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Ep 126: Working in Tandem with Bug and Luke
111 Plays2 years ago
Bug and Spooky Luke join us to talk about Spooky's new games!
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Guest Lineup
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 126.
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm Josh Roop.
00:00:12
Speaker
With me, my co-captain, as always, Scott Larson.
00:00:15
Speaker
And Scott, we got two awesome guests on today.
00:00:16
Speaker
But before we kick it over to them...
Pinball Anecdotes: Godzilla Machine
00:00:19
Speaker
Let's talk about flipping out pinball.
00:00:21
Speaker
Well, I always talk about flipping out pinball because my friend who I told you got the Godzilla from him.
00:00:27
Speaker
I thought it was hilarious because his wife said that he was going to hold off until Christmas before he opened it.
00:00:34
Speaker
And I already saw a picture of it set up.
00:00:39
Speaker
He told he told his kids that they just fumigated their basement.
00:00:43
Speaker
Nice.
00:00:44
Speaker
So they can't go down there for two weeks.
00:00:47
Speaker
So anyway, it's good.
Supplier Spotlight: Flippin' Out Pinball
00:00:49
Speaker
And, you know, Zach and Nicole Minnie, they have at Flippin' Out Pinball, basically anything you want, including the pinball machine from our current guests from Spooky Pinball.
00:01:03
Speaker
Their latest release is Looney Tunes and also Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
00:01:08
Speaker
So you can definitely pick out exactly what you want.
00:01:12
Speaker
If you're, if that is your style, definitely hit them up and they'll get you set up.
Guest Welcome: Bug & Spooky Luke
00:01:17
Speaker
So we want to welcome back bug and his, his, what, what do you call your buddy here?
00:01:23
Speaker
Like your henchman?
00:01:25
Speaker
I don't know.
00:01:31
Speaker
Larger one.
00:01:34
Speaker
He's just the, the opposite shape is me.
00:01:36
Speaker
We like, totally.
00:01:37
Speaker
Like I'm the, the tall skinny.
00:01:40
Speaker
He's the short wide.
00:01:42
Speaker
Kerry already ran into us at a show once and he's like, you guys are like two opposite ends of the spectrum.
00:01:48
Speaker
Evan Costello.
00:01:50
Speaker
That's exactly what I was thinking of.
00:01:52
Speaker
Pinball goes by Spooky Luke.
00:01:54
Speaker
Yep.
00:01:54
Speaker
Spooky Luke.
00:01:56
Speaker
So far, that's what I've been dubbed.
00:01:58
Speaker
Nice.
00:01:59
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:02:00
Speaker
So I want to thank you guys for coming back on.
New Game Spotlight: Texas Chainsaw Massacre
00:02:02
Speaker
This game looks insane.
00:02:04
Speaker
Whether you're a Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan or a Looney Tunes fan, I really think you're going to be happy with this.
00:02:11
Speaker
I've noticed on this layout, you guys have kind of went more of, it seems really fast.
00:02:16
Speaker
It seems like the flow is really good there.
00:02:19
Speaker
I know like with, with Halloween, it was kind of tiered with the stages and whatnot, and it was kind of building up, but this is just kind of like brutal in your face.
00:02:26
Speaker
Like it might kick your butt, which makes sense with Texas, Texas chainsaw massacre.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:31
Speaker
It's really, why did you go that direction?
Designing the Flow Monster Game
00:02:33
Speaker
Well, I mean, obviously, I think you guys probably wouldn't know as well as we do that people have been kind of hungering for that from us for a long time.
00:02:39
Speaker
We've done a lot.
00:02:40
Speaker
I mean, we've done some crazy stuff.
00:02:42
Speaker
Three upper play fields and a huge Scooby-Doo upper play field.
00:02:46
Speaker
We have done some wild things.
00:02:47
Speaker
So I think people were kind of just waiting to see us do a more, I guess.
00:02:51
Speaker
There was still sort of a question of can Bug and Luke do a...
00:02:56
Speaker
Elwynn, Jack Danger, Flow Monster type game.
00:02:59
Speaker
We know they can do really weird stuff.
00:03:01
Speaker
We know they'll go out there and they'll try two upper playfields and a boat dock of an upper playfield and all this weird stuff.
00:03:07
Speaker
So we wanted to try sort of a more classic Flow Beast with major mechanisms surrounding it that's integrated with it.
00:03:15
Speaker
So that was kind of our top priority going in, I guess, was getting a really, really, really great shooting layout and being, you know, I guess you wouldn't call it state
00:03:25
Speaker
Would you call it a standard game, I guess?
00:03:27
Speaker
Or it's not single level, really.
00:03:29
Speaker
It's just lacking in upper play field, I guess, for once.
00:03:33
Speaker
It's just missing.
00:03:34
Speaker
But it has ramps.
00:03:36
Speaker
It's a modern game with ramps.
00:03:38
Speaker
It's not an upper play field, which is that's fine.
00:03:40
Speaker
A lot of games are that way.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:03:44
Speaker
So, I mean, being able to do that, but then also we wanted to take our mechs, I guess, to the next level at the same time and not really inhibit flow with those mechs.
00:03:53
Speaker
Because that's the biggest problem when you get into mechanisms is you put some major mechanisms in there and all of a sudden the game is stop and start or whatever along those lines.
00:04:02
Speaker
I think being able to put those mechanisms in there in a way that the ball still keeps the flow of the game was really important for us in that one.
00:04:09
Speaker
So...
00:04:11
Speaker
And looking at this too.
Dual-Themed Game Design
00:04:13
Speaker
So the one thing, uh, uh, I don't know if you guys listened to click gamers, but one thing they pointed out, they were thinking that it was, this was originally kind of done around Texas chainsaw massacre.
00:04:21
Speaker
And then Looney tunes was brought in afterwards.
00:04:23
Speaker
Is that the case where they kind of just built in mind together?
00:04:26
Speaker
How did it work?
00:04:27
Speaker
We kind of knew that was going to be a pain point going in with everyone.
00:04:30
Speaker
They were going to be like, if we do the dual theme again and we don't do them in tandem, it's going to be.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:36
Speaker
So from the get-go, we made sure to design them in tandem together.
00:04:39
Speaker
I mean, we knew what both themes were as soon as we were starting on the layout.
00:04:43
Speaker
So we were able to design both of them together, keeping both themes equally in mind.
Theme Selection: Balancing Audience Appeal
00:04:49
Speaker
I think whoever buys their theme, I hope that they feel like they were the one that was catered to.
00:04:57
Speaker
If you buy TCM, I hope you feel like they designed this one for me.
00:05:00
Speaker
And if you buy a Looney Tunes, I hope you feel like they designed it for me.
00:05:03
Speaker
I'm really hoping that's the argument.
00:05:05
Speaker
You hop into one owner's thread and it's like, this game was made for Looney Tunes and we want them to hop in the other one and be like, no, it was Texas Chainsaw.
00:05:13
Speaker
That's the goal anyway.
00:05:14
Speaker
We're trying to start Turf Wars.
00:05:15
Speaker
We're trying to start arguments.
00:05:17
Speaker
That's what we're doing.
00:05:20
Speaker
But no, what's cool too is them be, even though they are so different, they're complete.
00:05:25
Speaker
I mean, you could not go two more different directions with your themes on that.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker
But a lot of stuff mechanism-wise works for both games.
00:05:34
Speaker
Like Leatherface spinning is an incredibly iconic shot.
00:05:37
Speaker
And then, you know, with spinning Taz, like Taz spin, you know.
00:05:41
Speaker
So being able to find those things that did overlap was actually oddly easy, I guess.
00:05:46
Speaker
The Leatherface spinning thing helps my argument with like certain Looney Tunes fans will feel like it was designed for them.
00:05:52
Speaker
Because they're like, well, Taz spins.
00:05:53
Speaker
Why is Leatherface spinning?
00:05:54
Speaker
And it's like, well, they don't know the end of the movie where he's throwing the chainsaw.
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, I actually did see that comment.
00:06:00
Speaker
Why?
00:06:00
Speaker
is leather face spinning.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:02
Speaker
It's like, perfect.
00:06:03
Speaker
We did our job.
00:06:04
Speaker
If both sides don't realize, yeah, we did our job.
00:06:07
Speaker
We have done it right.
00:06:08
Speaker
So let's talk about the theme selection.
00:06:11
Speaker
Now, the challenge that you guys have is that you are choosing themes that would resonate with an adult audience or a very specific audience.
00:06:21
Speaker
I mean, a lot of
00:06:23
Speaker
you're into Halloween, you're into Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you're into Rob's, so these type of things.
00:06:29
Speaker
However, you're also very aware that you're not going to be able to sell to a mass audience with a very niche theme.
00:06:38
Speaker
So how did you choose to go with Looney Tunes and and and what's the crossover when you're designing rules and flow and layout for those two things that actually Warner Brothers is wacky and violent in a in a comic way versus the Chainsaw Massacre.
00:06:57
Speaker
So it's interesting to see.
00:07:00
Speaker
How did you select the theme, the couple themes, and how did you make sure both were catered to?
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:10
Speaker
You know, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure we had Looney Tunes first, didn't we?
00:07:13
Speaker
Well, we had it signed up first, but we'd already been talking about Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well.
00:07:17
Speaker
We were talking with them, and back when we signed Scooby-Doo, I mean, like, Looney Tunes is obviously Warner Brothers, so is Scooby-Doo.
00:07:24
Speaker
We were already looking at the portfolio and, like, kind of picking some items on there, and we thought that, you know, Scooby being...
00:07:32
Speaker
most likely a great success with a theme with fans and everything we thought Looney Tunes would be a great follower right and there was a lot of people asking too for more Saturday morning cartoon type of stuff everything after Scooby-Doo so it kind of goes naturally we also didn't want to hear oh Spooky's abandoning horror themes you know Halloween was two games ago now like we don't want them to abandon the horror that was so I guess that was probably the most major part of our decision really is when when we did sign the the Warner Brothers Scooby-Doo license we signed Looney Tunes at the
00:08:01
Speaker
same time because we're able to pile those on the same contract.
00:08:05
Speaker
And with doing that, it was like, okay, now we have a decision to make because if we do Scooby-Doo and then just Looney Tunes by itself in a row, you know, are our customers or our fans going to be like, feel like we have abandoned them in the horror market or like we're not going
00:08:20
Speaker
doing right by them and providing them with the themes they want to see.
00:08:24
Speaker
Because I do take a lot of responsibility.
00:08:26
Speaker
And I've talked about this before, but I take a lot of responsibility that like when people make a purchase with us, I take that as like, you're kind of, you're making an investment or a contribution to the company
00:08:36
Speaker
For us to be able to come back and continue to make the themes that you want to see, like when our horror customers turn out and buy the game from us and do that for us and support us in that way, I want to support them back and give them the themes that they want to see.
00:08:50
Speaker
You know, I don't I don't want to do what we want to do necessarily so much as I want to make sure that.
00:08:54
Speaker
the people who are supporting us are getting the themes that they deserve to get.
00:08:57
Speaker
And, you know, when they're spending money for us, they're not only getting their game, but they're setting up to see future games that they want to see.
00:09:03
Speaker
If you're a customer or a fan of us, we feel very morally obligated to make sure we continue to do things you like.
00:09:11
Speaker
Probably a little too much.
00:09:14
Speaker
We take it very seriously.
00:09:15
Speaker
We do.
00:09:16
Speaker
We don't like when people are mad at us.
00:09:18
Speaker
No, we don't want anyone to be mad at us.
00:09:20
Speaker
We don't wake up in the morning and do this so that we can upset people.
00:09:23
Speaker
That's not on our radar.
00:09:25
Speaker
But then to answer your question going into the code side of things, the immediate plan from the start was just the code can't have anything in common.
Game Coding and Licensing Challenges
00:09:34
Speaker
The only thing that it can have in common is the fact that it's going to be using the same layout, but it's using the exact same layout in two entirely separate ways.
00:09:43
Speaker
Both games have their own development team.
00:09:45
Speaker
their own rules direction, their own programmers, their own animators, artists, everything.
00:09:51
Speaker
And like, I'm sure there's a couple crossover things that are the same, like you hit the captive ball to light lock, but even how they go about doing that is completely different between the two games.
00:10:00
Speaker
Which is cool to see too, because neither team really consulted the other team about rules.
00:10:05
Speaker
So if they did land on some of the same rules, that means the layout was just, you know, speaking to both teams and kind of telling them to go with those rules, which is cool.
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:13
Speaker
So one thing you talked about was licensing, and I've had something on my mind, and if you guys can't talk about this, this is fine, but I was told recently that anything dating pre-83, it's a lot easier to deal with because the licensor kind of owns all the rights to it, versus after 83, they're kind of divided
Production Strategy During COVID
00:10:31
Speaker
up.
00:10:31
Speaker
Is that kind of one of the reasons you guys are doing stuff that's kind of pre-83?
00:10:34
Speaker
Because really the only modern is Rick and Morty.
00:10:38
Speaker
I mean, the...
00:10:40
Speaker
I mean, that's probably like an accurate statement.
00:10:42
Speaker
It's a decent general rule.
00:10:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like, the further back you go, the less likely it was that people had agents who are still protecting their rights now.
00:10:51
Speaker
I mean, you compare it to like, an 80s blockbuster of some sort, like gremlins or something like I'm sure.
00:10:58
Speaker
some of the actors in there are very well protected and covered and everything.
00:11:02
Speaker
But back in the 60s and 70s, people just didn't really think that far ahead, per se.
00:11:08
Speaker
People just weren't pursuing their own likeness rights as hard back then, it didn't seem like.
00:11:13
Speaker
Or if they were, it was for
00:11:14
Speaker
a term, not for all of time.
00:11:17
Speaker
So, I mean, yeah, I mean, as a general idea, I guess that's, this is a really good question, by the way.
00:11:21
Speaker
I'm actually really like, this is a great question.
00:11:24
Speaker
A lot of people don't know a lot of the things that we deal with.
00:11:27
Speaker
It is easier to go back in time.
00:11:29
Speaker
You're right.
00:11:30
Speaker
It is easier to go back.
00:11:31
Speaker
I'd never heard 83 before.
00:11:33
Speaker
I wonder where does that come from?
00:11:34
Speaker
That's because there was a lawsuit in 82.
00:11:37
Speaker
And when it went through, when it, when it went in favor of the plaintiffs,
00:11:41
Speaker
That then opened the floodgates that actors and actresses could go after likenesses and stuff like that.
00:11:46
Speaker
And there's different stuff that I can point out, but we're not going to go down that rabbit hole.
00:11:51
Speaker
Definitely in general, like people can just see, I guess, a big cost in our game versus a lot of the manufacturers games out there and everything is how many of the assets and likeness rights that we do pursue.
00:12:03
Speaker
Like we, I mean, we pursue the majority of iconic things in our title.
00:12:08
Speaker
Like you've seen even back to Rick and Morty having actually Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon and all that.
00:12:14
Speaker
we always do try to get the largest part of the theme that we can get.
00:12:18
Speaker
And we do pay a premium price for that.
00:12:20
Speaker
I mean, we pay a premium price for that.
00:12:23
Speaker
But I think, again, that comes back to the same thing I was ranting about before, where we feel responsible with our customers that when they're supporting us and doing these things, that we're going to go get them full assets and stuff for the titles that they want to see.
00:12:37
Speaker
So the other thought I had in mind, too, with all this is...
00:12:41
Speaker
So scooby-doo was 1969 because that was the year it came out.
00:12:44
Speaker
But with, with Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you guys have actually kind of went back about 200 units.
00:12:49
Speaker
So they're 88 or 888 a piece, which equals about 1776.
00:12:54
Speaker
Is this like a strategic?
00:12:57
Speaker
Cause I mean, we can talk market all day and people can be bored because that's, that's all they're hearing left and right right now.
00:13:02
Speaker
But is this kind of one way to combat the market and, um,
00:13:07
Speaker
you're getting the same product on the line.
00:13:08
Speaker
It's not the same product, but drilling-wise and manufacturing-wise, it's similar product you're doing.
00:13:16
Speaker
It keeps the factory line going, but it's not necessarily... You're limiting supply.
00:13:21
Speaker
You're going back to those limited numbers on those themes.
Art Process and Visual Importance
00:13:23
Speaker
We didn't go super low with it, I guess.
00:13:25
Speaker
We weren't trying to drive FOMO or anything like that.
00:13:27
Speaker
It was going to be a dual theme no matter what.
00:13:30
Speaker
It just so happened that we managed to do it in a market where it somehow made the most sense for us to go into it.
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:38
Speaker
I would love to tell you we're rocket scientists and we planned this perfectly.
00:13:42
Speaker
And I hope that's what most people think.
00:13:44
Speaker
But I mean, it's...
00:13:46
Speaker
I wouldn't even say happy accident.
00:13:47
Speaker
I mean, we just kind of worked out that way.
00:13:49
Speaker
Well, like I said, it kind of demanded it too.
00:13:51
Speaker
When we were coming off of Scooby-Doo, we didn't want to go with too many like cartoon themes in a row and have people feel like we abandoned them.
00:13:57
Speaker
So, but no, I mean, like if you look at the combined units, they're kind of similar to Scooby-Doo.
00:14:03
Speaker
Generally, if we can, we like to stay consistent because we're hiring full-time people.
00:14:09
Speaker
We have to have work for 12 months a year.
00:14:12
Speaker
So, you know, if we're like back to say Rick and Morty days, we sold 750 units, right?
00:14:18
Speaker
So then we're taking those 750 units and we're saying, okay, we need to keep our guys busy for 12 to 14 months with this.
00:14:26
Speaker
And then we break it down to that.
00:14:27
Speaker
And that's how many games we do.
00:14:29
Speaker
That's what determines how many games we do a day, you know?
00:14:32
Speaker
And then with obviously the way numbers have been going up and everything, we've been able to just keep kind of slowly scaling that up to meet that demand and everything.
00:14:40
Speaker
So
00:14:41
Speaker
I guess when people ask, people ask a lot of time too, what's the benefit of pre-order?
00:14:45
Speaker
And it's like, that's actually a hugely beneficial thing for us.
00:14:49
Speaker
And during COVID, I had a lot of people reach out to me and they're like, how are you manufacturing right now?
00:14:54
Speaker
Like, how are you guys getting games out the door when other people aren't?
00:14:56
Speaker
It's like, well, if we know right away going in how many units we've sold and can plan for that, it makes us a lot more efficient.
00:15:05
Speaker
Whereas if you sell some units on day one and then they're sporadic throughout the entire year, you're always kind of chasing a little bit.
00:15:11
Speaker
It gets a little bit harder to plan for.
00:15:13
Speaker
But if you have all of your units sold right up front, if everybody shows up on launch day and puts down their deposits and everything, we're able to plan for that and spread the efficiency perfectly throughout the year.
00:15:24
Speaker
Whereas if only 25% of our sales are on launch day and then they're trickling in throughout the year, we kind of have to start slow, you know, to guarantee that we're not going to run out of work, but then we can trickle up to meet that speed.
00:15:35
Speaker
But it just makes it a little bit more difficult.
00:15:36
Speaker
You wouldn't want to hit the ground absolutely sprinting at it.
00:15:39
Speaker
So, you know, if, for example, like, you know, if 300 Rick and Morty orders would have come in instead of 750, we wouldn't have planned on building 750 right away and built ourself out of work in three months.
00:15:51
Speaker
Because the next thing you know, you're releasing three titles a year to keep working your shop, and that's not good.
00:15:55
Speaker
I mean, it's not good for anyone.
00:16:00
Speaker
The pinball market doesn't need three more titles released per year from anyone right now.
00:16:07
Speaker
doing four games.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to do five releases.
00:16:11
Speaker
And it makes it, it's just tougher too.
00:16:13
Speaker
It makes it hard to get ahead on code.
00:16:15
Speaker
You want to have your builds take a decent amount of time because you want to be able to get ahead on code and provide people with more complete code at launch and everything.
00:16:23
Speaker
Spreading that work out is definitely really important for us with having full-time employees.
00:16:27
Speaker
We're not just bringing on some people and then throwing them out the door.
00:16:30
Speaker
We don't want to do that.
00:16:31
Speaker
That's not what we're about.
00:16:35
Speaker
So the
00:16:37
Speaker
The one thing that I would give you guys top notch versus anybody else is what?
00:16:44
Speaker
Is everything.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's the entire game.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:47
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:48
Speaker
Visuals.
00:16:49
Speaker
Like you see a spooky game and your art is fantastic.
00:16:53
Speaker
Like the way it looks across the room is a hundred percent better than I would say in any other machine, or at least it's on, it's certainly competing at the highest level.
00:17:04
Speaker
So how do you approach your art packages?
00:17:07
Speaker
How do you apply?
00:17:08
Speaker
The bottom line is they won when Halloween came out, you sold so many units based on it looked so good.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:18
Speaker
And so how do you approach the art for your games?
00:17:22
Speaker
I guess step one is just hire really good freaking artists.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
And we have, we've always gotten very lucky and done that.
00:17:30
Speaker
I mean, and we've, we've explored out past who the, the typical pinball artists
Looney Tunes Game Plot
00:17:36
Speaker
would be.
00:17:36
Speaker
I mean, like Jeff Zornow and Matt Frank are both comic book artists that I grew up reading their Godzilla in Ultraman comic books.
00:17:43
Speaker
And we were just like, God, these guys are so good.
00:17:45
Speaker
And, uh, we just had grown personal relationships with them over the year.
00:17:49
Speaker
And, uh,
00:17:50
Speaker
Brad Duke reaching out to us pre Looney Tunes.
00:17:53
Speaker
He was like, hey, here's some stuff I used to do at Deep Root.
00:17:55
Speaker
He's like, I love pinball.
00:17:57
Speaker
I love that I got into this.
00:17:59
Speaker
He really has a knack for what pinball art is.
00:18:02
Speaker
Just knowing to which artists are going to be good at that.
00:18:05
Speaker
I mean, we spend plenty of time talking about which artist is going to be perfect for that theme.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:11
Speaker
You really do have to consider, I mean, what you're working with the license.
00:18:15
Speaker
I mean, are they saying you have to take these images and base your things off that?
00:18:19
Speaker
Are they saying you have freedom to do whatever you like?
00:18:23
Speaker
What's the theme going to look like?
00:18:24
Speaker
Is it going to look like a comic book?
00:18:26
Speaker
Are we going for realism?
00:18:27
Speaker
Are we going for a cartoon?
00:18:29
Speaker
You just have to really pay attention to what the theme is and what artists you're putting on the project.
00:18:36
Speaker
Well, and speaking of artists, you guys have posted the Looney Tunes artist Brad Duke on your page and kind of gave a look.
00:18:43
Speaker
Can you give a little more story to this?
00:18:44
Speaker
Because it says that he reached out to you guys a long time ago.
00:18:46
Speaker
It's kind of a funny story, really.
00:18:49
Speaker
Yeah, I got an email from this guy I'd never heard of, and his name was Brad Duke.
00:18:55
Speaker
And he opened his email saying, hey, I wanted to introduce myself.
00:18:59
Speaker
My name is Brad.
00:19:01
Speaker
I used to be an artist at Deep Root, which I know is a terrible way to introduce myself.
00:19:05
Speaker
And he was like, please stay.
00:19:07
Speaker
Don't delete this email.
00:19:08
Speaker
Please keep reading.
00:19:09
Speaker
And he goes on to say, yeah, he got hired on at Deep Root.
00:19:13
Speaker
He's like, I've literally done nine full pinball machines at this point, like design concepts and play fields and stuff.
00:19:20
Speaker
in cabinets.
00:19:21
Speaker
And, you know, we hopped on a meeting and he was showing me his artwork.
00:19:24
Speaker
And I was like, this is really good.
00:19:26
Speaker
Like, this is phenomenal.
00:19:27
Speaker
And he was brand new into pinball.
00:19:29
Speaker
But he he reached out to us after Deep Root kind of went their way or however that went.
00:19:34
Speaker
And when the government stepped in, they got arrested.
00:19:39
Speaker
But yeah.
00:19:40
Speaker
He was just like, hey, I know Deep Root wasn't such a great thing to be a part of, but I really am loving pinball.
00:19:46
Speaker
He's like, I've really gotten into this hobby.
00:19:48
Speaker
He's on all the forums.
00:19:49
Speaker
He's checking things out.
00:19:50
Speaker
He's buying games.
00:19:51
Speaker
And he's like, I really want to stay in this industry.
00:19:53
Speaker
I think it's great.
00:19:54
Speaker
Is there any chance I can do anything with you guys?
00:19:57
Speaker
And we just tried him out on a couple of things on Scooby-Doo on screen that we were like, oh, yeah, we could use an extra screen for this thing here.
00:20:04
Speaker
We need some images for that.
00:20:06
Speaker
And he was just right on top of it, turned it around quickly.
00:20:10
Speaker
It was very good quality.
00:20:11
Speaker
He really knew how to make his colors pop.
00:20:13
Speaker
He understood just how you're supposed to make the artwork for pinball.
00:20:17
Speaker
Friendly guy.
00:20:18
Speaker
And we were like, oh, you know.
00:20:20
Speaker
let's just have him try out Looney Tunes.
00:20:23
Speaker
I mean, we were kind of getting ready to start doing some concepts here in the cabinet and everything.
00:20:26
Speaker
We'll throw that his way.
00:20:28
Speaker
You know, we'll just see if he has it.
00:20:29
Speaker
And, you know, if it doesn't work out, then that's fine.
00:20:32
Speaker
You know, at least we gave him a shot or whatever, you know, we can work it out.
00:20:36
Speaker
And the concepts he sent back, first off, he sent them back quickly.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, and that's a big thing too.
00:20:42
Speaker
Which is huge when you're dealing with licensors and major corporations that the turnaround time is quite a while.
00:20:47
Speaker
Approvals are never quick.
00:20:48
Speaker
So having a quick artist is... So having an artist who's ready to jump right on top of what you're asking for is huge.
00:20:54
Speaker
And what he turned around was just so freaking good.
00:20:58
Speaker
He just completely understood everything we were going for.
00:21:01
Speaker
I thought it was final.
00:21:03
Speaker
I thought he was, like, done with it.
00:21:04
Speaker
I looked at it.
00:21:05
Speaker
I was like, this is the playfielder?
00:21:06
Speaker
And I'm like, this is amazing.
00:21:07
Speaker
This is a rough sketch.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:11
Speaker
I mean, obviously we give him direction on like, it's in the Acme factory, these are what the shots are doing.
00:21:16
Speaker
But the lack of direction he still required was just so impressive.
00:21:20
Speaker
He just ran with everything and understood it.
00:21:21
Speaker
So detailed too.
00:21:22
Speaker
So many little things in the play field people are going to get to see too.
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:26
Speaker
And he was, the microscopic details he was putting in all the Acme products.
00:21:29
Speaker
And one of my favorite things that I can't wait to highlight is all over the play field, there's rolls of film reels because a part of the Looney Tunes game is that you're collecting film reels.
00:21:38
Speaker
And in those film reels, he...
Unique Gameplay Mechanics
00:21:40
Speaker
drew his own like sketches and scenes from the show so in every single film reel you can see an iconic moment from you know the the 40 or 30 40 years that we're pulling from from the show on the play field so you can really get in there and just find all these crazy details he included
00:21:56
Speaker
But yeah, that's the Brad Duke story.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, it probably helped a lot too that I mean he did nine concepts and he's rubbing shoulders with some of the most iconic Names and pinball at that point to the you know of the past history So I mean looking at this this play field.
00:22:11
Speaker
It's insanely cool.
00:22:12
Speaker
It feels very
00:22:14
Speaker
like bally williams 90s like it's it's giving me like pat lawler vibes with like whirlwind and like with the squares in the middle and the lightning bolts and and just it just looks really really good especially this i'm not gonna lie like brad does not look old at all like
00:22:32
Speaker
I don't know how old he is.
00:22:34
Speaker
He's probably your age.
00:22:35
Speaker
He's probably like 27.
00:22:37
Speaker
A lot of us are young guys, honestly, in general.
00:22:40
Speaker
They were back then, too, actually, in the 90s.
00:22:44
Speaker
Seriously, they were.
00:22:47
Speaker
Sometimes you get a lot of creative juices.
00:22:51
Speaker
Those guys were young in the heyday of all that stuff.
00:22:53
Speaker
I wish I could share my meme I made.
00:22:58
Speaker
Now I will say that, and you touched on it.
00:23:01
Speaker
I'm actually, and heaven knows I have been hyper critical on many, many aspects of deep root, but I would say they land squarely on the con artist who was running this.
00:23:14
Speaker
It like, there's actually, if you can see a silver lining, there's a lot of things that actually came out of that, including, you know, Steve Bowden going and, and Barry was working for a while.
00:23:25
Speaker
And, and if,
00:23:28
Speaker
if he comes out with, with artists and we know that even going back to Zidware, like Jeremy Packer,
00:23:34
Speaker
So there are, there are things that can, can actually be positive about that, uh, dumpster fire that deeper.
00:23:42
Speaker
And so I'm really glad that he gave that he, that you gave him a chance to say, Hey, that's a good way of looking at it.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:49
Speaker
We're cause we also, the animator on Looney tunes also deep root Brad Duke.
00:23:53
Speaker
We, he's like, Oh, I have this friend, by the way, I worked with him on a handful of things he did.
00:23:57
Speaker
He animated my art a lot.
00:23:59
Speaker
If he could work on Looney tunes with us, you know, we have a good relationship.
00:24:02
Speaker
We could really get it done.
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:03
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:24:04
Speaker
Go for it, man.
00:24:04
Speaker
Like it worked out with you.
00:24:05
Speaker
We're also just not really those kind of guys in general.
00:24:08
Speaker
Like we're not going to throw anyone that comes to us and is like, Hey, I want to work on this.
00:24:11
Speaker
We're not just going to throw people out right away.
00:24:12
Speaker
We're going to hear them out and see their stuff.
00:24:14
Speaker
Like we're always looking to include good people in what we do.
00:24:18
Speaker
So I noticed that you guys have in the past, it's usually been a two tier system, like the blood suckers edition.
00:24:24
Speaker
And I can't remember if it's the standard or the collectors that you guys do, but it looks like you've actually added a third tier this time.
00:24:30
Speaker
So you've got standard.
00:24:32
Speaker
Rick and Morty, we had two tiers.
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:35
Speaker
Ever since then.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, we've been three tiers.
00:24:37
Speaker
We were three tiers on Halloween.
00:24:39
Speaker
It's just you forget about the standard because not many people buy it.
00:24:42
Speaker
It's a small percentage.
00:24:44
Speaker
It's actually the most limited of them all.
00:24:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:46
Speaker
Oh, by far.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:47
Speaker
There's not, there is not very many out there at all.
00:24:50
Speaker
I can see how it really got lost in the weeds with Halloween and ultimate too, just being as there was two games, six total models, which, and we've kicked around, not like just going to one model too, because if you look at it, and I don't know if you guys agree, maybe it's just my opinion or whatever, but I mean, our, our CE price is right in there with like a mid-level price for a lot of the companies.
00:25:08
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:25:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:09
Speaker
Whatever.
00:25:09
Speaker
Your price is quite competitive.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess... We include a hell of a lot.
00:25:14
Speaker
Yeah, we do.
00:25:15
Speaker
I mean, the color... I guess if you really dig into what we include between the powder-coated coin door and the custom rails and all the powder coat to match everything and extra decals and all the custom art and stuff, interior blades, I do think that we're competitive enough
00:25:31
Speaker
with our CE price being at that mid tier price for a lot of people that maybe there would be a world where we drop off the other two models and just have one because it would make it easier to make all of them for everyone.
00:25:42
Speaker
And it would actually probably help the affordability of that model, even if we only had to tool up one version, you know, so.
00:25:49
Speaker
But on the flip side though,
00:25:53
Speaker
this we've talked about this model before with cars.
00:25:56
Speaker
If you're just selling one, one model, a car, you're going to drop out the people who want a higher version of it.
00:26:02
Speaker
And also the people who want a lower version.
00:26:04
Speaker
That's a good point.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:05
Speaker
Then there's not an available, which I guess with us, you do have some availability of high.
00:26:09
Speaker
Cause we do have the direct for an option.
00:26:11
Speaker
Sure.
00:26:12
Speaker
And some other stuff like that.
00:26:13
Speaker
So I guess there is some higher availability, but yeah, that's, I mean, that's why we haven't changed anything, right?
00:26:17
Speaker
It's like, we've, we go back and forth on it.
00:26:19
Speaker
It's like, it's hard to say sometimes, sometimes even we don't know.
00:26:26
Speaker
So I want to go into kind of the difference.
00:26:30
Speaker
You kind of talked about Looney Tunes.
00:26:31
Speaker
You're trying to collect the films.
00:26:34
Speaker
So that's the base gameplay.
00:26:36
Speaker
Like what else are we trying to do inside of Looney Tunes to advance to where we're going?
00:26:40
Speaker
Yeah, so in Looney Tunes, essentially the game's story is that Taz has gone through and he's just completely destroyed the Acme factory.
00:26:50
Speaker
And he's still in the factory.
00:26:51
Speaker
He's causing mayhem all over the place.
00:26:53
Speaker
And so Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, the whole gang, the whole Looney Tunes gang is in there.
00:27:00
Speaker
They're trying to put the factory back together and they're collecting film footage while they're in there because when Taz went through there and destroyed everything, he tossed around all the golden era stuff.
00:27:09
Speaker
film footage everywhere and they're like oh man that's that's the heyday of looney tunes we can't lose this so you're you're essentially a recruit at the acme factory and you're helping them collect the film footage to put it back together so that you can re-watch the episodes you're collecting acme themed items like oh man there's luke peters has so many different yeah they're all stacked at the top of the screen rocket skates and punching gloves and and super glue uh duck bat outfits and like all these crazy things that work as like power-ups in the game
00:27:39
Speaker
And yeah, Marvin the Martian has some special modes in the game as well because he was working on
00:27:46
Speaker
some top secret Martian inventions for Acme that didn't quite hit the market yet.
00:27:50
Speaker
It's a really fun original story.
00:27:52
Speaker
I'm glad we have one in the game.
00:27:54
Speaker
I feel like that might have been the one thing that was missing in Scooby.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah, just an overarching story.
00:27:58
Speaker
But Scooby has its own story.
00:27:59
Speaker
Everyone knows the overarching story of Scooby-Doo, right?
00:28:02
Speaker
You're going to cases, solving histories and whatnot.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:05
Speaker
But Looney Tunes definitely needed something, like a reason that you were going to be a part of all the Golden Era episodes and everything.
00:28:11
Speaker
To tie all the episodes together.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, it needed a reason.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I love the story.
00:28:15
Speaker
that we created for it i think it's really fun and then the cool part the flip side of that coin with texas chainsaw massacre you guys are actually you play as the killers yeah that was that was a really early decision yeah that we we kind of almost knew that right like we're gonna do that we planned on it almost i guess yeah well we definitely knew coming off halloween we needed to make our minds up on if you are for sure the killer or for sure the survivor
00:28:39
Speaker
Because in Halloween it was kind of both.
00:28:42
Speaker
Sometimes depending on what mode you were in.
00:28:44
Speaker
Yeah, very loosely.
00:28:45
Speaker
It definitely could have been a lot more solidified.
00:28:47
Speaker
The thing with Texas Chainsaw is if you're the survivor, how the heck are we going to use the film assets to show you got away when nobody really got away?
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:29:01
Speaker
It's kind of tough to put that one together.
00:29:04
Speaker
I think it's also just a cool concept to be the actual.
00:29:07
Speaker
It's special because, well, you might think, oh, playing as the killer would get boring, but it's not just one killer in the Texas Chainsaw.
00:29:15
Speaker
It's numerous killers.
00:29:16
Speaker
So that really spices it up and makes things very unique in how we can go about each of the different modes when you're the different killers.
00:29:22
Speaker
You're not just choosing one either.
00:29:23
Speaker
You're switching them throughout.
00:29:24
Speaker
gameplay.
00:29:25
Speaker
So every time you hit that and you switch it, if you know what you have almost ready or what modes you have almost ready, you can choose the right character for
Nudity in Pinball Games
00:29:33
Speaker
that mode.
00:29:33
Speaker
To get special perks and bonuses.
00:29:35
Speaker
So you're not just stuck in one character.
00:29:37
Speaker
A lot of games, it's like you start the new character select.
00:29:39
Speaker
Even Scooby, you start the new character select.
00:29:41
Speaker
This is not like that.
00:29:42
Speaker
It's fluid and you can keep using it to your advantage throughout the game.
00:29:45
Speaker
And the family in Texas Chainsaw, they're so different that it's really fun, the things that we can do with the perks between them.
00:29:51
Speaker
Like Leatherface is obviously going to be better at killing people.
00:29:55
Speaker
He's going to get all the kills.
00:29:56
Speaker
But you play as the cook, and when you're in the gas station mode, the items you sell are worth more because he runs the gas station all day.
00:30:04
Speaker
And when you're in the cook's mode, he gets special bonuses for actually like cooking the meat and everything like that.
00:30:11
Speaker
The fact that the family members are all so different makes their perks and items so much more unique and fun.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:18
Speaker
Well, and one of the unique parts about this too is I was watching the gameplay footage and you talked about because the grandpa like drinks blood or whatever, filling up the whole play field, the LEDs become blood and it slowly drains out of the play field.
00:30:32
Speaker
And as you hit shots lower and lower.
00:30:34
Speaker
And as the blood gets lower on the play field, the shots that are above it no longer work.
00:30:40
Speaker
So like it's completely full and you're hitting the ramps up top and you drain it below those ramps.
00:30:44
Speaker
Now you got to focus on your shots that are below because the blood isn't up there anymore.
00:30:48
Speaker
Because if you like, it'd be like if you had a straw and you were above your drink, like, well, that doesn't make sense.
00:30:53
Speaker
Getting the liquid.
00:30:53
Speaker
Yeah, I will say I don't think anybody who buys Texas Chainsaw Massacre wants to play as the survivor.
00:31:02
Speaker
No, no, no.
00:31:04
Speaker
I play the video game.
00:31:05
Speaker
I never play as the survivor.
00:31:07
Speaker
Never.
00:31:10
Speaker
Well, one question I've heard floating around about this, and I'm going to ask to keep this as family friendly as we can, but is this going to have the first topless scene in a pinball machine?
00:31:18
Speaker
No, Halloween does.
00:31:20
Speaker
Halloween actually does.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's crazy.
00:31:23
Speaker
Halloween has nudity, but Texas Chainsaw doesn't.
00:31:25
Speaker
A lot of people don't know it.
00:31:26
Speaker
There is actually a topless scene in Halloween.
00:31:29
Speaker
Like, full on.
00:31:32
Speaker
Keeping it as family friendly as possible.
00:31:34
Speaker
I do think Spooky Pinball deserves some form of award for putting the first topless scene in a
00:31:40
Speaker
a pinball machine on Halloween.
00:31:41
Speaker
I feel like that was worth something.
00:31:43
Speaker
I don't think there's no nudity in Texas Chainsaw.
00:31:45
Speaker
No, there's not.
00:31:45
Speaker
There's none.
00:31:47
Speaker
But then there's also, look at Rob Zombie in the extra ball scene too as well.
00:31:50
Speaker
I mean, that's classic.
00:31:52
Speaker
That was pre-LCD.
00:31:54
Speaker
We were the first to do dots and LCD.
00:31:58
Speaker
We're on top of it.
00:32:01
Speaker
We stay on top of what matters.
00:32:06
Speaker
Sure, it took us a while to get extra ball on Halloween, but we had the boobs.
00:32:12
Speaker
Okay, so let's talk about
00:32:15
Speaker
the different versions that you're offering.
00:32:16
Speaker
Now we did, we talked briefly about them.
00:32:18
Speaker
So I'm your customer.
00:32:20
Speaker
Sell me on why I should get each version.
00:32:25
Speaker
Like two C's version.
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:28
Speaker
Sure.
00:32:29
Speaker
Tell us what, like what, if, if I'm like the bargain shopper, you're like, okay, so these are, this is the important stuff
Game Versions and Collector's Edition Value
00:32:35
Speaker
you're getting.
00:32:35
Speaker
This stuff is really pretty, but you get the gameplay on this.
00:32:38
Speaker
However, if you want the prettiest thing for your game room, this is why you need it because it has this, this, this.
00:32:45
Speaker
So one of the biggest things, I guess, is our standard is still a really decent deal in pinball.
00:32:50
Speaker
As far as having full gameplay, we're not taking out a whole upper play field.
00:32:54
Speaker
We're not taking out a whole mechanical feature in the game as far as one that actually affects gameplay.
00:33:00
Speaker
We might take out a sculpt that moves around a little bit, things like that, but we want to make sure that they're playing the whole same game.
00:33:09
Speaker
So having that, I think, is a big selling point on the standard.
00:33:13
Speaker
I think, I guess, I'll probably hop right up to the CE.
00:33:15
Speaker
I mean, we could go over that all day, just the amount of things.
00:33:17
Speaker
I mean, still having a physical knocker, shaker, a real back glass, a topper included, your lighted speaker grills.
00:33:25
Speaker
We now have custom art over top of the speaker grills.
00:33:27
Speaker
Your interior graphics, your powder-coated side rails.
00:33:31
Speaker
And we even do lighted buttons.
00:33:32
Speaker
Nobody else is doing lighted buttons.
00:33:34
Speaker
Full RGB, by the way.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah, they're full RGB.
00:33:35
Speaker
They have light shows that go with them.
00:33:37
Speaker
It's the same driver.
00:33:39
Speaker
And you have two buttons on the right side, I noticed.
00:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:33:43
Speaker
And that that second button on the right side is actually used in like Looney Tunes for selecting some of those Acme items that we were talking about earlier.
00:33:49
Speaker
It's got a cool Mario Kart.
00:33:50
Speaker
Yeah, I would rather have two buttons on one side than one on the lockdown bar.
00:33:55
Speaker
Like, especially if you're using it in a game.
00:33:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:59
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:59
Speaker
Interesting.
00:34:00
Speaker
Well, we did both.
00:34:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm looking at it and I see both, but it's I know there's a little bit of a skill of hitting the, you know, the lockdown button while you're trying to control the balls.
00:34:11
Speaker
But yeah.
00:34:12
Speaker
Yeah, but then I think, you know, you take all that and I really do believe and like I've said it before, I think our CE is the best deal in pinball.
00:34:19
Speaker
I really do.
00:34:20
Speaker
We load that thing up.
00:34:21
Speaker
But then the bloodsucker is just kind of a nice mix between those two reasons that I just noted.
00:34:25
Speaker
It's kind of the perfect middle ground and everything.
00:34:27
Speaker
So we do have a, I mean, we have good reasons to keep the system that we have.
00:34:31
Speaker
I mean,
00:34:33
Speaker
keeping it somewhat vague but like if you were to buy any other company's mid-tier option which is about the price of our ce to get it to the state of where our ce is you're going to be spending a lot of money to the point where you almost are just buying one of you're gonna put a couple thousand dollars yeah so i mean our ce like it's always funny when our ce's come out because the mod guys go dang
00:34:58
Speaker
What are we going to do?
00:35:02
Speaker
We do the smallest things too.
00:35:03
Speaker
Even the start button and the launch button are always customized.
00:35:06
Speaker
They have little custom art on them.
00:35:08
Speaker
Small stuff like that.
00:35:10
Speaker
I think it really does.
00:35:11
Speaker
That's part of the reason when you're saying when you step back and look at the game, they do look so beautiful.
00:35:15
Speaker
I think that's part of it.
00:35:17
Speaker
We do every little detail throughout the game.
00:35:19
Speaker
Everything somebody would do to mod out their game, we already have it done for you.
00:35:23
Speaker
At the price that other companies sell a mid-tier edition for.
00:35:27
Speaker
Well, even even like your wire forms there on, you know, they're they're powder coated.
00:35:32
Speaker
I don't see it's a two part process, actually, too.
00:35:34
Speaker
So they're laying down that color first and then they do a clear coat over top of it.
00:35:38
Speaker
A totally separate layer.
00:35:39
Speaker
Clear coated ramp thing to rest here.
00:35:43
Speaker
Oh, the where?
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, I heard a lot of people bringing that up.
00:35:47
Speaker
So yeah, it's a great question.
00:35:50
Speaker
It's a good question.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah, totally valid.
00:35:53
Speaker
There's two good reasons for that.
00:35:55
Speaker
You know, I guess three things I'd like to touch on with that is number one is like, we do want to make sure everything in the game just pops.
00:36:02
Speaker
We want it to be perfect.
00:36:03
Speaker
And that's why we do powder coat all the ramps and the rails and everything like that.
00:36:08
Speaker
With that said, too, we had that in Scooby.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, Scooby, both ramps.
00:36:15
Speaker
The ramps and Habitrails in Scooby are powder-coated.
00:36:17
Speaker
So far, we're not having issues.
00:36:20
Speaker
I don't think we've ever sent a single ramp out for the powder coat chipped because of the ball hitting it.
00:36:26
Speaker
I don't think it's ever happened once on...
00:36:29
Speaker
Over the thousand Scooby-Doo's.
00:36:30
Speaker
I'm also not going to sit on here and say just because, you know, because we test our games and they've obviously been powder coated for almost two years now and everything with our prototypes and we've had no issues, but things do happen.
00:36:42
Speaker
Maybe it could happen.
00:36:43
Speaker
I don't think that it's likely, but the best part about us is if it does, if someone says,
00:36:49
Speaker
you know, Hey Luke, my, my left upper ramp ship or chipped or whatever, you know, we're going to send them the new left upper ramp.
00:36:56
Speaker
You know, we're going to drop it in the mail.
00:36:58
Speaker
We're not going to charge them, you know, stuff like that.
00:37:00
Speaker
We don't have a problem.
00:37:02
Speaker
Part of, again, part of when people spend money with us is we're, we're planning on taking care of them.
00:37:07
Speaker
If something like that comes up, you know?
00:37:10
Speaker
So, and then even farther with that,
00:37:13
Speaker
Just in case, when I was doing a lot of the engineering for the stuff, so if you look at Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw, the optos are actually attached to the habit trails.
00:37:23
Speaker
So all you have to do to pop those ramps out and put them back in is just a couple of screws.
00:37:27
Speaker
Two screws.
00:37:28
Speaker
So, I mean, you can leave your habit trail wired right in place.
00:37:31
Speaker
And you pop your two screws out of your ramp, take your ramp out, slide your new one in, pop your two screws back in the same holes, and you got a new ramp in the game.
00:37:39
Speaker
You don't have to remove anything else.
00:37:41
Speaker
There's nothing on top.
00:37:42
Speaker
In your way, in the first place, you're very, very, very likely not going to have to replace this ramp anyway.
00:37:49
Speaker
And even if you do one, it's free until we made it as easy as possible to do.
00:37:55
Speaker
We do put a lot of thought into that stuff just in case and even cover, try to cover ourselves the best we can.
00:38:01
Speaker
when we don't even think there's going to be an issue.
00:38:03
Speaker
You know, we're still, we haven't had, I mean, our play fields have been rock solid for years and years and years.
00:38:08
Speaker
And we still take, I guess, so many precautions every time we're designing a game that we're trying to avoid play field damage in any way that we can.
00:38:18
Speaker
I mean, there was things on Scooby that we learned that we're not going to share.
00:38:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:38:22
Speaker
But there's like little secrets we learned on Scooby that we were like, oh, we should do that in the next one.
00:38:27
Speaker
That would make it even safer.
00:38:28
Speaker
And it's been flawless.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:38:30
Speaker
Wonderful.
Voice Acting and Thematic Immersion
00:38:32
Speaker
Let's talk about voice actors and the call outs because, okay, one, the question is who's going to do the call outs for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and who wrote the script.
00:38:43
Speaker
And also with Looney Tunes, everybody knows Mel Blank did all the iconic voices.
00:38:49
Speaker
So obviously Mel's not around anymore.
00:38:52
Speaker
How are you going to find someone who's able to replicate that for the call outs?
00:38:58
Speaker
Yeah, so Looney Tunes.
00:38:59
Speaker
We went and we hired Eric Bauza, who you can ask around.
00:39:05
Speaker
He is the Looney Tunes voice actor.
00:39:07
Speaker
It's not like we went and hired him either.
00:39:10
Speaker
That is Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes voice actor now.
00:39:13
Speaker
This is who they're using.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, Warner Brothers gives you a list like they did on Scooby.
00:39:17
Speaker
They gave us a list.
00:39:18
Speaker
Here are the approved Scooby-Doo voice actors if you want to go get one.
00:39:22
Speaker
And we chose from that list.
00:39:23
Speaker
Same thing here.
00:39:24
Speaker
They gave us a list.
00:39:25
Speaker
We saw Eric Bauza and we went and we got ourselves Eric Bauza.
00:39:29
Speaker
And I mean, he is the official Looney Tunes voice actor.
00:39:33
Speaker
He does all like all their movies and TV shows.
00:39:36
Speaker
He's all over the place with everything he does with them.
00:39:40
Speaker
And yeah, he's absolutely incredible.
00:39:42
Speaker
And when I was talking about him,
00:39:44
Speaker
He brought up Mel Blanc constantly about here are the specific things you have to do to channel your inner Mel Blanc when you're voicing these characters that other Looney Tunes voice actors haven't done previously.
00:39:55
Speaker
And here's why this is going to sound better.
00:39:59
Speaker
when he's doing those specific voices.
00:40:00
Speaker
And it does.
00:40:01
Speaker
It sounds amazing.
00:40:02
Speaker
He sounds absolutely phenomenal.
00:40:04
Speaker
He did some of our best call-outs of all time from a standpoint of bringing the energy.
00:40:10
Speaker
Because you think back to the Medieval Madness days and the Addams Family days, how good call-outs were.
00:40:16
Speaker
Medieval Madness, you get extra ball, and that wizard dude is just bellering about it.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I told Eric Bows, I was like, dude, do not hold back.
00:40:25
Speaker
When you say super jackpot, like...
00:40:27
Speaker
I know exactly the particular series of call-outs.
00:40:30
Speaker
I know that Looney Tunes does some yelling.
00:40:33
Speaker
What he let fly each time is so... I was laughing my tail off when we were recording.
00:40:38
Speaker
I was just like, oh my god, this is going to be so good.
00:40:42
Speaker
Even when Don was playing, he was just giggling to himself the entire time.
00:40:46
Speaker
It's so much fun.
00:40:47
Speaker
Phenomenal, phenomenal voice actor.
00:40:52
Speaker
I think you'll really be hard-pressed to find a person who can
00:40:55
Speaker
play that game and not be smiling when he hears those call outs.
00:40:59
Speaker
I really think you'd be hard breast to find that.
00:41:02
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:41:04
Speaker
Because he's Canadian.
00:41:05
Speaker
Does he finish every call out with a, not, not any of them that I've heard.
00:41:11
Speaker
No, don't you know?
00:41:15
Speaker
So back to Scott's question though.
00:41:17
Speaker
So are you using movie clips for Texas chainsaw massacre?
00:41:20
Speaker
Or did you get a voice actor for that?
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:41:23
Speaker
So Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we have access to the original audio as well.
00:41:27
Speaker
So we're pulling the audio from all the actors who were the, I guess you'd say survivors.
00:41:32
Speaker
They weren't.
00:41:34
Speaker
The survivors in that movie.
00:41:37
Speaker
The remnants of the movie?
00:41:38
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:41:39
Speaker
And then we also got...
00:41:41
Speaker
Edwin Neal, who played the original hitchhiker in the movie.
00:41:45
Speaker
He just did the Texas Chainsaw Massacre video game, which obviously got a major release like across the whole world.
00:41:52
Speaker
His call outs are and he sounded
00:41:55
Speaker
freaking great in the video game.
00:41:57
Speaker
So we got him on board for the project for the pinball machine.
00:42:00
Speaker
And yeah, he recreated some of his original lines from the movie just because it's fun to have him do that.
00:42:05
Speaker
We still have the audio from the original movie.
00:42:07
Speaker
He also did a ton of call outs just saying very bizarre, creepy, crazy things that Ben and I wrote for him.
00:42:15
Speaker
I was just in the office today while he was playing the game, and I was just laughing to myself here and overhearing some of the stuff that I hadn't heard.
00:42:21
Speaker
There is sometimes.
00:42:22
Speaker
Because, like, the thing is with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, like, it's secretly kind of a funny movie.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:28
Speaker
Like, there's moments in the movie that are, like, just really, really dark humor.
00:42:32
Speaker
I think that's why I meet up with Looney Tunes as well, though.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:42:36
Speaker
And I wanted to make sure that the game still had those moments where you're just like, jeez.
00:42:40
Speaker
I know.
00:42:41
Speaker
It's messed up, but you're giggling about it.
00:42:44
Speaker
And there's some callouts in the game that you're just like, God, I'm playing this.
00:42:51
Speaker
So he did a really, really wonderful job with that.
00:42:53
Speaker
And then beyond that, we still wanted to have more voices in the game.
00:42:58
Speaker
I mean, it's always good to have more than one character.
00:43:00
Speaker
And we figured that as far as giving you direction on what you should be doing,
00:43:07
Speaker
the movie opens up with a booming narrative voice.
00:43:11
Speaker
So we had Scott Innes, who is famous for obviously Scooby-Doo.
00:43:15
Speaker
I mean, he voices Shaggy, Scooby.
00:43:17
Speaker
He voices all the monsters.
00:43:19
Speaker
Just an insanely talented voice actor.
00:43:21
Speaker
So he recreated that original opening narrative dialogue and we use it all over the game for like direction and what you'll be doing.
00:43:29
Speaker
And Ben wrote all sorts of really
00:43:32
Speaker
Just like fun, creative, descriptive intros that sound like you're reading a horror comic book almost when you're entering in these modes.
00:43:41
Speaker
So between the two of them, the call outs are really great in the game.
00:43:45
Speaker
And then, yeah, we have the original movie to pair with it.
00:43:47
Speaker
It's just another area that we've been really fortunate.
00:43:49
Speaker
We have worked with some really, really top quality voice guys.
00:43:52
Speaker
They're professionals.
00:43:53
Speaker
These are good, good guys.
00:43:55
Speaker
And with that narrative voice too, we also applied effects to it and everything so it sounds like it's coming from the original movie.
00:44:01
Speaker
Because an important thing with the games is your sound has to match the whole way through.
00:44:06
Speaker
Otherwise, it can be pretty jarring or weird sounding.
00:44:09
Speaker
So we made sure the sound matches all the way through.
00:44:13
Speaker
Well, one thing I got to applaud you guys on too is you like immerse the game into the universe of what you're doing too.
Thematic Integration in Games
00:44:21
Speaker
I know it's even like in the description of the movie or when you were doing the video on these on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it's, it's, you're still having to say ramp and stuff.
00:44:31
Speaker
Like it's hard to get around.
00:44:32
Speaker
Like, I know a lot of people complain, like you need to name it something and then call it by that name.
00:44:36
Speaker
It's like,
00:44:37
Speaker
It's kind of hard though to do that.
00:44:40
Speaker
But I noticed that you guys are, you take that world and you splash it into the pinball machine and you refer to some of that stuff.
00:44:47
Speaker
Not necessarily as the ramp and stuff like that, but like even on Looney Tunes, like in this front left, I'm assuming this is the anvil ramp because it's the only one that has anvils that lead up to it.
00:44:55
Speaker
So is that something you guys consciously think of when you're going into these games?
00:44:59
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:45:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:45:01
Speaker
I mean, one of my favorite things...
00:45:03
Speaker
about pinball, right?
00:45:05
Speaker
Is like pinball is still a very niche hobby, technically.
00:45:08
Speaker
Like, like we are in a pretty small community here and we get really excited about seeing our favorite thing come to our pinball world.
00:45:18
Speaker
Like we want to hear our favorite shows, movies, bands acknowledge that pinball exists.
00:45:24
Speaker
And even better, if they're in a pinball machine, like we want them to be acknowledging us.
00:45:29
Speaker
So I've always really loved incorporating that into our scripts.
00:45:33
Speaker
When the Looney Tunes characters know that they're in a pinball machine.
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:45:38
Speaker
But then of course, like, yeah, it's still as better to have as much theme integration as possible as for like what your shots are, like shooting the door, the Texas Chainsaw door.
00:45:48
Speaker
Like everybody's gonna know what that is.
00:45:50
Speaker
So yeah.
00:45:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:51
Speaker
Well, that is actually very smart.
00:45:54
Speaker
And by the way, I do have to bring this up because it is hilarious.
00:45:57
Speaker
I have both Scooby-Doo and, sorry, I have both Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes kind of on a loop so I can just get a visual for the game.
00:46:07
Speaker
And the ad that popped up into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre video is this giant machete hatchet for cutting up meat.
00:46:22
Speaker
so i i took some pictures i'll have to send it to you but i'm just like i'm like well that's ironically cross-promotional that just in case you want to open your own texas chainsaw franchise um these are the knives that you should use yeah that's funny that they're chopping meat too because we literally have a mode in the game that is about it's it's so great i didn't get to show it in the video yet there's still so many modes that
00:46:45
Speaker
Yeah, that was the hard part.
00:46:46
Speaker
It was such a brief video.
00:46:48
Speaker
I know.
00:46:48
Speaker
There was seriously seven other modes that I was like, oh, those ones would have been great.
00:46:52
Speaker
You'll get to all of them, though.
00:46:53
Speaker
Yeah, but there's a mode in the game where essentially you slap a slab of meat on the playfield and the shots are lit as such.
00:47:01
Speaker
And as you shoot them, it's as if you're cutting it.
00:47:04
Speaker
So you shoot a shot, and then that section would slide off.
00:47:07
Speaker
And then you shoot a shot, and that section, everything past it slides off.
00:47:11
Speaker
So it's literally like you're cutting up meat on the playfield.
00:47:15
Speaker
Nice.
00:47:16
Speaker
I love that concept.
00:47:17
Speaker
That's cool.
00:47:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:18
Speaker
Ben is a really detail oriented programmer.
00:47:21
Speaker
So we're being able to work with him and have him actually implement those things that are that small and nuanced and everything.
00:47:27
Speaker
It's cool.
00:47:28
Speaker
I've had the most fun working on pinball code that I've ever had working with Ben on this game.
00:47:34
Speaker
because he's just as ridiculous as me.
00:47:37
Speaker
We can sit in a room and go, can we get the meat to literally slide off?
00:47:42
Speaker
And put a sound effect with it as if the shots are meat.
00:47:46
Speaker
He's on the same wavelength as us for things like that.
00:47:50
Speaker
So I had an absolute blast working with him on the game.
00:47:54
Speaker
No, that's awesome.
00:47:54
Speaker
And actually, that is a very smart move to have almost like...
00:48:01
Speaker
almost like the Muppet show in Looney Tunes, where you see behind the scenes of them putting the show on, if you go with me.
00:48:09
Speaker
And so having them behind the scenes of being part of the factory saying, hey, we're part of the production, that's a very smart, savvy move.
00:48:18
Speaker
Also having for Texas Chainsaw, having like a, yes, you're in the movie and this is what's going on.
00:48:26
Speaker
It's, it's not over the top creepy because there is a level of camp that you're like, this is so ridiculous that there's no, like this is, yeah, it's, it seems almost like, yes, it's a giggle fest because it's just so
Thematic Risks and Market Positioning
00:48:41
Speaker
ridiculous.
00:48:41
Speaker
What's going on?
00:48:43
Speaker
There's again, to bring back like acknowledge having your favorite characters acknowledge pinball.
00:48:48
Speaker
There were so many call outs that if you pulled it from another game, but have the hitchhiker say it, it gets exponentially creepier.
00:48:56
Speaker
So one of my favorites is if for extra ball, I had the hitchhiker say, keep the ball.
00:49:01
Speaker
I have a bucket full family.
00:49:04
Speaker
The hitchhiker says he has a bucket full.
00:49:06
Speaker
It's a little gross.
00:49:07
Speaker
That's funny.
00:49:13
Speaker
Well, you guys have kind of cultivated this relationship with Warner Brothers and kind of the cartoon network side of things.
00:49:21
Speaker
It makes me wonder, too, because Adult Swim has brought in some really cool titles like Cowboy Bebop, and I know Scott's always talking about Venture Brothers.
00:49:31
Speaker
Venture Brothers.
00:49:34
Speaker
Are these titles that you guys would consider doing down the road or something like that?
00:49:38
Speaker
We want to do all of the titles.
00:49:40
Speaker
We're actually...
00:49:42
Speaker
I actually have to kind of pull him back in because he's like, we need to get this one and this one and this one and this one because people are going to love it.
00:49:50
Speaker
It's like you don't want anyone else to be able to do it.
00:49:52
Speaker
You just want to do them all yourself and everything.
00:49:54
Speaker
I will go sign way too many titles.
00:49:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:56
Speaker
But we can only get some titles.
00:49:58
Speaker
Nobody keeps an eye on me.
00:50:00
Speaker
I just keep talking and like you just end up falling into these things and you're like, Oh, this is so cool.
00:50:06
Speaker
We can't put a hold on this.
00:50:07
Speaker
We got to go get that.
00:50:08
Speaker
No, honestly, dude, no one's going to hold onto a contract for 15 years.
00:50:12
Speaker
You got to slow down.
00:50:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:14
Speaker
That's really why Luke got hired, right?
00:50:16
Speaker
Like you're, you're like the parent with their kid on the leash at the licensing convention.
00:50:21
Speaker
It's weird because like I, I, you know, it's funny that you say that because I get carried away on all of the opposite things that he does.
00:50:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:30
Speaker
So we kind of perfectly keep each other in check in that way.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:33
Speaker
Because everything he gets carried away on just happens to be stuff that I do not at all.
00:50:38
Speaker
And everything that I do, he does not at all.
00:50:41
Speaker
So yeah.
00:50:41
Speaker
It actually works out perfectly.
00:50:43
Speaker
It really does.
00:50:43
Speaker
You know, people ask sometimes it's like, how do you guys design games together and everything?
00:50:48
Speaker
We just, everything that we want in the game are such separate things that work well together that it just, it works out.
00:50:54
Speaker
So we both have a general trust of what the other person's, you know, ideas and opinions are on certain matters.
00:51:04
Speaker
Like there's just certain things that I really trust Luke on making the right call.
00:51:07
Speaker
And there's certain things he trusts me on making the right call.
00:51:10
Speaker
So it's really been a,
00:51:12
Speaker
a wonderful yeah like when he's talking about the overarching theme of looney tunes it's like that is not not my not my there's definitely things that each of us can help the other as far as getting it integrated in the game you know but when he asked me you know is this shot possible or can we do it at that price then that's a different
00:51:32
Speaker
different thing.
00:51:32
Speaker
But we do try to keep a really good idea of what themes people want from us.
00:51:37
Speaker
Like we're always, I guess you guys probably see we're active on all the social media sites.
00:51:42
Speaker
We try to listen to the shows and everything.
00:51:44
Speaker
We try to keep in, I guess, as close an eye on the heartbeat of that stuff as possible.
00:51:50
Speaker
So that's the main way, I guess, we choose our theme.
00:51:52
Speaker
So if people want themes from us, you don't yell it at the top of the
00:51:57
Speaker
rooftop, I guess, you know, put it everywhere you can because we'll pick up on it and we'll, we'll make it happen.
00:52:01
Speaker
All right.
00:52:02
Speaker
I've told you a venture brothers that writes itself.
00:52:04
Speaker
Yep.
00:52:05
Speaker
I'll, I'll put one on my checklist.
00:52:06
Speaker
I'll put one, you can even double thing.
00:52:08
Speaker
You can do venture brothers and Johnny quest because it's the same show.
00:52:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:16
Speaker
I got to look up Scott Pilgrim.
00:52:18
Speaker
Let's see.
00:52:19
Speaker
Who's that?
00:52:20
Speaker
Scott Pilgrim.
00:52:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:22
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:23
Speaker
One thing I do want to talk about though is, okay, pinball is a business and you have talked about this, that, okay.
00:52:31
Speaker
So you're splurging on making sure you have every single bling on there.
00:52:35
Speaker
You're also splurging on licenses because you want to make sure people feel like they're fulfilled.
00:52:40
Speaker
You're making sure visually it's really cool.
00:52:44
Speaker
okay, how can you still do that and keep your build down?
00:52:48
Speaker
Because people still, yeah, eventually, okay.
00:52:52
Speaker
But at some point you're going to say, okay, we need to be a little more economical on this.
00:52:56
Speaker
And it's now, now I, I, I'm going to,
00:52:59
Speaker
I'm going to point out you are manufacturing in a place that is less expensive than Chicago.
00:53:06
Speaker
So I, I guarantee your overhead is significantly cheaper than it is at the Chicago manufacturers.
00:53:13
Speaker
So I mean, I can rant about this.
00:53:17
Speaker
I do have, you guys got two more hours.
00:53:19
Speaker
Cause I know this is where you'll get me to just drone on and on and on and on.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:23
Speaker
We have some strong opinions here.
00:53:25
Speaker
But even with what you said, like with manufacturing being cheaper here, our labor cost has legitimately doubled since probably what, 2016?
00:53:36
Speaker
I mean, you guys know as well as we do with the economy, that stuff has skyrocketed.
00:53:40
Speaker
But something I guess, I think a lot of people know now, but not everyone is how much of our own work we've set up to be able to control, which is
00:53:49
Speaker
It kind of goes back to the COVID thing where people were asking me, how are you guys making machines when other people aren't?
00:53:54
Speaker
It's like, well, we're making our own metal parts.
00:53:56
Speaker
We're doing all these things in-house.
00:53:58
Speaker
We're printing and we're printing our own decals.
00:54:01
Speaker
We don't have a landlord.
00:54:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:54:04
Speaker
All those interior graphics, everything, we're making a lot of that stuff all ourselves, which helps us be able to pass on that.
00:54:13
Speaker
I guess those savings to the customer.
00:54:14
Speaker
And that's why we're able to do that CE level machine at the, you know, premium type price.
00:54:21
Speaker
I don't know if you guys can really talk to this or not.
00:54:23
Speaker
Uh, I know that you, in the past, you've shared how the, out of the gate things have went, how are the, out of the gate going with a Texas chainsaw massacre and Louis toons?
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:32
Speaker
So this is a lot of fun right now, actually, because everybody is like, you know, with today's market and everything, it's everyone saying, you know, we don't want to rush in and that, right?
00:54:42
Speaker
So it's going to be really, everyone's like sitting on the edge of their seats, like, did it work?
00:54:46
Speaker
Are they, how many, what am I doing?
00:54:49
Speaker
How many did they sell?
00:54:50
Speaker
Nobody knows or anything.
00:54:51
Speaker
So.
00:54:52
Speaker
No, we're honestly still tallying numbers, everything.
00:54:55
Speaker
So we won't know for sure for probably another weekend.
00:54:57
Speaker
Morgan's still working on the game numbers and everything.
00:54:59
Speaker
We ask for every morning what game numbers are.
00:55:01
Speaker
We're still going to work
Production Logistics and Efficiency
00:55:04
Speaker
down.
00:55:04
Speaker
We have more distributors now than we ever did before.
00:55:07
Speaker
So, you know, getting that figured out between them and everything.
00:55:09
Speaker
Here's what I will say.
00:55:11
Speaker
today, Looney Tunes just so ever so slightly pulled out.
00:55:17
Speaker
I will say, Looney Tunes would be a better fit in my house.
00:55:22
Speaker
I think that's why it just so slightly took a day.
00:55:26
Speaker
I do love, though, it's like movies.
00:55:28
Speaker
I love that there are movies for
00:55:31
Speaker
all types.
00:55:32
Speaker
And I'm really glad that you guys are not just sticking with all the mainstream stuff.
00:55:36
Speaker
You are exploring areas that other, that maybe companies are selling a higher, you know, higher volume, higher overhead.
00:55:43
Speaker
They can't touch because it's just, I'm still shocked that the, the closest horror theme that a major company, you know, I would say a high volume.
00:55:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:55:53
Speaker
I, I hope that doesn't sound bad, but like a high volume manufacturer would be like the walking dead by Stern.
00:55:59
Speaker
which still kind of surprised me that they made it to be, to be frank.
00:56:03
Speaker
It just so happened to be the biggest show on the freaking planet.
00:56:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:56:08
Speaker
Sure.
00:56:08
Speaker
But you look at the play field and you're like, wow, that is, there's a lot of blood on there.
00:56:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:15
Speaker
You know, what's crazy.
00:56:15
Speaker
Uh,
00:56:17
Speaker
We've been getting so many comparisons to Walking Dead on TCM.
00:56:20
Speaker
Visually, yes.
00:56:22
Speaker
No, we didn't.
00:56:23
Speaker
We never once compared or contrasted to Walking Dead.
00:56:26
Speaker
And the first person that said it, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense.
00:56:29
Speaker
One game we haven't run into a lot either, honestly.
00:56:32
Speaker
No, I honestly have extremely limited experience with Walking Dead as a whole.
00:56:37
Speaker
yeah i let's be honest though walking yeah i would say walking dead though you take the the title card off of it and it's just a zombie game so sure yeah yeah yeah anyhow no i was saying visually though it's like lots of red lots of blood splatter i that that kind of stuff which really isn't specific to that and that's that's really the the horror genre you could probably put that on everything so
00:57:00
Speaker
I'm really glad that you guys are willing to take the risks and make things for the themes that are less mainstream.
00:57:09
Speaker
I guess I'll put it that way.
00:57:10
Speaker
And put nudity into pinball machines.
00:57:13
Speaker
Come out, support us and everything because we're going to do that stuff.
00:57:17
Speaker
We're going to do stuff that other people aren't going to ever release for you.
00:57:20
Speaker
If people come out and keep supporting us and everything, we're going to keep coming out with the games that they may have never gotten.
00:57:26
Speaker
So if someone wants to buy your game, what are the options that they can order it?
00:57:32
Speaker
So yeah, basically the best thing to do is just go to our website, just spookypinball.com.
00:57:37
Speaker
From there, you're going to be able to see, we have all of our authorized distributors on there.
00:57:42
Speaker
So you can go that direction.
00:57:43
Speaker
Otherwise you can order it right on our website as well, direct.
00:57:46
Speaker
So you just go to shop and then you scroll down and you can buy yourself a Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a Looney Tunes.
00:57:52
Speaker
You can even buy yourself a Scooby.
00:57:53
Speaker
Yeah, I see.
00:57:53
Speaker
You can still buy a Scooby.
00:57:54
Speaker
You can do all three.
00:57:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:56
Speaker
We'll cut you a special bundle pack.
00:57:59
Speaker
A triple, the triple pack.
00:58:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:01
Speaker
Yeah, we haven't made anything like that yet.
00:58:05
Speaker
Just use discount code Loserkid and you'll get your triple pack.
00:58:11
Speaker
Is there anything else?
00:58:13
Speaker
We're running out of time.
00:58:15
Speaker
Is there anything else you guys want to cover before we close this up?
00:58:18
Speaker
No, I think we hit all the... Yeah, we've been rambling for weeks here, so I think everyone's... We just wanted to come on here and, I guess, answer your guys' questions and everything.
00:58:27
Speaker
I mean, just to really send it home once again, though, I mean, the CE model, like we said, we really do put absolutely everything we can into those games, whether that's the custom armor and the powder coating,
00:58:40
Speaker
and then the mechanisms and the sculpts and everything but beyond that the the assets from these franchises and licenses and everything whether that's
00:58:48
Speaker
you know, the likeness rights, or we go get the original call outs, or we hire the professional actors who literally make their new movies, whatever it may be, the music, everything.
00:59:00
Speaker
I, for, we for sure think that our CE is hands down the best deal.
00:59:05
Speaker
I think the reason we keep rambling about that is we, we have been like, both of us have just been so excited because this feels like to us, I guess the one where it kind of all came together.
00:59:14
Speaker
Like we think that this layout is really top shelf.
00:59:16
Speaker
Like,
00:59:17
Speaker
a lot of people who've been, I guess, 50-50.
00:59:19
Speaker
I like spookies layouts.
00:59:21
Speaker
I hate spookies layouts, whatever.
00:59:22
Speaker
We're always pretty controversial in that regard.
00:59:24
Speaker
I think this is the layout that is going to kind of bring everyone together.
00:59:27
Speaker
And then with having...
00:59:29
Speaker
all of the movie assets because going into Halloween, that was a big thing too.
00:59:32
Speaker
We had the movie assets, but it was, you know, a specific set amount of clips and then it ended up being, I mean, it did end up being like well over 30, almost 40 video clips.
00:59:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:41
Speaker
But being able to just go into Texas Chainsaw Massacre with just this load of just a whole, we can use a whole movie, everything.
00:59:48
Speaker
There's just no, I mean, completely like leash off.
00:59:51
Speaker
So, and then obviously Looney Tunes with having all the episodes that we have and everything, it's just as loaded as Scooby-Doo.
00:59:58
Speaker
So I think just seeing all of that finally come together, layout, and then Eric Prefke, obviously great programmer, known for Rick and Morty on Looney Tunes, and then Ben Heck just completely blew us away on TCM.
01:00:10
Speaker
With his ability, yeah.
01:00:12
Speaker
We've talked about that before.
01:00:13
Speaker
We weren't sure if Ben was going to be able to come back into the current pinball.
01:00:18
Speaker
level of code that's needed.
01:00:20
Speaker
And he showed up when we were when we were bringing him on.
01:00:22
Speaker
We're like, Ben, you do understand this isn't AMH.
01:00:25
Speaker
Like there's a new level of, I guess, integration.
01:00:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:29
Speaker
And he just literally frickin blew everyone away, like blew everyone out of the water.
01:00:33
Speaker
We're like, all right, you win.
01:00:35
Speaker
You know, so yeah, we got to say overall, like,
01:00:38
Speaker
There's obviously so many behind the scenes things that we never talk or share.
01:00:42
Speaker
This was our best launch.
01:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, it really was.
01:00:46
Speaker
It was a really nice time for us.
01:00:49
Speaker
This, I will say, this layout, just for me not playing it yet, this looks like your best layout.
01:00:58
Speaker
It looks like your best layout.
01:00:59
Speaker
It looks like things are coming together.
01:01:01
Speaker
And I'm actually going to do one more plug for you in that
01:01:05
Speaker
For the spooky, I love that if you want all the bells and whistles, you can get them.
01:01:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:12
Speaker
Like, it's not like there's this, hey, we're only making 200 of the best option.
01:01:16
Speaker
We're only making 300 of the best option.
01:01:17
Speaker
You're like, hey, this is how many we're doing and how the orders come in depend on what we're going to make.
01:01:24
Speaker
And so if there's more like a...
01:01:27
Speaker
The collector's edition, that's probably the most common one because people want all the bells and whistles.
01:01:31
Speaker
It's not even close.
01:01:33
Speaker
Over 90%.
01:01:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:34
Speaker
And so I like that because there's one thing that I'm frustrated when they have like, okay, if you really want all the bells and whistles, then you have to pay this kind of ridiculous FOMO premium.
01:01:47
Speaker
And we don't really have options that you could level up your own game.
01:01:50
Speaker
So you have to go after market.
01:01:52
Speaker
So I like that that's an option for you.
01:01:55
Speaker
I'm really excited.
01:01:55
Speaker
I'm really excited to flip this because it looks like a lot of fun.
01:01:58
Speaker
And both of them really do look distinct and they look like they're complete packages.
01:02:04
Speaker
And I love, I, it looks, it looks like a lot of fun.
01:02:08
Speaker
That's the largest feedback we've probably gotten is just how different they feel.
01:02:12
Speaker
Even when you're playing them side by side, I think Don said it recently.
01:02:15
Speaker
He was like, if you put these in two different parts of the arcade, most people probably wouldn't notice that it's the same layout.
01:02:22
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:02:24
Speaker
I got two questions left for you.
01:02:26
Speaker
The first question is, when's the first time we can, what show is this going to be the first time we can play these at?
01:02:31
Speaker
It looks like Texas.
01:02:33
Speaker
I want to get to a show.
01:02:35
Speaker
We're ready to get to a show and get it somewhere.
01:02:38
Speaker
But I just don't think there's anything popping up until Texas for us.
01:02:40
Speaker
So, you know, March at Texas Pinball Festival, it sounds like.
01:02:44
Speaker
We're going to try to have a whole bunch of them.
01:02:45
Speaker
Unless there's like a major show we're missing that I don't know about.
01:02:49
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
01:02:50
Speaker
Okay, so if you want them to come to your show, all the people who have major shows out there, minor shows, reach out.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:02:58
Speaker
Just send bug at spookypebble.com an email.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:03:04
Speaker
And then actually a third question popped in mind.
01:03:06
Speaker
So my second question is going to be, when do these hit the line?
01:03:09
Speaker
When are you going to start, start cooking?
01:03:11
Speaker
They're on there right now.
01:03:12
Speaker
The cabinets are starting to get assembled.
01:03:15
Speaker
They're getting them wired up, kind of getting things figured out, getting parts in, you know, it always takes us a second to really get rolling because it's literally a whole new machine.
01:03:24
Speaker
that you're building.
01:03:25
Speaker
It's different than the thing you just spent the last 12 months building.
01:03:28
Speaker
We kind of like to take kind of an extra month almost and just really, really work through the first ones just to make sure the first one's coming off the line are as good as we can make them and everything.
01:03:38
Speaker
And you have to ease the employees into building it.
01:03:41
Speaker
You can't take them all off of one thing and put them all on it at the same time.
01:03:45
Speaker
You kind of have to pick and choose and get them slowly worked in.
01:03:48
Speaker
But on top of that, we're still building Scooby-Doo's and it's still for sale at the same time as these.
01:03:53
Speaker
So
01:03:54
Speaker
Thanks.
01:03:54
Speaker
All three of these titles can be on the line at any given time.
01:03:57
Speaker
And that's been a transition for us too as well that I think we've really worked into well is we're going to be able to produce all three of those at once.
01:04:03
Speaker
It's not going to be an issue.
01:04:06
Speaker
There's going to be Scooby-Doo on the line every day and there's going to be Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw on the line every day.
Future Plans and 10-Year Reflection
01:04:12
Speaker
And then the final question is, you guys are coming up on 10 years in April from your first release.
01:04:17
Speaker
You guys going to be doing anything special?
01:04:20
Speaker
Is that when the first release was?
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:22
Speaker
America's Most Haunted was April.
01:04:24
Speaker
I guess AMH wasn't released yet.
01:04:25
Speaker
We totally remembered that and had that planned.
01:04:27
Speaker
Yes.
01:04:28
Speaker
I'm just now wondering about this for the first time.
01:04:33
Speaker
All right.
01:04:33
Speaker
All right.
01:04:34
Speaker
All right.
01:04:35
Speaker
Awesome.
01:04:36
Speaker
Stick around.
01:04:37
Speaker
Stick around.
01:04:38
Speaker
We definitely want to get your address because we're going to send you some 3.0 Loser Kid hats.
01:04:42
Speaker
If you want to make them spooky, you can just draw some blood on them.
01:04:45
Speaker
That's funny.
01:04:46
Speaker
Thank you guys.
01:04:49
Speaker
If anyone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of you guys?
01:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, if it's for game ordering and general questions and whatnot, you can always call the main line for the shop.
01:05:01
Speaker
If you Google the Spooky Pinball, it's the first phone number that comes up.
01:05:06
Speaker
Otherwise, squirrel at spookypinball.com is a good place to hit for that.
01:05:10
Speaker
If you're trying to get shows set up or you're like, hey, I'm a wicked cool animator, you should hire me.
01:05:16
Speaker
or you're like, yeah, things that are related to the Scream and Stream whatnot, you can always email me at bug, B-U-G, at spookypinball.com.
01:05:25
Speaker
And my email is just spookyluke at spookypinball.com.
01:05:28
Speaker
Awesome.
01:05:31
Speaker
If you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
01:05:34
Speaker
You can hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, X, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, hit like, subscribe, all that jazz.
01:05:42
Speaker
We appreciate you guys.
01:05:43
Speaker
There's been a lot of amazing emails.
01:05:45
Speaker
I've come in.
01:05:46
Speaker
We'll probably talk about next episode, which might be sooner than you think.
01:05:49
Speaker
So I want to thank you guys for coming on again.
01:05:53
Speaker
Corwin, I always, I didn't even know your name was Corwin.
01:05:56
Speaker
I always thought it was Bug.
01:05:57
Speaker
So, and Spooky Luke, thanks for coming on as well.
01:06:01
Speaker
Thanks, guys.
01:06:01
Speaker
Thank you.
01:06:02
Speaker
Thank you, guys.
01:06:02
Speaker
Thank you.