Speaker: So,

Speaker: like whenever they've licensed John Wick for figurines, which we've seen, you know, people have been posting pictures of John Wick figurines with guns on them and stuff.

Speaker: That's not classed as a toy.

Speaker: Like, I don't know.

Speaker: I would say that it's, I guarantee there's going to be violent clips that are,

Speaker: going to have gunshots.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So I, I'm just saying it is going to be part of the game.

Speaker: I think that taking it out of the artwork is not a deal breaker for me.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And like, it's not, you know, I'm not the kind of person who would be put off by there being no guns as well.

Speaker: For me, it's more of an intellectual question, you know, like I'm just interested in how this came about in the first place.

Speaker: And I,

Speaker: and and and the marketing side of it too in terms of how big a fallout this is for them and what a deal breaker it is for a lot of people and regardless of whether that's right or wrong right it's it's happened you know like we've been earlier before we started the phone call we were talking about uh distributors and the fact that um

Speaker: You know, anecdotally, this has been the worst launch in terms of sales figures over the last 48 hours that they've ever experienced.

Speaker: Now, you know, just unless they turn it around, which is very possible, you know, we could have an amazing showing on the, you know, on the gameplay reveal.

Speaker: You know, everybody could completely turn around and say, oh, I don't care anymore.

Speaker: And then sales go through the roof.

Speaker: Personally, I don't think that's going to happen.

Speaker: I think that first impressions kind of stick with these things and the market is saturated.

Speaker: People are waiting for what Dutch has got coming down the road.

Speaker: JJP are going to be releasing something soon, possibly at Expo.

Speaker: There's a lot of options at the moment and

Speaker: for something to go down this badly, which it seems to have done.

Speaker: So far.

Speaker: I'm with you, Scott.

Speaker: I don't think it's, I don't care.

Speaker: But from a marketing point of view, I think it's a disaster.

Speaker: And I just want to know why.

Speaker: I want to know why that, you know, how has this come about and whether the story that we're hearing is the truth.

Speaker: Because I just don't know.

Speaker: It doesn't make any sense to me.

Speaker: I've done some research on Lionsgate because, you know, if we're going to put it back on the brand and whatnot, you know, there's a big difference between the people that front the mind to make the movie and the actual directors and the people involved in making the movie.

Speaker: The other thing about Lionsgate too is for about the last 10 years, they've made some poor financial decisions.

Speaker: They kind of overextended themselves after John Wick came out by buying up different properties and stuff like that.

Speaker: And then about 2019, they decided they need to start bailing out water from the ship.

Speaker: And now they've been sailing between stars and

Speaker: breaking up assets and making stuff public.

Speaker: And I think when you have that much inner turmoil as well, it becomes, I guess one of the, you can, you can Google all this.

Speaker: The one point I want to get to, I was reading last night is, so they were trying to sell off Lionsgate plus, I guess that's a big thing over in the UK.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: We don't really have it here.

Speaker: But it, between that and stars, cause they own kind of the same properties.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: ABC and CBS were looking to buy these properties for their streaming services for stars and whatnot.

Speaker: And they had to negotiate a deal of like five million or billion, whatever it was, for the streaming app for ABC.

Speaker: And then someone went, hey, by the way, CBS is willing to pay for this.

Speaker: Let's go back to an agreement we've already made and up the price by another half a million or billion, whatever it was.

Speaker: And it kind of goes to show too, I think when it comes to licensing, because we've heard this with certain licenses, they agree to so much up front, but then it's like, once you agree to that price, like, oh, by the way, if you want this extra, that's going to be an extra couple million dollars or whatever it may be.

Speaker: And so I think that's another thing that plays into it because you just automatically assume guns are going to be involved with John Wick.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I want to talk about another marketing aspect that kind of boggled me as well.

Speaker: Stern went with some influencers that were more on the arcade side, but almost like the virtual cabinet and arcade one style stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, the one up.

Speaker: Which is fine.

Speaker: Like it's their it's their prerogative.

Speaker: And looking at these people's pages, you know, they're they're

Speaker: their videos tend to be around

Speaker: you know, five to 10,000, their most popular, you know, got their 80, 90,000 views.

Speaker: But a lot of these videos that have these 80, 90,000 views have nothing to do with pinball.

Speaker: I get that you're trying to reach a new audience, but it was kind of weird, especially where you already have a built-in audience with Loser Kid, with Pinball Show.

Speaker: I think Pinball Show is a seller and a distributor.

Speaker: We've seen that Zach can actually do some really great stuff with video.

Speaker: And I think the thing is, is a lot of this video

Speaker: Okay, so the way that pinball works, I'm going to give you a quick breakdown.

Speaker: So the LE is what gives its boost, right?

Speaker: It's octane at the very beginning of the sales.

Speaker: And then what we see over time is there's a slow burn, right?

Speaker: People, they explore, they research, and they don't usually pull the trigger until about six months to a year later, depending on the product.

Speaker: Or someone that just came into the hobbies, like, I wonder if they make a John Wick pinball machine, and it's been out for two years now, how do I get my hands on it?

Speaker: Well, the thing is, is people are looking for evergreen content at that point.

Speaker: They're looking at reviews.

Speaker: They're looking at... The problem is when you're releasing this content, it's great that you went this way with influencers, but a lot of it was done poorly.

Speaker: There's videos where there's no sound at all, and I'm watching about a John Wick video, and it's sidewards, and it's like...

Speaker: This just doesn't feel professionally done.

Speaker: And I get it's an influence or whatever.

Speaker: I just think you should have, if you're going to do influencers like that, find someone that you're going to get better control of.

Speaker: I still applaud JJP for doing what Wonka that they had.

Speaker: They gave the slow motion guys.

Speaker: That video got millions of views.

Speaker: And all JJP had to do was give them a machine for like a week or two.

Speaker: You know what I'm saying?

Speaker: It really was, they're out 500,000 bucks in shipping.

Speaker: I just get it in front of a bigger audience than tens of thousands.

Speaker: You know what I'm saying?

Speaker: I saw that slow motion video.

Speaker: I was one of those millions.

Speaker: Same here.

Speaker: That's the other part that boggled me marketing wise.

Speaker: I just don't really understand what the, and that's the other thing too, is they've come out and defended the thought.

Speaker: I mean, and I don't want to slag anybody off because, you know, like I'm sure they're good guys and they were, you know, just making content and, you know, they got contacted by a company to do some stuff and they were like, say yes, like we all do, you know.

Speaker: But,

Speaker: As a result of not using industry people as much, you had some of these guys referring to expression lights as intelligent lights and things like that.

Speaker: It's like you were saying, Josh, the polish isn't there.

Speaker: For those of us that are a little bit obsessive about this hobby and know everything inside out and talk about the

Speaker: the miniature details of it, you know, in, in podcasts and things like that, seeing something like that on a reveal video, just, it just isn't, it just isn't right.

Speaker: Is it?

Speaker: And, you know, it's funny too.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: Speaking of that to that guy, he said that because, you know, it's not his gig, is it?

Speaker: It's not his gig to know those things.

Speaker: Well, not only that, but he had a godfather in the background the whole time.

Speaker: You have a reveal video for John Wick and you're sporting another company's pinball machine.

Speaker: Put John Wick back there.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't have a problem with them going to these people because that is how marketing is done.

Speaker: What I don't understand is that

Speaker: you're giving early access to people who are not in the industry to promote your product.

Speaker: Shouldn't you also consider giving early access to people who are in the industry to promote your product?

Speaker: That's what I don't understand.

Speaker: Like, I don't care if they, if they do the arcade one up guys, fine.

Speaker: Not a big deal.

Speaker: If you get a random influencer guy,

Speaker: However, you're going to make your L E money off people who are familiar with podcasts.

Speaker: There are familiar with streamers.

Speaker: They are familiar with people who at least know what they're talking about in pinball and they can talk intelligently about it.

Speaker: You should also give them the same courtesy to allow them because right now, okay, we are 48 hours.

Speaker: We're 24 to 48 hours after the,

Speaker: the reveal.

Speaker: And we are still going off the stuff that everybody can go and look on the website on.

Speaker: And so everything we're doing, we're trying to connect the dots and the people who listen to us, they're not random people who are just finding something to fill the day.

Speaker: There are people who are own pinball machines.

Speaker: They are in their house.

Speaker: They are the exact buyers that you are trying to reach with this $13,000 product.

Speaker: Wouldn't you like, okay,

Speaker: When I look at stuff and they give me targeted, targeted advertising, they're giving me something for a dad in his forties who was like, they're catering exactly to my demographic.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So don't you want to do the same thing when you're trying to sell a $13,000 pinball machine, you should cater to people who actually have a pinball machine in their house.

Speaker: At least include that, include that in your marketing.

Speaker: Like I don't, I I'm so puzzled by their marketing decisions that it, it, I don't.

Speaker: And this is me as an amateur guy looking outside.

Speaker: I just don't understand why you would only cater to the people who have a tangential.

Speaker: Scott, based on the effectiveness of that marketing over the last 48 hours, I think you can pretty much guarantee they won't be doing the same thing again next time.

Speaker: I agree.

Speaker: I think I would choose a few streamers.

Speaker: I would choose a few podcasters.

Speaker: And you don't have to give them a game.

Speaker: But I'm saying give them the opportunity to be exposed to the game and sign an NDA or whatever.

Speaker: And that way...

Speaker: they can actually have something intelligent to talk about on the day.

Speaker: There's a reason why when movies come out, they do a press release.

Speaker: They go through all the talk show circuits.

Speaker: They go and they, they try to saturate it when it comes out because they want people to go on day one.

Speaker: If you're trying to sell LEs, that's the biggest markup that you're going to have.

Speaker: And that drives everything else.

Speaker: Like, why don't you take advantage of this amateur marketing fan base that you already have access to?

Speaker: Like people love talking to, and I know this sounds like I'm, I'm,

Speaker: people can look at it and say, you just want early access to stuff.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: That is one thing, but I also would love to, I would love to have it's on offer.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I would love to, okay.

Speaker: That's I'm trying to be fair, but I would love to have something more.

Speaker: I would love to have something more to talk about than everyone else.

Speaker: Who's a fan of pinball, just scratching their heads at what their decisions are.

Speaker: Yeah, nobody could quite work it out, really, to be honest.

Speaker: I don't know if they've hit this guy up.

Speaker: Really quickly, I don't know if they've hit this guy up.

Speaker: Why don't they hit up Unbox Theory?

Speaker: That's literally his job is to unbox these games.

Speaker: And he's done it with $30,000 PCs.

Speaker: The guy's got 24 million subscribers.

Speaker: He's got videos that have 73 million views.

Speaker: Why haven't they hit this guy?

Speaker: And maybe they have, and he's just not interested.

Speaker: You're not going to get turned down by people who are making streaming, like streaming pinball, their hobby or pinball, you know, pinball podcasts, their hobby.

Speaker: You're not going to be turned down by those people.

Speaker: And you can pick the ones that you think would be, give a better assessment.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Sorry to cut you off.

Speaker: Go for it, Davey.

Speaker: Oh, I was, I'm going to say like, I mean, they,

Speaker: they've embraced the competition side of things, haven't they, in terms of like pulling in influential people from that scene, like Keith Elwin, you know, to come in as a designer.

Speaker: And I mean, that's paid off in spades for them, you know, to utilize the experience of somebody who plays at a very high level and plays in a way that's conducive to competition, right?

Speaker: has really honed the edges of their games, particularly Elwyn's games, and that's obviously then carried on into other people's games as they picked up on those same ideas.

Speaker: So it is weird that they're not embracing the other grassroots areas of pinball as well.

Speaker: um you know i mean i've always said how much i would love them to embrace the mod scene a little bit more and you know i know that there's various reasons why they don't um again you know people have posited that it's uh because of licensing and you can't um be seen to be giving access to third parties of that licensed material um but even if you weren't

Speaker: even if you were very explicit that the material was untouchable and you locked that down, even just giving us access to the data that the game's producing, the switches and the lamps, would make our lives so much easier.

Speaker: And we'd be able to produce better things that would hopefully then in turn create more hype and more promotion around the games that are getting created.

Speaker: Modders are getting better and better at releasing stuff as close to launch day as possible.

Speaker: Even if they had a trusted couple of people that they gave the schematics to ahead of time and got them to sign NDAs or whatever, so that we could use what marketing

Speaker: is at our disposal as well, you know, around launch week or whatever to promote the game, the mods, whatever.

Speaker: It's all going to be, you know, better for them at the end of the day.

Speaker: So, you know, it's a pity for me too that I feel like, you know, they're underutilizing this talent base that exists around the mod scene, you know, in much the same way as the content creators, I think, are underutilized in the same way.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: I want to move on to let's actually give our thoughts.

Speaker: And now that we've talked about the, the, the launch of this and the marketing of this, I want to talk about the actual game itself.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: What's your guys's first impressions?

Speaker: What do you think of layout?

Speaker: Do you feel like this pinball machine represents John wick?

Speaker: Well, do you, Scott, do you want to hit it off for us?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: They took a similar approach of visual style color palette.

Speaker: This looks very much like a Pulp Fiction type thing, which I don't think is a bad thing.

Speaker: It actually is very, in many ways, it's a similar vibe.

Speaker: It's a little bit more of a

Speaker: Um, it's a, it's a line drawn, but kind of a comic book vibe.

Speaker: The colors are great.

Speaker: Um, artistic wise, I think it looks, it looks great.

Speaker: Cause it, it feels like in that, you know, how Pulp Fiction is kind of in this,

Speaker: in this, you're not really sure what era it is.

Speaker: You know, you can't like lock the style down.

Speaker: I would say the same thing.

Speaker: I mean, these are the most well-dressed assassins I could think of.

Speaker: Like, I am not exactly sure why you need a suit and tie to go in and fight and beat up on someone, but they all looked fantastic.

Speaker: But I don't know that Scott, we're not going to explain.

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: I can't, I, you know, you got to dress for success or dress for death.

Speaker: So I would say that, yeah, it, it visually, I think it looks great.

Speaker: It's you know, there's okay.

Speaker: It's a pinball machine.

Speaker: And I would say it's at least solidly in the middle.

Speaker: It feels a lot like, yeah,

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: It kind of gave me the vibe of a Ghostbusters, how you had the big ramps and the cityscape.

Speaker: I think it looks pretty.

Speaker: And the layout looks, it's hard to judge a layout if you don't play it, but at least it looks like a well thought out layout.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What do you think, Davey?

Speaker: Slightly different.

Speaker: So when I initially saw the screen grab that got leaked onto Pinside and stuff, I thought it gave me really strong Venom vibes.

Speaker: And it still does in a lot of ways, I think.

Speaker: You know, yes, that could just be the fan layout and stuff.

Speaker: But yeah, it was giving me quite strong Venom vibes initially.

Speaker: So then we saw the full reveal and there was also some other videos floating around too where we could see actual gameplay and stuff.

Speaker: I think the play field for me, I think generally in comparison to the stills,

Speaker: that we initially saw, I thought it looked a lot better in the full reveal in terms of the colour palette.

Speaker: It was a lot more poppy.

Speaker: The cartoon vibes you were mentioning, Scott, I think did come through a lot better.

Speaker: But I still think there's some weird colour choices.

Speaker: Like, you know, they sort of went with like purple and pink on the main sort of motif in the middle, but then the slings are then green and then there's green on the cityscape at the back.

Speaker: If it was me, I would have just played them off differently somehow, like kept everything, like we were talking about earlier with the color choices for certain scenes.

Speaker: It's very, you know, two colors being the two main colors and then a very small amount of a third color just to add some sort of differentiation.

Speaker: I think it's a little bit thrown together in that way.

Speaker: The cityscape is green acrylic.

Speaker: um which means it doesn't change it's always going to be green um i think that's a bit of a miss too it would have been better if it had possibly been like frosted clear and then with rgb gi underneath it so it could change color that would have created a lot more opportunity to create different moods night and day that kind of thing um the shots look tight as well i think um

Speaker: the shot through to the, uh, captured pop, um, on the back left.

Speaker: Uh, and there's a drop target on the premium and early that looks like a really tight shot.

Speaker: The car is like a bash toy.

Speaker: The suitcase is a bash toy.

Speaker: There's a Newton ball bash toys, a lot of bash toys.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And the shot to the right of the car looks super tight as well.

Speaker: The suitcase is like a big rectangular thing on the play field for a lot of the game.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't get that part.

Speaker: Like number one, isn't that going to get destroyed by balls?

Speaker: That's what I was thinking.

Speaker: It's a sharp edge.

Speaker: Like I know it's a, I know it's a, it's got some flex in it, I think because it's a bash toy.

Speaker: but it's still going to get destroyed by, I'm sure of it.

Speaker: I can't work out how that's not going to get destroyed by balls.

Speaker: That bottom left corner, that's where it's going to get the maximum amount of kinetic energy transfer.

Speaker: So close to the flippers.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like, and then, and then not only a lot, but, but like, okay, so the left-hand side is obviously the switch register that makes it pop open, but the bottom bit is just a flat nothing.

Speaker: So shots to that are just, where are they going to go?

Speaker: like probably down the right outline, I guess.

Speaker: But it's just, I don't know, man.

Speaker: Like the design decisions, I just think are very weird.

Speaker: I think the toys are a bit weird.

Speaker: As I was saying earlier, I think cars and pinballs don't really work.

Speaker: The amulet thing, I think, looks weird and kind of floating in space.

Speaker: Sure, it's, you know, really...

Speaker: important in the john witt universe and stuff but effectively it's just like the hamburger in pulp fiction right like yeah it's just kind of this circular thing floating in the middle of nowhere it just doesn't have any context i believe you mean the royale with cheese the royal yeah which i quite like because it's silly you know yeah but the amulet's not trying to be silly it's trying to

Speaker: You know, and it's just like, I don't know, man.

Speaker: It looks like a cheap party bag toy to me.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: So look overall.

Speaker: So Saving Graces for me, the music sounds awesome.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: So I love that about it.

Speaker: It sounds really, really good.

Speaker: Apparently it's a new score.

Speaker: So it's not actually the music from John Wick, but from what I heard, it sounds great.

Speaker: and i think the cabinet artwork is like really really good on the home particularly the le the le is my favorite by far um which is good because i'm never going to get it um and yeah the back classes i'm not so keen on the premium side cab art i think it's got john wick in massive letters not so keen on that the other two look great

Speaker: from top to bottom.

Speaker: All of the backglasses look great.

Speaker: It's pretty rare that I like all of, I think it's probably one of the nicest cab artworks that they've done for ages really.

Speaker: So yeah, really happy about that too.

Speaker: But I've got the feeling it's not going to shoot great.

Speaker: I'm feeling it's going to be a bit of a clunk first.

Speaker: So I want to point out one thing too, you said, Davey, and it's funny because like you said, like 24, 48 hours before this revealed, there was a leak of the upper play, like the upper third of John wick.

Speaker: And I'm like, Ooh, I want to go see what people are saying on pin side.

Speaker: Cause I guarantee if I've seen this, it's on pin side.

Speaker: So I go on to Pinside, and there it is.

Speaker: And the funny part is, before they're talking about it, these people are fighting over what's... Because, I don't know if you know this, the rumor for the next two games are Metallica, then Pokemon.

Speaker: And it's seriously like... You remember in Billy Madison where he's like...

Speaker: you know mortal kombat's better no street fighter's better he's like or donkey kong no moral combat you know what you suck you know that's what it felt like so it's like no metallica is awesome and this is why pokemon sucks so pokemon's awesome that's why so this this photo drops right in the middle of that conversation right i'm like oh sweet we're gonna start you know start talking john white

Speaker: And it was that night.

Speaker: They went back to Pokemon.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They're like, so back to Pokemon.

Speaker: And I'm like, what?

Speaker: Okay, let's give this like 12 hours.

Speaker: I wake up in the morning.

Speaker: I go back to the photo.

Speaker: Same.

Speaker: And it's still Metallica versus Pokemon.

Speaker: Ooh, that's not a good sign.

Speaker: When leaked photos happen and no one cares, they're back to worrying about the next two titles.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: On to my actual thoughts of John Wick.

Speaker: I agree with you guys.

Speaker: I think...

Speaker: When I saw that crate on the bottom right, the suitcase, I'm like, I don't know how I feel about this.

Speaker: Okay, first off, I want to give a shout out to Elliot Eisman.

Speaker: This is his very first design game.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: He's been with Stern since 2014.

Speaker: His very first game was WWE.

Speaker: He's always been on the mechanical side of things.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Now, he is a mechanical engineer, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Like he does mechanical engineering.

Speaker: So I will say that's part of me thinking I'm not the first person to think that may be destroyed because he should probably think of that because that's what mechanical engineers do.

Speaker: Correct.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And it's his first game, so I'm sorry for being critical.

Speaker: I just want to point that out.

Speaker: No, you're good.

Speaker: You're good.

Speaker: If I was listening to me being critical of my first game, I'd be very upset.

Speaker: So I just want to apologize for that.

Speaker: Please keep making games and make them awesome.

Speaker: Anyway, please continue, Josh.

Speaker: Looking at this layout, I want to say...

Speaker: it looks really great for a first outing.

Speaker: I, I like the layout, uh, a two flipper game pretty much has to be a fan layout.

Speaker: And I don't know if it has nine shots around that.

Speaker: Uh, two flipper game has nine shots and you could argue maybe 11 if you count like the, the, you know, the side, basically like the, the C shot in Jurassic park, you know?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: I think with what you have with, with a family out, he's done an excellent job.

Speaker: Uh, what I like to see is being able to explore the whole play field, closer shots to the flippers to be more dangerous, but be more lucrative with points or forcing you to make hard decisions.

Speaker: And I think you can do that with the amulet and the, the suitcase here on the pro, the suitcase always stays up.

Speaker: So it's more of like a standup bank instead of a big crate on the play field.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: I do find the red circle area to be interesting where they've got a pop bumper that's kind of isolated with a sling in there.

Speaker: I think that's kind of a cool concept.

Speaker: I also noticed they showed that the ball can lock behind that drop target as well, creating a little

Speaker: mayhem and that.

Speaker: But really, I mean, that pops pretty safe.

Speaker: But I like it being isolated because in competition, a lot of people like to put the ball into the pops, gives them an extra time to mess with the play field before they have to deal with juggling balls.

Speaker: With this case, you're not getting that.

Speaker: There's no way just to drop it into the pop and leave it there.

Speaker: I think that's going to be more controlled.

Speaker: I love Tim Sexton making this dynamic AI.

Speaker: This is really cool.

Speaker: If you haven't watched this, they talked about in the Zach Sharp interview on Kong's R Us.

Speaker: Tim Sexton talked about in the presents video.

Speaker: So it's going to be tracking how you're playing this game and it's going to notice what shots you're making, which ones you're leaning towards, things that you're staying away from.

Speaker: And it's gonna force enemies to be blocking those areas.

Speaker: So you're gonna have to make more shots to those areas that you're comfortable making to take down those enemies.

Speaker: And then in turn, they talked about like, say there's two or three enemies blocking that ramp.

Speaker: if John Wick defeats those two or three on the screen, it's going to correspond with a video clip of him, you know, taking out two or three guys.

Speaker: So there's a lot into it.

Speaker: Uh, I do love this track progress.

Speaker: Like they're, they've been really pushing over the last two titles as well with jaws and venom.

Speaker: Um, I think this game has an amazing amount of potential.

Speaker: I think if you look at it based solely on I'm playing pinball, I want to play for the code set.

Speaker: I really think this game is going to be a dark horse.

Speaker: I know it's catching a lot of slack up front, but I just think once these get on location, the code gets to a point where it feels very fleshed out.

Speaker: I think people are going to go, oh crap, I actually do want to own this game, which makes me fear.

Speaker: I really think this is going to be another Bond situation.

Speaker: With Bond,

Speaker: It released.

Speaker: No one really wanted it.

Speaker: The code was so barren.

Speaker: No one could get the visuals of it.

Speaker: The code was bad.

Speaker: The initial view of the code was terrible.

Speaker: But it was almost a year later when we had three other titles come out.

Speaker: And all of a sudden, distributors were like, I couldn't give away bond, and now I can't keep them in stock.

Speaker: So I really think...

Speaker: I think if you're a John Wick fan, you'll be happy with this game.

Speaker: I think this is one of those games that are going to have to prove themselves.

Speaker: But with Tim Sexton on code, I don't want to say it's...

Speaker: it's not an easy layout, but it's, it's more forgiving.

Speaker: It's a safer layout for a first game, a two flipper layout.

Speaker: That's by definition, a two flipper layout is probably the safest layout you can do.

Speaker: And there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker: Medieval madness is a two flipper layout and it is awesome.

Speaker: And I think that's what I love about the team up here.

Speaker: Like, so if this is a safe game, relatively safe,

Speaker: let's say the shots feel great.

Speaker: They're very predictable.

Speaker: Tim makes up for that with the code by saying, hey, you might feel safe making these shots and I'm going to make it harder as you play because I'm going to learn with you.

Speaker: So I just, there's so much potential this game.

Speaker: I don't think we should be writing it off.

Speaker: I think I, from first blush.

Speaker: Yeah, it has no guns.

Speaker: Whoopty freaking do.

Speaker: The sheriff's on Jaws and you know what?

Speaker: Jaws is, everyone's playing at my house.

Speaker: He's in their tones.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: It just,

Speaker: I think this game has so much potential.

Speaker: And that's the thing.

Speaker: Okay, I hadn't watched a single John Wick movie until Saturday.

Speaker: I went through three.

Speaker: They're good.

Speaker: I like a good action film.

Speaker: By the end of the third one, I'm probably not going to watch the fourth one for a little bit because my brain just... It's a little fried, guys.

Speaker: It just is.

Speaker: Holy crap.

Speaker: I only watch a thousand people getting shot.

Speaker: I was sending around a scene.

Speaker: I think it was linked to in the Pinside thread, like just as a little animated GIF or whatever.

Speaker: But I went and I found the scene or whatever.

Speaker: It's in John Wick 4, which is, people say, is arguably the least good of them.

Speaker: But this scene is just incredible.

Speaker: And it's him, like, from a top-down perspective...

Speaker: basically just taking out bad guys like he does and stuff.

Speaker: But he's using like incendiary shotgun ammo to take everybody out.

Speaker: And obviously, you know, most of it's done with CGI and stuff, but it's all like a one taker.

Speaker: And it sort of just follows him from a top down perspective, you know, just shooting bad guys and getting holes blasted in walls.

Speaker: And honestly, like, it's such a cool scene.

Speaker: um i'll forward it to you guys later or maybe we can stick it in the comments later or whatever but it's really really worth watching um i think even if you just type in john wick for incendiary ammo like it'll probably be the first thing that comes up on youtube but it is you know you know when you see so one of my favorite movies of all time is children of men um you know it's it's not you know hugely well-known film or whatever okay but that's the one where they're not they're not having kids right

Speaker: Yeah, that's the one.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: So you have this pregnant girl that they're trying to get somewhere.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: And there's a one taker at the end of that, which is just one of the most amazing scenes, I think, in sci-fi and action cinema.

Speaker: And, you know, the amazing thing about that film is that he never picks up a gun through the whole thing.

Speaker: You don't actually notice it, but he's just so focused on

Speaker: You know, and it's a violent film, but he's so focused on protecting this one girl who has become pregnant in this world where nobody can be pregnant and getting her away that it just never sort of comes up.

Speaker: But, yeah, anyway, I was talking about John Wick and moving on with children.

Speaker: But, yeah, check out that scene in John Wick 4.

Speaker: It's very, very, very good.

Speaker: Okay, and I'm going to double tail on what you said, Josh.

Speaker: Obviously, people are concerned that there will be

Speaker: Okay, Munsters didn't come out of the gate big, okay?

Speaker: Ended up not being a huge seller.

Speaker: A few others, probably, I would say Led Zeppelin didn't come out of the gate strong.

Speaker: However, because it's Led Zeppelin, it's still selling.

Speaker: Which is a shocker to me, but you know what?

Speaker: It's not terrible.

Speaker: It's not an awesome game, but it's not terrible.

Speaker: It's a functional game with an awesome soundtrack.

Speaker: But I'm going to put out a few games here that have a very similar, had a very similar, I guess, deadpan release, right?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Deadpool.

Speaker: How do you think it turned out for Deadpool?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Deadpool turned out to be pretty good.

Speaker: Like the first rule, the first take ended up being really bad.

Speaker: Bond, again, not like, okay, if we're saying this is a bad release, Bond was equally bad, okay?

Speaker: This may be even like a little bit more, like people are snakebitten and saying, I'm just going to hold off and wait.

Speaker: but this bond has turned out to be a great one.

Speaker: I'm also gonna give you one other game, and we're gonna have to go back 10 years for this, that cratered on release, okay?

Speaker: The Walking Dead.

Speaker: Do we get to guess?

Speaker: I just told you.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: The walking dead.

Speaker: Like the walk.

Speaker: What did you say, Davey?

Speaker: It was the one he said, he said, I should just set this up.

Speaker: I've got a one too.

Speaker: Stranger things, stranger things, stranger things, the same thing.

Speaker: So there are another one.

Speaker: Guardians of the galaxy.

Speaker: And that one came out that one.

Speaker: I don't think that one was ready to release when they showed that one.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Anyhow.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So Walking Dead, though.

Speaker: Walking Dead.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: Like, do you think that people will take the Walking Dead today?

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: And it's a great game.

Speaker: So there are ways of recovering from these bad releases.

Speaker: That is true.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This doesn't seem like a bad layout.

Speaker: So that has it going for it.

Speaker: This has the code option, which Tim is a proven coder and he'll be good.

Speaker: It also still looks great and it is a great theme.

Speaker: So this has the potential of really after this initial bad launch, it could be good.

Speaker: the guns thing, like there's going to be a lot of people who are pissed off about that and will probably stick to their guns by not buying it.

Speaker: Thanks.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I like it.

Speaker: We'll stick to the guns by not, by not buying it because they've, they've come too far.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: I mean, Carrie Hardy, you know, can't now turn around and buy the game, Kenny, after his rant.

Speaker: He could do a redemption video.

Speaker: He could do it.

Speaker: I think he just did.

Speaker: He released one an hour ago and was saying, let me set the record straight.

Speaker: So I haven't watched it.

Speaker: Obviously, we've been recording.

Speaker: Yeah, we've been recording.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Oh, that'll be interesting to see.

Speaker: And there will be people who just won't do it for that reason, you know.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And that's fine, but I'm certainly not in that camp.

Speaker: And if it turns into, you know, a great game and, you know, sales pick up and everybody's raving about it and stuff like, yeah, it is, it is a great looking game.

Speaker: So, you know, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing that can't be turned around here.

Speaker: I don't think.

Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree.

Speaker: And,

Speaker: This is just going to be one of those you have to weather storm.

Speaker: I'm interested to see how this pans out.

Speaker: It's interesting development.

Speaker: I mean, even two weeks from now, the live streams on Friday, that could really help.

Speaker: I just, I feel bad because it's a really great development team.

Speaker: It's Elliot Eisman's first one.

Speaker: And I just, I feel like we're focusing on the weirdest things with this game.

Speaker: When we should be focused on pinball, isn't it?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Someone like pinball to focus on weird stuff.

Speaker: Like a shark doesn't eat the ball.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Are you going to make a mod for this that has John Wick eating the ball?

Speaker: Yes or no?

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: I've already got one in production.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'm going to make everything eat the ball.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: I'm going to make the entire machine.

Speaker: It'd be awesome.

Speaker: It's going to be gun eating balls, you name it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You know what?

Speaker: You should do that with galactic tank force.

Speaker: When the head comes down to make the tank, it actually swallows the ball and then shoots it out of the cannon out of the top.

Speaker: But that would require me to own galactic tank force and that's never going to happen.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Unless someone gives it to you.

Speaker: You can do it.

Speaker: You can still make the mod.

Speaker: It's fine.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Scott, going back to your... I would argue that Led Zeppelin is the worst Spike 2 game made.

Speaker: It still sells.

Speaker: It has a great soundtrack.

Speaker: It still sells.

Speaker: But for me personally...

Speaker: I'll go on the record.

Speaker: Me personally, I think Led Zeppelin's the worst spike two game.

Speaker: Well, it's a total fan layout and don't even get me, don't even get me started on that Hobbit flipper that is up there.

Speaker: That is good.

Speaker: It is a useless flipper.

Speaker: There's one shot from it and it is limp.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: It is nearly impossible to hit that shot.

Speaker: I think one of the beauties of John Wick, I think if you are someone that's looking to save a couple bucks, I really think the pro is the way to go on this.

Speaker: We've talked about the crate.

Speaker: I don't know what the crate does.

Speaker: It's definitely something you're going to have to play to figure out, hey, this is worth it or not.

Speaker: But I mean, between that...

Speaker: The car, it's cool that you can bash it from multiple angles, but really I don't know if it's worth it.

Speaker: Everything else is kind of on there.

Speaker: You know what I'm saying?

Speaker: It's just the physical ball lock, isn't it?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Again, I mean, it'd be interesting to see on the Pro, because obviously with that physical ball lock, when you go into multi-ball, it comes down into that pop region, doesn't it?

Speaker: They just sort of drop out into that pop region and then probably come out the bottom of it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So it'd be interesting to see where the, because obviously it's a virtual ball lock on the pro.

Speaker: So what happens?

Speaker: Do they get launched into that region somehow maybe?

Speaker: A lot of players actually turn on just virtual locks anyway.

Speaker: I think it's similar to, we were talking about this earlier.

Speaker: It's the ball gets, goes behind the drop target, the chop drop target holds it into place.

Speaker: So you don't get three balls in there.

Speaker: I don't, I don't think a physical ball lock is changes much in a, in a game.

Speaker: I truly don't care.

Speaker: The, I thought it was going to be a big deal for a lot of games, but it turns out that I rarely even notice it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You're right.

Speaker: You're absolutely right.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: I do think when it's done, and I know a lot of people dislike Godzilla Premium and LE multi-ball start with the balls on the roof and stuff just because of the amount of time that it takes.

Speaker: But I love that kind of stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, I do too.

Speaker: I think it's cool.

Speaker: Like moments in, you know, like, you know, Bride of Pinbot, oh, my God, like physical ball lock.

Speaker: of, you know, of all time, really, you know, and the way that her heartbeat starts, you know, as an intro to multiball is one of the best pinball moments of all time, I think.

Speaker: So, you know, it's those kind of things that stand the test of time and it's those are the things that we remember and we talk about, you know, years on.

Speaker: and a virtual Borlock is never going to do that.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker: It could be other things, but a virtual Borlock will never do that, I don't think.

Speaker: So I'm going to wrap this up.

Speaker: I'll go ahead.

Speaker: No, no, no.

Speaker: Let's just keep talking.

Speaker: We're a little over an hour and a half, and so I want to wrap this up.

Speaker: If I have one request from Stern,

Speaker: Scott pointed this out from John Wick 1.

Speaker: I think you guys should spend the money for this.

Speaker: Get the rights to Marilyn Manson's song Killing Strangers just for the troll.

Speaker: Davey, if you've never heard the song, it's in the first movie and literally the lines of it is...

Speaker: We got gone.

Speaker: And it's it's hilarious.

Speaker: So Stern, please for the troll, just just for the troll.

Speaker: Except for don't give any money to Marilyn Manson.

Speaker: He's a drollback.

Speaker: But yes, if you can get the song without paying him any money, it would be great.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: but that, that wraps up.

Speaker: Davey, if, if you want people to get ahold of you, if you want people to buy your product, how do they do it?

Speaker: Or listen to your, uh, listen to your, uh, your stream, your podcast.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Whatever it's called.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, uh, yeah.

Speaker: Stumble or pinball.

Speaker: Um, so S T U M B L O R, uh, pinball, uh, dot com.

Speaker: That's where all my products are.

Speaker: Um, we don't,

Speaker: sell on demand.

Speaker: We have lists, which just helps me.

Speaker: We have a big demand for things.

Speaker: So if everybody just ordered all at once, I'd probably have to go and hide somewhere because it'd just be too much.

Speaker: So we run lists.

Speaker: If you like to look at anything, you jump on the list and then I contact you in a couple of months when it's ready to go.

Speaker: The podcast is called In Before The Lock and we do that fortnightly and you can find us on YouTube and Twitch and all the usual places.

Speaker: But yeah, thanks so much for having me, guys.

Speaker: It's been fun.

Speaker: Definitely.

Speaker: Definitely.

Speaker: Definitely.

Speaker: And if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.

Speaker: All the socials is just at LoserKidPinball.

Speaker: You put that after Facebook.com or X.com or Instagram.

Speaker: Go ahead and check us out on YouTube.

Speaker: If you didn't know this, we are doing video now.

Speaker: subscribe, like, comment, all that stuff.

Speaker: It helps us out in the long run.

Speaker: And you know what?

Speaker: Scott, give us our last words for today.

Speaker: You need to buy the buoy of death.

Speaker: It is awesome.

Speaker: Totally get it.

Speaker: you