Spooky Pinball

"I feel like Spooky Pinball is now the second best company in all of Pinball when it comes to launching games, when it comes to theme integration, when it comes to executing a reveal properly"

Spooky Pinball is now the second best company in pinball

"Spooky Executes, right? No one's worried that when they give Spooky money, they're not going to get their game and the company's not going to be transparent. Like they are probably the most transparent company in pinball, which makes everybody feel good."

Spooky Pinball most transparent company, Evil Dead upcoming game

"I think quality has always followed spooky around a little bit like a dark cloud. They've obviously gotten better, but as they get more ambitious with more mechs and more toys, that's why a lot of these companies are yanking stuff out."

Spooky Pinball quality issues are a concern despite ambitious designs

"I think Spooky pinball is going to have the hit theme of the year. I think it's going to come out at the end of the year. My guess is it's going to be Goonies and I think it's really going to win people over."

Spooky Pinball will have the hit theme of the year, likely Goonies

"I think Pulp Fiction LE is gonna be like dead on arrival when it comes to enthusiasm and excitement... who's gonna care now when the LE comes out, I absolutely could care less, they're not gonna go up in value and I don't think anyone really cares anymore"

Pulp Fiction LE will be dead on arrival after 2-year wait - nobody cares anymore

"For them to have a hit game next, because I do think that Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre are two B themes. If you add them together, it doesn't make an A theme."

Spooky Pinball needs mainstream themes, not more B-level horror themes

"stop using the cheap monitors... your monitors are crap... there's no true black in your monitors... just spend the extra $15 and put the better monitor into the game."

Spooky Pinball needs better monitors and mainstream themes to compete

"I think that's a miss because if they have the Beetlejuice license and the movie is about to come out, why wouldn't you release Beetlejuice in the very year where the sequel to this iconic movie is coming out?... What a missed opportunity if I had a dollar. For every time these pinball companies cannot sync up, the damn game with what's going on with the property in culture, I'd be a very wealthy man. They always get it wrong, they always get it wrong."

Spooky missing Beetlejuice movie tie-in timing is a huge missed opportunity

"out of all the companies out there, I mean this, out of all the companies out there, they've just kind of been getting it done. I mean, it's really hard to be upset and angry with anything Spooky does. They don't rip anybody off, they make their games in numerical order, they've arguably made every game better than the previous game"

Spooky Pinball consistently delivers and keeps improving

"Every time a Spooky game comes out, it feels like everyone's beta testing it for two, three years"

Spooky needs better mechanical engineering and coding

"I want to say congratulations to a company that gets the least amount of airtime on Kaneda because they don't mess stuff up. That's it. Like when you're not getting talked about on Kaneda's Saturday morning, you're doing something right."

Spooky Pinball gets least airtime because they don't mess up - that's success

"spooky pinball has for the most part just been making games for themselves. Alice Cooper Rob Zombie Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Spooky Pinball has mostly made games for themselves rather than the community

"Games look great. Games look beautiful. They're getting it done... Everyone seems to be unboxing their games and having a good time. And that's what we want to see."

Spooky Pinball is executing well with Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw

"they're the only boutique company that has done it right. Really? It's true. All the boutique companies out there, if you're hearing this, the only one that's done it right is spooky pinball and what I mean by that is they've never lied. They've always delivered when they said they're going to deliver"

Spooky Pinball is the only boutique company that has done everything right

"I think the waiting on license or approval is simply because the code is not far enough along and I don't think they want people to see it until the code is further along and I wish they would just say that."

Waiting for licensor approval excuse is BS - it's really about unfinished code

"Pinball should not become downloadable content disguised as toppers. This is a $10,000 item. You should not have to spend more money to get more features"

Spooky Pinball's $969 interactive Scooby-Doo topper represents problematic DLC practices

"I wouldn't order one from Spooky directly. I wouldn't order one from a distributor yet... If you just wait on both Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you know people are going to buy these games early... when they sell them, they will most likely be selling for about a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars less than a new in-box game."

Wait to buy Spooky games instead of pre-ordering - prices will drop and quality will improve

"I've been saying this for a while. Men 40 to 60, you'll walk into a bar. Can they geek out over Looney Tunes?"

Looney Tunes theme won't appeal to core pinball demographic of 40-60 year old men

"And the reason why Spooky Pinball is having a lot of fun, whether or not they put the mechanical magic we want into the games, the reason they're having so much fun is they are making themes that they love and they are making themes that build their Spooky brand."

Spooky Pinball succeeds because they make themes they're passionate about

"We are under no delusion that we are not getting ripped off by Jersey Jack and Stern Pinball."

Spooky Pinball offers much better value than Stern with $1,500 worth of extras for under $10,000

"I got a really nice note from Luke over at Spooky, and he said, Chris, I want to confirm for you that our next collector's edition game will be less than $10,000."

Spooky Pinball keeping collector editions under $10,000 shows good competitive pricing

"I think smaller boutiques like Spooky and Barrels of Fun and Dutch Pinball, I think they're going to be fine because their operations aren't so big"

Spooky Pinball and smaller boutiques will survive the market crash because of better operations and community care

"David Van Es was disgruntled that they would not let him make a game. Like he wanted to make labyrinth at spooky pinball... the Emery family has kept spooky pinball close to the Emery family... they lost a lot of the talented people that were over at spooky pinball. Seemingly because they did not want to pay those people what they are worth."

Kaneda explains the backstory of why ex-Spooky employees left to form the new company

"people love them because they represent the American dream. They built their company from the bottom up and they never ripped anybody off. They never lied to customers. They did it the right way."

Spooky Pinball represents the American dream and built their company the right way

"Spooky's always in a good position. See what's happening right here. Everybody's battling it out. And they're all going to cancel each other out and Spooky Pinball doesn't have to worry. They're making money each week, making their Scooby-Doo's, while everybody else shows their hand way too early."

Spooky Pinball has superior timing strategy compared to other manufacturers

"These are good guys. It's a good company. It's a good family. And whether or not you like Spooky's games or not, you can't deny the fact that they're just really good people."

Positive view of Spooky Pinball as good people and company

"spooky just be different just try this I guarantee you it will work alright you ready for some news people let's talk about some news"

Prediction: A different approach from the pro/premium/LE model will work for the company.

"stop with the whole collectors edition bloodsucker edition standard edition here's my advice to you give these things names and make a finite number of them"

Spooky Pinball should abandon pro/premium/LE structure and create limited themed editions with better names

"All you need to do is get like 15 people or 10 die hard spooky fanatics who play their games all the time, make those people your beta testers and have them bang on the game for a few weeks before you release a code to the public."

Spooky Pinball releases buggy code updates and uses buyers as beta testers

"They need to get their design as good as their artwork. That is Spooky's job to be done. If I were to march over there... I say, guys, we're so close. You got everything else figured out. Now, the only thing left for us to do is get the design and the toys to where they need to be to justify these prices. And the way we're going to get there is we're going to hire somebody."

Spooky Pinball needs better designers to match their artwork

"When you buy a spooky machine, it's like buying a Jaguar. It's going to have problems. It's going to have issues. The quality is not going to be the same as everybody else's machines."

Spooky Pinball machines are like Jaguars - they have problems and quality issues

"I think a lot of people are like once burned, twice burned. How many times can spooky burn some of their customer base before they're not going to run at everything new?"

Spooky Pinball has quality issues and is burning their customer base

"Spooky Pinball has a lot of work to do people, for them to deliver on a dream theme of ours, I think everyone is secretly happy, they're not making games like Star Wars, can you imagine if Spooky Pinball made Ghostbusters instead of Stern, they're just not there yet"

Spooky Pinball isn't ready for triple-A themes and needs design help

"We really don't congratulate Spooky Pinball enough on just getting it done. I mean think about it, this small boutique company in Benton, Wisconsin has just made like 6 or 700 games in less than a year and we're not even celebrating them."

Spooky Pinball deserves more credit for manufacturing output

"Think about a company like Spooky Pinball, they are leaving millions, and I mean this, millions of dollars on the table. Because they said they were never going to make more than 750 Rick and Morty games."

Spooky Pinball shows integrity by keeping production promises

"When I do that and I see a Scooby-Doo CE with Butter next to Foo Fighters LE, next to Godfather LE, next to Pulp Fiction, next to everything else available in the pinball world, it's really hard for me to say these games are worth this much money."

Spooky Pinball games not worth $8-13k price point

"So ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first on Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I am hearing the rumored title that spooky pinball has the license to is the following. Rodents of unusual size? I don't think they exist."

Prediction: Spooky Pinball has the license to The Princess Bride.

"They're going to make like over 1,500 collector's editions, which means none of them are actually collector's editions. And I think Spooky Pinball needs to stop doing this because how many times are people going to run to Spooky Pinball with a nonrefundable deposit?"

Spooky Pinball's collector's editions aren't actually collectible and hurt customers

"So my overall grade for Spooky pinball as of today, as of 2023 is I'm going to give Spooky pinball a B minus grade. I do think they deserve a B minus."

Spooky Pinball overall grade: B-minus for good transparency but needs improvement

"The B students need to hire A students. I think they have a lot of B talent over at Spooky Pinball. I think they've got B talent in the design department. I think they've got B talent in the coding department. I don't think it's A talent. And I think now that they've got the money, they need to figure out a way to hire A talent."

Spooky Pinball has B talent and needs to hire A talent to improve

"There is no longer an excuse for this anymore. You see some of these photos of people that are just getting their games and the soldering in these games looks horrendous on some of them"

Spooky Pinball has unacceptable quality control issues

"When you sell a pinball machine, you need to manufacture that machine. So why would any pinball company that takes your money and asks for a nonrefundable deposit from you? Why would any pinball company who does that not open up the door to show you how they manufacture their machines?"

Spooky Pinball successfully demonstrated factory transparency and humanized their manufacturing process

"When you think about the most successful boutique company of all time, it's been Spooky Pinball... What Spooky Pinball did from the very beginning is they let us know what their manufacturing capabilities were every single step along the way."

Spooky Pinball is the most successful boutique company due to transparency about manufacturing capabilities

"The nicest people that I encountered when I walked up to their booth at Texas pinball festival was the crew over at spooky pinball... So look spooky pinball. This is your best game to date"

Spooky Pinball's Scooby-Doo is their best game to date with excellent customer service

"So wait a minute, let me get this straight. Spooky pinball, you made the game and you set it up in your factory and you didn't even set it up at the right pitch to show people how the gameplay was?"

Spooky Pinball's poor setup of their own game during stream was unprofessional

"I think spooky pinball heard all of our feedback about freaking what Halloween and Ultraman every once in a while"

Spooky Pinball has learned from past mistakes and improved their approach with Scooby-Doo

"The only company that's ever been transparent about it has been Spooky Pinball. And the only company that's ever stayed true to their schedule to the T has always been Spooky Pinball."

Spooky Pinball is the most transparent and reliable manufacturer for scheduling and production numbers

"I will say we don't see this level of transparency from most pinball companies. And I want to just say to Spooky, thank you for being you and thank you for being personal and thank you for sharing with us your passion on this machine."

Spooky Pinball shows excellent transparency and passion compared to other pinball companies

"the majority of people, the silent majority would say spooky pinball still needs to prove they can get their quality up. They need to prove they can engineer mechs that are really exciting. They need to prove they can make a game that has good flow."

Spooky Pinball still needs to prove quality and engineering capabilities with Scooby-Doo

"I actually do like seeing the fact that Spooky Pinball is making 1,969 Scooby-Doo's. They are available and it's somewhat refreshing. If you want the game, you can get it. If you want the game, you don't have to buy day one."

Spooky Pinball's anti-FOMO approach with Scooby-Doo is refreshing