# Pinball Titles We Love To Suck At **Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-08-31 **Duration:** 90m 0s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Pinball-Titles-We-Love-To-Suck-At-e3btfr7 --- ## Analysis Chris and Jared from Blockade Pinball discuss pinball games they love playing but struggle with, including No Good Gophers, Samurai's Vengeance, and Brothers in Arms. They reflect on an old episode about the failed Stern Pinball Arcade Kickstarter and Oculus VR exclusive, share personal updates including a film industry podcast appearance and Blue Sky social media adoption, and digress into LEGO collecting before transitioning to digital pinball discussion. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] The Stern Pinball Arcade Kickstarter for AC/DC was fully funded by a mystery third party revealed to be Oculus, making AC/DC exclusive to the Oculus Rift VR version — _Jared and Chris recounting a 2014 episode where they discovered Oculus had purchased the Kickstarter game to make it exclusive to their VR platform_ - [HIGH] The Stern Pinball Arcade VR app used a token-based economy where earning tokens became increasingly difficult as player scores improved, making it economically impossible to purchase games through gameplay — _Chris describing the VR app's monetization system where token scaling made progression mathematically impossible_ - [HIGH] Oculus required a 30-second table selection animation showing robot arms extracting and inserting pinball tables, purely for visual effect with no loading optimization benefit — _Chris recounting his friend's notes confirming the animation was mandatory by Oculus and served no functional purpose_ - [HIGH] No Good Gophers has a replay score of 14 million and features multiple sucker shots including a captive ball center drain, a jump ramp to plexi, and a right ramp that drains if not fully made — _Chris discussing gameplay mechanics while playing No Good Gophers on AtGames cabinet_ - [MEDIUM] LEGO has released a Game Boy set at 1:1 scale with functioning cartridge slots and has significantly expanded the Botanical collection with 20+ plant sets available at Target — _Chris describing recent LEGO purchases and retail availability_ ### Notable Quotes > "I wear these to like brighten things up...because it's like we're all bored of just black shirts." > — **Jared**, early segment > _Establishes Jared's personal branding approach at tournaments and casual commentary on pinball community fashion_ > "my God, I suck at this. Like, I cannot...I don't know how to boost the scores where the good scores are...it's got center drain everywhere horrible" > — **Chris**, main topic > _Core thesis of episode: discussing games players love but struggle with; No Good Gophers serves as primary example_ > "the thing of it was as you got better on a score on any of your stuff the tokens were harder to achieve...it literally became like very obviously very quick it was impossible to earn enough tokens" > — **Chris**, VR app discussion > _Critiques predatory monetization of Stern Pinball Arcade VR, highlighting economic design failure_ > "Every time you selected a table, this whole animation happened...30-second animation...it wasn't loading during this time. No. It was just animating. It was just animating. Because it looked cool." > — **Chris / Jared (agreement)**, VR app section > _Illustrates pointless technical requirements imposed by Oculus prioritizing visual spectacle over user experience_ > "I understand the rule. I understand how I'm supposed to complete the mode. I just can't complete the mode." > — **Jared**, main topic > _Distills the emotional core of the episode theme: games with clear rules but difficult execution_ > "This also has kind of that thing...It's going to look beautiful. And I can just imagine what the environmental effects are going to be on that table...cherry blossoms falling around it" > — **Jared**, Samurai's Vengeance discussion > _Enthusiasm for future VR adaptation of digital tables; shows community interest in table conversions_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Blockade Pinball | organization | Podcast hosted by Chris and Jared discussing pinball games, industry, and culture | | Chris | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball podcast; former film industry professional; LEGO collector | | Jared | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball podcast (Jared Morgz); wears colorful Hawaiian shirts to tournaments; plays pinball games frequently | | No Good Gophers | game | Williams pinball machine with 14 million replay score; features multiple sucker shots and high difficulty; discussed as game hosts love but struggle with | | Samurai's Vengeance | game | Pinball FX digital table with beautiful aesthetics, dangerous outlanes, and mode-based gameplay that Jared loves but consistently fails at | | Brothers in Arms | game | Digital pinball table with stacked drop target mechanism; gritty atmosphere; host has completed maximum 2 of 4 modes in single game | | Stern Pinball Arcade | product | Mobile/app pinball game platform announced circa 2014 with token-based monetization; featured Oculus VR exclusive version of AC/DC | | Oculus Rift | product | VR platform that exclusively funded and hosted AC/DC table in Stern Pinball Arcade VR app with proprietary 30-second table animation requirement | | Verne's Mysterious Island | game | Pinball FX table with unintuitive shot layout, narrow lanes, and dangerous playfield; Chris finds it difficult to engage with | | AtGames | company | Arcade cabinet manufacturer; hosts Pinball FX tables including No Good Gophers in digital format | | Pinball FX | product | Digital pinball platform by Zen Studios featuring both original and licensed tables; hosts discuss multiple titles from this ecosystem | | Moon Knight | game | Pinball FX table that Jared has discovered allows extended play sessions once rules are understood | | Iron Man | game | Pinball machine Chris previously championed; described as slogfest requiring completion of many objectives to reach wizard mode | | Houdini | game | American Pinball table featuring ridiculously narrow shots; referenced as example of tight shot design requiring precision | | Tales from the Crypt | game | Pinball table with at least one extremely narrow shot; mentioned in context of difficult precision gameplay | | Terminator 2 | game | Stern pinball machine; Chris owned a promotional T-shirt for this game from ~2015 | | Terminator 3 | game | Stern pinball game with three ramps and distinct playfield layout; Jared's preferred Terminator game over T2 | | Independence Day | game | Stern pinball machine with narrow lanes similar to Terminator games; referenced as example of precision-shot design | | Blue Sky | product | Social media platform; Blockade Pinball recently created account at @blockade.bsky.social with 11 followers mentioned | | Company Move Podcast | organization | Podcast about people who left the film industry; Chris recently appeared as guest discussing his film industry background | ### Topics - **Primary:** Games hosts love but play poorly, Stern Pinball Arcade app and VR history, Pinball FX digital table design and difficulty - **Secondary:** Nostalgic podcast retrospective, LEGO collecting and design philosophy, Pinball tournament fashion and community, VR pinball implementation and user experience failures, Zen Studios table conversion to VR ### Sentiment **Mixed** (0.55) — Overall positive and nostalgic tone with warm self-deprecating humor about gaming skill and industry history. Negative critique of Oculus VR implementation (token economy, unnecessary animations, poor UX) balanced by appreciation for current digital pinball design, LEGO innovation, and game mechanics. Hosts express genuine enjoyment of games despite frustration with difficulty. ### Signals - **[community_signal]** Blockade Pinball approaching 300th episode milestone; requesting community to highlight memorable past episodes in YouTube comments for planned retrospective episode (confidence: high) — Chris: 'we are approaching our 300th episode, and I would love to revisit some of these...I need to know what has stuck with any of you' - **[market_signal]** Pinball FX tables designing with intentionally narrow shots and dangerous playfield routing that mirrors real pinball but creates frustrating player experience; community noting mechanically feasible real-world conversion potential (confidence: medium) — Jared discussing multiple tables with tight shots: 'narrow lanes...really narrow...you've got to be on this flipper and shoot at this point otherwise why did you miss it' - **[market_signal]** Blockade Pinball expanding social media presence to Blue Sky platform due to dissatisfaction with X/Twitter; noted complete audience departure from that platform (confidence: medium) — Chris: 'I have all of 11 followers right now...I haven't actually, I just silently quit on X...that place is a dumpster fire. I'm pretty sure none of our original watchers...would be using that service anymore' - **[community_signal]** Chris revealing former career in film industry through recent podcast appearance on Company Move, expanding personal brand beyond pinball content creation (confidence: medium) — Chris: 'I did an interview for another podcast called Company Move...for those of you that want to hear me not talk pinball and hear me just talk nothing but my film background' - **[product_strategy]** LEGO demonstrating sophisticated design philosophy by reusing common parts in innovative configurations rather than creating expensive custom molds; learned from 1990s near-bankruptcy due to excessive bespoke parts (confidence: high) — Chris: 'LEGO almost went under' in 90s due to 'tons of bespoke parts which cost them a fortune' and now uses 'creative' reuse 'just getting creative not make 50 different molds' - **[product_concern]** Stern Pinball Arcade VR app featured token-based monetization with algorithmic difficulty scaling that made progression mathematically impossible, and required pointless 30-second animations mandated by Oculus that added no functional value (confidence: high) — Chris recounting friend's experience: 'the tokens were harder to achieve...it literally became...impossible to earn enough tokens' and '30-second animation...it wasn't loading during this time...it was just animating because it looked cool' --- ## Transcript Thank you. as always halfway across the world it's jared morgues hello crazy hands and crazy hands and crazy shirt wow i know with a full color going on there i thought why not it's it's it's the it's the carpet in an arcade it kind of is really it kind of is yeah it really it's not kind of it actually really is no i can see this in an arcade right now i i got uh instagram marketed right and I like shirts, weird shirts. I go down to this local what I call purveyor of fine haute couture of Hawaiian shirts. Okay. You know, like the really bright patterned shirts that you get, you know, and I kind of just like it because I usually wear them to pinball tournaments where everyone else is wearing black. And it's boring and everyone looks the same. Right? Yeah. So I wear these to like brighten things up. There's a couple of other dudes that do the same thing because it's like we're all bored of just black shirts. So I go and look for these sort of shirts around. And this place, I'm not going to say their names. I'm not really happy with the quality of them. They're not going to get a free plug from me. But, like, they had really bright shirts of dubious quality. And I imported them from, I think it was China because that's where the shop is. Sure. and yeah I got them and look they're alright but they're I think they're like 40 Australian dollars and I can get better quality shirts locally for that price so it's like but they're bright they're not black well that's right I mean there's a place for black shirts and I know why they always get black shirts with all the pinball comps that they go to because often these pinball comps are set up by um bars and stuff like that and if they have white shirts or anything that's not black it shows the dirt up literally immediately when they start work yep and it's it's just not good so they can use them as uniforms as well as you know event shirts so yeah and i mean black is a nice background for really vibrant art which is a lot of the time what get on these um adventures as well so i can see it it's but it's like boring so yeah it uh it's funny because i mean as you're saying this i okay so i open up our channel page on youtube and for some reason a very old video of ours is like up at the top of it oh really which means somebody recently watched it basically is what i think that tells you yeah it was like right It was nine years ago that this one was released. Wow, really? Yeah. And I'm looking, and I'm like, what is that shirt I'm wearing? It was a TPA, Pimple Arcade shirt for Terminator 2 release that was on the back of the shirt. It was the T2 release. And I was like, do I still have that shirt? So I just went and dug through the closet, and yeah, sure enough, it's in there. It's a little tight. Oh, really? But it's in there. and so so then i started i was like okay so what is this video because the video was saying um blockade blockade pinball app kickstarter uh canceled funded i was like what the we never ran a kickstarter like we would and so i was like okay i gotta watch this a little bit So I start watching it, and it was all about when Pinball Arcade was coming out with the Stern Pinball Arcade app. And one of the titles, so they announced the app at the exact same time as they announced their Kickstarter for ACDC. Okay, so Jared, I know this is a long time ago, but let's see if you can dig back in the memory bank. Think about what we might have talked about or thought about as they announced Stern Pimble Arcade app and a Kickstarter. What do you think our take on it was? Where were we leaning? Going both a Kickstarter for ACDC and an app. Yes. Would it be that, oh, the ACDC game is going to be only funded through Kickstarter and it's going to be exclusive to the app? That is what I was thinking. Okay. So apparently everybody had gotten confused based off of their video because they thought, yeah, the only way the app will come into existence is if ACDC gets funded. oh really that was based off the video because they were announcing them in the same video i had only apparently read the press release where i was able to very easily determine oh they're coming out with a stem stern pinball arcade app and they're running a kickstarter for acdc because i would love for that to be one of the launch titles um like that you could purchase the there was four titles that were going to be in the launch um i don't even remember what those four they were like it was it was track what no i don't think it was ghostbusters it was track it was frankenstein it was starship troopers and ripley's those were the four but basically all the all the stern games that are already been in people like hate anyhow yeah yeah um And so we were hopeful about the app. We made the wrong prediction that, oh, yeah, Metallica will be coming soon for this. Because back then we were so naive about, like, we knew a bit about licensing and how it worked, but we had no idea how music licensing works. We were more concerned with processing power and optimization. I was definitely concerned about that. You were going off on a tear on it. I mean, like, Jared went and did a deep dive. Yeah, I really did. Because it's like... Because we were convinced that because they weren't having to emulate, that they were going to be running straight off of what Stern provided, that that would save processing power, rather than having to do that additional step of emulating everything and then kicking through. And that's why we were convinced that, yeah, Metallica would be one of the titles and never even thinking about, oh, they're not going to pay for that. But then – No way, man. Yeah, so the first half of the conversation was all rather positive and, oh, this is going to be great. And then we talked about the Kickstarter and just ripped into it. Told them a new one. For what are you doing? Why are you doing a Kickstarter again? And then, as we were wont to do back then, day-by-day breakdown of, on this day, this happened. And then the following day, this happened. Because it was literally, I guess it had, by day three, it had only been funded $18,000. Of the $108,000 they were trying to make start. 108. 108, folks. Everyone was just fatigued by Kickstarters for a day by that point. And the price that you – if you paid $10, you were going to get the table. And we were like, why are you not labeling this as a preorder price? Because then people would do it. And instead it was – the wording made it so that it wasn't appealing in that manner. Anyway, it was – Yeah, they did not stick to landing. We don't need to go into how often Farsight just borked their Kickstarters and didn't do themselves any favors. But, like I said, I think by day three it was like 18,000. And the following day the whole Kickstarter got pulled. Every announcement about it from Twitter, from Stern, got pulled. All of a sudden you couldn't read a thing about it and everybody all of a sudden started mad panicking. and then came the announcement that, oh, a third party has fully funded the ACDC. More information will come. To which we were like, ooh, what could that information be? And then we had no idea. We didn't know what it was. And then the result was that it was Oculus that had purchased it so that it would be exclusive to the Rift for just a little bit for the Stern Pinball Arcade VR app, which I completely forgot about. And I had texted a friend of mine who I was like, did I play that at your place on your Rift? And he was like, I have no memory of it. Now, to be fair, this friend has memory problems, so I didn't expect him to remember it. Yeah, right. It's neurological, so I mean, I can't blame him. But anyway, he wound up digging through notes and was like, holy crap, I actually did have that. And so then, because he owned it, he could still download it or still open it. Oh, really? Except for it doesn't open on the MetaQuest store. he would have to even if he had the rift or whatever i guess that was the thing but anyway and i completely forgot about this that whole game was token based you couldn't own you couldn't straight out buy anything it was tokens yeah and and and this is a look of dismay of it like shrugging all over my face here and the VR like you could play and earn tokens but the thing of it was was as you got better on a score on any of your stuff the tokens were harder to achieve and and it literally became like very obviously very quick it was impossible to earn enough tokens to even like buy one game impossible because of the because of the scaling of it there was absolutely no way that you were going to be able to do it and be able to to purchase any of you know own any of these things um and that was and that's not even on top of the ui that was bungled to no end the massive lag in the controller. It was unplayable. You know us. We mock people to say it was unplayable. And I do remember trying to play it going, I don't know, what the heck? Yeah, it looks pretty. I can't do this. Oh, yeah, it was just unbridled trash. Oh, and not to mention the thing, and I don't know if this was I don't think I don't think this was in the flatball version. I think this was only in the 3D. But every time you selected a table, this whole animation happened of robot arms coming down and extracting the table and sucking it up into the roof, and then it would drop down the new table, and it was literally a 30-second animation. And according to my friend, this was a requirement by Oculus because they were trying to show off, ooh, isn't the 3D cool? Really? Yes. Oh, and it did nothing. It wasn't loading during this time. No. It was just animating. It was just animating. Because it looked cool. Ooh, VR. Stick through the front of the screen sort of thing. That being said, if you think Jared's only new to the VR talk, oh, no. So Jared had lots of thoughts about VR. He was talking about Google Cardboard. He was talking about some Samsung headset or whatever. It's one of those things that was kind of interesting going for a time capsule, going, boy, I don't remember a thing that I said. My beard was much darker too. but the fact that there were similar it's definitely us it's not like we've changed the brand the brand that is the Chris and Jared show has not changed very much at all sometimes it's fun folks to go deep dive into some of those older pods we don't usually say I'm sorry I listen to the the Lonely Island Seth Meyers podcast they talk about all the SNL digital shorts and they have this whole thing of saying instead of saying you know comment they go hit us in the titties I don't know why but now if I want to say leave a comment it's hit us in the titties hit us in the titties it's catchy right I mean how do you not want to say that it flies off the tongue so here's my here's what I would like to know in our YouTube comments, folks. If you go back and you watch any of our old episodes, can you please highlight what some of the ones that you think are just like, oh, my God, I remember that, or that's classic. I say this because we are approaching our 300th episode, and I would love to revisit some of these for just that purpose. But I need to know what has stuck with any of you. So if there is an old episode and if there's a moment in it, tell us, oh, the conversation you had at this point so that I can go rewatch and we can laugh at ourselves in the 300. That would be wonderful. It would be good. Yeah. That would be really cool. Okay. New things that I don't think Jared is even aware of because I don't think I told him. Okay. All right, Jared. Check this out. and hey folks, check this out also. We're on Blue Sky. Just in case you wanted to know. Alright, cool. Yeah, I mean I was like finally you know, maybe we'll switch over to I mean not switch over completely but maybe I'll open an account on Blue Sky for those of you that are like, I hate Twitter. Because that's not X, it's Twitter. So there you go, it's at Blue Sky or at Blockade dot BSky dot social if you want to follow because we have all of 11 followers right now. Yeah, cool. Well, I'll tell you what, I haven't actually, I just silently quit on X as far as doing show posts because that place is a dumpster fire. I'm pretty sure none of our original watchers or listeners would be using that service anymore because they're much smarter than that. Yeah, you know. I still unfortunately, I still doom scroll on it, But, you know, also, and I'll just highlight this in this while we have it up there. I did an interview for another podcast called Company Move that was it's all about people that have left the film industry. So if you want to hit them up and listen to that episode, it's kind of interesting for those of you that want to hear me not talk pinball and hear me just talk nothing but my film background. And that's – Or for those that didn't realize you actually had a former life in film. Yeah, I know. So there's that as well. Exciting. It's not what you think. It's not – Chris was not a movie star. But he was important. But that's why I wore this shirt today because – That's right. Former life. Yeah. All right. What was the other thing that I was – Oh, because your shelf inspired me. We never talk about Lego, but both of us like Lego. We do. And since it's been out or announced for a while or whatever, and I actually got to put my hands on one, they have a new Transformers Lego, Jared. Oh, do they? And it's Soundwave, the cassette player. Oh, with the cassettes? And it comes with two cassettes that do fully transform. Oh, they transform themselves? They transform into Laser Beak and Ravage, I think. one's the bird, one's the cat so okay, if these things transform how big is Soundwave? you have to scale the tape with the transforming elements the tapes were always mini they were always mini cassettes yes he's slightly larger than what the actual Transformer was, he's bigger than what a Walkman would have been but when he transforms he's the same height as Optimus oh right okay yeah Optimus over on your shelf there let me look at Optimus up there so I was like and that was the Transformer that as a kid I desperately wanted oh he was so cool yeah he was very cool you know I have my Megatron original G1 Megatron that transforms into a Walther P-39 pistol. Not sane for kids today, right? What does... In the latest series of... In the more modern series of Transformers, does he still do that? They transform him into either a tank or a helicopter. That's the typical... That's right, because he's tank form now. That's the typical thing that they... Because it's also weird, how do you go from a pistol to something the size of a semi-truck when you transform? They never explained that one. Yeah. So, you know, I know in Transformers Animated he was a helicopter, and that made a whole lot more sense. Oh, yeah, that helicopter form was sweet. It looked really cool. And then also for those of us that are doing the whole video game console thing of LEGO, so I've got the NES, I've got the Atari 2600, they also now have a Game Boy. And the Game Boy is one-to-one scale. Really? Right? I mean, they should have, really. Yeah. With cartridges that go in the back. Oh, that's very cool. yeah very cool that's pretty cool so anyway fun things with lego all right uh what's it oh okay fine bring it over here something that i recently built uh for my wife because she's a huge fan of these the lego mandrake oh that's cool from harry potter and yes it has legs oh that's so cool Yes. That's amazing. Screaming not included. Yes. Yeah. That's very cool. That's such a cool detail on that list. It is. I love how with these sort of custom or brand-related things, they're not shying away from making custom parts. No, that's the incredible thing. unique parts there is very few bespoke parts like because that costs them money to to tool to do the mold so they have gotten very creative with using parts that they've already done and just changing colors that's really this just creating a new colorway um that's easy they just put new plastic yeah new plastic die but i am blown away by the stuff that i've built recently going none of these parts are are unique i you know it's like when placed in a certain orientation they look like a completely yep different form factor yep i got one of those um i've recently sort of been given throughout the the past couple years the botanicals um in lego and they are they're amazing like i don't know how apparently wildly popular because when i just went into target the other day there was at least 20 different plant sets that were available in there it's i got this plum it was like a plum um blossom plant or something like that brown it looked very twiggy it looked quite bonsai in nature um but you put it together and it's like these are all just common bits right like there's nothing special about these parts at all but the way that they've been able to like make that like even the pot and stuff like that that these things go into that's like so ornate and there some like gold gold tinged parts and stuff in there that make it really pop it like there you right there only like a a small amount of change that they do to a part to make it a completely different feel in the kit yeah and it's um it's really fun to see how they've gone and reused and reimagined how these things go together like it's very different to the 80s lego no completely it's i mean they've got so many different like shapes and stuff like 80s lego was blocks with a few angles on it well and then and then they made the mistake in the 90s of tons of bespoke parts which cost them a fortune and that was when lego almost went under um so that's where they had to rethink and go wait a second maybe maybe we can just get creative not make 50 different molds for a new kit because that's like you know make it a very expensive yeah now it's just expensive because of licensing and uh highly painted minifigures yeah although i love watching how they do the minifigure printing like they have a like that's this little jig that they go in all production line obviously but it's like a pad printer and they go like there's one pad one color yeah and one color it goes along one color one color and it's like silkscreening almost yeah it is it really is silkscreening but But it's just so cool to watch them actually do the printing on the figure bodies. It's so good. Same with the faces as well. They use the same technique. Really cool. A whole lot better than the stickers I used to have to apply to all mine. All right. Oh, they still do that. I think they're horrible. Cheap and nasty and they peel off. Let's dive into our main topic today. We're going to talk about the Williams pack that just dropped afterwards. so if you want to stick around for that, please do. But I was playing on the AtGames cab, and they had just come out with No Good Gophers. And I'm playing No Good Gophers, and I can't even get the replay score. What's the replay on it? 14 million. Oh, that's it. Look, that's actually pretty high. But I mean... You've got to have a good game to get that on that game. on that game. Considering you get that just for launching the ball in Attack from Mars. And change. And change. But I'm sitting there playing it, and the thing is, I love No Good Gophers. I think it's a really fun table. Of course, it's a pet lover. Why am I not going to like it, right? But as I'm playing it, I realize, my God, I suck at this. Like, I cannot, I don't know how to boost the scores where the good scores are i know how to make multiball but then in multiball getting the jackpot is like i can barely accomplish it um it's really hard it's it's a hard shot on that right ramp on that on that side ramp yeah on the side ramp um yeah the uh it's got sucker shots all over the captive ball is a center drain sucker shot wait what was that there we go um the the the jump ramp that gets you up to the plexi on the top is a sucker shot because if that thing rolls back center drain the right ramp if you don't go all the way up it's a center drain it's like it's got center drain everywhere horrible and so i'm like that's like how it plays in real life too i played i actually played one and it's it is just dangerous everywhere yeah it really is yeah yeah but it has that factor of you can't resist going for the shot you you want that the jump ramp comes down you want that hole-in-one something fierce you want it so bad yeah it's just intoxicating you get um yeah gophers that's the one to do again the gophers pop up you want to bash them that center that that captive ball is just right there why not boom the pop hit that yeah the pop bumpers are not even something that you can send the ball into naturally the the ball has to kind of like drop into them from the lock from the upper trough and then it kicks it into it you know it's it's just yeah it's a weird layout and everything but i was like okay maybe it's just maybe i'm rusty maybe i just haven't played in a while yeah i'm on that table for like a solid hour still have not hit the 14 million just just chopping wood and breaking everywhere i would have one really good ball thinking oh here we go here we the very next ball just immediate death you know i'm like my god and so can i even pinball like what is going on like what do you what even is pinball I should learn this thing by now. But what I'm realizing is what I'm not learning is stop going for those sucker shots. I just can't help it. You know, I'm telling myself, don't do it, don't do it. Yeah, yeah, combo, no, oh, man, that one did. You know. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, that very much inspired me to then ask Jared. Jared, what's a table that you absolutely love playing but just suck at? oh look for me it is uh it's a samurai's vengeance like i like when i whenever i play pinball effects flat um i i load this table up because it feels like that you can actually you know you can start a mode really easy you can fight one of the you know the other characters at the top yeah it's like yeah yeah no this is fine i got this i got this and then you know draining on this table is something that you experience often like it's it is just i don't know what it is the outlines are just punishing and it's sort of you get into a mode you think cool i'll go and do that and then you've got that whole like you know the losing your um sort of aura whatever the mechanism is you know with the um the beautiful little cherry bottoms and blossoms cherry bottoms cherry blossoms that just like uh you know start burning down then your mode ends because essentially that's your timer and it's like i enjoy every bit of getting my butt kicked on it and i come back for more and it's great but i end up walking away going what do i actually achieved there absolutely nothing how often do you actually how often do you actually finish a mode on there i don't think i ever know how has i'm sure they have because there's some very good players out there in pinball fx flatland but i have never experienced anything past this that like the second um character yeah like did i pick i may i may get through one of them like oni or something like that yeah i'm pure luck and then and then the other one where the flippers get reversed is like okay yeah well i'm just monkey flipping that one because like it's i can't change my brain on that and it's just like everything is everything is danger on it but it's beautiful and it's one of the most gorgeous tables like this like when they start bringing some of these in originals into um vr man it's gonna be a feast that is one that's gonna benefit for sure just because of the angle. It's kind of like Champion Pub. The upper playfield. Well, no, I was going to say the upper playfield. No, but Champion Pub, how it's kind of got that angled ramp in the middle. Yeah, that looks so good. This also has kind of that thing. It does, the upper playfield. It's going to really pop out. Boy, I can't wait for it to come. It will mean that I play it so much in VR if it comes to VR. Because it's just, it's going to look beautiful. And I can just imagine what the environmental effects are going to be on that table. It's going to have cherry blossoms falling around it, and it's going to have like... It's going to just have a full-on bonsai tree with a ninja sleeping underneath it. Yeah. That's what I hope. They could do many things, all of which will be fantastic when that game comes to VR, honestly. I love it. Another game that popped up then for me that is the same thing where I really have a blast playing it, and my God, do I suck at it. uh his brother in arms our brothers and i agree with you there um that was actually on my list as well i i have so good i understand what i'm supposed to do i so and and i think that's i think that's kind of a key component of these is i understand the rule i understand how i'm supposed to complete the mode. I just can't complete the mode. And on that one, to this day, the most I've ever completed is two of the modes in a single game. I can't get, because I think there's four modes. I think. I'm not sure entirely. Do you know? Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah. But I've never even come close to to wizarding that thing like no it's just no but i really enjoy shooting on it i really enjoy the atmosphere of it other than the music the music you go um yeah that song i'm like no give me some more rousing um the missions the missions you actually get the the more rousing sort of mode-based music. And I do like the... I mean, the sound design in that game is great. Like, the weapons sound really... Like, all the machine gun fire and everything sounds really chunky, really big. Like, it really immerses you in what is that sort of life on the glass in that table that they're trying to go for there. Yeah, it's gritty. It's a really gritty table. And it's... The whole stacked drop target mechanism to get into the lock hole and everything is really an interesting one as well. And the thing I really like about that game is that that game could be a real table. Absolutely. As well. Like, they could make that mechanism with the drop targets work in real life and everything. So it could easily be a real table. So that's what I like about that one as well. It's a real... And yes, I suck at it as well. Do you have any others that popped to mind? What was... I was looking through the list. So, in the FX arena, I think probably, strangely enough, I think Verne's Mysterious Island. It's a weird... That's very bizarre. I can't get into it. It is. I read the rules on it, and I sort of know what I'm going for. but I do find myself, if I've had a break from it, like I have now because I've been playing flat for ages, I would need to go back and just sort of refresh my memory with the rules because it's not an intuitive table to shoot. But it makes you feel like that you can do everything on there, but it's another one like No Good Gophers that's really dangerous. There's so many bad feeds from that table. I reckon if Zen Studios was prototyping this as a whitewood and to produce it, they would have to make some changes to where some feet come from. Some of the ramps or lanes, I just know that they're really narrow. And it reminds me of, I don't know if you've played Houdini from American Pinball. Yes, I have actually. Houdini's got just some ridiculously stupid narrow shots that if you just barely miss it, you just go boing, and your ball goes everywhere. So that's what it kind of... Yeah, a lot of those American pinball tables are very much like that. They have such tight shots everywhere. They're really a shooter's table. And I know Tales from the Crypt also has at least one shot that's like that, that is just stupidly narrow. if you've ever played games like uh uh independence day at the stern independence day and the even to an extent um the t3 um stern pinball um those tables have similar lanes like they're very narrow they're not like your big wide open shots that you can kind of shoot for a number of different places you've got to be on this flipper and shoot at this point otherwise Why did you miss it? That's interesting. I thought T3 was practically a reskin of T2. No way. It's very different. No. It's different. Yeah, it's got like three ramps, and there's one ramp in the middle, and then there's all sorts of stuff on it. Yeah, it's definitely not a reskin. It's been up forever since I've touched it, but I remember when I played it, I was just like, oh, it's just T2 with a backbox game. No, it's very different. Okay, okay. it's actually better it's my preferred terminator game actually okay it's really fun so as i was thinking about these you know tables that i love but i suck at it started drifting me to the opposite category because and i'll give you my transition piece here i really used to be a champion for iron man and why because i understood the rules fully I found it very challenging I've only ever gotten to the wizard mode once and I immediately drained the ball and I was very mad at that and I realized that I'm okay at it it's a slogfest of a table there's so many things you have to complete in order to get to the wizard and you fumble once and it's like, oh crap, back to square one kind of sensation. And so that got me thinking, are there any games that I play purely because I can go for a long time on them, but in honesty, I don't really like the table. So that was what got me transition thinking. I don't quite put it in that category, but Jared I'll let you go first is there something that strikes that category for you? Yeah I remember this is one that I discovered recently that yeah I can really stay on this table for a stupid amount of time it's Moon Knight Moon Knight for me once you understand it wow once yeah it's a rule one you've got to actually understand what to shoot for and getting to that wizard mode you have to be quite deliberate about the things that you do and how you complete them but man once you dialed into that game that's a you can easily have an a 45 minute session on that thing and get especially if you figure out uh the trick of getting into midnight oh yeah that's where the massive points are and you just run a score you just spam that over and over and over again and yeah the score just goes it's almost a one trick pony it is once you understand that it is really yeah um but at first it's brutally difficult like yes until you crack that wall yeah yeah and but the thing is i i mean i love so i love playing it because it is i just love the aesthetic of it it's got a really great aesthetic yeah and the shots feel really nice on it yeah i think but it's just like it's a long player and i that's a big problem i have with a of the games, those old Zen games, they just they're there for a marathon session and I don't really have the time and nor the patience, honestly, to actually sit there and just slog away at something. It just feels like it feels like a chore towards the end. There's actually a point where I'm going to just let this fifth or sixth extra ball that I've earned drain because I'm just a bit over it and I don't really care about the score anymore. It gets a bit tiresome, right? What about you? You know, some people might call it heresy to say this. Creature from the Black Lagoon. Ah, yeah. I can rip on that thing. I know where the points are. I know how to get the points. But as I mentioned way back in TPA days. And this was one of those tapes. And that was a real grind fest back in TPA days, right? Because those railroads were real. I was leaderboard chasing at that time. And so, and I was purposely, that game would break, like, certain scores would break the game. Yeah. And the problem was, was you would hit a certain score and you'd go, oh, if I die now, the game's broken. I have to reach the next score in order to save this. So it was a real. Really? Yeah, because once you've gotten to the billions, it would real quickly, you could score more than the game could process fast enough. And so if you were on your third ball and you were in multiball and racking up the billion scores, if you drained during that, it would all of a sudden, you would go from having 250 billion points down to 6 billion. like it didn't know it couldn't turn over properly uh yeah right you know so the wrong you just lost it yeah so what you what you honestly needed to do was you had to complete multiball without losing or like you know you lost two of the balls but you still have the one ball yeah and then you could play and then you were fine but if you lost all three during multiball boom toast gone and the problem was was by that point you've been playing for 45 50 minutes yeah and it was a real control thrower kind of kind of moment oh yeah i'll be raging on that that's really but that was also when i learned that i could play that game with nothing but the right flipper like like because i would trap balls on the left flipper and i would just be holding them and the rest of the game was right flipper right flipper right flipper doing everything with the right flipper and that's where i was like i'm not having fun this is a one this is it's a one flipper game you know it's yeah but i kept on going back to it because i was good at it and yeah so that was points were easy to find yeah yeah i knew how to exploit it i knew how to to just like go mad on it um now again that was tpa it was how do you go with easy to go mad on it what's that how do you so how do you find it in pinball effects in comparison i've not been able to go mad on it in pinball effects um part of it is so the main thing you need to do when you get into multiball you need to get your multiplier up to four times because that'll magnify your jackpot four times. And then you need to kick the ball up into the pop bumpers a whole mess of times because that's what raises your jackpot level. And your first jackpot and super jackpot are like, eh, whatever. Then you've got to go through the whole thing again to super jackpot because then everything doubles, and then it doubles, and then it doubles. So it just exponentially just gets larger. Right. Right. So you've got to get – you have to complete the jackpot sequences. Yes. Like multiple times. You've got to find the girl, then you've got to rescue the girl, then you've got to do the pop bumpers, then you've got to get the super jackpot, and then rinse and repeat and keep your balls alive to keep doing that. Because every time you do it, you double your score. Yes. And so suddenly – Easier said than done. So suddenly just a regular jackpot was netting you a billion points. and then the super jackpot was netting you, well, because you had four times on it, was netting you $4 billion. And then the very next time, suddenly it's netting you $16 billion. Like I said, it would just go crazy on the scores. Yeah. And, but part of the ease of that was vacuum ramps. Yeah, the ball would just go. You send that ball up and went through the whole thing. And it was really lovely and powerful. It was like a full song with power shot every time. Whereas if you ever play that thing in real life, it's not like that. No, no, no. And then the other thing was the bowl. You were always guaranteed three turns in the bowl. So you could spell creature really fast. It was only, you know, kick it up three times, you spelled creature entirely. Whereas on pinball effects, it only gets you two spins. and i can say with with quite certainty that is really how it plays on the game that i've got another world it's it's two and if that's if you're lucky the other problem and this is one of the things that i don't think zen got correct uh when the ball kicks out on the right side you should be able to do a dead pass from the right flipper to the left yeah absolutely you cannot do that in Zen It just falls short Like if you do a dead pass um you can catch it on the flipper you have to actually flip it and so it just wrong that actually that is the the secret to the game yes it's the secret and you can't use the secret in the game so it is like even if you so all the games at netherworld for example have titans on them right titan rubbers very stiff silicon bands i like the great you can actually you can even do it with titans on which are generally pretty dead and it will do it and these games are like the netherworld games are set steep right we often have snag ups with the ball getting to the top of the the you know the the diverted ramp during multiple it just sticks up the top because it doesn't have the power to Just get over the edge. Oh, okay. That's how steep it is. Yeah. So, yeah. The dead bouncing in that game is 100% the exploit. From both sides, too. You know, because it's a big loop. You need to be able to dead pass from both sides. And it's sketchy in Zen. It's not. You've got to really fight for it. It's not correct. Yep. Yep. So, I mean, hooray for the challenge, I guess. look you gotta play it as it lies right you do you do and it's you know it is you just have to adapt your style and there's plenty of other things you can do in that table to um get the ball over to the right flipper so do you have a do you have another one that uh yeah i do look it's for me this is going to be controversial but it's attack from mars oh like i i found I found where the points are on that game you forget you basically just forget about standard and you just Total Nuclear Annihilation forever and the best thing you can do is set up your Total Nuclear Annihilation so you can nail all five shots in sequence and get an instant billion yes you do that and you're in Total Nuclear Annihilation you trap up and you just shoot the same shots over and over again that are safe. Like, send it up into the pop bumpers. Send it up into the pop bumpers. Get a nice, safe feed out of the pop bumpers to your flipper and then rinse, repeat, and do that until you're bored enough that you lose concentration and you die, and then you just go and do that again. I will say, and I know you sent this in a note, that I agree, I would much rather play Medieval Madness. And they're practically the same layout. well they essentially are yeah but medieval madness is the player's game like uh attack for mars is so the beauty of it is that you can do exactly that like you can shoot it it just feels great to shoot and i'm not saying i'm definitely not saying it's a bad game it's a fantastic game yeah honestly but you can just stay on it forever if you know what to do yeah and i guess you can say that about every game right even the obscure zen ones that you know people hate if you know what you're doing on it you can run any table but it's whether you enjoy it or not is the real factor i think attack from mars i i enjoy dipping into it occasionally but giving an attack from mars and medieval madness side by side it'll be medieval madness all day i do have one more and this was again because i was thinking about my time in farsight and what was because i went through the zen list you know last night i was looking through everything going well i don't know like creature's the one that stood out but then i was like i know there's you know there's all these tables that haven't made it into pinball effects uh and i was like sure as hell i'm not putting cactus canyon on there because i love that thing to death and i can run that table too speaking of uh attack for mars and medieval madness yeah cactus canyon it's the same thing I still don't see it. I still don't see it. I see it, man. I've played it. I know it's a mirror. I know it's the mirrored version of it, but I don't see it, and I love the theme, and I think it's a blast, and I really, really, really wish that Zen could find one in Europe so that we could get one in Pinball FX. Oh, man, I love it. I didn't spend enough time on it at BPAC because I had the remake there, and, man, I was just gasping to get on it because I was just loving it. And it's great. It's just so flowy. and so great. It was so much fun. And great call-outs. They've got to find one in Budapest, man. Yeah. They've got to find one. It's great. So anyway, it got me thinking about the things that are in Pinball Arcade. And it's scared stiff. That is a... If you're going for a high score... Because here's the thing about it. It's... In a lot of ways, it's a beginner's pinball machine. Absolutely, yeah. It's very straightforward. The shots aren't terribly difficult. It's very humorous. And like I said, it's very, if you're new to pinball, it's a great machine to throw somebody on and let them feel good about playing. If you're trying to go for high scores, you're going to be on it for days and days. If you can keep the bulls from draining. And days. like it is just and oh man that that pimbal arcade version of scared stiff was just a snore fest it was and again maybe that's the problem maybe that's the problem right there you know i'm comparing a vacuum wrap thing to a machine that i don't i haven't played it in years i have even it's probably 10 years since i've played it um played it at netherworld at uh during some i think they had it last time at um during spooky month so was it more fun live oh yeah it's it's a different game okay completely like yeah it's there's some risks to it for sure yeah and you can't just like sit there and vacuum ramp it all day because it's like yeah those those ramps and other ones where they're perfectly aligned to screw you up if you don't get a clean shot okay uh and you know the the things like um you know the pop bumpers we got to get the monsters lab like they don't really your ball doesn't stay up in those nearly as much as it did on um pimple like kayla you could pretty much stick the ball up in there it'll rattle around and get your monsters lab in one shot you know but have you played stern's version yeah elvira's house of horror is great is it like i've never i've never seen it um it's a it's a fun fun take on it it's very um the modes are where it's all at obviously and like it's elvira has done a lot of bespoke um video for it and stuff like that it's a great theme integration of like Cassandra's done the money on this one. Like it was great. That's one of those that I've been curious about just to see because it's just kind of rare that somebody has had three tables made about them. It's like, dang. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Kind of crazy. Oh, yeah, it's great. Love it. All right. Anyway, there you go. What are your thoughts? Again, hits in the titties. the other one for me with what are your uh what are yours yeah you got one more to add yeah look i've got one as well and i think this will probably resonate with with people fairly well and that's and that's the machine brighter pinbot like yeah it's a one trick pony it's just you know i mean you you can get a colossal score on it like if you get you know the billion shot a couple of times it's like the first time it's oh well this is amazing and then the second and subsequent crimes are going okay well let's keep going then i guess yeah but okay this this will seg nicely into our next section though because i'd still rather play brad a pin bot than pin bot yeah so let's let's roll that into pin bot is uh one of the new tables in a table pack that dropped so it's pin bot taxi and oh boy WHO dunnit yeah i'm so not a fan of WHO dunnit it's not that i think it's a terrible table it does nothing for me I'm just like eh it's there it's about the same level of excitement as noir which is fitting it's essentially I'm sure that they derived some some sort of theme ideas from like you know gumshoe sort of stuff with noir yeah but like I was playing that I was playing it last night on on the ad games cab oh yeah and all of a sudden i just found myself just racking up a score and without me having any clue what i was it was like phone rings you go hit the phone no shoot around okay whatever hey roulette sure bet it you know it just like i didn't know what i was doing and yet i was racking up a score and getting extra balls and like all yeah i wasn't getting punched at all And I was just like, I don't like that. I don't like a table that I can do a monster score on and still have no clue what I'm doing. That's, you know, because then, God, what happens when I figure out what I'm doing? Yeah, you will be there for a while. Yeah. Should we put a video while we're talking about this, Jared? Yeah, let's have a chat of stuff while we're watching the video. Okay. So, well, this is in VR, obviously. Oh, yeah. yeah it came okay first off kudos to zen for hey jared remember said that was uh quiet yeah it's not loud yeah i can fix that okay right down like that all right let's try now that's better there we go um so i really love that like this whole like tunnel freeway thing is very humorous the way have done this yeah like when you when you drain the ball the taxi like there's a there's a rival taxi that comes in behind and then the front takes you that pushes them off the side of the road by the way jared okay well next time we see it the back glass that's the actual back glass yeah okay it is guess what for at games no gorby no lola what i know i don't know they take them off they're off and they compressed they've come they brought santa and and uh dracula made them larger brought them over closer i don't know why i i'm very curious because i'm like clearly zen was able to put it in here why couldn't they put it i don't understand i don't either i don't either that's so bizarre just a strange question that i'm i'm sure we can maybe uh we might know somebody that could give us the answer um yeah maybe but yeah um what i was gonna say was was props to zen though for dropping this on all platforms again day and date that was except for switch obviously except for switch nintendo starts yeah as far as their release schedules go yeah um the one thing i find in vr with this table and this is in like classic physics mode this isn't pro um oh no this is like sorry this is the mode this is distance mode that i'm playing at the moment the ball feels just so lifeless in it it's just so floaty and i don't know maybe i'm just toughened up by netherworld and i expect fast games but look how floaty it is it's like this is not a steep game this is a five percent rake game yeah and that's maybe my problem because I know when I've played this in the arcade, I'm always just kind of like, whatever. It just doesn't excite me at all. I've never been a fan of Taxi. The real game is Diner. Let's be real. Yeah, absolutely. That's the only game with the bowl that you need is Diner. Yeah. And I think we were discussing on PimbleFX why we don't think Diner's in here. I think it's just a little bit more racist. Just a little bit more. Just a little bit more racist. and therefore it hasn't passed the can this be done today and not a thing. Or it's a we got to get the original out of the way and before, because if they put diner out first, everybody's like, what? What happened to taxi? You know, so. Yeah, exactly. Taxi's obvious. It's, you know. I mean, you know, taxi, it's almost like taxi is taking people to diner so they can eat. And everyone's a little bit racist. Yeah. like it's I mean this is like I say it but it's like this is the hell was back then right right now and I am I'm cautious about going on you know shooting game because it's got like you know some questionable stuff but we saw it with all the young like the Disney stuff without that disclaimer at the beginning right I mean I think I was how it was back then and it's like a reflection of the snapshot in time and it's not right but you know whatever like yeah i mean just just look at the art for future spa and oh yeah that that says all you need to know um this bar is wild if you like we have this this um chat that has it's called sexy ass pinball machine and we take all the art wherever you see a pinball machine usually an 80s one that has like you know scantily cared people and we take photos of the art and post it in this message straight absolutely features regularly but getting back to this thing like the this is a big trick i found if you're having trouble with the uh getting the the bowl plunge right you you hold your plunge button so it pulls it back fully then you just let it go back slowly and plunge it right at the very end of the plunge really and you'll pretty much get your your spot passenger if you want that and then about halfway if you do it if you want to get your full 100 000 points there so it's a bit hard to dial in but i found that's the most reliable way of doing it if you're having trouble with it the funny thing is i realized who cares about the 100 000 points it's actually about the spot uh spot passenger Spot passenger. And that's hard to hit. Yeah, you've got to dial it in. But once you've found it, you'll just keep finding it. So, yeah, experiment with that pull back and let go technique with the plunger, and you'll really find it easy to find. I'm going through my photos right now trying to find. I have a particular picture from a pinball machine that just cracked me up, so I had to take a picture of it. We'll go exactly into the, yeah, that was a different time. Yeah, right. If I can find it. I mean, some of my got leads are pretty weird. I keep saying Force 2 has the aliens. Once you see the part of the male anatomy that they are modeled on, you can't unsee it. Okay, this is from Evil Knievel. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've had that one in the 60s. Very cold in that room. Oh, yeah. we've seen we've seen that particular one yep on several occasions yep and the thing is it's not just this for the record it's not just a bunch of old dudes going look at all the really sexy art nah there's like there's women folk and and everything in this chat again future spa has a dude just just jacked beyond what's possible with the full on Tom Selleck mustache yep yep and there's There's a dude on that back glass that's absolutely having the best possible time. He's full tilting on a pinball machine. He really is full tilting all the way in there. It's a wild thing. I'm going to point out with Taxi and also with Pinbot, on the AtGames cab, freaking gorgeous. I don't know like for everybody that was like when are we going to get a 4K version I know they're still not in 4K but holy crap things are just crisp the insert jewels are lit and rendered phenomenally the text on the apron card is actually legible I don't know if it's because these are very simple tables with not a lot going on and so they were able to you know do so much more with them but yeah I think they're some of the best looking ones that that they did there's old pinbot you know until I've actually seen the 3d model of pinbot I really didn't realize what was going on with like yeah the way that they realized that the pinbot character in 3d here is like really nicely done so hat tip to your Zen for that it looks great now I know it's okay you've got the visual enhancements going on I do yeah do you know that there's a difference between them in this versus pinball effects I do not in pinball effects you've got the red side blue side flippers oh really yep and I don't we don't have that we don't have them here yeah interesting kind of interesting that would actually be pretty cool though red side blue side yeah so left side is blue and uh right side is red yeah and it's the and it's the bats themselves are yeah the color doll i wonder why they didn't do that here i don't know i mean there's not a lot going on on this table no so they easily do it and this is another one again era the same sort of era as um um taxi where it's a float fest like it's just so floaty and i think your point is correct in that this is this is how they were this is of the air because pinbot is what 1980 this is the same year as high speed yeah it's high speed and strangely enough i played a high speed and it wasn't as floaty as this so i'm calling i'm calling it am i right do you think 85 is that about correct or maybe is it more like 87 oh i'm not sure but space shuttle uses the same like williams system well that's what the space shuttle is that's that's definitely 84 and as we've talked about in one of our old podcasts um it's what saved it's what saved williams yeah but these these plastic ramps in the back are very space shuttle oh yeah they are very space shuttle yeah um just that solid colored bland interestingly i played this i decided to fire out fx flat the other day the lulls and uh i played i wanted to try these tables because i was questioning the floatiness of them yeah okay how do they actually play in um flat and when it hits that um the the center post yeah it just rockets back up the playfield so unnaturally it's really weird it's it's wrong it's very wrong it's like it's almost like a flipper in its power where it shouldn't be like that um but overall though i think it's actually less floaty in fx to be honest and i'm just wondering in in this pack what they've done is they've brought in a new ball reflection in VR and it's it's not a true like reflection where the the image changes based on where the ball is on the playfield like it does in FX because that's too much processing but they were talking about the cube map and the way they've done it has like a superimposed image of the playfield underneath it and I just wonder if the slowdown in it is because of the way it's it's trying to process the ball texture and it's a little bit slower in VR because of that and I brought that up in the thread on the FX VR discord and it's yet to be determined but I suspect it might have something to do with it anyhow. I could be completely wrong as well, it's happened before. Anyway that's Pinbot, let's scum through and go to whodunit. Yeah where is it here? Yeah, about here. There you go. Yeah. Very boring backless. Yeah, it is quite boring. It doesn't flash lights or anything. It's just kind of... I'm trying to be clever here. I'm trying to get the super skill shot. That's where it's at. So, yeah. it's like if you at the moment interestingly they're gonna have to fix this bug because it's silly so this super skill shot if you make it in time mode and you multiply your score you can finish the um the what is it the the score the speed mode in this game in one second oh wow one second so I think I'm probably not there anymore but I cracked this and I shared it in the chat it's like yeah you can basically get that score in pretty much one and a half seconds if you do multiply everything poor Bolt he was going like oh whoops we should probably change that so it won be there for long But it was just comical because I saw people going hey I started playing I went oh what the score I got one. Hang on. One second? I went, okay, how would you do that on this table on plunge? And then I realized it was a super skill shot. Jared, do you always play with the pop-up scores? I do, and I'll tell you why. When you're learning how the ROM credits your scores, at what point it credits your scores, it's very valuable when you're playing the mode where you can do score doubler. Because if you know when it credits it, you can just basically tap the button just when you know the ROM is going to give you the points, and then you're not burning up your score doubler unnecessarily as you wait for the animation to finish. so you can turn it off after a while once you get used to the game but you haven't come back for a while turn your score markers on because you'll go oh yeah like for example during the roof multiball yeah when you're shooting um the um shots the most valuable shot in roof multiball is the phone because as you're as it's making its way down the trough every switch hit for some reason is giving you a jackpot one that's way down to the hole and the only way you're finding that out apart from the like the the audio stings and stuff if you're listening to it you're noticing that it's going like jackpot jackpot jackpot jackpot as it's going down and the scores are following the ball as it's going down the trap so it's like okay well that's the only shot we do then you just keep shooting that with your score multiplier on you're getting like billions okay like really easily so I mean it's not a secret if anyone is struggling with the modes that's how all the top leaderboard players get their scores and um I remember sharing this insight on FX and people go oh I was like that was the reason why I was like so high on the leaderboard blah blah blah I was like yeah well pinball's about sharing information and it's about making sure people have fun doing the thing that they're doing and if you can share a tip about something to make someone's life better with pinball then you share the tip because that's my philosophy anyhow and that's the that's literally the way you get roof you you give the the usual free nudge and then you just nail it down there now watch this to you watch it when I'm shooting the phone okay I'll turn on school multiplayer now one two and then there's is like, I think, 1, 2, 3 on the way down. It's just a ton of points for you all of a sudden to pop up. Yeah, so it's just like four, you know. So I think what happens is when they're in a multiball, the points are split equally between all the balls that are on the play field. Okay. So two years ago, it's 242. So I'm doubling the score at the moment for, like, the maximum, which is 100 million. I'm doubling it for 200 million plus extra as it's hitting the other shots as well. So it's adding on the shot score. There you go. So I've just managed to get, like, what, 2 million points or something and the 2 billion points in a spot of, like, 30 seconds or so. So this is why this game is silly. Because, and even without the score doubler on, like, you'll see that, like, halfway through this game, like it's only two minutes so i'll go ahead now and and take a punt right on the roulette um because i thought why not let's let's have a spin see how we go and uh well you know i'm still trying to work it out like how there is a formula there's a pattern that it goes in certainly in pro where it's like i think black red black red or something like that and you've got to so yeah here we go I'm gonna gamble this what was my oh no it's not this one yeah it's yeah it's probably like soon anyhow so yeah I'm the the pattern at which you can get um the roulette win is predetermined but you've got to actually lose so you can win there's a there's way you actually have to do it, so yeah if you're chasing roulettes and I mean in some of the modes well there's a couple guys that we're doing the pro leaderboards with that are sharing some... oh here we go, so let's have the 1.8 sounds nice let's see if I can get that back, Come on Red, let's do it! Come on Red! Black! Oh, Black. Now I've gone from 2 billion to 173! Oh man! Yeah, but just, you go, oh, okay, well, most people would just go, whatever, that's hot trash, I'm going to start another game, right? Because, like, how are you going to recover from that many points lost? But there's something about this game that you just go, ah well you know, should I really bother worrying about it too much? Because you'll get a Mac, because it's such a ridiculously high scoring game that it can be feast and famine, you know, it doesn't really matter because you'll get a Mac, if you just keep chipping away. It's almost like it goes into rubber banding mode on the table. Does this, um, does that feature make it not a good tournament table? Oh, it's terrible. Okay, that's what I figured. Yeah. All right, so I've got 58 seconds left, right, and I know that it's tricksy here, because like, they do actually, the first one's always toning, and now I think the second one's always tricksy like it's just hard coded so do the little nudge let it pop out do the little nudge shoot the lane trap up and shoot it always doesn't bounce very nicely but you go get in there there's your 75 and i don't have any more score multiplier left here um but watch what happens in 47 seconds because uh if you think that losing 2 billion points is something that's a problem I'm gonna show you that it's not so 300 did you see three yeah I saw that problem then into 250 129 129 the more switches but if you're getting multiple jackpot it adds score to every jackpot you get oh my god so there you go 128 128 128 you know it's saying 75 off of there look 2.7 from like basically nothing 2.9 3 point something 3.1 8 seconds left ok remind me to not play against you on this table 3.6 so you know don't worry about it too much right so it's silly the game is is just a really unbalanced score fest and it's fun to play but then like you get scoring like that and i don't understand it yeah like nothing makes sense so there you go these are three tables with circling back around just because of after you know watching uh you play in vr there uh I cannot wait for No Good Gophers to come to VR. Oh, all those old Blooms tables. Well, but that one specifically has never quite captured in flatball because of that clear plexi ramp that you're hitting on. And right now, the way Zen has it, they've kind of got it scratched up so that you can identify it. You see it? But in VR, they're not going to have to do that. and it's going to look so good and it needs to be 3D there's so much shape to it it's just full of angles and textures and stuff like that it's going to look so good I think it's going to be a bit of a performance hog though, I'm not going to lie there's a lot of transparent plastic on that playfield that's going to be performance real quick, just because things did update in the VR sphere with this table pack you can now actually change up your room the tables that appear you can restructure your room yeah so there's still going to be three tables in this section and three tables in this section but now you could actually put all the Williams tables that you want of a particular ilk in one section unfortunately you still can't mix Zen Originals with Williams which is kind of like because I would love to put Lara Croft next to Indy that would just be so appropriate. And I would totally put Whodunit next to Noir. Absolutely. In the mystery corner. It would be great. Right. But it is a nice touch because you can also change up, therefore, what statues are available in that room because they're tied to what tables that you put together. Yeah, true. Yeah. So it's a nice little additional touch for that. Also, speaking of the VR space, we have sent questions off to Zen. Because they're more of a technical variety, and we're not going to get the technical people from Zen. We're going to get Mel once again. And some of these are out of his scope. So basically, he's going to get the correct answers and be able to answer them for us all. But there's definitely some things that we're dying to know regarding the layout and how much of a performance hog that winds up being and i'm very curious to know is that staircase to nowhere eventually going to go to a second floor because that would technically help save the performance hog aspect of things well yeah it's uh look there's there's there's actually active discussion happening right now over in the fx um discord I've opened up a thread or someone opened up a thread which I've been actively participating in and the one of the users on their hard rock is actually the QA guy that's working on this is really being open about performance with the game and it's mostly because and this is a byproduct of it but the apps like quest game optimizer and the other one which i can't recall the name of help me out in the comments chat um the those ones that allow you to tweak settings is really he's really making their job hard um try and like performance because they don't know obviously you have a baseline game you can control the settings yeah you have some agency over performance tuning but one of the interesting things they've said is that every time they add new room and new games they have to trade-off so they have to balance performance and move things around that's where i'm curious because obviously it's because you can turn your head in vr and you're going to see all these tables right but by making the way they like that first initial room you could see multiple things right and that first initial williams room you could see a whole bunch of things but now they've gone to smaller rooms so that technically once you're in that room those are the only tables that you're seeing so i wonder if that's the solution um i honestly think it is and that's why i'm saying if you open up that second floor that's like a whole reset you go into that second floor and you can do lots of tiny mini rooms with not much visual distance that would save you on the performance hit i would think i don't know that's one of those technical questions that we threw out there so for the room so when they're loading the table obviously that's done in a way that gives you the the high fidelity full yes that table but everything else in the room goes pretty much half resolution there's a technical term they use in vr so they pretty much switch off half of the detail in the room around you um so you can still see stuff but it's at half the detail but what adds a performance hit to that is the things that you place in the shelves so anything you add to the shelves or the walls the environmental decorations you put in there those need to be catered for and they do um have an impact on the performance so so if there's there's like people trying to work out what the the balance in quest game optimizer is and they've confirmed that the game is designed to run at 130 as a resolution setting so if you know qgo you'll know what that means and it's 130 130 is the the the scale they target and they also target 90 frames a second so those are two constants they're shooting for whenever they're trying to performance tune the game and trying to get it to work in a reasonable thing they do have dynamic resolution scaling on in the build so it will start to like scale things down as performance takes a hit so you're going to see like a like it does it down it doesn't just go from like 130 to 90 like that it starts to just sort of wind it back really slowly so it's almost imperceptible so if you if you notice that things are starting to get a little bit um lower resolution you notice that like you know aliasing is starting to increase that's the reason um the other really interesting thing is that people who are really trying to like they say i just want pinball in its purest most powerful form the way you do that is you go into an empty room with very little occlusion so very little the things around you with lots of space you plonk your um favorite table one of them only into your space in mixed reality and you play it like that because you don't have any load with the environment effects that you go to like half sample you've got no other tables that you need to load in and like maintain the blinking state of them and everything which is one table you can really dial up the settings in qgo if you do that that's what i learned with uh puzzling places and yes i actually plunked money down and bought that because i was missing it strangely enough i was i was missing being able to just sit there and zone out um but i only play in mixed reality because the resolution is so much better um because same with lego that lego game as well like that game when you're playing in mixed reality you can just crank up the settings on that thing and it looks pc grade yeah and you can like with quest game optimizer as much as it it does not surprise or delight zen that we're all using this app it's very interesting from like they're looking at the settings and the stuff we're doing going yeah okay and they're actually it's it's making them realize that there are so many different ways that people want to play vr some people want to be fully immersed and have that experience and They don't care about performance at all. They just want the game to be as it is, and they'll experience the way it is. But there are some people that, because there is no PC release of this thing, they're going, right, I want this thing, I want my headset to be screaming, and I want a PC-based experience from this chipset. And Hard Rock said that it's like, rightfully so, the chipsets that we have in the mobile, they're capable of throwing around some ridiculous specifications um for what it is essentially a like a snap dropping based processor like it's phenomenal what this chip this this vr chip can actually do in the headset but it's got to be a balancing act between performance for everyone right and this is where i'm finding it very interesting to see the trade-offs that they're having to make so i think some of that discussion is probably already happening um in discord and it's fascinating and if you want to do it just go and have a look through all the pin threads that are in the um the bug fix um thing uh it's a very interesting read and you'll get a you'll get more of an appreciation of just the challenges that the team is facing when they're trying to make this game run well enough for everyone but still have a decent level of fidelity in it they're actually pondering at the moment whether they put a a default switcher in there that at least lets you go from like performance to quality and like have that sort of preset quality toggle in there already so this all this stuff that we've been like hacking away at with qgo is making them realize well maybe we could actually introduce now that we're this far into the project like a quality control that's still very like narrow in its scope of what it changes but we can flick a few things off you know and see what that does so it's like these discussions that we're having out there are really mattering I was going to say it's very encouraging because it shows that they're not just okay we have it now we'll just drop tables but instead they're actively realizing the uh the benefit from this community and i gotta think things that happen in vr will help affect other platforms um yeah well you know vr is specifically at games potentially um well yeah because they're both using they are both using a mobile chipset uh it's different obviously like yeah and they've had to uh they've had to completely you know rewrite they're using basically the the same system that uh magic pixel is using you know they had to learn the hard way that that's how they had to do it but that's how they you know all right well hey that was uh oh yeah go the other the other interesting thing really quick thought um is that uh xrcade have released the price of the happy kit i have not seen that give it to me it is i think and please correct me if i'm wrong chat i think it's 150 dollars nah that's expensive i'm okay with that oh like i'm even thinking about that with the aussie tax right like the 150 that's a lot they've like i thought that it would be 120 max look there's a lot in that kit it is i know but i'm like that's literally half the cost of of the deck half the cost of the deck is it yeah that's 2.99 for the deck is it yeah yeah yeah interesting so that's uh that's interesting hmm yeah are they taking pre-orders now not just yet they're just they're just waiting I think for for something else to happen I forget what it is but they yeah they're still waiting to accept pre-orders I think it was going to be really soon though like the next couple of weeks I mean I hate to say it it's inevitable that like I'm gonna have to suck it up but yeah ouch it's one of those times when you go okay that's a lot but also i i guess it's fair like i understand it and especially with with the tariffing prices and everything else like that i'm sure that's factored into it um oh yeah so but yeah it's very much like that i forget where the thread is it's so many threads thankfully people are actually using threads now which is making things a lot easier but um yeah there's like there's there's an area in there somewhere okay maybe someone can point out in the chat that that shows it but i think it's up on their website actually xrk at the moment i think it's not a secret link okay it's just that people people find it and post it so well maybe uh maybe by the time we do our next, uh, show, we'll have more information about that. And, uh, we can dive into that, uh, get you all prepared for that. Uh, I'm definitely gonna have to have a think about, about what goes into that price for sure. Um, that's the show that we have for you today. So, uh, we appreciate you all, uh, tuning in and, uh, following along with us. We do it, uh, cause we love talking about this stuff. And we're just glad that you're out there that, uh, are willing to listen to us blab on about it. That's it for this week, though. Next time, as usual, we don't quite know what we're going to be talking about, but it's guaranteed to be something that Jared enjoys. Stuff and things. All right, folks, until then, bye-bye. See you later. Thank you. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 7929ad64-e24d-4617-ad64-68ca574c1c3e*