# And the WMS License Goes To… Zen Studios!

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2018-09-04  
**Duration:** 71m 9s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/And-the-WMS-License-Goes-To-Zen-Studios-e1bkfrd

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## Analysis

Zen Studios has acquired the worldwide digital pinball rights to Williams and Bally machines. The company is launching with four playable demo tables (Fishtails, Medieval Madness, Getaway High Speed II, Junkyard) integrated into the Pinball FX3 platform. Hosts Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan, along with guest Sven, extensively praise Zen's visual fidelity, physics implementation, and gameplay depth compared to The Pinball Arcade, noting significant differences in ball behavior, flipper mechanics, and difficulty that more closely match real pinball machines.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Zen has acquired worldwide digital pinball rights to all Williams and Bally machines — _Official announcement; both hosts confirm this as verified information from press release_
- [HIGH] Four tables will launch initially: Fishtails, Medieval Madness, Getaway High Speed II, and Junkyard — _Chris and Jared confirm playable demo access; Fishtails fully playable, other three as timed trials_
- [HIGH] Williams Collection will be fully integrated into Pinball FX3 platform with tournament features — _Chris explains platform integration with custom tournaments, ball limits, wizard bonuses_
- [HIGH] Zen developed new physics engine specifically for Williams tables, distinct from standard Zen games — _Sven confirms: 'They created a whole new physics just for the Williams tables' with normal and tournament modes_
- [HIGH] Williams tables in Zen have shallower flipper angles than The Pinball Arcade version, matching real machines — _Chris states he created comparison screenshots showing TPA flippers steeper than Zen; matches real Bally/Gottlieb machines_
- [HIGH] Ball physics exhibit non-repeatable patterns and ball spin, unlike TPA's predetermined routing — _Multiple hosts describe ball bounce variations on identical shots; Sven confirms no 'right-on-rails' vacuum physics_
- [HIGH] Visual rendering includes dynamic lighting that reflects off clear plastics and interacts with environment — _Hosts describe plastic 'rainbowed effect' from angle-based light refraction; ball increases/decreases intensity based on nearby lights_
- [HIGH] Zen revealed multiple tables in announcement video via manual flipping sequence Easter egg — _Chris and Jared identify Judge Dredd, Circus Voltaire, Whitewater, Tales of Arabian Nights, Theater of Magic, Black Rose, Attack from Mars visible in announcement_
- [HIGH] Release date and pricing not yet announced — _Both hosts confirm this is not in press release or current information clearance_
- [MEDIUM] Zen has offices in Budapest with museum access and internal collection of ~20 rotating machines — _Chris states Budapest Pinball Museum has 400+ machines; Zen has ~20 in-office collection; also mentions Pacific Pinball Museum connection_

### Notable Quotes

> "Zen has acquired the worldwide digital pinball rights to all things Williams and Bally. Yeah, let that sink in for a moment, huh?"
> — **Jared Morgan**, early in episode
> _Core announcement of the major licensing acquisition_

> "It's going to sound like we're going to be dumping a lot on Farsight... But that being said, this is kind of the equivalent of: you were dating your girlfriend and then the most awesome guy in the entire school decides to date her. And you go, you know what? If I'm going to lose out to anybody, at least it's that guy."
> — **Chris Freebus**, mid-episode
> _Acknowledges Farsight's stewardship while praising Zen as successor; shows respect for previous licensee_

> "Once you have played some hours into Zen pinball and you go back to TPA, and this is not to criticize TPA, but you will really think, is this slow motion or what?"
> — **Sven**, gameplay discussion
> _Direct comparison of physics; indicates TPA feels significantly slower/different after playing Zen version_

> "They created a whole new physics just for the Williams tables... The feel of the ball is like nothing you've felt previously in a Zen game before."
> — **Sven**, physics section
> _Confirms custom physics engine development; distinguishes from existing Zen games_

> "It's not that ugly, low-res wood floor... It looks like the man cave of some very rich person."
> — **Jared Morgan**, visuals discussion
> _Describes environment rendering quality and aesthetic improvement over TPA_

> "There's no right-on-rails physics where the ball... had to put in those vacuum physics... But there's like on the ramp there's natural rattle when you put the ball up, and all these sort of like the ball interacts with each layer like it is actually a playfield layer."
> — **Jared Morgan**, physics detail
> _Explains technical difference in ball routing vs TPA's predetermined paths_

> "It doesn't do repeatable patterns, and that is crazy exciting because that's pinball."
> — **Chris Freebus**, physics discussion
> _Identifies non-determinism as key authenticity feature matching real pinball_

> "So here's the amazing thing that Zen did. They created a whole new physics just for the Williams tables."
> — **Sven**, early physics discussion
> _Key revelation of dedicated physics engine for this collection_

> "We've known this information for a little while. And for the past three weeks, we've actually been able to play these tables... I cannot – I'm telling you, all you have to do is load this thing up and you're just going to go, 'Ah!'"
> — **Chris Freebus**, intro section
> _Explains NDA restriction that prevented earlier discussion; conveys enthusiasm from pre-release play_

> "They want feedback, folks. They want to hear what everybody's saying. So if you know these tables inside and out from the real world, they're going to want your input."
> — **Sven**, beta discussion
> _Indicates Zen actively seeking community feedback on physics and gameplay_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Zen Studios | company | Acquired worldwide digital rights to Williams and Bally pinball machines; developing games integrated into Pinball FX3 platform with custom physics engine |
| Chris Freebus (Shut Your Trap) | person | Co-host of Flippin' Out Pinball Podcast; involved in beta testing; conducting detailed visual and physics comparisons |
| Jared Morgan | person | Co-host of Flippin' Out Pinball Podcast; providing technical analysis and observations on gameplay mechanics |
| Sven | person | Guest from Germany; beta tester with extensive play hours; primary voice on physics and gameplay comparison to TPA |
| Farsight Studios | company | Previous licensee of Williams/Bally digital rights through The Pinball Arcade; described as 'wonderful stewards' but superseded by Zen |
| Pinball FX3 | product | Zen's platform into which Williams Collection will be integrated; supports tournaments, custom modes, and multiple game columns |
| The Pinball Arcade (TPA) | product | Previous digital Williams/Bally simulation by Farsight; frequently compared unfavorably to Zen version for physics, visuals, and difficulty |
| Williams and Bally | company | Classic pinball manufacturers whose game IP is now licensed to Zen for digital distribution |
| Budapest Pinball Museum | organization | Featured in Zen announcement video; contains 400+ machines; indicates Zen's office presence in Budapest |
| Pacific Pinball Museum | organization | Located in California; mentioned as another resource for Zen's pinball research and office location |
| Medieval Madness | game | Williams classic; one of four launch tables; fully playable in demo; extensively discussed for physics and visual comparisons |
| Fishtails | game | Williams classic; one of four launch tables; fully playable demo (unlimited access) |
| Getaway High Speed II | game | Williams classic by Steve Ritchie; one of four launch tables; timed trial demo |
| Junkyard | game | Williams classic; one of four launch tables; timed trial demo; features dog character and blueprint graphics |
| Judge Dredd | game | Williams pinball identified in Zen announcement video as visible in Zen offices; suggests possible future release |
| Circus Voltaire | game | Williams pinball identified in Zen announcement video manual sequence; suggests possible future release |
| Whitewater | game | Williams pinball identified in Zen announcement video manual sequence; suggests possible future release |
| Attack from Mars | game | Williams pinball identified in Zen announcement video manual sequence; mentioned in concern about strobe lighting effects |
| Theater of Magic | game | Williams pinball identified in Zen announcement video manual sequence; suggests possible future release |
| Tales of the Arabian Nights | game | Williams pinball identified in Zen announcement video manual sequence; suggests possible future release |
| Twilight Zone | game | Referenced as example of unrealistic physics in TPA where players easily achieve multiple lost-in-zone modes |
| Cue Ball Wizard | game | Referenced example of flipper angle differences; notably fast flippers compared to Zen's more authentic shallow angle |
| Netherworld | organization | Pinball arcade venue where Sven played real Twilight Zone |
| Flippin' Out Pinball | organization | Podcast and retailer; hosts Chris and Jared announcing Zen Williams license news |
| Steam | platform | Digital distribution platform where Zen Williams demo tables are available for testing |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Zen Studios Williams/Bally digital licensing acquisition, Physics engine comparison: Zen vs The Pinball Arcade, Visual rendering and graphics quality, Flipper angle and gameplay difficulty authenticity, Pinball FX3 platform integration and features
- **Secondary:** Initial four launch tables and Easter egg hints at future releases, Ball spin and non-repeatable shot patterns, Zen's development process and beta testing approach

### Sentiment

**Very positive** (0.92) — Hosts and guest express overwhelming enthusiasm for Zen's implementation. While they acknowledge Farsight's prior quality work respectfully, they heap consistent praise on Zen's graphics, physics, authenticity, and gameplay. Only minor concern expressed about room lighting potentially limiting future strobe/neon effects. Tone is celebratory throughout.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Release date and pricing remain unannounced; hosts indicate typical Zen timeline of 1-month from announcement to playable release (confidence: medium) — Both hosts confirm information not in press release; Jared expects standard Zen release pattern
- **[community_signal]** Zen is conducting public beta testing with demo access and actively seeking community feedback on physics and gameplay (confidence: high) — Hosts given 3+ week beta; public demo on Steam for all platforms; Sven notes Zen wants input from experienced players
- **[design_philosophy]** Zen prioritized authentic pinball physics and difficulty over accessibility, resulting in steeper learning curve than TPA but closer to real machine behavior (confidence: high) — Multiple hosts report lower scores, failed shots, and surprise at difficulty; Sven confirms this matches real pinball experience; flipper angle comparison documented
- **[leak_detection]** Zen announcement video contains multiple Easter eggs revealing future table candidates: Judge Dredd, Circus Voltaire, Whitewater, Tales of Arabian Nights, Theater of Magic, Black Rose, Attack from Mars (confidence: high) — Hosts identify specific tables in manual-flipping sequence and office tour footage; community likely to parse all hints
- **[licensing_signal]** Zen Studios has acquired worldwide digital rights to Williams and Bally pinball IP, replacing Farsight Studios' The Pinball Arcade license (confidence: high) — Official press release and demonstration; hosts confirm verified information from clearance
- **[market_signal]** Farsight Studios' The Pinball Arcade license has been replaced by Zen Studios, representing significant market shift in digital pinball licensing (confidence: high) — Multiple references to TPA's prior exclusivity; hosts acknowledge Farsight's quality but position Zen as superior successor
- **[announcement]** Four playable Williams tables launching in Zen Pinball FX3: Fishtails, Medieval Madness, Getaway High Speed II, Junkyard (confidence: high) — Hosts have played 3+ week beta; public demo available on Steam; confirmed as launch titles
- **[product_strategy]** Williams Collection integrated into Pinball FX3 with tournament modes, custom difficulty settings, ball/attempt limits, wizard bonuses, and player-controlled mid-game flyover (confidence: high) — Chris details platform integration features; Sven confirms accessibility without requiring Pro Mode for flyover function
- **[product_concern]** Zen's visual rendering uses high-resolution playfield photography, dynamic lighting with surface interaction, and lacks predetermined ball routing found in TPA (confidence: high) — Detailed host observations of clear plastic light refraction, ball intensity changes, and ramp rattle; comparison screenshots planned
- **[sentiment_shift]** Significant community sentiment shift expected from TPA players discovering Zen's superior physics and visual fidelity; potential migration from TPA to Zen tables (confidence: medium) — Hosts predict dramatic impact when players experience difference; describe 'rediscovering' tables with Zen; note Scientific Games license 'debacle' may have primed audience
- **[technology_signal]** Potential lighting limitation in fixed 'pub environment' may reduce effectiveness of future strobe/neon effects needed for tables like Circus Voltaire and Attack from Mars (confidence: medium) — Chris raises specific concern about inability to adjust room lighting for darkened strobe effects; notes this is 'only concern' with current implementation
- **[technology_signal]** Zen developed custom physics engine specifically for Williams tables, distinct from their standard Zen game physics (confidence: high) — Sven and hosts extensively document new ball behavior including spin, bounce variation, non-repeatable patterns, and authentic flipper angles

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## Transcript

 this is a blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade oh my god guess who just got the williams license pinball podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always with news heard halfway across the world. Jared Morgan. Oh my God. New license time. New license time. Yeah, so folks, big, huge, giant, massive news. Zen has acquired the worldwide digital pinball rights to all things Williams and Bally. Yeah, let that sink in for a moment, huh? Yeah, let's have a moment of silence for that. Oh, yeah. We are going to spend the entire show talking about this. So we're not going to go into small talk, Jared. There's no sense in that. We just want to talk about this is what we've been wanting to talk about for some time now. We've kind of had to be a little bit on the we can't say anything, folks. And you might have noticed that in our past podcasts with us scrambling to talk about anything because this is all we've wanted to talk about. And now we finally can. So here's the important thing for you to know right off the bat. You can actually play this, this moment. You can go into Zen Pinball, and you can play a demo of the four tables that they are going to be launching with. So if you would like to stop listening at this moment and go hop on your PC and boot up Steam, you're going to want to. We're not going to hold you to listening to us anymore. It'll probably help you enjoy the podcast if you've actually seen what we've seen rather than being like, I want to see. But for those of you that don't have Steam, that are either console-only users or mobile users, and obviously you're wondering, well, what the heck is going on here with this? That is where you get to go to blockadepinball.com slash episodes and look up this very episode where Jared will have posted just a motherload of assets of screenshots and video and stuff of that nature. Or you could go to Digital Pinball Fans and there, right on the front homepage, you'll see some stuff that is going to be put. I don't know if it's going to be necessarily how much of the assets are going to be posted there, But for sure, you'll be able to get an idea. And I'm probably going to be hopping into one of the threads and talking about stuff and posting some screenshots of the differences between what Zen is doing and what TPA did. Just so that everybody gets an idea of what we're all talking about. So let us dive right the hell in. four tables right off the bat that you'll get to enjoy. You'll get full access in the demo here of Fishtails. So you can go ahead and play Fishtails right off the bat. What else do they got up their wily little sleeves? Well, hey, if it was good enough for Farsight to do for their very first table pack, why not be good enough for Zen to do? Medieval madness, folks. Boom! Boom! Right off the top. Why not just go for one of the top dogs out there? If that's not good enough for you, and that one you're going to be able to play it's basically your timed demo mode, so it's what Zen has done with all their previous other tables. You're going to have a, I don't know if it's a scoring limit or time limit, probably score limit. It's not going to take you long to realize what it feels like, though. No, it's not going to take you long at all. So, you got Medieval Bandits. If that's not good enough for you well why don't we play a little getaway high speed too yeah so nothing like a little fast action Steve Ritchie uh to knock you around and then last but not least and this is the one table that i kind of went okay sure that's your choice so be it um but other people uh actually really love it junkyard that'll be your fourth table that uh you'll get to sample around with. So again, you can play as much Fishtails as you would like, and the other three, Medieval Madness, The Getaway, and Junkyard, will be timed trials, basically, of them. Certainly not a bad four-pack. Proceedings with, really. No. Now, interestingly enough, and this was a question that we had right off the bat, they're all Williams tables. Yes. When we got the announcement and it said Williams worldwide digital rights, we were like, so does that include Bally? And the answer was, yes, that does include Bally. The other interesting thing to note is three of the four tables are all push-button launches. So if you wanted to test out what the plunger actually feels like, the only one you're going to get to play that with is with Junkyard, which also, though, operates, if you so choose, to be push-button launch. yeah just like all the other tables with the plunger in zen yeah so those are those are the the the the things right off the bat that uh you're probably clamoring to know those tables um as for when they're released don't know yet hasn't been announced uh pricing don't know yet hasn't been announced um so there's still there's still more information that's going to be coming out this is the information that uh basically whatever you hear today this is what we're cleared to tell you. And what was in the press release that we got. Exactly. Now, one of the things that you're going to be able to see right off the bat is a video that is basically Zen's announcement video. And within that video are everybody's favorite thing to be able to do, which is look for clues, look for hints. Easter eggs and cows. Exactly. We're never happy with what we are told. We always want to know what we're not being told. That's right. There's some vital clues. Basically, Zen is very much promoting the fact that they're in Budapest. There's the Budapest Pinball Museum. It looks pretty awesome from the video. I can tell you that much. Yeah, it's got, I think it's over 400 machines in there. So quite impressive there. Um, they also, uh, have, have kind of been talking with the Pacific pinball museum here in California. So that's another office is, which is the other Zen office location. Right. Um, so that's another excellent source of that. And then within their own office, they have, I believe, 20 or so machines, um, at any given time. And they kind of rotate out the inventory of what they have. So when you watch the video, you'll be able to see a difference between what is obviously the Budapest Museum and what is obviously the Zen offices. Yes. First things first, right when they do the announcement, standing right behind Zolt when he's talking is a Judge Dredd. Yep. And what's the other table? Judge Dredd and... We're not looking at the video right now. Yeah. Is it Circus Voltaire? Yes. Yes, it is. So right off the bat, that gets you kind of going, ooh, hey, if it's in their office, does that mean? Suggests that it might be coming in. Do the math, you know. Then they do this thing where they show a quick cut of a whole bunch of pinball manuals flopping down one on top of each other. Yeah. And, of course, you know that, you know, had to go through there with the pause button and see what every single one of those are. Yeah. Like everybody else will be internet basically. Exactly. And right off the bat, we saw whitewater, uh, tales of the Arabian nights, circus Voltaire, theater of magic, black Rose attack from Mars, fish tails, and medieval madness. So you kind of get an idea of where they're going. What, what is coming in the pipe? We hope, uh, in the future. Um, so this season one, I mean, good God. Yeah, it's just like amazing. So like we said, we've known this information for a little while. And for the past three weeks, we've actually been able to play these tables. We have. We've been very lucky to do these. And I cannot – I'm telling you, all you have to do is load this thing up. You're going to take one look at it. You're going to flip your first ball, and you're going to just like go, ah! and you're going to want to talk to somebody because that's immediately what we did. It was like, go do it. We were straight in Steam chat, basically having this massive Steam chat. Pretty much all the mods are under NDA with this. Yeah. So we were able to. We needed some kind of pressure release valve to be able to share our joy of what is going on here. So first things first, let's talk to you a little bit about having the Williams Collection for Zen. Yes, this is going to be completely integrated within the Pinball FX3 platform. And that's kind of what Zen has been talking about this being. It is a platform. Yep, definitely. So within this platform, that means you're going to see the column just like you're currently seeing that labels Star Wars or Marvel. whatever, is going to be also labeling William's collection. And that's where you're going to find your tables. As such, within that, you're also going to be able to set up exactly what I was hoping for. Tournaments. Custom tournaments. You can do one ball, five minute survival challenges. So those are in there also. With the tournaments, you're going to be able to set up ball limits, attempts. You're going to be able to do the score bonuses, you're going to be able to do the wizard bonuses and apply those. So, again, all the things that are in the Pinball Effects platform, you're going to be able to experience with the Williams collection also. Yep. I apologize for the noise, folks. It was just blaring. The house is excited. Yeah. The whole announcement. It's fine. Everyone's excited. for it. This is what happens when we record on our non-usual recording day. We had to. We had to. So, yeah, basically that addresses that concern. If you were thinking that it might be a separate app, they're not doing Stern Pinball app away from it. Which is really good, right? Because there's nothing worse than having to navigate around multiple apps just to get the games you want. We've covered this in the past. It's not a good user experience. So having them in the core app with all of that core-based functionality built into them, wonderful. Wonderful. So why don't we go straight into then instead, why don't we talk about the look of these tables? Yeah, definitely. We should. So, and actually I'm going to even just, well, yeah, no, no, no. We're going to just go into look. We're going to bring in our friend Sven. He's going to help us talk about what it's like to actually be playing the tables. So we'll get into some stuff with the playing. But the look of the tables. The first thing you're going to notice is how absolutely razor sharp crisp and high res the images are. They're just, they jump out of you, don't they? It's amazing. In that flyover mode, when I first saw the flyover mode of that thing going, like the rooms, Just everything about the whole flyover experience gets you salivating to press that start button. It just looks incredible. Yeah. And the thing is that the flyover mode that they do in Pinball Arcade, sometimes I would get excited about that. But then as soon as you push start, it kind of zoomed out and certain things just didn't look high-res anymore. Yeah. This, you don't have to worry about that. Boom, everything is just razor-sharp crisp. And again, all you have to do is load in either Medieval Madness, and you're going to marvel at, hey, look at how easy it is to read what the inserts say for the various guys that you're attacking the castle for. Look at just how balanced all the lighting is. Yeah. Yeah. Or go ahead and load in Junkyard and look at the blueprint. and it is razor sharp crisp lines and they're bright white and you can just really see all the detail of the graphics there. So that's the first thing that's going to jump out at you. The other thing is the colors. They are so vivid. Yeah. The saturation is just off the charts in these tables. Nothing is pale or bleak looking. Washed out. No way. No, they've obviously got very, very high-resolution cameras they're using to capture these. Yeah. And it looks like from the video they do a similar, like, teardown process to Farsight. So they're using the same production technique to do it, but whatever the equipment they're using, it's incredibly recent. Yeah. From what I can tell. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing, and this is especially noticeable in the flyover, but look at the clear plastics. The clear plastics are ridiculous. It's like this thing comes straight out of the box, these tables. And you can actually, one of the things, and we'll talk about this a little bit too, you can do your typical in-game thing with Zen, which is you put your finger on the, well, I have a PlayStation controller. I don't know what it is on Xbox, but it's the square controller. And then you can go ahead and do your own flyover yourself mid-game, which I love that function, to be able to just pause the game and start looking. Because you've got to remember that there are some people out there who just never got onto the TPA franchise and who are probably coming into pinball after probably some of the news of the scientific games license debacle. Yeah. And they're probably going, oh, I really wanted to get into that, but I lost my chance. Well, now's your chance. Yeah, exactly. So like some people aren't going to know what these tables look like in real life. So that's a great feature to have. Like literally what you would do when you were looking at the table when you're playing it, just a nice close-up view. Yeah. And you're not having to have Pro Mode to be able to do it. You know, it's going to sound like – I'm just going to say this now. It's going to sound like we're going to be dumping a lot on Farsight. And I know for Farsight, if they're listening to this podcast, this is going to be kind of a painful podcast. to listen to because all we're going to be doing is heaping praise upon Zen. And to be fair, Farsight has been wonderful stewards of the license. Oh yeah. You can't complain about what they've done and we're still huge fans of them and huge champions of them. But that being said, this is kind of the equivalent of you were dating your girlfriend and then the most awesome guy in the entire school decides to date her. And you go, you know what? If I'm going to lose out to anybody, at least it's that guy. Yeah, right. So if you're doing a flyover mode in Junkyard, go all the way up to the top of the table near where the toilet is. And there's a whole bunch of clear plastic there. And what you're going to notice is as you shift the image, the light, how it hits upon the plastic, the plastic kind of gets that rainbowed effect. So we're talking about plastic that's actually interacting with the lighting based on the angle that you're moving it, and it's refracting and reflecting. It's a live surface, basically. It is. It's not just a layer. Yeah. Exactly. That's the word I was looking for. Thank you. And that's how the entire table looks. You look around the entire table and it's just that way. There are reflections everywhere. The light that is cast from all the general illumination it just it interacts with anything that it touches And if it blinks on and off it an immediate it not an alpha pane going dark or whatever It is reacting with the other environment and it has much larger throw than we're used to. It's definitely not like a baked-in effect. It's part of the actual engine itself. Exactly. Same thing with when the ball passes. The ball, you'll see it increase in intensity and dim based on what lights it's rolling past. yeah if you've got a decent video card you're going to enjoy this a lot yeah I'm very thankful that I have the video card I have because I have everything turned to max I found out that very quickly the reason why I was getting so much chop in all the games I was playing on my surface book too was because it's drawing too much power from the battery so if you plug it in perfect you have it on power all the time it gets full juice and it actually really works well. So that's a good little tip for service book users. So right off the bat, we've got things that we've been requesting for a long time. High-res graphics, fantastic colors, the plastics look amazing that are interacting with lighting that actually casts far and looks like it's reacting with the environment and isn't just any kind of layover or anything like that. And it's well balanced. and well balanced um yeah there's no giant uh floodlights like pounding down on the middle of the playfield um everything is lit by the actual uh bulbs on the machine and the room they've put this in so if you're playing on uh if you're playing dx9 lighting you get your own you don't get to adjust the lighting at all right well that's going to be the same thing with this you don't get to adjust the lighting the beautiful part is you're not going to want to adjust the lighting it is set to a call it a darkened environment um like a pub exactly exactly it's not pitch black it's not daylight bright it's like a barcade yeah it's a darkened room so you're going to be able to see clearly everything that's on the play field but there's going to be shadows there's going to be dark spots and you're going to notice the pop of all the lighting. So it's kind of nice to not have to worry about futzing with the lighting. That being said, it does bring us to concern. This is one area of concern that we have. Hey, when you go to play, if they get around to doing Circus Voltaire, if they get around to doing Attack from Mars, well, when I do Neon Multiball and when I do Strobe Multiball, I want a dark room. I want to have that effect of the strobes making it difficult to play, making the ball stutter, that kind of thing. That is the only concern that I have about the room lighting as it is right now. Other than that, I've been really pleased with the general look of it. On top of that, no ugly floor. No. It's real nice. There's that revolving W logo. Yeah, and the carpet up on a raised steps to your left. and it's just kind of a nice room. I don't know. It's just not that ugly, low-res wood floor. That's right. No, it's a pretty nice looking... It looks like the man cave of some very rich person. Yeah, right. Yeah. Something to that effect. So those are the things that you're going to notice right smack off the bat. And then you're going to push the start button. And pushing the start button, we're going to go ahead and bring in our friend Sven. Yes, let's just start that one, Sven. Yes. Sven, you're going to help us talk a little bit about impressions of playing the table. Say hello, everybody. Hello from Germany, and how frigging awesome is that? Yeah, man. I mean, I had such a blast playing in the beta over the past few weeks. and played for hours and hours. And although those tables I have played to death already on TPA, it was such an experience to see a different interpretation of the tables. It's kind of like rediscovering something, you know, that you haven't shoved into a dusty box for a long time. You pop open the back, you're like, oh, my God, look at that. Yeah. Not only have you rediscovered it, but it's also like super shiny. Yeah, you have been talking about the looks a lot, and it's absolutely worth mentioning. I mean, we know about Zen, about their production quality in general, what the tables look like, the standard Zen tables. They always look great. it's something we always said, wow, we would like to have that with those tables as well. Now we have that, but let's talk about the gameplay. Yes. And that's something very, very interesting. Because that's what it's all about. Yeah, I mean, you can have the nicest graphics. if it's all the same gameplay, it will wear off after a while. So I know a big concern people, whenever the idea of Zen doing, or when people would compare Zen to TPA, there was people that always had questions about the physics of Zen. There was always a debate where it was like, oh, but Zen's got the absolutely leaden ball and the rubbers have no bounce. and if they ever did a real table, well, that's not how a real table plays. We don't want to have that. So here's the amazing thing that Zen Women did. They created a whole new physics just for the Williams tables. And you get two different ways of playing, folks. You get to play it in normal mode or you get to play, oh dear God, is it difficult, tournament mode. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you, folks, both modes play amazing. The feel of the ball is like nothing you've felt previously. In a Zen game before. Nothing like in a Zen game, and it's not what it feels like in TPA. TPA feels moon physics, practically, to what these are. Once you have played some hours into Zen pinball pinball and you go back to TPA and this is not to criticize TPA but you will really think, is this slow motion or what? Did I really play that? Is there something wrong with my video card? Have I got the video card selected? Am I using onboard video? But even if you play other Zen games it's a little odd yeah it's brutal it kind of highlights the idea of what a simulation versus what a lot of people call the arcadey version of things it's interesting because I had just gotten to playing the Zachariah collection last week and they have both those uh what they call sim mode and arcade mode and their sim mode to me felt very much like pinball arcade um and so that's what i'm used to i was like oh yeah no this is good this is good this is good physics or whatever and then you pop in you know i popped on um medieval madness and i just went um why am i not scoring like anything why why is the ball not uh like on a vacuum ramp whenever i hit the ramp it it will um 100 of the shots will will go up no not happening forget it no so let's focus first on what the normal mode is um and and what the physics are like for the normal mode um first off folks ball spin, hell yeah. It's there. Believe me. I've seen it in action. It's not that of if you had a brand new freshly waxed table, but you will notice the ball kind of do one of those rollbacks. What's that? It's a little bit wild. Just a wee bit. The bounce of the rubber is unlike any priors and table that you've ever played. this is now the bounce is kind of similar to what the bounce is in pinball arcade um you know so yes the rubber is live it it has some some hoist to it um and that's going to be a little odd for people that are used to playing zen games to all of a sudden try and play these they're going to be like what the hell is going on with this this is this is odd this feels weird but again it's this is how the ball reacts on real pinball tables in my experience um flipper tricks i was able to do a live catch. It wasn't easy, but I was able to do one. The post passes, it's a little strong. You can't quite do the finessing. I think they might do some tuning on that, I hope. Yeah. It's a bit tricky, especially with the physics. the ball behaves a bit different than you might expect. Yeah. So I think there's room for improvement here. Oh, absolutely. And this is part of the reason why Zen is releasing these demo versions. They want feedback, folks. They want to hear what everybody's saying. So if you know these tables inside and out from the real world, they're going to want your input. They're going to want to know how this works. What we are speaking about is the beta. What we don't know is right now as time of recording, what will be the demo like? Will there be already some changes? So whatever you hear about us saying, oh, well, they could tune this or that, maybe they have done that already. That's true because they still have a different version. yeah and they still have certainly a lot of time until release of the final product it most likely won't happen next week not from what we know about Zen no Zen usually if you're familiar with the Zen's usual pattern they announce a table and then you get to actually play it about a month later that's normal and you get to play it. Right. So, I mean, this is kind of a big giant public beta. Yeah. I don't think they've done this in their life before. It's a big move from them. It is new. The most exciting part is, and Sven kind of touched upon it with the vacuum ramps or whatever, the ball is really wild. I'm not seeing repeatable patterns happening. no there's no right on rails physics where the ball like in when we we know that in the early tables and far side that because of the transitions between ramps they had to put in those vacuum physics to actually route the ball off the play field and then around back down onto the play field it was like a predetermined path but there's like on the ramp there's natural rattle when you You put the ball up and all these sort of, like, the ball interacts with each layer like it is actually a playfield layer. Well, all you have to do is, on getaway, go ahead and shoot that left loop. Hold your flipper up, your right flipper up. See how the ball bounces one time. Now do it again. See how it bounces the next time. It's going to be different. it doesn't do repeatable patterns and that is crazy exciting because that's pinball it is and again i think this is the ball spin in action it's very much upon the ball spin and and what that's going to be doing and how it where exactly it's touching a rubber and and how that's making it bounce accordingly on medieval madness i can't tell you how many times i've shot up a ramp and had it just come rolling right back down. Yeah, me too. Yep. Very much. And I got to say, I was giggling madly when it happened. Yep. And you can actually see the ball, especially on medieval madness, on that left ramp where they put in that special diverter, so the ball wouldn't just go straight down the middle. You can see it actually… Hugging the right. Right, being affected by it. Whereas if you look at it in TPA, it just kind of unnaturally went that direction. It wasn't like it was actually reacting to an object that was there. It was just doing, this is what I need to do, and you would be able to catch it the same way every single time. Yeah, I'm being programmed to go down this side of the ramp. Exactly. Whereas I'm interacting with this ramp because it is an interactable object. Yeah. Another thing to look at is, and this always drives me crazy, is when you're playing medieval Madison, you get the ball kind of in the vicinity of the catapult. Sometimes it would magically just get sucked into that way. Yeah, exactly. That don't happen. You can basically graze the wire form and it'll just keep on grazing it and then fall back down again. Yeah. A light fall is what it is. A lot of shots are incredibly more difficult. They are not impossible. but shooting the bridge is madness. It's something I can do in TPA almost blindly with both flippers. No, not in Zen. Forget it. It's really a left flipper shot only now. It's hard to backhand that thing. Yeah. And that's something I really like because when I started playing TPA, I haven't been playing real pinball for ages. I mean, you know, I'm a bit older, and it's probably like 30 years ago when I regularly played pinball. And so it felt quite good when I played that. And once I started playing real pinball again, I noticed, oops, it's not that easy in the real world. That's right. And Zen manages to get this feeling. Well, that's something that we've always commented on is it's unnatural to play Twilight Zone and be able to get lost in the zone twice in the course of one game. That's just like, what? Nobody does that, except for your absolute top, top, top, top people. And I can do it without blinking, right? And then I go to one of my leagues and I hop on a Twilight Zone and I'm happy if I score 170 million. Yeah. You know? And maybe I live two modes. Yeah. I mean, I played Twilight Zone at Netherworld the other day, and I had a cracking game, but it was $450 million. Right. Not a couple of billion each game. So here I am playing Medieval Madness in Xen, and I scored under $10 million. I'm like, what is going on? That's a bad – if I did that on one ball in TPA, I would be angry. you would just instantly start the game again this is obviously a bad game not worth playing any further and I'll point out something that I was very curious about this and so I wound up doing screenshots and doing a comparing of it the flippers how far the flippers flip up is shallower in Zen than it is in TPA and And I don't know if Jared will wind up posting it on our site. If not, I'm going to post it in the forums. I have these comparison pictures just so you can see how much steeper the flippers are for Pinball Arcade than they are for Zen. That right there You have to send them to me though Okay I send them to you That right there makes a huge difference in the difficulty Yep Because they're not... It's the difference between putting a godly premier flipper mech on a Belly Williams table, which is essentially what the flipper angle was in TPA compared to what it is in Zen. Well, it's what everybody said about Cubal Wizard and how speedy those flippers were. Insta-traps. Everybody was like, well, that's not right. Well, it is. It actually is right. That's how belly the Gottliebs are actually in real life. Yeah. So you can imagine if you went from that, if you went from playing that in TPA, cue ball wizard, and then hopped on medieval madness. You'd have a shock of your life. Yeah. And I've come across, now flippers are something that people can set the angle on. Yes. To what the throw is. And I've – typically when I come across a machine in the wild, they're set to that shallower throw, and it throws me off big time. I'm like, what the hell? I can't trap anything. And it changes up the game. The ball just seems to sort of fly off them in the arcade, whereas it doesn't at all in this. And I'm going to put it out there. It is, as Sven points out, there is a little bit of tuning to be done in the simulation mode. like the classic mode. But I'm going to put it out there. I think if IFPA folk start playing this in tournament mode... Which we're about to talk about. Yeah, so let's go and talk about that, because I think it is actually quite interesting. Like I said, you've got your normal mode of play, and then you've got tournament mode. Tournament mode is straight-up evil. Yeah. And again, if I was angry, or not angry, but if I was laughing at only scoring 10 million on Medieval Madness in regular mode, I scored 1.2 million in tournament mode, and I was doing everything in my power to get that score. It is steeper, so the ball is faster. Of course, with it being steeper, that means that all your angles on your flipper are different for how you're flipping it. The posts are adjusted so that they're more difficult. the scoring now follows IFPA rules of scoring. So you ain't going to get your extra balls anymore. That's been turned off. The lower jackpot settings are in effect. All the settings are basically lowered and in effect. And you can even notice that if you go and play Fishtails and you get the fish finder, one of the things is an automatic score that you can get. and if I'm not mistaken in tournament mode it's set to something like 2 million in normal mode it's set to I believe 4 million if you go and play it in pinball arcade it's set to I think 5 million so right off the bat you can see that tpa was always set up for the easy operator standards and we were always saying hey they're too easy challenge it up a bit and their point was well not everybody is you guys. We like casual pinball fans too. We don't want to scare them away from being able to play. Well, what Zen has done here, with the normal mode, they've made it the mode that we've been clamoring for. And with tournament mode, that's the scary mode. Yeah, that's the one that will keep you on your toes. Yeah, that's the one if you compare it to other video games, it's what you would have as the hard mode. Yeah, exactly. It would hurt me plenty. Yeah, exactly. Because it does exactly that. It seriously is. It is seriously brutal. And I love it. One thing you need to consider when playing this for the first time, even on the standard, not the tournament mode, but the standard mode is don't get scared away by the difficulty and the speed of the ball. Because I experienced it myself and I said it right in the beginning. Well, that's maybe too fast. And you really need to adapt to that. It's a very big shift in the way you play at the table. And it's going to feel really strange, right, when you play like that. But if you love real pinball, that's what you're going to ask for. But just be aware, the scores you used to have in TPA, it will take a while to get them back let's let me and we've been looking at i don't know if you guys have been i've been looking at the leaderboards which you know has all of you know just a handful of people on them and if i see sven all of a sudden jump up i'm like oh hell no and i'm jumping on the table and i'm trying to defeat it and it it is frustrating because again you're used to score, like, I think I saw on Medieval Madness, it was like a score of 67 million. I was like, that's nothing. I couldn't break 35 to save my life. It took me forever to get past that plateau. So you'll get there once you get used to, again, how the physics are playing and stuff like that. But for now, I just can't imagine any of us that are used to playing in Pinball Arcade, you're going to throw this in and you're just going to start giggling. You're just going to start laughing because it's just delightful yeah it just feels the way that you were hoping it feels right it feels the way for the last seven years um now one other thing that we've here's two beautiful things that santa has done one with the flick of your right analog stick you can look at the backbox boom yeah straight up heads up just the whole the whole thing just and swoops up to the backbox. So you don't have to wait for the fly-by-way mode. You don't have to not be playing the table. You can do it immediately. So that's kind of cool. The other thing is, usually Zen has seven views that you can look at. They have added an eighth view, and that eighth view is basically if you took their standard view two, which is what I usually play in anyway, and just brought the camera back a little bit more, so that you can see the DMD. So you can have the DMD directly center of their field with all that. So when they get around to implementing portrait mode, I don't know if it's portrait mode available yet or not. I actually tested it in portrait mode. Oh, okay, great. So it is available now. Yeah, it was available. Not all camera views I think were available in portrait mode, but that one was. They're calling it view eight. Yeah, it looks great. I just can't play in portrait mode with a 24-inch screen. That's a little too small. That's not. Yeah. So anyway, that'll be your new, for those of you that play in portrait mode, that'll be your new best friend because you won't have to have the DMD blocking any part of the table. And I it's one of those things where it's just like I can't say enough of just how strong of a look this is, how wonderful it plays. It's all the things that we were have been asking for for years. It's there. You know, the difficulty is there. The fantastic lighting is there. The way the ball behaves and acts wild and isn't going through vacuums or anything. it's there being able to set up custom tournaments it's there exactly the the the multiplayer features which made uh fx3 so great which uh brought us all uh back to playing way more um zen pinball than we did before um i used to play that from time to time but with these um different elements like you have with the tournaments and everything. It makes such a difference to go and play the tables again. Again, because you're having an immediate community with people. You want to set up a tournament that only lasts three days and you want to see who plays it and you can tell your friends about it and they join in and you play it. It's there. It's happening. You know, that's it's so much better than going what we used to do when we were playing pinball effects, too, which was sending emails or messages. Yeah. Going, check out my score now. And then you'd have to go load in and say, you know, you weren't you weren't updating and checking on it. You know, like I said, being able to this has always been a gripe of mine. and now I'm not going to have that gripe, but again, being able to pause the game right there as you're playing it, going to fly-by because they're saying, shoot this ramp, and you're like, I'm not quite identifying what the insert is that's blinking, what's saying what, where is that jackpot, where is that extra ball, I'm not sure, and being able to lean over the table essentially, spot it, and go, ah, there it is, and be able to do it, as opposed to, oh, I need to exit the game, I need to have purchased pro mode. Then I need to go into table view, which is just a straight over the top view of the table. It's not... Someone rolling a camera at the glass, essentially. Right. And seeing something that way. And now that I know where that thing is, okay, now I'm going to exit out of that, go back, start up the game, and go back to playing. Well, that's clunky as hell. It is. It's not intuitive the way you want to be intuitive. You know, I will say, now, similar to what Pimble Arcade did, when you first load up the table, there's going to be a little history of the table. I'm glad that Zen is taking that from Pimble Arcade. It's nice to see the little history bit about it. There's different facts in there than what you would normally get in the summary of the table in Pimble Arcade. There's facts about the designers. It's not just the standard sort of stuff that you get. And it's there every single time you load up the table. Yeah, and it doesn't take over the screen. It's just discreetly in the bottom that you can enjoy when you're watching the table fly over, and almost in demo mode. So it's really nice. So that's a nice bit. They also do do their instruction manuals or how to play the table. Farsights were way more detailed. If you want to know intimately how to score every last bit of the table you're going to want to go and read Farsight's instructions. Zen's instructions are basically the same kind of instructions that they've always produced which is enough to get you going but it's not going to tell you every single Easter egg that is on the table It's more like the instruction card you will find on the real table It's a little more detailed than that Yeah, it's more detailed because you have the screenshots and arrows and everything pointing to it. But, I mean, it's not explaining everything. No, there's not the 780-some pages that Twilight Zone had. You're going to get basically, you know, call it 6 to 10 pages of flip-through. I wonder if Sheriff Into the Tune is going to actually do his magic like he always does with the amazing guys he writes for Zen Tables. That would be interesting. He does a really good job of those. He does, but again, I just kind of, I don't know. If I were him, I would just go over to, I'd load in Pinball Arcade and download their instructions and just kind of crib from there because you're not going to find any more detailed instructions than those. That's something that Pinball Arcade actually absolutely nailed it. They spend a lot of time, a lot of time into doing those. And I know people that go to pinball tournaments and they've got the app on their phone specifically not to play pinball, but specifically for the rules. To know how to do anything, regardless of what the table is. It's like, hey, I'm not familiar with the table? Boom, let me get the quick primer. There we go. So that's one amazing thing that Farsight did manage to do with Pinball Arcade there that Zen has not improved upon. um zen does have more information to announce regarding this and we're going to have uh mel kirk uh who's the vp of communications i believe um we're going to have him on the podcast in about two weeks and uh he's going to basically tell us even more stuff that we want to know about this. So that'll be coming up. One of the things that we never considered, but it is interesting, and again, this is part of the reason why Zen is making the demo available for you to download right now. This is a gamble on their part. Yeah. They have their audience, their Zen audience, and by the numbers they keep track of, a lot of their audience has no clue about Pinball Arcade or about real pinball necessarily. Or are not interested, some of them. Some of them really say, we want those Star Wars tables, those Marvel tables. That's what we want. We're not that much interested in real physics, in the difficulty. We want more longer play sessions, which you certainly play sessions, which you certainly get with some of those Zen tables. So yeah, that's a gamble. And of course, those tables have already been available for a while. And people are asking, why should I buy those tables again? Exactly. That is going to be the primary question. I know people have asked that. already before. Well, why would I buy them again if another company wound up buying the license? Again, play the demo, folks. Play the demo. Tell me within 30 seconds that you're not going to be going, oh, this is why I want to buy this again. Because seeing it as believing, playing it as even more believing. But yeah, it is a gamble because they don't know what their crowd's going to react like, and they don't know what the current fans of Pimble Arcade are going to react like. I imagine there's going to be some people that just dumped a whole buttload of money on TPA before the license got lost that is now going to view this as war. Bear in mind that if you are in the position of, well, I just laid down a whole chunk load of cash, who knows what's going to happen around Christmas time or in the next steam summer sale, for example. Right, exactly. There is a history of that with Zen. So we don't know if this line of tables is actually going to be subject to that. But you just never know. You never know what's going to happen. So I will note there is some room in the version that we've been playing of these tables. There is some room for improvement. One of the things you're going to notice right off the bat, unless it's been changed again, we don't know. But in the version we've been playing, when you launch the ball on getaway, the ball does not go all the way around to your upper flipper. It gets stuck and it comes trickling back down. Sometimes I have had it on occasion make it all the way around, but usually it doesn't. and we all pretty much agree that it should be making it all the way around there on ball watch. Yes. Another thing that you'll notice, if you're playing tournament mode of Medieval Madness, and you get multiball, again, this might change, but the version I'm playing, only one ball appears, and if you tilt, then the ball will drain, and then the next ball will appear. but I'm not getting both balls at the same time. In normal mode I getting all three balls or however many balls are in multi So that something that they have room to improve And the third thing that I think that they have room to improve on is the chrome of their wire Yes. Oh, yes. This is one of those things. Right now, the chrome of all the Habitrails are kind of just a matte gray. I'm curious if they've made them look better. I went and I loaded up Marvel Women's Champions, whatever that table. I never understand what the page is going to be. But Champions. And they've got nice shiny chrome on that. So I'm hoping that they will go in and fix that. That being said, for a beta, this thing looks damn sharp. Yeah, this thing I was saying based on what we used to, this would be a release now. The beta that we played, which is essentially the alpha. Right. And the one that's being released now as we speak is the public beta. The alpha, it was amazing. That's any indication of what the beta that we're playing right now is going to be like in the future. It's going to be pretty incredible. I know things I'm looking forward to and some questions you people might have. First question you're going to probably have is licensed tables. This falls into the gambling part of Zen. they can do the license tables. We all know Zen is pretty handy at doing license tables. Currently, there's not a plan to release license tables yet. Why? They're filling out the waters. They need to make sure that they have an audience for what they're putting out there. So I don't necessarily know. I think that stack of manuals that flop down, that we would be seeing those before we see a license table. And that's just smart, really. Yeah, of course. Of those tables that were in the manuals, there was nothing wrong with those titles. I think it would be good for them to have with the next release, whenever that will be, some one or two tables which have not been released in TPA before. I would certainly love to see that. to see some tables that have not been released. That would really put the question in. That being said, most of the popular tables, except for all the licensed ones, which have been requested, have already been produced, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, until you start dipping into the System 11. And now there's something else that we have noticed. none of the tables in that manual are System 11. They're all CD screens. And again, this is their audience, what their audience is used to. So I think they're going to first ease everybody into it, all the Zen customers into it, and get them used to what Williams is about, gameplay-wise. And then hopefully they'll start going backwards in time and maybe hitting upon... Because that's where there's a ton of Bally tables and a ton of Williams tables of that System 11 era and a little bit before that have not been addressed in Pinball Arcade. So hopefully we'll get to see some of those. But in terms of tables, and I said this as soon as I saw the plastics, the clear plastics, I messaged you guys and I was like, oh my God, can you imagine what Whitewater is going to look like and what No Gophers is going to look like? Oh, because especially no good gophers. That is a really, really tricky one to get the look right of. And I know Farsight went back and forth about what to do for the golf cart up at the top of the play field. How how clear do you make the plastic look? How do you do fog it so people can see it, you know, versus what you see in the real world? and after seeing these plastics, I'm like, baby, you can go clear as you want because the light's going to reflect and make it look 3D and I'm going to be able to tell exactly what it is. Yeah. I've seen a whitewater with brand new plastics and it is stunning. Amazing, right? The light that comes through those is just incredible. Yeah, it was fully LED too. So, I mean, it really, you know, that clear plastic really had kind of that cool blue tone to it. So I'm beyond excited for when they get around to those. And again, if you look at the manuals, like we said, Whitewater was the first one they dropped down. So I'm like, come on, Whitewater! That's going to look great. If you watch the video and you go and the tables that are shown, I don't know, again, if any of those are hints or not. I don't know the games that Zen plays. But just so you have an idea of what you see in the video, you see Adam's family. you see Dracula, you see Indiana Jones, you see Champion Pub. NBA Fast Break, which Zoltan is just leaning against. That drove me nuts. I'm like, come on. You know how much I want that table. Judge Dredd. Revenge from Mars could be seen, which, I mean, that would be very interesting to see if Zem would be able to pull that off. Black Knight. I think they probably could. I think they're really good. Black Knight, Earthshaker, Diner. I don't know. Jared, did you see any beyond that? I did. I'd like to comment on this because if you, like everyone else that will be looking at that video, have actually freeze-framed it, there's two distinct scenes that you'll see in that video. There are the scenes that are filmed in either the Budapest Pinball Museum or the pub, and then there are the scenes that are filmed in the studio. And it's the scenes that are filmed in the studio that I've been focusing on because I feel that those tables in the studio are the ones that we're going to see. Yeah. Now, if you have a very close look at around 1 minute 25, there's a row of tables that starts with Revenge for Mars and you can see, I think, that there's a roadshow at the very end of that line. There's also a Twilight Zone as well. And then there's another one next to Revenge for Mars which I just cannot for the life of me make out what it is. So those ones are going to be, I reckon, the ones that we're going to see before the ones that are alluded to, which I think is what's happening in the pub and pinball museum videos segments. Roadshow would be very interesting because that would be our first sight of what a white body would be. Indeed. There's also a Star Trek Next Gen in that lineup as well. So there's tables in-house in the studio that they've been playing with. So that's an interesting little detective work that I had to really strain my eyes. We had some, I don't know whether you mentioned, I haven't heard it, but there was the Indiana Jones table. Yeah. That's true. That's in the studio. And believe me when I say this, the guys at Zem, they know how much we all want Indiana Jones. Yeah. They know this. so that's that was like one of our first questions for them it was like so when are you going to do Indiana Jones they're like we know you all want it just yeah so I know some of you will then go ahead and go onto the Facebook page and taunt them they were expecting you to put it that way but again we don't know the games that they're going to play with hints and clues like what Farsight did. We know what Farsight was doing. If it was in-house, that meant it was going to get made. So if there was any glimpse of a table, you knew it. Yeah, but these might all be a very elaborate rouge. Yes. And this is something that's also interesting. Zen has thrown open their doors. They've said, if you are in Budapest and want to come tour the studio, come on. I already told Sven because I know I'm not getting to Eastern Europe anytime soon and I doubt you are either Jared unfortunately I don't really have any plans to go to Eastern Europe but Sven already being in Europe it's not terribly inconceivable that he could make it so I already told him that that's his assignment now actually I have not fixed any plans but I plan to go there absolutely I mean that would be amazing just being there and visiting the studios meeting the deaf and then going to the museum in Budapest Budapest itself looks beautiful as a city so it wouldn't be a bad holiday destination to take a little trip to yeah so I mean in case you all haven't been able to tell we're kind of excited because like I said it's just you load this thing up, you push start and your jaw drops it's pretty amazing and it is very much a question we don't know what to expect we don't know other than this release what is their release schedule going to be we can we are assuming and i gotta say this because they announced their star wars uh han solo tables last week clearly they're not stopping making the typical zen tables either so um you know in any given year zen usually releases 12 to 16 tables um so i don't i don't know what to expect how often the releases of the the williams stuff is going to be um again we don't know when they would approach licensing. I absolutely hope that they do some alphanumerics and earlier. We don't know. We just don't know. Some of those questions we're no doubt going to post to Mel and put him on the spot and see if maybe he can give us a little hint of what we can expect. I would be very disappointed if all they did was DMDs. It's just great that no license is not rotting in a shelf. Oh, yes. That's always the best news. Knowing the story continues. And folks, that's been the hardest thing for us to keep our mouths shut about. Knowing that it wasn't rotting on a shelf, that it had been purchased. Which leads me into talking about next week, our podcast. So, where as this podcast was pretty much 100% fact-based, the next one is going to be what we do best. It's going to be 100% BS as we just put on our thinking caps and spin wildly. What we're going to be spinning wildly about is how did Zen manage to get the license? Yeah. If you piece together clues and different tidbits. Like, you know, we've been following this with the forum for six years. And we've had conversation with Farsight and everything that's been posted. If you look at all that stuff that's been posted and said by various people, you can kind of assemble a puzzle piece or a puzzle. And we think we have a good puzzle. but the thing is is we could be incredibly off and who knows so that's why i would say it's going to be wild speculation time but that's the fun of it isn't it um yeah absolutely so um i i think i think we're gonna do that podcast and then it'll be like we'll never hear from anybody again because they'll just be like you guys are just full of it Yeah. So anyway, that's a, we, we've extended our time, gone a little bit beyond what we usually go beyond. And we haven't said boo about anything else. And that's the way we're going to keep it. So you need to, if we haven't said this enough, go load up steam, go. And I believe the way you're going to do this. And I'm not a hundred percent because it hasn't been officially told to us how this is going to be, but you're going to go into your steam library. You're going to see, pinball effects 3 label there. You're going to right click on that. That's going to bring up a list at the bottom of the list that says properties. Click on properties. That's going to bring up a whole bunch of tabs. Among those tabs is a tab that says beta. Click on beta tab. Within there, we believe there's going to be a tab called public demo. Click on that. That's going to load in these tables. It's going to re-download the package and it's going to enable the Williams packages in there as well. So you're going to have to go through some steps, but believe me, well, well worth it. You can guarantee that Zen will have good instructions about how to activate this for all customers on their website. So just go and look at all their socials and they'll have the instructions there for you. And again, for all of you that don't have access to that, we're posting videos. You're going to be able to see... ...through Steam with us. Anyway, Zen is very good with showing Oh, if you have not followed PinballFX on Twitter, I suggest now's the time because you're going to get inundated with videos of stuff that they were showing, screenshots, videos, the works. So, again, this is going to be coming to console at some point. We are not quite sure what their mobile plans are, so I can't really say anything about that. But it is going to be coming to console soon. so you console people are definitely going to want to take a look at all these videos and get an idea of what it is I might even go to the point of doing a Twitch broadcaster of some sort and recording gameplay so that you can see but well there's going to be hundreds of those floating around I think on the internet I do too, so you're going to be able to get a sense of what these look like And maybe look at buying a PC in the near future. We already have one of the mods go, well, I guess I know what I'm buying this weekend. So like I said, follow PinballFX on Twitter. Make sure you check out Digital Pinball Fans because there's going to be plenty of information popping up there. For sure, go visit our website, blockadepinball.com slash episodes. Check out this particular episode. Jared's going to have his hands full just dumping tons and tons of material. It's going to take me a while not to actually edit the episode because we've done a good job with not saying too many ums and ahs this time around. But that post is going to take me hours to actually get right. And it's going to be worth every second. Every second of it. So people get a good idea. Then go ahead and hop on the forum and start just spinning your wheels about what all of this means. will, I know I'm going to try and get engaged in some of that just there are certain things that I'm not going to be able to comment about because I know things and we're not allowed to say them so sorry but anyway that's the deal that's everything you need to know let's make this podcast one of our most downloaded, won't you? Make sure you share with your friends make sure you put it on all the pinball sites get the news out there about this because it's a big deal. I mean, in terms of digital pinball, this is massive. Yeah, this is like the new iPhone being released. Yeah. So yeah, please help share, like spread the messaging. Yep. All right, gang, that's it. Hey, Sven, thank you. I know it's like 1.30 in the morning for you right now. Thank you for staying up with us. Yeah, thanks for inviting me again. No worries, anytime. Jared, I'll be talking to you next week just put on your BS waiters because we're going to be wading into it it's going to be a deep one alright folks as usual, thank you so much and we'll talk to you next time, bye bye see ya bye withremusement.com sales, restoration, customization. Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v1)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-15 | Item ID: 509952c5-0afc-40b5-8a7c-7d21ae425415*