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Ep 136: John Wick Pinball is here! With Davey Price
113 Plays1 year ago
Davey Price of Stumblor Pinball joins us to talk about his amazing mods and the new release by Stern, John Wick.
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Transcript
Introduction and Personal Stories
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast episode one 36.
00:00:11
Speaker
I am Josh Roop with me.
00:00:13
Speaker
My co-captain is always Scott Larson and Scott and John.
00:00:18
Speaker
Awesome.
00:00:18
Speaker
Okay.
00:00:19
Speaker
I don't see your pinballs behind you.
00:00:20
Speaker
Where are you?
00:00:21
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm at work.
00:00:23
Speaker
So you can't even show off your new, uh, your new purchase.
00:00:26
Speaker
What did you get?
00:00:27
Speaker
I got jaws baby.
00:00:28
Speaker
And it is amazing.
00:00:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:00:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:00:31
Speaker
obviously we did flipping the script on autism about two years ago.
00:00:34
Speaker
And main reason we did it is cause I, a company helped my child so much and he's doing great.
00:00:40
Speaker
Like, honestly, it's amazing.
00:00:42
Speaker
The strides that he's made that, um,
00:00:44
Speaker
They've actually told us he doesn't need to be in special ed classes for school and he's going into kindergarten.
00:00:49
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.
00:00:57
Speaker
And so we did that, right?
00:00:58
Speaker
And he loves Jaws because he loves sharks.
00:01:02
Speaker
And he's every day.
00:01:04
Speaker
Dad, can we play shark pinball?
00:01:05
Speaker
He knows how to turn it on.
00:01:06
Speaker
He goes down.
00:01:07
Speaker
I've made him an account.
00:01:08
Speaker
He's learned how to log himself in.
00:01:10
Speaker
No, I will not share his account with you guys.
00:01:14
Speaker
But no, it's amazing.
00:01:15
Speaker
It's shark pinball.
00:01:17
Speaker
Even just every day, it's shark pinball, shark pinball.
00:01:21
Speaker
And I want to give a major thank you to Flippin' Out Pinball for giving us this pinball machine.
00:01:27
Speaker
I'm not giving it.
00:01:28
Speaker
I obviously had to pay for it.
00:01:29
Speaker
You bought it from him.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:01:30
Speaker
But also they were a major sponsor with flipping the script on autism.
00:01:35
Speaker
Even they, they actually matched Stern in donations.
00:01:40
Speaker
And so Zach and Greg and Nicole are amazing people.
00:01:46
Speaker
You know, you don't buy a product just for the product itself.
00:01:49
Speaker
You buy it for the company and the company service.
00:01:51
Speaker
And the company service has been above and beyond with Zach.
00:01:54
Speaker
So if you're looking for the new John wick or a jaws premium,
00:01:59
Speaker
whatever it may be, hit up Zach and Nicole Mini at Flippin' Out Pinball.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:03
Speaker
And if you're looking to make your Jaws pinball machine even cooler... Oh, yes.
00:02:09
Speaker
So today we have...
00:02:13
Speaker
the mind behind Stumbler Pinball.
00:02:15
Speaker
This is Davey.
Interview with Davey from Stumbler Pinball
00:02:17
Speaker
And if you have not checked it out, we've actually talked about it on the show before.
00:02:21
Speaker
I have now, I need to increase my catalog of Stumbler mods because right now I just have the Tokyo neon sign.
00:02:31
Speaker
but I have Godzilla and I also need to get the lollipop mod for the UFO.
00:02:40
Speaker
I need to get the subway mod.
00:02:42
Speaker
I need to get the noodle bar mod.
00:02:44
Speaker
And he, okay, these are not basic mods.
00:02:49
Speaker
These are award winning.
00:02:51
Speaker
These are not LE mods.
00:02:53
Speaker
These are like signature edition mods.
00:02:57
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.
00:03:07
Speaker
Hey guys, how are you going?
00:03:09
Speaker
That was quite an intro.
00:03:11
Speaker
Thanks, Scott.
00:03:12
Speaker
I appreciate that.
00:03:13
Speaker
And a lovely story, too, about your son, Josh.
00:03:18
Speaker
Thank you.
00:03:18
Speaker
I'm now going to call Jaws Shark Pinball from now on.
00:03:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's always Shark Pinball.
00:03:23
Speaker
It's always Shark Pinball.
00:03:24
Speaker
From now on, yeah.
00:03:25
Speaker
How are you guys?
00:03:26
Speaker
You all right?
00:03:27
Speaker
Hey, we're doing great.
00:03:27
Speaker
Now, we're grateful that you stayed up.
00:03:30
Speaker
We're recording in the afternoon, but you are not, if you can tell by the accent,
00:03:36
Speaker
You are not from the continental US.
00:03:38
Speaker
So where are you from?
00:03:39
Speaker
I'm not from the continental US.
00:03:41
Speaker
I live in London, but I'm not from the UK either.
00:03:44
Speaker
I'm from Australia.
00:03:45
Speaker
So it's all very confusing.
00:03:48
Speaker
Even Rob, who I do a podcast with, at the same time, 10 o'clock in the UK, 4 p.m.
00:03:55
Speaker
Eastern Standard Time, even he gets confused about where I am from one day to the next.
00:04:00
Speaker
But yeah, I'm from Australia originally.
00:04:03
Speaker
And moved over to London about 17 years ago, just on a working holiday was what I was planning.
00:04:12
Speaker
I planned to come over here and make a bit of money and then go home again.
00:04:14
Speaker
And then I think within about three weeks, I'd met my lovely wife and 17 years later, here I am.
00:04:21
Speaker
Oh, there you go.
00:04:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:23
Speaker
This is the first I've heard about your other podcast.
00:04:26
Speaker
So tell me about your other podcast.
00:04:28
Speaker
Oh, well, yeah, it's not really a podcast.
00:04:30
Speaker
I don't know.
00:04:31
Speaker
Can we just call them all podcasts?
00:04:32
Speaker
I find it so confusing calling them streams or podcasts.
00:04:35
Speaker
We just call it a podcast.
00:04:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's with Rob from Tet Pinball who does toppers and it's called In Before the Lock.
00:04:45
Speaker
We do it fortnightly and stream it live, stupidly, on Twitch and YouTube and Facebook.
00:04:53
Speaker
And we basically just spend the whole time talking about the mod scene and all the new mods that have come out.
00:05:00
Speaker
And we're sort of getting a bit deeper into...
00:05:03
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.
00:05:20
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.
00:05:30
Speaker
you know, they deserve.
00:05:33
Speaker
And so we're still sort of doing that and trying to promote people as much as possible.
00:05:36
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.
00:05:48
Speaker
And you've definitely went above and beyond
Modding and Customization in Pinball
00:05:50
Speaker
on that.
00:05:50
Speaker
I mean, yeah, if you have not looked at Stumblr pinball mods, I know we talked about this last episode.
00:05:56
Speaker
Seriously, if you haven't went to his page,
00:05:58
Speaker
It's insanity.
00:05:59
Speaker
Like, this is just next level.
00:06:01
Speaker
I don't know where the heck you came up with these.
00:06:03
Speaker
Thanks, man.
00:06:05
Speaker
Thanks.
00:06:05
Speaker
Holy crap.
00:06:07
Speaker
I'm not a believer in mods.
00:06:08
Speaker
Like, you've converted me because I'm like, eh, like, take them or leave them.
00:06:12
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.
00:06:17
Speaker
Well, it's worth more because I have the, because I put this rinky dink golf cart in it.
00:06:21
Speaker
And you're like, no, you got it off of a cake.
00:06:23
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.
00:06:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:31
Speaker
Let's talk about buoy of death for a second.
00:06:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:33
Speaker
It ties into the actual jaws gameplay and relays information to you via a DMD screen on the mod itself.
00:06:42
Speaker
I don't know any other mod that does this.
00:06:43
Speaker
This is insane.
00:06:44
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.
00:06:54
Speaker
Right.
00:06:55
Speaker
You know, it was one of the, one of those kinds of situations I think.
00:06:58
Speaker
And, uh, look, I've copped a little bit of flack for that DMD.
00:07:01
Speaker
You know, there's certain people, uh, on pin side who aren't impressed with that DMD.
00:07:05
Speaker
And look, in some ways, um,
00:07:09
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.
00:07:20
Speaker
And CRK has done a pretty good update on that since.
00:07:23
Speaker
But before sort of he announced that, I was going to have a crack at doing that.
00:07:27
Speaker
And so I was talking to Joel Engelberth just on WhatsApp or whatever, and we were just kind of hashing out sort of,
00:07:35
Speaker
and I was just kind of throwing stuff to the wall and seeing if it stuck.
00:07:38
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.
00:07:48
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.
00:08:02
Speaker
And it just wasn't coming together.
00:08:06
Speaker
So I started thinking about other ways to convey that information that's on that sign.
00:08:14
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?
00:08:25
Speaker
Would it be possible?
00:08:29
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
00:08:50
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.
00:09:06
Speaker
But that's how I sort of came across the offset cam, which is a motor.
00:09:15
Speaker
So the motor spins really slowly and then there's an offset cam that turns around like that, basically.
00:09:22
Speaker
And then there's an arm attached to that cam.
00:09:24
Speaker
So it sort of goes like that.
00:09:26
Speaker
And then that's attached to the buoy.
00:09:28
Speaker
And that's what makes it go back and forth.
00:09:30
Speaker
So it's a fairly simple sort of little thing once you know how it's done.
00:09:34
Speaker
It's a windshield wiper.
00:09:35
Speaker
That's what it is.
00:09:36
Speaker
It's a windshield wiper.
00:09:37
Speaker
It's a slow windshield wiper.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:41
Speaker
My background is mechanical engineering.
00:09:43
Speaker
So yeah.
00:09:44
Speaker
So that is a, yeah, it's when I saw it, I'm like, I know how you did that.
00:09:48
Speaker
I it's, it's a great idea for this and it's a simple mechanism.
00:09:52
Speaker
So that's perfect.
00:09:53
Speaker
Oh man.
00:09:53
Speaker
I mean, or cause yeah, I never did any mechanical engineering.
00:09:58
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.
00:10:10
Speaker
But yeah, I'm fascinated by it, you know, all of the different, you know, names for different linkages and movement.
00:10:20
Speaker
You know, the fact that somebody just came up with it and then,
00:10:24
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.
00:10:35
Speaker
Because I was trying to get a seagull's wings flapping.
00:10:39
Speaker
And I don't know if that's going to go anywhere, but that was kind of what I was researching anyway.
00:10:45
Speaker
And then you sort of, you find, I can't remember the name of the linkage.
00:10:50
Speaker
It's like Watts linkage or something like that.
00:10:55
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.
00:11:09
Speaker
But all these things that you look at every day and you just think, oh, yeah, well, that works.
00:11:14
Speaker
But you don't really think that somebody invented that and now their name is attached to that.
00:11:19
Speaker
And then...
00:11:20
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.
00:11:29
Speaker
So, yeah, I'm fascinated by it.
00:11:30
Speaker
I think it's something that's really, really interesting.
00:11:34
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,
00:11:42
Speaker
it really does look like it's rocking in an ocean.
00:11:44
Speaker
Cause you know, it's not just a steady, a steady movement.
00:11:47
Speaker
It looks like it slows down as it tries to transition back.
00:11:50
Speaker
It's like, it's actually in the ocean.
00:11:53
Speaker
And I like the idea of the DMD.
00:11:54
Speaker
I don't know why some people would be upset with it.
00:11:57
Speaker
I don't know, but I still think it's cool.
00:11:59
Speaker
Like that you were able to integrate that in the game with the jackpot and with,
00:12:04
Speaker
You know, yelling shark.
00:12:05
Speaker
And well, I guess it doesn't yell, I guess, as much as you can.
00:12:08
Speaker
It texts shark.
00:12:11
Speaker
It does.
00:12:11
Speaker
It does.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:12
Speaker
But I mean, yeah, I like it too.
00:12:15
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,
00:12:23
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
00:12:46
Speaker
they can make it display something else when the shark is, you could animate a shark going across it.
00:12:54
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.
00:13:05
Speaker
So I just pulled that animated GIF off, like tenor GIFs or whatever, scaled it down to the right dimensions, which is,
00:13:15
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
00:13:42
Speaker
You know, the screen size, the pitch of it is sort of one mil by one mil for every pixel.
00:13:51
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.
00:14:02
Speaker
So Paul, who did the Atomic Godzilla and myself working on something for Foo Fighters at the moment that uses that same concept.
00:14:10
Speaker
has a screen and things happen in the game and then things change on the screen as a result of that.
00:14:16
Speaker
So it's kind of just like adding more tools to your arsenal in a way.
00:14:21
Speaker
And when it came to the DMD and the boy, Bui,
00:14:27
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.
00:14:38
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.
00:14:47
Speaker
I knew there was always going to be a contingent who wouldn't like that I was changing things to that degree.
00:14:53
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.
00:15:03
Speaker
And, yeah, I'm just really happy that I got it all working because it was tricky.
00:15:08
Speaker
It was tricky.
00:15:10
Speaker
You know, I think the buoy is kind of about that width, circular width.
00:15:18
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.
00:15:30
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.
00:15:40
Speaker
But yeah.
00:15:41
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:15:43
Speaker
So what I'm hearing is we could put loser kid in the DMD with our little logo.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:49
Speaker
Absolutely good.
00:15:52
Speaker
Absolutely good.
00:15:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:55
Speaker
Like I want to give that power to people, you know, like, yeah, it increases the fun, doesn't it?
00:16:01
Speaker
Like, yeah, maybe my design decisions, you know, weren't right.
00:16:05
Speaker
Maybe the colors that I chose weren't right.
00:16:08
Speaker
Um,
00:16:09
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.
00:16:16
Speaker
People post a picture of their Godzilla on the Facebook page or whatever.
00:16:18
Speaker
And I'll say, oh, there's Tokyo Neon and they've changed the colors on it.
00:16:22
Speaker
And, you know, I see it and I'm like, oh, you didn't change them that well.
00:16:26
Speaker
But...
00:16:28
Speaker
But they did, and they got it to the way that they wanted it.
00:16:31
Speaker
And that's the important thing.
00:16:33
Speaker
They made it their own, and they made it unique, and I love that.
00:16:36
Speaker
And that's why I did it.
00:16:38
Speaker
That's why I created that interface for people to be able to do that.
00:16:42
Speaker
Now, do you assemble these?
00:16:44
Speaker
Oh, sorry.
00:16:44
Speaker
Go ahead, Josh.
00:16:45
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
00:16:52
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
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, and well, Scott, to answer your question, yeah, I don't, no.
00:17:21
Speaker
I've got somebody assembling for me, thank God, because I would go bonkers if not.
00:17:28
Speaker
No, I've got a lovely woman by the name of Danny who does all my assembly for me.
00:17:37
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
00:17:48
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.
00:17:55
Speaker
She was really thorough.
00:17:57
Speaker
And she was, you know, easy to be around.
00:18:01
Speaker
You know, if I'm going to be working with somebody constantly and stuff, you just want it to be easy and stuff.
00:18:05
Speaker
And, you know, it was the best decision I ever made.
00:18:07
Speaker
She's fantastic, you know.
00:18:09
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.
00:18:20
Speaker
And so, yeah, it's great.
00:18:21
Speaker
And
00:18:24
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
00:18:53
Speaker
you know, trying to, trying to get through the big old lists as quickly as possible.
00:18:58
Speaker
That's kind of the focus, focus for this year.
00:19:02
Speaker
What is your, well, there's a couple of questions I have and you can take them in whatever order you want.
00:19:07
Speaker
Sure.
00:19:08
Speaker
How did you one decide that this is something you're going to do?
00:19:12
Speaker
That's, that's my, one of my first questions.
00:19:15
Speaker
The second question is what was your first mod?
00:19:19
Speaker
And third is what is currently your best selling mod?
00:19:24
Speaker
Okay, yeah, all right.
00:19:29
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.
00:19:44
Speaker
And this is when I wasn't in the pinball.
00:19:46
Speaker
Well, I was in the pinball, but I wasn't in pinball, if you know what I mean, you know.
00:19:51
Speaker
So I bought it, turned it into a virtual machine.
00:19:56
Speaker
It was really fun.
00:19:58
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.
00:20:12
Speaker
Dino in particular, I absolutely loved.
00:20:14
Speaker
So I sort of had it in my head, oh, I want to get a Dino.
00:20:17
Speaker
and I want to get a real machine too.
00:20:20
Speaker
So I started hunting around for one and picked one up.
00:20:23
Speaker
And then around about the same time as that all started happening, I decided that I didn't want the virtual machine anymore.
00:20:30
Speaker
I was going to rebuild a creature.
00:20:33
Speaker
And that machine was absolutely toast.
00:20:35
Speaker
You know, the playfield was destroyed, water damage, all the screws underneath were rusted into the playfield and stuff.
00:20:43
Speaker
And I thought, oh, I'll just drill them out.
00:20:44
Speaker
It'll be fine.
00:20:45
Speaker
And obviously it wasn't fine at all.
00:20:47
Speaker
It was a massive endeavor.
00:20:49
Speaker
But as a, you know,
00:20:52
Speaker
Eventually it became a beautiful, beautiful machine.
00:20:54
Speaker
I really enjoyed the process.
00:20:57
Speaker
But during that process, there were boards that were broken in Creech, namely the chase board, which manages the ramp lights.
00:21:09
Speaker
They sort of flash on and off like a chase light pattern.
00:21:13
Speaker
And I contacted Bill Ung, who runs UFO Pinball,
00:21:19
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.
00:21:35
Speaker
And so I thought, oh, you know, and he said somebody needs to rebuild it so that it does work with LEDs.
00:21:40
Speaker
And so I was like, oh, I should give that a go.
00:21:43
Speaker
And then just started researching Arduinos and
00:21:46
Speaker
building things on breadboards and got a version working that could play patterns rather than just the chase light stuff.
00:21:57
Speaker
And it was all based on sine waves.
00:22:01
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
00:22:11
Speaker
to control which LEDs are lit along a light strip or along the ramp.
00:22:20
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.
00:22:26
Speaker
So you can create like a blend of LEDs just doing that.
00:22:30
Speaker
And then alongside that I was like oh and what if you could then move them using sine waves as well.
00:22:37
Speaker
The sine wave then controls how much spin the thing's got.
00:22:40
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.
00:22:47
Speaker
Sine waves, they sort of taper off and they go.
00:22:51
Speaker
So it sort of gives that natural feel to the way things are moving.
00:22:55
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.
00:23:06
Speaker
And I went through a bunch of iterations and that ended up being my first mod.
00:23:12
Speaker
It was a chase.
00:23:13
Speaker
It was called the Chase Echo.
00:23:15
Speaker
And that was my first mod that I released.
00:23:21
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.
00:23:30
Speaker
It was originally on the Arduino and then I ported that code to a chip called the ESP8266.
00:23:36
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.
00:23:46
Speaker
So that enables you to hook into the mod with your phone and change all the settings on the phone.
00:23:50
Speaker
So that opened up
00:23:53
Speaker
just so many doors in terms of what the configuration options were.
00:24:00
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.
00:24:05
Speaker
But as soon as you've got a webpage, then you can just change everything.
00:24:09
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.
00:24:26
Speaker
And it's just, you know, just added more and more functionality on top as time has gone on.
00:24:32
Speaker
But yeah, like in terms of,
00:24:35
Speaker
When did I know that it was going to be like it is now?
00:24:43
Speaker
You know, I mean, Chase Echo, I think I sold maybe 30 or something initially and then sort of trickled in orders.
00:24:52
Speaker
It possibly got up to around sort of 50 or 60 or something like that.
00:24:56
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.
00:25:03
Speaker
Um, and it wasn't going to justify the amount of time I was spending playing pinball to my wife at that point.
00:25:10
Speaker
Um, and then I did a bunch of mods after that as well.
00:25:14
Speaker
I did, uh, um, a mod of one of Swinx's mods.
00:25:20
Speaker
Uh, so it was, uh,
00:25:22
Speaker
a lighting rig for his snack bar for Creature as well.
00:25:26
Speaker
And then I did the Lollipops, which you probably know the name.
00:25:30
Speaker
It's sort of filtered through other products as well.
00:25:32
Speaker
But initially that was just to control pop bumpers, the LED rings in pop bumpers, and sold a bunch of those as well.
00:25:41
Speaker
But it was all sort of on the same level.
00:25:45
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.
00:26:08
Speaker
And so Godzilla was that machine that the revenues from the PIN2DMDs paid for,
00:26:16
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.
00:26:29
Speaker
You know, something neon would work really well there, you know, in a Tokyo neon star.
00:26:34
Speaker
And so it was his idea originally.
00:26:37
Speaker
And I sort of took that and ran with it and
00:26:42
Speaker
And I've told this story a bunch of times, so apologies for anybody listening.
00:26:47
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.
00:27:06
Speaker
I think I had parts for 20 at the point of release.
00:27:12
Speaker
And then that was about five o'clock.
00:27:15
Speaker
I was going into town to meet up with my wife for dinner with the kids.
00:27:20
Speaker
So we jump on the tube, central line.
00:27:22
Speaker
So you're in tunnels and stuff.
00:27:25
Speaker
going through, no reception.
00:27:27
Speaker
And so I jump in, I'll be like, I'll just check inside and see how the threads do it.
00:27:32
Speaker
And it was just blowing up.
00:27:33
Speaker
Like there was maybe a hundred replies already, you know, loads of people on the list.
00:27:39
Speaker
I think by the end of that night, it was sort of closing in on 200 people on the list and stuff.
00:27:44
Speaker
And so it was just, yeah, it was bonkers.
00:27:46
Speaker
And it's pretty much been bonkers ever since.
00:27:49
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.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:58
Speaker
Something that could, uh, you know, turn into something quite special.
00:28:02
Speaker
Like it could actually quit my day job.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:07
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, it's, it's been, it's been great, man.
00:28:10
Speaker
It's been really, I've, I've been very fortunate and, um,
00:28:15
Speaker
You know, met so many great people and, you know, doing Expo and Texas, you know, every year now.
00:28:24
Speaker
And just met, you know, so many wonderful people and so many great experiences on the back of Tokyo Neon.
00:28:30
Speaker
So, yeah, the biggest seller.
00:28:32
Speaker
Take any on by far.
00:28:34
Speaker
Closing on 2,000 orders, I think, now.
00:28:37
Speaker
2,000?
00:28:37
Speaker
I know.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:40
Speaker
That is really impressive.
00:28:41
Speaker
Holy crap.
00:28:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:43
Speaker
It's nice, isn't it?
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:45
Speaker
When you have 1,000 LEs and you have doubled the LE sale, I guess.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:53
Speaker
I would love to know how many Godzillas...
00:28:56
Speaker
like what are the sales figures of Godzilla?
00:29:00
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.
00:29:11
Speaker
Well, even if you say 10,000, that's one in five.
00:29:15
Speaker
I mean, that's crazy.
00:29:16
Speaker
So Colin Alzheimer with Kinesis and This Week in Pinball, he did –
00:29:22
Speaker
Granted, they're all real rough numbers, but he was doing some real in-depth research.
00:29:27
Speaker
His guesstimate was closer to about 5,000 watts out in the wild for Godzilla.
00:29:32
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.
00:29:37
Speaker
Well, I would say that all our estimates are probably low.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:42
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.
00:29:48
Speaker
And my friend is one of them.
00:29:49
Speaker
My friend, he...
00:29:51
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.
00:30:01
Speaker
It's just, it's a, it's going to be an Adams family type game in time.
00:30:07
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.
00:30:19
Speaker
And so you sort of like, ugh.
00:30:21
Speaker
But I played it tonight and I was just like, man, it's such a good game.
00:30:24
Speaker
Like, it really is an absolute cracker.
00:30:28
Speaker
And it's nice to go back to it after playing, like, you know, I've been playing a lot of Foo Fighters.
00:30:33
Speaker
I've been playing a lot of The Big Lebowski.
00:30:34
Speaker
I've been playing a lot of Jaws.
00:30:37
Speaker
So, yeah, it's nice to go back to Godzilla.
00:30:39
Speaker
And it feels different, too, from all those games, weirdly, you know.
00:30:44
Speaker
I kind of expected it to feel the same, but it didn't at all.
00:30:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:50
Speaker
But yeah, it's an absolute cracker.
00:30:52
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.
00:31:02
Speaker
Like, I'll never be able to pay that back.
00:31:04
Speaker
So, you know, I'll just keep it on a pedestal for all time.
00:31:10
Speaker
There's a reason why it has displaced Medieval Madness as number one.
00:31:15
Speaker
And there's a reason because it is a...
00:31:18
Speaker
it's a better game.
00:31:20
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.
00:31:28
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.
00:31:40
Speaker
Hmm.
00:31:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:41
Speaker
And look, I think it's, it's one of those ones, isn't it?
00:31:46
Speaker
Because
00:31:47
Speaker
You know, I've commandeered that game for good or bad.
00:31:53
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.
00:32:02
Speaker
They still can.
00:32:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true.
00:32:07
Speaker
That's absolutely true.
00:32:07
Speaker
They can.
00:32:10
Speaker
And in some ways it was just right place, right time, you know, and right technology.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:16
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.
00:32:32
Speaker
And, you know, mod making wasn't quite at that, I guess, that point yet.
00:32:37
Speaker
You know, Lior was still doing his thing and doing it very, very well.
00:32:41
Speaker
But, you know, and, you know,
00:32:45
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.
00:32:55
Speaker
But kind of nobody was doing that stuff.
00:32:57
Speaker
So it kind of created even bigger waves because of that fact.
00:33:01
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
00:33:24
Speaker
A new game got released and apparently it has no guns in it.
00:33:27
Speaker
So my question to you is, are you going to revive John Wick with a couple of guns?
00:33:34
Speaker
Not with any guns, no.
00:33:37
Speaker
I'm not going to 3D print any crap-looking guns so that people can stick them in their game.
00:33:42
Speaker
No, sorry.
00:33:43
Speaker
I am steering it all well clear of that.
00:33:46
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.
00:34:00
Speaker
That for me just looked like,
00:34:02
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.
00:34:12
Speaker
You know, even the three-ring nightclub thing, you know, you could do a lot with that too.
00:34:19
Speaker
And, you know, the only thing that I'm concerned about is I think it might be...
00:34:27
Speaker
I'm just not sure about sales at the moment.
00:34:30
Speaker
And I'm not sure how much a time investment would be worthwhile, unfortunately.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about it.
00:34:37
Speaker
So let's pivot.
00:34:38
Speaker
Let's talk about John Wick.
00:34:40
Speaker
So we are recording this shortly after John Wick was announced.
00:34:45
Speaker
A little more than 24 hours.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yeah, about 24 hours.
00:34:48
Speaker
Ben Shaw.
00:34:49
Speaker
So this is something that, uh, okay.
00:34:52
Speaker
I know that Josh just watched the first three movies.
00:34:56
Speaker
I watched the first one today.
00:34:58
Speaker
I, I know it's 10 years old, but I, I haven't watched it.
00:35:02
Speaker
Um, and I, Davey, have you, have you seen the John?
00:35:06
Speaker
I haven't.
00:35:07
Speaker
I haven't.
00:35:08
Speaker
Um, shamefully, I haven't.
00:35:10
Speaker
Um, we've got a UK sort of WhatsApp group and, and all of those guys have seen it.
00:35:15
Speaker
All those guys love it.
00:35:17
Speaker
Um, I've,
00:35:18
Speaker
been sneaking little clips on YouTube just to see certain scenes and stuff.
00:35:23
Speaker
And I think I'd enjoy it.
00:35:26
Speaker
So I want to hurry and insert this before you go off, Scott.
00:35:29
Speaker
If you're looking to watch these movies, you can actually watch them for free via Tubi, T-U-B-I.
00:35:35
Speaker
It's an app.
00:35:36
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.
00:35:41
Speaker
But if you're looking to watch these movies, cause there has been multiple people like, yeah, we haven't seen this.
00:35:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:46
Speaker
So yeah.
00:35:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:48
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.
00:36:04
Speaker
And he's always doing is just doing stupid stuff in these commercials and that.
00:36:09
Speaker
But in the movie, he's like, you know, one of the henchmen.
00:36:11
Speaker
Right.
00:36:12
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.
00:36:21
Speaker
OK, so the question I have is.
00:36:24
Speaker
Okay, we are going to put on our marketing hats.
00:36:28
Speaker
Okay?
00:36:29
Speaker
Is this a movie that you think warranted or would have been a good idea to build a pinball machine around?
00:36:41
Speaker
Josh, do you want to go first?
00:36:45
Speaker
I'm going to say no.
00:36:48
Speaker
No, at this point.
00:36:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:49
Speaker
Maybe later down the road.
00:36:51
Speaker
I don't want just yes or no.
00:36:53
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?
00:36:58
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.
00:37:07
Speaker
And that's the thing.
00:37:08
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.
00:37:14
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.
00:37:22
Speaker
I know it's a billion over a billion dollar franchise.
00:37:26
Speaker
Uh, it's Keanu Reeves.
00:37:28
Speaker
It's 4 billion.
00:37:30
Speaker
That's unbelievable.
00:37:31
Speaker
It's grossed over 4 billion worldwide.
00:37:34
Speaker
Oh, all the movies combined.
00:37:36
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:37:37
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:37:37
Speaker
What have I been doing?
00:37:39
Speaker
What have I been doing?
00:37:41
Speaker
I just completely missed this.
00:37:43
Speaker
It's crazy because, I mean, this has, it's one of those weird ones where I feel disconnected.
00:37:49
Speaker
Like you and I, Scott, we talked about this last episode.
00:37:51
Speaker
Right.
00:37:51
Speaker
And thanks, Zach, many for shouting us out and talking about that episode on the episode you and Greg just released this week.
00:37:58
Speaker
But neither one of us had seen this.
00:38:00
Speaker
And we both had agreed it's overly violent for what kind of demographic pinball usually goes to.
00:38:06
Speaker
But there's nothing wrong with that because Elvira is not the usual.
00:38:10
Speaker
They have done this before, though.
00:38:12
Speaker
They've done Sopranos.
00:38:15
Speaker
They have done Pulp Fiction, which is a huge seller.
00:38:18
Speaker
They've done Walking Dead.
00:38:22
Speaker
I'm just talking like pinball themes.
00:38:24
Speaker
So they've done The Walking Dead.
00:38:25
Speaker
They've done that.
00:38:26
Speaker
Stern even made Playboy.
00:38:30
Speaker
And so they have veered into...
00:38:33
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
00:39:00
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.
00:39:07
Speaker
It's kind of funny.
00:39:08
Speaker
I'm well into the monster themes.
00:39:11
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:14
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.
00:39:28
Speaker
Rudy is far more terrifying than anything.
00:39:31
Speaker
Rudy's creepy.
00:39:32
Speaker
He is.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:37
Speaker
I had a little kid run out of the arcade.
00:39:42
Speaker
I felt really terrible for laughing.
00:39:45
Speaker
So Josh, you're saying, okay, like it, it doesn't seem like a good idea.
00:39:51
Speaker
Is that, is that a take I'm getting from you, Josh?
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:53
Speaker
I wouldn't be something you would choose.
00:39:56
Speaker
Yeah, I just don't think there's – Not necessarily – maybe the violence.
00:40:01
Speaker
I don't know what it is about John Wick.
00:40:02
Speaker
I mean, yeah, Pulp Fiction is a cult classic.
00:40:07
Speaker
That also came out in 90-something.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:11
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
00:40:36
Speaker
There's not really much you can quote from the movie.
00:40:39
Speaker
I mean, there's some really great quotes watching that first film.
00:40:42
Speaker
Do you know who Baby Yaga is?
00:40:45
Speaker
Is what he says to his son, the boss guy.
00:40:48
Speaker
He's like, yeah, the boogeyman.
00:40:50
Speaker
I'm not afraid of the boogeyman.
00:40:51
Speaker
He's like, this is who you send to kill the boogeyman.
00:40:54
Speaker
And it's like, oh.
00:40:55
Speaker
It's a really good line, but it's funny because a lot of these lines didn't come from Keanu.
00:41:00
Speaker
It was mostly the villains and stuff.
00:41:05
Speaker
I don't know.
00:41:05
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.
00:41:17
Speaker
I look at those two movies as well, and they're not movies I would be like, oh yeah, we need to have
00:41:22
Speaker
pinball machines of those, but they do.
00:41:24
Speaker
It's kind of the same context, right?
00:41:25
Speaker
It's kind of more of it's action driven with story that kind of takes a backseat.
00:41:30
Speaker
That's still there, but you know, how does that translate to a pinball machine where, um,
00:41:35
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
00:42:06
Speaker
Okay, so I think it's always hard to translate dark and moody themes into pinball because pinballs are boxes of lights.
00:42:17
Speaker
So how do you go dark and moody when you've got like RGB LEDs flashing everywhere?
00:42:22
Speaker
I think purely from an aesthetic point of view, it's quite difficult.
00:42:25
Speaker
So John Wick in that regard is a very sort of stylized neon artist
00:42:31
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.
00:42:41
Speaker
You know, they do like greens and yellows and then they do blues and reds and, you know, it's very.
00:42:47
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
00:43:07
Speaker
I thought Jaws was going to have the same problem.
00:43:09
Speaker
You know, it's kind of dark and moody and, you know, it's all out at sea.
00:43:15
Speaker
But the fact that they sort of leaned into the water aspect of it, you know, I think saved in that regard.
00:43:21
Speaker
For me, it's still not the most beautiful of games, Jaws.
00:43:27
Speaker
I think it's sort of...
00:43:29
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
00:43:56
Speaker
and it's not, you know, I think it's the, I think it's cars themselves.
00:44:00
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.
00:44:12
Speaker
High speed getaway is probably the best car game we've got, but there's no car on that.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:16
Speaker
On that game.
00:44:17
Speaker
If you know what I mean, it's got an engine, it's got sort of loops and stuff.
00:44:21
Speaker
It's, it's not the car itself.
00:44:24
Speaker
Um,
00:44:25
Speaker
any game that's got like a matchbox type matchbox, uh, hot wheels type or model car.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:32
Speaker
Like it just, it just kind of looks too tall.
00:44:36
Speaker
I mean, I know we're all playing with toys and that's why we love these things so much.
00:44:39
Speaker
What about me?
00:44:39
Speaker
It just has the, has the truck thing that, or the, whatever that, I don't even think.
00:44:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:46
Speaker
I like that's for me.
00:44:47
Speaker
That's the least best bit of Jurassic park is that spinny car thing.
00:44:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:54
Speaker
Um,
00:44:56
Speaker
But probably, you know, yeah, I just don't know.
00:44:59
Speaker
Cars just don't do it for me.
00:45:00
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:45:02
Speaker
I mean, I think somebody was saying on Pinside that they should have
00:45:09
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.
00:45:19
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.
00:45:25
Speaker
Like there could have been some really interesting choices they could have made that were very John Wick that weren't.
00:45:33
Speaker
Like what's that?
00:45:34
Speaker
What's that?
00:45:35
Speaker
I mean, I'm not saying it, Sam.
00:45:36
Speaker
I don't know whether he goes, but the amulet thing on the left, like, I'm just like, what is that?
00:45:41
Speaker
That's gotta be in the next ones.
00:45:43
Speaker
Cause I only saw it's a big part of, yeah, it's a big part of the second and third movie.
00:45:49
Speaker
It's called a blood, a blood amulet.
00:45:51
Speaker
Essentially.
00:45:51
Speaker
Like you, you still, you're,
00:45:54
Speaker
You seal it with your blood saying that like you owe someone a favor regardless of what they ask.
00:45:59
Speaker
And then once you call in that favor and they complete it, you, the person that owes the favor seals it with blood.
00:46:07
Speaker
And so, yeah, John wick is asked to do something impossible in the second one.
00:46:13
Speaker
And it, it, it revolves around that.
00:46:15
Speaker
And then he plays it into the third one as well.
00:46:17
Speaker
So, yeah,
00:46:20
Speaker
Okay, so it actually needed its own toy.
00:46:23
Speaker
I'm not entirely convinced.
00:46:25
Speaker
But I can understand why.
00:46:27
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.
00:46:32
Speaker
From a theme standpoint, I would argue that this is actually a good pinball theme.
00:46:38
Speaker
The way I'm looking at it is because it is definitely an action movie.
00:46:44
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.
00:46:50
Speaker
The fight scenes seemed like it was a combination of the matrix and blade had a love child.
00:46:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:00
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.
00:47:12
Speaker
And so that's immediately what jumped out at me.
00:47:15
Speaker
I also loved the color vibe because it felt a little bit like,
00:47:21
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
00:47:41
Speaker
Now what I'm going to say is we, okay.
00:47:46
Speaker
We know because this has been a dust up over the last 24 hours that Stern has actually, well, okay.
00:47:53
Speaker
I'll, I'll put it this way.
00:47:54
Speaker
When people saw that there were no guns now,
00:47:58
Speaker
In the artwork.
00:47:59
Speaker
In the artwork, right.
00:48:00
Speaker
Now, there's plenty of shot.
00:48:02
Speaker
Like, apparently, there's going to be a lot of footage.
00:48:06
Speaker
Okay, this seems to be a little bit like Jaws when they didn't get Roy Schneider.
00:48:15
Speaker
It's not... Schneider, yeah.
00:48:17
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?
00:48:21
Speaker
And they're like...
00:48:22
Speaker
Um, because his, his estate never got back to us.
00:48:25
Speaker
Like we couldn't put them on the play field because he did.
00:48:27
Speaker
So, but when I play jaws, it doesn't feel like a big deal because he's on the screen all the time.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:33
Speaker
So is it a big deal that there are no guns, at least in the art?
00:48:39
Speaker
Because from what I'm guessing, I don't know how you can cut together John wick without having him shoot things.
00:48:46
Speaker
And you're actually going to have to limit how many times you see someone's head explode.
00:48:51
Speaker
Because I counted like 50.
00:48:53
Speaker
Which none of us want to do that.
00:48:55
Speaker
No.
00:48:56
Speaker
None of us want to limit that.
00:48:57
Speaker
No, no.
00:48:57
Speaker
You don't want to limit that.
00:48:58
Speaker
No.
00:49:00
Speaker
I just.
00:49:02
Speaker
So with those design constraints.
00:49:04
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.
00:49:15
Speaker
Therefore, we, we had to work with constraints.
00:49:18
Speaker
We had to work with limitations and because that's just what we had to work with.
00:49:24
Speaker
And he even brought up, which has been a longstanding confirmed rumor now that bond had a lot of issues too.
00:49:32
Speaker
with licensing issues.
00:49:34
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.
00:49:49
Speaker
Well, and the interesting part too, he, not only did he talk about bond, I've got the quotes here.
00:49:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:49:53
Speaker
He also talks about, okay.
00:49:54
Speaker
So he talks about, go ahead and read it.
00:49:57
Speaker
We'll, we'll give George the mic.
00:49:59
Speaker
Go ahead and read this from George.
00:50:00
Speaker
So he says, there's no toy guns thing was a brand mandate.
00:50:05
Speaker
It was, it was brought down, not something we could control.
00:50:09
Speaker
We didn't worry too much about it because there's plenty of guns in the film clips and,
00:50:13
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
00:50:39
Speaker
All the guns had to be stylized to be fantasy blasters and cannot resemble real weapons.
00:50:44
Speaker
It's not uncommon for brands to have sensitivities to how guns are portrayed on WEC.
00:50:48
Speaker
A hundred percent of the art had to be created from scratch.
00:50:51
Speaker
So none of this is actually post artwork or anything like that.
00:50:54
Speaker
Randy Martinez did a great job in making all this artwork from scratch.
00:50:59
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.
00:51:09
Speaker
Now, if they did poster artwork like they did with Bond, then it can be in there.
00:51:14
Speaker
It's really, really weird, but this is a thing that- This is licensing.
00:51:18
Speaker
We've talked about licensing issues in the past.
00:51:21
Speaker
Yes.
00:51:21
Speaker
So, Davey, you're working on these things.
00:51:25
Speaker
Would you say, you know what, that's something I can work with?
00:51:27
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.
00:51:35
Speaker
I guess it depends on how far along in the process you are before they drop a bomb like that.
00:51:43
Speaker
If it's very early on in the process and you haven't actually started any R&D or
00:51:48
Speaker
You know, there was conversations that Avengers Infinity Quest was a different game before it became Avengers Infinity Quest, wasn't it?
00:51:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:59
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.
00:52:06
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.
00:52:20
Speaker
I would struggle, I think.
00:52:25
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
00:52:47
Speaker
these problems and we've got people over in the UK as well who have experience in these areas too.
00:52:53
Speaker
It's not something that I've ever had to do in any of my industries is work with a license holder.
00:53:01
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
00:53:15
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
00:53:40
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.
00:53:49
Speaker
So I know that people said, hey, how can you have Deadpool without Ryan Reynolds?
00:53:55
Speaker
Because that is what people are associating with it.
00:53:58
Speaker
I own Deadpool, and it's great.
00:54:00
Speaker
It's funny.
00:54:00
Speaker
And I don't really care that Ryan Reynolds isn't in it.
00:54:03
Speaker
Right.
00:54:04
Speaker
I would argue though his guns are pretty iconic though.
00:54:07
Speaker
Cause like looking at the new movie and on the end of his gun, it says, smile, wait for the flash.
00:54:12
Speaker
And that's to me, that's iconic because of that gun.
00:54:16
Speaker
I don't know.
00:54:16
Speaker
I get what you're saying, Davey.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:18
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?
00:54:29
Speaker
So,
00:54:30
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.
00:54:43
Speaker
That's not classed as a toy.
00:54:45
Speaker
Like, I don't know.
00:54:49
Speaker
I would say that it's, I guarantee there's going to be violent clips that are,
00:54:55
Speaker
going to have gunshots.
00:54:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:57
Speaker
So I, I'm just saying it is going to be part of the game.
00:55:01
Speaker
I think that taking it out of the artwork is not a deal breaker for me.
00:55:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:07
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.
00:55:15
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.
00:55:23
Speaker
And I,
00:55:24
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
00:55:47
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.
00:55:54
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.
00:56:11
Speaker
You know, everybody could completely turn around and say, oh, I don't care anymore.
00:56:14
Speaker
And then sales go through the roof.
00:56:16
Speaker
Personally, I don't think that's going to happen.
00:56:18
Speaker
I think that first impressions kind of stick with these things and the market is saturated.
00:56:25
Speaker
People are waiting for what Dutch has got coming down the road.
00:56:32
Speaker
JJP are going to be releasing something soon, possibly at Expo.
00:56:36
Speaker
There's a lot of options at the moment and
00:56:40
Speaker
for something to go down this badly, which it seems to have done.
00:56:46
Speaker
So far.
00:56:47
Speaker
I'm with you, Scott.
00:56:48
Speaker
I don't think it's, I don't care.
00:56:51
Speaker
But from a marketing point of view, I think it's a disaster.
00:56:57
Speaker
And I just want to know why.
00:56:59
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.
00:57:05
Speaker
Because I just don't know.
00:57:06
Speaker
It doesn't make any sense to me.
00:57:08
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.
00:57:23
Speaker
The other thing about Lionsgate too is for about the last 10 years, they've made some poor financial decisions.
00:57:29
Speaker
They kind of overextended themselves after John Wick came out by buying up different properties and stuff like that.
00:57:37
Speaker
And then about 2019, they decided they need to start bailing out water from the ship.
00:57:41
Speaker
And now they've been sailing between stars and
00:57:45
Speaker
breaking up assets and making stuff public.
00:57:48
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.
00:57:57
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.
00:58:04
Speaker
I don't know.
00:58:05
Speaker
We don't really have it here.
00:58:08
Speaker
But it, between that and stars, cause they own kind of the same properties.
00:58:13
Speaker
Um,
00:58:14
Speaker
ABC and CBS were looking to buy these properties for their streaming services for stars and whatnot.
00:58:24
Speaker
And they had to negotiate a deal of like five million or billion, whatever it was, for the streaming app for ABC.
00:58:32
Speaker
And then someone went, hey, by the way, CBS is willing to pay for this.
00:58:36
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.
00:58:43
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.
00:59:00
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.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:07
Speaker
I want to talk about another marketing aspect that kind of boggled me as well.
00:59:13
Speaker
Stern went with some influencers that were more on the arcade side, but almost like the virtual cabinet and arcade one style stuff.
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, the one up.
00:59:23
Speaker
Which is fine.
00:59:24
Speaker
Like it's their it's their prerogative.
00:59:26
Speaker
And looking at these people's pages, you know, they're they're
00:59:29
Speaker
their videos tend to be around
00:59:32
Speaker
you know, five to 10,000, their most popular, you know, got their 80, 90,000 views.
00:59:37
Speaker
But a lot of these videos that have these 80, 90,000 views have nothing to do with pinball.
00:59:42
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.
00:59:51
Speaker
I think Pinball Show is a seller and a distributor.
00:59:54
Speaker
We've seen that Zach can actually do some really great stuff with video.
00:59:58
Speaker
And I think the thing is, is a lot of this video
01:00:02
Speaker
Okay, so the way that pinball works, I'm going to give you a quick breakdown.
01:00:05
Speaker
So the LE is what gives its boost, right?
01:00:09
Speaker
It's octane at the very beginning of the sales.
01:00:11
Speaker
And then what we see over time is there's a slow burn, right?
01:00:14
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.
01:00:22
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?
01:00:30
Speaker
Well, the thing is, is people are looking for evergreen content at that point.
01:00:34
Speaker
They're looking at reviews.
01:00:36
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.
01:00:45
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...
01:00:51
Speaker
This just doesn't feel professionally done.
01:00:54
Speaker
And I get it's an influence or whatever.
01:00:56
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.
01:01:04
Speaker
I still applaud JJP for doing what Wonka that they had.
01:01:08
Speaker
They gave the slow motion guys.
01:01:11
Speaker
That video got millions of views.
01:01:13
Speaker
And all JJP had to do was give them a machine for like a week or two.
01:01:17
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
01:01:19
Speaker
It really was, they're out 500,000 bucks in shipping.
01:01:23
Speaker
I just get it in front of a bigger audience than tens of thousands.
01:01:27
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
01:01:28
Speaker
I saw that slow motion video.
01:01:31
Speaker
I was one of those millions.
01:01:33
Speaker
Same here.
01:01:35
Speaker
That's the other part that boggled me marketing wise.
01:01:37
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.
01:01:43
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.
01:01:58
Speaker
But,
01:02:00
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.
01:02:10
Speaker
It's like you were saying, Josh, the polish isn't there.
01:02:18
Speaker
For those of us that are a little bit obsessive about this hobby and know everything inside out and talk about the
01:02:26
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.
01:02:36
Speaker
Is it?
01:02:38
Speaker
And, you know, it's funny too.
01:02:39
Speaker
Sorry.
01:02:39
Speaker
Speaking of that to that guy, he said that because, you know, it's not his gig, is it?
01:02:43
Speaker
It's not his gig to know those things.
01:02:45
Speaker
Well, not only that, but he had a godfather in the background the whole time.
01:02:49
Speaker
You have a reveal video for John Wick and you're sporting another company's pinball machine.
01:02:54
Speaker
Put John Wick back there.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:00
Speaker
I don't have a problem with them going to these people because that is how marketing is done.
01:03:07
Speaker
What I don't understand is that
01:03:11
Speaker
you're giving early access to people who are not in the industry to promote your product.
01:03:19
Speaker
Shouldn't you also consider giving early access to people who are in the industry to promote your product?
01:03:28
Speaker
That's what I don't understand.
01:03:29
Speaker
Like, I don't care if they, if they do the arcade one up guys, fine.
01:03:34
Speaker
Not a big deal.
01:03:34
Speaker
If you get a random influencer guy,
01:03:37
Speaker
However, you're going to make your L E money off people who are familiar with podcasts.
01:03:45
Speaker
There are familiar with streamers.
01:03:47
Speaker
They are familiar with people who at least know what they're talking about in pinball and they can talk intelligently about it.
01:03:54
Speaker
You should also give them the same courtesy to allow them because right now, okay, we are 48 hours.
01:04:02
Speaker
We're 24 to 48 hours after the,
01:04:05
Speaker
the reveal.
01:04:07
Speaker
And we are still going off the stuff that everybody can go and look on the website on.
01:04:14
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.
01:04:22
Speaker
There are people who are own pinball machines.
01:04:25
Speaker
They are in their house.
01:04:26
Speaker
They are the exact buyers that you are trying to reach with this $13,000 product.
01:04:31
Speaker
Wouldn't you like, okay,
01:04:36
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.
01:04:50
Speaker
Right.
01:04:50
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.
01:05:02
Speaker
At least include that, include that in your marketing.
01:05:05
Speaker
Like I don't, I I'm so puzzled by their marketing decisions that it, it, I don't.
01:05:12
Speaker
And this is me as an amateur guy looking outside.
01:05:16
Speaker
I just don't understand why you would only cater to the people who have a tangential.
01:05:23
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.
01:05:33
Speaker
I agree.
01:05:34
Speaker
I think I would choose a few streamers.
01:05:36
Speaker
I would choose a few podcasters.
01:05:38
Speaker
And you don't have to give them a game.
01:05:39
Speaker
But I'm saying give them the opportunity to be exposed to the game and sign an NDA or whatever.
01:05:45
Speaker
And that way...
01:05:47
Speaker
they can actually have something intelligent to talk about on the day.
01:05:51
Speaker
There's a reason why when movies come out, they do a press release.
01:05:54
Speaker
They go through all the talk show circuits.
01:05:56
Speaker
They go and they, they try to saturate it when it comes out because they want people to go on day one.
01:06:02
Speaker
If you're trying to sell LEs, that's the biggest markup that you're going to have.
01:06:07
Speaker
And that drives everything else.
01:06:09
Speaker
Like, why don't you take advantage of this amateur marketing fan base that you already have access to?
01:06:18
Speaker
Like people love talking to, and I know this sounds like I'm, I'm,
01:06:23
Speaker
people can look at it and say, you just want early access to stuff.
01:06:26
Speaker
Okay.
01:06:27
Speaker
Yes.
01:06:27
Speaker
That is one thing, but I also would love to, I would love to have it's on offer.
01:06:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:33
Speaker
I would love to, okay.
01:06:34
Speaker
That's I'm trying to be fair, but I would love to have something more.
01:06:40
Speaker
I would love to have something more to talk about than everyone else.
01:06:44
Speaker
Who's a fan of pinball, just scratching their heads at what their decisions are.
01:06:50
Speaker
Yeah, nobody could quite work it out, really, to be honest.
01:06:55
Speaker
I don't know if they've hit this guy up.
01:06:57
Speaker
Really quickly, I don't know if they've hit this guy up.
01:06:59
Speaker
Why don't they hit up Unbox Theory?
01:07:00
Speaker
That's literally his job is to unbox these games.
01:07:03
Speaker
And he's done it with $30,000 PCs.
01:07:05
Speaker
The guy's got 24 million subscribers.
01:07:07
Speaker
He's got videos that have 73 million views.
01:07:14
Speaker
Why haven't they hit this guy?
01:07:15
Speaker
And maybe they have, and he's just not interested.
01:07:18
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.
01:07:28
Speaker
You're not going to be turned down by those people.
01:07:30
Speaker
And you can pick the ones that you think would be, give a better assessment.
01:07:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:36
Speaker
Sorry to cut you off.
01:07:37
Speaker
Go for it, Davey.
01:07:38
Speaker
Oh, I was, I'm going to say like, I mean, they,
01:07:41
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.
01:07:53
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?
01:08:11
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.
01:08:22
Speaker
So it is weird that they're not embracing the other grassroots areas of pinball as well.
01:08:30
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
01:08:55
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.
01:09:09
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.
01:09:20
Speaker
Modders are getting better and better at releasing stuff as close to launch day as possible.
01:09:27
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
01:09:41
Speaker
is at our disposal as well, you know, around launch week or whatever to promote the game, the mods, whatever.
01:09:49
Speaker
It's all going to be, you know, better for them at the end of the day.
01:09:53
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.
01:10:11
Speaker
Yep.
01:10:13
Speaker
I want to move on to let's actually give our thoughts.
01:10:15
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.
01:10:23
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:24
Speaker
What's your guys's first impressions?
01:10:25
Speaker
What do you think of layout?
01:10:28
Speaker
Do you feel like this pinball machine represents John wick?
01:10:32
Speaker
Well, do you, Scott, do you want to hit it off for us?
01:10:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:36
Speaker
Okay.
01:10:37
Speaker
They took a similar approach of visual style color palette.
01:10:43
Speaker
This looks very much like a Pulp Fiction type thing, which I don't think is a bad thing.
01:10:49
Speaker
It actually is very, in many ways, it's a similar vibe.
01:10:54
Speaker
It's a little bit more of a
01:10:57
Speaker
Um, it's a, it's a line drawn, but kind of a comic book vibe.
01:11:02
Speaker
The colors are great.
01:11:04
Speaker
Um, artistic wise, I think it looks, it looks great.
01:11:08
Speaker
Cause it, it feels like in that, you know, how Pulp Fiction is kind of in this,
01:11:13
Speaker
in this, you're not really sure what era it is.
01:11:16
Speaker
You know, you can't like lock the style down.
01:11:18
Speaker
I would say the same thing.
01:11:19
Speaker
I mean, these are the most well-dressed assassins I could think of.
01:11:23
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.
01:11:34
Speaker
But I don't know that Scott, we're not going to explain.
01:11:36
Speaker
I know.
01:11:36
Speaker
I know.
01:11:36
Speaker
I can't, I, you know, you got to dress for success or dress for death.
01:11:41
Speaker
So I would say that, yeah, it, it visually, I think it looks great.
01:11:46
Speaker
It's you know, there's okay.
01:11:50
Speaker
It's a pinball machine.
01:11:51
Speaker
And I would say it's at least solidly in the middle.
01:11:53
Speaker
It feels a lot like, yeah,
01:11:56
Speaker
I don't know.
01:11:57
Speaker
It kind of gave me the vibe of a Ghostbusters, how you had the big ramps and the cityscape.
01:12:04
Speaker
I think it looks pretty.
01:12:05
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.
01:12:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:14
Speaker
What do you think, Davey?
01:12:17
Speaker
Slightly different.
01:12:20
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.
01:12:33
Speaker
And it still does in a lot of ways, I think.
01:12:37
Speaker
You know, yes, that could just be the fan layout and stuff.
01:12:40
Speaker
But yeah, it was giving me quite strong Venom vibes initially.
01:12:48
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.
01:13:01
Speaker
I think the play field for me, I think generally in comparison to the stills,
01:13:09
Speaker
that we initially saw, I thought it looked a lot better in the full reveal in terms of the colour palette.
01:13:15
Speaker
It was a lot more poppy.
01:13:16
Speaker
The cartoon vibes you were mentioning, Scott, I think did come through a lot better.
01:13:22
Speaker
But I still think there's some weird colour choices.
01:13:24
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.
01:13:38
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.
01:13:49
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.
01:14:00
Speaker
I think it's a little bit thrown together in that way.
01:14:03
Speaker
The cityscape is green acrylic.
01:14:07
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
01:14:33
Speaker
the shot through to the, uh, captured pop, um, on the back left.
01:14:41
Speaker
Uh, and there's a drop target on the premium and early that looks like a really tight shot.
01:14:47
Speaker
The car is like a bash toy.
01:14:51
Speaker
The suitcase is a bash toy.
01:14:54
Speaker
There's a Newton ball bash toys, a lot of bash toys.
01:14:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:57
Speaker
And the shot to the right of the car looks super tight as well.
01:15:03
Speaker
The suitcase is like a big rectangular thing on the play field for a lot of the game.
01:15:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:13
Speaker
I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't get that part.
01:15:16
Speaker
Like number one, isn't that going to get destroyed by balls?
01:15:21
Speaker
That's what I was thinking.
01:15:23
Speaker
It's a sharp edge.
01:15:24
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.
01:15:30
Speaker
but it's still going to get destroyed by, I'm sure of it.
01:15:32
Speaker
I can't work out how that's not going to get destroyed by balls.
01:15:35
Speaker
That bottom left corner, that's where it's going to get the maximum amount of kinetic energy transfer.
01:15:43
Speaker
So close to the flippers.
01:15:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:45
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.
01:15:57
Speaker
So shots to that are just, where are they going to go?
01:16:00
Speaker
like probably down the right outline, I guess.
01:16:03
Speaker
But it's just, I don't know, man.
01:16:07
Speaker
Like the design decisions, I just think are very weird.
01:16:12
Speaker
I think the toys are a bit weird.
01:16:14
Speaker
As I was saying earlier, I think cars and pinballs don't really work.
01:16:20
Speaker
The amulet thing, I think, looks weird and kind of floating in space.
01:16:24
Speaker
Sure, it's, you know, really...
01:16:27
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
01:16:52
Speaker
You know, and it's just like, I don't know, man.
01:16:55
Speaker
It looks like a cheap party bag toy to me.
01:16:58
Speaker
Sorry.
01:17:00
Speaker
So look overall.
01:17:03
Speaker
So Saving Graces for me, the music sounds awesome.
01:17:07
Speaker
Okay.
01:17:08
Speaker
Yes.
01:17:08
Speaker
So I love that about it.
01:17:10
Speaker
It sounds really, really good.
01:17:12
Speaker
Apparently it's a new score.
01:17:15
Speaker
So it's not actually the music from John Wick, but from what I heard, it sounds great.
01:17:22
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
01:17:48
Speaker
from top to bottom.
01:17:49
Speaker
All of the backglasses look great.
01:17:51
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.
01:18:03
Speaker
So yeah, really happy about that too.
01:18:04
Speaker
But I've got the feeling it's not going to shoot great.
01:18:08
Speaker
I'm feeling it's going to be a bit of a clunk first.
01:18:11
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.
01:18:26
Speaker
And I'm like, Ooh, I want to go see what people are saying on pin side.
01:18:29
Speaker
Cause I guarantee if I've seen this, it's on pin side.
01:18:33
Speaker
So I go on to Pinside, and there it is.
01:18:35
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.
01:18:45
Speaker
And it's seriously like... You remember in Billy Madison where he's like...
01:18:49
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
01:19:09
Speaker
And it was that night.
01:19:10
Speaker
They went back to Pokemon.
01:19:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:13
Speaker
They're like, so back to Pokemon.
01:19:14
Speaker
And I'm like, what?
01:19:15
Speaker
Okay, let's give this like 12 hours.
01:19:16
Speaker
I wake up in the morning.
01:19:18
Speaker
I go back to the photo.
01:19:19
Speaker
Same.
01:19:19
Speaker
And it's still Metallica versus Pokemon.
01:19:22
Speaker
Ooh, that's not a good sign.
01:19:23
Speaker
When leaked photos happen and no one cares, they're back to worrying about the next two titles.
01:19:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:30
Speaker
Okay.
01:19:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:32
Speaker
On to my actual thoughts of John Wick.
01:19:35
Speaker
I agree with you guys.
01:19:36
Speaker
I think...
01:19:37
Speaker
When I saw that crate on the bottom right, the suitcase, I'm like, I don't know how I feel about this.
01:19:42
Speaker
Okay, first off, I want to give a shout out to Elliot Eisman.
01:19:46
Speaker
This is his very first design game.
01:19:48
Speaker
Awesome.
01:19:49
Speaker
He's been with Stern since 2014.
01:19:51
Speaker
His very first game was WWE.
01:19:55
Speaker
He's always been on the mechanical side of things.
01:19:57
Speaker
Right.
01:19:58
Speaker
Now, he is a mechanical engineer, right?
01:19:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:00
Speaker
Yes.
01:20:01
Speaker
Like he does mechanical engineering.
01:20:02
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.
01:20:13
Speaker
Correct.
01:20:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:15
Speaker
And it's his first game, so I'm sorry for being critical.
01:20:18
Speaker
I just want to point that out.
01:20:19
Speaker
No, you're good.
01:20:20
Speaker
You're good.
01:20:20
Speaker
If I was listening to me being critical of my first game, I'd be very upset.
01:20:24
Speaker
So I just want to apologize for that.
01:20:27
Speaker
Please keep making games and make them awesome.
01:20:29
Speaker
Anyway, please continue, Josh.
01:20:31
Speaker
Looking at this layout, I want to say...
01:20:34
Speaker
it looks really great for a first outing.
01:20:37
Speaker
I, I like the layout, uh, a two flipper game pretty much has to be a fan layout.
01:20:42
Speaker
And I don't know if it has nine shots around that.
01:20:44
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?
01:20:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:58
Speaker
Um,
01:21:00
Speaker
I think with what you have with, with a family out, he's done an excellent job.
01:21:05
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.
Innovations and Design in Pinball Machines
01:21:17
Speaker
And I think you can do that with the amulet and the, the suitcase here on the pro, the suitcase always stays up.
01:21:23
Speaker
So it's more of like a standup bank instead of a big crate on the play field.
01:21:28
Speaker
Um,
01:21:29
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.
01:21:36
Speaker
I think that's kind of a cool concept.
01:21:38
Speaker
I also noticed they showed that the ball can lock behind that drop target as well, creating a little
01:21:43
Speaker
mayhem and that.
01:21:45
Speaker
But really, I mean, that pops pretty safe.
01:21:49
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.
01:21:58
Speaker
With this case, you're not getting that.
01:22:00
Speaker
There's no way just to drop it into the pop and leave it there.
01:22:04
Speaker
I think that's going to be more controlled.
01:22:05
Speaker
I love Tim Sexton making this dynamic AI.
01:22:11
Speaker
This is really cool.
01:22:13
Speaker
If you haven't watched this, they talked about in the Zach Sharp interview on Kong's R Us.
01:22:18
Speaker
Tim Sexton talked about in the presents video.
01:22:21
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.
01:22:31
Speaker
And it's gonna force enemies to be blocking those areas.
01:22:35
Speaker
So you're gonna have to make more shots to those areas that you're comfortable making to take down those enemies.
01:22:41
Speaker
And then in turn, they talked about like, say there's two or three enemies blocking that ramp.
01:22:47
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.
01:22:55
Speaker
So there's a lot into it.
01:22:57
Speaker
Uh, I do love this track progress.
01:22:59
Speaker
Like they're, they've been really pushing over the last two titles as well with jaws and venom.
01:23:04
Speaker
Um, I think this game has an amazing amount of potential.
01:23:09
Speaker
I think if you look at it based solely on I'm playing pinball, I want to play for the code set.
01:23:16
Speaker
I really think this game is going to be a dark horse.
01:23:18
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.
01:23:28
Speaker
I think people are going to go, oh crap, I actually do want to own this game, which makes me fear.
01:23:33
Speaker
I really think this is going to be another Bond situation.
01:23:35
Speaker
With Bond,
01:23:37
Speaker
It released.
01:23:37
Speaker
No one really wanted it.
01:23:39
Speaker
The code was so barren.
01:23:41
Speaker
No one could get the visuals of it.
01:23:43
Speaker
The code was bad.
01:23:44
Speaker
The initial view of the code was terrible.
01:23:49
Speaker
But it was almost a year later when we had three other titles come out.
01:23:52
Speaker
And all of a sudden, distributors were like, I couldn't give away bond, and now I can't keep them in stock.
01:23:59
Speaker
So I really think...
01:24:01
Speaker
I think if you're a John Wick fan, you'll be happy with this game.
01:24:06
Speaker
I think this is one of those games that are going to have to prove themselves.
01:24:09
Speaker
But with Tim Sexton on code, I don't want to say it's...
01:24:15
Speaker
it's not an easy layout, but it's, it's more forgiving.
01:24:18
Speaker
It's a safer layout for a first game, a two flipper layout.
01:24:22
Speaker
That's by definition, a two flipper layout is probably the safest layout you can do.
01:24:27
Speaker
And there's nothing wrong with that.
01:24:29
Speaker
Medieval madness is a two flipper layout and it is awesome.
01:24:33
Speaker
And I think that's what I love about the team up here.
01:24:35
Speaker
Like, so if this is a safe game, relatively safe,
01:24:39
Speaker
let's say the shots feel great.
01:24:40
Speaker
They're very predictable.
01:24:42
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.
01:24:50
Speaker
So I just, there's so much potential this game.
01:24:53
Speaker
I don't think we should be writing it off.
01:24:55
Speaker
I think I, from first blush.
01:24:58
Speaker
Yeah, it has no guns.
01:25:00
Speaker
Whoopty freaking do.
01:25:02
Speaker
The sheriff's on Jaws and you know what?
01:25:03
Speaker
Jaws is, everyone's playing at my house.
01:25:06
Speaker
He's in their tones.
01:25:07
Speaker
Yes.
01:25:08
Speaker
It just,
01:25:10
Speaker
I think this game has so much potential.
01:25:12
Speaker
And that's the thing.
01:25:13
Speaker
Okay, I hadn't watched a single John Wick movie until Saturday.
01:25:16
Speaker
I went through three.
01:25:17
Speaker
They're good.
01:25:18
Speaker
I like a good action film.
01:25:20
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.
01:25:27
Speaker
It just is.
01:25:28
Speaker
Holy crap.
01:25:29
Speaker
I only watch a thousand people getting shot.
01:25:33
Speaker
I was sending around a scene.
01:25:35
Speaker
I think it was linked to in the Pinside thread, like just as a little animated GIF or whatever.
01:25:41
Speaker
But I went and I found the scene or whatever.
01:25:43
Speaker
It's in John Wick 4, which is, people say, is arguably the least good of them.
01:25:48
Speaker
But this scene is just incredible.
01:25:50
Speaker
And it's him, like, from a top-down perspective...
01:25:54
Speaker
basically just taking out bad guys like he does and stuff.
01:25:58
Speaker
But he's using like incendiary shotgun ammo to take everybody out.
01:26:04
Speaker
And obviously, you know, most of it's done with CGI and stuff, but it's all like a one taker.
01:26:09
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.
01:26:17
Speaker
And honestly, like, it's such a cool scene.
01:26:22
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
01:26:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's the one.
01:26:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:26:51
Speaker
So you have this pregnant girl that they're trying to get somewhere.
01:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:26:57
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.
01:27:07
Speaker
And, you know, the amazing thing about that film is that he never picks up a gun through the whole thing.
01:27:12
Speaker
You don't actually notice it, but he's just so focused on
01:27:16
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.
01:27:27
Speaker
But, yeah, anyway, I was talking about John Wick and moving on with children.
01:27:33
Speaker
But, yeah, check out that scene in John Wick 4.
01:27:36
Speaker
It's very, very, very good.
01:27:38
Speaker
Okay, and I'm going to double tail on what you said, Josh.
01:27:42
Speaker
Obviously, people are concerned that there will be
01:27:46
Speaker
Okay, Munsters didn't come out of the gate big, okay?
01:27:50
Speaker
Ended up not being a huge seller.
01:27:53
Speaker
A few others, probably, I would say Led Zeppelin didn't come out of the gate strong.
01:27:58
Speaker
However, because it's Led Zeppelin, it's still selling.
01:28:02
Speaker
Which is a shocker to me, but you know what?
01:28:05
Speaker
It's not terrible.
01:28:07
Speaker
It's not an awesome game, but it's not terrible.
01:28:09
Speaker
It's a functional game with an awesome soundtrack.
01:28:11
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?
01:28:24
Speaker
Okay.
01:28:25
Speaker
Deadpool.
01:28:26
Speaker
How do you think it turned out for Deadpool?
01:28:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:28
Speaker
Deadpool turned out to be pretty good.
01:28:30
Speaker
Like the first rule, the first take ended up being really bad.
01:28:35
Speaker
Bond, again, not like, okay, if we're saying this is a bad release, Bond was equally bad, okay?
01:28:44
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.
01:28:50
Speaker
but this bond has turned out to be a great one.
01:28:54
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?
01:29:03
Speaker
The Walking Dead.
01:29:04
Speaker
Do we get to guess?
01:29:06
Speaker
I just told you.
01:29:07
Speaker
Sorry.
01:29:07
Speaker
The walking dead.
01:29:09
Speaker
Like the walk.
01:29:09
Speaker
What did you say, Davey?
01:29:11
Speaker
It was the one he said, he said, I should just set this up.
01:29:17
Speaker
I've got a one too.
01:29:18
Speaker
Stranger things, stranger things, stranger things, the same thing.
01:29:21
Speaker
So there are another one.
01:29:23
Speaker
Guardians of the galaxy.
01:29:24
Speaker
And that one came out that one.
01:29:27
Speaker
I don't think that one was ready to release when they showed that one.
01:29:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:31
Speaker
Anyhow.
01:29:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:32
Speaker
So Walking Dead, though.
01:29:33
Speaker
Walking Dead.
01:29:34
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:29:35
Speaker
Like, do you think that people will take the Walking Dead today?
01:29:38
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:29:39
Speaker
And it's a great game.
01:29:40
Speaker
So there are ways of recovering from these bad releases.
01:29:47
Speaker
That is true.
01:29:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:48
Speaker
This doesn't seem like a bad layout.
01:29:50
Speaker
So that has it going for it.
01:29:52
Speaker
This has the code option, which Tim is a proven coder and he'll be good.
01:29:57
Speaker
It also still looks great and it is a great theme.
01:30:01
Speaker
So this has the potential of really after this initial bad launch, it could be good.
01:30:09
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.
01:30:19
Speaker
Thanks.
01:30:19
Speaker
Thank you.
01:30:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:21
Speaker
I like it.
01:30:21
Speaker
We'll stick to the guns by not, by not buying it because they've, they've come too far.
01:30:25
Speaker
Like,
01:30:26
Speaker
I mean, Carrie Hardy, you know, can't now turn around and buy the game, Kenny, after his rant.
01:30:33
Speaker
He could do a redemption video.
01:30:34
Speaker
He could do it.
01:30:35
Speaker
I think he just did.
01:30:36
Speaker
He released one an hour ago and was saying, let me set the record straight.
01:30:41
Speaker
So I haven't watched it.
01:30:42
Speaker
Obviously, we've been recording.
01:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, we've been recording.
01:30:45
Speaker
Okay.
01:30:46
Speaker
Oh, that'll be interesting to see.
01:30:48
Speaker
And there will be people who just won't do it for that reason, you know.
01:30:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:54
Speaker
And that's fine, but I'm certainly not in that camp.
01:30:57
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.
01:31:08
Speaker
So, you know, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing that can't be turned around here.
01:31:15
Speaker
I don't think.
01:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree.
01:31:18
Speaker
And,
01:31:19
Speaker
This is just going to be one of those you have to weather storm.
01:31:21
Speaker
I'm interested to see how this pans out.
01:31:27
Speaker
It's interesting development.
01:31:29
Speaker
I mean, even two weeks from now, the live streams on Friday, that could really help.
01:31:34
Speaker
I just, I feel bad because it's a really great development team.
01:31:39
Speaker
It's Elliot Eisman's first one.
01:31:40
Speaker
And I just, I feel like we're focusing on the weirdest things with this game.
01:31:45
Speaker
When we should be focused on pinball, isn't it?
01:31:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:31:47
Speaker
Someone like pinball to focus on weird stuff.
01:31:51
Speaker
Like a shark doesn't eat the ball.
01:31:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:31:56
Speaker
Are you going to make a mod for this that has John Wick eating the ball?
01:31:59
Speaker
Yes or no?
01:32:01
Speaker
Yes.
01:32:01
Speaker
I've already got one in production.
01:32:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:05
Speaker
I'm going to make everything eat the ball.
01:32:07
Speaker
Yes.
01:32:07
Speaker
I'm going to make the entire machine.
01:32:09
Speaker
It'd be awesome.
01:32:10
Speaker
It's going to be gun eating balls, you name it.
01:32:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:14
Speaker
You know what?
01:32:14
Speaker
You should do that with galactic tank force.
01:32:15
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.
01:32:21
Speaker
But that would require me to own galactic tank force and that's never going to happen.
01:32:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:26
Speaker
Unless someone gives it to you.
01:32:28
Speaker
You can do it.
01:32:28
Speaker
You can still make the mod.
01:32:30
Speaker
It's fine.
01:32:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:32:32
Speaker
Scott, going back to your... I would argue that Led Zeppelin is the worst Spike 2 game made.
01:32:41
Speaker
It still sells.
01:32:42
Speaker
It has a great soundtrack.
01:32:43
Speaker
It still sells.
01:32:44
Speaker
But for me personally...
01:32:46
Speaker
I'll go on the record.
01:32:47
Speaker
Me personally, I think Led Zeppelin's the worst spike two game.
01:32:50
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.
01:32:56
Speaker
That is good.
01:32:57
Speaker
It is a useless flipper.
01:32:58
Speaker
There's one shot from it and it is
Debate on Physical vs. Virtual Ball Locks
01:33:01
Speaker
limp.
01:33:01
Speaker
Okay.
01:33:02
Speaker
It is nearly impossible to hit that shot.
01:33:06
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.
01:33:16
Speaker
We've talked about the crate.
01:33:19
Speaker
I don't know what the crate does.
01:33:20
Speaker
It's definitely something you're going to have to play to figure out, hey, this is worth it or not.
01:33:24
Speaker
But I mean, between that...
01:33:27
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.
01:33:34
Speaker
Everything else is kind of on there.
01:33:36
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
01:33:37
Speaker
It's just the physical ball lock, isn't it?
01:33:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:40
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?
01:33:51
Speaker
They just sort of drop out into that pop region and then probably come out the bottom of it.
01:33:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:57
Speaker
So it'd be interesting to see where the, because obviously it's a virtual ball lock on the pro.
01:34:05
Speaker
So what happens?
01:34:06
Speaker
Do they get launched into that region somehow maybe?
01:34:09
Speaker
A lot of players actually turn on just virtual locks anyway.
01:34:14
Speaker
I think it's similar to, we were talking about this earlier.
01:34:16
Speaker
It's the ball gets, goes behind the drop target, the chop drop target holds it into place.
01:34:21
Speaker
So you don't get three balls in there.
01:34:23
Speaker
I don't, I don't think a physical ball lock is changes much in a, in a game.
01:34:29
Speaker
I truly don't care.
01:34:30
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.
01:34:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:39
Speaker
You're right.
01:34:39
Speaker
You're absolutely right.
01:34:41
Speaker
Um,
01:34:42
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.
01:34:58
Speaker
But I love that kind of stuff.
01:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, I do too.
01:35:01
Speaker
I think it's cool.
01:35:03
Speaker
Like moments in, you know, like, you know, Bride of Pinbot, oh, my God, like physical ball lock.
01:35:11
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.
01:35:26
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.
01:35:34
Speaker
and a virtual Borlock is never going to do that.
01:35:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
01:35:39
Speaker
It could be other things, but a virtual Borlock will never do that, I don't think.
01:35:45
Speaker
So I'm going to wrap this up.
01:35:47
Speaker
I'll go ahead.
01:35:48
Speaker
No, no, no.
01:35:50
Speaker
Let's just keep talking.
01:35:54
Speaker
We're a little over an hour and a half, and so I want to wrap this up.
01:35:58
Speaker
If I have one request from Stern,
01:36:01
Speaker
Scott pointed this out from John Wick 1.
01:36:04
Speaker
I think you guys should spend the money for this.
01:36:07
Speaker
Get the rights to Marilyn Manson's song Killing Strangers just for the troll.
01:36:13
Speaker
Davey, if you've never heard the song, it's in the first movie and literally the lines of it is...
01:36:21
Speaker
We got gone.
01:36:23
Speaker
And it's it's hilarious.
01:36:25
Speaker
So Stern, please for the troll, just just for the troll.
01:36:29
Speaker
Except for don't give any money to Marilyn Manson.
01:36:31
Speaker
He's a drollback.
01:36:32
Speaker
But yes, if you can get the song without paying him any money, it would be great.
01:36:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:38
Speaker
but that,
Engagement and Contact Information
01:36:39
Speaker
that wraps up.
01:36:39
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?
01:36:44
Speaker
Or listen to your, uh, listen to your, uh, your stream, your podcast.
01:36:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:49
Speaker
Whatever it's called.
01:36:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:50
Speaker
So, uh, yeah.
01:36:50
Speaker
Stumble or pinball.
01:36:52
Speaker
Um, so S T U M B L O R, uh, pinball, uh, dot com.
01:36:58
Speaker
That's where all my products are.
01:37:00
Speaker
Um, we don't,
01:37:03
Speaker
sell on demand.
01:37:04
Speaker
We have lists, which just helps me.
01:37:08
Speaker
We have a big demand for things.
01:37:10
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.
01:37:15
Speaker
So we run lists.
01:37:17
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.
01:37:22
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.
01:37:32
Speaker
But yeah, thanks so much for having me, guys.
01:37:34
Speaker
It's been fun.
01:37:35
Speaker
Definitely.
01:37:36
Speaker
Definitely.
01:37:36
Speaker
Definitely.
01:37:37
Speaker
And if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
01:37:42
Speaker
All the socials is just at LoserKidPinball.
01:37:45
Speaker
You put that after Facebook.com or X.com or Instagram.
01:37:50
Speaker
Go ahead and check us out on YouTube.
01:37:53
Speaker
If you didn't know this, we are doing video now.
01:37:55
Speaker
subscribe, like, comment, all that stuff.
01:37:58
Speaker
It helps us out in the long run.
01:38:01
Speaker
And you know what?
01:38:02
Speaker
Scott, give us our last words for today.
01:38:05
Speaker
You need to buy the buoy of death.
01:38:07
Speaker
It is awesome.
01:38:08
Speaker
Totally get it.
01:38:18
Speaker
you