# Bugs, Scores and Leaderboards

**Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2017-04-23  
**Duration:** 67m 14s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Bugs--Scores-and-Leaderboards-e1bkg7t

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## Analysis

Chris and Jared discuss recent tournament experiences, field repairs, and significant beta updates to three Pinball FX2 tables (Circus Voltaire, Genie, Creature from the Black Lagoon). They detail playfield physics tuning, ramp vacuum fixes, flipper adjustments, and how these changes dramatically alter game difficulty and ball control. The conversation covers operator perspectives on machine maintenance and collector preferences across different game types.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Creature from the Black Lagoon's main ramp vacuum has been fixed in the new TPA build, causing balls that previously would be sucked up to now roll back down the center lane. — _Speaker (Jared) tested the beta build on Steam and played multiple games, describing specific ball behavior changes and their impact on multiball strategy._
- [HIGH] Circus Voltaire's right outlane has become 'really nasty' in the new build after physics adjustments for better weight and bounciness. — _Jared tested the beta and reported difficulty activating ringmasters compared to previous versions._
- [HIGH] Genie's flipper and bumper strength have been toned down in the new build to reduce the ball moving at 'lightning speed'. — _Jared tested the beta and confirmed changes to flipper strength and bumper responsiveness, though noted difficulty evaluating impact due to limited Genie experience._
- [HIGH] The acrobat loop on Circus Voltaire was previously a vacuum that would pull the ball up regardless of other factors, now fixed to reject properly. — _Jared describes specific vacuum ramp behavior and fixes in collision detection in the beta build._
- [HIGH] Creature from the Black Lagoon snack bar sink now bounces around instead of being easily targetable with 90% accuracy as in previous version. — _Jared tested the beta and experienced changed ball physics on snack bar shots, indicating deliberate physics rebalancing._
- [MEDIUM] Rob Zombie's Spookshow International and America's Most Wanted are priced around $5,000 but have limited appeal to casual players due to mediocre art and toys. — _Chris and Jared attended a tournament and played both games, offering critical assessment of value proposition relative to classic Williams machines at similar price point._
- [HIGH] A high-end collector's house in the tournament circuit had 50-60 pinball machines with universal toppers, including Walking Dead with 'every mod' possible requiring auxiliary power supplies. — _Jared attended house ball at Dr. John's collection and observed extensive modding infrastructure._

### Notable Quotes

> "The ball does not move at lightning speed anymore. So they toned down the flipper strength, they toned down the bumper strength, and they flattened the table out a bit."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~32:45
> _Core description of Genie physics changes in TPA beta update_

> "Circus Voltaire's ball is definitely not floaty anymore. There seems to be weight to the ball, which was always the primary argument everybody had on that."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~33:20
> _Confirms long-standing community complaint about Circus Voltaire physics has been addressed_

> "Well, this new tuning doesn't work so well anymore, let me tell you. I, in the dozen or more games I played, I activated multiball. I never so much as found the girl."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~42:00
> _Dramatic statement about Creature from the Black Lagoon difficulty increase making previously easy mode impossible_

> "Now, I never realized how much a vacuum it was because, like I said, on the real tables, I've never had much of a problem hitting that ramp."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~41:30
> _Reveals difference between real table physics and TPA vacuum ramp behavior, leading to beta fix_

> "I wouldn't pay a thousand bucks for either of those [Rob Zombie's Spookshow International or America's Most Wanted]."
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~27:50
> _Critical opinion on value proposition of newer boutique games_

> "The art is so-so, and the toys are, you know, whatever, not really super interactive in the least."
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~28:10
> _Aesthetic criticism of boutique manufacturer game design approach_

> "I don't care how deep a rule set is, I'm still just not really thrilled with what I'm shooting at in general."
> — **Chris Frebus**, ~29:25
> _Philosophy statement: gameplay/shot appeal valued over complex rules depth_

> "You could shave your beard in it. It was that mirror-like. It was pretty amazing."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~35:00
> _Description of exceptional playfield restoration quality on vintage Whitewater machine_

> "This guy likes his mods. I mean, his The Walking Dead has pretty much every mod on it that you could think of."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~37:15
> _Observation about high-end collector mod culture and machine customization trends_

> "So basically what I had to do was you had to flip as it came down off the orbit. That was the only way to keep the ball alive."
> — **Jared Morgan**, ~15:30
> _Description of specific Creature from the Black Lagoon playfield design trap that TPA beta later addresses_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Chris Frebus | person | Co-host of Flippin' Out Podcast (also known as Shut Your Trap), Southern California pinball enthusiast and tournament player |
| Jared Morgan | person | Co-host of Flippin' Out Podcast, based in Australia, experienced tournament player and TPA beta tester with extensive play time on vintage machines |
| Pinball FX2 (TPA) | product | Digital pinball platform with head-to-head beta testing community; subject of discussion regarding physics updates and table tuning |
| Creature from the Black Lagoon | game | Pinball table receiving significant physics and gameplay adjustments in TPA beta (vacuum ramp fix, snack bar behavior, multiball difficulty) |
| Circus Voltaire | game | Pinball table in TPA beta receiving physics tuning: ball weight/bounciness fixes, menagerie ball behavior, acrobat/juggler loop collision detection improvements |
| Genie | game | Pinball table in TPA beta receiving flipper and bumper strength reduction to slow ball movement |
| Rob Zombie's Spookshow International | game | Boutique pinball game (~$5k) played by Chris at tournament; criticized for mediocre art, toys, and overall appeal despite slingshot-heavy design |
| America's Most Wanted | game | Boutique pinball game (~$5k) aimed at collectors with deep rule modes and wizard mode; criticized by Chris for uninteresting shot design despite depth |
| The Walking Dead | game | Pinball machine extensively modded with toppers and auxiliary power supplies in high-end collector's house (Dr. John's collection) |
| Twilight Zone | game | Classic pinball table heavily modded in Dr. John's collection; referenced as needing auxiliary power due to mod overload; also featured in tournament with plunger tip field repair performed by Jared |
| Dr. John | person | Australian pinball community member and collector with 50-60 machine collection featuring extensively modded machines; hosts house ball events |
| Whitewater | game | Vintage pinball machine in Dr. John's collection in exceptional condition (clear plastics, mirror-like playfield); referenced for satisfaction of ramp shots |
| The Dark Knight | game | Pinball table played by Chris at tournament; he scored well despite having no prior play experience |
| Ghostbusters Limited Edition | game | Pinball table at tournament described as beautiful but 'mean as hell' by other players |
| Space Invaders | game | Vintage pinball referenced as 'very bad' due to dual stack flippers and difficulty; mentioned in comparison to other belly-wide-body machines |
| Dungeons and Dragons | game | Pinball table at tournament with outlane 'versus' solenoid-actuated gates converting outlanes to in-lanes; peculiar design with hidden playfield areas |
| B-PAC | organization | Pinball tournament organization; Chris and Jared attend April tournament |
| Time Zone Surface Paradise | venue | Pinball arcade venue where America's Most Wanted and Rob Zombie's Spookshow International are located |
| Universal Studios | venue | Theme park in Southern California visited by Chris and his son during day off from school; context for broader conversation about theme park design and safety systems |
| Magic Mountain | venue | Roller coaster theme park in Southern California referenced for comparison to Universal Studios and discussion of Ninja coaster history |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Pinball FX2 (TPA) Beta Physics Updates, Creature from the Black Lagoon Game Balance and Difficulty Changes, Circus Voltaire Physics Tuning and Ramp Behavior, Tournament Play and Machine Condition Assessment
- **Secondary:** Boutique Pinball Manufacturers and Game Value Proposition, Pinball Machine Modding and Customization Culture, Vintage Pinball Machine Restoration and Condition, Operator Field Repair and Maintenance Techniques

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.55) — Positive sentiment regarding TPA beta physics improvements and machine discovery at tournaments; critical sentiment toward boutique game value and design philosophy; enthusiastic about high-end collecting and restoration; frustrated with difficult/poorly-tuned machines at tournaments

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Apparent value crisis in boutique pinball at $5k price point; community question whether innovative design depth justifies premium pricing vs. classic machines at same cost (confidence: medium) — Chris and Jared discussing value proposition of Rob Zombie and America's Most Wanted negatively; consensus that classic Williams/DMD offers better play value at $5k
- **[event_signal]** High-end collector (Dr. John) hosting house ball tournament events with extensively modded 50-60 machine collection, including machines with multiple auxiliary power supplies for mod infrastructure (confidence: high) — Jared visited house with universal toppers on every machine, Walking Dead with every available mod, Twilight Zone requiring auxiliary power due to mod overload
- **[competitive_signal]** Creature from the Black Lagoon difficulty spike in TPA beta will likely reset competitive leaderboards and strategy, making previously dominant players non-competitive (confidence: medium) — Jared's high score of five billion on old build rendered irrelevant; player unable to find 'girl' (multiball start) in dozen games on new build
- **[design_philosophy]** Rob Zombie's Spookshow International and America's Most Wanted criticized for mediocre art direction, weak toy interactivity, and generic shot design despite $5k+ price point (confidence: high) — Chris: 'they look like what people create as original tables in visual pinball. The art is so-so, and the toys are not really super interactive'; 'I don't care how deep a rule set is... if the shots aren't interesting'
- **[design_philosophy]** Digital pinball developer balancing realism vs. playability: TPA vacuum ramp fixes improve fidelity to real table physics but dramatically increase difficulty and reduce player agency in multiball (confidence: high) — Jared noting disconnect between real Creature tables (where he has no ramp problems) and TPA behavior; vacuum fix creates uncontrollable multiball situations requiring 'Missile Command action' ball saves
- **[market_signal]** Operator maintenance culture and field repair innovation: high-end tournament operators performing creative on-site repairs (plunger tip assembly with flipper bolt and wood putty) to keep machines operational (confidence: medium) — Jared performing field repair on Twilight Zone plunger tip using improvised materials at tournament location; fix apparently remains functional weeks later
- **[product_strategy]** TPA implementing iterative physics tuning based on community feedback about ball weight, flipper responsiveness, and ramp behavior across multiple tables (confidence: high) — Genie, Circus Voltaire, and Creature from the Black Lagoon all receiving coordinated physics adjustments; Jared confirms testing against documented community complaints
- **[product_concern]** Creature from the Black Lagoon's main ramp vacuum in original TPA build was masking difficulty; fix reveals multiball is now nearly impossible to complete for a previously highly-skilled player (confidence: high) — Jared: 'I activated multiball. I never so much as found the girl' after a dozen games with new tuning; previously easily activated multiball multiple times per ball
- **[sentiment_shift]** Community skepticism about boutique manufacturer game value proposition at $5k price point; preference for classic Williams/DMD machines at similar price (confidence: high) — Chris and other tournament players expressing lack of appeal for Rob Zombie and America's Most Wanted; 'for the same money you can get a classic DMD Williams DMD why wouldn't you'
- **[technology_signal]** TPA implementing significant physics engine tuning to address collision detection and ramp vacuum issues across multiple tables simultaneously (confidence: high) — Three tables in concurrent beta testing all receiving physics rebalancing; specific fixes to acrobat loop vacuum, juggler collision detection, snack bar bounce, and main ramp vacuum

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## Transcript

 This is a Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. Hey, you are listening to the Blockhead Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, a.k.a. Shut Your Trap. Joining me halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. Hey, Chris. How's it going? I'm chilly here. Yep, yep. We were commenting before we started the podcast that while we are in the midst of spring and summer coming upon us fast, you are having winter creeping up on you. yeah we're just sort of in autumn at the moment and uh or fall in as it's called over there and it's just that little bit crisp in the morning when i ride into the train station for work it's got that little bit of coldness in the air just enough that i have to wear a jacket underneath my riding jacket but that's nice yes yeah but that you don't mind it's not a bad layering going on there and of course being in australia we never have a problem with snow so uh i can ride my bike all year round, which is really cool. Well, being in my part of Southern California, I never have to worry about snow either. That's right. So me and the boy took a day of hooky yesterday. I had him ditch school and we went over to Universal Studios and we had one of those days where you go, dang, we're not going to have to be here long at all. This is awesome. oh really we got there right at opening and there's a good amount of crowd even though we're not out of school yet or whatever there's still a lot of kids there and still a lot of families it's that kind of anybody that's visiting Hollywood a lot of times is going to go visit Universal Studios just because it's kind of an all in one package of what goes on it's not a bad introduction but we hopped on the Harry Potter ride and the Spiggle Me ride. We're done with that in one hour. Then we went down to the bottom of the park. It's kind of a two-tiered park. It's weird. There's these giant escalators that have to take you down to the lower park. It takes probably about 10 minutes to get down there. Not stopping for anything. It's just a long ways down. Anyway, down there we did our Mummy ride and Transformers. Then we got back up top, did the studio tour. By the time we were done with that, it was lunchtime and we only had one more ride that we were going to go on after that, which was the Simpsons ride. And then we went and watched Waterworld and we were done. We were time to go home. It was like, woohoo. We hit everything that we wanted to see. Wow. And so of the rides that are there, how many rides did you actually go on compared to the total number? Okay. So what we didn't go on, we didn't go on, uh, the hippogriff ride, which is a Harry Potter. It's a really cheesy, lame kiddie coaster, essentially. Um, yeah. The boy is not old enough, nor does he want to go into The Walking Dead, which is a horror maze, if you will. So you just walk through. Oh, thanks. And we didn't go on the Jurassic Park ride, which is their water flume ride. Okay. That's it. That's what we didn't go on. I mean, there's not a terribly large amount of rides at Universal. and we didn't go see the special effects show we didn't go see the animal show we didn't go watch the Shrek 4D thing but a lot of your time literally is spent standing in line which thrill quotient isn't that high at the park you kind of come away disappointed if you're standing in line all that time as opposed to if you're at say Magic Mountain with 17 roller coasters that are going to be coming your way you know Oh, jeez. You want me to go there next time I'm over in the U.S.? Far out. That's right. That's right. Or they actually have roller coasters going through roller coasters there, don't they? Yes. Yes, they do. They're that densely packed. Yes. I always say that Magic Mountain has one of the best skylines, and I'm talking about roller coaster skylines, of any park. because when you pull into the parking lot, if you've ever seen National Lampoon's Vacation and they pull into Wally World, that's Magic Mountain, right? Well, when they filmed that movie, the skyline they had there was all matte painting and most of that didn't exist other than, say, Colossus. Now you pull into it and it looks like that. It looks like full-on Wally World. It's awesome. It's pretty awesome. That is pretty cool. anyway we did that and it was fun taking the day off school and just kind of ditching that would have been awesome I still haven't got down to Warner Brothers Movie World on the Gold Coast to try out all the rides geez I haven't been there for a good 10 years or ever since the Superman Escapes launch intermittent roller coaster got put in there with the top hat feature on it and yeah I've been gagging to go back on that one again it's a great ride I also haven't been on they've got like a reverse giant drop the Batman themed thing that actually catapults you up so that'll be interesting but yeah they've also got Green Lantern as well which is one of those ones that goes upside down very small car ones which is pretty cool but it's funny there's been a lot of press recently that Warner Brothers Movie World has had a fair few ride malfunctions. Yeah. And the way they handled that has been pretty interesting. They've released this video talking about some of the rides that go and the reasons why they stop working. And they actually really give it a very good positive spin about why rides malfunction and what happens and why they do that. and the sensors and stuff are so sensitive that even birds can trip them off sometimes and stuff like that. So yeah, it's been a very interesting marketing exercise. Essentially it's saying that, hey, our safety protocols are working. You should be thankful. Yeah. And if a rider rests halfway through, then that's it doing its job and keeping you safe. So be thankful that it did that. I saw it, was it in Orlando, Florida that they had a coaster that stalled recently? We saw it on the news down here. Oh wow, no I don't know about that one. And it was I forget which park it was, I think it was at Six Flags and the ride stalled in a very strange place, it sort of stalled at the lower end of an apex of a a corkscrew loop. Oh It's like, how did it stop there? Yeah. Like it would have had to grind to a halt like something would have had to actually foul it up for it to stop like that so very strange. We had a few years back there's a ride at Magic Mountain called Ninja that is on the side of the hill at Magic Mountain and they've let all the trees grow around it and it was one of the first hanging coasters so the track above and the car would swing and so obviously by letting all the trees grow, when the car would swing, you would give that really nice visual effect of, ah, we're going to smash into a tree, kind of thing. It was great. That'd be awesome. Because of the drought that we had, all the trees were drying out and one of them, the branch collapsed onto the track and when the train came, it wedged on the branch and derailed. So they had one car that was dangling and then the rest of the train was fine, so they had to go rescue all the people off of that. It completely destroyed that train. Magic Mountain Solution, unfortunately, was really sad. They just went and mowed all the trees down. The hillside was just... It looked like when the ride first got installed many years ago, just a blank, boring hillside. We completely changed the ride dynamic. The other problem is that the company that built Ninja is no longer in existence. They initially the riots start out with three trains. They had cannibalized one of the trains to keep the other two trains running and then this happened so they're down to one train. So they were having to hire out to get another train built. But the problem is we're talking about a coaster that's pretty old that coaster enthusiasts don't really care about because it's more of a it's what you take your kid on to train them on roller coasters nowadays. It's got a good thrill factor for them, but for a coaster enthusiast, it's kind of like... It's pretty tame. But then the worst part is, by running a single train, it's the slowest line in the park. So you've got all these people that want to ride it, and you've got one train running on this thing. So you've got to wait for everybody to disembark, and then you have people to get on. And of course, it's one of those that I don't know if you're familiar with, like Fast Pass. so people pay extra money and they can cut to the front of the line. So then people are doing that on the thing too. So it's one of those situations where it just makes everybody grumpy. Yeah, that would not be fun. And now they've taken away all the trees, it takes away that amazing tunnel effect that you get. Exactly. With the right, yeah, that's pretty much don't bother, right? Yeah, yeah. They may as well just pull it down. California has a, Southern California specifically has all these earthquake rules in effect. And one of them is that like with roller coasters, you cannot dig them underground, have them go underground. Okay. That's against the rules. However, you can make a tunnel over the top of them. Yes. Well, one of the rides that's been there since 1976, Revolution, they built the tunnel, and then they just kept on throwing dirt on top of it, and now it looks like it goes through the outside. Because it's got grass growing on top of it. I mean, it's been like that since the mid-'80s. So you can imagine now you would never know that there was a steel tunnel that you were going through. So basically they just kind of got it certified as no, no, it's definitely a steel tunnel that it's going through. It's all good. And then they just sort of went, okay, good, it's certified now. See ya. They just modified it. Interesting, interesting workarounds that they go there. Okay, enough of that kind of chatter. Let's talk pinball. But first, I must show you this, Jared. you're going to love it. My wife bought me a t-shirt pinball related Oh an alien It is an alien playing an alien pinball game and the alien pinball game reminds me as soon as I saw it of like Bride of Pinbot alien type of Yeah we're talking the skinny greys the big eyes big head the little tiny skinny bodies I will post a picture of that up on the twitter account so you listen to the podcast and know what I'm talking about but yeah it's pretty awesome I love it it's my favorite straight to the next tournament that one right that'll be we're into tournaments it'll be we'll be worn to Alien Covenant on the day that opens yeah so well geez speaking speaking of tournaments we just had the the April tournament for BBC boy did I have a bomb in that it was terrible I was about 20 out of 50 or something like that. And I just couldn't get a trick. Like, all the machines were kicking my ass. Yeah, I'm not sad with being 20 out of 50. I like being middle of the pack. That's good in my terms. I tell you what, the creature from the Black Lagoon there, it looked beautiful. It had the television mod where the hologram is. Just, wow. It looks so good in person when you see that. But boy, it was brutal. I don't think I actually cleared it. Let's compare your brutality of creature to the brutality of creature that I had at the tournament that I went to last week. Okay, well, this thing wouldn't let me get much more than probably about $30 million. Wouldn't let me get more than $30 million. I saw some 140s on it. Jeez, it was... What are the features, though, that trip you up the most? The outlanes. For instance... Oh, the outlanes got you. Oh, yeah, boy. I think the outlanes and the... I think just when it goes wild between the slings, there's something about those slings for me that just put the ball into perilous danger more so than other pinball machines. It's probably because of the closeness of all the other stuff on the play field to the flippers. It's very busy in that top third and in the bottom third. Because I'll tell you what the machine at our tournament did to me. So first off, I like to do what I do in TPA, which is launch the ball all the way around the orbit. And if you time it right, you'll score a kiss completely. Then you won't have to build up that. So I did that. And usually what I do in TPA, and I've done it on other machines, is I let the ball come all the way down and it does a dead pass. So bounce off the flipper over to the other side, you catch it on that side. In TPA you do. And you're good to go, right? So I did that. It whipped around. Boom! Straight to a center drain. Oh, yeah. Never even touched the flipper. Oh, you've got to be kidding me. So next ball, launch it. I go to catch it, try and do it that way. And it grazed the top of it, the flipper, bounced in and dribbled down the middle. I was like, what? Yeah, it sounds like they worked. So basically what I had to do was you had to flip as it came down off the orbit. That was the only way to keep the ball alive. So that was viciousness number one. Viciousness number two was the flippers were set really shallow for when they go into their flip-up position. So catching the ball or gaining control of the ball, especially on the left flipper, was brutal. I mean, I couldn't do it. I was trying and trying and trying, and I could not do it. And then you throw in the additional addition of, yes, the slingshots were slinging them straight into the outlanes. The pop bumpers up top were not popping all that much, so you weren't getting much activity out of that. About the only thing that was easy to hit was the main ramp. Everything else was just like, what the heck, man? This game is mean. and we'll talk about that main ramp a little bit later in comparison but but um i think yeah it was being very badly behaved towards me but the one game i had a a really good night on and i forget the name of it but it was another belly wide body um and it was i got the tip before i played because i said i've never played this before what's the what's the deal and of course with that era of wide bodies pretty much drop targets forever and get your multiplier up and you'll have a good time so that's what I did and it was not as brutal as Space Invaders is because that is very bad with the dual, the stack flippers, it's not fun but this one it was fun to play, like it was controllable enough, they did have some nasty features, like it had pop bumpers right near the outlanes Yeah, yeah. What happened to Pulse for a table of quarters? Stellar Wars. Yeah. And it was basically just basically spells stellar for the drop targets over and over again And yeah around the outlanes though it had really it had pop right next to the outlanes It was really risky. So if it hit it, you had the ball slamming around the outlane area, and it was, yeah, risky as. But, yeah, the biggest trick with that one is don't full plunge because it will just go straight around past the outlanes and down the middle. It's very brutal. but I did pretty well on that and they also had Dungeons and Dragons there as well no it's an interesting game it has always it has these outlander verses on them that basically turn the outlands into inlanes there's little bits of spring metal that get actuated by solenoids and they complete the they close the gap basically and the problem with it is that if the ball comes around and doesn't hit switches properly it goes straight down at the outland So you pretty much, when the ball goes to the outlay, you have to have your fingers over the outlay deploy buttons. They're like special buttons, so that the little things always go out all the time. And the flippers weren't particularly strong on that one, but it's a strange game. It's got a lot of hidden areas in it and a lot of strange playfield elements, and the layout of it is very interesting. It's not really like any other pinball that I've seen. It makes it... I'd say it's a belly. It's very peculiar. Even the backbox, the art on the backbox is very unusually designed. It's an alphanumeric, so it's got one big row of alphanumeric displays down the bottom. Oh, so kind of like Elvira. Yes, it's of that era. But it's a very strange table and fun to play. but very bizarre so and I didn't do very well on it as well because it was quite tricky I'd never really played it before so I was going in blind but the thing that was interesting though is that I had to do a bit of field repair while I was there and it was Twilight Zone the slot machine had a missing plunger tip on it so it had snapped off and the ball was just making it out and the coil was getting hotter and hotter and I was going this is going to burn out so I thought okay what can I fix this thing with and I thought well the easiest thing to fix it with is a bit of dowel and you just jam it in the end and that sort of keeps it going and you cut it to length but didn't have any dowel what we had is a bag of old flipper parts and some wood putty so kneadable wood putty and I thought I can work with this so I sort of I gouged out the plastic that was still remaining in the plunger assembly and I got a flipper pull bolt which is about the same length as the um uh the plunger tip and I went oh that should about work I sort of got it in there enough that it would stay put and then I put it back into the machine and tested the height and everything I went that's about right that should work and so then I just needed a whole bunch of putty and just shoved it in screwed it in a bit and then just let the putty set. I went to the men's room and used the hair dryer to set the putty. It set rock hard. I think it's still actually kicking balls out now. It worked. It was a bit of bush field repair. I loved it. I got a beer for that, so it was pretty good. Happy. Yeah. I got to play a couple of tables that I'd never touched before. I got to play Ghostbusters Ellie, which everybody was just... It looks beautiful, and everybody was saying, this game is mean as hell. So, yeah, my game didn't last all that long, so I couldn't really tell you what much was going on, but no, it was pretty cool. I'd never played The Dark Knight. And, of course, as is often the case when it's a table that I've never ever played before, I did really, really good on it. Yeah. For not knowing what the heck to shoot at, yeah, that was one of the tables I took first on for my grouping. But yeah, that was pretty interesting. I also got to play America's Most Haunted and Rob Zonney, was it Spooks International or something like that? Spooks Show International, yeah. Spooks Show International. Yeah, I wouldn't pay a thousand bucks for either of those. Oh, right. Yeah. I've heard that Rob Zombie is pretty nuts. It has slingshots everywhere on it. It does have slingshots everywhere, but it honestly, and I say this about both the tables, they look like what people create as original tables in visual pinball. The art is so-so, and the toys are, you know, whatever, not really super interactive in the least. I don't know there was just nothing at all appealing to me and I was like wait how much are people dropping on these? 5 grand or something like that? I just I don't know it did absolutely nothing for me so I was glad that I actually got a chance to put my hands on it but that was about it and I was kind of hearing it from a few other people too where they were just like I don't see what the appeal of this one is at all. I think from what I've heard about it, America's Most Haunted is all about, it's aimed at collectors because it has such deep modes on it. To actually get to the wizard mode on that game is pretty hard to get to it. And perhaps that's the problem. Maybe it's one of those tables that you actually have to really have a lot of plays on to appreciate it. No, but if the shots aren't interesting, then I don't really care about how deep the rules are. I found the shots to be about as interesting as, I mean, dare I say it, some of the Gottlieb premieres. Right. Where you just sound like going, wee! I don't care how deep a rule set is, I'm still just not really thrilled with what I'm shooting at in general. Fair enough. I can't comment. There is one down at Time Zone Surface Paradise, and also one of our very good community pinball members, Dr. John, who is famous for his collection down there of, like, 50 or 60 pins. He has both of them. and some people have been to his house for a what we call house ball here in Australia and they've played his extensive collection including those two and they said yeah they're fun but I think some of them reached the same opinion as you so like yeah they're fun but I don't know there's something about them I'm just saying if you're going to draw five grand on a pinball table for that same money you can get well even if you don't get a stern for that same money you can get a classic DMD William's DMD why wouldn't you you know i mean it's that's i i just don't see for the same money you're gonna get so much more banging for your buck out of something else unless you're concerned about you know the age of parts and stuff like that but i don't know um yeah this guy also had one of the most spectacularly shiny whitewaters i've ever seen like the look, it's got, Whitewater has hands down one of the most satisfying ramp shots ever with the whoop-de-doos, right? Oh yeah, it's so good. They were so clear plastic. They had kind of that blue tint to them because it was picking up the lighting. It was like looking, it's like when you see pictures of the Caribbean and the water there, that's what it just reminded me of. It's just this just so pure and clear. It was just really gorgeous looking. So just not a skerrick of yellow anywhere on the plastics at all. Not a lick. And then of course the play field was just reflective to all get out and... You could shave your beard in it. It was that mirror like. It was pretty amazing. That would have played so fast because it's a fast game normally. And it would have been a rocket. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was good. This particular house that we went to also, there was not a single pin that did not have a topper on it. Wow. Everything has to be topped. Yeah. This guy likes his mods. I mean, his Walking Dead has pretty much every mod on it that you could think of. And yeah, so some of the tables, people were joking that his Twilight Zone wasn't working properly because of how many mods it had on. It didn't have enough power for everything else that needed to be going on. It needed an auxiliary power supply, a second power supply, and a bunch of other trinkets. Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, that was a good time. Hey, why don't we shift over to last time we talked a bit about TPA and we hinted that they were, for this month off that they've been taking, that they were tweaking some of the tables. Yes. Well, they went and then announced some of those tables on the website, so now we can freely talk about them. Yay! Yay! So the three that specifically that I know for a fact are currently in the beta, and this is the head-to-head beta that's going on currently. On Steam. On Steam, yeah. These three tables are the newest builds with these tweaks going on, so I was able to test them out. And they are Circus Voltaire, Genie, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Now, here's the thing. I rarely play Genie, so it's hard for me to tell how much of a change there was. Other than to say this. The ball does not move at lightning speed anymore. So they toned down the flipper strength, they toned down the ball, or the bumper strength, and they flattened the table out a bit. Good. Yeah, so that's good. it has the proper bounciness that it should have but beyond that I really I'm not good at the table, I don't know how to rack up high numbers, I'm always just flailing away on it anyway so I can't really give a judgment as to how effective any of the changes were other than to say that yes, there has been changes implemented Serge's Voltaire little more noticeable in that the ball is definitely not floaty anymore. There seems to be weight to the ball, which was always the primary argument everybody had on that. Yeah, it was weight facility before. The menagerie ball no longer acts like a racquetball and acts like the hollow plastic ball that it is. Excellent. That's good. Although I wasn't able to replicate what has happened in the past as any kind of a test, but I know that the juggler and the acrobat loops orbits have been tweaked and fixed of any issues that they were having. Apparently also the... What's that? I know what happened with the acrobat. The acrobat was always a vacuum. So if you showed the ball up there, it would just go up there no matter what. So it will now reject and come back down at you. Now the acrobat's the one on the right side, correct? That's right, yeah. You shoot the right loop and it diverts you up to the left in lane. The problem that I always have with the Acrobat would be seeing that the first two times I'd shoot the ball, it would come around and then kind of do a slow orbit and drop them to your left flipper. Okay. The third time you did it, it would come rocketing out at a different angle than it's ever come out before and go straight down the middle. Oh, okay. That's strange. Yeah. Again, that's one of those things. I'm assuming it's once they figured out the collision problems that were causing the vacuum ramp and stuff that's been taken care of. But we've put in the... I was going to say the other thing you were talking about was the juggler. And the problem with that was simply the collisions in the sources. And when you shot the ball into the juggler, the ball would look like it was sitting up nowhere. it was sort of hovering over the area where it shouldn't be sitting and then when the juggler animation took effect the ball would drop into the saucer and then be juggled over to the left hand side it just looked like it was all misaligned so now the balls actually settle in the saucer apparently and they'll be juggled over correctly so it looks a lot more realistic it was really jarring I went oh that looks so janky when I was watching it every single time I had a few games going on on Circus And I will say that the difficulty is a little steeper now. I wasn't able to nearly get as many hits on the ringmaster that I have been before. The ball goes a little bit wilder. The right out lane has now become really nasty. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, nastier than I recall it ever being before. Which is correct on that game, because it is dangerous being right near the pop bumpers. It should be treacherous. And, I mean, in general, it did play pretty sweet. I mean, a lot of times I can get through all four Ringmasters without a problem, and I think I only activated the second one. Right. I can't tell you anything. there we keep on requesting it and hopefully it'll be we've been told it'll get looked into but a while back we lost all the additional judges we only were stuck with the same three judges game after game after game and so we've been told that that'll get looked into I mean that obviously has nothing to do with gameplay and probably everything to do with programming but it's more just for emulation completeness really exactly so now the big one is Creature from the Black Lagoon. This is a table that I have extensive play time on in TPA. My high score is in the five billions. That's pretty good. I regularly get a billion on the table. Me activating multiball is not an if, but it's a matter of when and how quickly. How many times on one ball am I going to do it? it's never even an issue. Once I'm in multiball, I've always joked that you can pretty much do away with your left flipper, tie it with a rubber band so that it's up and your finger doesn't cramp, and then do the rest of the table with the right flipper so you have the ball caught on the left. Well, this new tuning doesn't work so well anymore, let me tell you. I, in the dozen or more games I played, I activated multiball. I never so much as found the girl. Right. If that tells you anything. Yeah. The problem, and well, I shouldn't say problem. The addition is, again, they fixed the vacuum ramp on the main ramp. Now, I never realized how much a vacuum it was because, like I said, on the real tables, I've never had much of a problem hitting that ramp. Yeah. Well, I would say 80% of the time, your ball is still going to go up the ramp. As long as you got a good hard hit on it, fine. Yeah. It's those little dinky hits that you do that were magically getting sucked up. Nope, they're rolling right back down, and most of the time, they're going straight down the center lane. Ooh. So what the effect of that is is when you in multi and you miss that ramp and you see that ball coming down you got one choice for saving it and that flinging the ball in your left flipper and try and do a little missile command action and knock that ball off of its trajectory. Wow. Okay. So ball control has become way more difficult in multiball. And that just wrecked me. It just big time wrecked me. Now the other thing, which is a, uh, uh, that you probably didn't realize how much of a vacuum it was, is the snack bar. Um, sink. I was able to hit the snack bar from either flipper with 90% accuracy previously, just no issues at all. Just wham, wham, wham. I can sink it every time this new build. It's bouncing around all over the place. Now what they've done is this is what I think is good. Previously, the four snack bar lights to on either side of the, uh, the lane, if you will, the blue targets. Previously, the upper left target, you could not aim for it. The only way that you could actually hit that thing, as far as I knew, was on a live flip. And that was just like, typically you would end up having it go straight up the ramp instead. You would either hit the lower target on the left and it bounced up into the ramp, or you go straight up to the ramp. hitting that thing. I don't know. It just wasn't in the cards at all. And then on the Snack Bar side, again, those two targets, if you aimed for them, it was kind of dangerous and almost always immediately wound up in a drain. And again, I think you were only able to accurately hit one of them. So what that meant was you're always having to send the ball up the center lane into the pop bumpers to rotate where the lights were so that then you can get into one of those positions where you could aim for it and hit it. Not so with the new build. Now you can actually aim for these things and hit them. That's awesome. Which is good. The bad news is that the center post right to the left of the snack bar, the little rubber post that guards the snack bar from the center lane, all that thing is deadly. You hit the snack bar, you hit that, welcome to the center drain. I have never center drained so many times as I have on this table with this new build. So it's gotten a lot more vicious on that, around the snack bars. And so snack bar's dangerous. Center ramp is dangerous. The two sides, the slide and the kiss orbit, those are now a little bit more accurate for hitting. Before, you had to just let the ball really get to the edge of your flipper and go. And if you just missed it ever so slightly, it didn't go anywhere near those lanes, right? the lanes seem a little bit better aiming to hit, which makes me hopeful if they ever do Tilt of the Arabian Knights, because those are notoriously awful for hitting those orbit shots off the tip of your flipper, that maybe something could be done about that. Same thing with, I hope, Theater of Magic. Yeah. This new kind of tuning. Theater of Magic is just begging for a retune. It is so boring to play. It's just so easy. And they've already gone through it once, sort of, but not with... See, what they're doing now is they're tuning all the tables the way they tune them currently. So these tables that they're touching, they're putting in the parameters that they do now. And that also has to do with, I believe it's draw order? Is that what you told me at one point, Jared? Draw order relates to graphics. well because they're not able to change the graphics that are on the table itself but I think they can change when they get drawn and that's what was so what was happening on Creature was there's two different panes or planes you might say, the start of the ramp and the top of the ramp and because of how the order was drawn, that's what was doing the vacuuming of the ball up and so by shifting them however they shift them, that's why now the ball is being rejected and coming back down I've got a feeling that on some of those earlier tables, they actually had a completely different physics map for ramps versus playfields. Yes, I think so. So the ball transitioned onto a ramp. It picked up a completely different set of tuning values, and therefore the ball behaved completely differently, and that's what gave it the effect of a vacuum. Yeah, so now we're getting these things. These are all lessons that Farsight has learned over the past seven seasons of doing tables, or six seasons, I should say. Seven's about to start. Wait, is that correct? Seven's about to start? Yes. Yes. Eventually, when they get rid of this extra beta that they're doing. Yeah. So, yeah, they're taking all the lessons that they've learned, and now they're applying them to these. Other tables that I heard they're working on, Twilight Zone, they're working on Medieval Madness. So it's these first season tables that are getting some much, much needed love. Like I said, you're not going to see people around. You're not going to see a graphics change, but you're going to feel the change in how it plays to the extent that, like I said, a table like Creature where I was regularly scoring a billion on with relatively no issue, I was lucky to crack 300 million. Yeah, exactly. I got decimated in my Creature attempt at the tournament. I was lucky to even crack 100. It was just so terrible to me. Yeah. the thing I'd like to see fixed in medieval madness is the reverse right ramp bug that when you shoot it, the tuning, the railroading on that ramp actually sends the ball through the plastic in the mirror of the way that the ball pass should be going. You see it once and you go, Oh, I can't unsee that now. Whenever it happens, like, Oh, there's a mirror bug. There we are. So that's a very interesting one. Well, Well, what they need to do is they need to also add back in on the left ramp of Medieval. There was a diverter for if the ball came back down so that it wouldn't go straight down the middle. And TPA doesn't actually have that. There's actually a – I think they've got the tuning in there that has that behavior in, but the art isn't there. So there's like a little plastic layer on the ramp. Yeah, but I don't know that they have the tuning necessarily because I was playing it this past week, and I had multiple times where the ball came back down and went straight down the middle where it should have. So I don't know. Maybe that's different on mobile right now as opposed to on Steam. I actually think mobile is lagging behind in a lot of the tuning fixes that are going on to Steam at the moment. Well, I think we're back to Steam being the test bed. Yes. And then everything from there once they figure it out on Steam, which, again, it makes sense. use the most powerful platform, do all your tuning on that, and then down convert from there to these other platforms that can't do what Steam can. I actually found out recently, this is one such example, that Steam is becoming like the primary platform in mobile is sort of in a way forgotten to an extent, is that I was talking to someone about Elvira on Steam and talking about the fact that, oh yeah, it's so frustrating that Elvira, you have to have promo turned on so you can get Elvira getting multiple jackpots. in risque mode. And they said, hang on, that's been, ever since TPA got re-rated to TAME, that's been on Steam for ages. Well, it's not on mobile. We're still having TAME mobile ever since it was released. And so, yeah, I raised that as a bug. You know what? I haven't played Scared Stiff in a long time. I should throw that in and see if that's truly there. Yeah. Well, you know, the way you get multiple jackpots is just keep shooting the ramps over and over and over again. Eventually she'll say the quote. So that's the way you test it. Well, but there's also the, if you get the various heads, there's a couple of those that have not made the family-friendly cut. Yeah, shrunken head is one of them. Yeah. there's so many quotes that get cut out of that game so what I want to circle back on with regards to Creature and that was last time we made our pitch for why you should clear the leaderboards this really reiterated why they should clear the leaderboards now we got some blowback with what we discussed in our podcast thread some people came back at us and were like, why should you... There's no need to replace the leaderboards, and that's an unnecessary move. And there has been cleanup on the bad scores and things like that. But again, we're talking about if you can't play the game the way it was previously played that set certain scores, then it's not fair to try and beat those. Now, it's one thing if they make the game easier and you can beat those scores. But if you make the game harder, then that's not... That's just... That's changed the layout of the game. Therefore, those scores are obviously invalid. Right. Right. So one of the blowbacks that we got was from one of these guys that can just decimate TPA tables, Tarek Obradik. Yeah. And Tarek made the comment of well, I don't play these tables that much as it is, I'm certainly not going to go back and play him again to regain my high score. Which pretty much made my point of what a problem with a leaderboard is if it's not being active. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I don't really have any other comment except that. If you want a stale, stagnant leaderboard, then okay, I guess that's the way you do it. If you want an active leaderboard that has people trying again, then you reset them. Um, that's right. I don't know if we're going to get it or not. Cause I hear there's also some resistance up at Farsight among certain people, um, that don't want to reset versus people that do. Um, again, I don't, I'm not, I hate it when people are afraid to change something because of a very, very, very tiny minority of people, um, that they don't want to upset or vice versa. those people become upset and you don't hear anything from the thousands and thousands and thousands of other people, but they go like, oh no, somebody complained, gotta change it. And you're like, but what about everybody else? And then everybody else is gonna complain and you're gonna be like, well no, but we changed it, sorry. We're not changing it again. You know. Exactly. So, I I don't know, I think it's for the good of the game that they gotta start fresh and again, if you make it a regular thing. It becomes the new normal. Everybody accepts it. Boom. Honestly, they could do it in a stage approach. Just reset the games that actually had the tuning changes in and try it out on those three. So the worst that could happen would that people with the top 10 scores on those tables would get annoyed. So that's a total of 30 customers. Yeah. Top 10 scores that would actually be annoyed out of the thousands upon thousands of people that play those games. I think that's a fairly good risk to actually try and see if there's a lot of fallout. And you can actually make it known that the leaderboards had been reset on those tables and actually see what happens from a business perspective. What happens? Do you see a massive uptick in people actually competing on those tables? And you measure it like that. There's so many easy ways of measuring impact of that decision. And I'd totally be doing it. I would do it purely out of interest sake as a product owner. If I was working there saying, yep, I want to actually test a theory and I want to try this out and see what it does. You know, it's, there's no harm in doing it except maybe annoying at worse. Even if you'd look at a top 100, like let's call it 300 people maximum out of the thousands. Like that's a, that's a, such a low risk from a customer satisfaction perspective. It's, a no-brainer. Also want to touch upon this week. Well, here we'll just go into what is pretty much becoming a weekly segment. This week in Chris touches real pinball machines that he owns. So, the guy that was going to be coming over and working on my table prior to Easter, circumstances didn't work out for that to happen. He was supposed to come over this past week on a Wednesday. That didn't happen for certain circumstances. Then he was going to come over today and there was a massive freeway closure, so that didn't happen. Now we're looking at Monday with him coming over. It'll happen eventually. In the meantime, I took all the clear plastics off of Able Deluxe, scanned them into my computer, also traced them with just a pencil onto a pad of paper, sent those over to my pal who has got the LaserCNC. He is currently transferring what I sent him, transferring that onto his computer, tracing those into the CAD program. Then we'll be able to cut those out and compare them. Hopefully, by next session, I'll be able to tell you, maybe even have photos of some new cut plastics for Ebola Lux. Awesome. That would be so good. Yeah. Also, I took my play field of firepower with me to the tournament the other week, and I asked around, hey, does anybody have experience with clear coating? And I got a bunch of, no, hell no, it's nope, not me, I wouldn't do that. I send it out to somebody else that knows what they're doing. Yeah, correct answer. And then And then I got pointed over to this guy, Tim. Tim is the one that did that incredible getaway table. Oh, yeah. That getaway black. Yes. That was good. He also himself did Firepower and made it all shiny and blingy. So I talked to him. Turns out he did spray his tables himself. Oh. Not Firepower, because Firepower was a CPR play field. But with Getaway, he did. And so I was grilling him and asking him, and I was like, hey, why don't you just take a look at my play field? I got it here with me. So he came out. He took a look at it. And he pretty much pointed out to it, as far as prep work goes, the play field is so old as it is, I don't need to really sand and buff it anymore. The clear coat would just stick just fine to it. He pointed out what he thought was inserts that weren't level anymore, but I think it also happens to be that that's where the paint stopped and then the wood started, so it dips down because the paint has chipped away, which will just fill once you clear coat a couple of times. That area will fill anyway. So I don't know that I'm going to sand down those inserts any farther. But his big recommendation, which really just made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, was, well, you've got the underside of the play field still populated. What are you doing with that? I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, you got to take all that off. I said, but I'm seeing all these videos of guys where they build boxes and they put all that so it's protected so long as you plug all the holes and everything. He goes, you can spend all that time building that and all that time plugging all the holes and making sure that clear won't go down there. He goes, and then you're going to sand it, and you're going to create a whole bunch of little white specks. Those little white specks are going to get all over everything eventually. It's kind of like glitter. And so I went, but I don't want to depopulate the bottom of the play field. And he goes, no, it's really easy. He goes, you just unscrew all the screws, you pull out all the staples, and then you get a big piece of cardboard, and you just slide it all over onto the big piece of cardboard. And he says, it all has a memory anyway. You know, the wires all have memory, so it's going to retain its shape. And then you have a perfectly you know easy surface You don have to plug holes and you can do what you need to do with all the clear coating And then he said as far as clear coating itself don be scared of it He says you spray it You look at it in 20 minutes after it's settled. If it's orange peeled or not looking good, he goes, you just blast it with another coat. All right. You just keep on shoving it on until it looks good. Exactly. He goes, you blast another coat if that doesn't look good or whatever. He goes, well, then you get out your sand, you know, you sand it and you sand down and make it all flat again. And you do another coat. He goes, it's not, he goes, I know your thing, what you're thinking. Oh my God. Once I spray the clear, I'm screwed. I'm committed. And he goes, he goes, it's pretty easy to make corrections on. Um, and it's getting good. Yeah. More forgiving than you would think. He said his big thing was where are you going to spray it? And his recommendation was, and I was kind of thinking this was set up a pop-up tent, put curtains on two sides of it, leave the other two sides open for airflow, blast it, and then you put up the tarps while it sets so that dust doesn't get on. You pull the tarps back down, check it out, do it outside in that nature, and that'll be... Absolutely. And then, as soon as you're happy with the spray or with the coating, that's when you want to get it into a dust-free environment for sure so that no dust gets on it. But... And then, ultimately, while it's still wet and you can still apply it, it's a little bit less risky. Yeah. The only thing he said is it smells to high heaven. Like just absolutely terrible. He made recommendations just to make sure, he said that my air compressor tank is large enough to be able to handle me doing an entire pass of the playfield before I run out of air. Because that would be bad. It might even be worthwhile hiring a proper massive one from one of the higher shops. and you can hire them for like a day and just get it done. Right. And then he said just test-wise, he just said throw in water and test your strokes and learn it that way before you throw in the real stuff. Obviously not spraying water onto the play field, but spray it onto a piece of wood or something like that so you can see what your coverage is and get a feel for the spraying that way. Okay, so actually spray with water onto a board and then... Yeah. Yeah, that's a good tip actually. and then ultimately because he's done firepower before he was like if you get stuck, if you don't remember where pieces go or anything of that he's like, just give me a call and he can help me out that way so I'm almost leaning towards depopulating that bad boy which again is frightening but just lock in the current state of the playfield and yes it's going to have voids a little bit of graphics missing on it, but who cares? Well, that was the funny thing. One of the guys that also owns a Firepower, and I was showing him the table, and he goes, yeah, it's kind of beat up. I kind of like the idea, though, just spraying it that way and leaving it as is. Leave it beat up. He goes, if you're not going to do a full restoration on it, then why not? Lock in the table's history. Exactly. and make it look like a 40 year old table. And you get that with the, in the car field, there's guys that they like the patina of, it's not real rust, you know, it's oxidization and everything that happens on some of these cars and they clear coat that in. So that's for them. It's appealing. Yeah, exactly. So I thought, you know what, that might not be, you know, there's some corrections I would still have to make and that are easy and basic. Yeah. filling in the red laser line that's coming down and I need to put in all the numbers back onto all the inserts. But as for trying to fix the artwork itself, maybe just leave it as is. I keep on saying this. What I really, really wish was that I knew somebody that was a gung-ho airbrush artist that knew their stuff and would just make the whole thing Star Wars. Just make it make a, you know, cause, cause, and then, Oh, and I'm thinking about this, Jared, I am thinking about this. If I do depopulate the bottom of the play field, taking that play field over to a jig, cutting out the two holes so that if I want to do the drop target, I would totally do it. That I wouldn't. It's prepared for it. It's prepared. Yeah. Make sure, just like use the, um, the dimensions of your mates fiber. Cause if it's a CPR, his will be, um, yeah, he'll have the voids for the, the drops. and totally do it. Why wouldn't you do it? But, you know, because then I would make the drops. If I was doing a Star Wars theme, I'd make the drops to Stormtroopers. I'm already thinking about it. I'm like, ooh, what would I do? And then the news that they have since you can do a soundboard that you can put your own sound effects in, oh, my God, can you imagine? Like, screw putting an X-Wing coming out of this Death Star. I'd make the Millennium Falcon. And then every time you get into the pop bumpers, the sound effect would be the quad laser that's on the Falcon going off. um yep like oh my god i can rethink the hell out of this thing you could even like get a um a bit of cnc work done and put a plastic millennium falcon over the top of those pop bumpers so it's like a enclosed sort of area yeah like with a almost like a lid on the top of it right so yeah that'd be so good yeah unfortunately i don't know an airbrush or airbrush artist so so you're just going to have to lock it in the way it is and what's the worst that can happen right and that's really what I got to think about what is the worst that can happen it's not again if I'm not doing a full restoration there's not much worse that can be done you know it did get me thinking I didn't realize that so able deluxe I've got my lower over the entire play field and apparently that was reinstalled that they would do that back then. I didn't realize that. So the what looks like cracks that are on the various pool balls, that's the mylar cracking. And the paint that's coming up, well, the paint is what's on the inserts. Because obviously the inserts get hot, that's what's cooking the mylar, that's what's making the mylar crack, etc. So that's one of those things where it's like if I was successful with firepower, then I would feel empowered to go ahead and take the mylar completely off of 8-ball and spray that. I've done... I took the mylar off of firepower doing the freezy method, and it worked wonderfully. I've heard that's so effective. Apparently on Williams System 11s, it's very dangerous to do because they didn't let the paint set before they put the mylar down. And so people have had it where they take the mylar up and there goes the paint also. But I don't think that's the issue with these early ballys. Like I said, I didn't have any problem with firepower. So that's one of those things too where I was like, oh, very interesting because I'm trying to read up right now about my mylar's not cloudy to the best of my knowledge. But people are saying that there's something called Treasure cove that they've used to buff and makes the Mylar just look absolutely amazing. And then you can go ahead and wax on top of that. It's one of those things where I'm kind of keeping on the back of my mind this would be ways, ways, ways down the line. Like I said, I'd have to have firepower up and back up and be satisfied that I can do it before I touch 8-Ball with any of that kind of scary stuff. What you could do is, actually, you could, with all the parts off your, all the plastic parts off 8-Ball, you could go and get a sheet of Mylar, they just come in rolls and you could just get the old stuff off and put new stuff on for the time being. I wouldn't even bother putting Mylar down again. I wouldn't even bother. Somebody said Mylar was made for tables that were on route and just getting pounded on a daily basis. Home use only, you're certainly not going to be pounding the machine that much. I know operators now who get a brand new stern and the first thing they do is they put mylar down on top of the clear coat oh my god I know an operator who does that now for all of his pins that he puts them around for that reason because the clear coat they're putting on sterns now doesn't seem to wear as well as the older Belly Williams clear coats because the diamond plate that they were using on or the Belly Williams in the 90s was just like, they still look good now. Yeah. Unless your table has been flogged to death. Like I did, I remember going over to a museum mechanic in San Fran and their Indiana Jones, which has a diamond plate, plate that on, it was down to the white undercoat in some places. And I went, wow, that's, that's going to have seen some serious play for it to be like that or some very, very badly worn balls. So yeah, it's pretty hard to get it down. But yeah, the new sterns, there's been mixed reviews on how good they wear. So yeah, this guy just, he doesn't even depopulate the playfield. He's that good at putting on mylar now that he will actually just lay the sheet down roughly over the playfield and then just cut away at it to get it to go into where he needs it to go. I watched him do it once. I said, why don't you depopulate the playfield first? He said, I don't need to. I'm like, wow, that's pretty good, man. Yeah. Pretty good technique. Pretty good indeed. So anyway, that's where I'm at on that. Hey, if you want to check out, I did make a pin side post. There is a 8Ball Deluxe Owners Club and Visitors Welcome, I think is what it's called. I posted a whole slew of pictures up on there. Cool. So just it was like on the 24th page of I read all 24 pages, too. That took a while. Just trying to learn, you know, but out of that, I learned like somebody already figured out what the paint colors are for the cabinet. So I already had. So now I have those numbers if I ever want to go there. Then I read they read never sand a cabinet because they're full of lead paint, even ones from the 90s. Really? Because lead paint was banned for home use, but industrial use, it wasn't banned until just recently in the 2000s. So they said, what do you do then? Do you just sand it outside? Do not sand it inside your garage. And wear a respirator. And wear a respirator. Yep. Yep. Wow. I would never have thought that. I would never have even thought. There you go. So things learned when reading threads is amazing. Yeah. read threads save your life wow alright hey we're going to call it a week I do want to give everybody a heads up currently if things go the way that our recording schedule normally goes on May 20th we will be recording our 100th podcast we have plans to have a whole slew of voices that have graced this podcast in the past whether it be people from Farsight or podcast hosts previously. We're reaching out to Zolt and I believe right now, Jared, you have a survey that you had conducted for questions for Zolt from F. Comer about the Zacharia tables and we'll be reading the responses to that during that podcast also. I think it's still open at the time of recording. I'm leaving it open until I've actually published the podcast and then I'll probably close it a couple of days after the podcast is actually released. Just in case people want to do it. If you want to go and complete it, there's a pin thread in the Ask Homework sub-forum on Pinball Arcade fans. I also tweeted about it last week if you follow the Blockade Twitter account. So you can go there. You can choose to put your forum name down if you want or If you want to remain anonymous, you can do that too. And I've structured the form in such a way that you can ask about five questions, but you don't need to ask all five if you don't want to. And if you want to edit your responses, you can do that as well after you've submitted it. So I've tried to make it as open and as easy to use as possible. It's just using Google Forms. So it's very basic. What we'd also like to encourage is between now and then, we record our podcast using Google Hangouts. If you don't have a Google Hangouts account, why don't you go ahead and create one. And then on that date, you can actually join us for the live recording of the podcast. And though we won't let you talk in the podcast, we do have a comments section along the side and you can feel free to post comments, questions, whatever. We can try and address it. Basically, we want to make this 100th episode, you know, have a little life on it. Yeah, special and it's all about us kind of thanking you, the listener, for being there. Exactly. That'll be on May 20th, probably recording at 3pm Pacific time. Yep. About 8am Aussie time Sunday morning. Yeah. Anyway, I just wanted to kick that out. For every other one of your needs, if you want to see what the alien t-shirt that I purchased. Why don't you go, or I didn't purchase, my wife purchased for me. I'm going to be posting that up on Twitter. Follow us at Blockade, or you can follow myself at ShaggyTraps. Jared is at JaredMorgz. Why don't you visit our website, BlockadePinball.com. That is where the shows are posted, all our past ones, as well as show notes and the links to various websites that we talk about during the shows. you can also fire off an email to us blahblahblockade at gmail.com and give us comments about the shows, give us the subjects you want us to talk about, all that good stuff we love hearing from you. Don't forget too, if you listen through Apple Podcasts, which used to be iTunes, but now they've changed their name make sure you leave a review for us if you do because it does actually help us actually gain a little bit more better ranking on Apple Podcasts podcasts. So that would be great if you wouldn't mind. Currently there's only two and one of them apparently thinks I talk too much and talk over Jared and laugh at my own jokes. Yeah, that's right. That would have been one of the first couple of episodes. Way back when. Yeah, things have changed a lot since then. Chris only talks over me a little bit now, so it's fine. I still laugh at my own jokes though. Sorry. You do. All right, folks. Again, thanks for listening. Thanks for letting us take the week off last week for Easter break. And we'll be back next week with more stuff. Yes, we will. Take care, bye. Bye-bye. WizardAmusement.com, the West Coast leader in classic pinball. Makers of custom pinball shooter rods and buyer specifications. Swap out your standard ball plunger with something themed to your specific table. installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools even if you don't own the table looks great as a pinball memento to admire prices start at 39 but mention blockhead podcast receipt 10 off your order wizard amusement.com sales restoration customization don't forget to leave a review on itunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that blockade is delivered to you. We can't approve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some Gingol.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 71deee45-3e39-4871-b70f-c295c71240de*