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Ep 98: A Scooby Doo Christmas with Bug
83 Plays3 years ago
It's the most wonderful time of the year and we as an early Christmas gift we have Bug from Spooky on to talk about their most recent release, Scooby Doo Where Are You?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Season
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 98.
00:00:10
Speaker
With me, my co-captain as always.
00:00:12
Speaker
Scott Larson.
00:00:14
Speaker
And you know, Christmas time is right around the corner.
00:00:17
Speaker
And we wanted to bring you a Christmas episode.
00:00:19
Speaker
And we couldn't think of anything better.
00:00:22
Speaker
than to have the guys that are bringing out a Christmas pinball machine.
00:00:26
Speaker
Well, for Christmas, right?
00:00:27
Speaker
Yes.
00:00:28
Speaker
I mean, it's not Christmas theme, but it's coming out right before Christmas.
00:00:31
Speaker
Well, it could be.
00:00:33
Speaker
I mean, did someone announce Nightmare Before Christmas?
Scooby-Doo Pinball Announcement
00:00:36
Speaker
I don't know.
00:00:36
Speaker
That seems like it would be up their alley.
00:00:39
Speaker
But if you want to buy the new Scooby-Doo Where Are You pinball machine, where can you get it from now, Scott?
00:00:46
Speaker
Well, you can get it from Flippin' Out Pinball because Zach is now a distributor for Spooky.
00:00:51
Speaker
And so you can definitely contact him and see about all his product.
00:00:57
Speaker
It is Christmas time, so people are rushing to get those last-minute gifts.
00:01:00
Speaker
But he certainly has some things available and...
00:01:04
Speaker
the pre-order for Scooby-Doo, if that's something that's scratching a niche for you.
00:01:10
Speaker
And speaking of Scooby-Doo, who do we have on today, Josh?
Bug from Spooky Pinball Joins
00:01:16
Speaker
We have a man that has grown up in the industry that has done a fantastic job of taking something so small from a small town and creating it on a world scale.
00:01:28
Speaker
This is Bug from Spooky Pinball.
00:01:30
Speaker
How are you doing, Bug?
00:01:32
Speaker
I'm doing great, guys.
00:01:32
Speaker
Thank you for having me on.
00:01:34
Speaker
Definitely.
00:01:35
Speaker
We've wanted to have you on for a bit now.
00:01:37
Speaker
I know that we ran to you at Expo and it's like paths haven't crossed very often.
00:01:41
Speaker
And it was great timing now that you've got Scooby-Doo out to have you come on and give us a little chit chat.
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:01:48
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:01:49
Speaker
I want to reference, by the way, if you want the in-depth interview on Spooky and Scooby-Doo, where are you?
00:01:56
Speaker
Zach actually did a great one on the pinball show.
00:01:58
Speaker
And so we'll ask some of the same questions, but I will also refer you to that episode for maybe some in-depth follow-up on that.
Why Scooby-Doo?
00:02:07
Speaker
So this will be a companion piece to that.
00:02:09
Speaker
So first off, you've always done...
00:02:14
Speaker
I guess, spooky type themes.
00:02:15
Speaker
I mean, that's the whole point of spooky pinball is trying to you guys are huge horror fans, huge, huge monster stuff.
00:02:24
Speaker
And so how did this fit into your wheelhouse?
00:02:28
Speaker
And at what point did you decide you wanted to do it?
00:02:32
Speaker
Right.
00:02:32
Speaker
So, I mean, it's funny because in my mind, Scooby-Doo is quite literally the most ideal theme for our company.
00:02:39
Speaker
It makes the most sense.
00:02:41
Speaker
It checks all the boxes because it hits a very wide audience.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's still very spooky related.
00:02:47
Speaker
Obviously, every episode is about catching monsters.
00:02:49
Speaker
The score is very scary sounding.
00:02:52
Speaker
And it also hits nostalgia.
Spooky Pinball's Kid-Friendly Strategy
00:02:54
Speaker
Everybody grew up with it and remembers it from when they were a kid.
00:02:57
Speaker
So, I mean, it made perfect sense to go do.
00:02:59
Speaker
And Spooky Pinball in general has kind of been in an interesting position where we try and hit very kid-friendly things and then super adult things.
00:03:07
Speaker
So, like, we go from Rob Zombie where we can go as hardcore as possible.
00:03:12
Speaker
And then we go to Alice Cooper, where it's still scary, but completely family friendly.
00:03:17
Speaker
Like there's no swearing, no violence, nothing in Alice Cooper.
00:03:20
Speaker
And we like kind of bouncing back and forth between that and like coming off of Halloween, which is obviously more in the hardcore area of horror, going into a wide released family theme made a lot of sense.
Art and Inspiration Sources
00:03:34
Speaker
as well.
00:03:34
Speaker
And then, yeah, of course, just with it being still spooky, related, fun, family friendly game, it just checked every single box that it needed to.
00:03:44
Speaker
You brought up Alice Cooper, and I've kind of heard this a couple times, and I bet you've heard this already, Bug.
00:03:48
Speaker
I'm hearing comparisons of the art scheme to Alice Cooper.
00:03:52
Speaker
Is that intentional or is that just kind of a happy coincidence?
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:56
Speaker
I would say a bit of a happy coincidence.
00:03:58
Speaker
I mean, we're using one of the same artists that did all of Alice Cooper.
00:04:02
Speaker
So Jeff Zornow did the whole entire Alice Cooper game.
00:04:05
Speaker
And then he was, of course, involved on the Scooby-Doo game as well.
00:04:07
Speaker
He did all the cabinet artwork.
00:04:10
Speaker
Otherwise, I mean, I've heard comparisons about the layouts being similar.
00:04:14
Speaker
They're incredibly different layouts.
00:04:16
Speaker
They shoot very differently.
00:04:18
Speaker
There is castle walls in the center, which I could definitely see the similarities there.
00:04:23
Speaker
But it just made perfect sense for the game.
00:04:25
Speaker
And we definitely didn't reuse anything.
00:04:28
Speaker
It's all still brand new, custom
Character and Season Choices
00:04:30
Speaker
made sculpts everywhere in the game.
00:04:32
Speaker
But I mean, yeah, there's definitely influence drawn from Alice Cooper visually, because I think up until Scooby-Doo, Alice Cooper is probably our most visually impressive game we've ever done.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yes, it is a very beautiful game.
00:04:47
Speaker
And fun too, I do enjoy Alice Cooper.
00:04:51
Speaker
And so going on with that, there are lots of different versions of Scooby-Doo that have been out there.
00:04:58
Speaker
Really the stuff I grew up with is actually ultimately what you put in the game.
00:05:04
Speaker
But there are new versions, there's new movies.
00:05:07
Speaker
I actually saw a terrible one with Elvira.
00:05:12
Speaker
That was an interesting movie to watch.
00:05:15
Speaker
But so how did you choose which era of Scooby-Doo that you wanted to portray?
00:05:23
Speaker
It is interesting because you would think that every generation's favorite edition of Scooby-Doo would be the one that was being made when they were a kid.
00:05:31
Speaker
You would think that would be the case, but it just seemed like everybody unanimously in our entire team likes the originals the best.
00:05:41
Speaker
I mean, I'm the youngest member of the team, obviously, and I always watched the originals growing up and then
00:05:48
Speaker
People like my dad, who is in his 50s, he also watched the originals when he was growing up.
00:05:53
Speaker
There's just something about those original two seasons that is just the ultimate Scooby-Doo experience.
00:05:59
Speaker
But that being said, we still drew lots of influence from other series because I think the writing in a lot of the later shows for specific characters is really, really great and much funnier.
00:06:10
Speaker
So we tried taking the funniest elements that we could from other series and putting them
00:06:15
Speaker
into just mostly that original series because like I said it's just unanimously the whole team agreed that it was everybody's favorite so did you just say there's only two seasons to the original series
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, so the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
00:06:30
Speaker
There's technically three seasons, but they called the third season something different.
00:06:35
Speaker
But it's really just two seasons.
00:06:36
Speaker
It's like, I want to say a total of 27 episodes total.
00:06:40
Speaker
But like every single episode is so classic and so iconic.
00:06:45
Speaker
Like we seriously, you can't lose choosing what episodes to put into the game because everybody recognizes all of the monsters from those episodes.
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:55
Speaker
Definitely.
00:06:55
Speaker
Well, it just throws me for a loop because I'm like, you think of Scooby-Doo.
00:06:59
Speaker
I mean, I grew up on it and stuff.
00:07:00
Speaker
And it's just like, I felt like there was endless episodes of Scooby-Doo.
00:07:03
Speaker
And then they had Scooby-Doo with celebrities and they had Scooby-Doo.
00:07:06
Speaker
It just, there's Scooby-Doo everything.
00:07:08
Speaker
So it kind of blows my mind.
00:07:09
Speaker
There was only two-ish seasons.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:13
Speaker
That's weird.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:13
Speaker
And that original run.
00:07:16
Speaker
What I'm wondering is at what point did they transition?
00:07:18
Speaker
Because I will say I am of the camp that I'm really glad that Scrappy Do was never in this because every single episode that had Scrappy Do, I just wanted to turn off just because it seemed it just wasn't my thing.
00:07:33
Speaker
So it's, you know, at what point do they, it does seem a little bit like in shows when they're trying to maintain their relevance is they'll bring in guest things.
00:07:45
Speaker
Like I remember the Harlem Globetrotters being on Scooby-Doo like a few times and just, just random.
00:07:51
Speaker
I think Cass Elliot was on there.
00:07:52
Speaker
I mean, just all these guests.
00:07:54
Speaker
And then you had, then you add like a scrap, you do who's wants to get in fights.
00:07:58
Speaker
He's like the only one who actually wants to get in fights.
00:08:01
Speaker
And so I don't know, I guess that's interesting how they kept doing that.
00:08:06
Speaker
But everybody still just wants to go back to the original.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's very interesting.
00:08:11
Speaker
I mean, even if you watch the live action movies where in the sequel, they bring back a whole bunch of monsters that the gang has defeated in the past.
00:08:19
Speaker
A majority of them are literally the characters from those first couple
Development Insights and Challenges
00:08:23
Speaker
seasons.
00:08:23
Speaker
It was actually when we rewatched that movie, we felt very, um,
00:08:28
Speaker
confident in the decision of what we chose because we're like, even when they're making the live actions, they're going back and they're choosing minor 49er and Captain Cutler and these other monsters.
00:08:38
Speaker
So it's, it just makes all the sense in the world to go with the ones that we did.
00:08:43
Speaker
And I'm very happy we did.
00:08:44
Speaker
You spoke a little bit of going from adult theme to kid theme and back and forth, back and forth.
00:08:48
Speaker
But if I heard you correctly on your Q and a last week or the week before, did you mention there was an adult mode in the Scooby-Doo that you can turn on?
00:08:59
Speaker
So it's I don't want to spoil the joke because it's such a good joke.
00:09:03
Speaker
But OK, they're in the menu.
00:09:05
Speaker
There's a setting for adult mode.
00:09:08
Speaker
You can go and try and turn it on and just watch what happens.
00:09:11
Speaker
Oh, OK.
00:09:11
Speaker
All right.
00:09:12
Speaker
And I'll let people just find out for themselves because it's funny.
00:09:15
Speaker
It's a good joke.
00:09:16
Speaker
But but yeah, I was wondering, since you guys have the history of Adult Swim, obviously with Rick and Morty, it's you've seen the Venture Brothers, right?
00:09:27
Speaker
Are you familiar with the Venture Brothers?
00:09:29
Speaker
Adventure Brothers.
00:09:30
Speaker
The Venture Brothers.
00:09:32
Speaker
I'm not familiar, no.
00:09:33
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:09:34
Speaker
You need to go watch this.
00:09:34
Speaker
I'll send you a clip.
00:09:36
Speaker
There's actually the Venture Brothers.
00:09:39
Speaker
This is something that really would be up your alley because they're kind of a joke version of Johnny Quest.
00:09:47
Speaker
And are you familiar with Johnny Quest?
00:09:49
Speaker
I mean, it's the same era as Scooby-Doo.
00:09:51
Speaker
Where are you?
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm more familiar with Johnny Quest.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:55
Speaker
OK, so this is like an inept.
00:09:58
Speaker
This is the son of an inept scientist with two kids and then like a pilot bodyguard thing.
00:10:05
Speaker
And they go through and it's certainly along the lines of Rick and Morty, maybe not as blue, but just that way.
00:10:12
Speaker
And there is a cameo episode where they have like characters that are very Scooby-Doo-esque on there and is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
00:10:22
Speaker
So he was thinking the whole adult mode was just going to be Venture Brothers.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, I thought it was going to be the Venture Brothers doing Scooby-Doo.
00:10:30
Speaker
We got a separate license.
00:10:32
Speaker
No, you turn on adult mode and Rick shows up from Rick and Morty and he starts solving mysteries with the dog.
00:10:40
Speaker
That would be awesome.
00:10:43
Speaker
That's great.
00:10:46
Speaker
So is there a Pickle Rick mode in this one?
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:51
Speaker
Scooby turned himself into a pickle.
00:10:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:10:57
Speaker
So the approach you, you decide this is a license.
00:11:00
Speaker
This fits with our, with our themes that we like to do.
00:11:05
Speaker
And you, you said that you had a relationship with Hanna-Barbera because you have done work with them before.
00:11:12
Speaker
I mean, they, they're under the big umbrella that has has adult swim.
00:11:16
Speaker
Correct.
00:11:17
Speaker
Well, work with Warner Brothers because.
00:11:19
Speaker
OK, Warner.
00:11:20
Speaker
OK, yeah, we've done the Jetsons before with Warner Brothers and then Warner Brothers also adopted Adult Swim while we were in the middle of building Rick and Morty.
00:11:28
Speaker
So, yeah, already a very established relationship with them.
00:11:32
Speaker
Now, it's always challenging when you're integrating assets now versus even in the 80s or 90s where like the DMD.
00:11:41
Speaker
You had just some sort of grainy dots.
00:11:44
Speaker
A lot of times they didn't really have the voices of the actors.
00:11:47
Speaker
People nowadays, they expect to have...
00:11:53
Speaker
basically video assets, including, including visual representation of the character, audio representation of the character.
00:12:01
Speaker
And how challenging was that to make sure, Hey, we can't like spend, you know, $5,000 on a license alone because all these people want their piece, but still want to be able to have enough that it feels like Scooby-Doo.
Voice Actors and Iconic Lines
00:12:16
Speaker
Right, yeah.
00:12:17
Speaker
I can't emphasize enough how much the LCD screen has increased the workload of pinball.
00:12:23
Speaker
It is a whole different ballgame now than it was.
00:12:26
Speaker
Literally ballgame, that's funny.
00:12:28
Speaker
A whole different game now than it was, you know, however many years ago it was, probably 6-7 now.
00:12:34
Speaker
But, um...
00:12:36
Speaker
It's that's just something you kind of try to look at when you're working on licenses or obtaining them is what do you actually get when you sign with it?
00:12:45
Speaker
And we knew with Scooby-Doo that we would be getting access to all of the original clips.
00:12:52
Speaker
And we know how far that goes.
00:12:54
Speaker
Having full access to original series clips from the show like that's absolutely massive in making this game really feel tied together for us for for
00:13:06
Speaker
really showing that world that we want.
00:13:09
Speaker
That being said, we're, we're learning to overcome when that is less available because there's a lot of really fantastic games out there like Jurassic park and pirates of the Caribbean that don't have a ton of video assets.
00:13:21
Speaker
I like if you watch pirate, the pirates of the Caribbean game, it's one of my favorite games of all time.
00:13:25
Speaker
There there's really not much for film assets in it though.
00:13:28
Speaker
So it's, it's, it's definitely a hurdle that, uh,
00:13:32
Speaker
We're working past on how can you still make as good of a game as Jurassic Park and as Pirates of the Caribbean with less
Design Decisions and Game Mechanics
00:13:39
Speaker
assets.
00:13:39
Speaker
But we also got super lucky on this one and we have a ton of assets from the show.
00:13:44
Speaker
So I hope that answers your question.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's exactly what I was going off.
00:13:48
Speaker
And you even to to dovetail on that, the voice actors, you went and got.
00:13:56
Speaker
the people who have been with Scooby-Doo for years to actually re-record some of these voices and record the call-out.
00:14:05
Speaker
So how was that?
00:14:05
Speaker
How did that come about?
00:14:07
Speaker
And how was that?
00:14:09
Speaker
Literally Warner Brothers sent us a list.
00:14:11
Speaker
They were like, hey, these are the approved actors that you can use for your product.
00:14:17
Speaker
So you can, these are all our proof, like Fred's, Shaggy's, Scooby's, Velma's, Daphne's.
00:14:23
Speaker
And we looked at the list and
00:14:27
Speaker
At first, we were like, man, it'd be really cool if we got Shaggy and Scooby.
00:14:30
Speaker
That would be a lot.
00:14:32
Speaker
That would go a really long ways.
00:14:35
Speaker
We just kind of kept reaching out and trying.
00:14:37
Speaker
We had a few contacts already, like our foot in the door with a few of the actors through various agents and whatnot that we've just befriended over the years.
00:14:46
Speaker
And started asking around and seeing what could be made possible.
00:14:50
Speaker
And we kind of were like, well, it looks like we might be able to go and just get all of the actors.
00:14:56
Speaker
I mean,
00:14:57
Speaker
Why not?
00:14:58
Speaker
Like, go big or go home.
00:14:59
Speaker
It's Scooby-Doo.
00:15:00
Speaker
Like, we need to throw absolutely everything at this that we can.
00:15:03
Speaker
Like, we can't just have two members of the gang because then everybody's going to be like, well, where's Daphne?
00:15:08
Speaker
Where's Velma?
00:15:08
Speaker
It's like, okay, well, then we'll get Velma.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then we'll be like, we can't just get Velma and not Daphne.
00:15:12
Speaker
So it kind of ended up being like, wait, no, there's no option here.
00:15:16
Speaker
We have to get them all.
00:15:17
Speaker
And the fact that we actually got...
00:15:21
Speaker
these specific ones that I wanted from the beginning.
00:15:24
Speaker
Like we never had to make any concessions.
00:15:26
Speaker
Those were our first choices for all of the actors.
00:15:30
Speaker
And I still can't believe it came together and worked because nothing ever works that well.
00:15:36
Speaker
The first try, like every time you have a plan like that, it doesn't just work that well the first time.
00:15:42
Speaker
Usually it takes a few revisions and you end up with something kind of different, but yeah.
00:15:45
Speaker
We got very lucky and and working with them was fantastic.
00:15:49
Speaker
They were the most outstanding professional actors we've ever gotten to work with, I would say.
00:15:54
Speaker
And I've actually met Matthew Lillard in person before, and he's a he's a great guy.
00:15:59
Speaker
I know that you said that you kind of snuck some scream lines in there.
00:16:02
Speaker
Did you happen to speak any other lines in there from any of these other movies or?
00:16:07
Speaker
No, I tried not to overdo it too much.
00:16:09
Speaker
I actually, I really tried with each character to sneak in lines from something else that they've done just because I find things like that really fun.
00:16:17
Speaker
I like the opportunity to hear, you know, iconic voices say things from other stuff, like having Frank Welker do some of his call outs from other things that he's been in.
00:16:29
Speaker
I am kind of a dork for things like that.
00:16:33
Speaker
I think it's really fun.
00:16:34
Speaker
But with Matthew Lillard, no, it was just scream lines mostly.
00:16:37
Speaker
He's very famous in Utah amongst the punk scene because he did SLC Punk.
00:16:41
Speaker
So I was just curious if any of that made it into there.
00:16:44
Speaker
But that might not be very family friendly either.
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think that would be.
00:16:49
Speaker
It was hard because I'm a very big fan of Garfunkel and Oates, which is Kate McCoochie's band of Alma Actress.
Prototyping and Unique Features
00:16:56
Speaker
And finding dialogue to sneak from that is...
00:17:00
Speaker
very hard because it is so opposite of kid friendly.
00:17:04
Speaker
It's very blue.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:17:05
Speaker
It's, it's taking flight of the concords and taking it, uh, well down a notch, I guess taking, taking it more blue.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
So one thing I want to talk about is you, you said this is your first wide body and you started out with the concept of kind of a standard because you wanted to, uh,
00:17:26
Speaker
not have the driftiness or the slowness of a wide body and you expanded from that.
00:17:32
Speaker
How did you overcome some of that, I guess, going from the standard to the wide body?
00:17:37
Speaker
Because I assume it still didn't line up perfectly once you dropped it in there.
00:17:42
Speaker
You know, it really wasn't too much to overcome because we had a different plan in mind with how we were going to approach the wide body.
00:17:50
Speaker
Because I believe whenever people do wide bodies, they just add the three inches to like one side and then everything gets shifted over.
00:17:58
Speaker
Instead, we added it to either side.
00:18:00
Speaker
We just split the difference.
00:18:02
Speaker
And used that extra real estate just to widen up some shots and to put more items in the game.
00:18:08
Speaker
So really the entrance of all the shots is still fits a standard body layout.
00:18:13
Speaker
It's just where they go to from there gets into that wide body range.
00:18:18
Speaker
So I can't say that it was honestly too hard.
00:18:22
Speaker
But that being said, we also have, I mean, the co-designer in this game, Spooky Luke,
00:18:27
Speaker
is an absolute machine when it comes to making whitewoods.
00:18:30
Speaker
He, I don't know how he's so accurate on his attempts each time, but he just is.
00:18:36
Speaker
He's insanely talented.
00:18:37
Speaker
It's a part of the process I wish people could see is like his whitewoods are just beyond this world.
00:18:44
Speaker
Good.
00:18:46
Speaker
How many whitewoods do you have to, did you have to go through to come upon the layout that you, you were in love with?
00:18:55
Speaker
Ooh, that's a good question.
00:18:57
Speaker
I would say like what the players see now, as far as all the shot entrances, that was probably set and agreed upon by the third revision of the game.
00:19:09
Speaker
Cause I mean, we do quite a few revisions on each layout and we'll, we'll still change shots later, but we knew like the core group of shots and, and roughly where they would be going hard cadded into the game.
00:19:22
Speaker
Like we knew that probably by rev three, I would say.
00:19:25
Speaker
One concern that's been brought up is on the left side, there's a double outlane.
00:19:29
Speaker
Does any of those outlanes feed back into the inlay at all through like a gate or something?
00:19:33
Speaker
Or are they both?
00:19:34
Speaker
Is it just a double outlane on the left side?
00:19:35
Speaker
So it's a double outlane on the left side that spells rut row.
00:19:39
Speaker
And if you could spell.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, rut row.
00:19:42
Speaker
And if you could spell out rut row.
00:19:44
Speaker
So if you hit each of them, it gives you a ball save.
00:19:48
Speaker
Because I like outlane games, like an alien, like that second chance to, oh, if I can just nudge this the right way or change my inserts to where I want them to be, I can get a quick ball save.
00:19:59
Speaker
I love little things like that.
00:20:00
Speaker
I think they add a lot to compared when in normal games, if it just as soon as it hits that outlane, unless you death save, you know, you're toast.
00:20:08
Speaker
It's like I like the second chance when it comes to things like that.
00:20:12
Speaker
Kind of similar to maybe like Toto on Wizard of Oz or the Oxygen Destroyer on Godzilla.
00:20:18
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:19
Speaker
Kind of the same concept.
00:20:20
Speaker
Exactly.
00:20:20
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:20:21
Speaker
Now you also put in some physical ball locks on the apron.
00:20:26
Speaker
Yes.
00:20:26
Speaker
Which hasn't been done in a while.
00:20:28
Speaker
So why did you choose to go down there and have them feed up that way?
00:20:33
Speaker
Um, it's, we just, we have a obsession with putting locks and features in weird places.
00:20:41
Speaker
I, we've really love unorthodox things in pinball because we Stern puts out Stern layouts all year, every year.
00:20:51
Speaker
There's no point in us trying to do that.
00:20:53
Speaker
So we like to try and do things that are a bit weirder and more unorthodox to, to be the odd one out.
00:21:00
Speaker
And yeah,
00:21:01
Speaker
we just like looking at things and going, well, nobody puts flippers here or nobody puts locks here or pop bumpers here.
00:21:08
Speaker
What if we did like, does that just ruin everything?
00:21:11
Speaker
Does it make it way cooler?
00:21:13
Speaker
What can we build upon from here?
00:21:15
Speaker
Cause it changes how you think about the rest of the game.
00:21:18
Speaker
And when you can,
00:21:21
Speaker
especially with ball locks where it would take up a lot of real estate and a lot of visibility elsewhere, putting it somewhere where nothing's going on anyway, just makes a lot of sense.
00:21:31
Speaker
Cause I,
00:21:33
Speaker
If it was somewhere out on the play field, like where the Mystery Machine is, if we had another ball lock out there like the Mystery Machine ball lock, then we would be losing so much more real estate and visibility.
00:21:43
Speaker
And it's like, well, let's just put it somewhere where it's not in the way to begin with and builds upon what's there.
00:21:49
Speaker
Make something cooler out of something that's just okay.
00:21:52
Speaker
Well, I like that you said that you're trying to do something unique and different.
00:21:55
Speaker
I know when we hadn't seen any reveal information yet on Scooby-Doo, but we knew it was for sure Scooby-Doo.
00:22:01
Speaker
People are starting to say, well, it's probably going to have a van like Teenage Mirror Turtles where the balls come out of the van.
00:22:07
Speaker
And I was like, well, we just saw that like not even a year and a half ago or two years ago.
00:22:11
Speaker
I like that you guys are trying to be unique outside the box because, and one of the unique things that really catch my eye on this game is the upper bookcase shelf flipper.
00:22:20
Speaker
I don't think something like that has been done on pinball before.
00:22:22
Speaker
It looks like it creates a new gameplay strategies because of it.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, that Bookcase Flipper does some really wild things in gameplay.
00:22:31
Speaker
And I don't think it's been done anywhere before either.
00:22:35
Speaker
So we'll claim it.
00:22:38
Speaker
We'll say we did it first.
00:22:39
Speaker
But somebody will definitely send me a photo of some random game from 1979 that had it upside down in an upper playfield somewhere.
00:22:47
Speaker
But...
00:22:48
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely changes gameplay on that upper play field quite a bit because you can literally use the back end of it to catapult the ball around.
00:22:56
Speaker
And when you're cradling the ball up there, when you let go, it's going to throw it.
00:23:00
Speaker
You can't just let go of your cradle and shoot like normal.
00:23:03
Speaker
So it introduces a lot of chaos under that upper play field.
00:23:05
Speaker
But I also like giving players the ability to control when they're getting to the upper play field or not.
00:23:12
Speaker
That was something we learned with Halloween with the topmost play field is people are like, how do I get up there?
00:23:18
Speaker
I want to get up there right away.
00:23:19
Speaker
And it's like, well, in Scooby, you can.
00:23:20
Speaker
You can shoot right up the center ramp.
00:23:22
Speaker
And if you just hold your bookcase flipper open, now you're on there.
00:23:26
Speaker
If you don't want to be up there, you just don't open the bookcase flipper.
00:23:29
Speaker
It's entirely in the player's control as to how much they're getting on that upper play field.
00:23:33
Speaker
Well, I like the idea that you guys have introduced magnets and stuff up there as well as part of your ghost and whatnot.
00:23:39
Speaker
I mean, that seems like a very packed upper play field with the bookcase and the magnets and even your mechs, even your sculpts are moving when they're getting hit and stuff.
00:23:50
Speaker
There's a lot going on up there.
00:23:52
Speaker
I'm hoping it goes down as our best upper play field yet because it definitely has the most going on and the most features on an upper play field that we've ever done.
Game Objectives and Modes
00:24:02
Speaker
I see I'm counting up.
00:24:05
Speaker
There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12.
00:24:11
Speaker
And are those all the villains that you have to collect?
00:24:15
Speaker
12.
00:24:15
Speaker
Well, I see the inserts.
00:24:17
Speaker
Well, I guess the in the middle of the play field, there's all the bad guys that are there.
00:24:22
Speaker
So is the is the plan of the game to go through and like collect them all?
00:24:27
Speaker
And then, you know, kind of like I'm thinking of Monster Bash, where you get the band together and then you do stuff.
00:24:34
Speaker
It's funny you made that comparison because originally we were going to light up the monsters on the play field like in Monster Bash, but we ended up going with the silhouette inserts because it works a lot nicer for RGB lighting.
00:24:45
Speaker
But yeah, it's pretty close to what it is.
00:24:48
Speaker
You're solving the cases like it's each episode.
00:24:52
Speaker
So you'll start a case, you'll start your minor 49er case, and then you'll solve that and unmask him.
00:24:59
Speaker
And you're unmasking all of these villains to try and get to the wizard mode.
00:25:03
Speaker
So there's seven main villains that are across that center row of inserts and then the five gang members beneath them because each of them in the future will have their own modes as well.
00:25:14
Speaker
And then we're also introducing a lot of supplemental monsters that will be added later as kind of secondary modes and side modes.
00:25:23
Speaker
Fun extra things, including like Ghost Clown and the Mummy and Snow Ghost, things like that.
00:25:29
Speaker
But the primary group of seven down there, those are the main modes and villains of the game that you have to go and unmask to progress through.
00:25:39
Speaker
And I did hear you on Pinball Show saying that the code was going to be a lot further along on Scooby-Doo than it was on Halloween.
Code Development and Improvements
00:25:47
Speaker
I guess how far along are you hoping to have it once this starts getting to people's homes?
00:25:52
Speaker
Right.
00:25:52
Speaker
So by the time this is hitting people's homes, they will have the seven main modes in the game, the seven main monster modes.
00:25:58
Speaker
They will have Scooby Snack multiball, Mystery Machine multiball, and Captain Cutler multiball because Captain Cutler is a main mode.
00:26:05
Speaker
He's also a secondary multiball that you can just go up, bash him, start that.
00:26:10
Speaker
Um, there's other features involving like the bravery meter and things like that.
00:26:15
Speaker
Uh, the codes significantly further along the Halloween was at launch.
00:26:19
Speaker
Um, obviously that was one of our main focuses for when the game gets to people's homes is it can't, it's gotta be better than Halloween and Ultraman was like, just simply put needs to be further along, needs to be more fun, um,
00:26:33
Speaker
presented better on screen.
00:26:35
Speaker
Everything needed to be better.
00:26:38
Speaker
And 100% absolutely is.
00:26:40
Speaker
I'm very, very excited for people to see an actual live stream of it because I know there's quite a few people out there who that's what they're waiting for.
00:26:48
Speaker
They want to see where the code is.
00:26:49
Speaker
They want to see more gameplay.
00:26:51
Speaker
They want to see a live stream or they want to play it in person themselves.
00:26:54
Speaker
And those are all perfectly fine things.
00:26:57
Speaker
Those are all you should do that before buying a game.
00:26:59
Speaker
That makes perfect sense to go do.
00:27:01
Speaker
It's and I encourage people to do so.
00:27:05
Speaker
So I'm very excited for them to see that.
00:27:08
Speaker
It's just taking a little bit of time to get to because of a lot of licensing and negotiation reasons that we can't really talk about.
00:27:14
Speaker
But it's absolutely coming.
00:27:17
Speaker
And I think people are going to be more than satisfied with what we get to them.
00:27:20
Speaker
Well, in a follow-up question, I assume this is going to be kind of spooky practice going forward, right?
00:27:24
Speaker
On your future games, you're going to try to be this far along with code on every release that you have after this as well.
00:27:31
Speaker
Further, yeah.
00:27:32
Speaker
I mean, we hired Eric Prepke and Ben Heck to code games as well.
00:27:38
Speaker
And they're both coding games.
00:27:40
Speaker
Those games should be further along than Scooby is at launch.
00:27:43
Speaker
Every year, it's going to keep getting better.
00:27:45
Speaker
That's the primary goal.
00:27:46
Speaker
Since Halloween,
00:27:48
Speaker
One of our main goals has been how can we make sure we're further ahead than we have been, because we've always been notoriously behind on quite a few of those things.
00:27:56
Speaker
And that's something that I think we've done really well in just a year is catching up and getting years ahead, because it's completely necessary.
00:28:04
Speaker
You have to get further ahead, especially, like I said earlier, with how LCDs have completely changed the game.
00:28:11
Speaker
there's the workload is so much higher on programmers now to get the LCD functioning and looking good and working right.
00:28:19
Speaker
And then that's not even to mention like how deep code needs to be now compared to how it used to be as well.
00:28:24
Speaker
And yeah, they're absolutely killing it.
00:28:26
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure Ben Heck is tweeting about it, which he probably shouldn't be, but I'm sure he's tweeting every day about how far along on his game he is right now.
00:28:35
Speaker
And he's, he's absolutely knocking out of the park.
00:28:37
Speaker
He's doing great.
00:28:38
Speaker
So yeah,
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, going forward, that's going to keep getting better, for sure, because we recognize that it needed to be.
00:28:45
Speaker
We heard everybody loud and clear.
00:28:47
Speaker
So what is your favorite shot in the game?
00:28:49
Speaker
Ooh, my hands-down favorite shot.
00:28:53
Speaker
I think the reaction of the bash toy of Captain Cutler is the most satisfying.
00:29:00
Speaker
Hitting the helmet and it rocking back and forth with the sound design that we have on it.
00:29:05
Speaker
With...
00:29:06
Speaker
The magnets throwing it around after that, it altogether makes for the best, most rewarding shot in the game.
00:29:13
Speaker
Otherwise, just spamming the heck out of that center ramp is so satisfying.
00:29:18
Speaker
Just one after another.
00:29:20
Speaker
I could sit there
Game Editions and Collector Appeal
00:29:21
Speaker
and hit it all day long.
00:29:21
Speaker
It's so smooth.
00:29:24
Speaker
And how do the different, you have three different editions.
00:29:27
Speaker
So let's go over those different editions.
00:29:29
Speaker
So you have the standard edition and then you have the bloodsuckers edition and then you have the collector's edition.
00:29:36
Speaker
So tell me what people get when they level up to each edition.
00:29:41
Speaker
Right.
00:29:42
Speaker
So it'll be tough for me to remember this all off the top of my head, but I can definitely get most of it.
00:29:48
Speaker
I'll start with the collector's edition.
00:29:49
Speaker
So the collector's edition, you will have custom cut creeper armor powder coated in that green color.
00:29:55
Speaker
The whole cabinet is a custom art package from Jeff Zornau.
00:29:59
Speaker
The playfield has...
00:30:02
Speaker
I think it's 16 sculpts total, I want to say.
00:30:05
Speaker
So you'll have the mine cart Scooby, the miner 49er in his mine cart as well coming down that habit trail.
00:30:11
Speaker
You'll have Charlie the robot.
00:30:13
Speaker
You'll have, let me think, you'll have the Black Knight sculpt.
00:30:18
Speaker
You'll have the mine entrance sculpt.
00:30:19
Speaker
You'll have the abandoned airfield sign.
00:30:22
Speaker
All of those things.
00:30:22
Speaker
You'll have custom cut powder coated speaker grills with Scooby and zombie.
00:30:26
Speaker
You'll have the light up topper.
00:30:28
Speaker
Speaker kit, interior graphics.
00:30:31
Speaker
I'm trying to think what else.
00:30:33
Speaker
Custom launch button.
00:30:35
Speaker
A lot of stuff.
00:30:39
Speaker
And then basically all of our differences between the additions is purely cosmetic.
00:30:43
Speaker
We don't change mechs out between games.
00:30:46
Speaker
We don't want to change gameplay or anything like that.
00:30:50
Speaker
We like to keep that the same between models.
00:30:52
Speaker
We just like to make the collectors...
00:30:54
Speaker
pretty.
00:30:56
Speaker
So in the blood sucker and standard cabinet, you have the mystery machine cabinet as opposed to the custom art package.
00:31:02
Speaker
So the whole cabinet looks like the mystery machine, which was a long discussion in the shop as to, to what to do there, because there was a handful of guys that were like, well, that makes more sense as the CE that's cooler.
00:31:13
Speaker
And then there was guys that wanted the, the art package instead, which I was in favor of art package on the CE because I just think it's custom and
00:31:22
Speaker
Looks a lot nicer.
Manufacturing and Production Processes
00:31:23
Speaker
But and then on the Bloodsucker, you'll have the I believe it's the Rainbow River powder coat.
00:31:28
Speaker
All the habit trails in the game are the Rainbow River powder coat as well.
00:31:32
Speaker
While in the CE, they're the multicolored for each of the members of the gang.
00:31:37
Speaker
And in the Bloodsucker, we take out the sculpts like Charlie the Robot and the Black Knight and mine entrance and signs like that.
00:31:45
Speaker
There's no topper.
00:31:46
Speaker
There is speaker grills that are powder coated, but they are not the zombie chasing Scooby.
00:31:53
Speaker
No CE plaque.
00:31:55
Speaker
It's a Bloodsucker plaque instead.
00:31:58
Speaker
I think that covers it.
00:32:00
Speaker
on that one.
00:32:01
Speaker
And then the standard is just pretty bare bones.
00:32:03
Speaker
It's, it's a matte black finish on the powder coat, uh, uh, for the, the armor, as well as all the habit trails in the game.
00:32:10
Speaker
Uh, no sculpts other than the mystery machine, the castle, Captain Cutler and the Scooby barrel.
00:32:17
Speaker
Um,
00:32:18
Speaker
Trying to think what else is taken out of the standard.
00:32:20
Speaker
No interior graphics, no light-up kit, knocker shaker, all those things, no topper.
00:32:25
Speaker
Otherwise, like I said, gameplay, all the same across the board because we don't like to change that up.
00:32:29
Speaker
We want to make sure everybody has the same experience.
00:32:32
Speaker
And otherwise, there is a breakdown of all the differences between the games on our Facebook page.
00:32:38
Speaker
I'm not sure if it's on the website yet or not.
00:32:40
Speaker
It should be.
00:32:41
Speaker
I didn't see it on the website, but I do see it on like I've been looking a lot at the pinball news article.
00:32:46
Speaker
So the yeah, yeah, they have like a matrix breakdown on that, too.
00:32:52
Speaker
Yep.
00:32:52
Speaker
And it's on our Instagram as well.
00:32:55
Speaker
So it's floating around out there everywhere.
00:32:57
Speaker
We definitely should get it onto our Facebook or our company or the website.
00:33:01
Speaker
Sorry.
00:33:02
Speaker
And I do believe in the descriptions of each machine.
00:33:04
Speaker
It says what the differences are on our website as well, because I definitely probably missed a few things there.
00:33:10
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:11
Speaker
And how many are you making of each?
00:33:14
Speaker
So we don't limit our additions to any numbers.
00:33:18
Speaker
It's all open.
00:33:19
Speaker
There's a total unit limit.
00:33:21
Speaker
There's 1969 that are going to be made.
00:33:25
Speaker
We let the customers decide they can all buy CEs.
00:33:28
Speaker
They can all buy bloodsuckers standards.
00:33:30
Speaker
Oh, that's nice.
00:33:31
Speaker
We leave it up to the customer.
00:33:32
Speaker
Because we don't we just want everybody who wants the game to get that game.
00:33:37
Speaker
You know, we don't want to exclude a whole bunch of people out from something because there was only 500 and then the rest are all a different version.
00:33:45
Speaker
So and can you is this something you can share?
00:33:50
Speaker
What has been the most popular edition so far?
00:33:55
Speaker
I don't know if I'm supposed to or not, but why not?
00:33:57
Speaker
The CE is definitely the most popular.
00:33:59
Speaker
It's it's it's the prettiest one.
00:34:02
Speaker
The same thing happened in Halloween and Ultraman.
00:34:04
Speaker
Same thing happened in Rick and Morty.
00:34:07
Speaker
People, they just want the nicest looking version of the game.
00:34:10
Speaker
And that's that keeps being the trend so far.
00:34:13
Speaker
I I I would choose that.
00:34:17
Speaker
I'm a sucker for for the way a game looks.
00:34:20
Speaker
And the you really did make it look really cool with the collector's edition.
00:34:26
Speaker
I appreciate that.
00:34:26
Speaker
Thank you.
00:34:27
Speaker
Well, in addition to Scooby-Doo, there are other things available.
00:34:32
Speaker
Like you are doing a rerun of TNA right now too.
00:34:35
Speaker
And so there are options that people, if they want, they couldn't get that original TNA.
00:34:42
Speaker
I'm assuming you still have some of those available too.
00:34:45
Speaker
The funniest thing on the day that we started selling Scooby and we were watching the website and checking in with our distributors about how sales were going and whatnot.
00:34:55
Speaker
Two people did buy a TNA that day.
00:34:58
Speaker
It was just so funny for some reason.
00:35:02
Speaker
You're looking at the website and it's like another one gone, another one gone.
00:35:04
Speaker
Wow, this is great.
00:35:06
Speaker
Somebody just bought a TNA.
00:35:06
Speaker
Okay, that's weird.
00:35:09
Speaker
They picked the oddest day.
00:35:10
Speaker
Somebody the morning before sales started ordered a beanie and some leggings.
00:35:15
Speaker
We were like...
00:35:16
Speaker
Yeah, they're just sneaking in real quick before everything gets crazy.
00:35:20
Speaker
So and leggings, too.
00:35:23
Speaker
I am actually on your website.
00:35:24
Speaker
And so there I'm a sucker for strange merch.
00:35:28
Speaker
I do like the spooky pinball leggings.
00:35:30
Speaker
I'm going to get Josh a pair for his for his Christmas present.
00:35:33
Speaker
You know it.
00:35:34
Speaker
And there's hats.
00:35:37
Speaker
We can wear it for our next interview.
00:35:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:35:41
Speaker
The spooky plastic pint glasses with color changes, LED bottom.
00:35:46
Speaker
I mean, who doesn't need that?
00:35:49
Speaker
So you guys haven't been to Expo for a while.
00:35:51
Speaker
I know we're kind of moving away from Scooby-Doo for a second.
00:35:54
Speaker
You guys haven't been to Expo for a while.
00:35:56
Speaker
What made you decide to come back this year?
00:35:59
Speaker
It's obviously a very important show.
00:36:02
Speaker
I mean, it's probably...
00:36:03
Speaker
one of the biggest industry shows, if not the biggest.
00:36:06
Speaker
It's very close.
00:36:07
Speaker
It's right in our neck of the woods.
00:36:09
Speaker
And man, a lot of people yelled at us for not going last year.
00:36:14
Speaker
So we wanted to make an effort to come out this year and see everybody.
00:36:18
Speaker
And I've always loved shows.
00:36:20
Speaker
It's one of my favorite parts of the job is just traveling the country.
00:36:24
Speaker
You get to see a lot of people that you don't see that
Community and Location Benefits
00:36:27
Speaker
often.
00:36:27
Speaker
And I love talking to people who buy our games and answering questions and helping them if something's wrong or anything like that.
00:36:36
Speaker
I absolutely love doing the shows.
00:36:38
Speaker
And we'll definitely be back to Expo next year.
00:36:41
Speaker
We're hoping to do a few new shows this year.
00:36:43
Speaker
I can't say which ones yet because it's not confirmed.
00:36:45
Speaker
But we definitely want to make the rounds and get to some places we haven't had our faces at before.
00:36:52
Speaker
A lot of other pinball manufacturers have seemed to even we saw Jersey Jack just move to the Chicago area.
00:36:59
Speaker
I mean, they're all within like throwing distance of each other.
00:37:01
Speaker
You're still, I don't know, Chicago adjacent, but you're not like you're you're not there, but you're still within a driving distance of that.
00:37:10
Speaker
Have you ever considered getting closer to the manufacturing hub?
00:37:15
Speaker
Not for a second.
00:37:16
Speaker
Nope.
00:37:17
Speaker
We have an absolutely sweet deal here in Benton.
00:37:22
Speaker
I mean, it's in the documentary that they sold us the land for our first shop for a dollar and they continue to treat us that well.
00:37:30
Speaker
And we have more than enough employees in town here and who drive from all the neighboring towns as well.
00:37:39
Speaker
to produce the numbers that we're doing.
00:37:41
Speaker
We all live here.
00:37:42
Speaker
We've all grown up here.
00:37:44
Speaker
I still live in Benton.
00:37:45
Speaker
It's where I grew up.
00:37:47
Speaker
And we just, there's no need to go to Chicago, no desire.
00:37:51
Speaker
We have a pretty sweet deal in Benton.
00:37:55
Speaker
Now, another question though is because you have decided to stay away, like what are the advantages of, because you're close enough and you're like, how,
00:38:07
Speaker
Who's your major resource?
00:38:09
Speaker
Do you still have a big partnership with Pinball Life?
00:38:12
Speaker
Do you get a lot of your stuff shipping in from China like everybody else?
00:38:17
Speaker
Or how is your process?
00:38:20
Speaker
So we are still...
00:38:23
Speaker
very close with pinball life.
00:38:24
Speaker
We do a ton of business with them, like a ton.
00:38:27
Speaker
We pick up parts every other week, still every single week.
00:38:31
Speaker
We just drive down.
00:38:32
Speaker
It's only a two hour drive to get there, to get all our parts there.
00:38:36
Speaker
We have some neighboring businesses just within 20 minutes of our factory that supply us with other things.
00:38:44
Speaker
And then also we do a lot with, sorry, I'm saying,
00:38:52
Speaker
We also have a lot in-house.
00:38:53
Speaker
We try to keep as much of it in-house as possible because it just makes for a lot easier, especially with how supply chain has gone since COVID.
00:39:03
Speaker
That's a big thing that was really scary when it hit.
00:39:06
Speaker
We were fortunate enough to get ahead of it because we heard about how bad it might get.
00:39:11
Speaker
But there's no better way to make sure you have parts than to make them yourself.
00:39:15
Speaker
But yeah, we still have a very close relationship with Pinball Life and plenty of other
00:39:20
Speaker
notable pinball brands and companies and whatnot.
00:39:22
Speaker
But yeah, uh, it just being where we are, it hasn't really affected business negatively at all for us.
00:39:30
Speaker
It's really been great.
00:39:31
Speaker
I was gonna say, you guys have been expanding a lot over the years that you guys have been up and going.
00:39:37
Speaker
You don't feel like the, where you guys live has limited your resources for the workforce either.
00:39:43
Speaker
Not at all.
00:39:43
Speaker
Nope.
00:39:44
Speaker
We were sitting about 38, 39 employees.
00:39:49
Speaker
I mean, it's never been an issue getting people in the door.
00:39:54
Speaker
There's a lot of neighboring towns that just spooky pinball sounds like a cool place to work, you know?
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:02
Speaker
So when you put a game on the line, okay.
00:40:07
Speaker
And you know, it's like an assembly line, like everything else, like you go from point A to point B and all the way to point Z. Like how long does it take to get it when all things are, are greased and everything's going like, how long does it take to get from the start of the line to the putting in a box?
Efficiency and Quality Assurance
00:40:29
Speaker
Right.
00:40:29
Speaker
So when Halloween was at peak production, we were getting 40 games a week for about two months there.
00:40:36
Speaker
So 10 a day.
00:40:37
Speaker
We do four day work weeks.
00:40:38
Speaker
So 10 games every day.
00:40:40
Speaker
Departments are kind of broken down by days.
00:40:43
Speaker
So like your play fields will get over to play field wiring, which gets over to cabinets, which gets over to final assembly, which gets over to inspection.
00:40:53
Speaker
So you just account...
00:40:55
Speaker
that each department has to get those 10 a day and then that each department feeds the next department's work for their next day.
00:41:04
Speaker
So everybody's kind of within a four to five day split of each other.
00:41:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:09
Speaker
And then, yeah, when that's running at full speed,
00:41:12
Speaker
like we had it in Halloween Ultraman, 40 a week was the max that we hit.
00:41:18
Speaker
And it was very sustainable for about two months there, I would say, something like that.
00:41:23
Speaker
And yeah, it's really shocking.
00:41:28
Speaker
We never would have thought we would be doing 40 games a week, you know, five years ago.
00:41:33
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:41:34
Speaker
Well, you guys have been pretty good to pump these out pretty quick and your usual 18 month timeline has kind of shortened down because of it.
00:41:42
Speaker
Is 18 month always going just to be the goal or you guys, as you grow and expand and you're, you're knocking these out quicker, you're going to try to shorten that 18 month to a different window.
00:41:53
Speaker
Right.
00:41:54
Speaker
So 18 months is like the safest answer we can give where if anything goes wrong, we can still get it done in that time.
00:42:03
Speaker
I would like to brag a little bit that we've always beaten that timeline every single time.
00:42:08
Speaker
We've never, ever missed a production schedule in the history of the company.
00:42:13
Speaker
And that's definitely something we can keep doing.
00:42:15
Speaker
It should never be an issue.
00:42:17
Speaker
I hope, knock on wood.
00:42:18
Speaker
You never know.
00:42:19
Speaker
World's crazy.
00:42:20
Speaker
But
00:42:21
Speaker
Uh, so when we say 18 months, we're, we would like to shoot to get that done much quicker.
00:42:25
Speaker
Cause I, I know I wouldn't want to wait 18 months either.
00:42:28
Speaker
It's, it's way too long, but it's the safest time that we can get.
00:42:32
Speaker
Well, that's, that's smart too.
00:42:35
Speaker
Cause you don't want to oversell and underperform.
00:42:38
Speaker
It's easier to, to give people to, uh, go above their expectations.
00:42:44
Speaker
And so that's a good, a good business practice.
00:42:48
Speaker
Now over Spooky's history, I've counted them up.
00:42:52
Speaker
This is technically your 10th game.
00:42:54
Speaker
You have America's Most Haunted, Rob Zombie.
00:42:57
Speaker
Then you have the Dominoes and the Jetsons.
00:42:59
Speaker
Then you have Total Nuclear Annihilation, Alice Cooper's Nightmare Castle, Rick and Morty, Halloween, Ultraman, and now Scooby-Doo.
00:43:07
Speaker
What have you learned through each of the processes?
00:43:10
Speaker
And so this is the 10th time you're going through this.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
How does one build change and like the lessons you learn?
00:43:19
Speaker
Man, I mean, I could, if we've really gotten into all the details, this could be a 12-hour podcast.
00:43:25
Speaker
I mean, just the difference.
00:43:29
Speaker
Once Scooby-Doo's are out there, set a Scooby-Doo next to an AMH, and you can see all that we've learned and grown.
00:43:35
Speaker
I mean, every single new game we get to, we learn 100-plus things from the old one about how everything can be done better.
00:43:46
Speaker
I don't know a better way to really say it.
00:43:48
Speaker
I mean,
00:43:49
Speaker
just down to like on scooby-doo now we have light boards that's something we've never done before and we know it's going to help immensely well compared to like rick and morty tna halloween doing lights was always something that took a lot of time in the wiring department and is a lot of extra work light boards should hopefully streamline that and speed it up everything like that just learning hey like what departments are slowed down by what and how can we fix those and make them better and then you see how that affects them and then you just keep looking at it okay
00:44:17
Speaker
Now that they're really good at what they're doing here again, what's still slowing them down that we could make even better and just getting it down and down and down until everybody's really cruising.
00:44:27
Speaker
But just everything is absolutely massive, what you learn between games.
00:44:33
Speaker
I mean, one of the biggest things we learned between Halloween and Ultraman to Scooby now is just where the expectations of code are.
00:44:41
Speaker
And that's just one of the main things we're going to focus on making better.
00:44:43
Speaker
And then when this one's out and people get it,
00:44:46
Speaker
We're going to judge the reaction and then still keep growing upon that.
00:44:50
Speaker
And that goes from the code side, the animations, speech, call outs, rules, production.
00:44:58
Speaker
It goes everywhere.
00:44:59
Speaker
And it's a never ending process, to say the least.
00:45:03
Speaker
Looking at Scooby-Doo, it's pretty packed with mechs.
00:45:06
Speaker
You guys have done an awesome job to make this thing, you know, from top to bottom, have something almost every square inch of the game.
00:45:13
Speaker
Do you have any concerns of quality issues going forward, though?
00:45:16
Speaker
Because once you put more moving parts into a system, you have more liability of stuff breaking.
00:45:22
Speaker
So that is something that we really emphasized on making sure was better because we've done some really packed games with mechs before that, you know, reliability and serviceability were pretty rough and we don't want everything.
00:45:37
Speaker
We're going to make more of these than we've made any game.
00:45:39
Speaker
Hopefully we need them to work better.
Supply Chain and Operations
00:45:42
Speaker
So when we design things, we design them in a way that is what is going to ensure that this doesn't break or break.
00:45:49
Speaker
If it does break, it's very serviceable and accessible.
00:45:52
Speaker
That was a huge thing for us on Halloween was, okay, well, there's three upper play fields.
00:45:56
Speaker
These are going to have to be accessible.
00:45:57
Speaker
You have to be able to get to them.
00:45:59
Speaker
And there's servos and mechs, and they all need to be accessible and very simple to fix.
00:46:06
Speaker
Because there's a lot of mechs in pinball that look absolutely crazy, but when you actually get to the meat and potatoes of it, they're pretty simple to work on and fix.
00:46:14
Speaker
And so that's something that when we're designing, we really emphasize is that it's not hard to fix because we know how pinball is and we want our games to break less and we want them when they break that they're easy to fix.
00:46:27
Speaker
With the unknown of people doing collector's edition, people doing standard, people doing the bloodsuckers,
00:46:35
Speaker
How do you account for that in the build?
00:46:37
Speaker
Because it seems that I love what you're doing because if you want the collector's edition, you can get the collector's edition.
00:46:44
Speaker
But that does throw a little more complications into your planning.
00:46:49
Speaker
Yeah, so are you talking like as far as supply chain goes?
00:46:52
Speaker
Yeah, supply chain.
00:46:53
Speaker
Yeah, having the parts.
00:46:54
Speaker
I mean, it's kind of hard to predict.
00:46:57
Speaker
Oh, well, we're going to have a thousand collector's edition and 500 bloodsuckers and then, you know,
00:47:06
Speaker
169 to the stand or something like that, right?
00:47:08
Speaker
That, that radically changes your inventory.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:13
Speaker
So, and that's just something where, you know, it, it might get you one day, but, um, so far you just kind of have to really base it off of what your last game did.
00:47:23
Speaker
So like you base it off of the split from Rick and Morty, you base it off of the split of Halloween ultra man, and then you just don't over order.
00:47:31
Speaker
You can't over order, but you can't under order when you're doing those things.
00:47:35
Speaker
So you just have to really find what you think is a safe number to get started.
00:47:39
Speaker
And then after a little bit into the build, you get the, you start getting ready to order what the rest would be.
00:47:45
Speaker
And you'll typically have a pretty good idea of what that split's going to be.
00:47:49
Speaker
Worst case scenario, I get to have like 750 Charlie, the robots in my bedroom someday, and that'll make for a pretty cool decoration.
00:47:59
Speaker
That's worst case scenario.
00:48:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:01
Speaker
We are coming into the Christmas season.
00:48:04
Speaker
Now you have had historically, because of your awesome place to work, you do shut down for a week between Christmas and New Year's.
00:48:11
Speaker
Yes, we do.
00:48:12
Speaker
And so like, what are your goals until whatever the 23rd when you're actually shutting down, shutting the doors?
00:48:19
Speaker
What is your, what is your, what would you consider a successful December?
00:48:26
Speaker
So the current plan is we're going to be wrapping up the TNAs that we have left to build.
00:48:32
Speaker
We're going to be absolutely going through the shop and cleaning and gutting it and making sure that it's as ready for Scooby production as possible.
00:48:40
Speaker
We're getting all of our parts in order.
00:48:43
Speaker
for Scooby so that it's all sitting there ready to go.
00:48:46
Speaker
And we're kind of slowly working our way into getting that started.
00:48:50
Speaker
We've said multiple times online, we like to hold on to the first batch of 30 and really test them and make sure that they're built the way that we want it for production going through.
00:49:01
Speaker
I can't ask for a better December than we've been having, honestly.
00:49:05
Speaker
I mean, the fact that we were able to get the game out when we did and the fact that we were able to take sales and get TNA close to finished up and then kind of go into that break.
00:49:16
Speaker
And then we all know that when we come back, it's absolutely it's it's go time.
00:49:20
Speaker
I think it's been an absolutely perfect December so far.
Spooky Pinball's Future Outlook
00:49:24
Speaker
I don't know if I have any more questions.
00:49:25
Speaker
Do you have any more questions, Scott?
00:49:27
Speaker
No, I guess.
00:49:29
Speaker
So the final question I want to do is, okay, so let's look into the future.
00:49:34
Speaker
Where do you see spooky in two years?
00:49:39
Speaker
Where do I see Spooky in two years?
00:49:41
Speaker
You know what?
00:49:43
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:49:44
Speaker
Hopefully still making pinball.
00:49:46
Speaker
That would be the best case scenario.
00:49:47
Speaker
That would be number one, yes.
00:49:52
Speaker
No, I mean, I know what we have planned over the next two years, and I can't really say what those things are.
00:49:59
Speaker
But I would like to see us, of course, still...
00:50:02
Speaker
Getting games done on time, further code, better designs.
00:50:09
Speaker
I mean, obviously, I think each of our last two designs, they keep getting better and are some of the best that we've ever had.
00:50:15
Speaker
I would like to see them keep getting better.
00:50:18
Speaker
We're in a really healthy spot right now.
00:50:19
Speaker
I mean, I like where production is.
00:50:22
Speaker
I like our schedule.
00:50:23
Speaker
I like how everything is looking.
00:50:26
Speaker
And we've been growing, growing, growing, and we aren't going to necessarily stop growing.
00:50:31
Speaker
But I can't say that we're going to plan on doing 10,000 units of something in the next year, you know.
00:50:38
Speaker
I was gonna say, I really do have to congratulate spooky and your whole team, because I feel like out of the small distributor or the small manufacturers, you guys are definitely doing it right.
00:50:48
Speaker
You are delivering on your demands of.
00:50:52
Speaker
You've said 18 months.
00:50:53
Speaker
You're under that every window.
00:50:56
Speaker
You come through on your product that you're making.
00:50:59
Speaker
And because of the way that you guys run your business, COVID really didn't affect you guys.
00:51:05
Speaker
It probably was scary, but you guys were able to work through it.
00:51:09
Speaker
And it doesn't seem like you had as much hiccups as some of your fellow competitors.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, we got very fortunate with that.
00:51:17
Speaker
And really, the main thing that COVID affected was just the fact that we were shut down for that couple months that everybody was shut down.
00:51:24
Speaker
I mean, nobody went in, nobody made any games in that time.
00:51:27
Speaker
But once we got back, like I said, we still beat the production deadline and got it done.
00:51:33
Speaker
And kind of how we talked about
00:51:35
Speaker
how we organize our parts and production and everything like that earlier.
Upcoming Scooby-Doo Gameplay Reveal
00:51:39
Speaker
We were really set up in a good spot to get through COVID just fine.
00:51:42
Speaker
And we only hit a couple of hiccups along the way, really.
00:51:45
Speaker
And like I said, it still hasn't affected a production deadline yet.
00:51:49
Speaker
So it should stay the same.
00:51:52
Speaker
When do you anticipate us being able to see gameplay?
00:51:55
Speaker
So yeah, gameplay, obviously, we all want to get gameplay out as soon as possible and show everybody the code and show everybody how it plays, obviously.
00:52:04
Speaker
With how marketing goes and licensing and whatnot with the holidays right now, it's really hard to say exactly when it's going to be because a lot of those things just simply won't get looked at until the new year.
00:52:15
Speaker
But this January, you're definitely going to see gameplay.
00:52:18
Speaker
You're definitely going to see a Dead Flip live stream.
00:52:21
Speaker
where we're going to go in details about everything in the game and play for a few hours.
00:52:26
Speaker
And everybody will be able to see everything that they're asking to see.
00:52:31
Speaker
It's our number one priority.
00:52:32
Speaker
We want to get it out to everybody as soon as possible because we know that's what everybody is begging to see.
00:52:37
Speaker
And it totally makes sense.
00:52:38
Speaker
100% get why
Conclusion and Holiday Reminders
00:52:40
Speaker
it is.
00:52:40
Speaker
So we're going to be working on getting that out as soon as possible.
00:52:45
Speaker
Perfect.
00:52:45
Speaker
Well, I want to thank you, Bug, for coming on.
00:52:47
Speaker
This has been really awesome.
00:52:48
Speaker
I hope we didn't put you through the ringer too much.
00:52:51
Speaker
We really appreciate you coming on and answering all of our questions.
00:52:53
Speaker
And a personal thank you for me to you, for you and Spooky stepping up and helping us with flipping the script on autism.
00:53:01
Speaker
And you guys even went above and beyond.
00:53:02
Speaker
I know that...
00:53:04
Speaker
a lot of the stuff you guys had donated to the stream, uh, when the people received it, you gave them even more.
00:53:10
Speaker
It was like a swag bag per person that received all their stuff.
00:53:13
Speaker
And they were all very happy with what you guys had done for the, are flipping the script on the autism.
00:53:18
Speaker
So thank you again for helping out in that capacity as well for, for our event.
00:53:24
Speaker
It's our pleasure.
00:53:24
Speaker
Hit us up anytime that you need anything for stuff like that.
00:53:27
Speaker
We're, we're always, I would like to get more involved if we could with more things like that.
00:53:32
Speaker
I wish more people would reach out.
00:53:34
Speaker
Well, speaking of that, if they want to reach out and get in touch with you, what's the best way to do it?
00:53:40
Speaker
So depending on what aspect you are reaching out for, primarily squirrel at spooky pinball dot com is the best place to send questions and things like that.
00:53:50
Speaker
Otherwise, my email is bug bug at spooky pinball dot com.
00:53:54
Speaker
You can reach out to that anytime you need to.
00:53:57
Speaker
We're very active on pin side.
00:53:59
Speaker
If you're on pin side, you can private message any of us.
00:54:02
Speaker
We're all on there.
00:54:04
Speaker
What else?
00:54:05
Speaker
Those are the primary places that you can reach out, I would say.
00:54:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:08
Speaker
And I think we've got you the Loser Kid 1.0 hat, but we're going to get you some 2.0 hats so you can pass around at the office.
00:54:17
Speaker
Heck yeah.
00:54:17
Speaker
I need new hats.
00:54:18
Speaker
I have a cycle where I just routinely run through pinball hats that have been gifted to me.
00:54:24
Speaker
I'm working on my Tilt Minneapolis hat right now.
00:54:27
Speaker
And it was white at one point.
00:54:29
Speaker
It's not so white anymore.
00:54:30
Speaker
So I'll be ready to move on to my next one soon.
00:54:33
Speaker
I'm wearing the current version and the current version is black.
00:54:35
Speaker
And so it stays looking nice for a while.
00:54:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:40
Speaker
Well, if you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com.
00:54:44
Speaker
Also, you can get ahold of us on the socials at loser kid pinball podcast on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch.
00:54:51
Speaker
Uh, we are excited to have a couple more interviews over the next couple of weeks and the hundredth episode is coming up.
00:54:58
Speaker
And so it's going to be awesome.
00:55:00
Speaker
Got anything else for us?
00:55:01
Speaker
You got anything else for us, Scott?
00:55:03
Speaker
No, I just hope everybody sincerely has a safe and happy holiday time.
00:55:08
Speaker
And if you're lonely, go and play some pinball with some friends.
00:55:12
Speaker
I mean, really, it can be hard for a lot of people.
00:55:15
Speaker
And so just reach out to your friends who may not have the same sort of support system that you have.
00:55:22
Speaker
And if you don't want to wish someone a specific holiday, you can always say happy Christmas on a Kwanzaa.
00:55:27
Speaker
And Festivus, the Festivus for the rest of us.