I dunno man, I thought I wrote long posts, but then I read rosh's essay yesterday ...

My personal take, with obvious bias, is that if you have a choice between a lot of great games, and some of them are done by people who are active here in the community, engaging and listening, and some are from companies that treat Pinside like an embarrassment they don't want to acknowledge and don't post here, don't listen and respond ... well, I'd support the community games.

American Pinball came out the gate a little rough with the jpop stuff, but clearly they've pivoted, left that behind, and impressed the shit out of anyone with a brain with how fast they got that brand new Houdini design done for TPF. Seriously, quite a feat. And clearly now that the cat is out of the bag rosh is super excited to finally be able to share. Love it.

Obviously the Alien team is very active here, and of course I hope everyone buys 3, get one for the neighbors.

I can never say enough good things about Spooky. That Alice Cooper translite is exactly the kind of thing I'd hope to see them do.

Keeping my fingers crossed for Total Annihilation production. Scott is the man. And so on, there's more to come. P3 and on.

We're just blessed with a lot of cool things happening in pinball that are coming from the community. Am I saying don't buy Stern games or whatever? No. Well, maybe a little, lol. Just saying, who's here, supporting, listening, engaging, taking ideas, listening to feedback, all that good stuff? It's not always easy, the toxicity mentioned is real, and it can be draining. I say reward the effort, buy games from your peers, and not the companies who just treat you like a wallet.

So in short, get both Alien and Houdini.

Ralph definitely knows his $#!t, but ask him what he thinks of Alien.

Nice, sorry I missed Banning, but Ralph and I flew out to Expo together, so only fair that I share.