- In this presentation, Gary
Stern, of Stern Pinball,
joins us again to update
us on what's been going on
with Stern Pinball since last year,
and there's a lot of stuff.
Aerosmith Pinball, a new LCD screen
for their pinball machines,
and lots of other fun stuff are just some
of the topics that Gary's going to discuss
in this presentation.
(upbeat electronic music)
(electronic whirring)
- We're going to tell you,
that's a royal we, that means me,
a little bit about what Stern is doing,
then we'll see if you have
some questions for me,
and, I will try to answer every question
except what our next game is
because we don't talk about that,
or maybe we haven't decided,
you don't know what it might be,
but I'll be explaining to you
what we're trying to do,
and what we're trying to do with pinball,
and basically, it is
about everything pinball,
everything that we can
possibly do with pinball.
Those of you who haven't
gotten to play Aerosmith,
you really need to try and get to it
because people, once you play it,
you'll see the beauty in the game.
It is, once people get to play it,
our orders have skyrocketed,
and we're building a lot of games
in order to fill the demand.
We're still back-ordered
on our various games
a month and a half, two months,
but we're increasing production
and trying to fill the orders we have,
and why is there so much interest?
A, it's a great game,
like this one by John,
and B, is a lot of the different
things that we're doing.
So, if you go to that
next little slide here,
I'm gonna take you
through some of the stuff
that we're doing,
but we know the pinball
community is growing,
and I'm going talk about more
than just the pinball community.
The record attendance at shows like this,
and this place is mobbed,
lots of people here.
Lots of different games.
There's a millennial
attraction to pinball.
We're coming, we've got new interest.
Young people, like you all,
and some of you who aren't so young.
We have the barcade.
I was out last night with
a customer, customers,
a couple that we sell
games to that are dealers,
and we went to an arcade after dinner.
We went to an arcade that has a bar.
That's not a barcade,
FTW in the movie theater
on Illinois in Chicago, we
went to Headquarters Beercade
in River North.
We went to Emporium, the first Emporium.
Those of you who have been down to,
or are from Chicago, 1300
block of Milwaukee Avenue,
mobbed with young people.
I mean, you could barely
walk into the place.
You couldn't walk in it,
and then, we went to
Emporium in Logan Square,
and also mobbed, and then,
we went to Logan Hardware
around the corner, did
a little barcade tour,
had to drink a little bit of vodka,
and the other people, beer.
I can't drink that much beer,
but I do like the way,
and some of you have
heard me say this before,
the young people's places will
have the name of the beer,
the price, and the alcohol content,
and I happen to like Le Fin Du Monde,
which in French is the end of the world.
It's 8.5% alcohol.
It's a very good, I like it a lot.
It's good.
So, barcades' growth.
You know, we're also doing digital games.
We're doing our games digitally
to, with far sight to,
couple of eight by tens for me,
and to introduce even
more people to pinball,
and now, with Oculus, the virtual reality,
I was playing the virtual reality
at the Consumer Electronics Show,
which I'll talk about in a minute,
and I am a much better
player at virtual reality
than terrestrial, or regular, pinball.
Jody Dankberg explained to me
that that's because the
ball is running a lot slower
on the virtual reality version.
I think he had it adjusted down.
So, in any event, we're
doing lots of marketing,
lots of media, lots of growth.
Some of you might have seen
our CBS Good Morning
America Sunday episode
where we just introduced pinball
to a major audience there.
We're doing a lot.
In fact, if we talk media, let
me have the next one, please.
I have not met the Kardashians,
but they know our pinball
and want to be part of our,
the Stern army, which we'll
talk a little bit about
what the Stern Army is.
For the next slide,
you'll see that we were
at the Consumer Electronics Show.
You say, "Why?
"Why at the Consumer Electronics Show?
"Why do you take commercial pinballs
"to the Consumer Electronics Show?"
And we get asked this a lot,
and I explain to the various
news media people there that,
well, it's got electronics
in it, and consumers play it.
So, it is a consumer electronics,
but we actually, you know,
we spend a lot of money
to go to the show because
it's not where we sell games.
It's where we introduce
pinball to the public
and expand the recognition of pinball.
It's very important to create
more interest in pinball,
in the pinball community, and
again, everything pinball,
we want everyone to know about it.
We show the virtual reality there.
You can also see we built
a super booth with a ramp,
and a big pop upper in it, and so forth.
We were on, USA Today listed us
as one of the five show stoppers
when we had, showing Aerosmith there.
They really enjoyed pinball.
We get good coverage.
We're also different than
any other exhibit there,
and that's, we got
something for people to do.
So, it's, you know, we're mobbed in it.
We go to the press events prior to it,
and again, this is just to
expand the knowledge of pinball,
and the recognition of
pinball, and let people know
that yeah, there's still pinball machines,
and, in fact, we get
more and more interest.
So, if you go to the next
slide, I talked about barcades,
and this is some of the barcades.
I don't know how many
of you go to barcades
besides me in the room, but they're fun.
They're fun, but I want you,
when you go to that barcade,
you look and you see,
and I'm gonna talk about
casual players in a minute.
You'll see how many of the
people know how to catch a ball,
how to flip or pass a ball.
How many people are just having fun
and are very, very casual players?
And that's very important that
we talk about casual players.
We'll come back to that in a minute.
Next, next one just shows
some of the various press
that we get, Time Magazine,
Wall Street Journal,
Wired Magazine.
We get plenty of press,
and that's because pinball is interesting.
People are interested in it,
and again, if we are out there being seen,
other people will want to write about us
and see about us.
So, it's very important to expose pinball,
to have a greater exposure of it.
That's why you'll see that we
are, we go to various events
with our pinball machines, in
order to further expose them,
that aren't pinball events
but are just general events.
We go to Comic-Con every
year, and Comic-Con is the,
it's like pinball, in that
there is a core of people
that are really avid
enthusiasts, really into it.
Same with pinball.
We have a core of people
that are into pinball,
and for those of you who
aren't from Milwaukee,
it's the same with Harley.
You have a core of people,
a core of enthusiasts,
that are really into it, but
that's not the entire business,
and that's not the entire
comic book business,
the entire Harley business,
the entire pinball business,
but we do go there.
We got to Lollapalooza, Pitchfork,
these are concerts in the Chicago area
where we set up an area, a pinball area
to expose pinball to more people.
The next slide is, we moved
into a, it's two years in May,
it'll be two years in May.
We moved out of our
40,000 square foot factory
into a 110,000 square foot factory
with two large assembly lines.
We're making, give or take,
50 games a day right now,
and it's amazing how quickly
we filled the factory up,
but having said that, with a
little vertical integration,
the presentation that you see there
is our governor came to
sing me Happy Birthday.
Actually, he came to
talk about manufacturing,
but it happened to be on my 70th birthday
that he came to the factory.
That would have been almost two years ago
because in June I'll be 72.
So, and you notice he's
a little taller than me.
If they had pictures, he's a big guy,
but, what he came to talk
about is manufacturing,
manufacturing in Illinois,
and we actually talk about
manufacturing in America.
We're very proud to have been
and to continue to be
American manufacturers,
and that we think it's very important
to have manufacturing in our country.
So, we continue with that.
Now, let's, give me the next slide,
and you'll see here we talk
about the type of games,
or the genre of the
games, that we're making.
We make, we try to make what
we call cornerstone games,
three new main games a year,
like Aerosmith, like Ghostbusters.
Three of those a year.
Now, last year we were two
because Ghostbusters was very, very,
it remains very, very strong.
Very good game for you all,
very good game for our
operators operating,
very good game for home owners, the title.
It almost surprises us
how exciting that title
is for people.
So, it is, we were two last year.
We try to be three, and we
try to build those games
as sort of a half a bell curve.
It's like anything else, you start high,
and then, you have a long tail.
So, we continue to make
those games for a long time.
Two and three years continuing
to make the same game.
So, this year, we'll probably
make 15 different games,
three new games and a bunch of,
in different configurations,
and a bunch of older cornerstone games.
We also occasionally make a vault edition,
just like Disney talks about,
and I said this to Disney the other day.
"We adapted your term."
We take Spider-Man out of the
vault, the same type of thing.
Iron Man out of the vault,
and so, we occasionally
are going to remake a game,
updating it minimally,
but out of the vault,
maybe not updating it at all,
and then, sometimes, a studio edition.
That's where somebody
else brings us a game,
or most of a game.
Whoa Nellie! was a studio edition
that Dennis and Greg brought to us,
and we had to, we updated
to our solid state their,
electronic engineering
instead of electromechanical,
but that's a studio game.
Batman was a studio game.
A concept was brought by
our former head of design,
Joe Kaminkow.
Most of the work, though, nonetheless,
done my George Gomez and Lyman Sheats,
but that was a studio game
and done in conjunction
with Kaminkow's Ka-Pow.
On the next slide, next slide,
when the cornerstone games are made
in three different configurations.
One size does not fit all.
We have three different market segments
for our cornerstone games,
and, you know, I used to get laughed at
about my three-legged
farmer's milking stool,
but you have to understand
that there are three segments
that we're servicing,
and we're unique in that.
There are other people
trying to make pinball.
I think that's great, and you know,
they don't make as many variety of models
or anything we do.
You put 'em all together, they
don't make as many variety,
but we are going to have three versions
of these cornerstone games.
For the collector, we have a
premium, a limited edition.
For the enthusiast, more, basically,
the features of the limited edition,
a little less eye-candy,
not quite as expensive,
and so, then, we have a premium,
and for the game operator,
and often the rec-room buyer,
and sometimes, the enthusiast,
we have the pro.
Now, what I do mean by all that?
Three channels, three segments,
we have collector/enthusiasts,
and that's many of the people here,
and we appreciate you all, and
that market has grown a lot
over the years.
It's still growing a little.
We have game operators, people
who put the games in FECs,
in barcades, in bowling alleys, in bars.
Exceptionally important, that's growing
because of the games we're making.
We're the only people who are
servicing the game operator
because we're the only people making a pro
a lower-priced game,
and the operator, if he's operating games,
or the bar has lots of
enthusiasts, then great.
They'll have enthusiasts.
He may want a premium
and operate a premium.
The economics say that doesn't
make sense in most locations.
He needs a pro game.
If we don't service that
operator, in 20 years,
pinball business will be gone
because you guys are
interested in pinball,
people maybe want one for their home,
but that's because they see pinball.
If there's no pinball on the street,
nobody's collecting horse and buggies.
They're collecting cars,
and they're collecting,
they're not collecting Model A's anymore
because the people who
want Model A's are dead,
the people who remember them.
They're collecting old Mustangs.
They're collecting Ferraris.
They're collecting 356 Porsches,
cars that they might
have known, muscle cars,
cars they might have known
when they were young,
and those are popular as collector cars.
Operators, very important
because that gets people
introduced to pinball.
It keeps it out there, and
it makes it where we can,
half our games go to operators,
maybe less than half in this
country, but 97% in Italy.
We export half of our
games all over the world.
Operators, collector/enthusiasts,
and what we call rec-room buyers,
a guy who's 45, 50 years old,
played pinball when he was 20.
He wants one for the
home 'cause they're cool,
tells his wife they're for the kids,
'cause otherwise it ain't
comin' in the house.
That's how houses work,
and he gets a pinball.
He'll probably never have two.
She's not going to let him have two.
Maybe he's got a pool table
and a pinball, or not.
He's got one pinball, and
he may trade it in one day.
He may turn into an
enthusiast and end up with 50,
and I've seen that type of thing happen,
go to, from one, to five,
to 10, and so forth,
but basically, that rec-room buyer,
who is basically a pro-buyer, he maybe,
maybe he'll get a premium,
occasionally an LE.
We need all of these, all three markets,
and if we don't have operators,
if we don't have games
being played in barcades,
and I know you'll go to the barcade,
and again, they can't
catch a ball and so forth.
They're casual, casual players.
Although, most of the barcades now
participate in different leagues
or bar leagues go from place to place.
If we don't have games being operated,
if we don't have pro games,
there will not be pinball
because nobody will see it.
If we don't go to the
Consumer Electronics Show,
if we don't go to Lollapalooza,
if we don't get on CBS,
nobody will know pinball's
around, and it will die out,
and you say, "Oh, no, we're
going to keep it alive,
"and some of these other
companies will always make games."
Nah, uh-huh.
It'll be gone.
It'll be gone, and you
guys who collect games
will have one in the corner,
or two in the corner,
or three in the corner that
you're able to keep pieces for,
and you'll tell your
friends when they come over,
"Don't touch that!
"That's an antique.
"Don't touch it."
These are games.
They are to be played, and by
the way, when you play them,
they get beat up.
So, don't expect that the
game is going to stay pristine
and perfect unless you want
to put it in the corner
and don't play it 'cause
it will get beat up.
That ball is, that steel ball
is flying around that play
field, and it's hitting things,
and it's hitting the wood,
and it's hitting the plastic,
or this or that,
and if you think everything's
going to stay pristine,
don't play the game.
Easy, easy.
Just put it in the corner.
Don't play it.
So, we have the three different versions,
the pro, the premium,
and the limited edition.
We're unique in that.
Some people, other people
make limited editions
and what they call a
standard or a premium,
which is nothing more than the same game
when they run out of the first one.
We do distinguish them,
but it's real important.
We're the only people who make a pro.
You gotta have pros out there.
You gotta have games on the street.
Let's go to the next slide,
and you'll see that we
also do a few other things.
We are still working with our
entry-level game, The Pin.
It's a consumer game, non-coin-op,
trying to find the exact channel,
that's, again, for that rec-room buyer,
and our game, our Spider-Man,
our game, is really fun.
It's a nice game.
Those of you who have played it,
it's really a pinball machine.
It's not a toy.
We're trying to find the right channel
for selling this.
That's a rec-room buyer game,
and we're still working on it.
We're still working on that.
Private Label, you know, that we made,
the Pabst Blue Ribbon
game, it's very cool,
and we, sort of our introduction to it
is we make pinball more
acceptable, more visual,
more and more people
are interested in doing,
corporations will be interested,
and that's our, that's
game one in our portfolio,
and then, contract manufacturing.
We made, Medieval Madness
we made for Chicago Gaming,
and we just assembled.
When they gave us parts, we assembled it.
When they didn't give us
parts, we built something else.
We are, we don't have anymore
of that planned right now.
Don't know if we build for
somebody else again or not.
We don't have, we, for those
of you who are interested
in the Attack From Mars, we are not,
we have nothing to do with it.
We're not building it.
So, that's something,
they're going to try
and build it themselves.
Let's go to the next slide,
and I talked about the
Pabst Blue Ribbon game,
Private Label.
You can see how they're using this game
promoting Pabst Blue Ribbon,
promoting PBR and liquor stores, and I,
this young lady is fantastic,
absolutely fantastic.
I think that's great.
The next slide, I said everything pinball.
Accessories, and we make
licensed accessories.
You know, if you license,
our titles are all licensed.
We pay the licensor, and
it has many advantages
to being licensed.
If, it gives, it's where
the world is today.
You make a stuffed animal
that looks like a mouse,
you're not going to sell
it unless you pay Walt
to call it Mickey.
It's just the way the world works.
It gives designers four
corners within which to design.
It gives them ideas.
You work with other creative people.
We, when we did Tales From The Crypt,
there was a scene in the display
of somebody being cut
in half with a chainsaw.
Very, very creative on our people's part,
or on somebody's part.
It actually was Joe Pesci.
I saw the episode when he was cut in half.
So, our people saw it and got an idea.
I mean, there was a ball-eating
dinosaur on Jurassic Park
because it was Jurassic Park,
and Crichton knew enough
to use dinosaurs for his cloning book,
book about cloning, and it worked.
Jurassic Park, now, they've got,
how many movies have they made now?
They're getting better and better again.
If we make a game called
Zombies For Hell, From Hell,
and I call our French
customer, and they'll say,
"OK, give me two.
"I will test it."
Remember, we're in a commercial business.
"I will test it for eight weeks
"and tell you how many I want."
If I call them and say,
"I've got The Walking Dead."
They say, "Here's $300,000.
"I'm wiring it to you.
"Send me some games."
Licensing sells.
You can see that in all.
You go into one of the Lego stores now,
and you'll see that half
the Lego games are licensed,
licensed theme, Lego license.
So, any event, accessories.
We make accessories, toppers,
ball-shooter knobs, this or that.
They're all licensed.
It is against the law to use
the IP of the copyright owner
to make an accessory unless
you pay the licensor.
You can't make a topper for Aerosmith
with Aerosmith in it
and anything like that.
You're violating copyright law.
It happens to be criminal,
but we'll put that part aside.
They don't like it,
and they chase some of
the people who do it.
On the next slide, we
talk here about digital,
again, in smart phones, and by the way,
if we don't have pinball on the street,
today's 20-year-old, when he goes,
and he's 45 to 50 years old,
and he wants to get the game
that he played when he was 20,
instead of a pinball machine
that was in a bar that he's going to buy,
he is going to look for one of these, OK?
And he's going to look
for an old smartphone.
We need pinball machines on the street.
We need to introduce
more people to pinball.
We need them to have
fun as a casual player
in addition to deep rules for you guys,
but back to the digital.
So, we introduce more people
to pinball using digital.
Yeah, we make a little bit of money at it.
I wish we made a lot more at it
'cause we need to make more
money to design more games
and to do more stuff with 'em.
We now have, with Oculus,
we have the virtual reality,
and what's unique about
pinball in virtual reality
is you can play it without puking.
A lot of the VR games you can
get seasick from and so forth.
Our pinball, they're lookin' for,
they're all lookin' for
content, the VR people.
We are content, and
we're content that's fun,
and you can play.
Now, if I had a dream, we'll buy digital.
I would come out with a
digital version of Aerosmith
at the same time as the
terrestrial, the regular game,
to introduce people to it,
maybe give a one minute free
gameplay on the digital,
and have a locator in the digital
and GPS in the pinball
machine so somebody could find
where to play one.
Just something in the future.
Again, we have to make money
in order to develop these kind of things,
but that would be a dream I would have,
digital and terrestrial,
same time, GPS locator.
Next slide is Ghostbusters.
You all know about Ghostbusters.
We have, we're still making
the pro and the premium.
That's the next slide.
Where are we?
There we are.
The pro and the premium.
We're doing pretty good
together you and I.
Keep it up, Bill.
I think you're watching me turn pages.
So, any event, the LEs, of course,
we don't have the limited edition,
but we continue to make
both of these games.
It's one of our better-selling games.
It's a, it's got a great little bash toy
for the casual player, easy to pull down,
that being the Slimer.
Very important for the, and
we need the casual player
to have fun.
He may develop into a
great player, he may not.
He may stay a casual player,
and he may want a game.
He may become a game
collector when he's older.
He may be a rec-room
buyer and have one game,
but if there's no games on the street,
if he never sees a pinball machine,
he isn't gonna want one
when he's 45, 50 years old.
Pac-Man, the next slide
is, of course, Pac-Man,
and we continue to make
the, this is a game we did
as a studio game with
Ka-Pow with Joe Kaminkow,
and Joe, by the way, he
was our head of design,
my associate.
We were owned by Data
East and, later, by Sega.
We sold it from Data East to Sega.
We were involved in that,
and he then went into IGT,
the slot machine company,
to Aristocrat, the slot machine company,
one of the most creative people.
In fact, there was an
article in Las Vegas,
The Ten Most Creative People,
important people to slot machines,
or gambling, in Las Vegas
at that particular time,
a number of years ago.
Number eight was Steve Wynn, Wynn Hotels.
Number seven was Joe
Kaminkow and what he did
for the slot machine game
development and the licensing.
All, you look at a casino,
a lot of licensed games.
Wonder why they do it.
Because it works.
Next page, of course, is the game itself,
and we made a premium,
which we're still making,
and we made a limited
edition that are long gone.
We did something unique.
We wanted to see if people really wanted
a really super game.
We made a super LE, very
limited in quantity.
The demand for it was a little more.
So, we expanded a little,
but there was 30 of 'em
for each of the 30 years
of Stern and 50 of 'em
for each of the 50 years of Batman 66.
Coincidentally, 16 was their
fiftieth and our thirtieth.
So, that worked well.
Then, of course, we come to Aerosmith,
which we're making now,
and this is a very,
those of you who have played it, great.
Those who haven't played,
got nine different pieces of music in it.
Listen, for the casual player,
all you need is a toy box.
So, casual player, they see that once,
and it's just, wow.
Borg did a great job with that,
and so, of course, we've got
the different versions of it
and we've just, let's just
run through those real quick,
and we want to, I think
that's the pictures we have,
but I want to tell, and as I say,
we're making a lot of games.
So, right now, we will make now, and soon,
more Metallica pro.
I don't know when we'll make that.
We have more Metallica
Monsters we're making.
We are making more in May.
We're making more of those.
In May, we're making more
of The Walking Dead pro
and premium.
The, we've got one Whoa Nellie! right now.
We may make more of those.
We have, making more Game of Thrones pro.
Don't know about Game of Thrones premium.
That's not scheduled yet.
We're making more Spider-Man vault.
We're making more
Ghostbusters pro and premium.
We're making more Batman premium.
We're making more
Aerosmith pro and premium.
So, we have a lot of
games that we plan making.
Let's see, that is one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, about different models
in the next two or three
months that we're making.
Again, we, it's everything
pinball, the pinball machines,
the accessories, some merchandise, also,
I didn't mention that, and multiple models
so that we can have variety out there,
both for the operator, for you guys,
and for that rec-room buyer.
So, with that I've eaten up enough.
You guys got any questions,
other than what our next game is?
As I said, I will try and answer them.
- [Man] Congrats on Aerosmith.
It's a great game.
We had a launch tournament
a few weekends ago
that Mark sponsored, and it was a blast.
I see that as a game in my future.
I just wanted to ask you about it though.
Joe Perry, Joe Perry from
Aerosmith, is a pinball fan.
Did you guys get him involved in testing?
Was there any involvement with them or--
- I, I have to tell you, I don't
know how much do, you know,
they were, short of
testing, certainly, they,
everything is approved by the band, OK?
And each of the different
people in the band--
- [Man] Put their images
and everything like that--
- Yeah, oh, not just the images,
what the game's going to do,
the game play of it, so forth.
Tyler had to see video
of the game being played,
that type of thing.
So, yeah, they were
involved in that respect,
into the design itself.
It was presented to them,
and they liked and didn't like things.
- [Man] Yeah, it would have been cool
if you could have gotten Tyler
for voicing the character.
I don't know if you
guys tried that or not.
He's--
- They're very busy people.
You certainly, he certainly saw the video,
and we had an early
video that we used of it,
and it actually was pretty good.
The other thing in their videos,
I don't know if you all have
seen the premium version,
or the LE and the premium,
with the upper play field.
It's really well used in it.
So, the premium and the LE,
the pro is a very nice game.
The premium and LE are pretty special.
That upper play field is very nice, yeah.
(crowd chattering)
- [Man] What was your favorite game
that your company ever made,
your personal favorite?
- I've answered this question many times,
and I'm going to answer it the same way.
Yesterday, before I left the factory,
and the factory was working today,
and they worked half the
day, but I wasn't there.
Yesterday, before I left the factory,
I went out, and I looked,
and I saw what was on the assembly line,
and it was Aerosmith.
So, that's my favorite game.
If you had asked me three months ago,
I probably would have said, I
would have said, Ghostbusters.
That's my favorite game.
We make games I like,
and no, they're not really for me
in the sense that if we were
picking a theme, a title,
a license that's just for me,
it would probably be, I'm 71,
it would Fareed Zakaria
Global Public Square.
That's a CNN TV show on
Sunday mornings, guys.
So, but I like the games we make,
and I am a salesman.
So, I obviously like the ones I'm selling,
and so, I'm just going to
tell you what's on the line,
and that's my favorite game.
(crowd chattering)
Nice shirt.
- [Man] Thanks.
- You're welcome.
- [Man] When you have
a lot of popular games
that came out in the last couple of years,
like Ghostbusters,
Metallica, Walking Dead,
that you're still making more of,
does that mean that you
have to balance that
with new games?
With your new facility, do
you have plenty of capacity?
- We plan, the plan is to
continue to make a game
for a period of time,
but obviously, as I said,
we start sort of a half a bell curve.
So, you start with a large
quantity and have a long tail.
We like a long tail.
Now, at some point, the license is over,
and unless you re-buy it and
pull it out of the vault,
we buy a license, then you're
not going to make it again.
Some games will get made a little more.
Some games won't.
We want to be sure they're
going to hold their value
for you all, and also,
for that game operator.
See, for a game operator,
that resale value
is very important because we're unique.
We have resale value and most
products just depreciate.
We can have appreciation
instead of depreciation.
So, the plan, the whole
structure of the business
is three cornerstones a year
plus many continuations of
them in premium and pros.
(crowd chattering)
- [Man] Other questions?
- You guys are easy.
(crowd chattering)
- [Man] I saw that Aerosmith
has a color screen now.
- Yeah.
- [Man] What were the challenges in it?
- The LCD screen is quite a challenge
in a number of respects.
There's a lot of work that goes into in.
Now, we have two games, our LCD screen
is just slightly different
in size than the dot-matrix.
We think that's the appropriate size.
The game is on the play field.
It's not on the screen.
We think that, there's score,
and some animations, and so forth.
It's great, but the
game's on the play field.
We like having a backglass.
So, we think pinball
should have a backglass.
It's pinball art.
It should have it.
It's just traditional pinball.
We are a traditional product.
We're actually, there's a traditional size
for pinball machines.
It's a ball and bat game.
It is a game.
The pinball machines, cocktail tables,
round pinballs weren't
particularly successful.
Neil Falconer was a
programmer and sound guy
in our business from
Bally, and then to us,
and every time somebody started
making a wide-bodied game
he got his resume out and cleaned it up
because he knew pinball had a problem.
Harry Williams taught me the wide,
and Harry was like a second father to me.
Our history, many of you
know, is coming from Williams.
My father was an, and then
the, owner of Williams
from 1947 'til he sold it in 64,
and we left there in the 70's.
You make a wide-body, you gotta put,
you spend a lot more money
putting a lot more parts in it.
The ball slows up left to right.
If you don't narrow it
where the slingshots are,
the ball's just going to die in there.
Well, back to the display.
Yes, there's a lot challenges.
You notice we've done two
different type of display work.
One is using existing video, or film,
or whatever one wants, what is available,
and that's in the case of Batman 66,
and the other is doing our own animation.
It's a lot of work, and it's a lot people,
and it's a lot of money to do the design,
but it was time to move on, and we put,
we're all LCDs now.
We have the new SPIKE System, which,
must have had a picture
in here that I skipped,
and now, we have SPIKE 2, which is a,
so, the electronic, the
display itself, OK, let's,
it's priced a little
different than a dot-matrix,
but the electronics to drive it
add a significant amount of cost,
and the people to populate it
add a really significant
amount of cost to the game,
and especially the kind of things
we're trying to do with it,
and I think our guys have done,
you watch the displays on Batman,
and you watch it on Aerosmith.
I think they've done
incredible stuff with it,
but again, the game is on the play field.
So, a casual player like
me, I watch the display
when somebody else is
playing, but when I'm playing,
I gotta watch the ball.
It's just like, pinball's
a ball and bat game,
and like baseball, you
don't watch the ball,
you're going to get hit
in the head, and I have.
So, I can't watch the display very much.
I have to watch the play field.
So, yeah, it created a lot of challenges.
It's a lot of work.
We're still learning a lot.
We ain't done with what
we're going to learn,
and we're not fully developed
into where we think we can go with it.
Good question.
- [Man] Got a question back here.
- [Man] If I could make two real fast.
You mentioned play field,
and I'm looking at the boutique
machines that are here.
I won't call them competitors.
They're not competitors to you guys.
Particularly, as you say,
about operating machines.
That's not where they're about,
but I like the glassiness of
their play field's clear coat.
I'm seeing something there,
I mean, I own a couple of,
two or three brand new games from you guys
where I don't quite see
the same glassy smoothness.
- And in fact, you're right, and in fact,
we probably got too glassy.
About 10, 12 years ago, the
old factory had somebody,
we were doing the Pinball Expo Tour,
and there was somebody
who was a refinisher.
You know that really
pretty refinishing you see
on some of these games?
And I said, "Well, come in, come in.
"I want to talk to you,"
and he said, "You don't
want to do what I do.
"It's going to crack."
Now, let's look at what we got here.
We, we are making, these
are commercial products.
Even if it's an LE, it
is a game to be played,
and basically, definitely,
we have the same chemical,
the same hard, soft coat.
We call it a hard coat.
It's a flex coat.
It is not a hard coat.
If it was a hard coat, as the
wood expands and contracts,
and you put the game on
the water, going overseas.
You have it inside, outside.
It's in a truck.
It's damp.
It's in Chicago, or
it's going to Louisiana,
where it's really damp,
or it's going to Arizona,
where it's really dry.
The wood's going to,
you've gotta understand
that piece of wood is plywood
with a maple veneer top and bottom.
So, what are we going to do?
We're going to take that piece of wood,
and the first thing we're going to do
is we're going to sand part
of the veneer off the top
after we've put the inserts in,
which is a whole nother
question, the inserts,
which are plastic not wood,
a whole different material.
So, now, we've got a
thinner veneer on the top.
We are going to cut a lot of holes in it,
which are like straws.
It's plywood, and it's going
to dry out different amounts
different places.
We're going to put a seal coat in it.
We're going to put,
we're digitally printing
our play fields now.
We're going to put white and
four colors on it, and then,
we're going to put some
layers of a hard coat.
So, it's going to breathe
on the top, on the bottom,
not on the top.
We've taken this piece of wood
and done something
totally unnatural with it.
Now, the hard coat is not a hard coat.
It's a flex coat, but
we call it a hard coat.
It's a misnomer.
It is not as hard as the wood,
and the wood is not as
hard as the steel ball.
So, as we make it real shiny and thick,
we have more visual dents,
or dimples, or what have you,
but that's natural in pinball.
I can refer you to Pinside
to a post about the
original Medieval Madness
and a post about FunHouse.
It's a string on both of
those, and the point I,
if you look at an older game, it's got,
oh, I've got two minutes?
It's got some marks on it, what have you.
They've, if you keep
playing it, they play out,
and they level out.
You look at a used pinball,
and if you look at it closely,
you'll see that, yeah, there's dimples,
but they've played out.
If you have that game in your house,
either put it in the
corner and don't play it,
like I said before, or play it so much,
like it would be in a barcade,
then it's going to flatten out.
Otherwise, you'll see some dimples.
The shinier it is, the more
you're going to see it.
The thicker it is, the more
you're going to see it.
This is a commercial
product you guys want.
If you want a piece of fine furniture,
have one of these guys who
does special finishes finish it
and put it in the corner
and don't play it.
- [Man] All right, you're,
you know pinball history.
So, let me ask you this,
just out of of curiosity.
- I'm fair on history, but I'm old.
I don't remember everything.
- [Man] So, there had been
European manufacturers
from ages past who have
done Plexiglass pinball--
- Ah, Segasa Plexiglass.
- [Man] Yeah, why doesn't
it happen anymore?
- OK, Segasa did Plexiglass.
Segasa is a Spanish company,
and there's a couple
serious problems with this.
First of all, they had
to retool everything
for the thickness of, to, everything is,
most things are mounted from the bottom.
So, if you put the Plexiglass on it,
you're either going to have to have
a real thin piece of wood,
so your screws will fall out,
or you have to make, retool all your parts
to come up a little higher, or
you won't be on ball center.
They had a, they were
bottom-service screened,
single-service screened.
They had a, they're friends of mine.
They had a stud in the
middle of the play field
because the wood's going,
they're going two different directions.
The wood's warping this
way, the plastic's that way.
They're buckling up, things like that.
The ball doesn't roll.
It slides.
It doesn't play right.
Any of these plastic
covers on playing fields
that people do, they're
no longer on ball center.
They're covering the magnets
so the magnet won't work right,
and it's not going to
roll like it should roll.
Now, it's a pinball
machine, guys and ladies.
It's a piece of wood.
It's a piece of wood, and
there's a couple ladies.
We need more ladies.
It's a piece, well,
that's part of the thing.
We are a male, we're a male, white sport.
We need to broaden our market.
We need to broaden, some of the
women tournaments are great,
but anyway, I hope that
answered your question.
We don't believe in that.
We believe in a piece of wood,
and we believe in, as we've had for years,
and you'll look at old play fields,
and you will see that
they are slightly dimpled,
but it's all worn flat.
Go on Pinside, look at, which
I hate to refer people to,
but I will, and look up about,
I could give you the citation
'cause I've sent it to some customers.
Look up about FunHouse dimpling
and about Medieval Madness,
and it's, somebody's all upset.
He said, "Just play it, just play it."
The problem is you guys
put 'em in the corner
and don't play 'em.
You play 'em but not enough
because you play it for a couple weeks,
then you switch games,
and you're looking at it
and going crazy.
- [Man] All right, let's
have a big round of applause.
Gary Stern everyone.
(crowd applauding)
- And thank you all.
Thank you for your interest
in pinball and your support.
(upbeat electronic music)
