Before I get going, I want to make sure that there's, you know, a lot of times there's
a misunderstanding when I get up to do these things and for people who've come to Pinball
Expo over the years, it always seems like it ends up being about me and we'll get
to that part of it, but when I started in this business, a game team consisted of six
people and now a game team is almost 20 people across three candidates and my job has changed,
but the point is that just like when you go to the movies and you see a movie by Steven
Spielberg when they roll the credits, there's 4,000 people who had to build the movie. Well,
in this room tonight, there's probably 25 people and I want you all to raise your hands
if you're part of the game team. Right now, raise your hands.
What's going to happen?
These are people who didn't make this happen and all the spectacular stuff that we put
in this game is because of them and because I'm just crazy enough to think it out. So
with that being said, I'm back. I feel like that guy who gets to say, let's get ready
to rumble! I know Jack already did this. I'm going to do it real fast. I'm going to run
through it. Operators, raise your hands. Operators, everybody give them a round of applause.
The first time we were here, the first time it was a pinball expo. I've been doing this
so long that I'm not old and forget things. When that picture was taken, I actually remembered
things. Now I forget most of what goes on during the day and my team has to remind me.
Keep that in mind as we go tonight if my like brain wanders off over here somewhere. I realized
that on my drive here today that it's been so long since I did a game that especially
for the first timers who have gotten to see what our wonderful hobby and what pinball is
about, you might not exactly know who I am or what I do very quickly. I've done games
like Bonsai Run, The Earthshaker, Whirlwind, Funhouse, The Adams Family, Five Nights Over
Time, I went into a road show, Safe Cracker, Monopoly, Family Guy, and a bunch of others.
So that's who Pal Balder is. I can't tell you how excited I am. I'd like to show you
what it is we've just gotten out of getting ready to show you. How did I get back here?
Well that's an interesting question. Do you remember that movie where the government scientist
is retired and he's by the stream and he's fishing? And the helicopter comes and it lands
next to him and they rush out and they say, would you come back and do this? It was just
like that. Except that there was no helicopter in the stream on my property. It is dry and
I'm on the side of the earth. Anyway, so Jack called me up and he said he'd like an original
game. And I asked him pointedly. I said, honestly Jack, does anybody care about unlicensed games
anymore? It seemed to me that the only thing people were interested in by just perusing
the internet lately was, oh I want the next movie or oh I want a band from 20 years ago
or I want some. Why would you go to them and say I have an original game? Trying to build
an original game for anybody who's come to any of our seminars in the past. It's the
most dangerous thing in the world because if when we present you that original game
you don't get the joke. We've just spent a year or two of our lives wasting it. And so
Jack said, no, that's really what I want to do. I really want to do an original theme.
And I thought that was amazing that somebody was willing to take that risk and put that
much trust in what I could think up and design for them. So I said yes. And then Jack told
me something interesting. Jack said that, he told me why he founded the company. He
said, and I'm going to read this because I've got it written down here on a piece of paper.
He said, I have discerning customers who want full featured pinball machines. They don't
want disabled games re-warmed every time out. And I said, do you really mean I can put a
lot of stuff in this game? And he said, and what you're going to see tonight is, wow,
did we cook the game? I'm going to grab the microphone down here for a second, but I
want you to know something. Right now we're going to talk about details. And at Jersey
Jack, details matter. Being full featured matters a lot.
We're back. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to show you our new platform.
We just spent the last nine months redoing the platform that the game goes in. And you're
saying to yourself, why does the platform matter? Well, the platform matters a lot because
that's the base that we build everything in from then on. And while the first two games
were a great platform, there's nothing wrong with them. The people who've got those games,
you know, they work the way they're supposed to. But we're always trying to do things a
little better. And so what we did was we went back and we somewhat thought about the design
of the cabinet. Now, what we've got over here is this beautiful black cabinet. And you're
saying to yourself, that's pretty boring. I hope that's not something that's going to
be a game. But I'm going to point out some of the things in this cabinet that we've done
that make a difference for what we do. The first thing is, look, there's no boards. There's
nothing in there. That means that we can go back to building games with mechanisms that
are as deep as we need to get them. And that's a pretty cool thing. The next thing that's
obvious about this cabinet or in obvious about this cabinet is we've turned it up to an industry
standard, which means that you don't have to raise the loblers to get it to six and a half
degrees. If you take it out of the box and have the loblers all the way in, the game
is sitting at six and a half degrees. And by the way, the bubble bubble that I invented
on pinball machines in 1991 is back on the game. Now you say that's not very exciting.
We just put it back the way it used to be. But there's some other things we did to the
cabinet, which are pretty cool. The first thing is we've taken and we put the earphone
jack and the volume controlled down on the front piece of the cabinet. And what does
that do? Well, it does a couple of things. First of all, for the operators, it means
we now have an industry standard door that you can swap on and off and not have to worry
about the headphone jack being on the door. But we've done something else very, very cool
with what we've done and moved it there. The software guys decided that since we moved
out, we may as well do something more fun with it. If you're a homeowner and you want
to play at home, what's the thing you hate to do most with your game? You hate to open
up the front door and change the volume. It's a pain in the neck. You've got to figure
out where the keys are because your kid just ran off with them. And then you can't change
the volume. You can't play at 12 o'clock midnight because the family's sleeping. So completely
owner selectable in the software diagnostics, you can go in and if you're an operator,
it operates just like it used to be. Volume is on the door, no problem. But if you're
a homeowner, you can turn on that switch and you can change the volume without opening
the coin door. Speaking of volume, we completely redid the sound system in the game. And we
went through and we got what we call a more matched setup going on here now. We boosted
the size of the midrange speakers in the game from what's in the games that were previous
to this game. And we matched the woofer in the cabinet to match the sonic ability of
the rest of the system. So now what happens is we have a more balanced setup that gives
you a much bigger frequency range coming out of the pinball machine. And in order to do
that with the cabinet we have, the two midrange speakers which are now located here and here,
okay, are reflex speakers. They're pointing up in the cabinet and they come out at you
through those grills. And the other neat thing we did with our sound system is, if you want
to service any of the components of the sound system instead of having to work with 20 screws,
there are two security screws up in the front here. When you take the panel off, you can
work on the speakers or do whatever you want to do with them. Now comes my favorite part
of what we did with the cabinet. This is the, let's pull it back. So we're going to take
the glass out. And look, there's the boards right where they belong on a pinball machine.
And it's great. You can get in and do that, but you're saying to yourself, there's that
stupid monitor in the way. I can't possibly work on all those components that are in this
game with that there. So, you can simply move the monitor out of the way. It opens on either
side of the cabinet. And you can work on what you need to work on. You can work on it while
the speakers, while the playing field is raised. There's plenty of room. If you're in a pin
line, it swings to either side. And away you go, which means you can be running all your
diagnostics here. Do what you want to do. And when you're done, all you have to do is fold
it back into the game, put the clips down, and you're done. Details matter. Let me catch
up just a second in my notes here. All right. Now we're getting to the part of the program
that you all came for. Because you didn't all come here to see an empty cabinet. I know
that. Yes, we wanted to see it all. We noticed. We noticed because we got beat over the head
with it. That some of you like games that are based on comic books. We brought you each
a comic book. Everybody's going to get a comic book. They're all coming to hand out the comic
book that this game is based on. And it's our original comic book. So if you just hang
on a minute, all of our happy minions here are going to run around. They're going to
get you your free comic book to take home tonight. And this is what the game is based
on. All right. As Jack already told you, my mom always
told me it's more fun to make your own toys. It's more fun to make your own comic book
to make your own comic book to make your own comic book to make your own comic book to make
